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Thanks, Mihail. You are spot on with your comment although at the time I did not think of it as a monastic journey but perhaps that is where my interest in monasticism really began!

The past tenses in Spanish can be difficult. I remember it well! Yes, I have some advice. Firstly, try and stop thinking in terms of those '12 tenses' (indicative is a mood by the way). You are making it harder on yourself than it really is. The verbs in the language I documented in the High Arctic conjugated in several hundred different ways. If you start to ponder too consciously all the permutations, you end up not being able to get the words out. You should try and simplify it. Where tenses are concerned in Spanish, the main difficulty is the past. Think of it this way: (1) imperfect -description in the past; (2) preterite - an event completed in the past at a specific moment; (3) pluperfect 'I had played' - no different to English; (4) perfect - happened in the past but it is still ongoing. That is a slight oversimplification. Try and not translate from the English. You don't want to be in a situation where you feel like you want to say 'I was' and then start scrambling through all the permutations. Remember instead a phrase such as Estaba en París cuando comenzó la revolución, then you will get the sense of when describing something in the past you need to use the imperfect. One effective way of getting used to these differences is to read widely in the language. The feedback I got from Spaniards and Colombians (when I did fieldwork in Colombia) was that I used to use the perfect too much. I tended to say he comido when it should have been comí. In South American Spanish at least, my impression was that the perfect was rather seldom used. As always, practice makes perfect. Just keep talking (and try and stop translating in your mind) and these problems will sort themselves out over time. Good luck!

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 wow. Thank you for the lengthy response it means a lot coming from a true professional like you. I will definitely apply this to my learning journey. It’s kind of the same deal with learning basic phrases, right? Getting the vocabulary (but conjugations in this case) in context, and then being able to understand why it’s happening without directly memorizing tables like a robot. I can’t explain it as well as you of course, but that’s how I kind of take it. Getting used to the patterns as you would say :) Do you have a email or other way I could message you besides CZcams comments if I have any questions about Spanish in the future?

@@believerrrrr Actually, I think it is different with the vocabulary. I think memorising the 5 phrases/words each day is really important (in the manner I discuss in the video). With all language learning there has to be a bit of memorising and this is where it comes in. I really swear by these aide-memoire cards which I carry around in my back pocket. Once you have 40 or 50 of them, you should then revise what you have learnt going over the simple phrases and working up to the harder ones. If you do this in the right way, it does not feel like a chore. I have these in my back pocket all the time. When you are standing in a queue or on the Underground perhaps, just take them out and have a quick look. As you say, learning and memorising should never be in the manner of a robot. If you learn things in context, it does not feel robotic as you remember the occasion when you came across the word or the phrase. Am pleased to help. You can contact me through my website: stephenpaxleonard.com

Thanks, that is an interesting comment. The answer to your question is yes, sometimes. Can I remember the verbatim? No, or almost never. I remember the first time I dreamt in Russian, Norwegian and Polar Eskimo and could in part at least remember part of the conversation. I am not sure if that is unusual or not. Most of the time, we have enough trouble just remembering the dreams let alone the conversations.

Thanks very much. I am pleased to hear that you found it useful :)

Спасибо большое, Люля! Это очень интересный и важный комментарий. Я не подумал об аналогии с йогой, но то, что вы говорите, абсолютно верно. Flow, да, это очень важно. Мне следовало бы поговорить об этом подробнее. В следующий раз!

Je vous en prie! Je suis tout à fait d'accord.

Well, as long as you understood when I said Eu não falo português! 😂 Good luck and don’t give up!

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 😂😂 Thank you! I won't give up!

Вы научите меня сейчас русский мат!😂

Я лехко вас научу я Паэт У меня 4 кини я футурист!) 1. ХУЕТЯТИНА 2. ХУЕБОРАБОРА 3. Драздроперма ( это совецкое имя) 4. Заебло Послушайте песни Егора Летова (Гражданская оборона) там таке есть.)

They were Christianised about a hundred years ago.

Спасибо! Произношение русского языка очень сложное. Мне еще многому предстоит научиться!

Food for thought!

I am pleased!

My pleasure. I hope it will be helpful.

Good point. Perhaps there is such a thing as perfect synonymy after all?!

Language is always a reflection of culture. The Sami have a great number of words for different types of reindeer. They need these words to distinguish between males, females, geldings, calves etc when in the herd. To the non-herder they all look the same, but they are actually differentiated on the basis of age, sex, markings etc. The question of whether language determines culture is more problematic!

Thanks very much. I really appreciate your kind words. All my life, I have been told that I should be on the radio...Haha. I have been overwhelmed by the response to the video. I had no idea really that this would be so interesting to people. I thought I was just stuck in my own little thought bubble. In my experience, my impression of how languages sound changes once I start to learn them. I used to have all kinds of preconceptions as to how Arabic sounded. I spent 7 months studying Arabic each day and came to love many of those sounds which previously I thought were terribly harsh.

Thanks very much for your comments and interesting feedback. I started out with French and German. German was my first linguistic love! Had it not been for an excellent German teacher at school, I would have probably not got into this. You probably realise this already but 95% of the so called 'polyglots' on CZcams are not polyglots at all. They have just memorised a few phrases in a dozen languages and are trying to sell you something. The truth is that nobody speaks 20 languages because you can only speak (fluently) a language if you use it on a regular basis. There is no context or job where you need to use 20 language on a regular basis. At least, I don't know of one. If you know of one, then please tell me. Haha. The only possible exception to the above is Richard Francis Burton who was a hero of mine! He spoke a great number of languages but most of them were very closed related. That is another thing to watch out for. Scandinavians who say they speak 3 or 4 languages when they mean they speak one but understand more or less two others that are very closely related.

I understand. It is important to make mistakes, but also important not to get lazy. You have to make mistakes in order to learn from them. Go to any beach and watch how 2 year old toddlers with different native tongues just start chatting away to one another. It is remarkable to observe. That is what we, as adults, have to try and reproduce. I understand it is not easy.

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 When I do a conversation class with people at my level (maybe A2), it does remind me of a bunch of kids on the playground trying to figure out how to convey an idea, so excited to share something but sometimes missing a word or trying to figure out a different way to say the same thing. That's fun!

@@flashgordon6510 Oh absolutely. To be a good language learner you have to think on your feet. You go through phases where everything has to be paraphrased. A poor language learner simply gives up because they don't know the word. Work round it, rephrase it and if that doesn't work, rephrase it again. That in itself is part of the learning process.

Possibly the diction :) Amen.

Хаха. Не за что!

That's great! I am glad that it was helpful. Language (s) never gets boring. Good luck:)

Thanks very much. I didn't notice this!

Thank you very much for your kind comments. I am genuinely touched. Learning Malagasy is a fantastic achievement and must have made for some terrific fieldwork. I am ashamed to say I know more about the local trees than the language!

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 I think you've nothing to be ashamed of, with everything you've managed to fit in your brain! For a while, I thought maybe "baobab" was one malagasy word that everyone knew, but it turns out to have come from Latin. Here's one, anyway- one species is called "reniala" which means 'mother (reni) of the forest (ala)'

Oh, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

You are very welcome. I hope you find it useful.

Большое спасибо. Для меня это такой комплимент. Не могу сказать, что русский язык мне давался легко. Это мой первый славянский язык, и я учил его самостоятельно, используя методологию, которую объясняю в видео. Я люблю этот язык, и мне еще многому нужно научиться :)

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 Вы в видео говорить про запоминания слов с помощью методики интервального повторения? Расскройте подробно полную методику которую вы используете для запоминание слов, вы очень много слов используете в русском языке даже больше, чем большинство носителей.

My pleasure. Learning a language is absolutely like stepping into another world. Actually, when you learn another language a good language learner at least effectively adopts a different persona. A different language requires a different voice, different mannerisms and different gestures. When I speak French for example, I am much more expressive with my gestures than, say, when I speak a Germanic language. I don't do this consciously. It is just part of what is for me at least the French way of speaking. These things are subtle but important.

Glad you enjoyed the videos. I'll have a look to see if subtitles can be added retrospectively. In the meantime, if you are interested in Greenlandic and such stories you should check out my book 'Some Ethnolinguistic Notes on Polar Eskimo'. Thanks and all the best.

@@stephenpaxleonard6011Yes, you can add subtitles after posting the video. I do that to my videos.

Thank you. You are very kind :)

You are very kind, Arne. Thank you!

Thanks, Greg. Language and culture are intertwined at so many different levels. Enjoy your trip to Italy. Italian - what a great language! Like Spanish, with Italian you can make some good progress early on.

Actually, I don't like that question very much! Haha. CZcams is full of fake polyglots who claim they speak 20 languages but can only say 'Hi, how are you?' in each one. I take the opposite view. I only say I speak a language if I have a high degree of fluency in a language. I am comfortable speaking 6 or 7 languages, I have lectured in 5 but actually understand about 9. In my experience, anyone who says they speak say 20 languages is a fake. What non-language learners don't understand is you can't learn a language, tick a box and then walk away and say you have 'learnt' it. In order to say you 'speak' a language, you have to actually use it. There are almost no jobs, professions or contexts where you need to use more than 5 languages on a regular basis. That is the truth of the matter.

Yep, maybe he used AI to do it--I'm seeing more and more of that esp on shorts.

Well, first I have to confess to never having learnt a tonal language. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that I have avoided them as I feel tonality adds another level of complexity. Still, there are plenty of good reasons to learn Mandarin and don't be deterred. There is no right answer to your first question because I think it depends from person to person. In a way, I feel as if my advice re: developing the acoustic perceptual awareness applies even more to a tonal language. But, it is also slightly different as you are not just trying to internalise the phonology at a sentential level but also for each lexeme. My advice is keep listening to Mandarin as often as you can and start writing words down (but surely you have to learn script first?...) once you feel like you can sort of hum the language. You know that feeling when you have a piece of music in your head and you can't get rid of it, but actually you don't know the words. That is what you want to aim for with Mandarin. I have no idea how long that will take. The specific thing with Mandarin and its four tone system is that you need to 'feel' how each word with all the various permutations of tones sounds and feels to you. That is not an easy task as I am assuming your mother tongue is English. In the case of Mandarin, I don't think it is so much 'when do you start writing words down' (for I imagine that comes much later) but more when do you reach for the phrase book? Early on, you can try and memorise some basic phrases and see if when you listen to Mandarin you can identify those configurations of tones. I don't have any specific advice for Mandarin as I am not a speaker, but as I say I think everything I said in the film about developing auditory memory and acoustic perceptual awareness applies even more in this case. Good luck!

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 Thanks so much!

@@theweatherdog1816 Sorry when I said ‘script’, I meant of course characters!

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 No worries. When I said 'words' I actually meant characters myself. But thanks again for taking the time to respond to my comment so quickly and thoroughly. It's such a breath of fresh air to come across a CZcamsr who isn't trying to sell me something or get me to subscribe to their channel but is instead trying to genuinely spread their knowledge for its own sake.

@@theweatherdog1816 I think learning Mandarin is a marvellous endeavour. The sounds of the language, the universe of iconic pictograms, everything is so alien to us. If you get really fluent, I think you will feel like you have almost developed another Self. But that process will be so gradual, you probably won't even notice it. Enjoy and let me know how you progress.

Well, I said it is relatively’ easy, but ‘very difficult to master’! Stick with it! You will get there:)

That’s interesting. I am learning Church Slavonic at the moment. All my comments in this video relate to modern languages that are spoken on an everyday basis. With liturgical and ancient languages the process is quite different because the objectives are different. I am guessing you are not planning on speaking Church Latin with your friends?!:) If you are studying these languages for the purpose of reading manuscripts etc., then none of my comments in the film apply. I would study grammar, vocabulary and the language in the more traditional way.

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 Thank you, Mr. Leonard. You said what I expected to hear. No, I don't speak Church Latin with my friends. But my boss is fluent in it. So since I proofread for his company and always attend the Traditional Latin Mass, I understand some Latin I learned at church. I want to learn Attic Greek to read Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus in it. Years ago, when an Aristotle scholar tried to teach me some Greek. Sadly, it frustrated me enough that I needed to quit.

@@williammcenaney1331 It is a noble objective to learn a language in order to read an author in the original language. I strongly approve and wish you the best of luck!

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 You're very kind, Mr. Leonard. Thank you. Years ago, when I listened ineffectively, I felt angry with myself because I misinterpreted what other people said. So I hope and pray that learning Greek will and Ancient Greek History will help me see the world in something like the way Plato and Aristotle saw it. The the older I grow, the more I long to know eternal truths. God knows that the ancients were much wiser than I can become. Please read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations if you haven't read that book. He must have been the most virtuous man in Ancient Rome.

@@williammcenaney1331 I read it many years ago. I will certainly revisit it. Thank you!

Bingo!

@@stephenpaxleonard6011 😂😂😂

My pleasure. Thanks for listening!

И вам спасибо!

Thanks very much! I wish you the best of luck with your language learning. Have fun:)

That is a very interesting comment. To be honest, I had no idea that my pronunciation of et cetera was unconventional. Norwegian is actually my second language, so. perhaps that is the reason. Haha! Norwegian is very interesting because more than any other language I know it 'interferes'with my British English accent...I only need to spend about five minutes in Norway and I am suddenly no longer voicing my 's' when I need to speak English!