What a priviledge to be able to watch a video like this! "Ego permeability" is a very interesting term. I had never heard of it. It makes a lot of sense. I see most polyglots are teachers and their love for languages is a reflex of their love for people! I loved the comments about Japanese culture. Very interesting topic. I hope there are more videos that talk about comparisons between different cultures. I feel so privilegded to have found this channel! Thank you!
A member of the Polyglot Dreams Community, Jörg Weisner, has put together a table about cultural/linguistic attributes (characteristics/features). Please have a look and contribute about your own language and culture. Here is a link to the document: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lS0Lt8GWvsjjpFD3MOz36Bf5Tyvodc20qAw2pUfwKA/edit?usp=sharing
Hello Tim, I found this really interesting and helped me realise why I learn languages quicker than other people. I'd never heard of ego permeability before. I often have days at work using different languages throughout the day and find that I lose myself, almost like being in a different zone, when I speak another language to a customer. One of my colleagues described me as fearless and always willing to have a go at speaking a language, in other words, being childlike...
That is fascinating. I can relate to your experiences, thank you so much for sharing them with me. There are 2 other videos I am making about sounding like a native. I look forward to your feedback.
What you say makes a lot of sense to me and resonates with my observations and experiences. The thing I wonder about is if conscious effort to sound like an "accent parent" is necessarily the solution. Emotional affect is what's putting up the barrier and equally it will provide the solution. If you're convinced it would be cool to sound like a certain person, and you would be proud to be told you sound just like them, then simply "enjoying" listening to that person talk will work its magic. You'll be a "chip off the old block" in no time 😄
I hope my fellow language and culture enthusiasts find this video helpful. This is an area in which I have done considerable ground-breaking research and published papers that reached a wide audience. In these videos, I seek to make academic findings more accessible to the general public. There will be two more videos coming soon on "how to sound like a native speaker... the focus goes beyond just knowing vocabulary and grammar. If you have any questions or comments I will do my best to address them. I would love to hear about your experiences in relation to this topic and if you find it useful or not. A member of the Polyglot Dreams Community, Jörg Weisner, has put together a table about cultural/linguistic attributes (characteristics/features). Please have a look and contribute about your own language and culture. Here is a link to the document: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lS0Lt8GWvsjjpFD3MOz36Bf5Tyvodc20qAw2pUfwKA/edit?usp=sharing
Another wonderful video!!! I studied English as my major in university, and I have to thank you so much that your explanation is way easier for me to understand than the course that I attended before in uni. Thank you so so much for sharing knowledge with us. I read some comments showing doubts and sometimes disrespect to you as they thought you would just be another polyglot youtuber trying to get views on youtube. I wish it would never discourage you to keep making videos teaching us and especially inspiring us in this languges learning journey. Thank you, Professor.
I greatly appreciate your interest and moral support. It gives me pleasure to share the knowledge and experiences that I have accumulated over the past 5 decades as an adult learner and user of foreign languages. It is very gratifying to get comments like yours. Thank you so much.
The points you made about having empathy and imagining yourself in the shoes of the native speakers is golden! I didn’t realize this is exactly what I do, and at times I feel so much pride in the culture almost as if it’s my own. I think this is why I was able to pick up Spanish as well as I did. I’m not of any Latinx blood but I often get asked if I’m Dominican or Puerto Rican from the way I speak and it always makes me feel so grateful and proud of the hard work I’ve put into learning the beautiful language. I’m learning my mother tongue, Tagalog after spending a lifetime only understanding it but speaking enough to get by. And simultaneously learning Arabic as well but eventually, I’m eager to learn Portuguese. I also have found like you suggested, listening to music, news, podcasts, and watching movies in the target language really help. My phone is always set to my target language so I can get used to the unique phone specific vocabulary but also to keep my mind sharp. I really enjoyed your thoughts on learning languages!
A great video - thanks! As a professional language teacher and language learning hobbyist, I found this to be a very good exposition of an often under-appreciated aspect of language learning. A lot of polyglot language-learning videos are about the same novice topics, so I was really happy to find one with some more sophisticated applied linguistic substance. I'm going to recommend this to my students.
Thanks for sharing your appreciation of the topic and my video. I am aiming to make more in-depth videos on foreign language acquisition and cultural adaptation. I am so pleased that professionals like you are watching.
Este video es magnífico. ¡Me encanta tu visión! Es algo que yo no hacía y que hace poco he empezado a hacer; sin dudas es un cambio gigante y disfruto mucho aprendiendo sobre culturas y "sintiendo más" cada idioma.
Glad you enjoyed it and find it useful! Thank you so much for the input. I will publish 2 more in this series about sounding like a native, I hope you enjoy them too.
It's a pleasure to meet you Fabio. I'm glad you enjoyed it! BTW Brazilian Portuguese is one of my favorite languages. I read all the novels of Jorge Amado.
identity is a huge part of language learning, I have this cousin who's English is decent but has a very thick accent, every time we traveled to the States or Europe he would get more attention more friends, more girls, more contacts and so on, with time I learned that the reason he was, or still is, so successful is because when he speaks he is himself he is able to communicate his mind and the intended message, he is not a guy trying or pretending to have a perfect English accent, he just doesnt care about that, in the eyes of all the people we met...he is genuine.
It is a personal choice. Sometimes a thick foreign accent is hard to understand for some people. And they will speak back to you in a broken form, thinking that it is easier for you to understand. Personally, I prefer to strive for a native-like accent. My research and that of others clearly show that those people who adopt a more native-like accent and speech habits tend to have a richer vocabulary and a greater understanding and correct use of grammatical concepts. As for the issue of "so-called pretending," that is the attitude of someone with low ego permeability... as I mentioned, such people say it just doesn't feel right. Now, when it comes to imitating a status accent such as British RP, if you don't get it right then some may judge you to be pretentious or trying to be someone you are not in sociolinguistics terms (trying to sound posh)... even native British speakers of English who do not normally use RP feel strange or not genuine if they do so. It is not always a straightforward issue and I would not advise you to try to imitate the accent and speech habits of certain racial and ethnic groups if you do not belong to them. So those are the exceptions. In the case of most linguistic/cultural groups, sounding like a native will be greatly appreciated when they find out how much effort you have made to learn their language well, follow their cultural norms, etc. It shows respect in such cases.
Hi Tim. Being a Singaporean who was raised in a trilingual environment of English, Mandarin and Hokkien - Singlish is a 4th if you count it. I found the concept of ego permeability really interesting. It made me think about some Singaporean friends I have who were raised in much more monolingual environments (typically English or their mother tongue) - even if they can technically bi(tri)lingual, they tend to exhibit awkward non-native pronunciations. That said, "native" is hard to define since the accents of the various languages spoken in Singapore are largely considered non-standard globally anyway, and even (to my chagrin!) non-native to some more ignorant people! I've picked up French in the past 2 years and I'm now living in Montreal, so I speak French with the Quebec accent. Would you say that ego permeability applies to learning and adapting to accents too, and not just learning languages? Though obviously there's the infamous Anglo-French divide in Quebec and I have met Anglophone Quebecers who are absolutely resistant to learning French (so low ego permeability, I guess), I have also met native French speakers from France who claim that the Quebec accent is completely unintelligible to them and is thus a separate language when it's obviously not the case. As with any language, there are always multiple accents and it's a matter of adapting to them unless you simply choose not to. What do you think?
Tim Keely, in his video on this topic, talks about different attributes that differ in different cultures and languages, Tim thank you so much for these inspirations! This gave me the idea to create a table to list these attributes and then gradually add more and more of them to my own exercises. It would be great if we could share this table, then more and more people could add to it and especially add examples from their native language. Unfortunately, it seems not possible here on RUclips to share the link to this Google Sheet. I could send you Tim this LInk with pleasure, to which mail address would that be possible?
Thank you so much for your contribution and for those who would like to share their insights and read the ones already there... Here is a link to the document: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lS0Lt8GWvsjjpFD3MOz36Bf5Tyvodc20qAw2pUfwKA/edit?usp=sharing
Год назад
Thanks @@polyglotdreams and Tim for sharing this, looking forward to great insights and inspirations to speak like a native in different languages!
This is an interesting one to adopt because it can feel like youre mocking the other person, or trying to hard to be someone youre not, or so us Americans tell each other, which i feel can just depend on the context and how its done. Adopting another culter and celebrating their unique diversity is a beautiful thing, and as you've said, it requires us to use our empathy and put ourselves in their shoes. Very good advice! Im curious what your opinion is about nonnative speakers finding work within their target language and what that would entail. How dificult would it be? Would i just have to do my best to immigrate into the community as youve explained in thos video? Do i have to make sure i know most of the slang in that dialect to be considered fluent? Gracias por esto vídeo y yo esperar por el uno próximo.
Yes, exactly, imitation has to be done with those things in mind. In certain situations it can have a negative effect. Even British native speakers of English can fell false when trying to use RP (Queens English) and if you are white you might have some difficulty if you imitate certain speech patterns associated with US inner city blacks. But in general when you are simply speaking like others in a particular linguistic and cultural community the results tend to be very positive. As for finding work in my target languages, I am not making a video about all the jobs I have had in which I used foreign language skills (mandatory). Please ask me again if you have any questions after viewing it.
What a priviledge to be able to watch a video like this! "Ego permeability" is a very interesting term. I had never heard of it. It makes a lot of sense. I see most polyglots are teachers and their love for languages is a reflex of their love for people! I loved the comments about Japanese culture. Very interesting topic. I hope there are more videos that talk about comparisons between different cultures. I feel so privilegded to have found this channel! Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for letting me know.
A member of the Polyglot Dreams Community, Jörg Weisner, has put together a table about cultural/linguistic attributes (characteristics/features). Please have a look and contribute about your own language and culture.
Here is a link to the document:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lS0Lt8GWvsjjpFD3MOz36Bf5Tyvodc20qAw2pUfwKA/edit?usp=sharing
Hello Tim, I found this really interesting and helped me realise why I learn languages quicker than other people. I'd never heard of ego permeability before. I often have days at work using different languages throughout the day and find that I lose myself, almost like being in a different zone, when I speak another language to a customer. One of my colleagues described me as fearless and always willing to have a go at speaking a language, in other words, being childlike...
That is fascinating. I can relate to your experiences, thank you so much for sharing them with me. There are 2 other videos I am making about sounding like a native. I look forward to your feedback.
What you say makes a lot of sense to me and resonates with my observations and experiences.
The thing I wonder about is if conscious effort to sound like an "accent parent" is necessarily the solution. Emotional affect is what's putting up the barrier and equally it will provide the solution.
If you're convinced it would be cool to sound like a certain person, and you would be proud to be told you sound just like them, then simply "enjoying" listening to that person talk will work its magic. You'll be a "chip off the old block" in no time 😄
Yes, exactly, having a role model to immitate is a great way to learnt to sound like a native.
I hope my fellow language and culture enthusiasts find this video helpful. This is an area in which I have done considerable ground-breaking research and published papers that reached a wide audience. In these videos, I seek to make academic findings more accessible to the general public. There will be two more videos coming soon on "how to sound like a native speaker... the focus goes beyond just knowing vocabulary and grammar. If you have any questions or comments I will do my best to address them. I would love to hear about your experiences in relation to this topic and if you find it useful or not.
A member of the Polyglot Dreams Community, Jörg Weisner, has put together a table about cultural/linguistic attributes (characteristics/features). Please have a look and contribute about your own language and culture.
Here is a link to the document:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lS0Lt8GWvsjjpFD3MOz36Bf5Tyvodc20qAw2pUfwKA/edit?usp=sharing
Thankk you so much for sharing. I'm very thankful to have a role model like you to look up to. ❤
I really appreciate your enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Those are your keys to success.
Another wonderful video!!! I studied English as my major in university, and I have to thank you so much that your explanation is way easier for me to understand than the course that I attended before in uni. Thank you so so much for sharing knowledge with us.
I read some comments showing doubts and sometimes disrespect to you as they thought you would just be another polyglot youtuber trying to get views on youtube. I wish it would never discourage you to keep making videos teaching us and especially inspiring us in this languges learning journey.
Thank you, Professor.
I greatly appreciate your interest and moral support. It gives me pleasure to share the knowledge and experiences that I have accumulated over the past 5 decades as an adult learner and user of foreign languages. It is very gratifying to get comments like yours. Thank you so much.
The points you made about having empathy and imagining yourself in the shoes of the native speakers is golden! I didn’t realize this is exactly what I do, and at times I feel so much pride in the culture almost as if it’s my own. I think this is why I was able to pick up Spanish as well as I did. I’m not of any Latinx blood but I often get asked if I’m Dominican or Puerto Rican from the way I speak and it always makes me feel so grateful and proud of the hard work I’ve put into learning the beautiful language. I’m learning my mother tongue, Tagalog after spending a lifetime only understanding it but speaking enough to get by. And simultaneously learning Arabic as well but eventually, I’m eager to learn Portuguese. I also have found like you suggested, listening to music, news, podcasts, and watching movies in the target language really help. My phone is always set to my target language so I can get used to the unique phone specific vocabulary but also to keep my mind sharp. I really enjoyed your thoughts on learning languages!
I really appreciate you sharing that. You are able to create strong new linguistic and cultural identities. I talk about that in my next video.
A great video - thanks! As a professional language teacher and language learning hobbyist, I found this to be a very good exposition of an often under-appreciated aspect of language learning. A lot of polyglot language-learning videos are about the same novice topics, so I was really happy to find one with some more sophisticated applied linguistic substance. I'm going to recommend this to my students.
Thanks for sharing your appreciation of the topic and my video. I am aiming to make more in-depth videos on foreign language acquisition and cultural adaptation. I am so pleased that professionals like you are watching.
What a brilliant video! Congratulations!
Thank you very much!
Este video es magnífico. ¡Me encanta tu visión! Es algo que yo no hacía y que hace poco he empezado a hacer; sin dudas es un cambio gigante y disfruto mucho aprendiendo sobre culturas y "sintiendo más" cada idioma.
Muchas gracias! 🎉
Вы настоящий молодец.
большое спасибо
Another fantastic video! I’m becoming a fan 😄
Oh I love hearing that!
I loved the beautiful message, vibe and authenticity of all said by Tim and how it all makes sense. Gracias Tim.
Glad you enjoyed it and find it useful! Thank you so much for the input. I will publish 2 more in this series about sounding like a native, I hope you enjoy them too.
Tim that was a fantastic edit and full of useful information! Always impressed by your rich cultural and linguistic background!
Thanks so much. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I will make 2 more soon about how to sound like a native.
Thank you so much for all the advice you provide!
My pleasure! 😃 I appreciate your joining us here at polyglot dreams.
I really love this vídeo.Thank you very much for your valuable tips. Fabio ( Brazil)
Me too, it is awesome, isn't it? Finally, a legitimate professor researching about languages, cultures and business now on youtube sharing with us. 😆
Oh, I'm trying to learn Portuguese too, with the Spanish base, it helps a lot, but I'm still struggling with the pronunciation 😅
It's a pleasure to meet you Fabio. I'm glad you enjoyed it! BTW Brazilian Portuguese is one of my favorite languages. I read all the novels of Jorge Amado.
Great video, thank a lot Sir!
Glad it was helpful! Let's all keep on striving to reach our language learning goals 🙌
Loved your video! Great work!
Thank you so much for encouraging me... greatly appreciated!
Amazing content! 😇
Thanks 😊 🙏 I will do my best to continue sharing from my 5 decades of experience. I greatly your support.
identity is a huge part of language learning, I have this cousin who's English is decent but has a very thick accent, every time we traveled to the States or Europe he would get more attention more friends, more girls, more contacts and so on, with time I learned that the reason he was, or still is, so successful is because when he speaks he is himself he is able to communicate his mind and the intended message, he is not a guy trying or pretending to have a perfect English accent, he just doesnt care about that, in the eyes of all the people we met...he is genuine.
It is a personal choice. Sometimes a thick foreign accent is hard to understand for some people. And they will speak back to you in a broken form, thinking that it is easier for you to understand. Personally, I prefer to strive for a native-like accent. My research and that of others clearly show that those people who adopt a more native-like accent and speech habits tend to have a richer vocabulary and a greater understanding and correct use of grammatical concepts.
As for the issue of "so-called pretending," that is the attitude of someone with low ego permeability... as I mentioned, such people say it just doesn't feel right.
Now, when it comes to imitating a status accent such as British RP, if you don't get it right then some may judge you to be pretentious or trying to be someone you are not in sociolinguistics terms (trying to sound posh)... even native British speakers of English who do not normally use RP feel strange or not genuine if they do so.
It is not always a straightforward issue and I would not advise you to try to imitate the accent and speech habits of certain racial and ethnic groups if you do not belong to them.
So those are the exceptions. In the case of most linguistic/cultural groups, sounding like a native will be greatly appreciated when they find out how much effort you have made to learn their language well, follow their cultural norms, etc. It shows respect in such cases.
Hi Tim. Being a Singaporean who was raised in a trilingual environment of English, Mandarin and Hokkien - Singlish is a 4th if you count it. I found the concept of ego permeability really interesting. It made me think about some Singaporean friends I have who were raised in much more monolingual environments (typically English or their mother tongue) - even if they can technically bi(tri)lingual, they tend to exhibit awkward non-native pronunciations. That said, "native" is hard to define since the accents of the various languages spoken in Singapore are largely considered non-standard globally anyway, and even (to my chagrin!) non-native to some more ignorant people!
I've picked up French in the past 2 years and I'm now living in Montreal, so I speak French with the Quebec accent. Would you say that ego permeability applies to learning and adapting to accents too, and not just learning languages? Though obviously there's the infamous Anglo-French divide in Quebec and I have met Anglophone Quebecers who are absolutely resistant to learning French (so low ego permeability, I guess), I have also met native French speakers from France who claim that the Quebec accent is completely unintelligible to them and is thus a separate language when it's obviously not the case. As with any language, there are always multiple accents and it's a matter of adapting to them unless you simply choose not to. What do you think?
Thanks so much for sharing that.
I really like this one, you feel so relaxed and natural and real. Hard to do with a camera and a script 😊
Thanks so much.
11:40
Tim Keely, in his video on this topic, talks about different attributes that differ in different cultures and languages, Tim thank you so much for these inspirations!
This gave me the idea to create a table to list these attributes and then gradually add more and more of them to my own exercises.
It would be great if we could share this table, then more and more people could add to it and especially add examples from their native language.
Unfortunately, it seems not possible here on RUclips to share the link to this Google Sheet.
I could send you Tim this LInk with pleasure, to which mail address would that be possible?
Thank you so much for your contribution and for those who would like to share their insights and read the ones already there...
Here is a link to the document:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11lS0Lt8GWvsjjpFD3MOz36Bf5Tyvodc20qAw2pUfwKA/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks @@polyglotdreams and Tim for sharing this, looking forward to great insights and inspirations to speak like a native in different languages!
This is an interesting one to adopt because it can feel like youre mocking the other person, or trying to hard to be someone youre not, or so us Americans tell each other, which i feel can just depend on the context and how its done. Adopting another culter and celebrating their unique diversity is a beautiful thing, and as you've said, it requires us to use our empathy and put ourselves in their shoes. Very good advice!
Im curious what your opinion is about nonnative speakers finding work within their target language and what that would entail. How dificult would it be? Would i just have to do my best to immigrate into the community as youve explained in thos video? Do i have to make sure i know most of the slang in that dialect to be considered fluent?
Gracias por esto vídeo y yo esperar por el uno próximo.
Yes, exactly, imitation has to be done with those things in mind. In certain situations it can have a negative effect. Even British native speakers of English can fell false when trying to use RP (Queens English) and if you are white you might have some difficulty if you imitate certain speech patterns associated with US inner city blacks.
But in general when you are simply speaking like others in a particular linguistic and cultural community the results tend to be very positive.
As for finding work in my target languages, I am not making a video about all the jobs I have had in which I used foreign language skills (mandatory). Please ask me again if you have any questions after viewing it.
Uh, yeah, actually I remember some of my past lives and speak those languages in this lifetime.
Great 👍