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I just don't understand how someone can spend months or even years in another country and not even try to be at least decently conversational in the country's main language.

If I was on the phone with Metatron I would immediately think he was a native from somewhere in the UK.

My ancestots came from Sicily and Germsny. I was born here. I am neither Sicilian nor German. I am American. AND NORTHERN ITALIANS WILL NEVER BE SICILIAN. AND ITS THEIR PROBLEM.

I'm half Sicilian and American, but my father didn't teach me any Italian. Surname Alessi, and I was wondering if I have a family history, will I be welcomed in places like Palermo?

I learned Latin from 8 years old. It was beautiful Church Latin . When I studied in in college later it was flat sounding devoid of any musical tones of the former . I can still recite prayers in that Language.

Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiwicz, zamieszkały Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody. czcams.com/video/AfKZclMWS1U/video.html

I'd say two months is a very reasonable time to learn some languages... BUT. This is provided that you have some experience in language learning, and speak other languages which are related to the new one. My focus of study is Slavic languages / historical linguistics, and I have reached decent communicative capability quickly, but I never *really* started from scratch. Knowing several related languages, plus the historical linguistic background, means I was already somewhat familiar with the language before I "really" started to learn it. And I exploited the heck out of this prior knowledge - my established method of language learning involves comparison to other languages I know, whenever possible. Consciously. And this is something I very much encourage when learning a language related to what you (or your students) already know. Then I took up Hungarian and found myself basically having to relearn how to learn a language. But even there I'm not starting *entirely* from scratch, because I had (though very limited) immersion with it, so even though I couldn't form a sentence beyond "hello my name is...", i still had some vocabulary and a pretty good grasp on pronunciation.

a dialect of Latin? But every Romance language developed from Latin, so how would Sicillian be different from the others in that regard?

Idk if you’ll see this Metatron but I’m curious how different a dialect has to be before it becomes a different language

Great explanation.

"I don't know why she said egg" was pretty funny lmao.

Can you explain in more detail how immersion language learning works, Metatron? I don't understand it. I've never experienced it, and never had money to travel anywhere. But I used to work with a lot of Hispanic people, and I only understood a few words here and there when they spoke Spanish and only because I had looked up those words or was told what they mean in English. For example, I was told that "buenos dias" means good day, "buenas noches" good evening, "hola, como estas," hello how are you. I was told or looked up the translation into English of these sinple phrases and so could recognize them. BUT when these guys were having normal conversations it all sounded like gibberish!! I didn't understand a thing. So how exactly could I just "pick up" the meaning when I have no idea what any of the words mean? No one told me and I haven't looked up the translation in a dictionary, so how can I just know? That is what frustrates me because a foreign language sounds like gibberish so I don't see how I could just figure out the meaning by listening. I've never experienced immersion, like I said. I mean if he's pointing at an object and says a word, I get how you can figure that out. But usually it's not that obvious... and I find most (non anglo) native speakers don't want to bother translating for you or teaching you. If you don't understand they will just speak English to you. If they don't know enough English they'll just use a friend or child as translator. When you're a child I get it because you're still learning the words for everything for the first time. But as an adult, it's different, my brain is already set to English. So are you saying you can just learn the language by being immersed, even without ever having someone translate for you or look up the words in a dictionary? Or do you mean immersion plus studying the words and translations? Cuz that would make more sense to me. Also, I find in general I learn much better through reading and writing and not by listening. So for me, trying to learn French, I can understand the written words but not spoken. And I have no idea what to say in conversation beyond "hello how are you"... bonjour comment ca va. Lol. But I do know a lot of French words and can recognize them in written form. I can understand some spoken but much less and only if they're talking so slow and clearly.

I got it in Italian and English but in Sicilian I had a face of WTF what did he say? Amazing 😃

I listen to people speak Spanish every day and I understand 1 out of every 9 words

The economic influence of China would be countered by the combined financial power of at least eight of the other countries in the top ten for GDP. If given a choice between voting for English or for Mandarin to use as a business language, the USA, Germany, India, the UK, France, Brazil, Italy and Canada would all actively prefer English. I don't know which language the Japanese would opt for but they are the only other major country in question. That, along with geographical and cultural considerations, lead me to think that English will remain in the top position for at least most of this century.

I think some people feel awkward because they think it sounds like a caricature of the language they're learning and they don't want to be offensive to the native speakers by pronouncing as a caricature. This is misguided though because almost certainly your language teacher has not assigned you a racist caricature of the language they themselves speak. Rather, it is the learner's own bias that suggests correct pronunciation is a caricature in the first place.

The first type of person must have been really common in California because everything is named in Spanish but pronounced as if the Spanish language didn't exist.

Önge will be the only written or spoken language in the world by 2031.

I heard some audio of mainland Chinese Air Traffic Control talking to North Korean pilots. It was all in English.

My wife's dad was from Palermo and later this year I will be taking her back to look for family. I speak some Italian, but I see I have a lot of work to do! Thanks for the video.

Ave. Caesar. Murituri. Te. Salutant........

native english speaker, intermediate italian. i understood maybe less than 5% of the sicilian, 90% of the italian, and obviously 100% of the english

If I'm required to have a native/trained speaker, then I should just stop and seek to do something else. Being forced to have someone else to learn something is a *massive* barrier to entry.

ma tagliati sta barba e sti capelli niri niri

I wonder if it has something to do with American extraversion / small talk culture? I mean, I've never been to America but I've been told people there will just chat up random strangers. So I suppose they'd probably take it more personally when they hear people next to them talking and they can't join in. Idk just a hypothesis. I also know that if I were in that situation where someone told me to speak their language when they weren't even part of the conversation, I'd straight up tell them it wasn't meant for them. I really don't see why a random stranger public should be entitled to partaking in a conversation I have with someone else. If I wanted to be extra rude I might even tell the random stranger that I just didn't want people eavesdropping. Obviously if someone *is* part of your group, it's rude to exclude them from the conversation. But a random stranger? It's really none of their business.

Metatron, yes she’s has a Brazilian accent. That’s pretty acceptable and understandable, specially considering her mother language being Brazilian Portuguese. Galician pronunciation is closer to Brazilian Portuguese than to Portuguese of Portugal.

Well, that had me wheezing from laughter xD on a serious note tho, where did that "stereotypical italian accent" even come from?

Precisely, it is easier because it's formal. A lot of words are just transplanted from italian and internationally understandable, latin-based specific terms. In daily language it will be much harder. I speak friulian

what is a "difficult" word, anyway? I've seen/heard people express the opinion that people who use "big" words are stuck up or something, but I just really don't think of it in those terms. Even in my brief experience as a foreign language teacher, I found myself struggling to tell beforehand whether the words I used would be difficult for my student, because they were just normal everyday words for me. I suppose a word might be objectively difficult if it is very similar to another word in the same language, but beyond that..?

hot take: elves do exist but they don't have a specific "elvish language" they just use the language of the human societies around them OR, their language is not something a human could possibly learn because it involves the use of bodily organs that humans just don't have (perhaps with frequencies outside our hearing range or something)

I thought this video was about chess...

tbh, I *am* one of those people who don't want to even start talking until they reach a certain level, but... it has worked for me. But like, i wasn't just waiting for that day to come. I read a lot of books in the language, I listened to music in the language, I paid attention to how words inflected. And eventually, the speaking just came. Some notes: I did learn the pronunciation rules first, and most of the languages I speak are closely related both to eachother and to my native languages (i have multiple - two official languages + 2 or 3 dialects, i'm not sure whether or not i should count one as native but i was daily immersed from ages 3 to 14). I also tend to get really immersed in good stories, so I will think of them even when I'm not currently reading them, essentially "write fanfiction" in my head, in the same language that i read it in, so it's not like I don't get any practice in forming sentences, it just happens out of anyone else's view. Listening to music also goes with singing along, or singing to myself, I always check the full lyrics of a song if i don't understand it. I've also been told my pronunciation is much better when singing, I think it's because when I sing I'm trying to copy the original singer *exactly*.

Curious what you'd say to Lydia Machova's language learning methods. I'm not going to post a link since you've said you don't click links in comments, but you can easily find her talks on youtube, she's had several, now i've only listened to them in Slovak but the English versions are also up. And from her talks that i've listened to, I found myself agreeing very much, a lot of her methods and principles are what I've used myself and (as someone who also speaks and has studied multiple languages) had me thinking "yeah, exactly!".

Note that it also depends what you mean by "learn". Learn how to draw in five days, does it mean "become an expert in five days" or "become good enough at drawing that you are decent at it" - i'd be more inclined to think the latter. Same with learning a language in a short time. Though of course, from people advertising this stuff I'd expect more clarity on what they actually offer. I've also seen some people in linguistic and language learning circles say things like "you can never be fluent" and arguing with them because they evidently have a different idea of what fluency means. You can replace "become fluent" with "learn" if you wish. What does it mean, exactly? The people who say you can never be fluent seem to have this idea of fluency, that it means mastering everything there is to know about the language, which is unachievable even for native speakers - and therefore completely useless as a term, because you can't actually use it to describe anyone's skill level. I think fluency just means being good enough at a language that you can comfortably use it to discuss any topic at the same speed and detail as you could in your native language. (this definition ensures that poor communication due to unfamiliarity with the topic discussed is not a problem in determinging language skill. Re: talent, well I don't know about you, but I've seen people (a particular example that stands out in my memory came from a language teacher, even!) claim that, if you don't have talent you will never be able to learn a language no matter how much you try. Which seems to be the sort of mindset he is responding to. Often in our overzealousness to correct one wrong, we go too far in the opposite direction and end up in the other wrong. Or sometimes we might have a balanced view but don't get it across clearly enough. Cheers.

It sounds very much like Italian, which makes sense. I learned Latin in a German speaking country. Our Latin sounded very different. I suppose it had a German accent.

I cannot fathom how anyone could not "get" that there was "Latin" (classical Latin), and "latin accents" (a plethora of varyingly different "vulgar latins" across space and time.)...

What you say at 5:00 is what I try to tell people who are using exclusively work books and grammar books to learn languages. Usually however they group up and tell me I dont know what im talk about, while the same community asks how I can learn all the languages I am learning and to that level.

I kind of agree however Japanese do not think that way… especially because in standard Japanese the language in discussion is NOT precise, it is vague… due to politeness. Therefore tge only way a japanese is sure to know what you mean is through pitch.Apart from obvious social situations like hashi when eating at a restaurant…. a japanese will smile at you, not say anything or in some cases praise you, but think you are a total idiot. Amongst friends though you would be correct, pitch isnt important because the japanese being used is more informal, even slang and friends really wont care what you sound like. Ive lived here in Japan for 32 years now, so I feel I can speak on this topic with a high degree of confidence and experience. Also Europeans, especially Italians will go out of their way to try and understand you. Not so much Japanese people who simply enjoy being amused.

Great video! I like your balanced, intelligent approach. I have lived in Japan for 32 years now and I have to say that Matts Japanese is indeed perfect in the sense that if you hide his face and merely listen to him speaking… you would not know that he was not Japanese. So in that sense … his Japanese speaking ability is indeed perfect.

I disagree with you on two points: 1: "You can learn to draw in 5 days" being somehow disrespectful to artists. This might just be boiling down to being pedantic about the words being used, but "learning to draw" and "mastering the art of drawing" are two completely different things. People who are amazing artists are not going to be offended at someone learning the skills to draw in a short amount of time. In much the same way that learning basic addition and subtraction qualifies you as "learning how to do math," it's not going to take away the achievements of people spending their lives learning and researching complex mathematical concepts. To put it another way, "learning how to draw" doesn't mean you've reached master level. In fact, it's the opposite. It means you've reached level one. It means you've gotten a hold on the foundations and are now ready to begin your journey into learning the skill. 2: Talent being important to learning a language. I disagree with this. The point that was being made was that talent _isn't a requirement_ for learning. Obviously it helps immensely, but it's not a requirement. So he's correct in stating that talent doesn't matter. While talent can absolutely aid the quality of learning, talent, by itself, isn't gatekeeping your ability to learn in the first place. For instance, lets say you wanted to visit a restaurant downtown but you don't own a car. Not owning a car isn't preventing you from going to that restaurant. Obviously, if you had one it would make traveling way easier, but just because you can get their faster with a car doesn't mean you can't get there _at all_ without one. Also, on an unrelated side-note: I never would have guessed that you're natively Italian had you not said anything. You sound completely native, imo.

ah sleep learning, makes me thing of that one episode from dexter's laboratory.

I want to learn it since I’m getting the passport by descent and I like the language but I do feel Spanish is more useful in the USA. I’ve been studying for a year now and can understand anime but struggle speaking

Sou carioca e acho que sim, o s soa um pouco como x mas nao tanto. Quando se quer imitar o sotaque carioca se carrega demais no x mas pouca gente fala assim no dia a dia

Anyone who said they didn't know you are Italian were either being polite or were thick as a plank.lol.Not insulting you,you are actually quite pleasant to listen to,I love accents and you are far more agreeable to my ears than Americans from a certain famous big city.You can fly a car,just not "fluently".lol. I can always tell people who didn't learn American English by immersion,they tend to be very stiff and formal and often sound British not American. Also some expressions mean something different in a different context.

I mean, you do always sound like an Italian, but I've had a lot of Italian Canadian friends who grew up here and I would consider them native speakers, but I can immediately tell that they have an Italian background. And you can pretty much always tell someone's ethnic background in Canada even if someone was born here and never left here. They're native, but they have other linguistic influences

Wow I can actually understand some of this stuff!

I think the Longobards almost spoke like this after the first hundred years they were here ..

Sono di Genova, ma mia nonna era di Biella, quindi l'Occitano mi sembra abbastanza comprensibile ma forse solo perché i suoni sono molto simili al Piemontese.

As an Argentinian, I could barely understand the blogger. That example might be the worst case of study ever.