How to Remember Words in Another Language?

Transcript: Hi there. Steve Kaufmann here, again, answering some of your questions. I may not get to all of them, but the ones that I did notice. One question, interesting question—

Would I talk about brain freeze?

In other words, sometimes we know the word, we know what we want to say, but we just can’t remember the word. We can’t say it and the more we try to remember it, of course, the more we insure that we won’t be able to remember it. It happens to all of us. It happens to me at my age. Sometimes I think it’s because I’m older now, but I think it happened to me when I was younger, as well. The more pressure we put on ourselves, if we’re at a party and someone comes in and we’re trying to remember that person’s name, the harder we try to remember the name, the harder it is to remember.

If I find that I can’t think of a word or I can’t express what I want to express, I’ll talk about something else. I’ll move into a direction where I have the words and gradually then come back to what I wanted to say. In any case, I don’t let it upset me because it’s normal. The more confident and comfortable we are, the less pressure we put on ourselves, the less likely it is to occur.

There was a question from someone in Romania asking—

How would I go about learning Farsi? There are no resources.

Well, when I started learning Romanian there were no resources, so I went on the Internet, I wrote up 200 sentences in English and I asked someone to translate these into Romanian and record them for me. I paid them for that and the resulting lessons were imported into LingQ. So if there are no Farsi resources, you may have to create your own.

Another person asked—

How do I use Assimil?

A lot of people like Assimil. Personally, to me it’s just another beginner book like Teach Yourself Colloquial. What I get out of it is strictly the lessons, the content. I listen, I read. I used it for Russian. I started using the Korean one and I found it particularly uninteresting. The Russian Assimil has actually some interesting content and to that extent is better.

What I don’t like about Assimil is that they don’t give you the glossary, in other words, the translations of the new words. They give you a full translation, which I find very distracting. I find it distracting to read in the target language and then go reading through English to see the particular word I’m looking for. So I don’t use Assimil a lot, but I know that a lot of people do like Assimil.

Basically, that’s it, fewer questions. I hope this is of interest to you and now I’ve got to get back studying Polish. Bye for now.

[Waseem]

Mr. Steve I have a question for you .. when do you feel that it's time to give up a language you're learning and starting a new one ? does that time depend on the language itself or you compel yourself to reach a specific level always ?

[ohkaryukai]

Do you have a physical language learning library? If so, would you give us a book tour?

[abbieamavi]

WOWWWW this is so true!! When I pressure myself, I almost always stumble, or more commonly, my brain just freezes! Thank you so much, I want to learn my mother tongue (Romanian) better, than move into Spanish...and more, hopefully(: I have bad memory, or so I tell myself. But I'm finally memorizing chords and learning to play guitar, and learning to drive, so another dream I have is more languages! (:

[danielmunteanu]

Salut Domnule Steve :D Am ramas uimit pentru felul in care ai invatat limba romana, e un mod foarte interesant si probabil asa o sa fac si eu cu limba engleza. As fi foarte incantat sa te ascult intr-un video vorbind in limba romana despre experienta ta in legatura cu procesul de invatare. Te admir tare mult pentru ceea ce faci si sper sa ai succes in tot ceea ce iti propui pe viitor. O zi frumoasa!

[kusterdu]

Hi Steve,
I'm a Lingq user and big fan of your videos. According to earlier videos, you said that spent 5 years learning Russian, but after that it seems like you went through several languages over a shorter period of time. Why did you switch your pace? How were you able to maintain an interest in Russian over such a long period of time? Studying languages for shorter periods of time, do you find you get less out of them?

Thanks!

[vitusk]

I think there's scientific evidence to back up this phenomenon. I remember reading somewhere that in an attempt to help us remember a specific word, our brain blocks some of the similar words we know or something along those lines. Sometimes, it happens to block the very word we're trying to say. That's when you feel the word is right there, on the verge of coming out... but it won't. Hence, why it's easier to remember it after taking a break and letting your brain forget about it.

[SuperPDJAMES]

Hi Steve,
Just started using lingq, excellent application. I'm using lingq to learn French but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. For example: I'm going through some text collecting words like you stated. I reach the French words "La pièce de vie " all together translates as "The living room", but if I select them individually ( not knowing the translation) I get " the, play, from, life" and that's the translation in Lingq . How do you know what collection of words belong together and what don't?

I'm unable to understand the article fully when collecting words individually, its taking me forever to get though one article. Thanks

[byronchandler]

Hi, Steve. That was really informative and impressive. I still have a lot to learn about foreign languages. I have a question: how can you tell if there are similarities and differences between Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian? Please let me know. :-)