4 Things I Wish I Knew About Learning Languages

Learning a new language can seem tricky for many people. I know I could have saved myself so much time had I known the simple things I share in this video.

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[FellowHuman]

1. Learn every day.
2. Become an olfactory learner.
3. Write to your grandma in the language you're learning.
4. Don't have kids; they really take time away from learning languages.

[renegade-spectre]

Main points

1. Be consistent. Make a habit out of learning

2. Find something you like. If you try to force yourself, you won’t get far..so find something to do in your language that is fun for you

3. Figure out where in your schedule language learning fits daily.

4. Don’t burn out. Start small and build up your habits over time. Unless you’re like me and get obsessed over the language you’re learning from day 1…in which case go crazy and spend every waking hour learning ;)


These are 100% on point.

I would also add the following:

5. Don’t feel like you must understand 100% of what you consume in the language. For input to be comprehensible, you just need to understand most of it. If you miss a word or two, that’s ok.

6. In contrast, if you feel like there is a very important piece of information keeping you from understanding the sentence..for example, a grammar point that you are not able to understand from context, stop whatever you’re consuming to do a bit of research on to what that grammar point is about. Trust me, it will be of great help later as you keep finding it.

7. Language learning does not look the same for everyone as mentioned in this video. With this in mind, take everything you see online about language learning, including this comment, with a grain of salt. Just because someone tells you “this is the best way to learn a language” does not make it the case for you….Experiment with different approaches until you find something you can stick to.

8. If you’re anything like me, your process when learning a language evolves the more you know of that language. When you reach intermediate level, what used to work for you as a beginner suddenly stops working or just becomes boring or a chore…..whenever you get this feeling, it does not mean you should drop the language, but perhaps it just means you need to re-evaluate your approach ;)

[SergeLubomudrov]

Well, I learned to ride a bicycle at 46. And ride it (almost) every day since. ;)

[MisterGames]

As soon as you said "Fill yer boots" I IMMEDIATELY has a flashback of the prank call where the girl wanted to hire the demolition company to demolish her school and she told the boss to "fill yer boots"

[Lightdancer]

Siyo, Matt and wado for these tips.

I'm beginning to learn Cherokee, so similar to kanji, part of the process is learning the symbols - Syllabary, and tuning my ear to sound and cadences.
Our teacher's book is journeying into Cherokee, and becoming Lifelong Learners. I use a handy online dictionary to add vocabulary, and jot them down. Ed reminds us to say the syllables as we write them. A recent resource has a little story about each of the 80+ syllables, inspired by a book on learning Japanese kanji - helps with some I was having trouble remembering!
Wado!

[jeffreybarker]

New Matt video! Let’s

The cinematography is on point, Matt. Better all the time—well done. I give this video another 30 seconds before someone posts it on the Dreaming Spanish subreddit. Writing out what you normally do at a certain time per day is super solid and a LOT of beginners always seem to be wondering how some people get multiple hours of input in a day—and you just showed them.

[brolol]

Hey there, Linguistic Comrade! Thanks much for all your work. It's groundbreaking and eye-opening. Kudos from Belarus 😍🤩☺

[philipdavis]

I've often wondered why this sort of advice isn't the first thing taught in every language class. From school, and over the years with occasional evening classes I've dabbled in languages, but nobody ever gave me simple, straightforward advice like this. I guess if on day one of Japanese they said 'its going to take you 1, 000 hours to be able to ask someone the way to a shop, and 4, 000 hours to be able to chat to a girl in a bar', nobody would do it. But it took years (and various YTers), to really get a grasp of what it takes to learn a language.

[garethtian]

very grounded and doable advice, thanks for your sharing. By the way, I would like to talk you in learning Chinese.

[danielarivera]

if acquisition vs conscious studying and learning through stories, at an appropriate level of comprehension & without too much focus on grammar, are the way to learn a language, then how come the vast majority of commercial programs, and even courses at specialized language schools, follow the same -bits of grammar here and there and lets pretend immersion- model? I call it the breadcrumb model and I despise it. I don't get how a system that so blatantly contradicts the scientific evidence is so widespread. It's like they are trying to be something in the middle of immersion and grammar, and failing at both. A model that has not changed in decades: I did english in the 90's, tried french around 10 years ago, now struggling with german, and all of them followed the same method 😠🤮.
I personally see the value of studying grammar, bc I like understanding stuff in general, but not scattered bits, not the breadcrumbs please, I want the backbone, the general concepts and patterns that give a language its character. Don't give me a piece of a decoration here, some glazed particle there, a tiny piece of torte bread there and ask me to use those concepts as if I was the baker. Don't give the full wedding cake with three floors and complex decor either. Let's start with a simple vanilla torte, but the whole thing please. I'm learning german, my second foreign language, and this is how I feel. I've taken courses at two universities and three german language schools... in Germany!!! and they all are breadcrumbers. Example: for the life of me that i could not get why adjective endings changed all the time, no one explained the system in general terms, it was always tables and more tables that my brain kept rejecting despite of how much i tried to force feed my brain with them. Luckily I found german with Laura website and her all in 1 declension chart; that clarified a lot, now I feel I have a better scaffolding to build upon. Of course that doesn't mean I can use german declension naturally, but at least made it make sense, which makes it less scary. Now my next step is finding content that I like at the level I understand right now... that will be a challenge.

[SimplyChinese]

BTW, how’s your Chinese? Can you shock a native yet? (Just kidding!)😂😂😂