Reading the Harry Potter series in German was a game changer for me honestly. After finishing the whole thing, it gave me the confidence to read more material in the target language. Now my German speaking friends actually gift me books in German instead of my native language about tens of books read later. 😅
Hi. I just started learning German. Could you please tell me what your routine was like? What did you do? The materials/ resources you used? As well as the techniques? I literally have no idea where to even begin with German. Therefore, I'd appreciate your help. 😅
@@TheGoatConnor I would say that my language learning journey was so chaotic and on and off that there really was no routine for learning. Furthermore, I didn't start self study until I was around A2/B1. But let me first give you a laundry list of programs/materials that I used that could help you in the early steps. Programs: - Seedlang: A spaced repetition program with funny stories and bright colors. I used this to up my vocabulary when taking my last German class in undergrad. -Clozemaster: Program that lets you learn words in context by frequency. -Anki: Spaced repetition flashcard system. I used this and still am using this (although now for Serbian). -Niko's Weg: three feature-length movies for A1-B1, given in few-minute bits to teach vocabulary and grammatical features. Lots of people swear on using this when they were beginners. Books: - ABC Grammatik (Anne Buscha) the A volume might be helpful for you as it is bilingual. - Practice Makes Perfect Complete Grammar (Ed Swick)- really useful from A1-B1. Techniques: - Scriptorium method. Look this up if you aren't sure how it works. I did this for a handful of articles and it helped me reinforce the grammatical structures I was learning from the workbooks. - Vocabulary islands. If I didn't know how to say something to my satisfaction at a reliable speed, I would make a review of it. You don't necessarily have to do that- some learners make an Excel database of it for reference and that can work too. What's actually funny is that I didn't really leverage comprehensible input until quite late into my language learning. I didn't start reading Harry Potter until like B2, but that definitely changed things for me. (It actually may have been better that I did comprehensible input a lot earlier than I did.) Hope that helps.
Damn I really wanna read it in german now as well! Around what level were you when you started reading it? I’m starting a B1 course now so i think it might be a bit difficult for me still
@@chromosomethumbsdown I started when I was at B2. But interestingly, I think I still would have gotten something out of it if I was less fluent than that. So you can give it a shot if you'd like, but be prepared to read it multiple times if you really want to learn from reading it. Don't be worried about trying to know every word. Pick up a word per page per read-through and you'll definitely be better off after four or five reads.
I started at a low level with ARD KIKA shows (they’re generally free to watch online with ARD Mediathek) with subtitles on. (Really helps with the pronunciation). Later, I moved on to books and reading. It really helps if it’s something you’re VERY familiar with. I have Harry Potter, LOTR, The Hobbit, and the Bible as my foreign language starting books. Hardest part was scanning the page while not knowing everything on the page (and being okay with that). If I could look up just enough words to grasp which part of the story I was in, then that was enough to move on to the next page. Oh, and there’s some RUclips channels with super catchy German children’s songs. Very annoying, they get stuck in your head, but it’s also great because after 12 hours or so, you have an entire set of words absolutely stuck in memory.
YES !!! I'm French and have always told anyone and everyone that my fluency in english comes from Harry Potter. People usually take that as a joke, "ok, keep your secrets ;)", but it's true ! I've always been a big Potterhead and in middle school I got into the world of fanfictions. The French community was not enough for me so I tried to read a few one shots in english and was happily surprised to realise that knowing the series so well helped me understand almost everything very easily. Now 15y later, I'm still reading fanfictions!, I've got my own little collection of Harry Potter books: the full set in French, English and Japanese + the first books in Swedish and Korean. I want the Spanish and German ones next ! (greatest youtube recommendation ever)
This was absolutely my experience with Harry Potter in French. The first five chapters were a slog, but the rest of the book was much easier and more engaging. A lot of new vocab became repetitive and it supercharged my language learning in French. This video is a great description and explanation of this experience. Subscribed!
@aliceadebola, well, Im not learning french, but my english, though not native is pretty good, and I'm now at an intermediate level in german (comprehensionwise at least) and I would say you should start the sooner you think you can handle it mentally. Because the sooner you start, the harder it is, but if you endure it, it will also be where the benefit is greater. If you'd rather wait to get better and have a smoother experience, that should also be fine, but if you want to read it, go for it.
Worked my way through the series in Italian! For book 1 I kept my English copy by me at all times and by the last one I was just enjoying the story. And reading in a new language brought a whole lot of magic to it!
Can confirm from personal experience. Learning english from HP books, the first chapter was an absolute nightmare, but then it got a lot easier and by the end of the book, I was able to understand new words from context, so I didn't have to stop all the time to look things up. Great way to build up your vocabulary!
This is genuinely great advice, it's hard to find good advice on the language learning sphere of youtube with everyone trying to sell you their snakeoil. You definately deserve more subscribers, Ima tell my freinds about this video
this is definitely not an unique idea, I have heard it way earlier(read books that you like in your target language eg harry potter) but with presenting it with such a solid data, made the advice more realistic. now I know I can do it, and I've looked it up and found other interesting books too. from now on, I will definitely use it more often.
I maybe hesitate to call it a Rosetta Stone -- because Rosetta Stone to some extent implies it is your first book. I would use an easier book first as a Rosetta Stone to build a vocab of 2000-3000 words and then use Harry Potter as my Rosetta Stone #2 book. Yes, 2nd Rosetta Stone would be cool!!
new words in each chapter that data definitely shows what ive thought previously as theoritical, lets imagine telling, i'll read that book until coming across with 10 unfamiliar words on day one you'll read 1 page and for example on day 60 you read 4-5 pages, thats just example how beveling out is starting out then getting smoothened.
I've been reading Harry Potter in Japanese! The first couple of books were available for free on Kindle for a bit, and it seemed perfect for me as an elementary-level reader. On top of that, it's a book I'm familiar with, so I can follow the story easily. Thanks for the data, it's really cool to see!
@KyonHaruhiSuzumiya It was free for a bit on Kindle, but I'm not sure it is now. But if you get a trial of Kindle Unlimited and cancel before they charge you, maybe you can get the first book for free now!
I haven't read in French for 48 years, but I did buy a French version of Philosopher's Stone a while back. This gives me some motivation to read it side by side with the English version!
This is the first video on your channel I have seen. This is exactly the kind of the content the language learning community should be generating; informative, interesting and of practical use to many people. Keep up the great work!
I think a really key point here is that Harry Potter is considered to be level B2 (on CEFR) for language proficiency, which means you need to have c. 3250 words in your vocabulary (in Italian at least). I wrote down 40 new words to look up in chapter one. After a bit of a cross reference, I found that 25% of these words are in the 1000 most common Italian words and the median value for word frequency was 2500. The maths is a bit crude but I feel that is saying that I need 2500 words to understand half of these unfamiliar words. A good incentive to study vocab!
Yes, I would love to see another video like this one that assumes you know the 1000 most commonly used words, 2000 most commonly used words, and 3000 most commonly used words -- and then see what the stats look like. I think a much more realistic example -- as I hope no one starts reading Harry Potter as their first book. Would be ultra painful and ultra de-motivating to read those first few chapters -- if you started from ground zero.
I'm currently reading the Warrior Cats books in German, while there's a lot of unfamiliar words as they are way above my reading level (I'm at around an A2 level), they're surprisingly not that tough to read as I was obsessed with these books as a kid and can still remember the majority of the plot. I specifically chose these books as they're not too long and there's seemingly over one hundred books in the series, so they'll keep me occupied for a long, long time! I'm honestly having a lot of fun with reading in German, I plan to get started on the Harry Potter books when I happen to get sick of Warrior Cats, or if I finish the entire series, whichever happens first!
I can't explain how I felt touched by this video! I'm a process of german learning and so far, my roseta stone (reference of your other video) has been Dino lernt Deutsch. Each book presents a similar approach, first three chapters presents a topic, and then becomes easier, each book as a small step of a stair, or a small boulder problem. Currently I read 9 from 12 books of this serie and after that, Harry Potter is a brilliant recommendation to read.
This video is greatly informative and well made. It showed up as a recommendation on my home page and I hope that means it’s being recommended to others too! Subscribed!
When i was learning Dutch it was suggested to me to get a copy of Minoes in book and audio. And i gradually began slugging through and would translate a page a night. By chapter six i could understand the audio and what was going on in chapters i had not read yet. Felt quite surreal. My only add to this is before doing it, it is absolutely imperative to nail pronunciation of the written words, as we tend to read aloud in hour heads. Get this wrong and you will mentally hear words your ears never do and it will make overall progress tougher.
Your content is fantastic! The way you explain things, the peaceful vibe of the videos and your strategies/ideas/tips for language learning will skyrocket this channel in no time. We are all looking forward to your next videos!
Great video! It's amazing what a gift to language learning the Harry Potter series (and it's extremely broad release of translations) is, so it makes an extraordinary example for this.
This is the first youtube language learning video that I have found to be worth the time to watch!!! All the other youtube learning videos are trying to sell me something that I don’t want or need. This guy doesn’t seeem to be modivated by greed the way the others are. I hope it stays that way.
I listened to all of the Harry Potter books in Spanish in the span of 3 months late last year. It definitely got a lot easier as I went. I've only physically read 2 (short middle grade) books in Spanish, but this video has me wanting to try another one now to up my reading comprehension. Cole de espías, here I come!
Great video. I’m currently learning Spanish without classes or exposure to a grammar book-now at a B1 level, closing in on B2. I’m trying to plow through a list of thirty books, starting with graded readers and moving through some fiction (e.g., John le Carré) and non-fiction (economics, history, philosophy). After becoming bogged down in a period of painful, intensive reading-looking up many words and feeling frustrated-I turned to Harry Potter for a change of pace. What a great decision! I finished the first book quickly and am now in the middle of the second, using an audiobook version and a Kindle version simultaneously. It pushes my pace and gets me used to extensive (as opposed to intensive) reading. I think that my brain will finally have the volume it needs to work its subconscious magic. I highly recommend the Spanish audiobook with Carlos Ponce as narrator. Most audiobooks have listless narrators. Not this one. Ponce is a gifted vocal actor. He makes the material sing. This change has reinvigorated my language learning.
2:11 - To all of you I feel like I should point out that in russian "Колдун" is while technically correct, but far more used word is "Волшебник". The latter sounds less old-fairytale-like, and is actually used in Harry Potter translation. Or for example in videogame/TTRPG/fantasy literature context "Колдун" is sometimes used to refer to a warlock, and "Чародей" for sorcerer.
тебе не всё ли равно как его называть? что от этого изменится? ничего! А может лучше Магом назвать? подумай над этим. (+ ещё несколько бессонных ночей).
ладно, в чём то ты прав. Я даже не задумывался над этим, когда читал. Автоматически всех мысленно переводил как Волшебников (как что-то положительное). Колдун чаще используется как что-то негативное, плохой волшебник. А так я чаще в Поттере так и воспринимал мысленно (как образ) - Wizard, без перевода. Как чел, который может творить магию, колдовать, произносить заклинания. Наверно это правильный путь, не привязывать слово к русскому переводу. Как-то интуитивно встал на этот путь. И тут меня бомбануло что кто-то пытается подобрать максимально правильный перевод))) я об этом даже и не задумывался, а просто читал их Wizardами (способными творить магию = ака волшебники (если меня ночью поднять и спросить кем является Дамблдор))))
опять же, я не смог бы назвать Волдеморта колдуном (типа плохой волшебник). Колдун это всё таки что-то мелкое, немного дилетантское, лишённое величия. А "тот, которого нельзя называть" всё таки по уровню магии (скилам), как я понял, был практически на уровне Дамблдора, только более глуповат и душевно мелок (что его и погубило). Поэтому он тоже волшебник, только плохой. И так как максимально близкого перевода к такому субъекту в русском нет, я его мысленно и представлял как Dark Wizard.
I began reading the Icelandic version of Harry Potter in September 2022. The beginning, I remember, was so frustrating but I push myself to continue reading then creating and reviewing Anki cards. Slowly but surely, it became easier and easier where now I am working my way through the Goblet of Fire almost like reading it in English. In between all this, I´ve read a few native Icelandic novels to see whether I could. I assumed my higher comprehension was attributed to prior knowledge of the Harry Potter books having read them many times over. To my surprise that wasn't that case! In Icelandic, wizard is galdramaður
Thanks, really helpful! im about to start reading the first book in german and your video was just the right trigger to do so. i can also say that it does help, because i've used exact method learning serbian. I was reading a book and gradually expanded vocabulary. goodluck on the language journey to the reader of the comment section
Hi, I thought to write in to say what a fantastically informative and motivating video and record the start of my journey with this method. I’m a low B1 and have set a target of one chapter of HP a day, hoping to reach high B2 once I finish all 7 books over the next half a year or so. I’m listening and reading at the same time and also have the original English version (I read the chapter in my native English first then listen and read in TL, then read then re listen - I’ve experimented with looking individual words up but actually I remember a lot from reading beforehand alone - maybe I won’t need to do this for book 2). I’m 5 chapters into the first book and like the graph shows the amount of new vocab in that fifth chapter is insane! It was a total slog (and much harder than previous chapter), but I’m already noticing words repeat. Anyway I’m keeping my fingers crossed this gets substantially easier because at the moment it’s taking 2-3 hours per day to get a good grasp of the chapters.
This is absolutely fascinating, because I taught myself English back when I was 8yo, partly by reading Harry Potter in English 😂 Now I'm teaching myself French by reading the HP books again.
2:11 I'd like to add that in Polish we don't really say "czarownik" but we'd rather say "czarodziej" or "czarnoksiężnik", although the latter refers to a kind of darker, more evil one. and for witches, you can say "czarownica" or "wiedźma" - fun fact this is actually where the term "witcher" ("wiedźmin") comes from, it is a neologism of the word "wiedźma" since a masculine version of that word doesn't exist!
In slovenia we do say “čarovnik” but can also say “čarodej” which is so so similar to polish and for witch we have “čarovnica”. But we don t have other words. Its fun to learn where witcher comes from.
I think it should also be said that we also say "mag" which is more tied to english mage but also french, spanish and german words presented in the table.
Came here to recommend the audio book read by Rufus Beck, too. I am German and Mr. Beck does great impressions and he even includes different dialects/accents.
I've read the first three Harry Potter books in Portuguese on LingQ, and the % of new words are spot on. Great advice on reading in foreign languages, keep up the interesting videos!:)
@@marior.5796 I would recommend it! It's a tool for listening and reading basically. They have a large library of content in many languages, but you can also import your own books, youtube videos, articles, anything you like. Each word you read, you click the translation and how well you know the word (completely new, familiar, known). Then you get statistics of your activity, and % of new words when you import new content or browse the library. Biggest downside is the price. Costs about the same as Netflix. If you can afford it, I think it's some of the best way to learn languages, apart from traveling to the country or speaking with others.
@@lexiesanders929you import the whole book into lingq, and they seperate it into parts. It's pretty straight forward, I haven't had any issues with it. They give you a % of new words when you have imported the book, which really helps when picking books appropriate to your level
Very nice video and your observations really coincide with mine, when I've read the first 3 Harry Potter books in French :). One thing to add here is that books that we've already read in another language can be super useful to learn a new language. This way you can pick up interesting stuff earlier. Have a great day!
An interesting idea to explore: if you read the whole Harry Potter series, how well would you be able to read Lord of the Rings (or other popular series like Percy Jackson, Narnia, Game of Thrones). What would those graphs look like? I can attest to the beginning hill. I’ve been slowly working on Harry Potter in Spanish and man it’s a real slog. Way above my A1 level, but your graphs really show what I’ve seen others say (after a 1/3 of the book, it gets “easier”) Thanks for this information
Very cool video, thanks! Love the data and the take-home lesson. I'd be curious to see how many words you'd come into contact with across all seven of the Harry Potter books.
I'm actually doing this with Mandarin and I'm on Chambers of Secrets right now. I noticed that my reading speed is getting faster and I'm checking the translation less and less.
I am Japanese learning Chinese. Although this video is not about learning Chinese, your video still encourages me to learn Chinese step by step (English too!) Thank you for making such an informative video :)
I am a Chinese AND Japanese learner as well. I am at HSK 3 level in Chinese and around N4 in JLPT. I've tried to read Harry Potter in both languages, and so far, it was really challenging. But this video makes me feel better now :D I wish you good luck and good progress in your Chinese studies!
I’m a Chinese learning Japanese. I’ve downloaded the Japanese Harry Potter book but I had a lot of difficulty starting out. Maybe I’ll get back to it now.
Loved the video, actually perfect timing for me too, I was gifted German harry potter for Christmas!! I tried starting but it was overwhelming, and I like the idea of using Anki alongside. I was wondering, you described going from German to English one day, then English to German the next, and I was wondering how you set something like that up, for me it will try giving me both one after the other. Hope to see more videos from you soon!!
The first time I tried to read it took me ~30 minutes to get through the first 3 sentences. But it gets easier as you try! For Anki, the front of the card was German and then the back was English. By default based on my learning rate, the first day I would see the German-> English and then the next day I'd see English -> German. With the new, better algorithm as of the end of 2023, it may show you the English->German card 2 or 3 days later but it's still the same concept
Awesome video! Can you do a video on how soon one can expect to speak the language if they are reading and listening and slowly starting to understand.
oh wow, i actually made a new years resolution to read the harry potter books (at least 3) in french, because im not good at the language despite taking classes in school, and because i was feeling nostalgic for the series. this video showing up on my feed is an amazing coincidence. thank you for motivating me and the many others who have watched ❤❤
I'm currently on Book 1 for Spanish. Any words I don't know, I put them in Anki. I don't try to memorize words, I just review them so I won't forget them if I don't see them often. I will admit that it will boost your vocab immensely. The language learning process is a slow process, but reading is the game changer. It takes you from beginner to intermediate in a matter of months once you understand the structure of your target language. From there, you are pretty much acquiring vocabulary and listening to the language by native speakers
Reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher´s Stone in English was a complete game changer for me. I remember constantly looking up words in that book but in all the other ones, I barely had to resort to that and ever since, I´ve been able to fluently read (and after watching the films with subs) comletely understand spoken English. That was when I was 15 and now I´m 26 and basically do all my internet activity in English and have relationships in the language too.
I did exactly this in my French journey. I had studied French for about a year at school, and I had already done a lot of personal study (read: French RUclips). I want to say that what you said aligns perfectly with my experience. It was so difficult to read through each page of the first few chapters, especially because I was entirely new to a few of the literary tenses, in particular the passé simple. But that is something you very quickly get over, as you see it everywhere and your brain is designed to soak that kind of thing up. As I read on, my reading became much more fluid, and while I still didn’t know every word on any particular page, I was reading about as fluidly as I would’ve read as an 8 year-old me in English. It was fluid even though I didn’t know everything. By the time I stopped after the 3rd book, reading French felt as comfortable as English, and my proficiency had vastly progressed. Your video was amazing and lines up with my experience perfectly
This is very interesting data! I would love to see that chart for all seven books - does the mountain even out at some point? Where/how did you get the data?
It does even out over time , though there's still that "background radiation" of new words that come up as different expressions, topics, dialogue etc. come up.
There are definitely still new words, because even just looking at the titles: The Deathly HALLOWS. I'm fairly sure Hallows isn't used anywhere else in the series. Also, there was what, 11 years between the first and last book? JK essentially wrote the first one aiming at 12 year olds and the last ones aiming at late teens and adults. The fourth one kicks off a whole different level of "adult" writing.
Great sdvice. Ive downloaded them all in Spanish, Frenh, German and Italian and they are brilliant to learn to read in a language. I just copy each page into Google translate which makes it easy to look up any words when you are really stuck and cant work out the meaning. Then you can save the words you dont know in Google and export them to a spreadsheet.
*Dirty tip:* when picking up a new Harry Potter to read in a new language, immediately skip to Chapter 6 (The Train Ride). The first chapters are mostly verbose descriptions in the third person. From Chapter 6 onwards, the book is heavy on dialog. You can read the tedious narrative of Harry’s life chez Dursleys later (or not at all). Do the same when watching HP movies in other languages.
My advice is build up a vocab of 2000-3000 words first using easier material and then tackle Harry Potter. You then won't have that initial cliff at the beginning.
The algorithm is becoming a little bit too accurate lol 😅 one of my resolutions for the new year is to read a Harry pPotter chapter in German each day to become familiar with reading with a story that I already know and love. Nice video btw
That's what i did for a while. I first read it in polish then in english (a few times over the years) then russian and most recently korean (4 chapters left in book 7). I started from zero and and just read with no anki. In between reading i skimmed through some grammar constructions to know their meaning. Started with a page per day and it was a painful grind that mostly consisted of looking up words in the dictionary. After a month i had much less to check so it got much easier, then after about 3-4 months i was reading multiple pages and soon whole chapters. So far i've read: 1. Pretty much the whole HP series, 2. Hunger games series. 3. Twilight, 4. Some nk defector story I went from not understanding a single word and to understanding 99%. I was using FLTR app for reading so i also have some stats. Started with 0 known unique words (words like "like", "likes", liking" counted as separate words) to 63000 by 9th book and to 107000 by book 19, on average you gain 3-5k new words per book (mostly depends on the length of the book). Meanwhile after reading about 9 books i started going to korean classes in the local korean culture center mostly to gain some opportunity to ask questions. Started at level 4(out of 8, although the online test scores allowed me to get any level but that was the only one available at the time) now I finished level 6 and got 100% reading score in each semester with 0 study while the rest of the group was struggling. On the other hand my speaking ability is pretty much nonexistent and my listening is way worse than reading. So if your priority is to speak I would mix it up with dramas or classes. The numbers in the video are roughly correct. What FLTR showed for me is that a long HP chapter was about 3500-4000 unique words long and no matter how much you know you will always see 200-400 new words or previously not met variation of already known words (depending on language - korean has a lot of particles, conjugations etc). Recently i've been also experimenting with replacing korean letters with chinese characters. But I don't have much experience with that yet to draw any conclusions.
Excellent analysis of new words! Was very interesting to see. Would have liked to have seen you support your idea of changing genre as a way to attaining more vocabulary by comparing new words learned from going from HP1 to HP2 against new words learn from going from HP1 to a completely different genre!
Thanks! I had tried to work with Moby Dick and Frankenstein but my text analysis in Python was having a hard time parsing the files I could find. Will keep searching and likely do a follow up like you suggested! My broader hope with this channel is to look at what a "curriculum" of content could look like to learn a language (e.g., start with reading simple books then add watching and listening then moving to literature etc.).
Awesome video! 😊 I'm on the fifth book in Spanish and it's now very comfortable to read which is great because I do it before bed but I agree that it's important to read different things if you want to get out of the intermediate plateau. Also, you could the greek word for wizard which is μάγος 🇬🇷
I'd be very interested in this topic: Paired multi subtitles i.e. I want to watch some movies/news subtitled in English + target language + phonetic spelling. There's also the cherry on top of them being color coded, but I don't expect that :))
So happy I found your channel. I love seeing all the data since it makes things a little less abstract when it comes to language learning. What software/website did you use to analyse the books? I would like to start reading in French and I think this analysis of cumulative unique words is a great way to assess a book.
btw in the litle self-promo graphics it would be really helpful if you would show the pronunciations for the non-phonetic writing systems (chinese and japanese in this case)
I'm using the HP method for learning Finnish and it works a lot. Learning as an adult, it took me four years to get to a *solid* B1 level, leaning towards B2. This is about what you'd expect if you consistently put in 20 minutes each day combined with one lesson per week. Traditional language classes have a lot to offer in the beginning, especially if they focus on reading and listening comprehension, explain grammar, but don't spend too much time on written grammar exercises. Outside of class, comprehensible input videos on youtube (Such as the "Easy German" or "Easy French" youtube channels) are the best use of your time. Switch between rewatching the same videos, learning the vocab in them, and watching some new ones. So when did I start the HP method? I knew already that this was a great way to learn, since I'm so familiar with the stories. I decided to start using it as soon as I noticed that when I don't understand something, it is due to the vocabulary and not due to the grammar. Looking up a word is a lot faster than looking up grammar. Plus there are only a limited amount of grammar concepts, but thousands and thousands of new words. What helps here is to focus purely on input, not on output. I don't care if I can't conjugate a verb, I just need to recognize its meaning in the text. When I got at that point, the harry potter grind could truly take off. I'm now at a point where I can put on HP4 audiobook, listen, and understand enough to *be entertained*. This is key. Now I just switch back and forth between learning vocab (plenty of HP1 vocab still to learn), and listening/reading the books. I do the vocab systematically from chapter to chapter, and listening I do kinda whatever.
@@OneWordataTime1 Thanks! I migrated here for work and am now settling down. That's also been a huge help, I'm constantly surrounded by my target language. But plenty of western immigrants here stick to just using English because everyone here can speak it so well.
@@OneWordataTime1 Thank you! And thanks for your video, it was very interesting to see the new word breakdown for the books. Would love to see one graph combining all new words per chapter for all the seven books!
I love your approach which is very similar to the method I use for language learning. Usually I prefer literary classics, but for yiddish I actually used also Harry Potter. Luckily, even for this 'niche language' a translation is available (vol 1) 😊. Kind regards from Germany
@@bettlovesshrek2026 Thank you for your comment. I fully agree, it is a bit hard in the beginning, but it really pays off greatly. It's a very unique feeling (almost ecstatic) when you've passed this threshold and are able not just to read but to truly enjoy classics in a foreign language. Actually, that's my main motivation for language learning: exploring and enjoying foreign literature in its original form :-) ok, it may seem a bit nerdy to others, but who cares? 😀 This passion is something I'm trying to share on my channel😊
@@polyglotreading you literally described everything I feel during the process of reading in a foreign language, I know people feel overwhelmed when they try to do things like this, but actually reading intensely has become one of my main interests. we know that it’s hard, no one says it isn’t, but it’s one of the few things that you can experience in language learning. Lernen ist einfach alles für mich, ich danke dir auch für diesen herzlichen Kommentar :)
@@bettlovesshrek2026 Thanks a lot for your comment. If you would like to share experiences on reading classics in foreign languages, you might consider visiting my channel where I mostly present (in videos made in multiple languages) literary classics that I read in their original language 🙂
thanks for the lovely video, i've been thinking about buying the first book in korean and your video made me actually do it! hope to see more content like this in the future! grüße aus berlin :)
Read the first three books of Harry Potter in Japanese a few years back. I did it as a "Let's Read Japanese" livestream, but have taken down those few dozen videos. However, I have other Let's Read videos that demonstrate how I approach it. One method that really helps is to read alongside the audiobook so you hear how natives pronounce the words and phrases. Basically, I would read then pause the audio whenever I needed to look up an unknown word or phrase. Another trick I did was use Morphman to learn the most frequent unknown words from the book AFTER I finished the book cause a number of words were learned passively through exposure.
2:10 regarding the free word considering this is a video about Harry Potter. The translation for wizard (for the Harry Potter universe at least) in German is Zauberer and I’m pretty sure the Japanese version uses 魔法使い.
Very fair (at least as far as German goes). I went with Magier, since I thought Zauberer was closer to magician. I know in Harry Potter the word Zauberer is used though in the Eragon series, Magier is definitely used more.
I am using it to study Ukrainian language. I had counted the book has totally 64,362 Ukrainian words. There are 13,870 unique words in either norminative or inflected form. If all the words rewrite to norminative form, there will be 8,185 unique words.
Very interesting, I am currently listening to the Harry Potter series in another language and I'm currently about halfway through the 3rd book, and yeah it is getting easier and easier and there are fewer and fewer unknown words the further I get in the book. Would you mind sharing where you found the data about the new unique words? would love to check this out on some other books.
Hi One Word at a Time, I have really enjoyed watching your videos and found them very insightful. For this video essay, I was wondering how long the steep hill would persist if you looked at learned words (greater than twenty exposures) rather than new words alone. Do you have any insight on this? Also, did you use a morphological analyzer or consider all forms of the word as different words completely? I can't wait to see your next video.
@@OneWordataTime1 Looking forward to your follow up vid (what the process would look like with mastery of the 500/1000/2000 most common words in the target language)! The other thing that I'd be interested to see is the actual number of exposures to each new word across the entire book, and the coverage of the vocabulary against something like the New General Service List. I might have to learn to code!
Wow. This is superb. I don't know how original it is, but I have not seen this analysis before. I will certainly now re-look at my French language Harry Potter. I wonder what your analysis would bring to the chapter sequence of a single book? I attempted to read the French translation of one of my favourites, A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle, but it was much too difficult for my level (intermediate). Would it become manageable if I persevered? I don't know, but will try again. Thanks for this exceptional video. (It was commendably concise, by the way.) Have liked and subscribed.
Thanks! I don't know the book specifically but if it's one of your favorites, then my gut says you'd have the excite to persevere to the point where it becomes manageable. I've had a number of books where that's the case and it's always been super rewarding, even if a few parts are quite difficult.
As I was learning English in Russia in the late 90s, playing Fallout series of RPG games (1 and 2) strictly in English really helped my vocabulary. It was was challenging (since there is a lot of text, and it's important to understand to be able to respond), but the interest in the games really kept me working at it. I would say that I probably had about 400-500 words when I started though, so it was building up on something.
Maybe RUclips is watching me, but yesterday I downloaded the French book and audio book of Harry Potter et l'école des sorciers to help me learn the language!
I forget the name of the youtuber its something like livakiv I think. Anyways, he has yearly progress videos and the main thing he did was immerse at least until he added 20 new words to his anki deck everyday (until he got to 20k). Once I get to a level where I see less new words, I plan to make a similar plan, which will force me to read more and find more difficult books. This video reinforces that idea for me and I think is super important for all learners, especially at the beginning of reading. I'm on my 4th book but it still feels insanely difficult (different authors for each one). I know one day it will get easier but sometimes it's really just a grind, and that's okay too.
Your experience definitely resonates that books are very very hard when you switch authors. I've had this experience in both German and Hebrew, and I'd be curious to see what the new word frequency chart looks like when you switch. Hoping to make a video on this.
For your one free word promo, I feel as though it may be more beneficial to write the Japanese word in one of its phonetic alphabet (probably hiragana) for an easier time learning said word. Otherwise the reading could be very ambiguous due to the many different kanji readings per symbol
While I never read harry potter in Japanese, when I read my first manga I was looking up a new word every page, often more than one. (Especially since it was dialogue heavy) I got more and more comfortable as I read through the series, although there were a lot of unique words only used once in the series. I read another Manga by the same author after that, and while it was technically harder than the last, I was having an easier time with it since I already learned a lot from the one I read before. Honestly it doesn't entirely matter what your immersion material is when you're a beginner, it just matters that you do something, because you'll struggle even with kids books. (Like Harry Potter) Just get through the first hurdle as soon as you can and you'll have more fun from there.
I used Harry Potter for this purpose with its excellent French translation back when the series was still emerging. The method does work. I now can read French fluently, having since read hundreds of books in that language. However, there is a problem with this method: in spite of being a good reader of French, I still have trouble understanding spoken French. I believe that this is due to my having over-learned implicitly a kind of “literary dialect” of French in which pronunciation follows spelling much more than it does in actual dialects of spoken French. As a result, my fantasy language-learning-by-pleasure-reading system would include an audio-only module in which phrases are played one at a time, and the listener selects advance, replay, replay slower, show the written form and replay, or show the translation and replay. Just as in the reading method, one would expect that as one progresses through the book, the frequency of “advance” would increase and there would be fewer and fewer pauses between phrases. The reason this is still a fantasy is that unlike just picking up a book in the target language, setting this up would take great effort and cost a fortune-per book!
Great video! Have you done this video where you assume the person already knows the 1000 most common words or the 2000 or 3000 most commonly used words? i.e. they are not starting from ground zero? Think that would be a great video -- actually IMO a more interesting video than this one. I think you mentioned you have -- but I can't seem to find it if you had. Also, a video that shows the cumulative stats of reading the entire Harry Potter series from start to finish. I assume it's probably the same 200 new words for each chapter, but curious if it does go down to something like 100 new words for each chapter.
I'm probably about 3/4ths of the way through the 4th HP book in Polish (I'm using LingQ). When I started, I hoped by the time I got through the last book, I would be functionally fluent. I was an A2 level when I started reading the series (I did read "The Little Prince" as my first book; what a slog!). I'm now somewhere around the middle of B1. Functional fluency usually happens somewhere in B2, so I will probably hit my goal by the time I'm done. And, as Steve Kaufman says, reading does wonders for speaking, because most of the time the problem with speaking is not having enough vocabulary. I've noticed when I have practice conversations with myself, I am speaking faster and able to say more than a couple of years ago when I had a tutor. And the only thing I've done in the meantime is read and watch some shows in Polish.
Very awesome! Since my family's from Poland going back a few generations, I'd love to eventually learn Polish to a solid level. How did you import the book into Lingq? I know you can import but I thought the Kindle/ebook versions had some sort of lock on them.
Thumbs up for learning polish @kerim.peardon5551 😁🥰 B1/B2 is pretty awesome for polish ^^ @oneWordataTime1 So you know some polish also? And Hebrew? 😮 Looks like you have some cool heritage languages ^^
You're probably B2 at "reading" already. Many people don't realize you can be different levels at reading, writing, listening, and speaking. One woman posted a video on RUclips where she said she was C1, and she showed that she passed the test and received C2=reading, C1=listening, C1=writing, and B2=speaking. (so, each of the four skills is not always at the same level) and can even differ by two levels like in this example where this woman was amazing at reading (probably had a really good vocab) -- but still was far behind with her speaking. I think she could get better at speaking pretty fast with a good vocab -- but still need to practice each skill to get better in that skill. Don't forget that at some point you need to start speaking (Steve Kaufman says this all the time) -- you'll have a much easier time at it if you do a boatload of reading and have a massive vocabulary -- but you still need to speak to get good at it.
@@OneWordataTime1 RUclips turning off my notices of replies. 😣 Kindle books may work on LingQ; I'm not sure, because I haven't directly uploaded one of those, but I have not previously had issues with moving Kindle books around to different platforms or converting them from .mobi to .epub. I had to get my copies of HP in Polish from GooglePlay because only the 1st two books were available on Amazon and no one else had them. GooglePlay books are so locked down, you can't read them on anything other than GooglePlay's website. You can't put them on a Kindle or Nook or any other sort of reader or tablet. Which is B.S. I paid good money for that book; I ought to be able to read it in whatever manner is convenient to me, just like I can take a physical book anywhere I want. On a completely unrelated note, there's free software out there that will strip out DRM so you can use your book on your reader of choice. Rumor has it, you can even import it into LingQ (gauging by the fact that someone or some persons have saved vocabulary into LingQ's dictionary that's HP-specific.)
@@quantus5875 Well, LingQ grades you based on your reading vocabulary, so I would say that it's probably accurate that I'm halfway between B1 and B2 in reading. For writing, I'm probably more towards the beginning of B1 because my grammar isn't going to be any better or worse than with speaking, but my spelling will be off, for sure. I think my speaking is also probably just barely B1. My listening skills are probably worst of all. I wish I had more access to Polish stuff with English subtitles. Netflix was the best for having stuff dubbed into Polish (really, though, the only things I could watch were anime/cartoons because dubbing of movies was horrendous). But I watched pretty much everything Netflix offered 4-5 times each, and finally gave up on them getting anything new for a while, and changed over to watching anime elsewhere. I'll give Netflix a while to get something new before I go back.
You can stay within the same genre and just change authors to get bunch of new words without hopefully making your head explode. Translated books are also always easier than the original version.
Haha I started Harry Potter in German like 3 or 4 months ago. Im still on the hill and t's really hard to dedicate time to reading it. But this was a super neat video for me!
I've always heard about Harry Potter and how it's great for language learning.. And everyone keeps telling me to read it, cause I haven't .. even in English... maybe I should read it in my target language, Portuguese, which I've been studying for 2 years, yet I know I'll struggle.
It’s mainly helpful for people who have read it before and can guess vocabulary from context. Otherwise any series of similar length and level will work as well, it’s a strategy called “narrow reading” sticking to one long series that re-uses the same vocab.
Better to read a book in your target language if you're already familiar with the story. While Harry Potter is a classic and definitely worth a read, probably don't want to attempt it for the first time in a language you're learning.
@@AmandaMcGee ah well. I'm reading a fantasy book right now and doing just fine. Still a lot of words I don't understand, but I'm understanding enough. First book I read I finished only because I'm a perfectionist and it was just annoying me not finishing it, even though I didn't understand 1 single thing 😂 well not much anyone. Read the first chapter of queen of the south.. even with translations it didn't make sense 💀😂
I have the Harry Potter books in different languages. 1st in English, 2nd in Hungarian and my target language future 3rd book in German, but first I have a Grundschullexikon to read mit various words and grammar to have the basics down + a bit of reading. Also --wizard is varázsló-- and --witch is boszorkány-- in Hungarian if someone is interested.
I used to use this method when learning my first 5 languages! Unfortunately i can't monetarily support the author in these times, and I've lost the taste for reading the series. Thankfully, there are lots of popular works like this!
I took it on myself to learn French through the Harry Potter books but everyone in my family (part French) has treated me like an imbecile for suggesting it. :p Probably should send this video to them but meh. Getting tired of these same people always giving me the same shit over things that usually turn out to be great ideas. This video is getting my like.
I knew I wasn't the only one. I read it on my native Portuguese language. Then English, Spanish and now Japanese. And if you love the series it never gets borrowing :)
I've been recommending the HP series to language learners for years, because of everyone's familiarity with it, and its wide range of translations making it available no matter what your target is. But these graphs have such a punch to them in that they also tell a story about what it feels like to get through the first chapters and books. Excellent work! I am about to finish the fifth book in French, and remember very clearly the grind that was those first few chapters. The graph you made here describes it perfectly. Rereading, following the audiobook, listening to chapters on repeat, thick ankii decks for such a tiny book. By the third book, I was reading comfortably, and able to listen to the audio without much trouble. Now, on the fifth, I only occasionally look things up, and don't bother with ankii anymore (even though I should). There would have been fewer cards from this, the thickest book of them all, than in the first or seconds ones!
Awesome! We're almost literally in the same spot - I'm 70% of the way through the 5th book in German now. I don't need to look up anything based on context but there are still words worth remembering so I still add words with my notecard bookmark method
I'm right on the intermediate plateau and reading in German is being really frustrating. I'm ok at listening, i.e., I can listening to the Easy German podcast and radio programs about my themes of interest and comprehend them pretty well, but when it comes to reading newspaper articles or books, I feel like I made no progress at all. It is specially disheartening because my mainly goal is not even speak, but to read with fluency.
If it's hard to get into a flow while reading, I'd recommend finding something that can be rewarding at the sentence level. That could be finding reading that's just at your level or by finding a topic you're interested in (based on your channel playlists, maybe something related to religion?). That way you can build up tiny wins to get momentum to want to read more. If you'd like, I can also recommend some good Kindle books for starting in German that I found useful when starting.
For me, it was finding the balance between novelty and repetition. For at least the first three books, I read each book four times, highlighting a single word on each page or on each two pages I didn’t recognize. Then on the second reading, I did this again, but when I encountered the words on the first read, I would try to remember what the word meant, and if I still couldn’t remember, checking it’s definition in the highlight. (I did this on kindle so it’s quite accessible.) I’d argue that this made me more confident in my reading abilities and got me to find more stuff to look at with this method, which is needed to learn by input.
@@OneWordataTime1 Thank you. I think I was I a little bit too confident because now I can comprehend podcasts much more than I could before, so I thought it would be the same with reading and jumped into texts that were beyond my level. I would appreciate your book recommendations.
@@nolsterbuckr8496 I confess I have a difficult time reading the same text more than once, but now I understand that this is something very beneficial and will try to discipline myself on that way. The ideia of using Kindle's highlights is really great and one that I will put into practice. Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
How much basic language should I know before doing something like this? My TL is Thai, and my first challenge is learning the Thai script (which I am working on now). Should I already know a certain level of Thai words before I start reading HP in Thai, or can I just jump in and build vocab? Very interesting video!
That's a very good question. It's probably not best to start learning a language by reading a novel but once you have 500 words it might be worth a try, if that doesn't work, try again a few months later once you've learned more
@ThrillhouseToTheMax I just started learning Thai not long ago🥳😅 What are your first thoughts on the script and vocab? 😊 After watching this video I'm now tempted to read HP in Thai as a experiment 🤣🤣🤣 But the biggest problem would be even getting a copy of HP in Thai 😢
Reading the Harry Potter series in German was a game changer for me honestly. After finishing the whole thing, it gave me the confidence to read more material in the target language. Now my German speaking friends actually gift me books in German instead of my native language about tens of books read later. 😅
Hi. I just started learning German. Could you please tell me what your routine was like? What did you do? The materials/ resources you used? As well as the techniques?
I literally have no idea where to even begin with German. Therefore, I'd appreciate your help. 😅
@@TheGoatConnor I would say that my language learning journey was so chaotic and on and off that there really was no routine for learning. Furthermore, I didn't start self study until I was around A2/B1. But let me first give you a laundry list of programs/materials that I used that could help you in the early steps.
Programs:
- Seedlang: A spaced repetition program with funny stories and bright colors. I used this to up my vocabulary when taking my last German class in undergrad.
-Clozemaster: Program that lets you learn words in context by frequency.
-Anki: Spaced repetition flashcard system. I used this and still am using this (although now for Serbian).
-Niko's Weg: three feature-length movies for A1-B1, given in few-minute bits to teach vocabulary and grammatical features. Lots of people swear on using this when they were beginners.
Books:
- ABC Grammatik (Anne Buscha) the A volume might be helpful for you as it is bilingual.
- Practice Makes Perfect Complete Grammar (Ed Swick)- really useful from A1-B1.
Techniques:
- Scriptorium method. Look this up if you aren't sure how it works. I did this for a handful of articles and it helped me reinforce the grammatical structures I was learning from the workbooks.
- Vocabulary islands. If I didn't know how to say something to my satisfaction at a reliable speed, I would make a review of it. You don't necessarily have to do that- some learners make an Excel database of it for reference and that can work too.
What's actually funny is that I didn't really leverage comprehensible input until quite late into my language learning. I didn't start reading Harry Potter until like B2, but that definitely changed things for me. (It actually may have been better that I did comprehensible input a lot earlier than I did.)
Hope that helps.
Damn I really wanna read it in german now as well! Around what level were you when you started reading it? I’m starting a B1 course now so i think it might be a bit difficult for me still
@@chromosomethumbsdown I started when I was at B2. But interestingly, I think I still would have gotten something out of it if I was less fluent than that. So you can give it a shot if you'd like, but be prepared to read it multiple times if you really want to learn from reading it. Don't be worried about trying to know every word. Pick up a word per page per read-through and you'll definitely be better off after four or five reads.
I started at a low level with ARD KIKA shows (they’re generally free to watch online with ARD Mediathek) with subtitles on. (Really helps with the pronunciation). Later, I moved on to books and reading. It really helps if it’s something you’re VERY familiar with. I have Harry Potter, LOTR, The Hobbit, and the Bible as my foreign language starting books. Hardest part was scanning the page while not knowing everything on the page (and being okay with that). If I could look up just enough words to grasp which part of the story I was in, then that was enough to move on to the next page. Oh, and there’s some RUclips channels with super catchy German children’s songs. Very annoying, they get stuck in your head, but it’s also great because after 12 hours or so, you have an entire set of words absolutely stuck in memory.
YES !!! I'm French and have always told anyone and everyone that my fluency in english comes from Harry Potter. People usually take that as a joke, "ok, keep your secrets ;)", but it's true !
I've always been a big Potterhead and in middle school I got into the world of fanfictions. The French community was not enough for me so I tried to read a few one shots in english and was happily surprised to realise that knowing the series so well helped me understand almost everything very easily.
Now 15y later, I'm still reading fanfictions!, I've got my own little collection of Harry Potter books: the full set in French, English and Japanese + the first books in Swedish and Korean. I want the Spanish and German ones next !
(greatest youtube recommendation ever)
What is it? A video about language learning that is original, short, informative and to the point? Subscribed and can't wait for more.
This was absolutely my experience with Harry Potter in French. The first five chapters were a slog, but the rest of the book was much easier and more engaging. A lot of new vocab became repetitive and it supercharged my language learning in French. This video is a great description and explanation of this experience. Subscribed!
I am pretty fresh to learning french but have a french copy of the sorcerers stone. At what language level did you start to pick it up?
@aliceadebola, well, Im not learning french, but my english, though not native is pretty good, and I'm now at an intermediate level in german (comprehensionwise at least) and I would say you should start the sooner you think you can handle it mentally. Because the sooner you start, the harder it is, but if you endure it, it will also be where the benefit is greater. If you'd rather wait to get better and have a smoother experience, that should also be fine, but if you want to read it, go for it.
Worked my way through the series in Italian! For book 1 I kept my English copy by me at all times and by the last one I was just enjoying the story. And reading in a new language brought a whole lot of magic to it!
Can confirm from personal experience. Learning english from HP books, the first chapter was an absolute nightmare, but then it got a lot easier and by the end of the book, I was able to understand new words from context, so I didn't have to stop all the time to look things up. Great way to build up your vocabulary!
This is genuinely great advice, it's hard to find good advice on the language learning sphere of youtube with everyone trying to sell you their snakeoil. You definately deserve more subscribers, Ima tell my freinds about this video
You've got to do it! It'll be a blast! I've gotten back into my French after a 25 year hiatus. Totally 💯 recommend.
this is definitely not an unique idea, I have heard it way earlier(read books that you like in your target language eg harry potter) but with presenting it with such a solid data, made the advice more realistic. now I know I can do it, and I've looked it up and found other interesting books too. from now on, I will definitely use it more often.
Harry Potter as a rosetta stone is such an intriguing realization lol
I maybe hesitate to call it a Rosetta Stone -- because Rosetta Stone to some extent implies it is your first book. I would use an easier book first as a Rosetta Stone to build a vocab of 2000-3000 words and then use Harry Potter as my Rosetta Stone #2 book. Yes, 2nd Rosetta Stone would be cool!!
Well thought out, logical, data driven. Please keep these videos coming.
new words in each chapter that data definitely shows what ive thought previously as theoritical, lets imagine telling, i'll read that book until coming across with 10 unfamiliar words
on day one you'll read 1 page and for example on day 60 you read 4-5 pages, thats just example how beveling out is starting out then getting smoothened.
100% I've had the same experience in my reading.
I've been reading Harry Potter in Japanese! The first couple of books were available for free on Kindle for a bit, and it seemed perfect for me as an elementary-level reader. On top of that, it's a book I'm familiar with, so I can follow the story easily. Thanks for the data, it's really cool to see!
Hey I also want to read harry potter in japanese please tell me a free method Onegaishimasu
@KyonHaruhiSuzumiya It was free for a bit on Kindle, but I'm not sure it is now. But if you get a trial of Kindle Unlimited and cancel before they charge you, maybe you can get the first book for free now!
@@キャサリン1 Thanks 👍🏻
I haven't read in French for 48 years, but I did buy a French version of Philosopher's Stone a while back. This gives me some motivation to read it side by side with the English version!
This is the first video on your channel I have seen. This is exactly the kind of the content the language learning community should be generating; informative, interesting and of practical use to many people. Keep up the great work!
I think a really key point here is that Harry Potter is considered to be level B2 (on CEFR) for language proficiency, which means you need to have c. 3250 words in your vocabulary (in Italian at least).
I wrote down 40 new words to look up in chapter one. After a bit of a cross reference, I found that 25% of these words are in the 1000 most common Italian words and the median value for word frequency was 2500. The maths is a bit crude but I feel that is saying that I need 2500 words to understand half of these unfamiliar words.
A good incentive to study vocab!
Yes, I would love to see another video like this one that assumes you know the 1000 most commonly used words, 2000 most commonly used words, and 3000 most commonly used words -- and then see what the stats look like. I think a much more realistic example -- as I hope no one starts reading Harry Potter as their first book. Would be ultra painful and ultra de-motivating to read those first few chapters -- if you started from ground zero.
I'm currently reading the Warrior Cats books in German, while there's a lot of unfamiliar words as they are way above my reading level (I'm at around an A2 level), they're surprisingly not that tough to read as I was obsessed with these books as a kid and can still remember the majority of the plot. I specifically chose these books as they're not too long and there's seemingly over one hundred books in the series, so they'll keep me occupied for a long, long time! I'm honestly having a lot of fun with reading in German, I plan to get started on the Harry Potter books when I happen to get sick of Warrior Cats, or if I finish the entire series, whichever happens first!
Great starclan, I am going to try that too (except in dutch)!!
Yeah those are in Swedish too, read by Mattias Linderoth who is one of their best narrators.
I think this is the missing part that Dr krashen never talks about. you’ve re inspired me
I can't explain how I felt touched by this video! I'm a process of german learning and so far, my roseta stone (reference of your other video) has been Dino lernt Deutsch. Each book presents a similar approach, first three chapters presents a topic, and then becomes easier, each book as a small step of a stair, or a small boulder problem. Currently I read 9 from 12 books of this serie and after that, Harry Potter is a brilliant recommendation to read.
This video is greatly informative and well made. It showed up as a recommendation on my home page and I hope that means it’s being recommended to others too! Subscribed!
When i was learning Dutch it was suggested to me to get a copy of Minoes in book and audio. And i gradually began slugging through and would translate a page a night. By chapter six i could understand the audio and what was going on in chapters i had not read yet. Felt quite surreal. My only add to this is before doing it, it is absolutely imperative to nail pronunciation of the written words, as we tend to read aloud in hour heads. Get this wrong and you will mentally hear words your ears never do and it will make overall progress tougher.
The mental pronunciation is a very interesting (and correct!) point. Definitely worth thinking more about
Your content is fantastic! The way you explain things, the peaceful vibe of the videos and your strategies/ideas/tips for language learning will skyrocket this channel in no time. We are all looking forward to your next videos!
Great video! It's amazing what a gift to language learning the Harry Potter series (and it's extremely broad release of translations) is, so it makes an extraordinary example for this.
Yeah I'm gunna be honest here
I need more videos from you
Absolutely amazing content brother
i'm currently learning greek and this is such a good idea thanks
Weird this video just came out. I've been toying with this idea for a year.
This is the first youtube language learning video that I have found to be worth the time to watch!!! All the other youtube learning videos are trying to sell me something that I don’t want or need. This guy doesn’t seeem to be modivated by greed the way the others are. I hope it stays that way.
I listened to all of the Harry Potter books in Spanish in the span of 3 months late last year. It definitely got a lot easier as I went. I've only physically read 2 (short middle grade) books in Spanish, but this video has me wanting to try another one now to up my reading comprehension. Cole de espías, here I come!
Did you like the narrator? If so, what was their name? If you don’t mind 😊
@@apetass123 I did like the narrator, Carlos Ponce.
@@katherinep1010 Thanks!
Great video. I’m currently learning Spanish without classes or exposure to a grammar book-now at a B1 level, closing in on B2. I’m trying to plow through a list of thirty books, starting with graded readers and moving through some fiction (e.g., John le Carré) and non-fiction (economics, history, philosophy).
After becoming bogged down in a period of painful, intensive reading-looking up many words and feeling frustrated-I turned to Harry Potter for a change of pace. What a great decision!
I finished the first book quickly and am now in the middle of the second, using an audiobook version and a Kindle version simultaneously. It pushes my pace and gets me used to extensive (as opposed to intensive) reading. I think that my brain will finally have the volume it needs to work its subconscious magic.
I highly recommend the Spanish audiobook with Carlos Ponce as narrator. Most audiobooks have listless narrators. Not this one. Ponce is a gifted vocal actor. He makes the material sing. This change has reinvigorated my language learning.
2:11 - To all of you I feel like I should point out that in russian "Колдун" is while technically correct, but far more used word is "Волшебник". The latter sounds less old-fairytale-like, and is actually used in Harry Potter translation. Or for example in videogame/TTRPG/fantasy literature context "Колдун" is sometimes used to refer to a warlock, and "Чародей" for sorcerer.
good points
тебе не всё ли равно как его называть? что от этого изменится? ничего! А может лучше Магом назвать? подумай над этим. (+ ещё несколько бессонных ночей).
ладно, в чём то ты прав. Я даже не задумывался над этим, когда читал. Автоматически всех мысленно переводил как Волшебников (как что-то положительное). Колдун чаще используется как что-то негативное, плохой волшебник. А так я чаще в Поттере так и воспринимал мысленно (как образ) - Wizard, без перевода. Как чел, который может творить магию, колдовать, произносить заклинания. Наверно это правильный путь, не привязывать слово к русскому переводу. Как-то интуитивно встал на этот путь. И тут меня бомбануло что кто-то пытается подобрать максимально правильный перевод))) я об этом даже и не задумывался, а просто читал их Wizardами (способными творить магию = ака волшебники (если меня ночью поднять и спросить кем является Дамблдор))))
опять же, я не смог бы назвать Волдеморта колдуном (типа плохой волшебник). Колдун это всё таки что-то мелкое, немного дилетантское, лишённое величия. А "тот, которого нельзя называть" всё таки по уровню магии (скилам), как я понял, был практически на уровне Дамблдора, только более глуповат и душевно мелок (что его и погубило). Поэтому он тоже волшебник, только плохой. И так как максимально близкого перевода к такому субъекту в русском нет, я его мысленно и представлял как Dark Wizard.
I picked up a copy of the Korean translation at my local bookstore here the other day! Can‘t wait to start
I began reading the Icelandic version of Harry Potter in September 2022. The beginning, I remember, was so frustrating but I push myself to continue reading then creating and reviewing Anki cards. Slowly but surely, it became easier and easier where now I am working my way through the Goblet of Fire almost like reading it in English.
In between all this, I´ve read a few native Icelandic novels to see whether I could. I assumed my higher comprehension was attributed to prior knowledge of the Harry Potter books having read them many times over. To my surprise that wasn't that case!
In Icelandic, wizard is galdramaður
Funny, in swedish its trollkarl, literally troll/spell/magic. Karl/man
I bought the first three books in spanish so thats the exact video I needed right now. Nice!
Thanks, really helpful! im about to start reading the first book in german and your video was just the right trigger to do so. i can also say that it does help, because i've used exact method learning serbian. I was reading a book and gradually expanded vocabulary. goodluck on the language journey to the reader of the comment section
Really weird to see this comment lmao- I’m actually learning Serbian after like four and a half years of learning German on and off
Good luck with the reading :D
@@nolsterbuckr8496 yeah i moved in balkans, so had to make sure i can speak their language lol
@@gregorykl2317 Well you'll defo learn faster than I will- all I have is a serbian speaking gf to work with lmao
currently reading through Harry Potter in Polish! Have read them in Danish, English and Japanese as well so far
Hi, I thought to write in to say what a fantastically informative and motivating video and record the start of my journey with this method. I’m a low B1 and have set a target of one chapter of HP a day, hoping to reach high B2 once I finish all 7 books over the next half a year or so. I’m listening and reading at the same time and also have the original English version (I read the chapter in my native English first then listen and read in TL, then read then re listen - I’ve experimented with looking individual words up but actually I remember a lot from reading beforehand alone - maybe I won’t need to do this for book 2). I’m 5 chapters into the first book and like the graph shows the amount of new vocab in that fifth chapter is insane! It was a total slog (and much harder than previous chapter), but I’m already noticing words repeat. Anyway I’m keeping my fingers crossed this gets substantially easier because at the moment it’s taking 2-3 hours per day to get a good grasp of the chapters.
This is absolutely fascinating, because I taught myself English back when I was 8yo, partly by reading Harry Potter in English 😂
Now I'm teaching myself French by reading the HP books again.
2:11 I'd like to add that in Polish we don't really say "czarownik" but we'd rather say "czarodziej" or "czarnoksiężnik", although the latter refers to a kind of darker, more evil one. and for witches, you can say "czarownica" or "wiedźma" - fun fact this is actually where the term "witcher" ("wiedźmin") comes from, it is a neologism of the word "wiedźma" since a masculine version of that word doesn't exist!
In slovenia we do say “čarovnik” but can also say “čarodej” which is so so similar to polish and for witch we have “čarovnica”. But we don t have other words. Its fun to learn where witcher comes from.
I think it should also be said that we also say "mag" which is more tied to english mage but also french, spanish and german words presented in the table.
Fantastic video! Straight to the point and incredibly informative :)
I’m reading the 1st book right now in German while listening to the audio book narrated by Felix Manteuffel. Excellent stuff, can’t recommend it more.
I can highly recommend Harry Potter, narrated by Rufus Back. He is an amazing actor and narrator and, in my humble opinion, better than Felix.
Wait, there's a new audio book? Rufus Beck is the classic one, and it's awesome
Came here to recommend the audio book read by Rufus Beck, too. I am German and Mr. Beck does great impressions and he even includes different dialects/accents.
I've read the first three Harry Potter books in Portuguese on LingQ, and the % of new words are spot on. Great advice on reading in foreign languages, keep up the interesting videos!:)
Hi, I did hear of LingQ in the past, but didn't try it out, yet. Is it really such a great tool to learn a new language? Would you recommend it?
How do you upload the whole book to LingQ? Or did you copy chapter by chapter from an ebook?
@@marior.5796 I would recommend it! It's a tool for listening and reading basically. They have a large library of content in many languages, but you can also import your own books, youtube videos, articles, anything you like. Each word you read, you click the translation and how well you know the word (completely new, familiar, known). Then you get statistics of your activity, and % of new words when you import new content or browse the library.
Biggest downside is the price. Costs about the same as Netflix. If you can afford it, I think it's some of the best way to learn languages, apart from traveling to the country or speaking with others.
@@lexiesanders929you import the whole book into lingq, and they seperate it into parts. It's pretty straight forward, I haven't had any issues with it. They give you a % of new words when you have imported the book, which really helps when picking books appropriate to your level
Very nice video and your observations really coincide with mine, when I've read the first 3 Harry Potter books in French :). One thing to add here is that books that we've already read in another language can be super useful to learn a new language. This way you can pick up interesting stuff earlier. Have a great day!
An interesting idea to explore: if you read the whole Harry Potter series, how well would you be able to read Lord of the Rings (or other popular series like Percy Jackson, Narnia, Game of Thrones). What would those graphs look like?
I can attest to the beginning hill. I’ve been slowly working on Harry Potter in Spanish and man it’s a real slog. Way above my A1 level, but your graphs really show what I’ve seen others say (after a 1/3 of the book, it gets “easier”)
Thanks for this information
I love this idea and would love to explore it. I'll see what I can get done :)
Very cool video, thanks! Love the data and the take-home lesson. I'd be curious to see how many words you'd come into contact with across all seven of the Harry Potter books.
I'm working on something like this too 😉 hopefully i find the data I need
Did the same with German and Spanish. Audiobooks were great for that
As an Argentine that learned English reading Harry Potter, I see this as an absolute win
I'm actually doing this with Mandarin and I'm on Chambers of Secrets right now. I noticed that my reading speed is getting faster and I'm checking the translation less and less.
I am Japanese learning Chinese. Although this video is not about learning Chinese, your video still encourages me to learn Chinese step by step (English too!) Thank you for making such an informative video :)
I am a Chinese AND Japanese learner as well. I am at HSK 3 level in Chinese and around N4 in JLPT. I've tried to read Harry Potter in both languages, and so far, it was really challenging. But this video makes me feel better now :D I wish you good luck and good progress in your Chinese studies!
I’m a Chinese learning Japanese. I’ve downloaded the Japanese Harry Potter book but I had a lot of difficulty starting out. Maybe I’ll get back to it now.
你好我是瑞典人。我也学习中文
How similar is chinese to japanese?
Loved the video, actually perfect timing for me too, I was gifted German harry potter for Christmas!!
I tried starting but it was overwhelming, and I like the idea of using Anki alongside. I was wondering, you described going from German to English one day, then English to German the next, and I was wondering how you set something like that up, for me it will try giving me both one after the other.
Hope to see more videos from you soon!!
The first time I tried to read it took me ~30 minutes to get through the first 3 sentences. But it gets easier as you try!
For Anki, the front of the card was German and then the back was English. By default based on my learning rate, the first day I would see the German-> English and then the next day I'd see English -> German. With the new, better algorithm as of the end of 2023, it may show you the English->German card 2 or 3 days later but it's still the same concept
Awesome video! Can you do a video on how soon one can expect to speak the language if they are reading and listening and slowly starting to understand.
oh wow, i actually made a new years resolution to read the harry potter books (at least 3) in french, because im not good at the language despite taking classes in school, and because i was feeling nostalgic for the series. this video showing up on my feed is an amazing coincidence. thank you for motivating me and the many others who have watched ❤❤
I'm currently on Book 1 for Spanish. Any words I don't know, I put them in Anki. I don't try to memorize words, I just review them so I won't forget them if I don't see them often.
I will admit that it will boost your vocab immensely. The language learning process is a slow process, but reading is the game changer. It takes you from beginner to intermediate in a matter of months once you understand the structure of your target language. From there, you are pretty much acquiring vocabulary and listening to the language by native speakers
Reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher´s Stone in English was a complete game changer for me. I remember constantly looking up words in that book but in all the other ones, I barely had to resort to that and ever since, I´ve been able to fluently read (and after watching the films with subs) comletely understand spoken English. That was when I was 15 and now I´m 26 and basically do all my internet activity in English and have relationships in the language too.
I did exactly this in my French journey. I had studied French for about a year at school, and I had already done a lot of personal study (read: French RUclips). I want to say that what you said aligns perfectly with my experience. It was so difficult to read through each page of the first few chapters, especially because I was entirely new to a few of the literary tenses, in particular the passé simple. But that is something you very quickly get over, as you see it everywhere and your brain is designed to soak that kind of thing up. As I read on, my reading became much more fluid, and while I still didn’t know every word on any particular page, I was reading about as fluidly as I would’ve read as an 8 year-old me in English. It was fluid even though I didn’t know everything. By the time I stopped after the 3rd book, reading French felt as comfortable as English, and my proficiency had vastly progressed. Your video was amazing and lines up with my experience perfectly
This is very interesting data! I would love to see that chart for all seven books - does the mountain even out at some point? Where/how did you get the data?
It does even out over time , though there's still that "background radiation" of new words that come up as different expressions, topics, dialogue etc. come up.
There are definitely still new words, because even just looking at the titles: The Deathly HALLOWS. I'm fairly sure Hallows isn't used anywhere else in the series.
Also, there was what, 11 years between the first and last book? JK essentially wrote the first one aiming at 12 year olds and the last ones aiming at late teens and adults. The fourth one kicks off a whole different level of "adult" writing.
Great sdvice. Ive downloaded them all in Spanish, Frenh, German and Italian and they are brilliant to learn to read in a language. I just copy each page into Google translate which makes it easy to look up any words when you are really stuck and cant work out the meaning. Then you can save the words you dont know in Google and export them to a spreadsheet.
*Dirty tip:* when picking up a new Harry Potter to read in a new language, immediately skip to Chapter 6 (The Train Ride). The first chapters are mostly verbose descriptions in the third person. From Chapter 6 onwards, the book is heavy on dialog. You can read the tedious narrative of Harry’s life chez Dursleys later (or not at all). Do the same when watching HP movies in other languages.
My advice is build up a vocab of 2000-3000 words first using easier material and then tackle Harry Potter. You then won't have that initial cliff at the beginning.
The algorithm is becoming a little bit too accurate lol 😅 one of my resolutions for the new year is to read a Harry pPotter chapter in German each day to become familiar with reading with a story that I already know and love. Nice video btw
Yes do it! It’s how I learned the phrase “mit ihr ist nicht gut Kirschen essen”
כל הכבוד ליוטיוב שהמליץ לי על הערוץ, נראה לי שאתה רומז לי שהגיע הזמן שאני אנסה לחזור לקרוא את הארי פוטר 1 באיטלקית :)
!בהצלחה
That's what i did for a while. I first read it in polish then in english (a few times over the years) then russian and most recently korean (4 chapters left in book 7). I started from zero and and just read with no anki. In between reading i skimmed through some grammar constructions to know their meaning. Started with a page per day and it was a painful grind that mostly consisted of looking up words in the dictionary. After a month i had much less to check so it got much easier, then after about 3-4 months i was reading multiple pages and soon whole chapters. So far i've read:
1. Pretty much the whole HP series,
2. Hunger games series.
3. Twilight,
4. Some nk defector story
I went from not understanding a single word and to understanding 99%. I was using FLTR app for reading so i also have some stats. Started with 0 known unique words (words like "like", "likes", liking" counted as separate words) to 63000 by 9th book and to 107000 by book 19, on average you gain 3-5k new words per book (mostly depends on the length of the book). Meanwhile after reading about 9 books i started going to korean classes in the local korean culture center mostly to gain some opportunity to ask questions. Started at level 4(out of 8, although the online test scores allowed me to get any level but that was the only one available at the time) now I finished level 6 and got 100% reading score in each semester with 0 study while the rest of the group was struggling. On the other hand my speaking ability is pretty much nonexistent and my listening is way worse than reading. So if your priority is to speak I would mix it up with dramas or classes.
The numbers in the video are roughly correct. What FLTR showed for me is that a long HP chapter was about 3500-4000 unique words long and no matter how much you know you will always see 200-400 new words or previously not met variation of already known words (depending on language - korean has a lot of particles, conjugations etc).
Recently i've been also experimenting with replacing korean letters with chinese characters. But I don't have much experience with that yet to draw any conclusions.
That's awesome to have such great progress. And I definitely agree that books can give a big jump to your vocab
Cresting the hill of chapter 5 in German. Despite the difficulty, this book is still so much fun.
Excellent analysis of new words! Was very interesting to see. Would have liked to have seen you support your idea of changing genre as a way to attaining more vocabulary by comparing new words learned from going from HP1 to HP2 against new words learn from going from HP1 to a completely different genre!
Thanks! I had tried to work with Moby Dick and Frankenstein but my text analysis in Python was having a hard time parsing the files I could find. Will keep searching and likely do a follow up like you suggested!
My broader hope with this channel is to look at what a "curriculum" of content could look like to learn a language (e.g., start with reading simple books then add watching and listening then moving to literature etc.).
Are you a programmer? :)) I wondered how you analyze the content for your statistics 😅 Programming it makes sense😊😅 Anyway keep up the good work ^^
I'm fully fluent in Spanish and i have Harry potter to thank
Damn just left my in-laws house in rural Japan and my wife's Harry Potter books on the shelf. Will be sure to grab them next time.
Very encouraging, thank you ❤
Awesome video! 😊 I'm on the fifth book in Spanish and it's now very comfortable to read which is great because I do it before bed but I agree that it's important to read different things if you want to get out of the intermediate plateau. Also, you could the greek word for wizard which is μάγος 🇬🇷
I'd be very interested in this topic:
Paired multi subtitles
i.e. I want to watch some movies/news subtitled in English + target language + phonetic spelling. There's also the cherry on top of them being color coded, but I don't expect that :))
So happy I found your channel. I love seeing all the data since it makes things a little less abstract when it comes to language learning. What software/website did you use to analyse the books? I would like to start reading in French and I think this analysis of cumulative unique words is a great way to assess a book.
btw in the litle self-promo graphics it would be really helpful if you would show the pronunciations for the non-phonetic writing systems (chinese and japanese in this case)
I'm using the HP method for learning Finnish and it works a lot.
Learning as an adult, it took me four years to get to a *solid* B1 level, leaning towards B2. This is about what you'd expect if you consistently put in 20 minutes each day combined with one lesson per week. Traditional language classes have a lot to offer in the beginning, especially if they focus on reading and listening comprehension, explain grammar, but don't spend too much time on written grammar exercises. Outside of class, comprehensible input videos on youtube (Such as the "Easy German" or "Easy French" youtube channels) are the best use of your time. Switch between rewatching the same videos, learning the vocab in them, and watching some new ones.
So when did I start the HP method? I knew already that this was a great way to learn, since I'm so familiar with the stories. I decided to start using it as soon as I noticed that when I don't understand something, it is due to the vocabulary and not due to the grammar. Looking up a word is a lot faster than looking up grammar. Plus there are only a limited amount of grammar concepts, but thousands and thousands of new words. What helps here is to focus purely on input, not on output. I don't care if I can't conjugate a verb, I just need to recognize its meaning in the text.
When I got at that point, the harry potter grind could truly take off. I'm now at a point where I can put on HP4 audiobook, listen, and understand enough to *be entertained*. This is key. Now I just switch back and forth between learning vocab (plenty of HP1 vocab still to learn), and listening/reading the books. I do the vocab systematically from chapter to chapter, and listening I do kinda whatever.
Very well thought out - what made you start Finnish?
@@OneWordataTime1 Thanks! I migrated here for work and am now settling down. That's also been a huge help, I'm constantly surrounded by my target language. But plenty of western immigrants here stick to just using English because everyone here can speak it so well.
@@lGalaxisl awesome - good luck with the immigrant status!
@@OneWordataTime1 Thank you! And thanks for your video, it was very interesting to see the new word breakdown for the books. Would love to see one graph combining all new words per chapter for all the seven books!
I love your approach which is very similar to the method I use for language learning. Usually I prefer literary classics, but for yiddish I actually used also Harry Potter. Luckily, even for this 'niche language' a translation is available (vol 1) 😊. Kind regards from Germany
classics are so hard even in my native language wow
@@bettlovesshrek2026 Thank you for your comment. I fully agree, it is a bit hard in the beginning, but it really pays off greatly. It's a very unique feeling (almost ecstatic) when you've passed this threshold and are able not just to read but to truly enjoy classics in a foreign language. Actually, that's my main motivation for language learning: exploring and enjoying foreign literature in its original form :-) ok, it may seem a bit nerdy to others, but who cares? 😀 This passion is something I'm trying to share on my channel😊
@@polyglotreading you literally described everything I feel during the process of reading in a foreign language, I know people feel overwhelmed when they try to do things like this, but actually reading intensely has become one of my main interests. we know that it’s hard, no one says it isn’t, but it’s one of the few things that you can experience in language learning. Lernen ist einfach alles für mich, ich danke dir auch für diesen herzlichen Kommentar :)
@@bettlovesshrek2026 Thanks a lot for your comment. If you would like to share experiences on reading classics in foreign languages, you might consider visiting my channel where I mostly present (in videos made in multiple languages) literary classics that I read in their original language 🙂
thanks for the lovely video, i've been thinking about buying the first book in korean and your video made me actually do it! hope to see more content like this in the future! grüße aus berlin :)
Read the first three books of Harry Potter in Japanese a few years back. I did it as a "Let's Read Japanese" livestream, but have taken down those few dozen videos. However, I have other Let's Read videos that demonstrate how I approach it. One method that really helps is to read alongside the audiobook so you hear how natives pronounce the words and phrases. Basically, I would read then pause the audio whenever I needed to look up an unknown word or phrase. Another trick I did was use Morphman to learn the most frequent unknown words from the book AFTER I finished the book cause a number of words were learned passively through exposure.
2:10 regarding the free word considering this is a video about Harry Potter. The translation for wizard (for the Harry Potter universe at least) in German is Zauberer and I’m pretty sure the Japanese version uses 魔法使い.
Very fair (at least as far as German goes). I went with Magier, since I thought Zauberer was closer to magician. I know in Harry Potter the word Zauberer is used though in the Eragon series, Magier is definitely used more.
I am using it to study Ukrainian language. I had counted the book has totally 64,362 Ukrainian words. There are 13,870 unique words in either norminative or inflected form. If all the words rewrite to norminative form, there will be 8,185 unique words.
Very interesting, I am currently listening to the Harry Potter series in another language and I'm currently about halfway through the 3rd book, and yeah it is getting easier and easier and there are fewer and fewer unknown words the further I get in the book. Would you mind sharing where you found the data about the new unique words? would love to check this out on some other books.
It's some custom python code that I wrote :)
Great video! Might try this thanks to the inspiration!
Hi One Word at a Time, I have really enjoyed watching your videos and found them very insightful. For this video essay, I was wondering how long the steep hill would persist if you looked at learned words (greater than twenty exposures) rather than new words alone. Do you have any insight on this? Also, did you use a morphological analyzer or consider all forms of the word as different words completely? I can't wait to see your next video.
You are an inspiration sir! I've been reading Olly Richards' Short Stories in German and it's already made a difference.
Danke für die Tipps!
Great video. I'll definitely be sharing this with my students! Question, though: where and/or how were the data for your graphics derived?
I wrote custom Python code, though the chapter text is available online
@@OneWordataTime1 Looking forward to your follow up vid (what the process would look like with mastery of the 500/1000/2000 most common words in the target language)! The other thing that I'd be interested to see is the actual number of exposures to each new word across the entire book, and the coverage of the vocabulary against something like the New General Service List. I might have to learn to code!
Wow. This is superb. I don't know how original it is, but I have not seen this analysis before. I will certainly now re-look at my French language Harry Potter. I wonder what your analysis would bring to the chapter sequence of a single book? I attempted to read the French translation of one of my favourites, A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle, but it was much too difficult for my level (intermediate). Would it become manageable if I persevered? I don't know, but will try again. Thanks for this exceptional video. (It was commendably concise, by the way.) Have liked and subscribed.
Thanks! I don't know the book specifically but if it's one of your favorites, then my gut says you'd have the excite to persevere to the point where it becomes manageable. I've had a number of books where that's the case and it's always been super rewarding, even if a few parts are quite difficult.
Continue this chart for all books :D
keep pushing my g, your content looks fire
As I was learning English in Russia in the late 90s, playing Fallout series of RPG games (1 and 2) strictly in English really helped my vocabulary. It was was challenging (since there is a lot of text, and it's important to understand to be able to respond), but the interest in the games really kept me working at it. I would say that I probably had about 400-500 words when I started though, so it was building up on something.
thanks, I love you this is exactly what I was hoping to see pop up in my home page. Instant sub
Maybe RUclips is watching me, but yesterday I downloaded the French book and audio book of Harry Potter et l'école des sorciers to help me learn the language!
I forget the name of the youtuber its something like livakiv I think. Anyways, he has yearly progress videos and the main thing he did was immerse at least until he added 20 new words to his anki deck everyday (until he got to 20k). Once I get to a level where I see less new words, I plan to make a similar plan, which will force me to read more and find more difficult books. This video reinforces that idea for me and I think is super important for all learners, especially at the beginning of reading. I'm on my 4th book but it still feels insanely difficult (different authors for each one). I know one day it will get easier but sometimes it's really just a grind, and that's okay too.
Your experience definitely resonates that books are very very hard when you switch authors. I've had this experience in both German and Hebrew, and I'd be curious to see what the new word frequency chart looks like when you switch. Hoping to make a video on this.
Livakivi is who you mean. Estonian guy who learned Japanese.
For your one free word promo, I feel as though it may be more beneficial to write the Japanese word in one of its phonetic alphabet (probably hiragana) for an easier time learning said word. Otherwise the reading could be very ambiguous due to the many different kanji readings per symbol
While I never read harry potter in Japanese, when I read my first manga I was looking up a new word every page, often more than one. (Especially since it was dialogue heavy) I got more and more comfortable as I read through the series, although there were a lot of unique words only used once in the series. I read another Manga by the same author after that, and while it was technically harder than the last, I was having an easier time with it since I already learned a lot from the one I read before. Honestly it doesn't entirely matter what your immersion material is when you're a beginner, it just matters that you do something, because you'll struggle even with kids books. (Like Harry Potter) Just get through the first hurdle as soon as you can and you'll have more fun from there.
I used Harry Potter for this purpose with its excellent French translation back when the series was still emerging. The method does work. I now can read French fluently, having since read hundreds of books in that language. However, there is a problem with this method: in spite of being a good reader of French, I still have trouble understanding spoken French. I believe that this is due to my having over-learned implicitly a kind of “literary dialect” of French in which pronunciation follows spelling much more than it does in actual dialects of spoken French. As a result, my fantasy language-learning-by-pleasure-reading system would include an audio-only module in which phrases are played one at a time, and the listener selects advance, replay, replay slower, show the written form and replay, or show the translation and replay. Just as in the reading method, one would expect that as one progresses through the book, the frequency of “advance” would increase and there would be fewer and fewer pauses between phrases. The reason this is still a fantasy is that unlike just picking up a book in the target language, setting this up would take great effort and cost a fortune-per book!
Timely... I've been doing this for a few months. Very veeeery sloowwwwly.
Great video! Have you done this video where you assume the person already knows the 1000 most common words or the 2000 or 3000 most commonly used words? i.e. they are not starting from ground zero? Think that would be a great video -- actually IMO a more interesting video than this one. I think you mentioned you have -- but I can't seem to find it if you had.
Also, a video that shows the cumulative stats of reading the entire Harry Potter series from start to finish. I assume it's probably the same 200 new words for each chapter, but curious if it does go down to something like 100 new words for each chapter.
I'm probably about 3/4ths of the way through the 4th HP book in Polish (I'm using LingQ). When I started, I hoped by the time I got through the last book, I would be functionally fluent. I was an A2 level when I started reading the series (I did read "The Little Prince" as my first book; what a slog!). I'm now somewhere around the middle of B1. Functional fluency usually happens somewhere in B2, so I will probably hit my goal by the time I'm done.
And, as Steve Kaufman says, reading does wonders for speaking, because most of the time the problem with speaking is not having enough vocabulary. I've noticed when I have practice conversations with myself, I am speaking faster and able to say more than a couple of years ago when I had a tutor. And the only thing I've done in the meantime is read and watch some shows in Polish.
Very awesome! Since my family's from Poland going back a few generations, I'd love to eventually learn Polish to a solid level. How did you import the book into Lingq? I know you can import but I thought the Kindle/ebook versions had some sort of lock on them.
Thumbs up for learning polish @kerim.peardon5551 😁🥰 B1/B2 is pretty awesome for polish ^^ @oneWordataTime1 So you know some polish also? And Hebrew? 😮 Looks like you have some cool heritage languages ^^
You're probably B2 at "reading" already. Many people don't realize you can be different levels at reading, writing, listening, and speaking. One woman posted a video on RUclips where she said she was C1, and she showed that she passed the test and received C2=reading, C1=listening, C1=writing, and B2=speaking. (so, each of the four skills is not always at the same level) and can even differ by two levels like in this example where this woman was amazing at reading (probably had a really good vocab) -- but still was far behind with her speaking. I think she could get better at speaking pretty fast with a good vocab -- but still need to practice each skill to get better in that skill.
Don't forget that at some point you need to start speaking (Steve Kaufman says this all the time) -- you'll have a much easier time at it if you do a boatload of reading and have a massive vocabulary -- but you still need to speak to get good at it.
@@OneWordataTime1 RUclips turning off my notices of replies. 😣
Kindle books may work on LingQ; I'm not sure, because I haven't directly uploaded one of those, but I have not previously had issues with moving Kindle books around to different platforms or converting them from .mobi to .epub. I had to get my copies of HP in Polish from GooglePlay because only the 1st two books were available on Amazon and no one else had them.
GooglePlay books are so locked down, you can't read them on anything other than GooglePlay's website. You can't put them on a Kindle or Nook or any other sort of reader or tablet. Which is B.S. I paid good money for that book; I ought to be able to read it in whatever manner is convenient to me, just like I can take a physical book anywhere I want.
On a completely unrelated note, there's free software out there that will strip out DRM so you can use your book on your reader of choice. Rumor has it, you can even import it into LingQ (gauging by the fact that someone or some persons have saved vocabulary into LingQ's dictionary that's HP-specific.)
@@quantus5875 Well, LingQ grades you based on your reading vocabulary, so I would say that it's probably accurate that I'm halfway between B1 and B2 in reading.
For writing, I'm probably more towards the beginning of B1 because my grammar isn't going to be any better or worse than with speaking, but my spelling will be off, for sure. I think my speaking is also probably just barely B1. My listening skills are probably worst of all.
I wish I had more access to Polish stuff with English subtitles. Netflix was the best for having stuff dubbed into Polish (really, though, the only things I could watch were anime/cartoons because dubbing of movies was horrendous). But I watched pretty much everything Netflix offered 4-5 times each, and finally gave up on them getting anything new for a while, and changed over to watching anime elsewhere. I'll give Netflix a while to get something new before I go back.
You can stay within the same genre and just change authors to get bunch of new words without hopefully making your head explode. Translated books are also always easier than the original version.
Haha I started Harry Potter in German like 3 or 4 months ago. Im still on the hill and t's really hard to dedicate time to reading it. But this was a super neat video for me!
I've always heard about Harry Potter and how it's great for language learning.. And everyone keeps telling me to read it, cause I haven't .. even in English... maybe I should read it in my target language, Portuguese, which I've been studying for 2 years, yet I know I'll struggle.
It’s mainly helpful for people who have read it before and can guess vocabulary from context. Otherwise any series of similar length and level will work as well, it’s a strategy called “narrow reading” sticking to one long series that re-uses the same vocab.
Better to read a book in your target language if you're already familiar with the story. While Harry Potter is a classic and definitely worth a read, probably don't want to attempt it for the first time in a language you're learning.
@@AmandaMcGee ah well. I'm reading a fantasy book right now and doing just fine. Still a lot of words I don't understand, but I'm understanding enough. First book I read I finished only because I'm a perfectionist and it was just annoying me not finishing it, even though I didn't understand 1 single thing 😂 well not much anyone. Read the first chapter of queen of the south.. even with translations it didn't make sense 💀😂
I have the Harry Potter books in different languages. 1st in English, 2nd in Hungarian and my target language future 3rd book in German, but first I have a Grundschullexikon to read mit various words and grammar to have the basics down + a bit of reading. Also --wizard is varázsló-- and --witch is boszorkány-- in Hungarian if someone is interested.
I used to use this method when learning my first 5 languages! Unfortunately i can't monetarily support the author in these times, and I've lost the taste for reading the series. Thankfully, there are lots of popular works like this!
I took it on myself to learn French through the Harry Potter books but everyone in my family (part French) has treated me like an imbecile for suggesting it. :p
Probably should send this video to them but meh. Getting tired of these same people always giving me the same shit over things that usually turn out to be great ideas.
This video is getting my like.
You should send it anyway! 😛 From one random internet stranger to another, bonne chance dans tes études!
I knew I wasn't the only one. I read it on my native Portuguese language. Then English, Spanish and now Japanese. And if you love the series it never gets borrowing :)
wow 4 languages is awesome. and I agree the books don't get old!
I've been recommending the HP series to language learners for years, because of everyone's familiarity with it, and its wide range of translations making it available no matter what your target is. But these graphs have such a punch to them in that they also tell a story about what it feels like to get through the first chapters and books. Excellent work!
I am about to finish the fifth book in French, and remember very clearly the grind that was those first few chapters. The graph you made here describes it perfectly. Rereading, following the audiobook, listening to chapters on repeat, thick ankii decks for such a tiny book.
By the third book, I was reading comfortably, and able to listen to the audio without much trouble. Now, on the fifth, I only occasionally look things up, and don't bother with ankii anymore (even though I should). There would have been fewer cards from this, the thickest book of them all, than in the first or seconds ones!
Awesome! We're almost literally in the same spot - I'm 70% of the way through the 5th book in German now. I don't need to look up anything based on context but there are still words worth remembering so I still add words with my notecard bookmark method
I'm right on the intermediate plateau and reading in German is being really frustrating. I'm ok at listening, i.e., I can listening to the Easy German podcast and radio programs about my themes of interest and comprehend them pretty well, but when it comes to reading newspaper articles or books, I feel like I made no progress at all. It is specially disheartening because my mainly goal is not even speak, but to read with fluency.
If it's hard to get into a flow while reading, I'd recommend finding something that can be rewarding at the sentence level. That could be finding reading that's just at your level or by finding a topic you're interested in (based on your channel playlists, maybe something related to religion?). That way you can build up tiny wins to get momentum to want to read more. If you'd like, I can also recommend some good Kindle books for starting in German that I found useful when starting.
For me, it was finding the balance between novelty and repetition. For at least the first three books, I read each book four times, highlighting a single word on each page or on each two pages I didn’t recognize. Then on the second reading, I did this again, but when I encountered the words on the first read, I would try to remember what the word meant, and if I still couldn’t remember, checking it’s definition in the highlight. (I did this on kindle so it’s quite accessible.)
I’d argue that this made me more confident in my reading abilities and got me to find more stuff to look at with this method, which is needed to learn by input.
@@OneWordataTime1 Thank you. I think I was I a little bit too confident because now I can comprehend podcasts much more than I could before, so I thought it would be the same with reading and jumped into texts that were beyond my level. I would appreciate your book recommendations.
@@nolsterbuckr8496 I confess I have a difficult time reading the same text more than once, but now I understand that this is something very beneficial and will try to discipline myself on that way. The ideia of using Kindle's highlights is really great and one that I will put into practice. Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
How much basic language should I know before doing something like this? My TL is Thai, and my first challenge is learning the Thai script (which I am working on now).
Should I already know a certain level of Thai words before I start reading HP in Thai, or can I just jump in and build vocab?
Very interesting video!
That's a very good question. It's probably not best to start learning a language by reading a novel but once you have 500 words it might be worth a try, if that doesn't work, try again a few months later once you've learned more
@ThrillhouseToTheMax I just started learning Thai not long ago🥳😅 What are your first thoughts on the script and vocab? 😊 After watching this video I'm now tempted to read HP in Thai as a experiment 🤣🤣🤣 But the biggest problem would be even getting a copy of HP in Thai 😢