You also need to change your approach depending on what languages you already know. I speak French and know its grammar well and now I’m learning Italian. I don’t need to study Italian grammar in the same way as I studied French grammar. I just need to learn where Italian grammar is different than French grammar. I also don’t need to spend much time on vocabulary that is very similar between the languages. I need to focus on the words that are completely different.
I think all of his videos are from the perspective of an English speaker trying to learn other languages. You, being a native speaker of a romance language, rightfully need to have a different approach to learning another romance language
@@canchero724 I am a native English speaker, and what @thedavidguy01 says is accurate. I started learning French in 6th grade, Spanish in 10th grade, and Italian in 12th grade. Spanish study was based on similarities and differences with French. Italian study was based on similarities and differences with French and with Spanish (similar/similar, different/similar, similar/different, different/different). It's a simplification, but I would often say that Italian was 49% French, 49% Spanish and 2% other. As a bonus, when I took German I as an undergrad, there were grad students in French, Spanish, and Italian taking German as a required second language. They each had trouble with some aspect of the language, and I was able to help all of them by drawing comparisons with their focus languages. Alas, I'm 3 decades removed from that time, though, and all 4 languages have atrophied to varying degrees.
@@canchero724 contrastive approach is universal, it means you contrast your native language with the language you wanna learn. French grammar is a tad bit different but you will know a lot of vocab, because of the French influence during Normans times. Pronunciation is totally different and you need to learn which sounds are approximates and you can go for there (unaccentuated e - sounds a bit like schwa) and which are new sounds (j - in jeune). By knowing what is easier and what is harder to learn and when you can be both prepared and shuffle around your schedule. Works for every language, even those very exotic ones. If everything is different you contrast: e.g. Chinese: speech - tones, need a lot of work with it, grammar -a bit easier, no tenses, there are words to clarify that, contextual, meaning unlike English it may be a bit more vague if translated directly (seriously, don't do that). etc. there will be always something easy about the language and something difficult.
I feel that I benefit from using a textbook, but going through a textbook is a hard work. Hence watching language learning videos or somethings similar is a way to avoid hard work, convincing yourself that you're doing useful thing
You could try language learning videos in your target language,that’s what I did when I started to feel that I was wasting time by spending hours watching them.thanks god there’s a huge amount of videos in English cause idk if I can just quit .there might be in your target language too as long as you are not learning Ongota or something like that
University language teacher here. A really good video, with really good helpers for learners! It made me think of when I was teaching Portuguese in a Chinese university and looking at how students in there would learn the vocabulary. They would simply write a word down 10-20 times. And it made me realised that that is the system they are used to because of learning their own language - Chinese characters need practice and repetition! So, my point is that the way we learn (and the way we should learn) languages also is bound to be more or less successful due to our geography. So, for example, it would be really interesting to counter the repetitive learning process of a Chinese student providing them with a different learning approach, to see how impactful (for better / worse) that would be.
I have never seen any research ever that suggests writing the same word again and again is beneficial. Teachers in Japan and China do it because they’ve always done it, not because it works
@@tokumei99Aren't they simply teaching kids how to write by hand? We do exactly the same thing in the West; the difference is that we have far fewer distinct graphemes.
It worked for me. I believe the author's name was Raul d'Eca; the C has a cedilla mark on it. Listen to songs in Portuguese too. One recommendation is Cristian Araujo's "Voce mudou": 'E quando despertar...' I think that's the future subjunctive, which looks just like the infinitive in 1st and 3rd person singular. It could also be the personal infinitive. My personal example was: "Se tivesse bastante dinheiro, estaria morando no Brasil." However, most Brazilians are too nice to correct your mistakes. I think that people in Portugal would be different that way, but there are a lot fewer learning materials for European Portuguese, and they don't seem as impressed by foreigners learning their language as Brazilians tend to be. Boa sorte!
@@bhutchin1996 Thanks for the rec! And yeah I've been listening to plenty of music and trying to watch online comedy skits too. Porta dos Fundos is amazing.
@@modalmixture I cannot back this recommendation enough. Whitlam's grammar was quite literally the only one I purchased and needed. Three years in and conversationally fluent and I owe it completely to this grammar and daily Anki (+ the usual reading and having conversations with Portuguese speakers, of course)
Re: Anki. Japanese learners were early adopters of Anki for language learning, and developing tools for grabbing content from popular media to create flashcards in it.
On the note of tools that integrate with anki, Yomitan is supporting more and more languages all the time. I didn't count how many it had last I looked, but it was probably at least a dozen different languages.
My favorite Duolingo nonsense was when I tried learning Haitian Creole with it, and it would constantly give me those "fill in the missing word in this sentence" type quizzes where the blank word was the name of a person. So it would say "Andre loves his coffee" and the quiz would be "______ renmen kafe li".
It's surprisingly common in the Italian course too. I'm guessing it must be common across all their languages. It would be simple for them to change it I assume. I wonder why they dont
This sentence seems to be very silly, because the answer is most likely "Andre renmen kafe li." But if you take your time, you have a simple example for a correct word order. So the important part of the sentence is "kafe li", not "Andre".
@@Hofer2304 Yes, but all that was already done in the app. The only part it wanted me to fill in was the name. If it happened once, I'd get it, but it continued module after module. Not every single question, but usually more than once per exercise.
Helpful. One of my most prescient teachers said again and again: you’ll see all the grammar all the time. I’ve never regretted taking his classes. I was going crazy with my ignorance of Russian grammar.
@@GoodOleDFT No, the verb for to see is "ver", not "veer", and it has a first-person plural of vemos. I am not familiar with "venemos" as a correct conjugation for any verb. Hope that helps!
This is going to help as such an important start to studying a language that doesn't have many structural supports to be learned so far. I'm learning on the fly how to learn Sinama, which doesn't have many written grammars yet, but this overview is helping me understand how to make something more concrete about what I can explore and build around. I hope to speak with you someday about it but this is incredibly helpful, thank you for sharing so generously
Shanah tovah! Thanks for helping people avoid the common pitfalls of language learning. I was on my 4th language before I got these things down: 1. Learn the structure of the language and decide how to proceed through that structure most effectively 2. Match your learning process to how the language is actually used (read, listen to, write about, and speak about things like people who use that language already do) 3. Use tools for learning in a way that works (based on personal experience and research) rather than just taking for granted that how other have used it traditionally will work for you. Those tools included textbooks, free composition exercises, outside reading, listening to music, singing, Anki, and Duolingo. But I don't limit myself to those tools. I'm willing to use whatever works. Also, whatever makes it interesting and fun.
Pretty much my process for learning German. I did take classes at first, though. And I now have an italki tutor so that I can get some speaking practice.
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@@bhutchin1996 For learning Hebrew though - Living Language series is one of the best and I had a chance to look at tHebrew course they made - really decent although they keep the diacritics (?) to help with pronunciation for quite a long time :/ A friend tried to learn Hebrew and she showed me the book, since I've recommended her the series.
☕☕ Taylor, you are not the first person to say some, many, or all of these observations, but you are certainly the first person to put together a comprehensive and cogent summary of these points. Bravo. I studied French (badly) for seven years beginning in middle school and although I could read Molière, I couldn't write a letter or order a cup of coffee. On the other hand, I began German study (after learning Ancient Greek and Latin) as a senior in college followed by a summer at the Middlebury College Summer Language Program. I then moved to German speaking Switzerland 35 years later (!) and tested at the B2 level on the CEFR scale. What I do now (for continued learning in German and French and new learning in Italian and modern Greek) is simple: mostly what you suggested. It works. I do a lot of listening, a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a bit of spaced repetition. For French I do the dreaded dictées. I transcribe native audio-nothing improves listening comprehension better than transcribing 30 seconds of real speech. Lastly, I prep myself as I need to. I make domain specific lists of words and phrases. For instance, I just did my Swiss tax returns (in German), so I studied tax, income, investment related vocabulary. Somewhat related, I also write out scripts. I needed a cabinet repaired in my apartment, so…I learned a lot of kitchen cabinetry words and ways you can break or damage the cabinets. Bravo, again!
I can definitely get behind learning the whole grammar first. I did that for Korean and it set me up to naturally learn vocabulary while listening, because I could more easily infer what parts were what. 커피 아예 안먹어요!
@@stevencarr4002 Absolutely! Unless they are teachers or grammar nerds native speakers don’t know grammar and have forgotten whatever grammar they learned in school. In the worst case they will avoid saying that they don’t know and come up with some half baked explanation.
@@thedavidguy01 Or unless they speak two or more languages - which is true of a significant majority of non-English speakers in the world. So I guess it could be more accurately stated that ‘native English speakers are very bad at explaining their own language.’
I also have a very vivid memory of trying to memorise a list of English words, but I don't remember the list itself. I really don't like word lists, spaced repetitions and such. I just want to watch YT videos, read stuff, talk to people and translate the words I need for what I'm doing at the moment. I find it way easier to remember a word, because I needed to figure it out when someone was wrong on the internet, or because it came up a lot a video.
I think its important to note that no one persons learning style is going to be the same, I had to learn that for myself learning Korean. I treated the language as if I were a 5 year old learning it at school, I started with the sounds and worked my way up. I had to develop this method and various others that work for me from watching 100s of RUclips videos.
I teach German as a foreign language professionally and I agree with you concerning the grammar: All these colourful textbooks treat the grammar like a special surprise, only to be revealed step by tiny little step. That is ludicrous and it makes me furious.
How are you supposed to reveal the grammar all at once, instead of building knowledge step by step? Can you say a little bit more about what you mean? I'd love to learn more about your perspective and experiences.
I majored in German in university and took a course in Germany. But before that, I was using a German book from more than 100 years ago to learn the grammar! It was all in the Frakturschrift. But I liked the explanations and the many examples, which were different than what I saw in modern German textbooks.
@@mrkingsudo The "C-Grammatik" by Buscha et al. is very good (Schubert-Verlag). I am not sure whether you can get it in English though, which would be a good idea if your level is only A1/A2.
@@resourceress7 You... explain it with graphs and example phrases(?). I am not sure what kind of problems you see with this. Maybe you could elaborate a little.
I like all of the things you talk about.. and would add one more: context. Almost everything in learning is about building context. When you are trying to learn a new thing, and it fits into a hole in what you already know that makes everything else you know make even more sense, learning can be nearly effortless. Building up the context that makes that possible, however, is something that nowhere near enough is known about. I remember a day, probably in my first week of studying Russian, flipping through flashcards with my mother, as she was trying to come up with mnemonics, when she said "chitats me to read". This story is the embodiment of mnemonics for me: 40 years later I remember that. If I'd read it in a textbook, it would most likely have been as meaningless as all of the other mnemonics she came up with that day that I've forgotten. I remember another day, some years later having a two page long vocabulary list of words all related to reading, and essentially having it memorized after going through the list once. The difference wasn't that my memory got better. It was that the first time I had no context for the literally "foreign" word. By the time I had that list to memorize, I had enough context of the language that chitalnii, chitatelnii, chitavshii, chitaushchii, etc., etc. all had hooks that connected to things that I already knew, so they fit, and they made sense. I wish I knew shortcuts to building context to make the process easier. There are many approaches that certainly do not work: spoonfeeding vocabulary and grammar for example. No language makes sense one tense and gender at a time. Immersion learning works to the extent it works by flooding you with context, which is completely overwhelming and confusing at first, until you either give up, or it starts to stick. That, and making lots and lots of mistakes along the way.
I'm studying an Anki deck for JLPT N5 that TokiniAndy made, and it's really interesting how it's done. It's got vocabulary and grammar. Recall cards only for vocabulary. Each vocabulary card has the English meaning of the word, the pitch accent, an example sentence in Japanese (no English translation), and audio of a native speaker saying the word and the sentence. Practical real world descriptions of grammar points with examples. New cards are presented in order, and each card introduces only one new word. The vocab card may introduce new grammar in the sentence that is then explained on the next card. So what happens is that as you bring new cards into your review, you learn one new thing per card. As you go through the deck, the example sentences become more complex, using only words and grammar points you've learned and providing reinforcement for those. You are left to figure out the meaning of the example sentence _without translating_, and I think that's a plus.
Overall generally good advice. I think something that was glossed over quickly was the emphasis that listening, comprehension, internal modeling, and speaking have to go through the existing brain structures, i.e., the fact that you declaratively know this information and the fact that it sits in your pre-frontal cortex is of little use to the motor neurons and other brain structure that will have to process this information in a real conversation. I think you’ve made the point in previous videos that iTalki and having real conversations is when you start to feel like actual process is being made. If you understand that these are the situations where all the brain structures are interacting, not just the explicit knowledge in the prefrontal cortex, it’s obvious why these methods are much more effective.
Language-specific learning - in a logical order for the language - is vital. I teach Irish, but have developed my own method, because I’m sick of texts that simply don’t explain sound changes logically, and teach tenses in an order that makes sense for French or Spanish, but is illogical for Irish. My preferred order: imperative, preterite, continuous aspect, present, future, imperfect, conditional, past subjunctive, present subjunctive. It seems odd, but using this order, students build patterns from a logical framework - and the conversational patterns also move more logical from simple/common to complex/uncommon patterns. Of course, verbs and tenses come after we start on the most unique aspects of the language - sound mutations (knowing phonetics makes it simple) - and practise them by building phrases using the most common nouns with numbers, common adjectives and prepositions. Building a little ‘bank’ of phrases, helps you remember words (and their meanings) in context, but also illustrates grammatical rules - so you can use them as ‘templates’ instead of memorising rules (for gender, etc.). A bank of phrases using the most common nouns and adjectives in context also aids fluency.
@@vampyricon7026 I can, but it would probably require too much detail for a comment - especially if you’re unfamiliar with Gaelic or even other Celtic languages. But I’ll try to make it as concise as I can…. (I’ll be cutting a lot of corners and oversimplifying, so please bear that in mind.) There are, in effect, three forms of the verb, ‘to be’, in Irish: the Copula, ‘is’, a special present tense form, ‘tá’, which is only used for the present moment (that is, without ‘habitual’ meaning), and the fully conjugated verb: ‘bí’. From the very beginning, I introduce ‘tá’ (and its various forms) and ‘is’ (and some of its various forms). With the rule-of-thumb, “Tá describes; Is defines”, I get the students learning about nouns, numbers, adjectives and prepositions with (mainly) these two concepts (which many learners struggle to master). Since Irish is a very noun-centred language, you can say a lot with just the copula and ‘tá’ (and a few verbal nouns). [ed. See my other note, posted later, below.] Then to verbs…. 1. The Imperative mood (in its 2nd person singular) is simply the root of the verb. It’s the form you’ll find in the dictionary, and the basic form, from which you divine the ‘stem’ - which takes all the suffixes you’re about to learn. There’s a full conjugation of imperatives in Irish, but I mainly concentrate on the 2nd person singular and plural (which adds a suffix). 2. The Preterite (Past) tense, in most cases, simply requires the speaker to ‘lenite’ the first consonant of the root (change a plosive consonant to fricative) and add a subject (noun or pronoun). There’s a little more to it, but that’s the gist. Irish only has 11 irregular verbs, and they are most irregular in this tense, so we spend more time on them - and they’re the most common verbs, and very often used in conversation. (I’ve invented a board game based on Snakes and Ladders and ‘Truth and Dare’ to practise Imperative and Past tense constructions.) 3. Verbal nouns are next. They’re fairly diverse, you just have to learn them. And they are extremely commonly used in Irish conversation. With the verbal nouns, we learn the ‘continuous aspect’ with ‘tá’ and the preterite, and touch on the ‘active perfect aspect’, too. 4. The Present Tense in Irish is used much as in English - apart from with the senses, it generally has a ‘habititual’ meaning. As in English, then, it is not so commonly used in conversation, unless you’re discussing regular events, daily schedules, pastimes, etc. Tá and Is (the copula) with verbal nouns, etc. do much of the work in basic conversation, so there’s no need to start with the Present Tense (as in French or Italian). Unfortunately, most texts start with this tense probably out of habit from Latin, etc. However, here the students encounter (not only a more complex set of suffixes) but the ‘habitual present’ form of ‘to be’, and need to master it. 5. The Future Tense is quite a complex step, and it is next. It’s needed, not just for making appointments, but for understanding how the Conditional Mood is put together. 6. Most texts ignore the Imperfect (Habitual Past) Tense and plunge headlong into the Conditional Mood - which creates a nightmare for the poor student - not because of the new suffixes in Irish - but because English muddies the waters. (And remember, all Irish speakers also speak English - they are often learned together. ) Instead, I teach the Imperfect Tense first (often ignored by texts) so that the students familiarise themselves with the suffixes (which are the same in three tenses) but also come to grips with the vagaries of English ‘habitual past’ constructions, so that they don’t get muddled up when they learn the Conditional. In Irish and in English, the Conditional and the ‘habitual past’ (Imperfect) can often sound identical (but are written differently in Irish.) Without first learning the Imperfect tense (and the English ‘habitual past’ constructions), it’s no wonder that Irish students have floundered on what is actually a very straightforward framework (and often much simpler than English constructions). 7. Then, when students are comfortable with the Future and Imperfect tense, we join them together into the Future-in-the-Past tense we call the Conditional Mood. First, we learn it for polite requests, refusals and indirect speech. Then we tread carefully into hypothetical situations with subordinate clauses. 8. After the Conditional, the remaining Subjunctive tenses are a breeze. The Past Subjunctive (no longer used in colloquial Irish, having been replaced with the Conditional) is exactly the same as the Imperfect, but introduced with a subordinate conjunction, signalling a different ‘sound mutation’ (that is, ‘eclipsis’ - whereby a voiceless consonant becomes voiced, or a voiced consonant becomes nasal). 9. The Present Subjunctive is a breeze. And thanks to a bunch of set phrases, common in conversation, (like ‘thankyou’), the students are already familiar with many of its uses and forms. It only requires a quick review and a few more useful set phrases. 10. Throughout the introduction of each tense, there’s a quick look at other aspects, the ‘autonomous’ form of the verb in each tense, verbal adjectives, where appropriate. After covering all the tenses, I look at the implied difference between active, passive and autonomous constructions… bringing it all together. Then we go on to tie other bits over vocab together - such as a lesson on comparison of adjectives and related constructions, and a lesson tying together the 72 different directional words in Irish!
@@vampyricon7026 I should also note that Irish does not generally use specific verbs for the equivalents of the English verbs: have, like, prefer, love, want, need, must, should, can, ought, owe, cost, own, seem, mind, wear, hope, know, regret, wonder, hunger, thirst, desire, worry, fear, delight, work, talk, laugh, smile and study. These are most often expressed using ‘tá’ or ‘is’ in combination with a noun, adjective and/or preposition. So, by the time it comes to learning verb conjugations, the Present Tense (used chiefly in a habitual sense) is really not the first tense needed for conversation. Also, Irish has no specific equivalents for ‘yes’ or ‘no’. When answering a closed question, one must repeat the verb (or copula) in the appropriate tense or mood, in its affirmative or negative form. Which is one very important reason for learning verbs properly!
@@noelleggett5368I was about to mention that Irish and Scottish Gaelic don't have their own words for 'yes" and 'no'. While Portuguese does, speakers also use the verb instead of simply just saying 'yes' and 'no'. - "Do you speak Portuguese?" - "I speak, yes." Or simply... - "I speak." - "Do you live in a favela?" - "No, I live no." The Portuguese were a Celtic people before they became Latinized. As with French, they have more phonemes. The counting system in France is very Celtic.
@@bhutchin1996 Primitive Latin and the ancient Celtic languages were quite closely related. Latin originally had no words for yes or no, either. The Romance languages acquired them slightly differently, from disparate Latin dialects. French and German, for instance, have three words for yes/no: oui/si/non, ja/doch/nein. (I haven’t researched whether this is due to the influence of German as ‘Sprachbund’, evidence of the early influence of Germanic-speaking Franks, or a pre-existing Gaulish characteristic.)
Notable that immersion in content that involves listening to native speakers talk didn’t really feature in your method other than disparaging the Easy Italian video. I also binge a lot of language learning RUclips videos and am slightly baffled at those that suggest the best way to learn a language is to endlessly listen to words that mean nothing to you, rather than setting yourself up to understand them by first doing focussed vocab and grammar study. Would love to see you do a video one day on what you see as the perfect balance to strike between these two approaches at each stage in the language learning process.
"am slightly baffled at those that suggest the best way to learn a language is to endlessly listen to words that mean nothing to you, rather than setting yourself up to understand them by first doing focussed vocab and grammar study." - Yes, so much yes!
I study Latin. I've been concerned with language acquisition ever since I started with traditional grammar-translation methods in class (I actually studied law, but I got a semester of Latin). it was the usual routine of learning case and verb endings before attempting to translate sentences. although I'll admit I did learn all five declension patterns, I still couldn't get through an average sentence in Latin. fast-forward one year later and I am now aware of Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. yet, I did not properly use it for about three years. finally, I started following some instructions I was given by the most dedicated Latinist I know of. I used it for about four or five months, and I was amazed by the results: I was able to read through most of the «Historia Brittonum», an anonymous text in medieval Latin! although there were many parts I couldn't figure out at all, I still was able to get most of it. ever since, I've been close friends with the direct method for learning languages
Assimil has a good Latin course, but it's not available in English. It's available in French. Still, all the audio is in Latin. I think LLPSI also has separate audio for "Familia Romana".
I don't like mnemonics because then I remember the mnemonic first anytime I think of something related to it. It's useful in that I can't forget the thing the mnemonic is supposed to help me remember. It's annoying though because now that concept is forever entwined with an intrusive thought that necessarily always accompanies the concept.
I used anki to study Japanese a long time ago. It served its purpose as a way to enrich my vocabulary. It didn't do me good on doing actual conversation but it sufficed. Now that I'm fluent in Japanese I'm trying different way to learn new language (Spanish at the moment). I just simply listen to a lot of Spanish channlei onRUclips and repeat what they say out loud. To be honest I enjoy it much better than using anki method.
I think anki is so useful for Japanese because the vocabulary is entirely new and can't be linked to anything you know. It's mucheasier in Spanish where at least some words look like English or french words and can be made sense of
@@RammusTheArmordillo Ah yes you do make sense. It's easier to learn Spanish if you know English given the many cognates. On the other hand, I feel like as I grow older I'm more patient listening to foreign contents than looking at flash cards 😁
@@bhutchin1996 Ooh that's nice. I wonder if I could learn Portuguese easily when my Spanish is at a good enough level. That's definitely another challenge in the future I'd like to do 😁
@@jerfareza Even native Spanish speakers have a hard time with Portuguese. When I was learning Portuguese, sure, Spanish helped, but I was treating Portuguese as its own language, which really it is. If you have Netflix, watch some Brazilian movies and TV shows to get an ear for the language, that's how I would start out with a new language. I don't know what kind of music you like, but if you like rap, there's Racionais MCs; if you like R&B, there's Ed Motta and Tim Maia. Sertanejo is Brazil's version of country music. Brazil has good rock and metal music too. It all depends on your tastes in music. Brazil is HUGE in the entertainment world, and that goes for its movies and TV shows too, so Netflix is a good language learning tool.
I remember learning French in school, we heard a whole lesson, had to repeat the dialogue without any written clues and in the end got the text, I was anxious and felt like an idiot, .... I swore to not let that unpleasant experience deter me from learning French, so I went to a language course, read French novels, watched French films and visited France in order to have to speak French With other languages I also prefer to start with the grammar to get an idea how the language "works" Kaffee ist wirklich ein Lebensretter😂☕️ eine Wiener Melange
The Coffee Kapuziner is a traditional Austrian coffee drink originating from Vienna’s coffeehouses. It consists of a small amount of espresso topped with a dollop of whipped cream, giving it a distinctive brown color reminiscent of the robes worn by Capuchin friars. This unique combination of flavors and textures has been a staple of Viennese coffee culture for centuries Spice it up with Brandy, if thats your thing...
I tried some Ethiopian coffee and it was pretty good. Just breaking into the coffeesphere myself. Thanks for the videos, you’ve quickly become my favorite language expert on the tube.
The biggest language learning mistake I ever made in my life was listening to language teachers who said speak the other language in full sentences. If you don't know enough words, you can't practice. If you mix the language with your own language, then you can practice and say whatever you want. I try to do it this way now many years later, and I don't know if it will work, but I like being able to practice the language even if I don't know every word. In school, they teach too many words and rules too fast, so you can't really learn anything, except temporary memorization of rules and words. I would rather experiment and try wacky ideas than listen to experts who couldn't teach a dog to bark. If they tried to teach a dog to bark, it would probably end up meowing.
As a heritage spanish speaker who learned portuguese this is exactly what I did in my earliest stagest of learning. Obviously there is a ridiculous amount of overlap when learning portuguese as a spanish speaker so I was already reading and understanding so much. What was lacking was my vocabulary. I studied the phonology and almost immediately threw myself in to live conversations with portuguese speakers, often "inventing" words on the spot or guessing what they would be based on the spanish equivalent. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but I would always look up the word I stumbled upon and add the portuguese to my anki deck later to study. Here 3 years later comfortably fluent in brazilian portuguese. It's a method that works.
Schools have to find ways to grade you, so of course they're going to have you learn as much vocabulary and grammar as possible. While that's important, it's more important to fail than "get it right" the first time everytime. Business entrepreneurs know this. They know that they will have failures on the way to success. On the other hand, schools teach us to be afraid to fail or even make mistakes.
@@luiscruz5556I learned Spanish first. When I started learning Brazilian Portuguese, I treated it as its own language rather than apply my knowledge of Spanish to it. I ignored Spanish for many years while learning and using Portuguese. However, learning Portuguese has taught me so much more Spanish. My approach was different, but it worked well for me too.
I never thought about learning feminine adjectives first in French until you just explained it. I’m L1 Spanish, and my mental map is that the masculine is the default and the feminine is the exception and assumed the same in French. I might be as wrong in Spanish as I was until ten minutes ago in French, but je n’ai eu pas encore assez de café pour penser aux adjectifs en espagnol
I'm also L1 in Spanish and I've learned French, Italian and Portuguese using masculine as the default and learned how to form the feminine so I can't think of it the other way around. Besides, you'll end up realizing the masculine should be taught as the default since in plural, you use masculine nouns and adjectives to describe a mixed or only male group of people.
"Why your language method is set up to fail" Probably because this video came up just as I finished work for the day and as I was about to sit down and study. I also had three bad French teachers at school (all for different reasons). The last was a native speaker who learned English at a young age. We'd have lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday and she expected us to memorise 30 new words and be able to recognise them in flowing speech and produce them the following day. I also don't remember anything from those French lessons except a few rude phrases.
They just don’t build in the time needed to develop recognition in isolation, recognition in regular speech, and production. It’s like they think teaching a new word is handing you a new object and now you have the object. It just doesn’t work that way!
I think you miss something pretty major at the beginning. You say textbooks, classes are available, but these cost money. Not all of us have money, so the idea of learning by watching RUclips videos is pretty appealing. I've been pretty successful doing this. Steve Kaufmann's method seems to work well for me, I watch French RUclipsrs and whenever I watch English videos I learn new vocab by using autotranslate to get French subtitles (this is such a good trick btw!). The thing is you learn the most common words really quickly, because, well, they're common. It's effortless. I look up grammar when I don't understand something. I would say I'm pretty proficient in reading and listening now, but my speech is slow and I don't think anything will substitute for time spent talking with fluent speakers.
My dream course would have you learn basic vocabulary and grammar, and then have a lot of minecraft videos using these words, and progressively adding more advanced vocabulary. this is how I learned english, my school has taught me simple grammar and vocab, then I watched a lot of english minecraft videos to actually learn the language.
I've been teaching for almost a decade at a foreign university where I got to design what I did myself and now suddenly am faced with the very narrow vision of local regulations degrading things to an extreme. I'd say the one thing you seem to not much focus on at least here is that there is no language without meaning, it basically just being empty lexis and syntax; therefore meaning, both kind of 'descriptive' and 'procedural', being central. Lexis can't be memorised, nor can grammatical aspects, but there has to be an insight into them in a meaningful context which means that both the fact and structure of them on the one hand, and the meaning of them on the other (including even how that might shift), occur simultaneously, and for efficiency's sake, both receptively and productively. So using authentic materials which can be understood enough to be engaged with, and for meaning to be able to be derived from it, and for some process of analysing and responding to it also meaningfully, is where the acquisition occurs. And no language is isolated either, so this consolidates learning in connection with previous learning, and also not in a fragmented way, but where it's received as a whole with deriving meaning for real reasons as the first aim, and working with that, and responding, following from that. What is learned, but also what is reviewed, and also what is merely strengthened, all come together. Also the 'muscle' for dealing with full context is developed. So here I might disagree with you on the point of giving isolated language first, before a fuller context. To me to see it in context provides a good opportunity to derive meaning, to get direct insight into it, to see nuance that maybe can't be explained, and for it to have meaning immediately; for the meaning to take precedence. For me also what is 'most useful' comes out this kind of process whereby if you're getting learners to engage with real content really about whatever it's about, with a real reason to do so, then the language 'useful' for that will come out; and also what is really useful will be repeated a lot. Get learners engaged with what is meaningful to them and they'll learn it quicker anyway, because that meaning is there, but the langauge needed for that will arise again and again in that context anyway. The stuff in the lists will find its way in there quickly enough, but in a holistic way that facilitates learning. This is also pretty true with grammar. Though, yes, I do agree with the idea of repeatedly bringing attention to items, and also maybe deliberately making sure they arise again and again regularly, but ultimately if meaning of items, grammatical or lexical, can be 'merely' seen in context, then that is a short-cut to acquisition, and is the best way, and simply involves a bunch of other considerations too. Sadly, what I'm up against now is being forced to reduce lessons to disconnected grammar points, much of which isn't going to get practised in context anyway, because it's mere 'high level' grammar of rare utility, and also lexical learning diminished to a mere set list of words, disregarding how lexis to be learned is anything and potentially everything that someone needs to understand to do a meaningful task with content or situations in that language. My job is being destroyed. Standards crashing through the floor, because unqualified bureaucrats are forcing their simplistic and hollow view of it.
I'm making a learn English course which uses spaced repetition and tries to put as much vocab review as possible into little stories while minimizing flashcard style repetition. Optimizing the administration is difficult and it isn't immediately obvious how to deal with users have inconsistent schedules. Part of the problem is that, especially in the beginning, new stories have NEW vocab, which is a review liability. The obvious solution is to re-read the same story, but that is boring, and I hated when Duolingo forced me to read stories I'd already done before. I'm part of the Awesome Coffee Club or whatever Hank Green renamed it to ☕
Your insights on optimizing language learning hit home! It's refreshing to hear someone blend fun with effective strategies. Can't wait to apply your tips and ditch the rote memorization! 🚀
If you haven't already, you should look into Lingua Latina per se Illustrata and the rest of the Nature method books. They are, in my opinion, some of the best language learning books ever devised
This was 100% the process that my Latin teacher/textbook took in high school, which might explain why I learned that so much better than every other time I've tried learning a new language
W języku polskim, 'Coffee' to 'Kawa' - w tej chwili moja ulubiona kawa jest co robię w domu. Już kupiłem espresso machine, więc robię Latte z syrupem wanilowym As someone trying to learn this ^ mess of a language for the last few years btw, I wish I could have seen someone tell me what you've said in this video when I started. It took me a long time to work out on my own what you've said here Learning grammar piecemeal without introducing the rest in any way is madness. It kinda makes sense on paper but in practice means reading even the simplest 'wild' text in your TL is impossible to even attempt as you're always stumbling across things you have absolute no clue about and can't look up in a dictionary. Spending of time at the start to build a mental image of the whole of the language (even if you forget most of the details), is so useful. The only reason I worked out a lot of what you've said in this video, is through studying Latin for my masters - the course there was grammar and vocab heavy. When I tried buying Polish textbooks after they always spent chapters and chapters at the start getting you to say random real world stuff without any explanation behind it (I'm guessing because they didn't want to overwhelm the reader), but it meant I never really knew what I was doing at a more fundamental level which allows me to internalise and truly memorise the language. So I went out of my way to buy a grammar book that looked like my Latin one - no nonsense, cold and heartless, but to the point! Then combined this with other fun imput and methods mentioned in the video. (Anyone interested in, or currently learning, Polish - the book I got was Dana Bielec's routledge grammar and workbook Tldr: From my experience, this video will help you learn a language far, far better than most other RUclips language learner channels, and is an absolute gem for those at the start of the journey who don't have to struggle to reach this conclusion years down the line!
Hey, I recognize your issue here as well. I am studying Macedonian, but textbooks that focus on grammar are usually the ones used in universities (in my case UToronto). Maybe this can help you find a good supportive book for studying Polish😊
First, kudos for learning Polish. Only crazy people, and Poles, do that. Second, very good attempt, but I believe it should be "W tej chwili moją ulubioną kawą jest ta, którą robię w domu. Kupiłem ekspres do kawy, więc robię latte z syropem waniliowym." Good luck with your Polish studies!
@@zerostrong3516 Rozumiem dlaczego powinienem użyć '... ta, którą...', ale czemu narzędnik kiedy chcę mowić 'moja ulubiona kawa'. Guessing the 'w tej chwili' is influencing it but 'tej chwili' isn't instrumental either?
I had studied a little Latin before studying Russian for 2 years at university, and that helped a lot with Russian grammar. Polish's "to have (something)" is more like English, whereas in Russian it's more like Latin's "Est mihi ___" and Gaelic's "Tha ___ agam".
@@MichaelH-h5u You could say "moja ulubiona kawa, to ta, którą robię w domu" or "moją ulubioną kawą jest ta, którą robię w domu", both have the same meaning. as to why you use instrumental in the second one, I can't tell you, i had to google what instrumental was. i have zero knowledge of grammatical concepts, that's why i'm not fluent in any language :(
I've managed to teach myself to read and write Armenian using textbooks and online resources and by reading and translating books of poetry. I don't live near an Armenian community so speaking is more difficult to manage though when I went to LA this summer I found I understood it fairly well when I visited Glendale and Little Armenia.
You're putting into words all my frustrations with learning/reviewing french. Speaking and sounding out words is fun but USELESS IF I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE WORDS MEAN! I'm using a berlitz book and the vocab is at the end of each chapter.
I studied French for 8 years (high school then college) and learning the feminine first makes much more sense looking back. Though, I’m not sure if some teachers would want to adapt that given the severe emphasis sometimes put on the masculine as the “standard” with the whole le masculin l’emporte sur le féminin. I could be wrong but that’s the sense of the mentality I encountered when living in France
There seems to be an almost left-right spectrum in regards to language learning theories; the "left" swearing upon the basis and purity of comprehensible input, immersion and static listening, and the "right" requiring what amounts to textbook work, flashcards, and grammar practice. RUclips linguists tend to fall somewhere on it, amusingly. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, depending on the language component studied.
I wish I was able to pay attention to what you say, but you never change your tone and you are clearly reading. Please don't take this in the wrong way, the content is great. I suppose I could try to read the transcript of the video instead of watching you reading it. Again, don't take this in the wrong way, I do have ADHD.
The main thing I learned from this video is that my French student book is even better than I thought initially It was written by Russian linguists from Moscow state language university and I use it in my linguistic studies (since French is my second language besides English). Somehow, we’ve got ridiculously few lessons of French this semester, so we’re basically left to study it ourselves. I thought imma lose a lot of nerves learning the language until I had my hands on the book 1. It explains the phonetics amazingly. The rules are simple and clear, and the words in a lesson are used so that we could practice the previously explained phonetics. What’s more, the intonation is also explained AND practiced from the 2nd or 3rd lesson (out of 50 for the A1 level) 2. The grammar exercises are really smart as well. For example, the story of a lesson tells as «Papa va à Paris, Marc parle à sa femme». The exercise asks us to construct the sentences «Marc va à Lille, Gille parle à sa femme». Utilising well-known characters and familiar vocabulary, it allows to basically learn the grammar by heart without actually learning it (the regular reviews included in future lessons also help tremendously) 3. And (which is the point of the whole comment lol) they started from feminine adjectives while explaining that the other (masculine) form exists it just will be explained later. I didn’t know it was such an important thing??? I know now though Having seen quite a few English student book (written in GB or USA), which is considered to be a standard, I didn’t know you can do better than that. I was wrong lol. Even considering slightly different goals of the books and the fact that I still managed to learn English from them, they’re not the standard for me anymore At first I was sceptical since learning a whole new language by yourself AND passing an exam is not an easy task (especially if you don’t even like the language lol I wanted to study Spanish my uni just didn’t provide me that option). Now, however, I’m confident in my abilities and I’m sure I’ll pass the exam. I might even continue learning it after the uni (since it’s the second language, we’re only supposed to learn it to B1-B2-ish level, and the said student book has B2, C1 and may be even the C2 levels (idk if that’s possible)) out of pure respect to the book and the authors. I’m glad I have such amazing colleagues (and in general Russia has so many amazing linguists in so happy I’m able to learn from them!) Thanks for the video! Gotta go read some books to get my PhD in linguistics as well (jk, it’ll take a while for me)
Not a platform per se, but my Hebrew book (HaYesod) puts 20ish vocab words before each grammar lesson, then there's an on-level story and finally translation exercises.
The bit about getting learners directly into natural sentences is part of the way I'm trying to craft my system for teaching English vowel patterns. I figure that young learners (and foreign learners) will be able to grasp longer words faster so long as the syllabic structure stays simple (mostly open syllables, no consonant clusters), and getting straight into longer words feels like a better move. It's "taco" before "cat", and "We go to the rodeo & see Papa in the arena" seems like it would actually be easier to read than "Blake saw the black cat." (Yes, I'm cheating by using the ampersand. But in my defense, it's a normal English symbol in widespread use, it conveys the concept apart from the sound, it can be pronounced a few different ways (including just "n"), the word itself is core vocab that *should* be introduced early, and this way I don't have to delve into the lax primary sound of A (says, said, again, against, and) long before its key words would show up in my program.) Basically, I'm sticking to a minimalist, low-confusion set of graphemes and introducing them in an order that I haven't seen in any other system -- and putting off, for as long as possible, the more complicated details, such as most of the ambiguous combos (bead, bread, break). Then my color code makes clear the distinction between consonants and vowels, and makes clear which category of vowel rule is in play. One of the stretch words is "hypothermia" -- before the kid can read "spotted". P.S. I have some sort of sensitivity to caffeine -- it gives me headaches that can last for literally hours -- so I haven't a favorite coffee. But I do like Body Armor, which is my favorite way of staying hydrated ^_^
Teachers and self-study grammar resources tend to have me practice super simple sentences, limited to one new grammar point at a time. I recently started taking the (long ass amount of) time to translate my natural-in-English thoughts on x topic and write them out, only simplifying if something is confusing enough to be demotivating. It's forcing me to look up a lot of new vocab, differences between similar word choices, and new grammar patterns that are way above my level according to structured curricula but used commonly in basic convos. Ofc I'm not gonna remember everything after one long writing session or after having my writing corrected by a native speaker and having those first aha moments; *most* of it I'm not gonna be able to actively recall for a hot minute probably, but I'm already able to recognize and understand more when listening or reading. Brb, finna go preview all the grammar now.
I was slowly plugging along with French after taking it in highschool, and I'm to the point where I can listen to some content in it. However, I now have a trip to Japan coming in May, so I'm gonna put my head down and try to learn enough that I can at least stumble my way through basic interactions ;)
What do you think of "latin grammar book" style language courses? As a high school student I took spanish before switching to latin, and I remember wondering during latin why spanish wasn't taught like that. I think this mostly had to do with the very explicit focus on morphology in my latin textbook.
アイスコーヒーは私の一番好きなコーヒー飲み物と思います。。。 I'm actually been working on a memorization app for Japanese for a year now, and I'm glad to say that the ideal version of that app follows what you describe almost pefectly. It's reasuring. It just takes a while to get there. I have radicals, kanji and words, and would ideally add grammar based on the words and kanji you know next. Like you said. It's not easy... Keep up the great work! I'm learning a lot.
☕☕ich trinke nicht gern Kafee, also your videos have been very helpful for my own learning as i found your channel straight away and have been making tweaks to my own learning after every video of yours i watch
Still not convinced. To this day the only person who I think has it figured out is Steve Kaufman. Only with his method was I able to learn German, and I tried a lot of them
Love this. How does a layman go about implementing this for themselves? We don't know what we don't know, so there's clearly homework on the front end before we set up our own, effective course. Clearly most are not linguists, so what is good enough to serve us well??
I’ve met a German colleague at work yesterday. I’m trying to learn German. She asked me if I could speak German and I almost threw at her “Ich trinke Milch“ duolingo stuff, but I limited myself to say my name and where I’m from. I was so frustrated because I memorized a lot of words that I don’t use in most occasions.
Germans will just speak English with you if they know your German communication skills are basic. I don't really blame them, but it doesn't help the language learner. If you can afford it, you'd want to find a private tutor.
@@bhutchin1996 sure! We communicate in English most of the time, but I’m curious to try speaking more and more German and she is really kind to have some time to listen to me. I’m starting my German lessons in February.
3:55 honestly so glad to hear this from another person, i dont even know *why* i hate them so much but i think their heavy usage in the class i was taking is what single-handedly turned me away from learning spanish
Shana Tova! I admit I do procrastinate often when it comes to language learning, I go through a textbook and then want to start reading books or shows because otherwise I feel very bored and disinterested, but then doing that feels like slugging through vocab, so I tend to after an hour or so stop and take a break or if I got a headache just stop.
I find that Duolingo does incorporate spaced repetition. It doesn't give choice about this process as it did a few years ago, but by following the vine (or tree or path or whatever they're calling it), it mixes old concepts in with the new. More recent old concepts show up more often. Older old concepts show up less frequently.
You mention learning the determiner with the noun. I began formally learning French when I was 11 in 1963. Although there was some audio-visual input, at that time the teaching was heavily grammar-based. Vocabulary always included the determiner so you didn’t have wonder about the gender. I was surprised when I started using apps to learn a language to find the determiner was no longer given. In some cases it will be obvious, especially in a language like Greek where each gender has specific endings. This is not the case in all languages: in French, for example, ‘piéton’ is masculine, but ‘maison’ is feminine. French nouns ending in ée are usually feminine, but ‘lycée’ and ‘musée’ are masculine. If you’ve learned the determiner with the noun, this presents no problem. I’m all in favour of audio-visual material, but grammar is an important part of any language
Clicking this video just made me understand why earlier when i was watching language simp for the first time in a long while i had the unshakeable feeling that i somehow knew that his name was Jones. namely, a different, vaguely similar channel I haven't seen in a long while
I studied Latin in high school, and proportionally a lot more of the learning was focused on grammar, so getting an overview of the language system and grammatical structures as soon as possible sounds really appealing to me... but it doesn't mesh with what was successful about how I ended up doing Japanese learning (only my 2nd modern language after English), or what I've seen most other learners struggle with. The edge I have above almost everyone I met seems to be that I 1. got comparatively massive amounts of listening (including what I think would fall into the highly controversial "passive" listening and 2. getting familiar with the writing systems, which was pretty much the only active thing I managed to do consistently. I was supposed to do a lot more, but never got around to it until years later when I actually went to Japan. I did NOT have speaking practice but I found the weird experience of being able to speak in 2-3 weeks at what passed for someone who'd lived in Japan for 5+ years even though I had our huge knowledge gaps. Fast forward to now, in out little local study group, almost everyone came at least partly from a traditional classroom, and they all have trouble parsing speech, chunking phrases, and understanding the intuitive meaning of things they read and hear. They tend to come to me for help, and I can give them a translation but I'm only learning the grammar now, so I have to resort to making comparisons and contrasts to English vis-a-vis the formal grammar ideas I learned in Latin because I'm only now learning how things are laid out formally in Japanese. And I always have the sense they're overthinking it and confusing themselves... I have no further thesis, just an interesting situation I've found myself in. Just wanted to offer the anecdote for others to think over and pick apart!
It's not based on any sort of analysis (including proper self-reflection), but I feel like weird approaches may be what we end up remembering. I mean, I know that watching science popular videos and listening to annoying songs wasn't the main reason I got to understand spoken English (which came after speaking some English for me, because post-Soviet system), and that classes made much more difference. But when I started watching these videos (after I had enough of crappy translations), and when after a few weeks I got used to them, I got an epiphany. And now I remember that I got to understand spoken English by watching RUclips videos, even though it's only technically correct
I feel like Practice Portuguese, a podcast/app put together by a first language Portuguese speaker and a first language English speaker achieves a lot of what you've outlined here.
That was a pretty sweet subjunctive. It made me happy. I can't stand the bitterness of coffee, so I cling to sugar free energy drinks for my daily fix.
Trying to not miss my daily Ukrainian exercises in Duolingo when waking up, what a stupid idea, when I need 3 espressi in the same cup with some cold milk to actually REALLY wake up. No wonder these words don't stick...
Hey Dr. Jones, do you think you could make a video showcasing your personal Anki-deck process? Maybe some examples of the kinds of cards you like to use? Thanks!
Once I'm really confident it's optimized, sure! But I've just abandoned a few decks because either I found better research or just found that personally the way I was working with them wasn't working. Learning optimization is a passion of mine, but not my main expertise.
I learned French in college, and the teaching of it (at first by a linguist, no less) was excellent. The first course was conducted mostly in French, and the following semesters were 100% in French. All vocabulary was learned in context, and grammar was drilled by progressive transformations. One of the later courses consisted of eight hours a week of free conversation; others revolved around classical literature. And yes, we were told early on that the feminine singular form of an adjective was the critical one from which the other forms can usually be determined.
Yes, I knew I shouldn’t have used Spanish, which I’m just starting out in! I’ll be sure to say venimos at some point in my Spanish learning update video
japanese does the same thing with the stem changing words, iku means "go" but ikimasu" means "will go" and "ikimasen" is "will not go" ive been studying for about a month and a half now, and ive always kept in the back of my mind something you said in one of your earlier videos "memory is forgetting and remembering again till you stop forgetting" this is such great advice, i can now read hiragana but a month ago i would have to stop and look to see what half of the kana are, i bought the genki textbooks and those have also helped alot especially with the grammar and particles so far, i have seen alot of people on here saying the genki books arent bad but they wouldn't recommend them cause its not "natural japanese" but in my experience, yeah its pretty much all polite japanese but i dont see the harm in using it as a base to start from, especially since before i got them i was pretty much just floating in the ocean of japanese and not really learning anything, and now after just a week with the genki book, i may not be able to readd an entire sentence but i can at least tell you what particles mean what and have a general idea of what someone is talking about, like for example "ore wa gakkoo de ikimasen" "i will not go to school" basic point being, and im not an expert like the doctor here but finding something that is a good source and works for you personally is a major thing as well. i mean in a week with a textbook i now know all the kanji for 1-15 and the kanji for "watashi" even though that ones pretty easy, and can make basic sentences.
I've just restarted my Māori learning and am using AnkiDroid for vocab and reading a slightly over-simplified introductory grammar called "Te Reo Māori - the Basics Explained" Its focus is very much on that "here's where the grammar is different from English" approach you mention. Which, given that it's Austronesian and not IE, is a lot of difference. Your video has bumped a more detailed grammar up my purchase list, thank you. Sorry I can't shout you a coffee this week (doppio ristretto ftw)
Olly Richards does a good job of all that you said, but of course, not everything you explained I have his Fluent Spanish Academy lifetime course- intermediate level. He even has stories that use the preterite-imperfect, etc... only. So that you learn how to conjugate thru a story.
What I'm liking is methods that immerse you in content that's just a bit above your level, and you see that you don't have to understand every word. Olly Richards's stories (I went through his Icelandic book) work that way, although I ditched that book as soon as ever I could because the stories were so! dumb! ... and I have this online course in Levantine Arabic that uses videos, which I just think is the bee's knees ("the bee's knees"? no, I'm not THAT old, but the course is called Beelingo, so), they show you the video and ask you questions about it, what's going on here, which one is Jamila...
Me gusta un poco de café con mi leche y azucar. Jejeje. I'm happy learning even one new word a day, regardless of how. Just don't try to throw me into complete immersion as an adult; never doing that again.
I’m almost finished the audiobook Learn Japanese with Paul Noble (he also has French and Spanish) and honestly he hits most of the techniques you suggest. Lots of spaced repetition, he specifically asks you *not* to try and remember vocabulary, and the focus is on grammar and learning 5-6 tenses with a very basic scaffolding of nouns and verbs. It feels slow but I suspect I’ll remember more of what he’s taught than any other past course. Kyou no gogo Jones to kouhi wo nomitaidesu! ☕️ (See, I remembered that even without looking it up except for spelling.)
Most people can’t just read a grammar to get an orientation. I am helping my teenaged son with his personal goal of learning Modern Greek, and we have found the free “Language Transfer” recordings a good way of getting that overview. It doesn’t have much vocab or practice (though it does have some), but it’s an accessible intro to the structure.
Yess ok ty for validation for doing the thing it feels like everyone says we shouldn't bother even looking at until xyz for fear of idk, our heads exploding or something. Not even acknowledging the existence of simple past and future tenses, much less anything else, for a whole (University level) semester is wild.
You also need to change your approach depending on what languages you already know. I speak French and know its grammar well and now I’m learning Italian. I don’t need to study Italian grammar in the same way as I studied French grammar. I just need to learn where Italian grammar is different than French grammar. I also don’t need to spend much time on vocabulary that is very similar between the languages. I need to focus on the words that are completely different.
I think all of his videos are from the perspective of an English speaker trying to learn other languages. You, being a native speaker of a romance language, rightfully need to have a different approach to learning another romance language
@@canchero724 I am a native English speaker, and what @thedavidguy01 says is accurate. I started learning French in 6th grade, Spanish in 10th grade, and Italian in 12th grade. Spanish study was based on similarities and differences with French. Italian study was based on similarities and differences with French and with Spanish (similar/similar, different/similar, similar/different, different/different). It's a simplification, but I would often say that Italian was 49% French, 49% Spanish and 2% other.
As a bonus, when I took German I as an undergrad, there were grad students in French, Spanish, and Italian taking German as a required second language. They each had trouble with some aspect of the language, and I was able to help all of them by drawing comparisons with their focus languages.
Alas, I'm 3 decades removed from that time, though, and all 4 languages have atrophied to varying degrees.
comparative/contrastive approach, someone actually does this. Refreshing. :)
@@canchero724 contrastive approach is universal, it means you contrast your native language with the language you wanna learn. French grammar is a tad bit different but you will know a lot of vocab, because of the French influence during Normans times. Pronunciation is totally different and you need to learn which sounds are approximates and you can go for there (unaccentuated e - sounds a bit like schwa) and which are new sounds (j - in jeune). By knowing what is easier and what is harder to learn and when you can be both prepared and shuffle around your schedule. Works for every language, even those very exotic ones. If everything is different you contrast: e.g. Chinese: speech - tones, need a lot of work with it, grammar -a bit easier, no tenses, there are words to clarify that, contextual, meaning unlike English it may be a bit more vague if translated directly (seriously, don't do that). etc. there will be always something easy about the language and something difficult.
I feel that I benefit from using a textbook, but going through a textbook is a hard work. Hence watching language learning videos or somethings similar is a way to avoid hard work, convincing yourself that you're doing useful thing
the same!!
but it's better than nothing
though it is ok to stop and have fun.
Holy shit! Same! I have so many language textbooks just waiting for me to use lol
You could try language learning videos in your target language,that’s what I did when I started to feel that I was wasting time by spending hours watching them.thanks god there’s a huge amount of videos in English cause idk if I can just quit .there might be in your target language too as long as you are not learning Ongota or something like that
I feel attacked 😂 but totally agree
University language teacher here. A really good video, with really good helpers for learners! It made me think of when I was teaching Portuguese in a Chinese university and looking at how students in there would learn the vocabulary. They would simply write a word down 10-20 times. And it made me realised that that is the system they are used to because of learning their own language - Chinese characters need practice and repetition!
So, my point is that the way we learn (and the way we should learn) languages also is bound to be more or less successful due to our geography. So, for example, it would be really interesting to counter the repetitive learning process of a Chinese student providing them with a different learning approach, to see how impactful (for better / worse) that would be.
The Gold List Method could work for Chinese students like that. Tem mais de um jeito de quebrar um galho.
I have never seen any research ever that suggests writing the same word again and again is beneficial. Teachers in Japan and China do it because they’ve always done it, not because it works
@@tokumei99Aren't they simply teaching kids how to write by hand? We do exactly the same thing in the West; the difference is that we have far fewer distinct graphemes.
@@weirdlyspecific302 yes but they are still doing that kind of handwriting practice when they are in high school. I’ve never seen that in the west
The "stop just giving me a verb that I can only use in the simplest contexts" gripe is so real man. I gotta buy a portuguese grammar don't I.
It worked for me. I believe the author's name was Raul d'Eca; the C has a cedilla mark on it. Listen to songs in Portuguese too. One recommendation is Cristian Araujo's "Voce mudou": 'E quando despertar...' I think that's the future subjunctive, which looks just like the infinitive in 1st and 3rd person singular. It could also be the personal infinitive.
My personal example was: "Se tivesse bastante dinheiro, estaria morando no Brasil." However, most Brazilians are too nice to correct your mistakes. I think that people in Portugal would be different that way, but there are a lot fewer learning materials for European Portuguese, and they don't seem as impressed by foreigners learning their language as Brazilians tend to be. Boa sorte!
@@bhutchin1996 Thanks for the rec! And yeah I've been listening to plenty of music and trying to watch online comedy skits too. Porta dos Fundos is amazing.
Get John Whitlam’s Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar (assuming you want Brazilian dialect). Best $ you will ever spend.
@@modalmixture I cannot back this recommendation enough. Whitlam's grammar was quite literally the only one I purchased and needed. Three years in and conversationally fluent and I owe it completely to this grammar and daily Anki (+ the usual reading and having conversations with Portuguese speakers, of course)
Forgetting better for getting better. :)
Oh I like that
Re: Anki. Japanese learners were early adopters of Anki for language learning, and developing tools for grabbing content from popular media to create flashcards in it.
On the note of tools that integrate with anki, Yomitan is supporting more and more languages all the time. I didn't count how many it had last I looked, but it was probably at least a dozen different languages.
Not just early adopters, the program was developed to help study Japanese. The name Anki is the Japanese word 暗記 meaning memorization
My favorite Duolingo nonsense was when I tried learning Haitian Creole with it, and it would constantly give me those "fill in the missing word in this sentence" type quizzes where the blank word was the name of a person. So it would say "Andre loves his coffee" and the quiz would be "______ renmen kafe li".
It's surprisingly common in the Italian course too. I'm guessing it must be common across all their languages. It would be simple for them to change it I assume. I wonder why they dont
This sentence seems to be very silly, because the answer is most likely "Andre renmen kafe li." But if you take your time, you have a simple example for a correct word order. So the important part of the sentence is "kafe li", not "Andre".
@@Hofer2304 Yes, but all that was already done in the app. The only part it wanted me to fill in was the name. If it happened once, I'd get it, but it continued module after module. Not every single question, but usually more than once per exercise.
@@NeverTheSame These simple tasks are also a kind of break.
In the French course it gave me sentences that weren't even missing words, so I just typed a single space and was marked correct.
Helpful. One of my most prescient teachers said again and again: you’ll see all the grammar all the time. I’ve never regretted taking his classes. I was going crazy with my ignorance of Russian grammar.
Sorry if this sounds a bit pedantic, but at 7:52 the correct 1st person plural form of venir is venimos, not venemos.
To confirm, 'venemos' is the 1st person plural for 'veer' (to see), right?
@@GoodOleDFT No, the verb for to see is "ver", not "veer", and it has a first-person plural of vemos. I am not familiar with "venemos" as a correct conjugation for any verb. Hope that helps!
@@Tovarris It does, thank you 💛
@@Tovarrisliterally came looking for this. Venemos is not a word…yet.
This is going to help as such an important start to studying a language that doesn't have many structural supports to be learned so far. I'm learning on the fly how to learn Sinama, which doesn't have many written grammars yet, but this overview is helping me understand how to make something more concrete about what I can explore and build around. I hope to speak with you someday about it but this is incredibly helpful, thank you for sharing so generously
You can trust any man with an O'Reily UNIX book on his bookshelf.
Well spotted!🎉
Maybe he's a Linux user too.
Where is it?!
Shanah tovah! Thanks for helping people avoid the common pitfalls of language learning. I was on my 4th language before I got these things down: 1. Learn the structure of the language and decide how to proceed through that structure most effectively 2. Match your learning process to how the language is actually used (read, listen to, write about, and speak about things like people who use that language already do) 3. Use tools for learning in a way that works (based on personal experience and research) rather than just taking for granted that how other have used it traditionally will work for you. Those tools included textbooks, free composition exercises, outside reading, listening to music, singing, Anki, and Duolingo. But I don't limit myself to those tools. I'm willing to use whatever works. Also, whatever makes it interesting and fun.
This is the way
Netflix too, but they don't have a lot of movies or TV shows in Hebrew.
Pretty much my process for learning German. I did take classes at first, though. And I now have an italki tutor so that I can get some speaking practice.
@@languagejones6784bro, I have something valuable for you and your subscribers, I've mailed you regarding, check it out, Im sure that you would love it💯
@@bhutchin1996 For learning Hebrew though - Living Language series is one of the best and I had a chance to look at tHebrew course they made - really decent although they keep the diacritics (?) to help with pronunciation for quite a long time :/ A friend tried to learn Hebrew and she showed me the book, since I've recommended her the series.
Here’s to everyone learning another language!
🥂
👍🏽
Hiiii
🥂
🍻
☕☕ Taylor, you are not the first person to say some, many, or all of these observations, but you are certainly the first person to put together a comprehensive and cogent summary of these points. Bravo. I studied French (badly) for seven years beginning in middle school and although I could read Molière, I couldn't write a letter or order a cup of coffee. On the other hand, I began German study (after learning Ancient Greek and Latin) as a senior in college followed by a summer at the Middlebury College Summer Language Program. I then moved to German speaking Switzerland 35 years later (!) and tested at the B2 level on the CEFR scale. What I do now (for continued learning in German and French and new learning in Italian and modern Greek) is simple: mostly what you suggested. It works. I do a lot of listening, a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a bit of spaced repetition. For French I do the dreaded dictées. I transcribe native audio-nothing improves listening comprehension better than transcribing 30 seconds of real speech. Lastly, I prep myself as I need to. I make domain specific lists of words and phrases. For instance, I just did my Swiss tax returns (in German), so I studied tax, income, investment related vocabulary. Somewhat related, I also write out scripts. I needed a cabinet repaired in my apartment, so…I learned a lot of kitchen cabinetry words and ways you can break or damage the cabinets. Bravo, again!
Happy rosh Hashanah Jones! Happy new year!
May you learn as many languages as you desire!
I can definitely get behind learning the whole grammar first. I did that for Korean and it set me up to naturally learn vocabulary while listening, because I could more easily infer what parts were what.
커피 아예 안먹어요!
Asking 'real' speakers about grammar? Native speakers are very bad at explaining their own language.
@@stevencarr4002 Absolutely! Unless they are teachers or grammar nerds native speakers don’t know grammar and have forgotten whatever grammar they learned in school. In the worst case they will avoid saying that they don’t know and come up with some half baked explanation.
@@thedavidguy01 Or unless they speak two or more languages - which is true of a significant majority of non-English speakers in the world. So I guess it could be more accurately stated that ‘native English speakers are very bad at explaining their own language.’
I also have a very vivid memory of trying to memorise a list of English words, but I don't remember the list itself.
I really don't like word lists, spaced repetitions and such. I just want to watch YT videos, read stuff, talk to people and translate the words I need for what I'm doing at the moment. I find it way easier to remember a word, because I needed to figure it out when someone was wrong on the internet, or because it came up a lot a video.
I think its important to note that no one persons learning style is going to be the same, I had to learn that for myself learning Korean. I treated the language as if I were a 5 year old learning it at school, I started with the sounds and worked my way up. I had to develop this method and various others that work for me from watching 100s of RUclips videos.
I teach German as a foreign language professionally and I agree with you concerning the grammar: All these colourful textbooks treat the grammar like a special surprise, only to be revealed step by tiny little step. That is ludicrous and it makes me furious.
I'm learning German almost entirely on my own with youtube, do you have any recommendations for books about German grammar?
How are you supposed to reveal the grammar all at once, instead of building knowledge step by step? Can you say a little bit more about what you mean? I'd love to learn more about your perspective and experiences.
I majored in German in university and took a course in Germany. But before that, I was using a German book from more than 100 years ago to learn the grammar! It was all in the Frakturschrift. But I liked the explanations and the many examples, which were different than what I saw in modern German textbooks.
@@mrkingsudo The "C-Grammatik" by Buscha et al. is very good (Schubert-Verlag). I am not sure whether you can get it in English though, which would be a good idea if your level is only A1/A2.
@@resourceress7 You... explain it with graphs and example phrases(?). I am not sure what kind of problems you see with this. Maybe you could elaborate a little.
I like all of the things you talk about.. and would add one more: context. Almost everything in learning is about building context. When you are trying to learn a new thing, and it fits into a hole in what you already know that makes everything else you know make even more sense, learning can be nearly effortless. Building up the context that makes that possible, however, is something that nowhere near enough is known about.
I remember a day, probably in my first week of studying Russian, flipping through flashcards with my mother, as she was trying to come up with mnemonics, when she said "chitats me to read". This story is the embodiment of mnemonics for me: 40 years later I remember that. If I'd read it in a textbook, it would most likely have been as meaningless as all of the other mnemonics she came up with that day that I've forgotten. I remember another day, some years later having a two page long vocabulary list of words all related to reading, and essentially having it memorized after going through the list once. The difference wasn't that my memory got better. It was that the first time I had no context for the literally "foreign" word. By the time I had that list to memorize, I had enough context of the language that chitalnii, chitatelnii, chitavshii, chitaushchii, etc., etc. all had hooks that connected to things that I already knew, so they fit, and they made sense.
I wish I knew shortcuts to building context to make the process easier. There are many approaches that certainly do not work: spoonfeeding vocabulary and grammar for example. No language makes sense one tense and gender at a time. Immersion learning works to the extent it works by flooding you with context, which is completely overwhelming and confusing at first, until you either give up, or it starts to stick. That, and making lots and lots of mistakes along the way.
I don't think I've ever caught one of these this early. Here goes a target language attempt.
私はコーヒーが好きです
僕もコーヒーが大好きですよ!
This might be the first time I read a japanese youtube comment and immidiately understand it. I like tea better though.
俺もコーヒーが好きだ
@@RasmusMolckso コーヒーより茶の方が好き
Oh~ a fellow Japanese learner!! BTW did you know coffee has a kanji!? it's 珈琲... though it's not used that often, most Japanese people can read it!
I'm studying an Anki deck for JLPT N5 that TokiniAndy made, and it's really interesting how it's done. It's got vocabulary and grammar. Recall cards only for vocabulary. Each vocabulary card has the English meaning of the word, the pitch accent, an example sentence in Japanese (no English translation), and audio of a native speaker saying the word and the sentence. Practical real world descriptions of grammar points with examples.
New cards are presented in order, and each card introduces only one new word. The vocab card may introduce new grammar in the sentence that is then explained on the next card.
So what happens is that as you bring new cards into your review, you learn one new thing per card. As you go through the deck, the example sentences become more complex, using only words and grammar points you've learned and providing reinforcement for those. You are left to figure out the meaning of the example sentence _without translating_, and I think that's a plus.
Overall generally good advice. I think something that was glossed over quickly was the emphasis that listening, comprehension, internal modeling, and speaking have to go through the existing brain structures, i.e., the fact that you declaratively know this information and the fact that it sits in your pre-frontal cortex is of little use to the motor neurons and other brain structure that will have to process this information in a real conversation.
I think you’ve made the point in previous videos that iTalki and having real conversations is when you start to feel like actual process is being made. If you understand that these are the situations where all the brain structures are interacting, not just the explicit knowledge in the prefrontal cortex, it’s obvious why these methods are much more effective.
Language-specific learning - in a logical order for the language - is vital. I teach Irish, but have developed my own method, because I’m sick of texts that simply don’t explain sound changes logically, and teach tenses in an order that makes sense for French or Spanish, but is illogical for Irish. My preferred order: imperative, preterite, continuous aspect, present, future, imperfect, conditional, past subjunctive, present subjunctive. It seems odd, but using this order, students build patterns from a logical framework - and the conversational patterns also move more logical from simple/common to complex/uncommon patterns.
Of course, verbs and tenses come after we start on the most unique aspects of the language - sound mutations (knowing phonetics makes it simple) - and practise them by building phrases using the most common nouns with numbers, common adjectives and prepositions. Building a little ‘bank’ of phrases, helps you remember words (and their meanings) in context, but also illustrates grammatical rules - so you can use them as ‘templates’ instead of memorising rules (for gender, etc.). A bank of phrases using the most common nouns and adjectives in context also aids fluency.
Can you explain why you're teaching the verbs in that order?
@@vampyricon7026 I can, but it would probably require too much detail for a comment - especially if you’re unfamiliar with Gaelic or even other Celtic languages. But I’ll try to make it as concise as I can…. (I’ll be cutting a lot of corners and oversimplifying, so please bear that in mind.)
There are, in effect, three forms of the verb, ‘to be’, in Irish: the Copula, ‘is’, a special present tense form, ‘tá’, which is only used for the present moment (that is, without ‘habitual’ meaning), and the fully conjugated verb: ‘bí’.
From the very beginning, I introduce ‘tá’ (and its various forms) and ‘is’ (and some of its various forms). With the rule-of-thumb, “Tá describes; Is defines”, I get the students learning about nouns, numbers, adjectives and prepositions with (mainly) these two concepts (which many learners struggle to master). Since Irish is a very noun-centred language, you can say a lot with just the copula and ‘tá’ (and a few verbal nouns). [ed. See my other note, posted later, below.]
Then to verbs….
1. The Imperative mood (in its 2nd person singular) is simply the root of the verb. It’s the form you’ll find in the dictionary, and the basic form, from which you divine the ‘stem’ - which takes all the suffixes you’re about to learn. There’s a full conjugation of imperatives in Irish, but I mainly concentrate on the 2nd person singular and plural (which adds a suffix).
2. The Preterite (Past) tense, in most cases, simply requires the speaker to ‘lenite’ the first consonant of the root (change a plosive consonant to fricative) and add a subject (noun or pronoun). There’s a little more to it, but that’s the gist. Irish only has 11 irregular verbs, and they are most irregular in this tense, so we spend more time on them - and they’re the most common verbs, and very often used in conversation. (I’ve invented a board game based on Snakes and Ladders and ‘Truth and Dare’ to practise Imperative and Past tense constructions.)
3. Verbal nouns are next. They’re fairly diverse, you just have to learn them. And they are extremely commonly used in Irish conversation. With the verbal nouns, we learn the ‘continuous aspect’ with ‘tá’ and the preterite, and touch on the ‘active perfect aspect’, too.
4. The Present Tense in Irish is used much as in English - apart from with the senses, it generally has a ‘habititual’ meaning. As in English, then, it is not so commonly used in conversation, unless you’re discussing regular events, daily schedules, pastimes, etc. Tá and Is (the copula) with verbal nouns, etc. do much of the work in basic conversation, so there’s no need to start with the Present Tense (as in French or Italian). Unfortunately, most texts start with this tense probably out of habit from Latin, etc. However, here the students encounter (not only a more complex set of suffixes) but the ‘habitual present’ form of ‘to be’, and need to master it.
5. The Future Tense is quite a complex step, and it is next. It’s needed, not just for making appointments, but for understanding how the Conditional Mood is put together.
6. Most texts ignore the Imperfect (Habitual Past) Tense and plunge headlong into the Conditional Mood - which creates a nightmare for the poor student - not because of the new suffixes in Irish - but because English muddies the waters. (And remember, all Irish speakers also speak English - they are often learned together. ) Instead, I teach the Imperfect Tense first (often ignored by texts) so that the students familiarise themselves with the suffixes (which are the same in three tenses) but also come to grips with the vagaries of English ‘habitual past’ constructions, so that they don’t get muddled up when they learn the Conditional. In Irish and in English, the Conditional and the ‘habitual past’ (Imperfect) can often sound identical (but are written differently in Irish.) Without first learning the Imperfect tense (and the English ‘habitual past’ constructions), it’s no wonder that Irish students have floundered on what is actually a very straightforward framework (and often much simpler than English constructions).
7. Then, when students are comfortable with the Future and Imperfect tense, we join them together into the Future-in-the-Past tense we call the Conditional Mood. First, we learn it for polite requests, refusals and indirect speech. Then we tread carefully into hypothetical situations with subordinate clauses.
8. After the Conditional, the remaining Subjunctive tenses are a breeze. The Past Subjunctive (no longer used in colloquial Irish, having been replaced with the Conditional) is exactly the same as the Imperfect, but introduced with a subordinate conjunction, signalling a different ‘sound mutation’ (that is, ‘eclipsis’ - whereby a voiceless consonant becomes voiced, or a voiced consonant becomes nasal).
9. The Present Subjunctive is a breeze. And thanks to a bunch of set phrases, common in conversation, (like ‘thankyou’), the students are already familiar with many of its uses and forms. It only requires a quick review and a few more useful set phrases.
10. Throughout the introduction of each tense, there’s a quick look at other aspects, the ‘autonomous’ form of the verb in each tense, verbal adjectives, where appropriate. After covering all the tenses, I look at the implied difference between active, passive and autonomous constructions… bringing it all together.
Then we go on to tie other bits over vocab together - such as a lesson on comparison of adjectives and related constructions, and a lesson tying together the 72 different directional words in Irish!
@@vampyricon7026 I should also note that Irish does not generally use specific verbs for the equivalents of the English verbs: have, like, prefer, love, want, need, must, should, can, ought, owe, cost, own, seem, mind, wear, hope, know, regret, wonder, hunger, thirst, desire, worry, fear, delight, work, talk, laugh, smile and study. These are most often expressed using ‘tá’ or ‘is’ in combination with a noun, adjective and/or preposition. So, by the time it comes to learning verb conjugations, the Present Tense (used chiefly in a habitual sense) is really not the first tense needed for conversation.
Also, Irish has no specific equivalents for ‘yes’ or ‘no’. When answering a closed question, one must repeat the verb (or copula) in the appropriate tense or mood, in its affirmative or negative form. Which is one very important reason for learning verbs properly!
@@noelleggett5368I was about to mention that Irish and Scottish Gaelic don't have their own words for 'yes" and 'no'. While Portuguese does, speakers also use the verb instead of simply just saying 'yes' and 'no'.
- "Do you speak Portuguese?"
- "I speak, yes." Or simply...
- "I speak."
- "Do you live in a favela?"
- "No, I live no."
The Portuguese were a Celtic people before they became Latinized. As with French, they have more phonemes. The counting system in France is very Celtic.
@@bhutchin1996 Primitive Latin and the ancient Celtic languages were quite closely related. Latin originally had no words for yes or no, either. The Romance languages acquired them slightly differently, from disparate Latin dialects. French and German, for instance, have three words for yes/no: oui/si/non, ja/doch/nein. (I haven’t researched whether this is due to the influence of German as ‘Sprachbund’, evidence of the early influence of Germanic-speaking Franks, or a pre-existing Gaulish characteristic.)
Notable that immersion in content that involves listening to native speakers talk didn’t really feature in your method other than disparaging the Easy Italian video. I also binge a lot of language learning RUclips videos and am slightly baffled at those that suggest the best way to learn a language is to endlessly listen to words that mean nothing to you, rather than setting yourself up to understand them by first doing focussed vocab and grammar study. Would love to see you do a video one day on what you see as the perfect balance to strike between these two approaches at each stage in the language learning process.
"am slightly baffled at those that suggest the best way to learn a language is to endlessly listen to words that mean nothing to you, rather than setting yourself up to understand them by first doing focussed vocab and grammar study." - Yes, so much yes!
I study Latin. I've been concerned with language acquisition ever since
I started with traditional grammar-translation methods in class (I actually studied law, but I got a semester of Latin). it was the usual routine of learning case and verb endings before attempting to translate sentences. although I'll admit I did learn all five declension patterns, I still couldn't get through an average sentence in Latin. fast-forward one year later and I am now aware of Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. yet, I did not properly use it for about three years. finally, I started following some instructions I was given by the most dedicated Latinist I know of. I used it for about four or five months, and I was amazed by the results: I was able to read through most of the «Historia Brittonum», an anonymous text in medieval Latin! although there were many parts I couldn't figure out at all, I still was able to get most of it. ever since, I've been close friends with the direct method for learning languages
Assimil has a good Latin course, but it's not available in English. It's available in French. Still, all the audio is in Latin. I think LLPSI also has separate audio for "Familia Romana".
@@bhutchin1996 it does, actually. I just listen to Luke Ranieri's own voice acting for Familia Romana
Una pequeña corrección, la palabra es “venimos,” venemos no existe 👍 😉 ❤️
I don't like mnemonics because then I remember the mnemonic first anytime I think of something related to it. It's useful in that I can't forget the thing the mnemonic is supposed to help me remember. It's annoying though because now that concept is forever entwined with an intrusive thought that necessarily always accompanies the concept.
Do you use Anki? I find that my brain generally omits the mnemonic after the first three or four reviews and goes straight to the target.
I used anki to study Japanese a long time ago. It served its purpose as a way to enrich my vocabulary. It didn't do me good on doing actual conversation but it sufficed.
Now that I'm fluent in Japanese I'm trying different way to learn new language (Spanish at the moment). I just simply listen to a lot of Spanish channlei onRUclips and repeat what they say out loud. To be honest I enjoy it much better than using anki method.
I had a co-worker who was fluent in both Japanese and Spanish. When he was in Brazil, he had a relatively easy time picking up Portuguese.
I think anki is so useful for Japanese because the vocabulary is entirely new and can't be linked to anything you know. It's mucheasier in Spanish where at least some words look like English or french words and can be made sense of
@@RammusTheArmordillo Ah yes you do make sense. It's easier to learn Spanish if you know English given the many cognates. On the other hand, I feel like as I grow older I'm more patient listening to foreign contents than looking at flash cards 😁
@@bhutchin1996 Ooh that's nice. I wonder if I could learn Portuguese easily when my Spanish is at a good enough level. That's definitely another challenge in the future I'd like to do 😁
@@jerfareza Even native Spanish speakers have a hard time with Portuguese. When I was learning Portuguese, sure, Spanish helped, but I was treating Portuguese as its own language, which really it is. If you have Netflix, watch some Brazilian movies and TV shows to get an ear for the language, that's how I would start out with a new language. I don't know what kind of music you like, but if you like rap, there's Racionais MCs; if you like R&B, there's Ed Motta and Tim Maia. Sertanejo is Brazil's version of country music. Brazil has good rock and metal music too. It all depends on your tastes in music. Brazil is HUGE in the entertainment world, and that goes for its movies and TV shows too, so Netflix is a good language learning tool.
I remember learning French in school, we heard a whole lesson, had to repeat the dialogue without any written clues and in the end got the text, I was anxious and felt like an idiot, ....
I swore to not let that unpleasant experience deter me from learning French, so I went to a language course, read French novels, watched French films and visited France in order to have to speak French
With other languages I also prefer to start with the grammar to get an idea how the language "works"
Kaffee ist wirklich ein Lebensretter😂☕️ eine Wiener Melange
The Coffee Kapuziner is a traditional Austrian coffee drink originating from Vienna’s coffeehouses. It consists of a small amount of espresso topped with a dollop of whipped cream, giving it a distinctive brown color reminiscent of the robes worn by Capuchin friars. This unique combination of flavors and textures has been a staple of Viennese coffee culture for centuries
Spice it up with Brandy, if thats your thing...
I tried some Ethiopian coffee and it was pretty good. Just breaking into the coffeesphere myself.
Thanks for the videos, you’ve quickly become my favorite language expert on the tube.
The biggest language learning mistake I ever made in my life was listening to language teachers who said speak the other language in full sentences. If you don't know enough words, you can't practice. If you mix the language with your own language, then you can practice and say whatever you want. I try to do it this way now many years later, and I don't know if it will work, but I like being able to practice the language even if I don't know every word. In school, they teach too many words and rules too fast, so you can't really learn anything, except temporary memorization of rules and words. I would rather experiment and try wacky ideas than listen to experts who couldn't teach a dog to bark. If they tried to teach a dog to bark, it would probably end up meowing.
You’re describing what is sometimes called “interlanguage” as a study method. You hit on exactly the best practice
As a heritage spanish speaker who learned portuguese this is exactly what I did in my earliest stagest of learning. Obviously there is a ridiculous amount of overlap when learning portuguese as a spanish speaker so I was already reading and understanding so much. What was lacking was my vocabulary. I studied the phonology and almost immediately threw myself in to live conversations with portuguese speakers, often "inventing" words on the spot or guessing what they would be based on the spanish equivalent. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but I would always look up the word I stumbled upon and add the portuguese to my anki deck later to study. Here 3 years later comfortably fluent in brazilian portuguese. It's a method that works.
Schools have to find ways to grade you, so of course they're going to have you learn as much vocabulary and grammar as possible. While that's important, it's more important to fail than "get it right" the first time everytime. Business entrepreneurs know this. They know that they will have failures on the way to success. On the other hand, schools teach us to be afraid to fail or even make mistakes.
@@luiscruz5556I learned Spanish first. When I started learning Brazilian Portuguese, I treated it as its own language rather than apply my knowledge of Spanish to it. I ignored Spanish for many years while learning and using Portuguese. However, learning Portuguese has taught me so much more Spanish. My approach was different, but it worked well for me too.
I never thought about learning feminine adjectives first in French until you just explained it. I’m L1 Spanish, and my mental map is that the masculine is the default and the feminine is the exception and assumed the same in French. I might be as wrong in Spanish as I was until ten minutes ago in French, but je n’ai eu pas encore assez de café pour penser aux adjectifs en espagnol
I learned French orally (before learning to write) and there's lots of these little ways I'm surprised French is taught normally.
I'm also L1 in Spanish and I've learned French, Italian and Portuguese using masculine as the default and learned how to form the feminine so I can't think of it the other way around. Besides, you'll end up realizing the masculine should be taught as the default since in plural, you use masculine nouns and adjectives to describe a mixed or only male group of people.
"Why your language method is set up to fail"
Probably because this video came up just as I finished work for the day and as I was about to sit down and study.
I also had three bad French teachers at school (all for different reasons). The last was a native speaker who learned English at a young age. We'd have lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday and she expected us to memorise 30 new words and be able to recognise them in flowing speech and produce them the following day.
I also don't remember anything from those French lessons except a few rude phrases.
They just don’t build in the time needed to develop recognition in isolation, recognition in regular speech, and production. It’s like they think teaching a new word is handing you a new object and now you have the object. It just doesn’t work that way!
For me the best method has been the one I actually do. So I try to mix many different methods and tools and move between them before I get fed up.
I think you miss something pretty major at the beginning. You say textbooks, classes are available, but these cost money. Not all of us have money, so the idea of learning by watching RUclips videos is pretty appealing. I've been pretty successful doing this. Steve Kaufmann's method seems to work well for me, I watch French RUclipsrs and whenever I watch English videos I learn new vocab by using autotranslate to get French subtitles (this is such a good trick btw!). The thing is you learn the most common words really quickly, because, well, they're common. It's effortless. I look up grammar when I don't understand something. I would say I'm pretty proficient in reading and listening now, but my speech is slow and I don't think anything will substitute for time spent talking with fluent speakers.
I really appreciate having your authority on RUclips. You are my go-to. ❤❤❤
My dream course would have you learn basic vocabulary and grammar, and then have a lot of minecraft videos using these words, and progressively adding more advanced vocabulary. this is how I learned english, my school has taught me simple grammar and vocab, then I watched a lot of english minecraft videos to actually learn the language.
A linguist with a Linear Algebra and Unix textbook on his bookshelf. This is my kind of guy…
Agus is aoibhinn liom caife…
I've been teaching for almost a decade at a foreign university where I got to design what I did myself and now suddenly am faced with the very narrow vision of local regulations degrading things to an extreme. I'd say the one thing you seem to not much focus on at least here is that there is no language without meaning, it basically just being empty lexis and syntax; therefore meaning, both kind of 'descriptive' and 'procedural', being central. Lexis can't be memorised, nor can grammatical aspects, but there has to be an insight into them in a meaningful context which means that both the fact and structure of them on the one hand, and the meaning of them on the other (including even how that might shift), occur simultaneously, and for efficiency's sake, both receptively and productively. So using authentic materials which can be understood enough to be engaged with, and for meaning to be able to be derived from it, and for some process of analysing and responding to it also meaningfully, is where the acquisition occurs. And no language is isolated either, so this consolidates learning in connection with previous learning, and also not in a fragmented way, but where it's received as a whole with deriving meaning for real reasons as the first aim, and working with that, and responding, following from that. What is learned, but also what is reviewed, and also what is merely strengthened, all come together. Also the 'muscle' for dealing with full context is developed. So here I might disagree with you on the point of giving isolated language first, before a fuller context. To me to see it in context provides a good opportunity to derive meaning, to get direct insight into it, to see nuance that maybe can't be explained, and for it to have meaning immediately; for the meaning to take precedence. For me also what is 'most useful' comes out this kind of process whereby if you're getting learners to engage with real content really about whatever it's about, with a real reason to do so, then the language 'useful' for that will come out; and also what is really useful will be repeated a lot. Get learners engaged with what is meaningful to them and they'll learn it quicker anyway, because that meaning is there, but the langauge needed for that will arise again and again in that context anyway. The stuff in the lists will find its way in there quickly enough, but in a holistic way that facilitates learning. This is also pretty true with grammar. Though, yes, I do agree with the idea of repeatedly bringing attention to items, and also maybe deliberately making sure they arise again and again regularly, but ultimately if meaning of items, grammatical or lexical, can be 'merely' seen in context, then that is a short-cut to acquisition, and is the best way, and simply involves a bunch of other considerations too. Sadly, what I'm up against now is being forced to reduce lessons to disconnected grammar points, much of which isn't going to get practised in context anyway, because it's mere 'high level' grammar of rare utility, and also lexical learning diminished to a mere set list of words, disregarding how lexis to be learned is anything and potentially everything that someone needs to understand to do a meaningful task with content or situations in that language. My job is being destroyed. Standards crashing through the floor, because unqualified bureaucrats are forcing their simplistic and hollow view of it.
I love looking up the etymology of new words. It almost tells a little story about the history of the word.
So do I! But of course we have to resist the etymological fallacy, at the same time
I'm making a learn English course which uses spaced repetition and tries to put as much vocab review as possible into little stories while minimizing flashcard style repetition. Optimizing the administration is difficult and it isn't immediately obvious how to deal with users have inconsistent schedules.
Part of the problem is that, especially in the beginning, new stories have NEW vocab, which is a review liability. The obvious solution is to re-read the same story, but that is boring, and I hated when Duolingo forced me to read stories I'd already done before.
I'm part of the Awesome Coffee Club or whatever Hank Green renamed it to ☕
Your insights on optimizing language learning hit home! It's refreshing to hear someone blend fun with effective strategies. Can't wait to apply your tips and ditch the rote memorization! 🚀
If you haven't already, you should look into Lingua Latina per se Illustrata and the rest of the Nature method books. They are, in my opinion, some of the best language learning books ever devised
This was 100% the process that my Latin teacher/textbook took in high school, which might explain why I learned that so much better than every other time I've tried learning a new language
W języku polskim, 'Coffee' to 'Kawa' - w tej chwili moja ulubiona kawa jest co robię w domu. Już kupiłem espresso machine, więc robię Latte z syrupem wanilowym
As someone trying to learn this ^ mess of a language for the last few years btw, I wish I could have seen someone tell me what you've said in this video when I started. It took me a long time to work out on my own what you've said here
Learning grammar piecemeal without introducing the rest in any way is madness. It kinda makes sense on paper but in practice means reading even the simplest 'wild' text in your TL is impossible to even attempt as you're always stumbling across things you have absolute no clue about and can't look up in a dictionary. Spending of time at the start to build a mental image of the whole of the language (even if you forget most of the details), is so useful.
The only reason I worked out a lot of what you've said in this video, is through studying Latin for my masters - the course there was grammar and vocab heavy. When I tried buying Polish textbooks after they always spent chapters and chapters at the start getting you to say random real world stuff without any explanation behind it (I'm guessing because they didn't want to overwhelm the reader), but it meant I never really knew what I was doing at a more fundamental level which allows me to internalise and truly memorise the language. So I went out of my way to buy a grammar book that looked like my Latin one - no nonsense, cold and heartless, but to the point! Then combined this with other fun imput and methods mentioned in the video. (Anyone interested in, or currently learning, Polish - the book I got was Dana Bielec's routledge grammar and workbook
Tldr: From my experience, this video will help you learn a language far, far better than most other RUclips language learner channels, and is an absolute gem for those at the start of the journey who don't have to struggle to reach this conclusion years down the line!
Hey, I recognize your issue here as well. I am studying Macedonian, but textbooks that focus on grammar are usually the ones used in universities (in my case UToronto). Maybe this can help you find a good supportive book for studying Polish😊
First, kudos for learning Polish. Only crazy people, and Poles, do that. Second, very good attempt, but I believe it should be "W tej chwili moją ulubioną kawą jest ta, którą robię w domu. Kupiłem ekspres do kawy, więc robię latte z syropem waniliowym." Good luck with your Polish studies!
@@zerostrong3516 Rozumiem dlaczego powinienem użyć '... ta, którą...', ale czemu narzędnik kiedy chcę mowić 'moja ulubiona kawa'. Guessing the 'w tej chwili' is influencing it but 'tej chwili' isn't instrumental either?
I had studied a little Latin before studying Russian for 2 years at university, and that helped a lot with Russian grammar. Polish's "to have (something)" is more like English, whereas in Russian it's more like Latin's "Est mihi ___" and Gaelic's "Tha ___ agam".
@@MichaelH-h5u You could say "moja ulubiona kawa, to ta, którą robię w domu" or "moją ulubioną kawą jest ta, którą robię w domu", both have the same meaning. as to why you use instrumental in the second one, I can't tell you, i had to google what instrumental was. i have zero knowledge of grammatical concepts, that's why i'm not fluent in any language :(
I've managed to teach myself to read and write Armenian using textbooks and online resources and by reading and translating books of poetry. I don't live near an Armenian community so speaking is more difficult to manage though when I went to LA this summer I found I understood it fairly well when I visited Glendale and Little Armenia.
6:50 I'm shocked that's not what people do when learning a language. In italy that's the standard approach to learning a new language
I still remember 我的猫吃了我的香蕉 it always sounded like an innuendo
You're putting into words all my frustrations with learning/reviewing french. Speaking and sounding out words is fun but USELESS IF I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE WORDS MEAN!
I'm using a berlitz book and the vocab is at the end of each chapter.
Outwit your book and start reading chapters from the last pages 👁️👁️
I studied French for 8 years (high school then college) and learning the feminine first makes much more sense looking back. Though, I’m not sure if some teachers would want to adapt that given the severe emphasis sometimes put on the masculine as the “standard” with the whole le masculin l’emporte sur le féminin. I could be wrong but that’s the sense of the mentality I encountered when living in France
There seems to be an almost left-right spectrum in regards to language learning theories; the "left" swearing upon the basis and purity of comprehensible input, immersion and static listening, and the "right" requiring what amounts to textbook work, flashcards, and grammar practice. RUclips linguists tend to fall somewhere on it, amusingly. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, depending on the language component studied.
RUclips's English CC is rendering "mneumonics" as "pneumonics"and I find it quite interesting :3
Pumping it aaaall in :P
I wish I was able to pay attention to what you say, but you never change your tone and you are clearly reading. Please don't take this in the wrong way, the content is great. I suppose I could try to read the transcript of the video instead of watching you reading it. Again, don't take this in the wrong way, I do have ADHD.
The main thing I learned from this video is that my French student book is even better than I thought initially
It was written by Russian linguists from Moscow state language university and I use it in my linguistic studies (since French is my second language besides English). Somehow, we’ve got ridiculously few lessons of French this semester, so we’re basically left to study it ourselves. I thought imma lose a lot of nerves learning the language until I had my hands on the book
1. It explains the phonetics amazingly. The rules are simple and clear, and the words in a lesson are used so that we could practice the previously explained phonetics. What’s more, the intonation is also explained AND practiced from the 2nd or 3rd lesson (out of 50 for the A1 level)
2. The grammar exercises are really smart as well. For example, the story of a lesson tells as «Papa va à Paris, Marc parle à sa femme». The exercise asks us to construct the sentences «Marc va à Lille, Gille parle à sa femme». Utilising well-known characters and familiar vocabulary, it allows to basically learn the grammar by heart without actually learning it (the regular reviews included in future lessons also help tremendously)
3. And (which is the point of the whole comment lol) they started from feminine adjectives while explaining that the other (masculine) form exists it just will be explained later. I didn’t know it was such an important thing??? I know now though
Having seen quite a few English student book (written in GB or USA), which is considered to be a standard, I didn’t know you can do better than that. I was wrong lol. Even considering slightly different goals of the books and the fact that I still managed to learn English from them, they’re not the standard for me anymore
At first I was sceptical since learning a whole new language by yourself AND passing an exam is not an easy task (especially if you don’t even like the language lol I wanted to study Spanish my uni just didn’t provide me that option). Now, however, I’m confident in my abilities and I’m sure I’ll pass the exam. I might even continue learning it after the uni (since it’s the second language, we’re only supposed to learn it to B1-B2-ish level, and the said student book has B2, C1 and may be even the C2 levels (idk if that’s possible)) out of pure respect to the book and the authors. I’m glad I have such amazing colleagues (and in general Russia has so many amazing linguists in so happy I’m able to learn from them!)
Thanks for the video! Gotta go read some books to get my PhD in linguistics as well (jk, it’ll take a while for me)
Not a platform per se, but my Hebrew book (HaYesod) puts 20ish vocab words before each grammar lesson, then there's an on-level story and finally translation exercises.
こうやって「時間を無駄にしない」ために文法を先に勉強することを勧めてるけど、日本人はおおむねそうやって英語を勉強してて結果は散々なんよね。ジョーンズさんが英語から離れた言語を平均的な人より短期間で習得できてるっていう証拠もないし、結局は「ぼくがかんがえたさいきょうの学習方法」の域を出てない
The bit about getting learners directly into natural sentences is part of the way I'm trying to craft my system for teaching English vowel patterns. I figure that young learners (and foreign learners) will be able to grasp longer words faster so long as the syllabic structure stays simple (mostly open syllables, no consonant clusters), and getting straight into longer words feels like a better move. It's "taco" before "cat", and "We go to the rodeo & see Papa in the arena" seems like it would actually be easier to read than "Blake saw the black cat."
(Yes, I'm cheating by using the ampersand. But in my defense, it's a normal English symbol in widespread use, it conveys the concept apart from the sound, it can be pronounced a few different ways (including just "n"), the word itself is core vocab that *should* be introduced early, and this way I don't have to delve into the lax primary sound of A (says, said, again, against, and) long before its key words would show up in my program.)
Basically, I'm sticking to a minimalist, low-confusion set of graphemes and introducing them in an order that I haven't seen in any other system -- and putting off, for as long as possible, the more complicated details, such as most of the ambiguous combos (bead, bread, break). Then my color code makes clear the distinction between consonants and vowels, and makes clear which category of vowel rule is in play.
One of the stretch words is "hypothermia" -- before the kid can read "spotted".
P.S. I have some sort of sensitivity to caffeine -- it gives me headaches that can last for literally hours -- so I haven't a favorite coffee. But I do like Body Armor, which is my favorite way of staying hydrated ^_^
Teachers and self-study grammar resources tend to have me practice super simple sentences, limited to one new grammar point at a time.
I recently started taking the (long ass amount of) time to translate my natural-in-English thoughts on x topic and write them out, only simplifying if something is confusing enough to be demotivating. It's forcing me to look up a lot of new vocab, differences between similar word choices, and new grammar patterns that are way above my level according to structured curricula but used commonly in basic convos. Ofc I'm not gonna remember everything after one long writing session or after having my writing corrected by a native speaker and having those first aha moments; *most* of it I'm not gonna be able to actively recall for a hot minute probably, but I'm already able to recognize and understand more when listening or reading. Brb, finna go preview all the grammar now.
I was slowly plugging along with French after taking it in highschool, and I'm to the point where I can listen to some content in it. However, I now have a trip to Japan coming in May, so I'm gonna put my head down and try to learn enough that I can at least stumble my way through basic interactions ;)
Write that down Write that down
What do you think of "latin grammar book" style language courses? As a high school student I took spanish before switching to latin, and I remember wondering during latin why spanish wasn't taught like that. I think this mostly had to do with the very explicit focus on morphology in my latin textbook.
アイスコーヒーは私の一番好きなコーヒー飲み物と思います。。。
I'm actually been working on a memorization app for Japanese for a year now, and I'm glad to say that the ideal version of that app follows what you describe almost pefectly. It's reasuring. It just takes a while to get there. I have radicals, kanji and words, and would ideally add grammar based on the words and kanji you know next. Like you said. It's not easy...
Keep up the great work! I'm learning a lot.
anki has special coding for japanese that works great.
☕☕ich trinke nicht gern Kafee, also your videos have been very helpful for my own learning as i found your channel straight away and have been making tweaks to my own learning after every video of yours i watch
Still not convinced. To this day the only person who I think has it figured out is Steve Kaufman. Only with his method was I able to learn German, and I tried a lot of them
Love this. How does a layman go about implementing this for themselves? We don't know what we don't know, so there's clearly homework on the front end before we set up our own, effective course. Clearly most are not linguists, so what is good enough to serve us well??
Cognitive bias making me "immerse" by rewatching my favourite shows to learn go brrrrr
I’ve met a German colleague at work yesterday. I’m trying to learn German. She asked me if I could speak German and I almost threw at her “Ich trinke Milch“ duolingo stuff, but I limited myself to say my name and where I’m from. I was so frustrated because I memorized a lot of words that I don’t use in most occasions.
Germans will just speak English with you if they know your German communication skills are basic. I don't really blame them, but it doesn't help the language learner. If you can afford it, you'd want to find a private tutor.
@@bhutchin1996 sure! We communicate in English most of the time, but I’m curious to try speaking more and more German and she is really kind to have some time to listen to me. I’m starting my German lessons in February.
@@CaioCodes Das ist wunderbar für Dich. Ich wünsche Dir viel Glück!
3:55 honestly so glad to hear this from another person, i dont even know *why* i hate them so much but i think their heavy usage in the class i was taking is what single-handedly turned me away from learning spanish
I was thinking how useful it would be to have an app to learn French Canadian.
Shana Tova! I admit I do procrastinate often when it comes to language learning, I go through a textbook and then want to start reading books or shows because otherwise I feel very bored and disinterested, but then doing that feels like slugging through vocab, so I tend to after an hour or so stop and take a break or if I got a headache just stop.
I find that Duolingo does incorporate spaced repetition. It doesn't give choice about this process as it did a few years ago, but by following the vine (or tree or path or whatever they're calling it), it mixes old concepts in with the new. More recent old concepts show up more often. Older old concepts show up less frequently.
カフェなどいたらコーヒーは大丈夫ですがお茶の方が好き。毎日飲みます
You mention learning the determiner with the noun. I began formally learning French when I was 11 in 1963. Although there was some audio-visual input, at that time the teaching was heavily grammar-based. Vocabulary always included the determiner so you didn’t have wonder about the gender. I was surprised when I started using apps to learn a language to find the determiner was no longer given. In some cases it will be obvious, especially in a language like Greek where each gender has specific endings. This is not the case in all languages: in French, for example, ‘piéton’ is masculine, but ‘maison’ is feminine. French nouns ending in ée are usually feminine, but ‘lycée’ and ‘musée’ are masculine. If you’ve learned the determiner with the noun, this presents no problem. I’m all in favour of audio-visual material, but grammar is an important part of any language
Kaffee ist Leben! ☕️ Meine lieblings Kaffee ist Caramel Macchiato. Tolles Video.
(Moonwalking aus den Kommentaren...)
Ja, Kaffee ist Leben. Jetzt trinke ich schwarzen Kaffee. ☕
I’ve been self studying Korean for two years and this is the best I could come up with to answer your question.
저는 홍차이 좋아해요. 커피를 괜찮아는데 차 더 맛있어요.
Clicking this video just made me understand why earlier when i was watching language simp for the first time in a long while i had the unshakeable feeling that i somehow knew that his name was Jones. namely, a different, vaguely similar channel I haven't seen in a long while
I studied Latin in high school, and proportionally a lot more of the learning was focused on grammar, so getting an overview of the language system and grammatical structures as soon as possible sounds really appealing to me... but it doesn't mesh with what was successful about how I ended up doing Japanese learning (only my 2nd modern language after English), or what I've seen most other learners struggle with. The edge I have above almost everyone I met seems to be that I 1. got comparatively massive amounts of listening (including what I think would fall into the highly controversial "passive" listening and 2. getting familiar with the writing systems, which was pretty much the only active thing I managed to do consistently. I was supposed to do a lot more, but never got around to it until years later when I actually went to Japan. I did NOT have speaking practice but I found the weird experience of being able to speak in 2-3 weeks at what passed for someone who'd lived in Japan for 5+ years even though I had our huge knowledge gaps. Fast forward to now, in out little local study group, almost everyone came at least partly from a traditional classroom, and they all have trouble parsing speech, chunking phrases, and understanding the intuitive meaning of things they read and hear. They tend to come to me for help, and I can give them a translation but I'm only learning the grammar now, so I have to resort to making comparisons and contrasts to English vis-a-vis the formal grammar ideas I learned in Latin because I'm only now learning how things are laid out formally in Japanese. And I always have the sense they're overthinking it and confusing themselves... I have no further thesis, just an interesting situation I've found myself in. Just wanted to offer the anecdote for others to think over and pick apart!
It's not based on any sort of analysis (including proper self-reflection), but I feel like weird approaches may be what we end up remembering. I mean, I know that watching science popular videos and listening to annoying songs wasn't the main reason I got to understand spoken English (which came after speaking some English for me, because post-Soviet system), and that classes made much more difference. But when I started watching these videos (after I had enough of crappy translations), and when after a few weeks I got used to them, I got an epiphany. And now I remember that I got to understand spoken English by watching RUclips videos, even though it's only technically correct
I feel like Practice Portuguese, a podcast/app put together by a first language Portuguese speaker and a first language English speaker achieves a lot of what you've outlined here.
That was a pretty sweet subjunctive. It made me happy.
I can't stand the bitterness of coffee, so I cling to sugar free energy drinks for my daily fix.
Trying to not miss my daily Ukrainian exercises in Duolingo when waking up, what a stupid idea, when I need 3 espressi in the same cup with some cold milk to actually REALLY wake up. No wonder these words don't stick...
Hey Dr. Jones, do you think you could make a video showcasing your personal Anki-deck process? Maybe some examples of the kinds of cards you like to use? Thanks!
Once I'm really confident it's optimized, sure! But I've just abandoned a few decks because either I found better research or just found that personally the way I was working with them wasn't working. Learning optimization is a passion of mine, but not my main expertise.
I learned French in college, and the teaching of it (at first by a linguist, no less) was excellent. The first course was conducted mostly in French, and the following semesters were 100% in French. All vocabulary was learned in context, and grammar was drilled by progressive transformations. One of the later courses consisted of eight hours a week of free conversation; others revolved around classical literature. And yes, we were told early on that the feminine singular form of an adjective was the critical one from which the other forms can usually be determined.
Venemos is wrong! Venir: el viene - nosotros venimos - ustedes vienen - ellos vienen. Venemos doesn't exist in Spanish.
Yes, I knew I shouldn’t have used Spanish, which I’m just starting out in! I’ll be sure to say venimos at some point in my Spanish learning update video
japanese does the same thing with the stem changing words, iku means "go" but ikimasu" means "will go" and "ikimasen" is "will not go"
ive been studying for about a month and a half now, and ive always kept in the back of my mind something you said in one of your earlier videos "memory is forgetting and remembering again till you stop forgetting" this is such great advice, i can now read hiragana but a month ago i would have to stop and look to see what half of the kana are, i bought the genki textbooks and those have also helped alot especially with the grammar and particles so far, i have seen alot of people on here saying the genki books arent bad but they wouldn't recommend them cause its not "natural japanese" but in my experience, yeah its pretty much all polite japanese but i dont see the harm in using it as a base to start from, especially since before i got them i was pretty much just floating in the ocean of japanese and not really learning anything, and now after just a week with the genki book, i may not be able to readd an entire sentence but i can at least tell you what particles mean what and have a general idea of what someone is talking about, like for example "ore wa gakkoo de ikimasen" "i will not go to school"
basic point being, and im not an expert like the doctor here but finding something that is a good source and works for you personally is a major thing as well. i mean in a week with a textbook i now know all the kanji for 1-15 and the kanji for "watashi" even though that ones pretty easy, and can make basic sentences.
I've just restarted my Māori learning and am using AnkiDroid for vocab and reading a slightly over-simplified introductory grammar called "Te Reo Māori - the Basics Explained" Its focus is very much on that "here's where the grammar is different from English" approach you mention. Which, given that it's Austronesian and not IE, is a lot of difference. Your video has bumped a more detailed grammar up my purchase list, thank you. Sorry I can't shout you a coffee this week (doppio ristretto ftw)
7:51 Actually it's venimos not venemos 🤪
Olly Richards does a good job of all that you said, but of course, not everything you explained I have his Fluent Spanish Academy lifetime course- intermediate level. He even has stories that use the preterite-imperfect, etc... only. So that you learn how to conjugate thru a story.
What I'm liking is methods that immerse you in content that's just a bit above your level, and you see that you don't have to understand every word. Olly Richards's stories (I went through his Icelandic book) work that way, although I ditched that book as soon as ever I could because the stories were so! dumb! ... and I have this online course in Levantine Arabic that uses videos, which I just think is the bee's knees ("the bee's knees"? no, I'm not THAT old, but the course is called Beelingo, so), they show you the video and ask you questions about it, what's going on here, which one is Jamila...
The fact that I know the video you're referring to, I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing, it's probably both
Me gusta un poco de café con mi leche y azucar. Jejeje. I'm happy learning even one new word a day, regardless of how. Just don't try to throw me into complete immersion as an adult; never doing that again.
I’m almost finished the audiobook Learn Japanese with Paul Noble (he also has French and Spanish) and honestly he hits most of the techniques you suggest.
Lots of spaced repetition, he specifically asks you *not* to try and remember vocabulary, and the focus is on grammar and learning 5-6 tenses with a very basic scaffolding of nouns and verbs.
It feels slow but I suspect I’ll remember more of what he’s taught than any other past course.
Kyou no gogo Jones to kouhi wo nomitaidesu! ☕️ (See, I remembered that even without looking it up except for spelling.)
9:42 Thank you for not using the Australian 'Olympic' breakdancer
Very useful tips, and I also notice that a few courses out there are utilizing a lot of these methods now.
Most people can’t just read a grammar to get an orientation.
I am helping my teenaged son with his personal goal of learning Modern Greek, and we have found the free “Language Transfer” recordings a good way of getting that overview. It doesn’t have much vocab or practice (though it does have some), but it’s an accessible intro to the structure.
I was not expecting Kurtis Blow to pop up lmfao
Yess ok ty for validation for doing the thing it feels like everyone says we shouldn't bother even looking at until xyz for fear of idk, our heads exploding or something.
Not even acknowledging the existence of simple past and future tenses, much less anything else, for a whole (University level) semester is wild.