The data-driven approach with systematic methodologies that you use is a breath of fresh air, not to mention you started your channel right off the bat with professional video and audio quality. I think you'll go far on RUclips.
I checked the Easy Languages channel's playlists, here are the languages with enough videos for a 100+ day challenge, if anyone wants to try: German 596 French 354 Polish 287 Greek 283 Spanish 280 Turkish 200 English 190 Italian 190 Arabic 147 Russian 146 Portuguese 143 Catalan 124 Mandarin 94 Dutch 82 (Czech 64) Most are split between "Easy" and "Super easy". There are a lot of other cool languages with a few videos too!
Man, I'm in awe of the quality of your videos. After watching the one on Harry Potter's books, I turned on the notifications for your channel and checked the video several times to see how many people have watched it. I hope your channel grows fast because your work is of the highest quality among language learning channels.
I personally listen to the same korean podcast episode 4 times over one month to be able to absorb as much as possible from it and get this vocabulary repetition pattern. Great video! I have seen quite a bit of your content by now and you always deliver interesting insights! You just gained yourself a new subscriber ^^ Keep up the good work~
Absolutely phenomenal production quality!! Fingers crossed this video keeps sky-rocketing for ya because you deserve it! And also as a language learner myself, I love the new tools you’ve introduced to me!
Ich liebe diesen Channel. Er kommt genau zur richtigen Zeit, hoffentlich können wir hier eine Conmunity bilden, die durch Gruppenintelligenz und weitere tolle Videos viel Neues über effizientes Sprachenlernen erfährt. Ich bin wie ein anderer Kommentator sehr skeptisch über die 20-Wörter-Aussage, werde mir aber gleich mal die Studien anschauen. Ich denke, diese 20 Wörter müssen auch so verwendet werden, dass sie verständlich sind. Das heißt, es bringt wohl kaum etwas, zum Anfang drei Videos zu schauen und plötzlich kann man die 50 meist verwendetsten Wörter eine Sprache. Auch denke ich, dass der Abstand eine Rolle spielt. Es bright doch definitiv nichts, ein Wort 20 Mal vorzulesen. Bei Active Recall könnte die 20 schon eher hinkommen, bei einigen Wörtern sogar deutlich weniger, bei andern mehr. Dazu würde mich deine Statistik bei Anki zum Deutschlernen mal interessieren. Wie oft musstest du eine Karteikarte lernen, bis du sie dir z. B. 6 Monate gemerkt hast.
I love this kind of language learning data! Thanks for doing these calculations. I'm not sure the vocabulary pick-up rate will remain linear for so long, though I suppose it might not taper off until you get past 5k words or so.
That definitely aligns with my experience. I'm going to dive into my Anki vocab reviews to see how many reviews it takes for a word for it to solidify.
Another stellar video. Your channel is starting to become one of my new favorites. I really like they way you break things down. Now, obviously, the math will not be the same for everyone, everyone is different and some learn quicker and some slower. But overall, what you are actually showing is how sticking with a language works. If you want to learn one, you just have to stick with it for the long run. No quick fixes. Just have fun on the way.
Really enjoyed this video, and just subscribed. Love your data driven approach. And I LOVE "Easy Languages". I've been learning Portuguese for a year -- and at first "Easy Portuguese" was too hard -- the interview videos -- but now I watch them all the time. I also liked that you listed caveats. Yes, one other caveat is what does "know" really mean or what does it get you. I would argue that "know" is great for reading and for listening -- and knowing words is great as it helps you understand and learn even more words. The caveat around "knowing" words is around "speaking" -- to speak "knowing" helps a lot -- but to really be able to speak you have to what I call "master" a certain number of words, especially certain verbs and connection words. So yes, the interesting question is when do should you start learning how to speak. I am also a big fan of "Steve Kaufman" and input-based learning -- and agree with almost everything he has to say -- and I do agree with him that you should build up a good vocabulary before you start learning to speak. But is that vocabulary, 3K, 5K, 6K, 8K, 10K, 12K, or more? Would be an interesting topic for a video -- although I gather there is no "correct" answer -- and it depends on how quickly you want to learn how to speak. On my end, I reached entry level Intermediate B1 in Portuguese in about a year with a 4K to 5K vocab (similar to what you did -- except I was not so rigid about using a program like anki, although I do like your method, which I think might be really, really good when trying to get from B1 to C1 or C1 to C2). So after building up a vocab of 4-5K, now in addition to my reading and video watching I'm actively learning to speak -- which to me is really about the "mastery" of a small smaller subset of words -- words I already "know", but now you really need to "know" them extremely well -- and I'd argue that you have to practice phrases over-and-over and over (using Pimsleur) -- and get that structure down so you can immediately respond in an extremely fluid manner Yes, something I wish Steve Kaufman would talk more about speaking -- but have noticed all the content creators that have incredible speaking skills -- actively fork off at some point and "actively" improve their speaking skills in parallel. Most of them are also huge input learners -- but they also believe build up a decent vocab (which is different for different people) and then start practicing output. Wish you luck in your path to German fluency -- whatever "fluency" really means -- let's just say C1. And thanks for the great video!
I've used (a less vigorous version of) this approach for about 5 months now, being that I naturally gravitated to the Easy Spanish channel and their podcast. I watch videos while I'm at home and I listen to the podcasts (and repeat them too) at work while doing tasks that don't require me to concentrate. I can say, it is no magic pill, I'm nowhere close to even conversational, but I can fairly comfortably 'read' Spanish now, so long as I take my time, which makes building vocabulary much easier. I can recommend it, but I think it's important that you get used to feeling somewhat foolish for a very long time.
I really enjoy your videos, especially your data-driven approach. I would be interested in seeing how you set up your Anki, including the settings and options you use for your deck.
6:39, In my experience the "early stages of learning in this manner of immersion with easy content are actually extremely rapid. So much so that after the first 100 hours the rate of learning slows down so much that it can feel like you've entirely stopped improving. If you are struggling with this first plateau I highly suggest trying the "rewatch a movie you know in your native language 50 times." This produces a similar rapid learning curve to the very beginning and could give you a huge boost in confidence to the immersion method. Side note, I believe the lack of a cohesive story in the Easy-language videos can be a hindrance, there are plenty other to supplement this with however.
Great video! Subbed to you and just learned about Easy German and subbed to them. I think what you mention near the end is key for me. Although I may hear a word the magic 20 times, the brain in reality probably needs to "notice" it in context 20 times. At least that's what I found with my Korean learning. Adding these interview videos to the content list as I start the German journey
The only things that helped me to learn German and English is to have fun with a little bit of work I watched video about what I love and I take some notes now I can say I'm B1 in English and A2 German
Wow, it must have taken a lot of time to analyze all that stuff that meticulously 🥳 Great video ! 💙 I watched few Easy German videos before and I really loved the content they made, need to go back to their channel someday😊 For German I think it's much easier for English speakers, since you already can understand a lot at the beginning considering all the vocab similiarities. I think the reality of that challenge would differ a lot with languages with different writing systems, like Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Russian etc. Having experience in learning few Asian languages I thing that the learning curve would be much longer for most of people since the scripts or characters are not going to be easy when you start and it's a huge barrier if you don't learn the writing system properly.
You are a genius sir. A mathematical approach to learning a language. Like they say. It's all maths. I have already started using your approach. I'm not sponsored by them, but using lingq to download podcast and easy languages helps you read better and keep track of your words known. You guys should team up. Match made in language heaven. Keep it up.
Love what you're doing with this channel! You're bringing something to the language learning community that no one else has (as far as I'm aware of) with data.
i feel like the difficulty of acquiring a new word trends down as you progress. i learned english as a kid and there are many words that i absorbed as an adult on just 1 or 2 encounters. must be because i have a huge mental map of the language by now and there are so many submaps i can attach a new word onto.
There's a lot of variation in what learning a word mean. Even someone who only speaks English can understand a sentence like "Unsere Mutter ist in der Küche und backt Brot.", or one like "Un problème difficile requiert une solution compliquée." without ever having learnt a word of German, or French, but good luck trying to figure out what "iszogatunk" means in Hungarian.
Did you do this challenge or come up with the curriculum for it after you made a lot of progress in German? You also have a lot of challenge videos. I am curious if you would do them sequentially concurrently. If I focused on this channel would you also recommend a SRS or maybe Speakly during the initial phases? A lot of questions! You are putting out some interesting content and I hope you channel can grow quickly.
I came up with this specific episode curriculum after making progress, but I basically followed it early on as I was trying to learn new words. I 100% recommend using a tool like Anki since it increases the pace of learning, especially for medium-to-rare words. The 20 exposure rule is a very rough approximation and can break down if you're working with material too far above your level (either vocab wise or speed).
How am I supposed to watch the videos. Do I pause after every sentence and go over the words slowly.?? Do I rewatch them multiple times. Or just watch them once through
These are all fair questions. There's no right answer here as it depends on what your goal is, though as a general rule I'd try to find something that gives you enough of those "Aha!" moments while avoiding feelings of sucking at being new to a language. If you enjoy pausing to reread things out loud or "shadow" the speakers, then do so (knowing it will take a lot longer). You can totally rewatch if that's a compelling option since that will reinforce things. I'd recommend using some notecard system to reinforce vocab and accelerate your abilities too. You can of course just watch and try to absorb, but the path there will still take a looong while before things begin clicking on a large scale.
Hello and thank you for your video. I have have recently moved on to my third language (Arabic) and I have some questions about this technique. Is there much much merit to watching the videos if you don't understand much going on without peaking at the subtitles? Being in a completely different language family makes it difficult to notice cognates. Also what are you goals while watching the videos/podcasr? Do you try to just pick out phrases or words your familiar with or do you pause and start writing down new phrases bit by bit in the video?
This is what I’m trying to figure out for Russian. Exactly how I want to use the Easy Russian videos. 🤔 For now, I created a playlist of videos that interest me and I’ve been watching them repeatedly to practice listening. I’m trying to get my ears used to the sound and after watching them several times in a row I at least feel like I know where one word ends and another begins and certain words are standing out to me even if I don’t know the meaning. Will keep playing with it until I find my groove. What about you?
I really like the idea of calculating the amount of words you will have learned but I'm a bit skeptical of how the 20-word-assumption will translate to my learning. For instance, if I start learning a language like Japanese as a native English speaker, will I really understand the word for "the" after watching a couple of 20 minute videos. I am actually not sure I'd understand much of anything at that stage. I'd love to see you test these claims with a new language.
He didn't say this in the video but I think you have to understand or at least notice the word consciously for it to count as part of the 20 times. If you just filter it out as not important the first 5 times and finally look it up on the 6th time then maybe you are #1 now. Or maybe not. I wonder how well whoever published the study clarified things. My own experience with Japanese when I was living in Japan was that I had to study a word, then use the word, and then hear someone use the word and understand it all separately before I knew it. And it didn't matter how many times I used a word in conversation. It seems that I would still fail to understand it when a native speaker used it several times even before it clicked (for the love of God haha). I really struggled. But if you work at it every day the words do add up. I didn't study using RUclips like he's describing though. It was textbooks, regular books, manga, anime, and Anki. I think RUclips could be really effective.
@rileyharris1406 My thoughts exactly😊 for English speakers European languages that contain a lot of similar vocabulary with different phonetics it may be a piece of cake with some languages. But when you consider the differences in script, tonal languages, belonging to completely different language family it's gonna take much longer to aquire even the simplest concepts. I remember when I started learning Chinese we had a weekly classes dedicated to just pronouncing the tones for few weeks at least and for the first year I had to practice writing at least 20 different characters per day, if I didn't want to be kicked out from my faculty😂😂😂
Very fair point and I wish I had been able to find a firmer answer in my research. I mentioned it in the "limitations" portion, but I agree with @paulwalther5237 that the word needs to at least create a hook in your mind, which may only happen with a portion of words when you first start out. I'll see about doing a "workshop" of trying this out with a new language, though it'll probably be one with the latin alphabet. And I'll have to think through how I can run the experiment without unintentionally cheating. Thanks for the idea!
@@OneWordataTime1 I've seen somewhere in the comments on one of your videos that you plan to learn Arabic. It would be awesome if you could test this theory with a language like that :))
Okey i'm from Poland and i am try to up my english but i go try to english and german. When i wake up today i start. I tell you how this end. See you to 12.05.2024!!!
About words: I am now learning English, and I write out 30-40 new words every day. I play games in it, I watch videos in it. Recently, my live has been divided into two language realms: the first is the realm of my mother tongue, which I speak at school, at home and in my day-to-day life, and the second is the realm of English. It is my virtual side of life: computer games, videos, internet etc. What I've seen is that sometimes I see a word, and one time of seeing it is enough for actual use of this word. Though, sometimes I see a words for the twentieth time, and I still don't remember it until I write it 30 times.
@@OneWordataTime1 , this approach is highly effective. But I've begun to be fully immersed in English-speaking youtube only two-three months ago. I had watched English-speaking youtube before, but it had not been as easy as it is now, for my English has changed since those times. Compare my today English to the one I had a year ago, and you'll find out I made a huge progress. I am saying this because this level of immersion can be reached only if you are a B2 or maybe B1 (though I doubt it). On my level, I still come across unfamiliar words in youtube videos, but I understand their meaning from context. By the way, it is the only activity where I don't write out unfamiliar words. P.S. Try this level of immersion out in German when you reach this level. It's gonna boost your confidence in the language extremely.
agreed. writing them down (and reviewing them, maybe even regularly as notecards) would be more effective imo but if that's less enjoyable, you'd get more by spending that time watching or re-watching.
Its all fine and dandy, but do I watch those videos and stop everytime and write down the the vocab or I just keep wathcing and absorbing naturally somehow? The first method seems very time consuming and the latter seems kinda impossible. Correct me if I am wrong please. Also what about the grammar? German language is very grammar heavy and the grammar rules are important.
When I took this approach and used Anki, I was pausing to make sure I understood the gist of what was going on and to grab words to make notecards. I would use a textbook to understand the grammar but found most of my understanding came from reading, watching and listening. If you’re looking for a magic bullet, you won’t find one. But if you’re looking to stay dedicated to this in the medium to long term, then you can make meaningful progress.
How do you get this data? Do you have a script that pulls words from the audio recordings? Or they just publish the recordings and you pull it from there
I'd recommend using some system to understand them better (e.g., quick look ups) and then begin getting them into your long term memory (e.g., notecards / Anki). It's totally an option to just notice and move on, but the little bit of friction as you learn is what makes things sticks in your memory
hmm super interesting (and good work). I'd love to do a comparison of duolingo/apps vs. content vs. textbooks, though finding reliable (or any) data on duolingo has been a tough road.
@@OneWordataTime1 I think Duolingo is easier to learn with, due to the material being so straightforward and slowly presented. Therefore, it is obviously going to take longer to learn with Duolingo. It’s like anything. If the sets you’re doing in a gym don’t push you to failure as quickly, you will have to do more reps, and spend more time in the gym. I likely HAVE TO spend more time practicing with Duo than I would with other learning sources, because it doesn’t push my mind as hard to scramble for patterns. The reason I continue with Duo is, I am very comfortable with it because of the ease. I understand everything it presents me, because it is presented so slowly. Leads to very little frustration.
In what way? I know there are many assumptions built into this simple model, but this approach has worked for a lot of people, so I'd be curious how your feedback could help improve it.
A much better way to learn vocabulary and language in general is to keep re-watching 1 piece of media until you memorize most of the words and ideally can even reproduce the intonation. Watching dozens of different videos but not (nearly) fully understanding them is a very inefficient method. Podcasts are a bad form of media because there is no situational context so podcasts are only useful for intermediate or advanced speakers. New language learners should watch TV shows or movies.@@OneWordataTime1
@@OneWordataTime1 One more, if you actually care about speaking a language well then you should ignore many of the uncommon words in a language and focus on the words that expand your active vocabulary.
@Adam-jr4lx That's fair as an approach to speaking in general, though the approach described here also just focuses on those most common words that show up naturally. that being said, you'll find yourself limited in the ability to speak about (and understand) areas of interest if you just focus shallowly on common words. At some point, you need some specificity in your language learning.
The data-driven approach with systematic methodologies that you use is a breath of fresh air, not to mention you started your channel right off the bat with professional video and audio quality. I think you'll go far on RUclips.
You yourself are becoming a key resource in language learning, thank you for putting all this work in!
I checked the Easy Languages channel's playlists, here are the languages with enough videos for a 100+ day challenge, if anyone wants to try:
German 596
French 354
Polish 287
Greek 283
Spanish 280
Turkish 200
English 190
Italian 190
Arabic 147
Russian 146
Portuguese 143
Catalan 124
Mandarin 94
Dutch 82
(Czech 64)
Most are split between "Easy" and "Super easy". There are a lot of other cool languages with a few videos too!
It's a shame that Easy Japanese only has 21 Videos and no new upload for 8 years...
Thanks for compiling, @joshuasims5421! These channels are awesome resources!
@Zeldaretter yeah I was just looking at it myself and was pretty disappointed
Thanks for this list!
@@Zeldaretter Easy Swedish and Super Easy Swedish has 3 videos and no uploads in 7-ish years. I'm really surprised about Japanese, though.
This guy is arguably the best Language learning video going around. Informative, thorough and relevant.👍
Man, I'm in awe of the quality of your videos. After watching the one on Harry Potter's books, I turned on the notifications for your channel and checked the video several times to see how many people have watched it. I hope your channel grows fast because your work is of the highest quality among language learning channels.
Same here! Love the vids
@@Medalea Do you also watch Days and Words' videos? He does it a bit differently, but he's one of the best nonetheless.
@@thebigamateur yes! Lots of useful advice, even though I’m more of textbook learner myself.
thank you so much. 🤞 fingers crossed I can keep grinding to make more and help people learn better.
And I'm also a big fan of Lamont
Love how you use data and graphs to help us visualize language learning, keep up the amazing content!
thanks!
only 6k views?? this video is so underrated!! THank you so much! I'll definitely share it!
I have just subscribed and you currently have 3.87K subscribers. I'm going to enjoy watching this channel grow
I personally listen to the same korean podcast episode 4 times over one month to be able to absorb as much as possible from it and get this vocabulary repetition pattern. Great video! I have seen quite a bit of your content by now and you always deliver interesting insights! You just gained yourself a new subscriber ^^ Keep up the good work~
Absolutely phenomenal production quality!! Fingers crossed this video keeps sky-rocketing for ya because you deserve it! And also as a language learner myself, I love the new tools you’ve introduced to me!
Ich liebe diesen Channel. Er kommt genau zur richtigen Zeit, hoffentlich können wir hier eine Conmunity bilden, die durch Gruppenintelligenz und weitere tolle Videos viel Neues über effizientes Sprachenlernen erfährt.
Ich bin wie ein anderer Kommentator sehr skeptisch über die 20-Wörter-Aussage, werde mir aber gleich mal die Studien anschauen. Ich denke, diese 20 Wörter müssen auch so verwendet werden, dass sie verständlich sind. Das heißt, es bringt wohl kaum etwas, zum Anfang drei Videos zu schauen und plötzlich kann man die 50 meist verwendetsten Wörter eine Sprache. Auch denke ich, dass der Abstand eine Rolle spielt. Es bright doch definitiv nichts, ein Wort 20 Mal vorzulesen. Bei Active Recall könnte die 20 schon eher hinkommen, bei einigen Wörtern sogar deutlich weniger, bei andern mehr. Dazu würde mich deine Statistik bei Anki zum Deutschlernen mal interessieren. Wie oft musstest du eine Karteikarte lernen, bis du sie dir z. B. 6 Monate gemerkt hast.
I love this kind of language learning data! Thanks for doing these calculations. I'm not sure the vocabulary pick-up rate will remain linear for so long, though I suppose it might not taper off until you get past 5k words or so.
That definitely aligns with my experience. I'm going to dive into my Anki vocab reviews to see how many reviews it takes for a word for it to solidify.
Another stellar video. Your channel is starting to become one of my new favorites. I really like they way you break things down.
Now, obviously, the math will not be the same for everyone, everyone is different and some learn quicker and some slower. But overall, what you are actually showing is how sticking with a language works. If you want to learn one, you just have to stick with it for the long run. No quick fixes. Just have fun on the way.
Really enjoyed this video, and just subscribed. Love your data driven approach. And I LOVE "Easy Languages". I've been learning Portuguese for a year -- and at first "Easy Portuguese" was too hard -- the interview videos -- but now I watch them all the time.
I also liked that you listed caveats. Yes, one other caveat is what does "know" really mean or what does it get you. I would argue that "know" is great for reading and for listening -- and knowing words is great as it helps you understand and learn even more words. The caveat around "knowing" words is around "speaking" -- to speak "knowing" helps a lot -- but to really be able to speak you have to what I call "master" a certain number of words, especially certain verbs and connection words. So yes, the interesting question is when do should you start learning how to speak. I am also a big fan of "Steve Kaufman" and input-based learning -- and agree with almost everything he has to say -- and I do agree with him that you should build up a good vocabulary before you start learning to speak. But is that vocabulary, 3K, 5K, 6K, 8K, 10K, 12K, or more? Would be an interesting topic for a video -- although I gather there is no "correct" answer -- and it depends on how quickly you want to learn how to speak.
On my end, I reached entry level Intermediate B1 in Portuguese in about a year with a 4K to 5K vocab (similar to what you did -- except I was not so rigid about using a program like anki, although I do like your method, which I think might be really, really good when trying to get from B1 to C1 or C1 to C2).
So after building up a vocab of 4-5K, now in addition to my reading and video watching I'm actively learning to speak -- which to me is really about the "mastery" of a small smaller subset of words -- words I already "know", but now you really need to "know" them extremely well -- and I'd argue that you have to practice phrases over-and-over and over (using Pimsleur) -- and get that structure down so you can immediately respond in an extremely fluid manner Yes, something I wish Steve Kaufman would talk more about speaking -- but have noticed all the content creators that have incredible speaking skills -- actively fork off at some point and "actively" improve their speaking skills in parallel. Most of them are also huge input learners -- but they also believe build up a decent vocab (which is different for different people) and then start practicing output.
Wish you luck in your path to German fluency -- whatever "fluency" really means -- let's just say C1. And thanks for the great video!
Fascinating video! Planning to start my 100 days today (1/31/24) with Easy Spanish and Easy Russian. 🥰🤓
Good luck!
I just started studying German now and found this channel. Your content is soo good! Thanks for sharing
Solid stuff! I hope your channel continues to grow :)
I've used (a less vigorous version of) this approach for about 5 months now, being that I naturally gravitated to the Easy Spanish channel and their podcast. I watch videos while I'm at home and I listen to the podcasts (and repeat them too) at work while doing tasks that don't require me to concentrate. I can say, it is no magic pill, I'm nowhere close to even conversational, but I can fairly comfortably 'read' Spanish now, so long as I take my time, which makes building vocabulary much easier. I can recommend it, but I think it's important that you get used to feeling somewhat foolish for a very long time.
Your videos have been really good. I love watching them.
I really enjoy your videos, especially your data-driven approach. I would be interested in seeing how you set up your Anki, including the settings and options you use for your deck.
I'll see if I make a full video on this, as the default Anki settings are pretty good by themselves without customization
6:39, In my experience the "early stages of learning in this manner of immersion with easy content are actually extremely rapid. So much so that after the first 100 hours the rate of learning slows down so much that it can feel like you've entirely stopped improving. If you are struggling with this first plateau I highly suggest trying the "rewatch a movie you know in your native language 50 times." This produces a similar rapid learning curve to the very beginning and could give you a huge boost in confidence to the immersion method. Side note, I believe the lack of a cohesive story in the Easy-language videos can be a hindrance, there are plenty other to supplement this with however.
super fascinating and a very interesting pushback. i suppose this is the dunning kruger effect followed by the intermediate plateau?
Excellent stuff. I like the suggested 100 day plans too.
Great video! Subbed to you and just learned about Easy German and subbed to them. I think what you mention near the end is key for me. Although I may hear a word the magic 20 times, the brain in reality probably needs to "notice" it in context 20 times. At least that's what I found with my Korean learning. Adding these interview videos to the content list as I start the German journey
good luck! German is a delight to learn and the Easy German team make great content
The only things that helped me to learn German and English is to have fun with a little bit of work I watched video about what I love and I take some notes now I can say I'm B1 in English and A2 German
Wow, it must have taken a lot of time to analyze all that stuff that meticulously 🥳 Great video ! 💙 I watched few Easy German videos before and I really loved the content they made, need to go back to their channel someday😊 For German I think it's much easier for English speakers, since you already can understand a lot at the beginning considering all the vocab similiarities. I think the reality of that challenge would differ a lot with languages with different writing systems, like Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Russian etc. Having experience in learning few Asian languages I thing that the learning curve would be much longer for most of people since the scripts or characters are not going to be easy when you start and it's a huge barrier if you don't learn the writing system properly.
You are a genius sir. A mathematical approach to learning a language. Like they say. It's all maths. I have already started using your approach.
I'm not sponsored by them, but using lingq to download podcast and easy languages helps you read better and keep track of your words known. You guys should team up. Match made in language heaven. Keep it up.
Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to have a conversation with Steve Kaufmann 😜
I've a lingq account myself. Do you import the lessons in right?
How did you learn to compile/analyze all this data? Cool stuff!
Love what you're doing with this channel! You're bringing something to the language learning community that no one else has (as far as I'm aware of) with data.
i feel like the difficulty of acquiring a new word trends down as you progress. i learned english as a kid and there are many words that i absorbed as an adult on just 1 or 2 encounters. must be because i have a huge mental map of the language by now and there are so many submaps i can attach a new word onto.
This video is an actual gem. Thank you so much!!!
Dude, you need a mic stand. Seriously, this driving me crazy😆 Thanks for the vids!
I know 🥲 . This mic gets heavy while filming so I'm working on getting a stand
There's a lot of variation in what learning a word mean. Even someone who only speaks English can understand a sentence like "Unsere Mutter ist in der Küche und backt Brot.", or one like "Un problème difficile requiert une solution compliquée." without ever having learnt a word of German, or French, but good luck trying to figure out what "iszogatunk" means in Hungarian.
Did you do this challenge or come up with the curriculum for it after you made a lot of progress in German? You also have a lot of challenge videos. I am curious if you would do them sequentially concurrently. If I focused on this channel would you also recommend a SRS or maybe Speakly during the initial phases? A lot of questions! You are putting out some interesting content and I hope you channel can grow quickly.
I came up with this specific episode curriculum after making progress, but I basically followed it early on as I was trying to learn new words. I 100% recommend using a tool like Anki since it increases the pace of learning, especially for medium-to-rare words. The 20 exposure rule is a very rough approximation and can break down if you're working with material too far above your level (either vocab wise or speed).
How am I supposed to watch the videos. Do I pause after every sentence and go over the words slowly.?? Do I rewatch them multiple times. Or just watch them once through
These are all fair questions. There's no right answer here as it depends on what your goal is, though as a general rule I'd try to find something that gives you enough of those "Aha!" moments while avoiding feelings of sucking at being new to a language. If you enjoy pausing to reread things out loud or "shadow" the speakers, then do so (knowing it will take a lot longer). You can totally rewatch if that's a compelling option since that will reinforce things. I'd recommend using some notecard system to reinforce vocab and accelerate your abilities too. You can of course just watch and try to absorb, but the path there will still take a looong while before things begin clicking on a large scale.
Great videos! I love your channel ❤❤❤
🙏
Hello and thank you for your video. I have have recently moved on to my third language (Arabic) and I have some questions about this technique. Is there much much merit to watching the videos if you don't understand much going on without peaking at the subtitles? Being in a completely different language family makes it difficult to notice cognates. Also what are you goals while watching the videos/podcasr? Do you try to just pick out phrases or words your familiar with or do you pause and start writing down new phrases bit by bit in the video?
This is what I’m trying to figure out for Russian. Exactly how I want to use the Easy Russian videos. 🤔 For now, I created a playlist of videos that interest me and I’ve been watching them repeatedly to practice listening. I’m trying to get my ears used to the sound and after watching them several times in a row I at least feel like I know where one word ends and another begins and certain words are standing out to me even if I don’t know the meaning. Will keep playing with it until I find my groove. What about you?
I can't say anything bad about your videos. They are enjoyable and informative :)
I really like the idea of calculating the amount of words you will have learned but I'm a bit skeptical of how the 20-word-assumption will translate to my learning. For instance, if I start learning a language like Japanese as a native English speaker, will I really understand the word for "the" after watching a couple of 20 minute videos. I am actually not sure I'd understand much of anything at that stage. I'd love to see you test these claims with a new language.
He didn't say this in the video but I think you have to understand or at least notice the word consciously for it to count as part of the 20 times. If you just filter it out as not important the first 5 times and finally look it up on the 6th time then maybe you are #1 now. Or maybe not. I wonder how well whoever published the study clarified things. My own experience with Japanese when I was living in Japan was that I had to study a word, then use the word, and then hear someone use the word and understand it all separately before I knew it. And it didn't matter how many times I used a word in conversation. It seems that I would still fail to understand it when a native speaker used it several times even before it clicked (for the love of God haha). I really struggled. But if you work at it every day the words do add up. I didn't study using RUclips like he's describing though. It was textbooks, regular books, manga, anime, and Anki. I think RUclips could be really effective.
@rileyharris1406 My thoughts exactly😊 for English speakers European languages that contain a lot of similar vocabulary with different phonetics it may be a piece of cake with some languages. But when you consider the differences in script, tonal languages, belonging to completely different language family it's gonna take much longer to aquire even the simplest concepts. I remember when I started learning Chinese we had a weekly classes dedicated to just pronouncing the tones for few weeks at least and for the first year I had to practice writing at least 20 different characters per day, if I didn't want to be kicked out from my faculty😂😂😂
Very fair point and I wish I had been able to find a firmer answer in my research. I mentioned it in the "limitations" portion, but I agree with @paulwalther5237 that the word needs to at least create a hook in your mind, which may only happen with a portion of words when you first start out.
I'll see about doing a "workshop" of trying this out with a new language, though it'll probably be one with the latin alphabet. And I'll have to think through how I can run the experiment without unintentionally cheating. Thanks for the idea!
@@OneWordataTime1 I've seen somewhere in the comments on one of your videos that you plan to learn Arabic. It would be awesome if you could test this theory with a language like that :))
Okey i'm from Poland and i am try to up my english but i go try to english and german. When i wake up today i start. I tell you how this end. See you to 12.05.2024!!!
Hey can I ask how it’s going?
My memento to stick w Methods like Easy German... n be consistent fr
Thanks❤
About words: I am now learning English, and I write out 30-40 new words every day. I play games in it, I watch videos in it. Recently, my live has been divided into two language realms: the first is the realm of my mother tongue, which I speak at school, at home and in my day-to-day life, and the second is the realm of English. It is my virtual side of life: computer games, videos, internet etc. What I've seen is that sometimes I see a word, and one time of seeing it is enough for actual use of this word. Though, sometimes I see a words for the twentieth time, and I still don't remember it until I write it 30 times.
wow the real life / digital life language personas is an interesting concept . and i hear you on the fact that some words click and others won't
@@OneWordataTime1 , this approach is highly effective. But I've begun to be fully immersed in English-speaking youtube only two-three months ago. I had watched English-speaking youtube before, but it had not been as easy as it is now, for my English has changed since those times. Compare my today English to the one I had a year ago, and you'll find out I made a huge progress. I am saying this because this level of immersion can be reached only if you are a B2 or maybe B1 (though I doubt it). On my level, I still come across unfamiliar words in youtube videos, but I understand their meaning from context. By the way, it is the only activity where I don't write out unfamiliar words.
P.S. Try this level of immersion out in German when you reach this level. It's gonna boost your confidence in the language extremely.
A true superhero, using his data science super powers for the benefit of clueless language learners
Hey so do we just listen to these videos? Or do you suggest we pause at every word we don't know and record it somewhere?
agreed. writing them down (and reviewing them, maybe even regularly as notecards) would be more effective imo but if that's less enjoyable, you'd get more by spending that time watching or re-watching.
Its all fine and dandy, but do I watch those videos and stop everytime and write down the the vocab or I just keep wathcing and absorbing naturally somehow? The first method seems very time consuming and the latter seems kinda impossible. Correct me if I am wrong please. Also what about the grammar? German language is very grammar heavy and the grammar rules are important.
I’m starting by just listening to get accustomed to hearing the language…
When I took this approach and used Anki, I was pausing to make sure I understood the gist of what was going on and to grab words to make notecards. I would use a textbook to understand the grammar but found most of my understanding came from reading, watching and listening. If you’re looking for a magic bullet, you won’t find one. But if you’re looking to stay dedicated to this in the medium to long term, then you can make meaningful progress.
What a content of quality!
How do you get this data? Do you have a script that pulls words from the audio recordings? Or they just publish the recordings and you pull it from there
how should we learn those words though? should we actually learn them (write them down, look them up..) , or should we just notice and move on?
I'd recommend using some system to understand them better (e.g., quick look ups) and then begin getting them into your long term memory (e.g., notecards / Anki). It's totally an option to just notice and move on, but the little bit of friction as you learn is what makes things sticks in your memory
@@OneWordataTime1 thank you for your answer !
Their content is succesfull because they have JANUSZ.
Underrated comment😂😂😂
Another great video! 👊👌👌👌👌
Olá! Abraços do Brasil. ☺
You look like the guy from Egychology channel
If I was learning German I would probably do this.
Hey, the video was cool, but the music was a bit too loud, don't you think?
Agree, a few of us said this in the last video too. I really hope he changes this. The captions help, but it is very distracting.
Sorry about that - I had turned down the music since the last video but apparently not enough. noted for the next one!
is it weird I bageled you based on the spine of the lower set of books, and not by your kipah?
Lol I also immediately noticed that nice shelf of Artscroll before the Kippah
Does anyone know an easy-german-ish channel for levantine/syrian arabic? I have a hard time finding consistent content
if you find one let me know! I know Easy Arabic has a mix of dialects
@@OneWordataTime1 exactly, it is a mix, so most dialects are underrepresented on there
Duolingo states I’ve learned 650 words in 100 days
hmm super interesting (and good work). I'd love to do a comparison of duolingo/apps vs. content vs. textbooks, though finding reliable (or any) data on duolingo has been a tough road.
@@OneWordataTime1 I think Duolingo is easier to learn with, due to the material being so straightforward and slowly presented. Therefore, it is obviously going to take longer to learn with Duolingo.
It’s like anything. If the sets you’re doing in a gym don’t push you to failure as quickly, you will have to do more reps, and spend more time in the gym.
I likely HAVE TO spend more time practicing with Duo than I would with other learning sources, because it doesn’t push my mind as hard to scramble for patterns.
The reason I continue with Duo is, I am very comfortable with it because of the ease. I understand everything it presents me, because it is presented so slowly. Leads to very little frustration.
Easy Language videos in lingQ is the lazy man’s dream ticket
easy ww2 language
Yiddish? 🤔😂😂😂
@@heinrich.hitzinger German language also known as hitler language, mein kampt language or treaty of versailles language
This is a terrible method.
In what way? I know there are many assumptions built into this simple model, but this approach has worked for a lot of people, so I'd be curious how your feedback could help improve it.
A much better way to learn vocabulary and language in general is to keep re-watching 1 piece of media until you memorize most of the words and ideally can even reproduce the intonation. Watching dozens of different videos but not (nearly) fully understanding them is a very inefficient method. Podcasts are a bad form of media because there is no situational context so podcasts are only useful for intermediate or advanced speakers. New language learners should watch TV shows or movies.@@OneWordataTime1
@@OneWordataTime1 One more, if you actually care about speaking a language well then you should ignore many of the uncommon words in a language and focus on the words that expand your active vocabulary.
@Adam-jr4lx That's fair as an approach to speaking in general, though the approach described here also just focuses on those most common words that show up naturally. that being said, you'll find yourself limited in the ability to speak about (and understand) areas of interest if you just focus shallowly on common words. At some point, you need some specificity in your language learning.