I agree about personal talent. I also agree with your comment in the "Stats from my own language learning" section: "I was simply relying on school and doing no learning on my own". I used to tell my Spanish students that the time in the classroom, formal learning, is the smallest part of language learning if you really want to advance. This comes back to your points about self-motivation and how much time you are willing to spend learning. I have my own acronym: PETS - patience, enthusiasm, time, system ("method").
@@PolyglotSecrets Actually in order of importance it should be ETSP: Enthusiasm, Time, System and Patience. Enthusiasm/motivation/passion: whatever you want to call it is the bedrock - without you will struggle, indeed you need to question why you are even bothering. Time: people say they can't find time. I don't believe that. How much time do people spend on social media or watching TV? I find it best to work in short sharp bursts rather than non-stop for two hours, say, but I manage find time each day to work on my Finnish, Italian and French. System: I totally agree with you that different people have different systems. I studied Spanish and Portuguese formally at university, then taught myself Finnish and Italian informally (I lived in Helsinki for 2 1/2 years) and now I study French formally with Alliance Française. Formal or informal learning is fine (a mixture of both is even better) - whatever gets you there. But regardless, you need to systematise your learning, but without becoming rigid - mix it up if you start to get bored. I watch UA-cam videos, listen to radio, read online newspapers, watch Netflix series and movies, italki and Skype chats, etc. and yes, I even read grammar books and do some old-fashioned rote learning and repetitive exercises. Patience - essential. All of these principals - PETS - apply to learning a musical instrument too. Thanks for your informative videos
@@wowjef Thank you for describing your method! I love it to be honest; I was nodding along the whole time, as I was reading it. :) Oh, and I also read more about grammar than I need to - I just really like it for some reason. So I get what you mean. P.S. Is Finnish as difficult as they say? I know difficulty is subjective and can be skewed, but still...
@@PolyglotSecrets Finnish is only difficult at the beginning. It has case endings and consonant gradation, but phonetically offers no problems. PETS, PETS, PETS! Thanks for responding
I learned italian in 3 months (I studied it for a summer) and I was super proud of myself, but I already spoke Portuguese, Spanish and French (from the romance family), so I felt smart and it was very easy. After that, I was feeling very confident, I tackled Russian. Motivation was there, passion was there, study hours were there, but still, it took me several YEARS to reach a conversational level (making mistakes). All those factors you mention MATTER, but language similarity IS the most defining factor, because I had the experience, I had the good method, I was practicing it but Russian still took me so much compared to Italian. From that moment, I have enormous respect for polyglots who do engage into different language families. Speaking 4 languages: FR,ES, PT, IT IS NOT the same as speaking 4 languages: Mandarin, Arabic, Russian and Finnish, those are two completely different levels of "polyglotism" in my opinion.
I agree, it's completely different. Of course, if you speak very different languages, that takes much more effort. I have to say though, I am not sure which one is the biggest factor - it could be similarity. But I am not sure. So far, the most different language I have studied is Greek and it is alone in its Hellenic language family, has no living relatives etc. And I have progressed in it much faster than in German. I think that's due to passion and better methods. Who knows, perhaps the most important factor is similarity or perhaps it's different every time... I can't say for sure. All I know is I've noticed all factors that I mentioned influencing my learning and I am open to the possibility of there being other factors as well. Perhaps there's individual differences depending on the learner too.
Respect aka reverence is only meant for me, not for ppl! Anyways, why would someone want to learn a non-pretty language such as Arabic or even Russian (too many Russian words are kinda meh, I don’t know) and most Asian languages or African languages etc, and I don’t even understand why some of those languages are so popular, when there are such gorgeous languages as Dutch / Welsh / Norwegian / Icelandic / Breton etc that have almost only very pretty words and that are a true joy to one’s eye / ear! Choosing only pretty languages like Germanic / Celtic / Latin languages and Hungarian etc is a smart choice, and only pretty languages with mostly pretty words can truly be enjoyable because they naturally please one’s sight, so one should learn pretty languages for their pretty words and sounds, instead of learning non-pretty languages just because they have many speakers etc!
Dutch / English / Norwegian are the prettiest and most refined languages ever with the most pretty and poetic words and with the easiest to read (and to type and to pronounce) aspect or format and words, which makes them the easiest languages ever, so one can learn these languages to an advanced level (or to an intermediate level) in a few months if one has real good methods and time, and most other Germanic languages and Welsh / Breton / Cornish and Latin languages are also category 1 languages, so they are all very easy to learn, and there are certain languages that have mostly words that are naturally very easy to learn and remember fast, such as Dutch / English / Norwegian and Welsh, so I noticed that most words in Dutch & Welsh took me less than 5 or 6 repetitions to permanently remember them and to automatically remember them, and many of them even took 1 to 3 repetitions, which is super fast, because the words in these languages just have real great letter combinations that the hern can easily remember fast, and also because most of the words in these languages are very pretty, and one tends to remember the prettier and more distinctive words faster - new (technical) English words only take me one or two repetitions to permanently remember because I am writer level in Modern English + Scots dialect + Middle English, so I know 60k to 100.000 words in the three combined, and am very used to the patterns, and it is also the same for most new words in Spanish, so usually, when I am at least native speaker level in a language, I can usually remember almost every new word in that language after only seeing it once or twice or thrice, and it’s also started to be like that in Dutch, because my Dutch vocab is close to 10.000 base words, which is native speaker level, so now, most new Dutch words, I can remember them after only seeing them twice!
I learned Dutch to a very advanced level (over 8.000 base words) in only about 3 months or 300 hours of study as I only focused on Dutch for about 3 months or so, but not every day or all day every day, so I still watched mostly entertaining videos that aren’t necessarily teaching new vocab (because I also need to watch entertainment, not just language learning videos) but, there were also days when I would only watch vocab videos, like, going through a 2.000 vocab video once or twice and also watching lots of other shorter vocab videos! I am intermediate level in Norwegian / German / Swedish and Portuguese (but I can understand almost everything in Brazilian Portuguese and in Galician and also in Catalan because I am native speaker level in Spanish since childhood, and most words are almost the same, with just one or two different letters usually, and I actually learned Spanish 100% passively by watching a lot of TV series and movies in Spanish and listening to lots of songs with lyrics in Spanish) and, I am beginner level in Welsh / French / Icelandic / Breton / Gallo / Cornish / Galician / Old Norse and all the other pretty languages that are on my list of languages I want to learn and improve! I naturally have great observational skills and pattern recognition skills and analytical skills, and I also have a great memory and I don’t usually forget any word that I have seen many times or at least three times, which also makes learning new languages way easier, and I can learn multiple languages at the same time, so I started learning over 15 of those languages that I selected (because learning multiple languages at the same time saves so many years and keeps it very interesting) but, I usually prioritize 3 languages per month, so I focus more on those 3 and less on the others, and having those natural skills makes it easy for me to understand how each new language works and to see the different patterns that each language has, which is why I don’t usually mix them up, so I can even learn very similar languages at the same time, and I always use the best methods and techniques that help me get it done as fast as possible, because I don’t have patience, so I always go for speed / for the fastest methods!
I have all the time in the world, so all I do is, watching videos and learning languages, which is a hobby - I actually started learning languages on my own only about 8 months ago, but I should have started learning Dutch and other languages on my own in childhood, and now I would be writer level in Dutch! However, at the moment, I am writer level only in English, but I hope I can get to a writer level in Dutch soon! I actually want to know all the words that exist in Dutch / English / Norwegian (at least in these three) and that includes all the technical terms and other rare terms! There are almost 1.500.000 words / definitions in English, and it feels like I know almost everything in English, so maybe I know a lot more than 100.000 words, I don’t know exactly, but whenever I try finding new words by reading different articles and stuff that I wouldn’t normally read, I realize that I know all the words, and sometimes there are only a couple new words if it’s something about technical stuff or biology etc!
So happy to hear that! Let me know if you have particular questions about topics in English that you are wondering about - I’d love to help! Thanks for watching 🥰
When I decide to learn a new language, I am always very motivated and want to give it my all, which sometimes means twelve to fourteen hours a day. But I'm an intellectual hard worker and a perfectionist, and I understand that not everyone is able to sacrifice that much time to learn a new language. And I also agree that if we already know a foreign language and are learning another, it's easier. I guess it's because we already have a system worked out through which we achieve this. And we also have a more "expanded consciousness".
For me it's a long process because I never studied anything before. I started two years ago with English at 40 years old, but without tools or organized way. Six months ago I started Italian because I felt that English routine started to be boring for me. So, I started Italian in the same that I continued to learn English and it was more fun like that. For me because all that it's a really long way, a real big school for improving my patience skill. Thank you for your video, it's the first one that I saw with you and it's helpful.
Thank you for the kind words! I am so glad you find it helpful. Your English is great by the way. :) And learning 2 languages at once is always more fun than just learning one, so I am glad you made that choice. :)
@@PolyglotSecrets I hope later be able to learn Portuguese . I love this country and people over there. But for me when I tried i saw that it was difficult because every times after two weeks I started to mix it with Italian.
@@laurentpicard3963 Oh, no worries. Mixing is fine, it happens to us all. Eventually, the languages will separate - it's all about practice. I've mixed even unrelated languages terribly. With time, you overcome it. :)
I know well English, French, Cantonese, Russian, Croatian, Thai. French I got free as a child from going to French international school. Cantonese took 5 years to get fluent and I lived in Hong Kong. I lived 15 years in Hong Kong and within this time it took me 3 months for Thai, and I found an old video of me speaking 20 minutes of isan dialect fluently.... That language took 3 months after Thai. But can't remember this language now. I lived 7 years in Ukraine. Took me 3 years for Russian intensively. Croatian took 6 months to get to B2. And now I'm learning Italian after 2 weeks and I remember and understand nearly everything I am learning. I tried German... This has to be the hardest of them all. Pausing German until Italian is fluent. I think 3 months will get me B1 for Italian. I think it's getting easier every new language. German is too hard and I need much more time as I don't have another language to leverage
Well there's this once famous 10 000 hour rule🙄.... Which translates to three to five years if you work eight hours a day, depending if you take some days off or not haha But getting fluent in three months is really impressive !😲 So among all the wise factors you bring up, I would clearly single out personal talent as being a true game changer... Interesting study as always👍
@@nolanr1400 Haha absolutely! Portuguese was an exception, as I already spoke Spanish, took the right steps, and most importantly - I was committed. I usually don't commit like that. I am too easily distracted by other languages and I constantly juggle between them. I think that's great overall, but you can bet that it means it takes me much longer to learn a language (simply because it has too much company). But I am also someone that couldn't care less about how long it might take me to learn a language - I just enjoy the process 😉
@@PolyglotSecrets Awesome ! :) The fact that you already spoke Spanish looks like an advantage, but It's not so obvious : For example, as you know it better than me, 30% of all english words are literally french words, the exact same words with the exact same meaning, all these long latin rooted words that are usually considered academic vocab in the English speaking world you know... So the French could be expected to be good at English since they already know 30% of the English dictionary even before starting learning english... but in spite of that, the French are very known not to be good at English at all hahaha 😂 . So I would say that the similarity between Portuguese and Spanish is just anecdotal in your performance, more like the icing on the cake or something. 😉
I've been using flashcards to learn and review new words, but I've noticed that I can't remember these words as I speak. do you have any tips for making new words stick in my mind and actively using them?
Excellent question! I am a vocal opponent of flashcards, as I believe that there is little use of learning words outside of context. Vocabulary is best learned through input, through stories, in context - I give all the details in this video, ua-cam.com/video/eqF3iguoBv4/v-deo.html. Take a look, as the explanation is quite long for a comment. Thank you for your question! ☺
Hey all polyglots say that you should enjoy the proccess but most of the time of learning language is just full of pain and repetetive boring study do you guys really enjoy all the time of learning language ?
I certainly didn't enjoy parts of it in school. But ever since I started learning by myself, I only do things that I enjoy. I never stick with something, if I don't like it. From my conversations with other polyglots, I would say they do the same - at least those I have spoken with. That's why our methods are never exactly the same, because we all like different things. We all found ways to enjoy learning a language though. We simply don't do activities we find boring. For me, it's a hobby. Hobbies are fun ☺
Sounds like you are using language learning apps and memorizing vocab. Consider switching to reading things you are interested in and watching content in the target language you are interested in. Comprehensible content if possible
@@Andunia Right, I meant that in general, I wasn't referencing any language in particular, but just making an overall point. Oh, I hope no one thinks I was bashing learning Spanish. 😬 I love that language to death.
🤔definitions, definitions... probably not everybody is capable of achieving a native-like level? i have met quite a few people living in germany for ten or more tears and speaking ok-ish. others have achieved "perfection" after maybe three or four years. i am not native-like in any of my learned languages. not even in english, despite practicing for like 45 years🤷♂️. so, how long does it take to learn a language? as you said, we never stop learning, so the answer is "forever". but with 100% immersion and max. effort, if the goal is a2, the answer is "maybe a few months".
Interesting that you say that. I know people who have lived in Germany for 10+ years as well, but not only are they not native-like - they don't speak the language at all. They are in their foreign-language-speaking communities and don't bother. So immersion is definitely not enough. I'd say you really need to want it to be native-like. Personally, that's not my goal when I learn most languages. The basics you can definitely get in a few months. Fluency? Depends on the language. Native-like? Years for sure. How many is the tricky part :)
@@PolyglotSecrets depending on where you live and what you do for a living that's def. possible. work makes the difference. if you push buttons on a machine and your whole team speaks your native language you will prob. not learn more than a few basics. but if you want some kind of career you have to do more. and that's where it gets difficult. even if you speak quite well a "bad" accent might block you from a better job. there is no discrimination against french or british accents ( that i am aware of ) but if you sound "russian" or "turkish" you have already lost. same goes for native speakers who don't speak a very clean hochdeutsch. regional dialects are accepted in certain environments, but if you sound more colloquial/lower class - lost again... same in italy, friend of mine from napoli speaks like the proverbial newsspeaker to avoid discrimination against terroni. a bit off topic now, but for "native-like" accents matter.
@@thomasfleck6552 Oh, totally, it does depend on your job. I agree with you. And unfortunately, stereotypes based on accents abound. My personal opinion is that you can be native-like even without a native accent (as long as it's not too thick), but that's just an opinion of course - I believe all language definitions are just opinions :)
@@PolyglotSecrets sure, no accent is a good accent. and some foreign accents are well liked, others less so... i am quite sure this isn't even intentional/racist, we're just wired like that. i am not prejudiced against any italian region, i like the country in general, culture, food, people are mostly friendly, nothing not to like, right? but. if i hear an accent from the north it just feels wrong. anything from toscana / rome to the south is fine, but milano? nope. why? obv. because i have spent most of my time in italy in the south and with people from the south, so that way of speaking had become the standard / felt right and the "other" / "different" felt wrong. being conscious about it does not make it go away, i just try to hide any reaction🤷♂️
Fluency is a fucking scam as you can never learn the whole language if it is a living language so learning all the rules and shit you can never be fluent till the language dies. It honestly is Either Natives can understand you or they can't, like how many words or phrases does one must know before they are considered fluent? it is so vague a lot of people can not answer what Fluency actually is as Natives of their own language do not know their language that well unless they major in it or in the academic fields so saying native level speaker does not mean fluency. So Fluency in a language is a scam especially since a lot of people rate "Appropriate" language as in what society deems right and wrong to say and how Social you are meaning introverts no matter what can not be considered Fluent to them as even though they know how they can not really navigate through difficult social situations Really if you want to rate Fluency i think it should be based on how many words you know or in Japanese how many Kanji as well
It's not a scam - it simply doesn't mean what you are implying, i.e. knowing the whole language. We don't even know all of our own native languages. It's impossible, even for a native speaker. Fluency to me means you can talk about almost anything in that language - and quite comfortably and effortlessly (many people define it that way actually, but there can be other definitions). It doesn't mean you "learn the whole language", which no human being has ever achieved.
Hello, are you going to learn swedish? It is in gernanic family. Have you considered Hungarian? It is close by. Its an agglutinative language, prefixes, suffixes attached to words. Phonetic like Spanish And words spoken with harmony. Unusual is 14 vowels, front or back spoken. Check out " agi szabados" UA-cam channel for a great listening experience sample. Thankyou
Hey Brian! I will learn Swedish, yes! Actually, I bought the intro book, but then got distracted by other languages, and these days I am doing mostly Russian and Persian (when it comes to new languages). But I will eventually pick up Swedish, it's a plan. :) Regarding Hungarian, who knows in the future, but I have no plans to learn it for now. I am an emotion-based learner, so I need to feel a pull towards the languages I am learning; and I haven't been drawn to Hungarian yet. But who knows, never say never. P.S. The only languages I could never be interested in learning are constructed ones like Esperanto etc. But many people learn them! So to each their own. :)
I agree about personal talent. I also agree with your comment in the "Stats from my own language learning" section: "I was simply relying on school and doing no learning on my own". I used to tell my Spanish students that the time in the classroom, formal learning, is the smallest part of language learning if you really want to advance. This comes back to your points about self-motivation and how much time you are willing to spend learning. I have my own acronym: PETS - patience, enthusiasm, time, system ("method").
I love this! Can you please elaborate on your PETS method? Always excited to learn more about methods ☺
@@PolyglotSecrets Actually in order of importance it should be ETSP: Enthusiasm, Time, System and Patience. Enthusiasm/motivation/passion: whatever you want to call it is the bedrock - without you will struggle, indeed you need to question why you are even bothering. Time: people say they can't find time. I don't believe that. How much time do people spend on social media or watching TV? I find it best to work in short sharp bursts rather than non-stop for two hours, say, but I manage find time each day to work on my Finnish, Italian and French. System: I totally agree with you that different people have different systems. I studied Spanish and Portuguese formally at university, then taught myself Finnish and Italian informally (I lived in Helsinki for 2 1/2 years) and now I study French formally with Alliance Française. Formal or informal learning is fine (a mixture of both is even better) - whatever gets you there. But regardless, you need to systematise your learning, but without becoming rigid - mix it up if you start to get bored. I watch UA-cam videos, listen to radio, read online newspapers, watch Netflix series and movies, italki and Skype chats, etc. and yes, I even read grammar books and do some old-fashioned rote learning and repetitive exercises. Patience - essential. All of these principals - PETS - apply to learning a musical instrument too. Thanks for your informative videos
@@wowjef Thank you for describing your method! I love it to be honest; I was nodding along the whole time, as I was reading it. :) Oh, and I also read more about grammar than I need to - I just really like it for some reason. So I get what you mean.
P.S. Is Finnish as difficult as they say? I know difficulty is subjective and can be skewed, but still...
@@PolyglotSecrets Finnish is only difficult at the beginning. It has case endings and consonant gradation, but phonetically offers no problems. PETS, PETS, PETS! Thanks for responding
Thank you as well 😊
I learned italian in 3 months (I studied it for a summer) and I was super proud of myself, but I already spoke Portuguese, Spanish and French (from the romance family), so I felt smart and it was very easy. After that, I was feeling very confident, I tackled Russian. Motivation was there, passion was there, study hours were there, but still, it took me several YEARS to reach a conversational level (making mistakes).
All those factors you mention MATTER, but language similarity IS the most defining factor, because I had the experience, I had the good method, I was practicing it but Russian still took me so much compared to Italian. From that moment, I have enormous respect for polyglots who do engage into different language families. Speaking 4 languages: FR,ES, PT, IT IS NOT the same as speaking 4 languages: Mandarin, Arabic, Russian and Finnish, those are two completely different levels of "polyglotism" in my opinion.
I agree, it's completely different. Of course, if you speak very different languages, that takes much more effort.
I have to say though, I am not sure which one is the biggest factor - it could be similarity. But I am not sure. So far, the most different language I have studied is Greek and it is alone in its Hellenic language family, has no living relatives etc. And I have progressed in it much faster than in German. I think that's due to passion and better methods. Who knows, perhaps the most important factor is similarity or perhaps it's different every time... I can't say for sure. All I know is I've noticed all factors that I mentioned influencing my learning and I am open to the possibility of there being other factors as well. Perhaps there's individual differences depending on the learner too.
Respect aka reverence is only meant for me, not for ppl! Anyways, why would someone want to learn a non-pretty language such as Arabic or even Russian (too many Russian words are kinda meh, I don’t know) and most Asian languages or African languages etc, and I don’t even understand why some of those languages are so popular, when there are such gorgeous languages as Dutch / Welsh / Norwegian / Icelandic / Breton etc that have almost only very pretty words and that are a true joy to one’s eye / ear! Choosing only pretty languages like Germanic / Celtic / Latin languages and Hungarian etc is a smart choice, and only pretty languages with mostly pretty words can truly be enjoyable because they naturally please one’s sight, so one should learn pretty languages for their pretty words and sounds, instead of learning non-pretty languages just because they have many speakers etc!
Dutch / English / Norwegian are the prettiest and most refined languages ever with the most pretty and poetic words and with the easiest to read (and to type and to pronounce) aspect or format and words, which makes them the easiest languages ever, so one can learn these languages to an advanced level (or to an intermediate level) in a few months if one has real good methods and time, and most other Germanic languages and Welsh / Breton / Cornish and Latin languages are also category 1 languages, so they are all very easy to learn, and there are certain languages that have mostly words that are naturally very easy to learn and remember fast, such as Dutch / English / Norwegian and Welsh, so I noticed that most words in Dutch & Welsh took me less than 5 or 6 repetitions to permanently remember them and to automatically remember them, and many of them even took 1 to 3 repetitions, which is super fast, because the words in these languages just have real great letter combinations that the hern can easily remember fast, and also because most of the words in these languages are very pretty, and one tends to remember the prettier and more distinctive words faster - new (technical) English words only take me one or two repetitions to permanently remember because I am writer level in Modern English + Scots dialect + Middle English, so I know 60k to 100.000 words in the three combined, and am very used to the patterns, and it is also the same for most new words in Spanish, so usually, when I am at least native speaker level in a language, I can usually remember almost every new word in that language after only seeing it once or twice or thrice, and it’s also started to be like that in Dutch, because my Dutch vocab is close to 10.000 base words, which is native speaker level, so now, most new Dutch words, I can remember them after only seeing them twice!
I learned Dutch to a very advanced level (over 8.000 base words) in only about 3 months or 300 hours of study as I only focused on Dutch for about 3 months or so, but not every day or all day every day, so I still watched mostly entertaining videos that aren’t necessarily teaching new vocab (because I also need to watch entertainment, not just language learning videos) but, there were also days when I would only watch vocab videos, like, going through a 2.000 vocab video once or twice and also watching lots of other shorter vocab videos! I am intermediate level in Norwegian / German / Swedish and Portuguese (but I can understand almost everything in Brazilian Portuguese and in Galician and also in Catalan because I am native speaker level in Spanish since childhood, and most words are almost the same, with just one or two different letters usually, and I actually learned Spanish 100% passively by watching a lot of TV series and movies in Spanish and listening to lots of songs with lyrics in Spanish) and, I am beginner level in Welsh / French / Icelandic / Breton / Gallo / Cornish / Galician / Old Norse and all the other pretty languages that are on my list of languages I want to learn and improve! I naturally have great observational skills and pattern recognition skills and analytical skills, and I also have a great memory and I don’t usually forget any word that I have seen many times or at least three times, which also makes learning new languages way easier, and I can learn multiple languages at the same time, so I started learning over 15 of those languages that I selected (because learning multiple languages at the same time saves so many years and keeps it very interesting) but, I usually prioritize 3 languages per month, so I focus more on those 3 and less on the others, and having those natural skills makes it easy for me to understand how each new language works and to see the different patterns that each language has, which is why I don’t usually mix them up, so I can even learn very similar languages at the same time, and I always use the best methods and techniques that help me get it done as fast as possible, because I don’t have patience, so I always go for speed / for the fastest methods!
I have all the time in the world, so all I do is, watching videos and learning languages, which is a hobby - I actually started learning languages on my own only about 8 months ago, but I should have started learning Dutch and other languages on my own in childhood, and now I would be writer level in Dutch! However, at the moment, I am writer level only in English, but I hope I can get to a writer level in Dutch soon! I actually want to know all the words that exist in Dutch / English / Norwegian (at least in these three) and that includes all the technical terms and other rare terms! There are almost 1.500.000 words / definitions in English, and it feels like I know almost everything in English, so maybe I know a lot more than 100.000 words, I don’t know exactly, but whenever I try finding new words by reading different articles and stuff that I wouldn’t normally read, I realize that I know all the words, and sometimes there are only a couple new words if it’s something about technical stuff or biology etc!
It takes EXACTLY 2 years, 3 months, 4 days, 5 hours, 6 minutes and 7 seconds to learn a language.
Give or take a few picoseconds.
🤣🤣🙈
Just popping in to say I love your videos, thank you for sharing your valuable insights with us.
Thank you so much! Comments like this one always make me happy, because it's so good to see all the work is not in vain. 🥰
I'm learning English, your videos help me a lot
So happy to hear that! Let me know if you have particular questions about topics in English that you are wondering about - I’d love to help! Thanks for watching 🥰
If you understand her then I'd say you basically know English
When I decide to learn a new language, I am always very motivated and want to give it my all, which sometimes means twelve to fourteen hours a day. But I'm an intellectual hard worker and a perfectionist, and I understand that not everyone is able to sacrifice that much time to learn a new language. And I also agree that if we already know a foreign language and are learning another, it's easier. I guess it's because we already have a system worked out through which we achieve this. And we also have a more "expanded consciousness".
Absolutely, those things really matter! :)
For me it's a long process because I never studied anything before.
I started two years ago with English at 40 years old, but without tools or organized way.
Six months ago I started Italian because I felt that English routine started to be boring for me.
So, I started Italian in the same that I continued to learn English and it was more fun like that.
For me because all that it's a really long way, a real big school for improving my patience skill.
Thank you for your video, it's the first one that I saw with you and it's helpful.
Thank you for the kind words! I am so glad you find it helpful. Your English is great by the way. :) And learning 2 languages at once is always more fun than just learning one, so I am glad you made that choice. :)
@@PolyglotSecrets I hope later be able to learn Portuguese . I love this country and people over there. But for me when I tried i saw that it was difficult because every times after two weeks I started to mix it with Italian.
@@laurentpicard3963 Oh, no worries. Mixing is fine, it happens to us all. Eventually, the languages will separate - it's all about practice. I've mixed even unrelated languages terribly. With time, you overcome it. :)
I know well English, French, Cantonese, Russian, Croatian, Thai. French I got free as a child from going to French international school. Cantonese took 5 years to get fluent and I lived in Hong Kong. I lived 15 years in Hong Kong and within this time it took me 3 months for Thai, and I found an old video of me speaking 20 minutes of isan dialect fluently.... That language took 3 months after Thai. But can't remember this language now. I lived 7 years in Ukraine. Took me 3 years for Russian intensively. Croatian took 6 months to get to B2. And now I'm learning Italian after 2 weeks and I remember and understand nearly everything I am learning. I tried German... This has to be the hardest of them all. Pausing German until Italian is fluent. I think 3 months will get me B1 for Italian. I think it's getting easier every new language. German is too hard and I need much more time as I don't have another language to leverage
I love your interest in so many different languages! How cool 😎
Por q no lo explicas como estudias en un canal?
Has un canal de UA-cam sería buenísimo
Well there's this once famous 10 000 hour rule🙄.... Which translates to three to five years if you work eight hours a day, depending if you take some days off or not haha
But getting fluent in three months is really impressive !😲
So among all the wise factors you bring up, I would clearly single out personal talent as being a true game changer...
Interesting study as always👍
Yes, but that's just my extreme, keep that in mind. I learn every language with varying speed. Usually it takes me more than that. :)
@@PolyglotSecrets Phew ! You usually need more than three months , you're still human ! I feel better ! :)
@@nolanr1400 Haha absolutely! Portuguese was an exception, as I already spoke Spanish, took the right steps, and most importantly - I was committed. I usually don't commit like that. I am too easily distracted by other languages and I constantly juggle between them. I think that's great overall, but you can bet that it means it takes me much longer to learn a language (simply because it has too much company). But I am also someone that couldn't care less about how long it might take me to learn a language - I just enjoy the process 😉
@@PolyglotSecrets Awesome ! :)
The fact that you already spoke Spanish looks like an advantage, but It's not so obvious :
For example, as you know it better than me, 30% of all english words are literally french words, the exact same words with the exact same meaning, all these long latin rooted words that are usually considered academic vocab in the English speaking world you know...
So the French could be expected to be good at English since they already know 30% of the English dictionary even before starting learning english...
but in spite of that, the French are very known not to be good at English at all hahaha 😂 .
So I would say that the similarity between Portuguese and Spanish is just anecdotal in your performance, more like the icing on the cake or something. 😉
I've been using flashcards to learn and review new words, but I've noticed that I can't remember these words as I speak. do you have any tips for making new words stick in my mind and actively using them?
Excellent question! I am a vocal opponent of flashcards, as I believe that there is little use of learning words outside of context. Vocabulary is best learned through input, through stories, in context - I give all the details in this video, ua-cam.com/video/eqF3iguoBv4/v-deo.html. Take a look, as the explanation is quite long for a comment. Thank you for your question! ☺
@@PolyglotSecrets I just found your video talking about it. I’ll take a look, thanks :)
Anytime! Always open to questions 😊
Thank you for sharing this video. I really love your all videos. You are my idol
🙏
Krachen and Kaufman? Maybe?
1 - not yet, unfortunately, 2 - YES!! I am so excited 🤩
@@PolyglotSecrets congrats! That'll give your channel a boost
1 hour, 50 minutes and 32 seconds
Give or take 😂🤩
Hey all polyglots say that you should enjoy the proccess but most of the time of learning language is just full of pain and repetetive boring study do you guys really enjoy all the time of learning language ?
I certainly didn't enjoy parts of it in school. But ever since I started learning by myself, I only do things that I enjoy. I never stick with something, if I don't like it. From my conversations with other polyglots, I would say they do the same - at least those I have spoken with. That's why our methods are never exactly the same, because we all like different things. We all found ways to enjoy learning a language though. We simply don't do activities we find boring. For me, it's a hobby. Hobbies are fun ☺
Sounds like you are using language learning apps and memorizing vocab. Consider switching to reading things you are interested in and watching content in the target language you are interested in. Comprehensible content if possible
Turn it into fun, adventure, or use humor, or discovery of new words, phrases.
10:40
I wonder what language could that be.
Haha I didn't even have one in mind when I said this! But the statement works through (insert any of the most spoken ones here)😁
@@PolyglotSecrets Español, Señora.
@@Andunia Right, I meant that in general, I wasn't referencing any language in particular, but just making an overall point. Oh, I hope no one thinks I was bashing learning Spanish. 😬 I love that language to death.
@@PolyglotSecrets jajaja
🤔definitions, definitions... probably not everybody is capable of achieving a native-like level? i have met quite a few people living in germany for ten or more tears and speaking ok-ish. others have achieved "perfection" after maybe three or four years. i am not native-like in any of my learned languages. not even in english, despite practicing for like 45 years🤷♂️. so, how long does it take to learn a language? as you said, we never stop learning, so the answer is "forever". but with 100% immersion and max. effort, if the goal is a2, the answer is "maybe a few months".
Interesting that you say that. I know people who have lived in Germany for 10+ years as well, but not only are they not native-like - they don't speak the language at all. They are in their foreign-language-speaking communities and don't bother. So immersion is definitely not enough. I'd say you really need to want it to be native-like. Personally, that's not my goal when I learn most languages.
The basics you can definitely get in a few months. Fluency? Depends on the language. Native-like? Years for sure. How many is the tricky part :)
@@PolyglotSecrets depending on where you live and what you do for a living that's def. possible. work makes the difference. if you push buttons on a machine and your whole team speaks your native language you will prob. not learn more than a few basics. but if you want some kind of career you have to do more. and that's where it gets difficult. even if you speak quite well a "bad" accent might block you from a better job. there is no discrimination against french or british accents ( that i am aware of ) but if you sound "russian" or "turkish" you have already lost. same goes for native speakers who don't speak a very clean hochdeutsch. regional dialects are accepted in certain environments, but if you sound more colloquial/lower class - lost again... same in italy, friend of mine from napoli speaks like the proverbial newsspeaker to avoid discrimination against terroni. a bit off topic now, but for "native-like" accents matter.
@@thomasfleck6552 Oh, totally, it does depend on your job. I agree with you. And unfortunately, stereotypes based on accents abound. My personal opinion is that you can be native-like even without a native accent (as long as it's not too thick), but that's just an opinion of course - I believe all language definitions are just opinions :)
@@PolyglotSecrets sure, no accent is a good accent. and some foreign accents are well liked, others less so... i am quite sure this isn't even intentional/racist, we're just wired like that. i am not prejudiced against any italian region, i like the country in general, culture, food, people are mostly friendly, nothing not to like, right? but. if i hear an accent from the north it just feels wrong. anything from toscana / rome to the south is fine, but milano? nope. why? obv. because i have spent most of my time in italy in the south and with people from the south, so that way of speaking had become the standard / felt right and the "other" / "different" felt wrong. being conscious about it does not make it go away, i just try to hide any reaction🤷♂️
That makes sense. Our ears have an easier time accepting what we are used to, I suppose.
Fluency is a fucking scam as you can never learn the whole language if it is a living language so learning all the rules and shit you can never be fluent till the language dies. It honestly is Either Natives can understand you or they can't, like how many words or phrases does one must know before they are considered fluent? it is so vague a lot of people can not answer what Fluency actually is as Natives of their own language do not know their language that well unless they major in it or in the academic fields so saying native level speaker does not mean fluency. So Fluency in a language is a scam especially since a lot of people rate "Appropriate" language as in what society deems right and wrong to say and how Social you are meaning introverts no matter what can not be considered Fluent to them as even though they know how they can not really navigate through difficult social situations
Really if you want to rate Fluency i think it should be based on how many words you know or in Japanese how many Kanji as well
It's not a scam - it simply doesn't mean what you are implying, i.e. knowing the whole language. We don't even know all of our own native languages. It's impossible, even for a native speaker. Fluency to me means you can talk about almost anything in that language - and quite comfortably and effortlessly (many people define it that way actually, but there can be other definitions). It doesn't mean you "learn the whole language", which no human being has ever achieved.
@@PolyglotSecrets I am telling you what others have told me in the past
Hello, are you going to learn swedish? It is in gernanic family.
Have you considered Hungarian? It is close by. Its an agglutinative
language, prefixes, suffixes attached to words. Phonetic like Spanish
And words spoken with harmony. Unusual is 14 vowels, front or back spoken. Check out " agi szabados" UA-cam channel for a great
listening experience sample. Thankyou
Hey Brian! I will learn Swedish, yes! Actually, I bought the intro book, but then got distracted by other languages, and these days I am doing mostly Russian and Persian (when it comes to new languages). But I will eventually pick up Swedish, it's a plan. :)
Regarding Hungarian, who knows in the future, but I have no plans to learn it for now. I am an emotion-based learner, so I need to feel a pull towards the languages I am learning; and I haven't been drawn to Hungarian yet. But who knows, never say never.
P.S. The only languages I could never be interested in learning are constructed ones like Esperanto etc. But many people learn them! So to each their own. :)