I think the point is that even though this kind of logic probably is the foundation itself of your language learning method, most people would like to see a bit more practically what would actually be your approach at learning a completely new language from a language family you're not super familiar with. I think people just would like to see an extensive practical application of what you say.
I have never commented on your videos, but this time I had to. People who are saying that you are just selling apps or programs and trying to earn money are so wrong that I think that they have never seen one single video of yours trying to understand how it works. I am not a language learner of tonal languages, I am into another one, so the only videos I can understand something is when you associate something with Japanese. And your mind is constructed in such form of genuine and deep knowledge towards every language that you study, I find you as a genius! Like Matt Bander and Steve Kauffman for example. Though I know that they wouldn't like to be called as a genius, and probably you too. Just commenting to show how impressive your videos are even though I do not take ""useful"" knowledge of it, I do in the end, specially in this video. I actually watch every other person experience to learn something more towards the languages. I am learning how to proceed with my own way based on other experiences and I am sure the others do that as well. Congrats for all your videos, Stuart! :D
i don't really understand how people can say that you were just selling an app and selling a theory... when i first discovered this channel, my first thought was, "oh wow, that makes a lot of sense. that explains a lot about my language (korean) today compared to back in middle ages" it explained to me why we got rid of the z, v, f, th, r, l, au, etc. it's because sound changes and we no longer needed them in our own language. we even had tones at one point but we no longer use it outside of one dialect but we can understand them without knowing their tones. which again, explains that we used to have tones but we no longer do because our language changed to the point where we don't really need it anymore. your theory helped me understand that we used to be way different from where we are today by explaining how sound changes through the language of origin itself through time, and with other languages that influenced them. also the fact that countries form, dissolve, form a different one, combine with others, split up, etc. and that can have a huge impact on sound shifting. so if i were to "sell" a theory as they say it, i would say that korean will once again start using the lost letters to represent the sounds we are being influenced to say through other languages' loan words and we might even streamline them to fit the modern sounds.
I love your videos Stuart and did read 'Cracking Thai fundamentals' after I studied Thai for around 11 month already. It was definitely a good read and addition to my studies. I do enjoy to listen to your very deep and profound knowledge. You do have so much expertise in this field and fully absorbt every little detail about those indic languages. I understand what some people mean though. Most of us do not have this knowledge base of yours and that makes it hard to really understand some of your content to the extend, that I can use it for my own journey. It reminds me a bit about my math professor, when he got lost in the deep of the math jungle, but as we did not have the same knowlegde base as him, we could not really use his explainations to our advantage. I however, listen to your content to broaden my mind and learn far beyond just words and grammar and appreciate it so much. I am not looking for another person who explains how they excute language learning in detail, your content is much more valuable to me!
You are a unique learner with a unique brain! You were able to create a unique system to apply your brain to...in reality most brains around are not that good. Good on'ya Mate!
Some viewers wants you to show them 'how you fish'. Instead, I think your channel is more about you showing us 'how to make a solid fishing rod', so we can fish more successfully in long term. Your channel was a real eye-opener for me 😲 . I'm looking forward to see more about this kind of content.
Very interesting as always Stuart, thanks for the useful content! I think I get mostly how you study/would study a language, it does make sense I don't see the issue. Analysing connections and understanding underlying patterns is so helpful. Like when I was taught the underlying phonetic-semantic components in Chinese characters, they all make way more sense now rather than being random symbols. I'd like to hear your thoughts sometimes on conscious study (which you seem to like) vs the more acquisition-style approaches like Krashen, or Marvin Brown, curious on your perspective. Brown seemed to think this kind of analysis prevents true mastery of second languages, and negatively impacted his Thai skills, if I've read correctly. Anyway, keep up the good work!
I respect Marvin Brown and Krashen immensely. I had the pleasure to meet Krashen many years back at an event here in Bangkok and a copy of Marvin Brown's doctoral thesis was given to me by the late and also wonderful Domnern Garden. Input is king, bit what I have found is that in fine tuning my ear and understanding how sound works and shifts, I can drastically shorten the 'exposure' time and start to build up real fluency and highly efficient self correction on things I would otherwise not have heard. Doesn't mean things are perfect and there is always improvement over time, but I get get up and running in output faster doing things the way I do.
Good question, mate Yeah, over the years l, I have found flaws and limitations in getting too dogmatic with Krashen's concepts of: input and don't force study and outputting. I've come to see A LOT of evidence this just isn't completely true. Yeah, when you compare Krashen methods to crappy university style, Grammer based studying, sure, Krashen based will win, but there are MANY clever ways to do intentional study that will speed up your learning. Also, About 95% of the people that can reach strong intermediate speaking skills quickly, are people that push themselves to speak and make tons of mistakes and keep going and persevere, NOT people that just read "compelling content" as Krashen advises. Stu, being a concrete example of that.😀 If you seek out those that get RESULTS, not just cool sounding theory, you'll see they often speak and do some study, in addition to inputting like crazy.
If people want a “““practical””” approach they can watch some other channel then, or spend their money going to some class. Stuart has managed to make a learning method that is both intellectually stimulating and deeply memorable, he’s made me realize that it’s not about the goal, it’s the process itself that is enjoyable!
I’m Thai amateur linguist and have no difficulty in learning multiple languages. I have background in German, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Now I’m learning Burmese, Indonesian, Tagalog, Italian, Norwegian, Persian and Nepali. SEA languages are easy for Thai speaker as their grammar are very similar to Thai: Isolating syntax, SVO pattern and N+Modifier, except Burmese which has SOV/OSV and Tagalog which has VSO/VOS and complicate verbal morphology. Let me share my learning plan. I categorize languages by my personal goal: 1. “Bizlangs” (business languages) which requires B2 (upper intermediate) to C1 (advanced) 2. “Vaclangs” (vacation languages for tourism) which require A2 (elementary) to B1 (intermediate) I’m also interested in some ethnic/regional languages, e.g. Shan, Sgaw Karen, White Hmong, Mon, Tibetan, Okinawan, Hawaiian and Quechua (this seems very challenging due to its polysynthetic syntax). Some are critically endangered that’s why I’m interested in them.
I believe the person asking is looking for more a step by step procedure not theories and concepts. Programs are great but the breakdown in the action is best. If your tools are as great as you say they are then actually show an example of a word, tone...etc...as a beginner and move the learner though clarity. Are you a teacher or a salesmen? George Trombley (Japanese from Zero) is a great example of how to merge tools and language learning with each other. May great success be with you!
@@StuartJayRaj indeed, and my comment is based on my experience watching your channel from around 8 years ago. i rediscovered the things i didn't know about my own language. isn't that also part of your reason for making videos? (so we can look back at our own language and find tools we can use to learn other languages)
well, he did have that one video where he shows how we can remember tones using english. this was a long time ago but it made me realize that we do have the tools we need. we just never realized it until we watched that video. he's not teaching a language/tone nor is he trying to sell a program (that part is up to you. he's not forcing you). he's just helping you discover tools within your own language either current or in the past versions that will help you learn other languages. he helped me discover why my language, korean, sounds the way it does and what it most likely sounded like in the past. and that allowed me to hear tones better. not perfectly, but as a complete beginner, i was able to hear the tones. this allowed me to sort of find words i actually recognize in mandarin. it allowed me to understand some of the menu in my favorite chinese/thai/vietnamese restaurants. so what he's doing, actually works. it just takes time to discover your own tools. also, there are a bunch of videos where he shows his program and how it works. i don't know when you started watching his videos, but it's all in his channel here and there. i mean, i guess he could just keep making videos about his program in detail but then that would kinda get repetitive.
oh wow this was amazing to watch also shows you're such a humble great person aside of language learning... i hope that my comment was positive rather than negative now i see.. this is your way of learning using muscle memory as you call it do you have a book or course about mandarin as I'm learning mandarin for now i also built a system (probably it's somewhat related to the patters you talking about) and i managed to learn 4500 Hanzi in 1 year without a teacher and to be honest you're much wise and better than me when it comes to languages... i would love to have an interview with you (me representing lay-learners vs you representing muscle memory masters) if you're interested let me know. thanks again!
First of all I need to thank you because your comment sparked some constructive introspection as what I think may be obvious when doing my clips may only be obvious to me and I could be missing out key explanations. I never take a linear approach when learning a new language. I approach it much like an archaeologist might do when going on a dig. do background research, build rough maps and then grab a shovel. As for data, as part of Mindkraft we look at how to find data and how to extract it using everything from scraping, APIs, academic databases and even just pdf articles etc and then we use the terminal and tools like visidata and vim to shape the data into usable forms. Would be happy to do a discussion
Which Indian language(s) can you speak? It would be also interesting if you introduce the Indian languages in your videos :) Personally, i've learned a little Hindi, I'm curious how different between Hindi and other Indian languages, such as Tamil(although it's different language family) or Bengali.
my family speaks Hindi and I have studied many both northern and southern Dravidian languages as well as Sanskrit. I will look at doing an India series this year.Its a great idea
You do it your own way , if you were to do it the same as everyone else, if everyone did the same video, that would be Linda boring. And showing the relations and similarities and patterns in each of the languages is unique and something we didn't already know. And it is interesting.
Hi.. I'm Italian and I learned English and then Spanish.. And I saw patterns between these 3 languages.. But now I am studying some Russian and the other languages don't help much.. So maybe what you say is good for related languages only?
The key word here is 'exploit' - so with Italian / Spanish, here are some things that you could exploit - Russian basic conjugations have some very similar parallels with romance conjugations - first person - 'o/u' (lips), 'we' - final 'm' , they 'n' - you can start to build links. There are also many sound shifts from Indoeuropean roots that follow standard sound shift patterns - hardening of 'ch' to 'k' as I mentioned in this clip is one you see both ways. Palatisation is a huge thing in russian which is also based on this principle - these palatisation principles actually happen across romance languages too - look at portuguese pronunciation of 'di' 'dia' in Portugal vs. Brazil, then spanish 'di' 'dia' - I will be on patterns like that and dig in like an archeologist to see exactly what vocab might be able to be exploited. Given - with russian, knowing sanskrit for me was a Huge help as when you triangulate russian, sanskrit and romance / Latin languages, you get a much more complete 'shift' picture - but you can still do it. The case system once learnt in Russian (or sanskrit), along with the other stuff then sets you up to get a very fast shift into all the other Slavic languages. This is why I try to set up a framework of as many 'fundamentals' as I can, so that when I encounter things in the wild, I will have something to reference, and then exploit to help me get it into my long-term memory and muscle memory faster.
Do you have any plans to write a book for Mandarin one day. You have a Cracking Thai Fundamentals. Will you do one for Cracking Mandarin Fundamentals one day? By the way, I really enjoy watching your videos and have great admiration for your polyglot skills. You know not just how to read, speak, write, and understand, but even know the language in a much deeper way. I am interested in learning many of the languages you know and always thought of it as 'dream' level so to speak, but I guess you are living the dream.
this is pretty much what my Mindkraft programme is about. We do deep dives into many areas in particular Chinese which sets a robust framework for other languages. In hindsight it's a prequel to Cracking Thai Fundamentals. in saying that I'd love to do a concise book like CTF for Chinese
Idk about that sourpuss of a comment, but this breakdown of linguistics has really helped me when I started learning both Cantonese and Mandarin simultaneously 3 years ago, and it's still helping me today for Korean. It allows me to guess sounds/meaning of words I have not familiarized myself with~ 💯 Unfortunately, I had to learn this method on my own as I only found your channel this past month 😂 🤣
@@6Uncles It can definitely include cognates with shared/similar meanings but can also extend to include shared phonetic origins for alternative pronunciations of certain words. For example, 一 has two pronunciations yi1 and yao1, the latter sharing striking phonetic similarity to yat1 in Cantonese. You also have 的 which is de or (di1 when sung in Chinese opera). To me, I find it interesting to see how/where languages may have diverged and how they may use different sounds and/or phrases to express the same thing. For example, in Canada, French is taught as a mandatory second language. Most students, including me, gloss it over to simple memorization and a passing grade/credit. However, after taking-it on again in self-paced study, my approach with learning has definitely changed over the years - increasing my comprehension and enjoyment. ie simple things like "s'il vous plaît" would be taught and memorized to mean "please", but it actually means "if it pleases you". In German, kurzgesagt (like the RUclips channel) is described to mean "in a nutshell", but word for word it simply means "shortly said" - which, in my opinion is a more satisfying and straightforward translation.
i would like to see clicks. all the different ways to click and where in the mouth it comes from. i have no idea but have been curious for a while. he could be the guy to make that chart for us. or maybe a subscriber who knows of the language can make one. either way. that's one minority language i'm curious about
apologies... this one is taking a little longer to prepare for. The more I go into the topic, the clip becomes WAYYY to long, so I'm revising my flow toake the clip more concise. Cantonese is a monster of a topic
@@StuartJayRaj just a question do you plan to explore the mongolian language ? i feel like we can learn a thing or 2 from that language on how they are affecting northern chinese or korean and japan , even in history when the middle chinese language are starting to replace by the northern influence it was also under the time where the mongol from the north rule China and the very last dynasty of china was also the Manchurian which is right next to mongolia so i think it's something to think about and dive in to and we might have a conclusion of why mandarin are become the norm ? and the way korean and japanese speak are somewhat relatable to the mongol ( seem like that to me ) . btw i live in Canada after watching inuit and eskimo people speak their language it like they used to be from mongol .
I think you're too far away in your knowledge from most of us regarding language learning and that's why your viewers feel that way. I say this with an inmense respect and admiration to your vast knowledge so please do not take it negatively. I promise I'm not a veiled troll that tries to come as a friend but really has bad intentions. I admire you and the effort you've done across the years to reach such a mastery level ...but I'll give you an example of something that happened to me just some hours ago and hopefully you'll see what I mean. Another RUclipsr published a video on tones some weeks ago and I commented there yesterday on how I discovered by myself that tones are really throat positions, and that the pitch is a bypyoduct of it really and by itself won't allow us to speak naturally. The video author came back to me and mentioned you had videos about it. So I rushed to watch all of them. I watch all your videos about it (I think) but I could fully understand only one of them. Only there I could relate to my findings and experiences without thinking I was missing your line of thought. In the other ones, the mix you do between Thai - you bring Thai into all your tone videos but I do not speak a word of it - and many other things - like this Yin and Yang approach that I cannot understand - made it a hard to follow experience for me, and a bit frustrating/disheartening time. It was so because yes! it is clear to me you had the answer I was looking for a year ago when I started my Chinese Mandarin learning journey but it is equally clear that if I only understood one of the many videos I watched this morning and it was only because I already could relate to your finding as I got there by myself before watching it...how would have had your video helped me during my search itself? It would not have. Still now, in your video you never mention which are the exact throat positions for any language for example. That is to say, you never said something along the lines of: "In Mandarin Chinese to produce the 3rd tone one puts their head or mouth a bit down so your throat is in the lowest position possible and a creaky sound (lowest tone one can get) is naturally produced at light speed as all Chinese speakers do instinctively when they talk. It is this position that helps us produce a short creaky low tone sound, and not a deeping and raising tone that never ever happens in reality unless one is pronouncing a syllable in isolation, one syllable at the end of a sentence, or emphasizing/stressing a syllable for some reason" Instead, you showed many tone charts (borrowed from Marvin Brown studies if I'm correct) and up you go. Those are things that you know by heart but most of us are too far away from your knowledge. You seem to describe your findings from the other side of the tunnel but not many have crossed that tunnel as to me is clear you are in another level. So, chapeau for you vast knowledge but if you could do it more accessible to us it would help many more people. Your Indic diagram tool is really impressive btw...and I can understand it. Please take it as positive feedback, ok?
hi stuart i build my tool for study too can you give some advices on where can i find some high quality structued data in terms of character, sound, tone..
.. it is hard to find even at the official gov site or university site that is famous for language study they often only provide a site that you can search for data one by one viewing in single page but nowhere to download all at once.
I think the point is that even though this kind of logic probably is the foundation itself of your language learning method, most people would like to see a bit more practically what would actually be your approach at learning a completely new language from a language family you're not super familiar with. I think people just would like to see an extensive practical application of what you say.
I have never commented on your videos, but this time I had to. People who are saying that you are just selling apps or programs and trying to earn money are so wrong that I think that they have never seen one single video of yours trying to understand how it works. I am not a language learner of tonal languages, I am into another one, so the only videos I can understand something is when you associate something with Japanese. And your mind is constructed in such form of genuine and deep knowledge towards every language that you study, I find you as a genius! Like Matt Bander and Steve Kauffman for example. Though I know that they wouldn't like to be called as a genius, and probably you too. Just commenting to show how impressive your videos are even though I do not take ""useful"" knowledge of it, I do in the end, specially in this video. I actually watch every other person experience to learn something more towards the languages. I am learning how to proceed with my own way based on other experiences and I am sure the others do that as well.
Congrats for all your videos, Stuart! :D
thank you - that means a lot, and glad that there are viewers out there that get in one way or another what I'm trying to do
i don't really understand how people can say that you were just selling an app and selling a theory... when i first discovered this channel, my first thought was, "oh wow, that makes a lot of sense. that explains a lot about my language (korean) today compared to back in middle ages"
it explained to me why we got rid of the z, v, f, th, r, l, au, etc. it's because sound changes and we no longer needed them in our own language. we even had tones at one point but we no longer use it outside of one dialect but we can understand them without knowing their tones. which again, explains that we used to have tones but we no longer do because our language changed to the point where we don't really need it anymore.
your theory helped me understand that we used to be way different from where we are today by explaining how sound changes through the language of origin itself through time, and with other languages that influenced them. also the fact that countries form, dissolve, form a different one, combine with others, split up, etc. and that can have a huge impact on sound shifting.
so if i were to "sell" a theory as they say it, i would say that korean will once again start using the lost letters to represent the sounds we are being influenced to say through other languages' loan words and we might even streamline them to fit the modern sounds.
Loving your videos! So interesting to learn more about my Thai heritage through your language lessons! Please consider making an “about me” video!
I love your videos Stuart and did read 'Cracking Thai fundamentals' after I studied Thai for around 11 month already. It was definitely a good read and addition to my studies. I do enjoy to listen to your very deep and profound knowledge. You do have so much expertise in this field and fully absorbt every little detail about those indic languages. I understand what some people mean though. Most of us do not have this knowledge base of yours and that makes it hard to really understand some of your content to the extend, that I can use it for my own journey. It reminds me a bit about my math professor, when he got lost in the deep of the math jungle, but as we did not have the same knowlegde base as him, we could not really use his explainations to our advantage. I however, listen to your content to broaden my mind and learn far beyond just words and grammar and appreciate it so much. I am not looking for another person who explains how they excute language learning in detail, your content is much more valuable to me!
You are a unique learner with a unique brain! You were able to create a unique system to apply your brain to...in reality most brains around are not that good. Good on'ya Mate!
I've seen this work for many more than just me. We as humans have an amazing ability to exploit and learn from pattern recognition.
Some viewers wants you to show them 'how you fish'. Instead, I think your channel is more about you showing us 'how to make a solid fishing rod', so we can fish more successfully in long term. Your channel was a real eye-opener for me 😲 . I'm looking forward to see more about this kind of content.
or even fish psychology
Very interesting as always Stuart, thanks for the useful content!
I think I get mostly how you study/would study a language, it does make sense I don't see the issue. Analysing connections and understanding underlying patterns is so helpful. Like when I was taught the underlying phonetic-semantic components in Chinese characters, they all make way more sense now rather than being random symbols.
I'd like to hear your thoughts sometimes on conscious study (which you seem to like) vs the more acquisition-style approaches like Krashen, or Marvin Brown, curious on your perspective. Brown seemed to think this kind of analysis prevents true mastery of second languages, and negatively impacted his Thai skills, if I've read correctly.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
I respect Marvin Brown and Krashen immensely. I had the pleasure to meet Krashen many years back at an event here in Bangkok and a copy of Marvin Brown's doctoral thesis was given to me by the late and also wonderful Domnern Garden. Input is king, bit what I have found is that in fine tuning my ear and understanding how sound works and shifts, I can drastically shorten the 'exposure' time and start to build up real fluency and highly efficient self correction on things I would otherwise not have heard. Doesn't mean things are perfect and there is always improvement over time, but I get get up and running in output faster doing things the way I do.
Yes makes sense thanks.
Good question, mate
Yeah, over the years l, I have found flaws and limitations in getting too dogmatic with Krashen's concepts of: input and don't force study and outputting.
I've come to see A LOT of evidence this just isn't completely true. Yeah, when you compare Krashen methods to crappy university style, Grammer based studying, sure, Krashen based will win, but there are MANY clever ways to do intentional study that will speed up your learning.
Also, About 95% of the people that can reach strong intermediate speaking skills quickly, are people that push themselves to speak and make tons of mistakes and keep going and persevere, NOT people that just read "compelling content" as Krashen advises. Stu, being a concrete example of that.😀
If you seek out those that get RESULTS, not just cool sounding theory, you'll see they often speak and do some study, in addition to inputting like crazy.
@@TheFiestyhick Yes I've noticed a similar thing myself, those are good points.
If people want a “““practical””” approach they can watch some other channel then, or spend their money going to some class. Stuart has managed to make a learning method that is both intellectually stimulating and deeply memorable, he’s made me realize that it’s not about the goal, it’s the process itself that is enjoyable!
Two of my favorite things...cubing and language learning...awesome video Stuart!
I’m Thai amateur linguist and have no difficulty in learning multiple languages. I have background in German, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Now I’m learning Burmese, Indonesian, Tagalog, Italian, Norwegian, Persian and Nepali. SEA languages are easy for Thai speaker as their grammar are very similar to Thai: Isolating syntax, SVO pattern and N+Modifier, except Burmese which has SOV/OSV and Tagalog which has VSO/VOS and complicate verbal morphology.
Let me share my learning plan. I categorize languages by my personal goal:
1. “Bizlangs” (business languages) which requires B2 (upper intermediate) to C1 (advanced)
2. “Vaclangs” (vacation languages for tourism) which require A2 (elementary) to B1 (intermediate)
I’m also interested in some ethnic/regional languages, e.g. Shan, Sgaw Karen, White Hmong, Mon, Tibetan, Okinawan, Hawaiian and Quechua (this seems very challenging due to its polysynthetic syntax). Some are critically endangered that’s why I’m interested in them.
Props to you being interested in Mon, finding material for that language is tough
You're amazing! I'm a Filipino learning Thai 😊
I believe the person asking is looking for more a step by step procedure not theories and concepts. Programs are great but the breakdown in the action is best. If your tools are as great as you say they are then actually show an example of a word, tone...etc...as a beginner and move the learner though clarity. Are you a teacher or a salesmen? George Trombley (Japanese from Zero) is a great example of how to merge tools and language learning with each other. May great success be with you!
I don't sell the tools. I teach people how to build their own according to what they need
I have 15 years worth of clips here doing exactly what you described
@@StuartJayRaj indeed, and my comment is based on my experience watching your channel from around 8 years ago. i rediscovered the things i didn't know about my own language. isn't that also part of your reason for making videos? (so we can look back at our own language and find tools we can use to learn other languages)
well, he did have that one video where he shows how we can remember tones using english. this was a long time ago but it made me realize that we do have the tools we need. we just never realized it until we watched that video. he's not teaching a language/tone nor is he trying to sell a program (that part is up to you. he's not forcing you). he's just helping you discover tools within your own language either current or in the past versions that will help you learn other languages. he helped me discover why my language, korean, sounds the way it does and what it most likely sounded like in the past. and that allowed me to hear tones better. not perfectly, but as a complete beginner, i was able to hear the tones. this allowed me to sort of find words i actually recognize in mandarin. it allowed me to understand some of the menu in my favorite chinese/thai/vietnamese restaurants. so what he's doing, actually works. it just takes time to discover your own tools.
also, there are a bunch of videos where he shows his program and how it works. i don't know when you started watching his videos, but it's all in his channel here and there. i mean, i guess he could just keep making videos about his program in detail but then that would kinda get repetitive.
I can't thank you enough for your cracking thai fundamentals program.
excellent and quality information, as usual. Your videos are very helpful to me!
I like to look for patterns too
oh wow this was amazing to watch also shows you're such a humble great person aside of language learning...
i hope that my comment was positive rather than negative
now i see..
this is your way of learning using muscle memory as you call it
do you have a book or course about mandarin as I'm learning mandarin for now i also built a system (probably it's somewhat related to the patters you talking about) and i managed to learn 4500 Hanzi in 1 year without a teacher
and to be honest you're much wise and better than me when it comes to languages... i would love to have an interview with you (me representing lay-learners vs you representing muscle memory masters)
if you're interested let me know.
thanks again!
First of all I need to thank you because your comment sparked some constructive introspection as what I think may be obvious when doing my clips may only be obvious to me and I could be missing out key explanations. I never take a linear approach when learning a new language. I approach it much like an archaeologist might do when going on a dig. do background research, build rough maps and then grab a shovel. As for data, as part of Mindkraft we look at how to find data and how to extract it using everything from scraping, APIs, academic databases and even just pdf articles etc and then we use the terminal and tools like visidata and vim to shape the data into usable forms. Would be happy to do a discussion
Which Indian language(s) can you speak? It would be also interesting if you introduce the Indian languages in your videos :)
Personally, i've learned a little Hindi, I'm curious how different between Hindi and other Indian languages, such as Tamil(although it's different language family) or Bengali.
my family speaks Hindi and I have studied many both northern and southern Dravidian languages as well as Sanskrit. I will look at doing an India series this year.Its a great idea
@@StuartJayRaj Thanks :)
I'm Vietnamese.
I use Vietnamese to learn Chinese. I use English and Latin to learn French and Spanish.
I wonder what you would say about Hungarian and Albanien. They are so far from everything I experienced.
You do it your own way , if you were to do it the same as everyone else, if everyone did the same video, that would be Linda boring. And showing the relations and similarities and patterns in each of the languages is unique and something we didn't already know. And it is interesting.
Hi.. I'm Italian and I learned English and then Spanish.. And I saw patterns between these 3 languages.. But now I am studying some Russian and the other languages don't help much.. So maybe what you say is good for related languages only?
The key word here is 'exploit' - so with Italian / Spanish, here are some things that you could exploit - Russian basic conjugations have some very similar parallels with romance conjugations - first person - 'o/u' (lips), 'we' - final 'm' , they 'n' - you can start to build links. There are also many sound shifts from Indoeuropean roots that follow standard sound shift patterns - hardening of 'ch' to 'k' as I mentioned in this clip is one you see both ways. Palatisation is a huge thing in russian which is also based on this principle - these palatisation principles actually happen across romance languages too - look at portuguese pronunciation of 'di' 'dia' in Portugal vs. Brazil, then spanish 'di' 'dia' - I will be on patterns like that and dig in like an archeologist to see exactly what vocab might be able to be exploited. Given - with russian, knowing sanskrit for me was a Huge help as when you triangulate russian, sanskrit and romance / Latin languages, you get a much more complete 'shift' picture - but you can still do it. The case system once learnt in Russian (or sanskrit), along with the other stuff then sets you up to get a very fast shift into all the other Slavic languages. This is why I try to set up a framework of as many 'fundamentals' as I can, so that when I encounter things in the wild, I will have something to reference, and then exploit to help me get it into my long-term memory and muscle memory faster.
@@StuartJayRaj thanks very much.. I didn't think about it.. I should exploit more what at first sight does not seem very relevant
Do you have any plans to write a book for Mandarin one day. You have a Cracking Thai Fundamentals. Will you do one for Cracking Mandarin Fundamentals one day?
By the way, I really enjoy watching your videos and have great admiration for your polyglot skills. You know not just how to read, speak, write, and understand, but even know the language in a much deeper way. I am interested in learning many of the languages you know and always thought of it as 'dream' level so to speak, but I guess you are living the dream.
this is pretty much what my Mindkraft programme is about. We do deep dives into many areas in particular Chinese which sets a robust framework for other languages. In hindsight it's a prequel to Cracking Thai Fundamentals. in saying that I'd love to do a concise book like CTF for Chinese
Hey! Can you tell us something about who are you and your background, basically a small Q&A. Thanks.
Merry Christmas 🎄
Idk about that sourpuss of a comment, but this breakdown of linguistics has really helped me when I started learning both Cantonese and Mandarin simultaneously 3 years ago, and it's still helping me today for Korean.
It allows me to guess sounds/meaning of words I have not familiarized myself with~ 💯
Unfortunately, I had to learn this method on my own as I only found your channel this past month 😂 🤣
curious to know how you apply this kind of stuff to Canto/Mando
By reaching a shared understanding via shared etymology
@@x_jaydn so basically cognates?
@@6Uncles It can definitely include cognates with shared/similar meanings but can also extend to include shared phonetic origins for alternative pronunciations of certain words. For example, 一 has two pronunciations yi1 and yao1, the latter sharing striking phonetic similarity to yat1 in Cantonese. You also have 的 which is de or (di1 when sung in Chinese opera).
To me, I find it interesting to see how/where languages may have diverged and how they may use different sounds and/or phrases to express the same thing.
For example, in Canada, French is taught as a mandatory second language. Most students, including me, gloss it over to simple memorization and a passing grade/credit.
However, after taking-it on again in self-paced study, my approach with learning has definitely changed over the years - increasing my comprehension and enjoyment.
ie simple things like "s'il vous plaît" would be taught and memorized to mean "please", but it actually means "if it pleases you".
In German, kurzgesagt (like the RUclips channel) is described to mean "in a nutshell", but word for word it simply means "shortly said" - which, in my opinion is a more satisfying and straightforward translation.
@@x_jaydn very cool. Didn't even know Mandarin had an alternative pronunciation for 一.
Btw, also from Canada, and learning MandoCantoFrench
I can't wait for anything on minority languages!
i would like to see clicks. all the different ways to click and where in the mouth it comes from. i have no idea but have been curious for a while. he could be the guy to make that chart for us. or maybe a subscriber who knows of the language can make one. either way. that's one minority language i'm curious about
請問你會幾種語言 你來過台灣嗎
4:10"so this is how I actually produce languages" ?
地not的
good catch!
3:45 ultra instinct
What is chinese part 2 coming anytime soon?
next part will be out before weds
@@StuartJayRaj umm its Thursday now.
apologies... this one is taking a little longer to prepare for. The more I go into the topic, the clip becomes WAYYY to long, so I'm revising my flow toake the clip more concise. Cantonese is a monster of a topic
@@StuartJayRaj just a question do you plan to explore the mongolian language ? i feel like we can learn a thing or 2 from that language on how they are affecting northern chinese or korean and japan , even in history when the middle chinese language are starting to replace by the northern influence it was also under the time where the mongol from the north rule China and the very last dynasty of china was also the Manchurian which is right next to mongolia so i think it's something to think about and dive in to and we might have a conclusion of why mandarin are become the norm ? and the way korean and japanese speak are somewhat relatable to the mongol ( seem like that to me ) . btw i live in Canada after watching inuit and eskimo people speak their language it like they used to be from mongol .
I think you're too far away in your knowledge from most of us regarding language learning and that's why your viewers feel that way.
I say this with an inmense respect and admiration to your vast knowledge so please do not take it negatively. I promise I'm not a veiled troll that tries to come as a friend but really has bad intentions. I admire you and the effort you've done across the years to reach such a mastery level
...but I'll give you an example of something that happened to me just some hours ago and hopefully you'll see what I mean.
Another RUclipsr published a video on tones some weeks ago and I commented there yesterday on how I discovered by myself that tones are really throat positions, and that the pitch is a bypyoduct of it really and by itself won't allow us to speak naturally.
The video author came back to me and mentioned you had videos about it. So I rushed to watch all of them.
I watch all your videos about it (I think) but I could fully understand only one of them. Only there I could relate to my findings and experiences without thinking I was missing your line of thought.
In the other ones, the mix you do between Thai - you bring Thai into all your tone videos but I do not speak a word of it - and many other things - like this Yin and Yang approach that I cannot understand - made it a hard to follow experience for me, and a bit frustrating/disheartening time.
It was so because yes! it is clear to me you had the answer I was looking for a year ago when I started my Chinese Mandarin learning journey but it is equally clear that if I only understood one of the many videos I watched this morning and it was only because I already could relate to your finding as I got there by myself before watching it...how would have had your video helped me during my search itself? It would not have.
Still now, in your video you never mention which are the exact throat positions for any language for example.
That is to say, you never said something along the lines of: "In Mandarin Chinese to produce the 3rd tone one puts their head or mouth a bit down so your throat is in the lowest position possible and a creaky sound (lowest tone one can get) is naturally produced at light speed as all Chinese speakers do instinctively when they talk.
It is this position that helps us produce a short creaky low tone sound, and not a deeping and raising tone that never ever happens in reality unless one is pronouncing a syllable in isolation, one syllable at the end of a sentence, or emphasizing/stressing a syllable for some reason"
Instead, you showed many tone charts (borrowed from Marvin Brown studies if I'm correct) and up you go.
Those are things that you know by heart but most of us are too far away from your knowledge. You seem to describe your findings from the other side of the tunnel but not many have crossed that tunnel as to me is clear you are in another level.
So, chapeau for you vast knowledge but if you could do it more accessible to us it would help many more people.
Your Indic diagram tool is really impressive btw...and I can understand it.
Please take it as positive feedback, ok?
The video I understood in full is titled:"Tonal Languages - STOP Focusing on JUST Pitch Contours".
i had a comment here but not seen
i dont know why my comment cant be shown
its ok now. maybe related to how i type
hi stuart i build my tool for study too can you give some advices on where can i find some high quality structued data in terms of character, sound, tone..
.. it is hard to find even at the official gov site or university site that is famous for language study they often only provide a site that you can search for data one by one viewing in single page but nowhere to download all at once.
it is strange that i need to chop the comment into segments
now I am practicing English, Japanese and Chinese just for drama series.