Language learning is hard. Be harder.
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- čas přidán 11. 06. 2024
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Welcome! I am an aspiring polyglot with a degree in Linguistics. I speak English, Spanish, French, and Esperanto, and I'm currently working on Thai. I make videos twice a week to talk about my methods of learning languages and to try to help others make language learning faster, easier, and more fun.
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You nodding your head and smiling has totally made my day!😂😂
It's so true though lol!
I feel attacked. LOL I like my silent box. Tu as raison bien sûr ! The 30 DRYC has been very helpful.
This video is such a mood wow! Thank you for this!
2:28 I'm literally gonna make this a daily affirmation 🙌🥰
And I don't know Portuguese but when you said GOOD! I could've sworn you said BOOM! And I was like wow, that's so appropriate lol
Do your thing Fingtam, do your thing 👏👏👏
Thank you! Yes, I never thought about it, but the Portuguese word for good was doubly appropriate in this context! 😆
Thanks for your videos! They have helped me to learn Spanish and inspired me to make my own videos ☺️
Not gonna lie, as a native Brazilian who actually teaches the language to foreigners, when you started speaking my tongue outta nowhere the only thing I could think of was "holy shit that's actually pretty f****** GREAT. NO, that's excellent!" I mean I got your point about the accent but that's not bad at all considering all I can pay attention to is how confident you are (and rightly so, I may add). These tips are gold. Thanks!
I'm absolutely fearless! Because I enjoy it! If you're really interested in your target language and your language exchange partners see your enthousiasm they'll happily interact with you instead of akwardly. I also see it as a challenge making friends. In a weird way getting to know someone starts to override the challenge of applying the language. Which is a great method I believe, because in the end that's what language is about, communication and connection. I'm already thinking about the time I'll meet my language exchange friends. That's the price for me and why I don't fear making mistakes!
Excellent! You have the right attitude!
This might be a step beyond these tips, but I saw this on Instagram. She would say right away "I don't speak English" (in your target language) this is to make sure they don't automatically switch to English when you're trying to speak to them.
Haha I don’t like to recommend lying, but it’s not a bad idea to adamantly stick to the target language regardless of what language they respond in.
I am Brazilian and I didn't understand of what a Portuguese friend spoke for two weeks. Sometimes I asked him to speak in English because it was easier to understand it.
I understood everything he said in this video, so I guess you are already better in Brazilian Portuguese than most Portuguese! Hahahahahaha
“Accent” in Portuguese was a blast. 😂
Great video as always, Aaron! I love the thumbnail too, lol!
There are tons of people hiding in "silent boxes"... many Chinese learners of English fall into this category (including tons of ESL students I had and even my wife back when we were still in China). If you are in the target country and an extrovert (as I was when I was in China), this method of just speaking with everyone as much as possible and not worrying about the mistakes can be very powerful--it was for me.
That said, there is also something to be said for automatic language growth and having a good silent period at first while you assimilate lots of comprehensible input as Krashen and other scholars recommend. With my Thai learning, although I have been speaking a lot more than the ALG method would suggest for someone as beginner as myself, I am focusing on input much more than I did when I learned Chinese, and you know what... I am learning faster! It's crazy. I'm not even in Thailand!
I think people learning from books and living outside the region where the target language is spoken speaking the language as much as possible first might not be a good fit for many people. I think it's important that people also realize that taking in a healthy amount of input first in the form of listening/audio is also a very good and totally legit place to start (and in fact, it may even be better depending on the exact situation).
Yes, none of this should be understood as diminishing the value of input. Input is also essential. But at some point you need to start speaking. There is not shortcut around it.
@@FingtamLanguages Agreed.
This is wonderful. Thank you so much
Good advice. Look at how babies/kids learn to speak. They just go for it, totally fearlessly.
True! Babies are the boldest of language learners!
That Portuguese killed me! haha amazing
Your Portuguese sounds great, honestly! ;-)
Haha that’s quite the surprise! I’ve never really studied it
Thanks for the advice. This helps me. 😁🖑
Glad I can help!
Good man. Much appreciated
Thank you! 😃
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the language struggle that goes on in language exchanges. You both want to practice a foreign language, and their level is higher and slowly you just end up spending more time speaking English to them than they do speaking their language to you. Do you have any strategies to combat this?
thanks man, you help me to learn english.
Nice try on the portuguese, the Spanish accent is very clear, but it was good!
And awesome video btw
1 minute a day doesn't sound like much but I'd be stressing out about that 1 minute all day long.
Give the challenge a go for 5 days, and you'll see how easy it really is!
It's actually easy to end up making a 2 min video without realizing
Great video. Reminds me of Cobra Kai but for languages.
As a Brazil native Portuguese speaker yes, I laughed. Lol anyways, these tips on how to learn a language are awesome
I have seen one set specifically made for Esperanto but for some reason the number 29 had text [music] covering it - I'm thinking to make up some topic for that day if I don't find the actual question.
Your portuguese sounds awesome! Bom trabalho!
Haha. That’s surprising but thanks!
Parabéns pela pronúncia do português. Como falante nativo, eu consegui entender tudo sem precisar das legendas. 👍
Can flash cards
Je suis rémercie, Aaron, encore une fois. Dans une vidéo précédente, votre inspiration m'a aidé commencer avec iTalki. C'était horrible au début. Je vais mieux et c'était juste comme tu l'as décrit. Très horrible et très fabuleux tout en même temps.
Oui, c’est toujours le cas ! 😃
I have a question, Fingtam Languages do u know bout Duolingo Events?
No way your channel wenderful my big friend wenderful teacher, by the way I from Brazil my big friend
Damn, confusing "peine" for "pene" must've been really embarrassing and awkward hahahahaha
Yes it was! lol
I disagree that you can't learn a language with your mouth shut, well...depending on what you mean by 'learn'. Obviously speaking is it's own skill and yeah, you gotta speak to get good at speaking but as far as understanding/comprehending(99% of what it means to 'acquire' a language), a language can totally be 'acquired" in silence.(in my opinion, it is the optimal way to learn/comprehend/understand/acquire a foreign language) Otherwise mute people wouldn't understand language and of course they do, independent of their inability to speak and even like dogs understand "Wanna do for a walk?!" even though they don't understand the individual words, they decipher what is being uttered through context and intonation.(a la Comprehensible Input/Krashen) As the Dalai Lama once said: "When you talk, you are only repeating what you know; but when you listen, you learn something new." Now I know what the Scottish flag is for🤣🤣
Great points!
@@ComprehensibleThai Thank you!
@@nathanmcgarvey6613 I think the key distinction is in the learning method. Assuming you're learning through books and will only get audio input if you engage others in conversation, then what Aaron has said is 100% true. I think that is the most common way people try to learn languages, and to that extent what Aaron says here is very relevant. However, to your point, the most effective way to learn is not the traditional way but rather via audio input, i.e. listening, and if you are going the listening route then the whole topic is moot point (no pun intended). It is not an issue in the natural route, because you naturally start producing when you are ready and do not suffer from so many confidence issues because you have a fairly decent idea of what the language is like already.
@@ComprehensibleThai Oh yeah that's fair enough. If you're not well off to have internet/computer etc then sure you're going to have to rely solely on books and whoever you can speak to learn the target language to improve. Aaron's point is then indeed relevant to those people(although I don't hear it being illustrated that way but to give the benefit of the doubt)...but he says that in a YT video. If you can watch his video, then it's not the biggest stretch to say you should be able to find resources like native audio/videos online for one's target language etc.
That's not really my point since I still don't know what Aaron means by 'learning' a language,(let me know what you think) it's not my opinion that audio input/listening is optimal(that's so broad I don't even know what you mean, that wasn't my point, I was talking about whether one should output or not while building up one's mental infrastructure of one's target language and to what degree.
I don't know what you mean by "if you are going the listening route...", any level in a foreign language beyond ordering food at a restaurant requires listening ability either consciously(listening to the language deliberately in an effort to parse phonemes and decode inter-connected speech) or unconsciously.(speaking from day 1 and natives talk to you like a baby just so you understand all the words)
What is the 'natural route'? What is not an issue in the 'natural route'? I agree that already having good infrastructure of the language will help you get by better(by the sheer fact of being at a higher level)
@@nathanmcgarvey6613 Yeah, there are so many different methods and styles out there that speaking in shorthand can be confusing. Honestly, I do not know all of the styles out there myself. I am talking about ALG and comprehensible input... which is what I thought you were getting at. But really any listening based method (comprehensible input, mass immersion, a hybrid of the two, or some other listening-based input as the basis at first) is going to be your best bet in my opinion.
I guess you are an academic since you are so into specific definitions? Honestly, I've found language learning just doesn't require that level of analysis. It is a basic human function. I was telling that to my ESL students in China all the time. They would say stuff like "I'm not smart enough to learn English" or "I just don't have language talent." Then they would say "You are so smart for being able to learn Chinese." To that I would show or tell them about a wrestling friend of mine, a Chinese dude who of course spoke fluent Chinese. I would ask them, "Does this guy look smart to you?" They would say "No." I would say, "You're right, but he is fluent in Chinese. Does that mean he must be smart?" After some reflection on other examples I would give them they usually got the point... language learning is like walking, it's just what humans do. The trick is to get the conditions right, and honestly that isn't all that tough either.
That reminds me of an AJATT guy who saw Aaron's interview with me and commented that my method did not seem "sophisticated." LOL! That is the point... language learning doesn't have to be sophisticated. It's a basic human function... That's why I speak in broad generalities a lot when it comes to language theory. There just isn't any need to get a PhD in it. There just isn't.
Tsarelìri arusikx irayo nìtxan! Lu ngay fìtxan! || Thank you for that video! It is so true!
Thanks for the comment! (I don't know how to say that in Na'vi lol)
Hola ¿qué tal? -Tal y fulano. ¿Cómo? Nada. Solo una broma. ¿Cómo te va? Así así, y tú? Un día de maravilla, otro día, la misma mierda. Jajaja. Vale. Oye, me llamo Merréll, y ¿Cómo te llamas tú? Aaron. Encantado. Igual. ¿Eres norteamericano? Sí. ¿Me cuele el accento? No, no, no... Hablas muy bien el español, de verdad. El sombrero. Ah! Vale.
Like that. Just develop a split personality (not a personality that has a split) and write creative conversation with that imaginary person. Make all the mistakes you want! Write it down!! This is the perfect proofing tool.
Wrong. I am sorry but I cannot agree with you on on your first point. You CAN learn a langauge, any langauge at all, without speaking to ANYBODY. You dont need social interaction to learn a language. You can become fluent all alone. How? You practice speaking to yourself, as well as listening to videos in the target langauge. Listening to the language is 80% of the battle. Substitute in some online grammar lessons and yt videos for guidance and you are all set. Learning langauges from books is also a bad terrible idea. Learning from a book exposes you to none of the normal rate of speech, nor the correct pronounciation and comprehension skills. Doing the things I have just mentioned will guarantee you a fast track to fluency without any social interactions. I have learned numerous languages to a c1 and c2 level without speaking to anybody, more specifically over 10 langauges to c1. Even languages such as Mandarin Chinese can be learned this way. I am getting sick and tired of the myth that you need to speak to natives to learn a langauge. What a preposterous idea! I can hardly fathom such a mindset. You can talk to people, if you really want to, but it is not remotely necessary for the learning process. The only thing talking to a native will give you is feedback on your speech, which you can correct if you just talk to yourself! Record and talk to yourself, and you can learn from your mistakes and keep pushing forward. These remarks on langauges learning and these myths are really starting to grind my gears. People like you ruin langauge learning for actually DEVOTED learners. Get educated!