10 Myths About Language Learning DEBUNKED
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- On this top ten list we will identify and talk about the most common myths realted to language learning. Have you heard of any of these? Let me know in the comments!
#metatron #mythsbusted #debunked
Actually, the ‘learn while sleeping’ actually does work, but only for the French phrase ‘Omelette Du Fromage’
Ooooh ooh ooh ooh ooh. What does this button do?
'Omelette du fromage' isn't a correct french term though?
@@Fantastic_Mr_Foxproof that being smart enough to hide the world's most sophisticated scientific facility behind your bedroom bookcase in your parents' middle class suburban home doesn't mean you're smart enough to pick out good immersion material for your subconscious discographic hypnotater.
As a native English speaker, i learned grammar as a child simply by reading books written for adults. I had no idea what the rules were at that time, but when it came time to study English grammar formally, the rules made perfect sense to me once they were presented. I actually understood the basic terms (noun, adverb, etc.) because on the weekends, there was this thing called Schoolhouse Rock between the cartoon shows, which were essentially animated educational music videos. They covered a number of subjects, grammar being one of them. Who would have guessed that there would be thousands of six-year-olds in the late 1970's who could recite the preamble of the American constitution by heart? We had no idea what the words meant, but by golly, we knew what those words were!
"the rules made perfect sense to me once they were presented"
As someone who has been teaching English language arts for 20 years I doubt this. One of the difficulties of English grammar is that the grammar doesn't make sense in many cases. At a very basic level the grammar can be ok but once you move past what is a noun and what is a verb it goes off the rails quite quickly.
Ci voleva un italiano per ricordare ad un inglese o ad un americano che anche nella loro lingua esistono dei modi verbali al congiuntivo nelle subordinate condizionali
@@maurotassinarizugnitauro2990 come fai a sapere che è italiano?
Lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here...
Interjections, show excitement and emotion. They're usually set off from the sentence by an exclamation point and by a comma when the feeling's not as strong
Schoolhouse Rocks is certainly why almost any Gen X American knows the problem to the constitution. Shows the power of rhythm and repitition
Here are my rules for learning any language:
1- Have faith that you will learn it!
2- Remember: languages can only be learned, not taught.
3- Have fun with it!
4- Create a habit, learning needs to be addictive.
5- You learn languages by understanding messages.
6- Find a method that applies #5 that works for you (books, TV, comics, apps).
7- Don't worry if bits and pieces are hard to get, they'll make sense later. Just check grammar or dictionaries if those are coming often.
8- Hierarchy of skills in language learning by importance: listening, reading, speaking, typing and writing.
9- Use shadowing to practice pronunciation.
10- You'll make mistakes, don't worry, be cool and move on.
11- Use the language as much as possible.
I’m an older person working on learning Italian as my third foreign language, having studied Spanish and German in the 70’s. Back before smartphones I carried around huge dictionaries and it was very hard to find appropriate and interesting programs to watch. Now choices are virtually limitless and my multilingual dictionary fits in the palm of my hand. With my background in Spanish, I was able to understand Italian videos almost perfectly within a few weeks.
The resource that we lack the most is will and creativity
Regarding becoming fluent without moving to a country where the language is spoken: When I was in high school, I hadn't met a single native English speaker in my life before I went to study for a year in Japan (I'm from Finland).
I was mainly there for Japanese, of course, but we had an assistant English teacher who was from the US, and I was able to have long conversations with him in English without a problem, without ever having set foot in an English-speaking country (I still haven't, come to think of it). My English abilities have only improved since then, so yes, it is absolutely possible (granted, English is probably the easiest language to do this with, simply because of how prevalent it is all over the world, and how much immersion and study material there is in the language).
Totally agree, I don't think living in the country is such a huge benefit as some make it out to be, if I had to guess I would estimate that over 95% of foreigners in Japan suck at Japanese (personal experience) and some of them have spent a considerable amount of time there.
I'm Canadian, and I've actually been learning Finnish for close to eight years. All online and with music, and sometimes practicing with my Finnish friends. My level, according to Finnishpod101, is around a B2 level, and I've only spent around a month total in Finland itself. So I agree that you don't need immersion to get to a reasonably high level.
I believe Finland (just like Sweden) are not dubbing movies and TV for adults. This means we are actually surround by English all of the time.
Won't make us speak any better, but we have a huge advantage over e.g. Germans when it comes to understanding spoken English.
@@57thorns This is true, but I would say the advantage was way bigger in the past, where most of our entertainment came from actual television broadcasts. Nowadays you can easily choose the original voice track on services like Netflix or Amazon Prime (I think the original is usually the default option, too, but I might be wrong).
Still, growing up/living in a dub-free culture definitely helps.
If you gonna learn a gendered language, learn the genders with the words.
In my German class we learn the vocabulary only. They treated the genders as part of the grammar but I think would be far better to treat it as a part of the vocabulary.
Lexicogrammar!
Yes, it makes more sense to learn the relevant grammar of a word when learning the word. In English, if learning words like 'advice'; 'information'; 'money', it is essential to learn from the beginning that these are uncountable. Otherwise, learners don't really 'know' these words, and cannot use them accurately.
yeah that's one thing I really remember from school. WAY too much focus on grammar.
Exactly, way too much focus on grammar, not enough reading and listening to interesting content, not enough speaking practice.
I think a good way to teach grammar would be through practical examples, such as teaching about the past by sharing stories and anecdotes with the students.
@@marcello7781 you think schools can ever be that creative
The "Easy" channels here on CZcams do this. Mostly it's street interviews, but there is the occasional grammar video. The grammar is presented in a fun manner, almost like you're hanging out with friends. I'm learning Spanish rn and the EasySpanish channel helps a lot. I can only recommend!
people who say things like they are not talented enough or" i'm too stupid" drive me crazy because they forget that THEY ALREADY KNOW ONE DAMN LANGUAGE
13:30 ... in the US Army as I was training to become an interrogator I was struggling (North Korean language). Several months prior, I was in a hand grenade accident that blew out my eardrums. I struggled to learn the language because, yes, I had become partially deaf - when you enlist into the military, you are given a physical exam, including a hearing test. When I struggled with learning the new language, they tested me again and compared to my original pre-enlistment physical, I had lost 30% of my hearing.
So yes, I am one of those people who actually have been medically diagnosed with severe hearing loss, and that contributed to my inability to become fluent in the language. I had been fluent in Russian (4 years of study in high school and 3 semesters in university) prior to the Army, and even when I tried to transfer to Russian language after the failed Korean, I failed the entry exam for Russian - I could speak it, I could read it. but had difficulties translating spoken Russian.
Due to the damaged hearing, I was released from my enlistment contract with an Honorable Discharge base on medical reasons... so yes, the claim of "I am tone deaf/partially deaf" is a realistic reason to not become fluent in learning a new language, as you said, a medical diagnosis is the only way to honestly claim that is the excuse for not learning a new language - bye-the-way, as a native English speaker, I struggle hearing ENGLISH as well. Basically, 1/3rd of words in a spoken sentence I simply do not hear correctly.
Sorry for the long comment - I'm just saying a medical diagnosis is the only legitimate way to excuse your inability to learn a new language to be considered proficient in said language... anything short of a medical diagnosis is just making an excuse.
learning while you sleep
"omelet du...fromage"
Fun fact: this new channel of yours is gradually building up my excitement to get involved with language learning again... and I think I might pick up Swahili once more (a language which I studied for about 2 years... which was also the reason I couldn't finish my bachelor in African languages and cultures since I couldn't pass the last few courses on Swahili). I then went on to study European languages and cultures with Italian as my major and managed to pass... and the reason I chose that was also sort of thanks to you, so yeah, grazie per tutto, signore! Getting through that BA programme enabled me to land a government job here in the Netherlands, so you probably did more for me than both of us realise :P
As a fellow teacher, I can pretty much agree with all of your points.
7:00 i'm now learning Mongolian while living in Mongolia, and i have to admit the most effective things i'm doing are still coming from CZcams and eBooks, and a bit of zoom calls - none of which you need to live in the country to have access to.
But you are able to practice with native speakers. That is a huge bonus.
10:20 the myth I hate the most is that exposing a child to multiple languages will just cause "confusion"
Not only we loose our local linguistic heritage but we preclude entire generation to multilingualism.
On this one I'm skeptical. Yes, if the parents speak different mother tongues it can be good to be bilingual. But in principle I'm heavenly leaning to a monolingual approach (not caunting different accents). German is my identity, the language of my world. I could never connect to any other language in this way. For me personally (and for basically every German I know, and I mostly know academics) it was and still is a bit of an existential dread to think in another language. Not something I want my child to experience too early.
P.S.: I had english in kindergarden and it severely limited my motivation to learn any spoken language for over a decade. At least I learnt latin and ancient greek this way.
Thanks, Raf! I believed for a long time that I just didn't have the talent to learn languages. I'm going to put more earnest effort into learning Japanese
Do you know how sympatetic and charismatic you are 😉? I watched a few your videos and I really enjoyed in it! I will definitely keep watching your channel.
Regarding pronunciation, having good pronunciation will encourage native speakers to speak with you in their language,. My high school Spanish teacher here in the U.S. was a stickler for pronunciation, so I developed relatively good pronunciation for an English-speaker. As an adult learning Italian, I was able to use many of these sounds in Italian, and Italians, upon hearing my accent, would assume I spoke the language much better than I did, and would speak to me in Italian instead of switching to English, which obviously helped me learn Italian even better.
Got my ass kicked when I tried to learn chinese in typical method (classes, lots of gramar, some writing, text + vocabulary lists). I came across the works of Stephen Kraschen and decided to try his advice. I tried spanish and learned it to a pretty good level (advanced or fluent, perhaps?) in 8 months (ok, my native language is portuguese). Then moved to japanese. I made incredible advances within less than 1 month. I learned to read (notice: to READ) hiragana in 3 days and katakana in about some hours. Then I learned some basics with an app, I can already speak some japanese.
The only thing that really matters: Passion.
The first language I learnt at school was latin and half of the time was spent reciting grammar tables. (The other half translating from Latin to German). This gave me a template for understanding the grammar in other languages. When I see a sentence with translation, I make an inner note like 3. person plural, indicative presence active has this or that ending. (Actually, my inner dialog is not that complicated more like the "they form" or "right column, lowest row"). But I use these categories consciously while learning the language. If nobody had told me, how it works, I wouldn't be able to do it unless I were exposed to thousand of sentences for each form like a native speaker is. I see knowing the grammatical structure as a shortcut.
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.
I suspect the 'learn while sleeping' thing was based on an attempt to use hypnosis and tapes during sleep - it is featured in the Robert Heinlein science-fiction book "Space Cadet" (1948) - and he usually based ideas on the science of the day.
I am curious as to what you think of:
learning with AI
learning by watching TV (input only)
I would like to point out that one can learn a _lot_ in two weeks. When I was sent to Europe by the US Army, I received a 'headstart' language program that lasted for 2 weeks (about 2 hours a day, so 20 total hours). We did not learn a _lot_, but we learned basic greetings, how to count and ask for directions, and how to (important) order beer and at least tell someone you are interested in that they are pretty (or handsome) and would you like to go out to dinner (or whatever) with me.
That little bit of French (and an equivalent class in German) served me quite well for the three years I was in Europe. No - I was not at all fluent, and was quite limited in what I could talk about, _but_ I was able to get by even as the sole English speaker in a group.
But - I did rely on people being generally friendly, which was almost always my experience throughout my travels.
I used to say I’ll never get Japanese right because I simply don’t hear their pitch accent… until someone pointed out to me I’m already using it as my native language also has a pitch accent - which at no point was taught to me at school.
Hit me like a plank to the face with that!
Many thanks for these tips, especially for the ones about pronunciation and grammar.
Interesting video, thank you. Though I did have to look away every time your countdown numbers came up because of the bright flashes.
That sleep thing is so stupid. Sleeping is when your brain is resting. It's not going to process any input that requires higher brain functions.
Hey Metatron, thank you so much for the video : ).
My mom repeatedly discouraged me from learning Chinese because I don't have perfect musical pitch and that Chinese people are more patient, hardworking and dedicated so there's no point of learning it because they will know my native language better than I theirs. So it's pointless to learn it for work or business. It kinda worked for me for a while but someday I tried to learn Chinese pitches and its actually not that bad. Still I'm more interested in learning Japanese at the moment.
My tip for learning languages especially on at the start is not to be afraid to sound dumb. Yes you will make mistakes but you don't have sound perfect for people to understand you. Main idea of the language is communication so if you're understood and you understand other the main goal is kinda fulfilled. Say for example
"I at school, do now English"
This is completely grammatically uncorrect but you still can get that this phrase has something to do with being in school and probably learning English. I don't say you need to abandon the grammar altogether but fixating on this too much will give you more harm than good. I saw foreigners completely mixing up case system or grammatical gender and I still could understand them. So don't be afraid to do mistakes and if someone tries to shame you for them this is not the best person to listen to.
I like watching videos about language learning, and Im currently learning spanish, but I feel like if I spent the time learning a language I did watching videos about language learning I would be so much further... this is not a knock on you, Metatron, I very much enjoy your videos and will continue watching them!
Exactly. I spend all my time watching these type videos and then go watch tv lol.
A common trap.. you (and I and, in fact most language learners) spend time learning *about* languages/a language, instead of learning the actual language.. 🙂
@@tohaasonfor a while I learned about language learning... In my target language
What videos about language learning in Spanish or search for a subject you are interested about in the language. I'm not even learning Spanish but I ended up watching a lot of reviews about a product in bout English, Spanish and in my native language to make sure I was buying the right thing for me.
Fantastic video! I strongly value your knowledge and experience in language education. Setting up this chanel was a brilliant idea and will help many people avoid unnecessary mistakes that cost time and take away motivation. I wasted a lot of time following wrong rules of studying like focusing to much on grammar and written language instead of listening or speaking. Lectures of Stephen Krashen on language acquisition helped me rectify my beliefs. I would like to know your opinion about listening to music as means of language practice - do you think it’s as valuable as listening to spoken language? Which category of vocabulary do you recommend learning as a beginner and what order of introducing new words should be followed?
I always find it strange when I speak German or French, the people compliment my language skills, even though I am of the opinion that I make too many mistakes. I suppose it might be because I'm quite good in mimicking speech, so my accent is usually very light.
I've become semi-fluent in English by reading books without using a dictionary to translate every word I didn't know the meaning of. Instead, I just kept reading, and inferred the meaning from context.
Same for me with Italian.
Idk man, I once learned everything in a text book by using osmosis. I put my head on it and absorbed all the knowledge like a sponge. Also, a friend of mine was able to speak in tongues fluently after hitting his head on a rock
It's true I was the rock
@@cahallo5964 How much for a lesson rock?
😂😂😂
I think the excellent point about putting in the work and not just having an excuse like " being tone deaf" is also good advice for life in general. often people think they can't learn various things because they are not naturally able to do them without any effort. of course, much of the time that is not true. you have to study the thing you want to do and learn it and put in the effort.
Good luck to your new channel, but remember that most people learn a language in order to get by when abroad, they don't need or intend to become fluent in it.
非常有趣的视频。谢谢老师！
Can you do a video on how you approach starting a new language you don’t know a single thing in yet
The tone deaf thing is definitely a thing I wish I'd known was a myth.
Unfortunately, I didn't realise that for decades after one of my music teachers at primary school insisted that I had the condition.
It was only when one of my kids started playing the guitar, I decided to look into it and try to figure out exactly what was wrong with my hearing, and then discovered I'd been wrong all along.
I ended up being kind of mad at wasting decades believing I was tone deaf and pleased that I wasn't somehow unable to hear parts of music that 'normal' people could.
----------.
Anyway, speaking of languages, I used to find I could learn Spanish easier if it was written (probably because I was used to reading a lot).
However when I got a different Spanish teacher who made a point of focusing a lot more on speaking verbally than reading or writing, I just couldn't get the hang of it.
Having the written equivalent used to make things a lot easier to memorise, imo. .
.
I just have a question, I am currently trying to learn Italian. But you mentioned you actually have to move to the place of your target language you are studying to be totally immersed in the language. There is no way I have the funds to go to Italy and won't for a long time so what do you suggest how to study without that option. I also don't have any native speaking friends around either so I'm pretty much on my own.
My worry is my southern/Texas accent. I don't sound like a cartoon hick. In fact it's pretty mild. But it is there and still effects how I make sounds. Once in awhile I am able to pronounce a German word that will impress a native speaker but most of the time I fall pretty short of correct. I have no idea how to fix this.
“Learn languages while sleeping”
That works great if you want to learn “Omelette du Fromage”.
I have an approach which is more 'specific' for determining my own language fluency, instead of using the A1 - C2, which is...school grade levels. I tell myself...if I can at least understand a language like a preschooler can, for instance, preschool level books that the teacher reads to the preschoolers...then I'm off to a good start. Very basic grammar, short sentences, and super easy words. Then go 'up a grade', of which all those get a bit more complicated over time. Of course this varies 'per child' but the idea is consistent.
I speak 3 languages - not that impressive, I know - but I'm using it as a credential to confirm the points you have made in your video, especially when it comes to learning grammar.
Number 8 is important. People think I'm some kind of genius because I can speak Mandarin. They don't believe me when I tell them they can learn it too.
Excelente video! Saludos
This all makes sense. Wrt to pronunciation my feeling is that exact phonetics is unimportant compared to learning to distinguish phonemes eg it matters more that a British English speaker learns to pronounce a close and open "e" differently (say "ay" and "air") than it does to get them dead right. A bad distinction can always be improved and refined, not making a distinction can't.
Listen, you can't tell me I don't learn language in my sleep. I don't understand any of my dreams
I have to push back a little on this one Raf...yes and no. There are actually quite a few studies for language learning while sleeping, as well as, language learning while under hypnosis and self-hypnosis. I agree the results are mixed and I agree 100% that vocabulary learning doesn't work as advertised. However, we can't say there isn't any proof or studies. And one interesting observation in these studies is that people (even with limited language exposure) will hear or dream in the target language they are listening to while dreaming. There is a theory that while sleeping it's possible for the brain to learn/familiarize one to the sounds, intonations, and rhythms of the language. It's no different than listening to the language while awake, however, while asleep your brain can actually focus on it more due to the survival mode your brain goes into while sleeping. It becomes able to focus on, and to detect, audio inputs. There's also a theory this method is similar to an attainment similar to a baby in the womb learning to recognize a mother's voice via her sounds and speech patterns.
What are your recommendations on listing to music or watching videos, tv, movies, & news in your target language?
Is it worth stopping every second or two to pause and look up a word?
i would say watch something that you knowledge of (sports, movies, tv) and watch it one time to listen. Then watch again to learn the vocabulary. It can work with shows that are dubbed in your target language
Yes, it's how I personally learned English along with some interpretation.
I definitely think it's possible to learn a language to fluency in 1-3 months, but only if it's very closely related to a language that you already speak, for example a native swedish speaker could learn dutch, and a native turkish speaker could learn azeri very quickly
These are not 2 different languages. Even as a german I do not consider english as a foreign language
I always thought learning languages is more about finding ways to expose yourself to the language while minimizing the amount of willpower used. That's how I got a degree in Engineering and learned 2 new languages at the same time. Learning languages never felt like studying to me.
Time to get started. I have a list of languages I would love to learn. 💕
Pretty much all research I've seen on the subject concludes that, if all things are equal, adults are always better at acquiring a second language than children.
I think the main reason this myth persists is because everyone has encountered adults who can't really speak very well, but kids who can't speak very well are constantly surrounded by people who can so they inevitably learn how to.
Adults just kind of avoid situations where they're forced to learn. If you come to America from some non English speaking country ur kid is going to go to a school filled with people who only speak English. So they have no choice but to figure it out.
On the other hand, adults often just find people who speak their language and end up in a native bubble where they spend most of their time around non English speakers.
If you do happen to meet an adult who learned as an adult and is really good people assume they must be special, and an exception to the rule that adults cannot truly learn a second language.
A few that I would add (maybe good for a part 2) are:
1. An effective strategy is to "learn like a baby" does by associating words/sentences to images (the Rosetta Stone approach): This is good for building vocabulary but a learner will become lost very quickly without understanding rules and grammatical concepts.
2. You don't really need to study; you can just go to a country where the language is spoken and you will pick it up while you are there. Having incomprehensible input isn't very helpful. A base level of understanding would be necessary for this approach to be successful.
3. Proficiency is a binary and you either are or aren't fluent. Fluency is nuanced and people may be strong in some areas and weaker in others. It would make more sense to talk about a person's capabilities rather than if they are fluent or proficient.
Damn, I didn't know the learning language as you sleep trend could be detrimental. I mean I always knew it was mostly bogus, but I like to use it as one tool to help me with language exposure.
Not a lot of people speak Spanish here, my thought process I guess was that if i have it in conjunction with my own language learning efforts, it gives my brain more time to be in "Spanish mode," for lack of a better term.
I'm curious about your opinion about learning multiple languages at the same time. Would you personally recommend it or not? Have you ever done it?
Some people find it relatively easy, others find it hard. In 1968 (my last year in high school) I was studying Spanish (5th year), German (3rd year) and French (1st/2nd year) at school - attending a night class in basic Japanese - and had a private tutor for Russian. 55 years later I can still get by reasonably in the first three.
As a non native English speaker, I never focused too much on grammar, and in my english classes, there's a lot of focus on grammar. And the students know a lot of grammar, but have bad english lol.
I would say that some people actually are tone-deaf, even if it's not perhaps the best world to use. I noticed that some people have a very different talent for understanding how the language is pronounced. For example I am a czech and we pronounced R very strongly with rolling our tongue (similar to spanish double RR), but other languages (german, english) have very soft R and sometimes it's almost silent (for example when british people say "Door" it's almost like ther R is not there.)
I know czechs who can speak english - for example my coworker can speak english and he talks with clients on Skype and his english is mostly OK. But he pronounces the R in a very czech-way with lots of stress and when I explained to him it's rather soft, he still somehow can't hear it there. I, on the other hand, can hear the difference immediately.
Or he pronounces "something" like "samcink" and so on. He simply can't hear the small differences.
Many czech people can't hear it also in german. They say "wir sind hier" like "wiRRR sind hieRRR" with very strong R, but german language has this very soft R.
Some people can't hear the "ou" in english "o". Words like "video" or "audio" are with very short "o" in czech language, but in english there is this "ou" like "veedio-uu" and again - many czechs can't hear this and pronounce it in a very czech way and when I explain them, they seem even confused.
On the other hand, there are people who actually can hear it and pronounce it correctly very quickly.
Excellent.
I have auditory processing disorder. So what are my chances of actually learning another language? I would love to learn but my ears work fine but head well unless i am familiar with the topic I just have no clue and that is with English my native language
Perseverance is key.
I studied english grammar in the past but most of the time I'm just using what sounds right to me, most languages have so many exceptions for rules that in the end, you just end up sticking with what doesn't sounds weird.
I learned English entirely through games and CZcams videos, all that matters in learning a language is immersing yourself within it. I also recently took an IELTS test, and would love to share the result here once it's announced just to prove that a language can be learned without paying a single dollar or interacting with any native speakers.
How long did it take you?
@@DopaminedotSeek3rcolonthree normally, years....but English dosen't count for me bc is too easy in comparison with other bc everything is in English nowadays 🤷
@@fitito500 I know, lol. I'm a native English speaker, and have tried switching my game languages to Russian and French, and I've noticed that most text is still in English 💀
I got really good in italian in the sane way. But haven't gotteb a test yet.
Same here I learned english through media , my english classes were too boring or not challenging enough. I am just trying to learn korean in the same way and so far is going good.
Another advantage Adults have over children when it comes to learning a language : They probably know more languages already, that they can reference. For example: I'm currently learning Tagalog because I have some Filipino friends that I met online, and truth be told, being French, knowing English and bits of Spanish is extremely useful ! (Spanish being the MVP here)
For those who DO think that you have to live somewhere that speaks the language in order to be fluent in it...where do you live to become fluent in Esperanto? 😀Or, for that matter, Latin.
10:20 Also; adults, generally speaking, have a better idea of, what the hell they are doing, than children. They also tend have more experience; which can be a double-edged sword, if their head is filled with ”irrelevant” knowledge that has little to nothing to do with the target language / languages, in general; so, that knowledge can become a burden, taking up valuable memory/space from the ”hard-drive” of their brain; or, in the worst-case scenario, can even mislead them (if it’s about a language that works totally different way, like the word order, in Papuan vs. Austronesian languages); thus, sabotaging their learning effort. On the other hand, adults’ brains are also more capable and better equipped to understand the big picture, than children’s; and they (adults) have more context. 🤔
I was kept out of foreign language learning as a child because of the myth that one "has to be exceptional/talented," particularly academically gifted. I have ADHD so I was often discriminated against in public grade schools as there is a myth that an ADHD student is incapable of succeeding academically and if they learn a different language they will forget their native language.
I wish there were more tips for learning languages for people with ADHD/LDs. (Tips in general, not nessesarily from you. I appreciate everything you say and all the tips you give us)
For years and years I've been trying to learn languages. But my working memory is so bad that I have to repeat a lesson 3-5 times before I can grasp any sort of complex rules or structures. Any decent amount of vocabulary that isn't just basic.. Ciao, Buonasera, come Sta etc.. I have to write and listen to 100x. Then come back to it later before it's sunk in.
But by that point the lesson has just become repetitive and boring..
I struggle to tears.. it makes me feel stupid and incompetent.. but I want to learn a second language so badly.. and I want it to be Italian.
I do sometimes listen to those "learn while you sleep" videos.. not because I'm lazy.. but because I usually have to have something on in the background to fall asleep. And I hope maybe someday an extra word or two might stick in my head a bit longer. (I know it won't.. but, sometimes I just need the hope).
Sorry if that was long and rambling. It's just difficult to find places where people understand my struggles.. and don't just immidiatly call me lazy.. when I have to work 5-10x as hard to do what "normal" people can generally do with standard effort.
In school I took.. 4.5 years of French. I'm not even sure I became conversational. As wrote memorization isn't my strong suit (obviously). And that's what most learning in school is, here in the US.
I appreciate your videos very much.. I watch them during the day. And sometimes they help me fall asleep (not in a bad way.) But because I can listen to a video multiple times, so I'm comfortable falling asleep to it (it's a weird ADHD compliment 😂😅)
Keep making awesome videos ❤❤
I'm going to keep doing my damndest to learn Italian. And someday actually go to Italy. I would definitely like to see Sicily
Hi Natasha and thank you very much for your comment, I've read it all. A very valid point. I've taught in school for many years before becoming a youtuber. I think the idea of a video about language learning specifically dedicated and crafted for people who have AHDH has a lot of potential to help people. I'd be more than happy to consider making a video like that, but it might take me a little longer than usual, simply because I'll have to contact a specialist to help me make it. That's something I do often with both my channels, to ask the aid of a specialist so it's absolutely something I can do. Thanks for the idea and comment. As a side note I have a whole series about Italian in the making. Hopefully you'll find it useful.
I would recommend multisensor style of studying. I learned Swedish by watching television with cc. I'm a Swede but I have a grave language disorder. I wish you good luck and take care.
A small correction to the 7th. First what native speakers learn is to hear language and then quickly speak and try to reproduce what you heared.
Well.. speaking.. true as such, but the difference between babies and adults is that reading is not a option for babies, while it's a very powerful option for adults. I didn't really learn English until I started to read. And read. And read. All reading was stuff I *wanted* to read, so in that sense it didn't actually require any conscious effort. What reading dozens, and later hundreds, and at this point thousands of books gave me, relatively early, was an intuitive understanding of grammar, and an intuitive understanding of words and nuances which dictionaries and translations could never have given me.
Obviously I wouldn't have learned to converse in English if I hadn't also done any speaking. And I did a lot of that, eventually. But I wouldn't have been able to unless I hadn't also ingested a huge amount of written material (though also a lot of input via movies and TV). Speaking is necessary if you want to learn to speak a language. I can, for example, read German pretty well, because I did a lot of reading during a very boring period of my life (military service), but I can't speak a word of German. Because I didn't have anyone to speak to, and my interest was in what I was reading. So I did only that, and learned only that.
As for the rest.. 100% agreed on everything. Matches my own experience and what I've observed. My only argument is that babies and very small children don't learn through reading simply because that's just an option they don't have.
02:30 Actually, one man COULD do it: the archeologist Heinrich Schliemann. He learned Turkish in 2 weeks in order to get the ancient city of Troy digged out. 😅
I personally have excelled in knowing the grammer of greek more than I ever did just listening to words
Another myth I hear is that you have to learn from a Native speaker. While Native Speakers have advantages over non-natives on teaching the language, Non-Natives also have advantages over native speakers on teaching the language.
Metatron is just a saint...
Oh... I do not do good with only speaking, and naturally listening to the language first. It just falls out of my head. Never worked for me to learn a new language.
I need to see the words, because I have a way of connecting the word's look, the pronunciation and meaning at the same time. It is sooo hard for me as a grown up to learn only by the sounds. I can't do that. It is painstaking and is so hard. It is also dependent on having someone to rely on to be reminded, or have a soundtrack. No... I need the text, the sound and talking... naaaah, olny to myself for a time. Do you know that infants listen to you a looooooooong time befor they actually speak? I want to have a basic knowledge before I try to speak with others in that language. But. I listen, read, write and reproduce the words orally at the start as needed. A lot of all that. That is the only way I get it to stick. Just talking and listening at the start is actually making me get burned out and I loose interest after that.
I started learning Ukrainian with an app where real people say the words (an app I can recommend):. Now I could not imagine any other method of study start than trying to pronunciate the new language as correctly as I can. It helps writing, too, when I am able to correctly remember the letters (or phonemes) I am using.
Regarding the 5th myth, let me just tell you that NFKRZ became fluent in English during his childhood while living in Russia, and he has never visited an anglophone country or physically been in an English speaking environment.
As for children becoming bilingual.. it's not always the case that children raised in a bilingual environment will actually become bilingual. In many cases it fails, or just doesn't go very well. If a child grows up in a bilingual home, and the parents are careful in both speaking only their respective native language to the child, then the child will probably learn to understand both, but a) not always! The parents may not both be fluent in their respective languages, so they'll communication in just one of them, and b) the child may learn to understand, but may as well always reply in the local native language, and never reach fluency in conversation. After all, the family has to live somewhere, and the child, when growing up, will live in a country surrounded by only one of the languages. It's hard to maintain both languages when all their friends speak only one of them (the exception is when it's possible for the child to attend a school in the *other* language - that option is available some places).
And lastly, a pattern has become apparent (disclaimer: there are a many example families around me where I now live): The oldest child may become reasonably fluent in the "second" (non-local) language, but the next child is almost always much less bilingual.
I've told kids "Don't WORRY about grammar. I'm not saying it's not important. I'm not saying don't work at it. It's VERY important and you NEED to work at it. I'm saying don't WORRY about it." Language is 90% vocabulary and phonology and 10% grammar, but classroom time is 90% grammar. It's okay to make mistakes and you will NEVER memorize all the rules. You learn the grammar by using the words, but you will never use the words if you don't know them.
Listening to vocab in bed sends you to sleep!
I would also disagree with others over the immersion thing. I'm Canadian, and I've been learning Finnish for close to eight years. All online and with music, and sometimes practicing with my Finnish friends (and now italki lessons). My level, according to Finnishpod101, is around a B2 level, and I've only spent around a month total in Finland itself. Compare that to my heritage language, Mennonite Low German; both of my parents and most of my relatives speak it, but nobody ever spoke it to me, so I can't speak more than a few basic words and sentences, even though I've been surrounded by it my whole life and can understand it fairly well. So I don't think you need immersion to get to a reasonably high level.
That's not really complete immersion.
@@danielantony1882 I listened to my parents speak it every day. I think that counts.
@@corinna007 _That's_ immersion.
@@danielantony1882 Yes, and even though I heard them speak it every day growing up, and most of my family can speak it as well, I can't (I'm going to try to change that though). So I'm still sticking to my opinion that immersion doesn't work for everyone.
@@corinna007 Indeed.
Only thing I have to say about myth No. 10 is:
Omelette du fromage!
I have never been diagnosed of being tone-deaf, but I don't think it's so black and white.
I am not able to tell the difference between the uh-uh that mean yes and the one that means no, or which note is higher or lower than another. For my entire life, when singing by myself, I also sang all songs 1 octave higher than what the singer does, before my girlfriend heard me and told me to try lower, which I started doing, and it feels more natural.
I don't think I have a "medical condition", but I know it's much harder for me to get the right accent in other languages. I'm very talented in learning languages actually, but my accent is bad in all of them 😂
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
So If I want to learn Latin...
... you have to find a time machine, go back to the times of Roman Empire and live there for some months
You missed the biggest myth, although you alluded to it in Myth 2. People usually attend classes thinking that the teacher is going to pour the information into their head. In reality, language must be learned. Teachers help to maximise results and explain points of confusion, but the core of language learning is vocabulary acquisition and that requires memorisation in some form, which is the student's job. Even the teacher repeating the words 100 times before the class will not work if the student fails to pay attention.
If access to native speakers is not available, better to learn words with poor pronunciation than not to learn them until the conditions are 'right'. Not knowing how to pronounce words should not become an excuse for not learning a language. It is actually fairly easy to adjust one's pronunciation. I had to do that with Lithuanian which is rarely written with the accent marks and even the vowel sounds are not properly described in any grammar that I have found so far. Thus, without access to a native speaker, you are not going to have consistent rules for pronunciation and you won't know where the accent goes all of the time. English with its mishmash of words from everywhere is even worse for changing the sounds for any given letter.
Wow so many videos already and I was missing all of them because youtube unsubscribed me after the first two videos..
No it didn’t, that is not a thing
@@Aerostarm it did and it's an issue that has been known for years
You can't imagine how awkward I feel when you say adults have discipline and focus, something children don't have. Oh well... 😅
Everyone these days is either tone def, dyslectic, has ADHD, but surprisingly nobody is just plain lazy.
Achieving the correct pronunciation of Arabic must be really painful, even worse when it's taken in consideration how different are becoming the Arab versions of each country. Perhaps in the following centuries they will take a similar path that neo-Latin languages took.
I agree with everything except the part about learning a language fast. You can definitely learn enough to understand and be conversational in a few weeks or months. It will depend on many factors, of course: How much experience you already have with language learning, how similar the language is to the ones you already speak, how much time you learn per day and more importantly, how you learn.
If you're good at mnemonics, for example, you can memorise hundreds of words per day. You combine that with massive amounts of input (reading and listening), and you'll be able to understand the language well veyr quickly.
There *are* some exceptions.. I know a very few people in that category, who managed to become fully conversational in a few months. But those are truly exceptions. The vast majority of people aren't able to do that. And even being able to memorise a large vocabulary won't actually help that much, if the memorisation is as a list of words and their translations. Words need to go into the associative part of memory, not the dictionary part, or you won't be actually fluent - your brain must look up the word.
@@tohaason that's why I said you need to combine the memorisation with massive input for it to work. Memorising hundreds of words with mnemonics AND reading and listening a lot so that you keep seeing those words in context. Works for me anyway
I don’t understand what tone deafness has to do with learning languages. Doesn’t that regard music?
Can actually understand multiple languages But I can't speak them fluently Have you put in together 1 or 2 sentences But that's about it
damnant ut a nice monitor
childe have better hearing to.
Italians offended? LMAO.
I dare anyone to tell an Italian they need to be protected from words (or anything for that matter)
Shit... I like to listen to how you speak, read and repeat at the same time, but man yt subtitles suck so much...
Also; being tone deaf impedes your ability to make out… wait for it… yep; you knew it: tones; and, even then, *_MUSICAL_* tones; not necessarily *_LINGUISTIC_* tones. It certainly has nothing to do with making out, say, vowel quality or vowel length or geminates or consonant clusters, etc. 🙄
Myth: Learning Latin with chatgpt is better than Google Translate but not by much. #LinguaLatinaMachina
I actually learned to read and write my native language (Finnish), first; before learning to speak it (though, granted; I am on the spectrum); and many people with neurological issues never learn to speak (even their native language), at all (and I’m pretty sure, neither do people, who’re born deaf); but may still learn to read and write it, and understand spoken language. So, saying that: *_”ALL_* natives learn to speak their native language, first; before learning to read/write it.”, is simply false. All *_”NORMAL/HEALTHY”_* natives, maybe; but not ”all natives, period”.
Connected to that; again, every *_HEALTHY_* human being is programmed to learn a language; but, again, it doesn’t apply, for example, people with _”Anencephaly”;_ that is, people, who are basically born braindead, because they either have no brain, or their brain is downright tiny, lacking, like, 90% of mass, volume, and structures. They may still be alive (at least, for a little bit); and thus, they should count. Obviously, they’re not programmed to learn a language.
🤔