Timestamps & Links 0:00:00 Intro 0:01:18 Step 1: Read at the Speed of Speech 0:03:00 Step 2: Analyse 0:04:46 Step 3: Repeat Aloud 0:06:02 Step 4: Recite Aloud with Vivid Imagination 0:07:16 Step 5: Tell the Story to a Child 0:08:18 Step 6: Re-Read at the Speed of Speech 0:08:53 Step 7: Re-Read at the Speed of Speech SILENTLY 0:09:27 Summary of 7 Steps, and additional steps 0:11:27 Phonological Loop: the tape recorder in the head 0:18:37 CI & Extensive Reading 0:20:46 Definitions of Extensive vs. Intensive Reading 0:29:01 Latin Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique 0:39:17 Ancient Greek Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique 0:47:56 Romanian Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique 0:58:43 Portuguese Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique 1:01:00 Lucian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek 1:07:39 Russian Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique 🦜 Alexandros (beginner Ancient Greek book) audio: www.patreon.com/posts/41402787 🦂 Support my work on Patreon, and get access to tons of Extensive Reading audiobook in Latin & Ancient Greek! www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri 📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com
Well that's my journey now: I'm on an english UA-camr's video for learning latin while being a German native speaker XD Thanks for the vid!!! I completely got your very well described "deep dive"-method. I love it. Since I've (somewhat) successfully learned english I do know what you mean by the issue of this translating behaviour. I can write and speak and listen to english without doing it. Since I've done a ton of connections btw the meant thing and the language rather than the told/written word and my native language! Means your first steps gives me the substance to kinda move a bit within the language and for getting better it is better to deal with grammar later. tbh I'm not surprised that schools fail at that one as well. It is quiet the opposite LMAO. I want to get fluently in Latin before I go to University (which demands the full set of latin since I'm on to gradue in Philosophy). And I think you've made me clear how I should do it. But I didn't find ANY audio books for latin and I'm not even sure which is the correct pronounciation for my course then (it hasn't any details). :SS But I've ordered the first Book of Harry Potter in latin. I gonna try your method - THANKS AGAIN
Reading is, honestly, a very underrated form of language acquisition. In most cases, an advanced vocabulary will be got from reading a wide range of material. In fact, I once *read* in a study that the optimal number of books one ought to read if one wishes to acquire a large vocabulary is 137. Of course, that number should include books on a vast array of topics, say, from theatrical classics and provincial fables to scientific papers and business reports.
Agree, and it need not necessarily be books. I read one Spanish and one French newspaper article online each day to retain my skills and increase my knowledge. One aspect I focus on is the various ways a sentence can *begin* because grammar books never go into these formulations; they tend to be very conversation-centered, as if the only topic one might wish to speak about is oneself. Connected with this, newspapers generally report, so it's an excellent means of learning to speak in the third-person/past tense.
There’s potentially a trap here which needs to be recognized before it’s encountered. We are spoiled as English speakers as our written language mirrors our speech for the most part (not counting formal legal documents or other prescribed formats). French, as an example, has verb tenses which are only used in written French but never in spoken French - AKA the “literary tenses”. Not knowing which is which can lead to awkward (yet humorous) conversations. www.thoughtco.com/french-literary-tenses-1368875
There's this short analysis that points to this very same number: puroh.it/reading-for-a-fine-vocabulary/ It's error prone in many assumptions and it misses a few extra ones, but I believe it's a fairly reasonable conclusion.
Started doing this for Spanish. An extra step I do in step 2, is to write down the sentences or phrases that include a word or grammar structure that I don’t understand. Adds time, but is worth it! This has taken my learning to the next level. Thank you!!
The “read it to a child” step is fantastic! I struggle with sounding very monotoned when reading non-native languages (sometimes in my native English as well), so the emphasized emotions and the like is helping me tremendously.
Following cognitive science research helps explain why this method is so successful. What you’re doing is training your language parser so that your brain can interpret appropriate phoneme sequences innately instead of “mechanically” (i.e. rote vocabulary and grammar study). As you listen to natural speech your brain is actually running about 7-8 parallel “execution threads” of what the next phoneme MIGHT be and immediately prunes the incorrect paths in real-time as it moves on the the next sequence. This is why just listening to your target language helps train your prediction engine. This is how infants learn to optimize their language acquisition, so why too shouldn’t we as adults? Doing so not only helps train phoneme sequence but also tone and pitch accents as well. Native speakers often aren’t aware of pitch accent but know when it’s incorrect when a foreign speaker does it; they just can’t name it. Having a “good ear” for mimicry helps a lot too. I’m often complimented on my pronunciation, but it can also get me into a bind because it signals to the listener that I am more proficient than I actually am.
What you said about how languages are usually taught with an emphasis on grammar translation resonates a lot. I've heard many teachers advise thinking in the language you're learning, but having been taught the standard method, I find myself always trying to translate from English. They're saying do it like this, but they teach in a way that counters it.
Luke, you really surprised me. Many Romanian language learners have trouble pronouncing the "i" at the end of the words like "cărți", "astăzi" because it's whispered. But you pronounced it naturally, like a Romanian. I also noticed that you pronounced "el/este", "iel/ieste", which is the correct way of saying it despite how it is written. Just be mindful of the fact that this invisible "i" before the "e" is only pronounced in the pronouns (ieu/iel/iele/iei) and verbs like “ieste, iera” but not in regular nouns that begin with "e". Like you don't pronounce "engleza" or "elefant" with an "i" in front because these are just regular nouns, so they should be pronounced exactly as written. Glad you decided to learn Romanian.
Nice comment Octavian, agree with you. Glad you took the time to explain this concept to others who might not know. I've noticed a trend throughout most people that have not had an interaction with the Romanian language, in which they assume it is pronounced and enunciated the same as Italian due to the many similarities between the two, although that could not be further from the truth. Ai dat sfaturi foarte bune si tangibile! With that being said, I'd like to mention to everyone else that this is not perpetually applicable, as the whispery "i" phenomenon has, to my knowledge, predominantly become popular through, and generally used, in colloquial contexts. Natural, flowing Romanian conversation might feature the "i" or not. I use both "este" and "ieste" depending on how I feel or what want to convey. "Este" is formal and correct, clean, and "Roman," while "ieste" is organic and more emotional. They're both the same. It's simply a matter of accent or dialect.
I agree that you can use either "este" or "ieste" depending on what you want. But I do think that "ieste" is actually the actual way to pronounce it, and "este" comes from how people started pronouncing it, due to its spelling. It's kinda how we say "eu sunt" instead of "eu sânt". "sânt" was always the pronunciation of the word, but because of the spelling reform, people started to shift the â into a u. But again, the way you decide to speak is your unique way, and we apreciate it :)
@@dimitalle3530 I was taught that the pronunciation of “sunt” is actually more archaic than saying “sânt” as it comes from Latin “sunt”. Therefore, it makes more sense that “sunt” is the older pronunciation. It’s worth pointing out that there is no one “correct” way of pronunciation. It depends on the region. But I think that with respect to “ieu/iel/ieste” this is fairly standard. Maybe there are regions that I’m not aware of that don’t pronounce the “I”.
@@polyMATHY_Luke You don't have an English accent but a Roman one when speaking Portuguese. If you ever came here and talked to me, I'd ask if you were Italian or Sardinian or something like that.
Excellent advice! Much better approach than that take with Latin when I was at school. (Fortunately I was/am bilingual: English/Spanish). Now (at 83) I’m learning classical Greek.😊😊😊😂
I am learning Romanian and I think it is limba cea mai frumoasa. I like this idea for getting away from the internal translation that can happen when you try to learn through vocabulary and grammar studies. Thank you for sharing and demonstrating your method.
It’s fascinating how the technique you describe is essentially the exact same way that a child learns to speak and read. Makes one wonder how true it actually is that we get worse at learning language as we age.
I learned to read at the age of four or five (not sure exactly.. it happened when I got my glasses, I was half blind until then). I wasn't taught the letters or anything, it happened because my father used to read Donald Duck & co for me. I kept watching the pages as he read (after getting my glasses, at least). He used his finger when he read because he wasn't a good reader himself, having suffered dyslexia as a child. Anyway, I kept watching and listening.. then, my father later told me, one day I urged him to turn the page when he was only half way through. At that point I had started to read myself, and much faster than he could read to me. From then on he figured I could very well do the reading myself, he was done with it! (A much more recent example of learning to read without being taught is a little Japanese girl I know, she isn't living in Japan but she speaks Japanese - she loves to listen to and sing Japanese songs, and, as she actually has access to a mobile phone and a tablet, she watches UA-cam videos with Japanese songs *and* Japanese written lyrics. To the astonishment of my wife, who is also Japanese, the girl had taught herself to read Japanese (or anyway the subset available to her) purely from watching those song videos with written subtitled lyrics.) As for kids being better at learning languages.. I believe it's true to some extent. It seems that they're better at, in particular. two major things: a) Memory. Words just.. stick better. I remember elementary school, our teacher was only interested in music, he didn't bother teaching us mathematics, geography, all that stuff. Instead we were taught songs. The thing is - he repeated the song *once*, and we remembered it. To this day, now that I'm getting old, I can still remember those songs. When I got a bit older, late teens, I lost that ability. Completely. Not for lack of trying, I assure you - I play guitar. Can't remember lyrics to save my life, with any amount of practicing or repeating, however long. b) Imagination. Small children, in particular, seems to be able to quickly imagine what it's about. They quickly understand, or can guess, what you're saying. Their imagination runs wild and it works. Whereas when my wife tells me something I don't understand (as mentioned above she's Japanese) I try to imagine it, but more often than not I don't get it, but when she or I translates it it's always "of course, why didn't I see that?". And it's even worse for my wife, the other way. Children are much better at this stuff. But it's also true that in practice it doesn't mean that children are so much better than adults - the adults have a lot of other mental tools to help learning. And, after all, children have time. Years, even.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the ancient Greeks were known to be masters of both recitation and memorization. They even promoted memorization through recitation as a means to improve comprehension and command of the information being presented in the text or oration. Definitely something to be said for this approach, even when studying texts in your native language. Many times I’ve noticed a difficult poetic line or paragraph in a piece of literature becomes much more comprehensible to me after I recite it out loud
I'm a native Portuguese speaker, and I can say that, indeed, your pronunciation sounds better than the announcer’s. I was born in Brazil, so I think your accent is more familiar to me. Your channel is the best on UA-cam for languages. I started a deep immersion routine five days ago, and I reached level B1 in only five days, before that, I was at A2. i'm just spent all my day typing with GPT and shadowing everything along my day (thanks for teach this method), the rest of my time i just watch movies/series and youtube, and perhaps i'm start to listen some podcast because too, my routine has something between 16~18h/day, i wish be able to speak fluently in only 2 weeks, and really thoght this is archivable. Today is the first time I'm able to understand almost everything someone says. Your pronunciation is excellent!
The 7 steps are amarvellous idea...I'm almost finished with Olberg 1, and now I will go back with the method. Thanks, Patrick PS the course by Satura Lanx is pure genius.
I am 15 minutes into this video, at almost 1am, and I resonate with the problems with just grammar-translation. I have 6 semesters of Latin under my belt. And I feel like I know NOTHING in Latin still. I cannot read it quickly, I end up stopping at almost every word, and just slowly struggling through a sentence. I often lose track while doing this and have to begin again and again. This video has me super excited about Latin again! Latin and Greek had been a major cause of anxiety for me due to the pressure of feeling like I had to be able to see and properly translate a passage immediately. I have a 4-year-old, and I want to try this method now and see if I can even teach her some Latin in the process.
As you learn Latin in school, you should practice the language at home too. Ie keep reading and listening. Consume Latin content. Sch is mostly just theories and limited practice. You have to actually drive to drive a car.
Your comment about ambiguity being fun reminds me of something CS Lewis said in his essay On Stories: I happened to remark to a man who was sitting beside me at dinner the other night that I was reading Grimm in German of an evening but never bothered to look up a word I didn't know, 'so that it is often great fun' (I added) 'guessing what it was that the old woman gave to the prince which he afterwards lost in the wood'.
I just love all your Latin videos. How I wish someone would do this with the Icelandic and Old Norse Sagas, too! The extensive reading method is absolutely the best way to truly aquire a language.
I, as a Russian speaker, am impressed that you included it in this video. If it be of some help to you, your pronunciation is good as far as nuances of vowel reduction and intonation go, although foreigners' biggest struggle (i.e. hard-soft-consonants distinction) remains. Many thanks for sharing the method. Btw, I'm not criticising you as overall it was great especially the 5th step, I am just pointing out the small things you yourself might not notice you might want to improve.
You’re absolutely right! 😊 Another helpful thing when learning a language is to record oneself, as I did here, because then I was able to catch the same things. Great points.
A suggestion I have for learning your target language's pronunciation if you dont have an audiobook is to listen to songs in the language and sing along to them. I've been doing it the past 3-4 months and it's superbly helpful.
I learned a lot of Spanish by reading. I also learned to let the language wash over me and accept ambiguity. Previously it never occurred to me that the two might be interrelated in a cause and effect relationship.
Luke, this was one of your best videos! I am currently learning Russian as a hobby and It seems like I've been unconsciously using similar (albeit less refined) techniques to study it, however, your approach makes so much more sense and I can't wait to test it on my Russian studies!
Luke - this was very helpful to me. Unfortunately, I learned Koine Greek in Seminary (2 years) but only from a grammatical standpoint. Thus, I never really “learned” it. Now I am “re-Learning” the proper way. I appreciate you and your work!
I’ve been copying this technique exactly to learn Russian via LingQ and it has helped immensely. You learn words, learn how to pronounce them, and learn how they work in different contexts all at the same time.
I've applied this method and re-read Familia Romana in this manner. It is amazing! Definitely learnt a lot more than my first run and I'm starting to understand Latin as it is instead of trying to figure out what it means in English first.
Familia Romana, using pictures and context, gives you a lot information about not only meanings of words in Latin, but also many nuances of meaning that cannot be translated accurately into other languages.
Dear Luke, thank you for this content. It really is a blessing to be able to access all this information for free. As a student myself I always have to look for the cheapest option in order to acquire knowledge or practice my hobbies, so this is just perfect for me. Greetings from Germany.
As a Romanian I can confirm that your accent is much better than the general American accent. Many people have trouble with our ș, ț, ă and especially â.
You truly are a genius. This research you've done on languages is so beneficial. I'm going to try this method. I've never tried a method like this before. I try to learn by brute force, but it never works. Thank you for sharing !
Justin Lee Miller raises a very important point about access to texts of interest. A former Classics professor suggested this to me when learning another language. And it speaks to Polýᴍᴀᴛʜʏ's initial comment about not needing to know the text initially. I humbly disagree. For my professor said that a good way to learn a language is precisely to go for that familiar genre (who-dunnits, sci-fi, religious, poetry, etc.), or even a selfsame favorite book (Αlice in Wonderland, the Little Prince, Harry Potter, poems of Catullus, the Bible, etc.), or a piece of a book ( a book from the Bible, a chapter from a favorite novel, a cherished poem) in the target language. That way, one already knows what the text means, and then it becomes a string of aha-moments whereby you learn the structures, vocab and nuances of the language through how the story is told in the target language. It makes it easier, I ween, to move through a text in a more native-speaker pace. You can't get more 'comprehensible input' than that, I think, and it would help each of the seven steps, IMHO. 👍 ἔρρωσο
Come to think of it, I did this without knowing the term haha! I have a copy of Dante’s Comedia in Italian, which I’ve been using to learn the language. Dante inspired me to learn Italian in the first place. Narrator isn’t so bad either lol!
This summer I’m putting on my big-boy pants: I’m going to read Don Quixote in Spanish. I’ve been trying to do this every summer for 30 years. I’ve started the prefaces several times and never made it to the first chapter. And for some dumbass reason, I wouldn’t *let* myself make it past the prefaces and just *enjoy* reading. I just gave up. I have to say I’ve got a really good Spanish vocabulary. I’m subscribed to many Spanish language news sources. If I have to look up more than one or two words a day, it’s a rare. But Don Quixote was a blow to the nards. (Before you begin: I know this is old Spanish. I’ve read the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Diario de Cristóbal Colón.) I even bought the Trapiello edition that’s been adapted to modern Spanish. There’s C2 vocabulary, and there’s C2+ vocabulary-words you will likely only see in literature. And the prose, like much modern Spanish literature, is very florid-props to Trapiello for keeping that. I just need to gird my loins and read past the words I don’t know-then go back to some of the really interesting ones, because I generally understand the gist without knowing every single word. Incorporating some of these techniques should definitely help!
This is why I always download subtitles in the language of the movie I'm watching. So German subtitles for German movies, English subtitles for English movies etc. Myself, I'm Dutch and I'm trying to learn all the Indo-European languages.
Luke, i can't express how grateful I am to you for creating and sharing this technique. Absolutely brilliant information on the aspects of acquiring a language. And your content is unique among everything around. I find your method so suitable for myself and positively effective. Thank you so much! Спасибо от всей души!
I used to go to Barnes and Noble to buy the "Corriere della Sera" (an Italian newspaper) to read it. I would read an article in Italian and a word that I didn't understand I would write it and translate it; then I would read the article again with the new word I've learned to understand the article better and at the same time I acquired a new word for my Italian vocabulary. Luke tu sei molto bravo, stammi bene amico.
I feel blessed by having found your channel. Totally agree with your method, happy to see you mentioning Dr. Arguelles and here in the comments people remembering Steve Kaufmann's advocacy for reading and listening. This is the way to go, this is the way Lomb Kato and Stephen Krashen would like the word to be spread. :))) Happy to see the language I yearned to learn since I was 6 being taught by someone so passionate and well informed as you.
I think before whenever I'd encounter a long paragraph or piece of text filled with unfamiliar vocabulary or grammar, I'd just ignore it under some impression that I simply wasn't advanced enough to tackle such texts. I have to say just hanging in there and really breaking down such a text and being able to say it and comprehend it confidently really helps counter the demotivation one feels when studying the same pieces of vocab and simple grammar. Thanks so much for the advice.
Wow, by step 7 you'll know the text by heart. You'll be just like a child, whom you can not cheat by skipping a passage in its favourite good night story. 🙂 Naturally this is all great advice! Do pick up a book you really would enjoy, and you'll have a great time and fabulous results. A personal choice will reflect your personality and things you'll like to communicate and share with others. If you want to improve your English, "Therapy" by David Lodge could be a choice that keeps you enthralled for its many levels: theater, comedy, TV, philosophy, psychology, health, religion, youth and old age, first love and divorce, home and travel, even car-choice - and an immense range of styles and vocabulary, delivered wittily by this professor-author and literature-expert.
I'm very happy for having found this video, because I started using a somehow similar method to learn German reading Die Unendliche Geschichte, loosely based on what Ranciere explains in The Ignorant Schoolmaster and on other feedback. Although I had some German classes before coming to Germany (I understood the basic grammar), when I arrived I realized I couldn't effectively communicate with other people. I started reading slowly aloud, then used deepl to give me a (roughly) translated version of the paragraph whenever I felt I needed it, and as I was living with a German speaker, she corrected me whenever she heard something odd. At the begining I put a lot of emphasis on remembering words (I usually wrote them down and looked for them in the dictionary), but after a while a could go on more or less fluidly, looking for words less and less (I used almost 20 pages to write vocabulary and notes for the first chapter, and not even half a page for the last one). I wish I would have seen your video sooner.
This video clearly outlines how to go about learning another language. I liked how you explained the method, and how you demonstrated the method in the 2nd half of the video. I always feel like I need to look up every unknown word, but I'd still like to try out this method! Thank you for making and posting the video!
Sō true!;) Look, listen, read, and imagine, all at once! I did this with Greek and now Anton Tasos seems slow! The Bible can be your Rosetta Stone. Once you basically memorize the text, you can pick it up in multiple languages using this technique! I used to walk listening to 1st John recorded in 7 languages! I am def not a polyglot, but once you've memorized the text it's easy! (Doing this now with John in Lucian!!! 😊)
Coming back to languages, particularly Latin and Koine Greek, after a few years hiatus, I'm getting a jolt of inspiration to dive into your method - such an insight-filled video, thank you for all your work!
It reminds me of having spent three years studying Koine Greek from 11 to 14 years old. I couldn't actually read the New Testament until I started to listen to the audio recording from both the Erasmian and modern pronunciation. That's how I picked up Greek. That was 10 years ago. Now I'm 24 and a junior at the University of Evansville in Classics with Language and Literature Concentration, double major in Religion. I have a long ways to go to get to the level of proficiency in this video. But simultaneously, I do have a very good plan and also agree with what he's saying. Speak Greek. Speak Latin. Speak Russian, German, English, Sanskrit, whatever. Speaking is the key. That's how I picked up both Modern Hebrew and also German and Russian.
Great video, Luke. I have just recently started to teach myself Latin and having recently received my copy of LLPSI I find myself translating it into English in my mind, which I know from your videos is not a good method to use. So I started listening to your LLPSI readings as I follow along in the book. Those videos are gold btw - hearing the words pronounced correctly is great. Especially since I’m more interested in speaking Latin fluently more than reading/writing fluently. Thanks for inspiring me to learn a second language.
Salve! I’ve started doing this with some of the texts from Latinitium and have been really enjoying it, my pronunciation has improved so much. But I’d love for someone to release an audiobook of Harrius Potter because I’d love to try this with it too.
Teachers were becoming repetitive in high school with Spanish.. We were actually forced to learn Spanish by age 12, then relearn the same exact thing in high school Spanish class. I got bored and went to learn Modern Greek at the library since the library was a walking distance to the high school and I worked in the library not far from home later on, so I was also able to gain access to many books, dictionaries and newspapers in Modern Greek.
Brazilian portuguese speaker over here and I just wanted to thank you for the tips and congrats you for your great Brazilian accent and pronunciation. Keep going dude ;)!
I'm clearly late, though currently learning Japanese. And most textbooks I've gotten that have "tips" to learning language often have asked me to read books translating as I go when I reach (specifically kanji, though words in general) that I do not know. I'll definitely try this method, though! I've never heard of it before, thank you for making this video!
Just when you are ready to say the internet is a failed experiment and everything is awful out there, you come across something like polýMATHY. It’s a feast of riches. And as a fairly new Latin student, it’s a huge gift to have all this help, not just from you but from all the creators who do Latin teaching. (But YOU are the man) I don’t know why I took up Latin (3 months ago). Some version of middle age crazy, I guess. I’m I’m still going. So thank you so much for everything you do.
Very cool. I've been studying Italian for a year starting with Duolingo then UA-cam learning some solid A1 skills. I then started approaching my studies using some of the elements you outline here. I will be tweaking my approach to better match your system. I often "act out" the Pimsleur audio lessons or yell at my kids in Italian. I also write out sentences and things I want to talk to my online instructor about. I transcribed a lot of videos including a lengthy one recounting the history of Caraffa using the closed caption in Italian. Thanks for the great videos, from one rotorhead to another.
I'm learning French and I was about to begin reading Le Petit Prince tomorrow. It has 27 chapters so I was going to do one a day for the whole of Feburary (I guess I get a day off). I'll be sure to try out this technique!
Luke, I stumbled across your channel recently and I love it! You inspired me to relearn Latin. Also, you really, REALLY need to look into Classical Arabic. You don’t know what you’re missing, trust me. A highly inflected and poetic language with crazy mathematical morphology and phonology, unbelievably large and wacky vocabulary and an ancient tradition that is mostly unknown to western audiences. It would be right up your alley. Try it, you won’t regret it! I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
Esse método é maravilhoso, muito bom mesmo. Escrevo na minha língua nativa pra você já ir treinando seu português kkkkkkkkkk Abraços do Brasil, professor Luke, Deus te abençoe.
I ve been using a similar method for quite some time especially for English and French. And I ve come to belive that learning a foreign language is almost as spiritual as reciting holy Sanskrit texts iin Buddhism. Your video sort of confirmed my long-held hypothesis(?) and I thank you for that.
Great suggestions Luke, thank you. Personally , when I am learning a new language, I like to listen to songs and read illustrated stories for children, so that I take andvantage of music and illustrations to memorize new words.
Thanks for sharing your method. I’m Brazilian living in Germany and despite of reading and writing German at a C1 level, I speak it as A2-B1 level. I have been told to read my books in German loud, but this was not so appealing as your method. I will surely try it. 😉
This is not an unusual situation when learning a language. Some parts of learning a language come to a person more quickly and other parts take more time. So how is your hearing comprehension and ability to spontaneously engage in everyday conversational language skills with another person in German? Since the spoken German Language is heavily influenced by the region of German you live in, how are your skills for understanding the local dialects? Lastly since you have a Romance Language as a Native Speaker, how your are your pronunciation skills for pronouncing word groups, such as: "ach: mach, nacht, lach, usw" "ich: licht, nicht, mich usw.", "ag: mag, Tage, jag, usw." "sch: schon, schön, vermisch, usw." You might want to spend some time with the YT group Easy German: ua-cam.com/video/_NXDM9XXhQ4/v-deo.html.
Hi Luke, This is a great method! However, I would like to make one suggestion to add to this: accent reduction. I completely agree with your method and this sort of thing absolutely works. However, one of my strong points in language learning is accent reduction and it's something that I've noticed a lot of people struggle with when learning a language. What I like to do is when I hear a language, I listen for the sounds that stick out for me. For example, when I was learning Persian, the "-at" sound that they make at the end of some Arabic loanwords (e.g. istarahat, ijazat, salamati). This sound combines an /æ/ sound with a palatal "t" which adds a strange quality to words I already knew as an L3 Arabic speaker. What I did was I would find recordings of individuals using words with this sound and try and mimic the specific motions they are making with their tongue, throat and nose to produce that sound. I suppose you could compare this to tuning a musical instrument. Basically, what I did, was I would start with the most odd sound that, in my mind, captures the essence of what the language sounds like. Once I feel that I've sufficiently mastered that sound, I would work my way to less and less prominent sounds. Once I've mastered some of these sounds, I move to intonations (e.g. the question intonation or the "joke" intonation). This is a very important process since it helps you understand how native speakers use the language and adds some cultural context to the texts that you read.
I think you did a great job with your Russian. I've been studying Russian for around 4 years now and I'm between B2/C1. Reading definitely helped expand my Russian. I'll read Russian news, then I'll highlight the text with my phone and put it into Google translate to have the app read the Russian to me, then I repeat the paragraph.
Very helpful! I'm trying to learn German at the moment. I'd heard of comprehensible input theory from the 'What I've Learned' channel, but I really appreciate you breaking it down here into actionable steps.
Luke, tu trabajo es realmente impresionante. Tu generosidad por compartir tus conocimientos y tu amor por la enseñanza de la lenguas hacen que para aquellos que tardíamente nos iniciamos en el estudios tanto de las lenguas clásicas como de las modernas el camino parezca menos cuesta arriba. Si fuera sólo por tus conocimientos sobresalientes, ya diríamos que este canal es uno de los mejores canales para adentrarse en el estudio del griego y el latín. Sin embargo, lo que distingue este de otros canales es tu pasión por poner en movimiento a través de la práctica todo ese conocimiento, por mostrar cómo se despliega el proceso de aprehender otra lengua, y sobre todo cómo ese proceso puede ser arduo, pero a la vez gratificante: un recorrido lleno de aventuras semejante al de aquel héroe alejado del hogar por el designio de los dioses, un viaje con sus idas y venidas, sus escilas, sus caribdis, con el anhelo de la patria siempre distante distante pero también siempre presente.
I just started watching the video. The first step, just hearing to the audio book and keep reading, seems to me one of the best advices I've ever heard to learn a new language. It helps you with the fundamental ability to tokenize the sounds of the target language, separating all the stream of nonsensical sounds into words. Surely, many of those words make no sense at all at first, but while doing this, you train your brain to recognize individual words and to give them a separated mental "life", so you can go from "mamamamimumemopatispatispatisblablablaporosporos" to "μου αρέσει να μαθαίνω γλώσσες", whatever that means. Now I keep watching the rest of the video. 🙄
I use a very similar method. It helped me tremendously improve my Spanish. I used Harry Potter and finished the first 5 books. Very helpful! I am using almost the same method with French using Assimil and some Olly Richards books. This is legit! Thanks for sharing!
I remember hitting that point in German. I was able to read at a high school level (though I didn’t understand everything). I thought it was like watching a drive-in movie (remember those?) in a rainstorm. The story was there to follow, but sometimes the bad weather would blot out some of what was on the screen. Overall you can still enjoy the movie and the more you watch, the more you can watch.
Interesting. I naturally did many of these things when I was a kid and then wondered, how I learned English so well. Reproduced it many years later to better learn the languages I was learning in school at that time and boom.. love for languages was born. And like you mentioned I as well am not very fond of pure reading. I don't really prefer to read books. I wonder if this very technique could be implemented into regular schools. I said to one of my English teachers how making the students translate everything was not good and her response was: "I know, but they are not good enough to start learning to do it the other way." (Like... Not learning the language through a filter of another language) "When are they going to be good enough? They have been learning English in school for the last 10 years, when are they going to be good enough? Their English is pisspoor" I thought to myself. I told her that they should be reading a lot, not doing written exercises in their books. She didn't even respond yet a few minutes prior she was angry at the low level of English proficiency in students. This way, we could bring people to reading books and learning languages by themselves. Book's are attractive to teachers. They keep complaining, that kids aren't reading enough, yet they make the students not read, when they could be reading. My Ted talk is over. Thank you for attention.
So glad I came across this video. I just picked up the Japanese audio version of the Sorcerer's Stone the other day and planned to listen to that alongside the copy of the book I bought ages ago but only ever got through the first few pages. I imagine I'll be in reading pain for a while but I'm glad I found a methodology to work through and hopefully make more progress this time around. Your mention of the brand of reader that you use for Romanian allowed me to find a book in the same brand for Japanese! So I'll be picking that up at some point soon as well. Heck, if I like the book then I might consider grabbing it for French too as that's something I've been wanting to start up sometime this year. Thank you so much for your in depth explanation of your method but also you actually going through the steps as an example. I think there's a lot of language learning channels out there that talk about how to learn a language or the theory behind their practice but they never actually show exactly what it is they're suggesting. This has been really helpful.
I'm going to get acquiring latin started, reading some easy cpmprehensible latin texts aloud, including such a Via Latina or per se illustrata or something. Recently, I got started latin textbook with named " latin made simple through stories" which had purchased on amzon. That is very easy and funny explanation with comprehensible English level. Though I like ecclesiastical latin more than classical about pronounciation but no matters how many gaps We have, I think you are a passionable Teacher and humanist might be useful polymath helping us with your insight and knowledege into classical greco-roman world. You are right. Comprehensible input makes me work my English skills out right way these days. I'm going to go on my work. Thank you. Just I think it's all when We got fluent in latin or other lamguages. No matter how was it pronunciation or pitch or how many had it ancient or medieval grammar's gaps.
Olá, Luciano. Chamo-me Gabriel, tenho vinte e quatro anos. Sou do Brasil, portanto, brasileiro. Gosto muito dos seus vídeos. Estou aprendendo latim, francês e planejo aprender italiano, grego e alemão. Seus vídeos têm me ajudado muito, principalmente quanto ao latim, mas também com as indicações para o francês. Aprecio muito o seu trabalho com o latim. Eu aprendo latim para estudar filosofia e ter acesso à bibliografia universal necessária para os estudos da religião católica. Mas também não só por isso, porque o latim te torna mais livre pois é possível entrar em contato com praticamente qualquer homem que já pisou pela terra. Por isso também quero aprender o grego. Eu também tenho descendência italiana. Meus sobrenomes são Pagliuso e Arsuffi. Sucesso para você, Luciano.
I’ve used similar methods. The most difficult part is getting your hands on interesting texts. I think it’s one of the reasons people think you have to go to the country. It’s just easier to find interesting media.
We did something very similar in language pedagogy classes back in the 1980s. Forget the name of the technique. I took classes in ESL teaching at the time. Your Russian is pretty good. Watch for the softening of of consonants and vowels. My Russian learning readers ( graded readers) did provide accents and footnote glosses of vocabulary). So, such exist. When I struggled to learn Russian, we had no internet to listen to native speakers. Barely any books. But now, oh my, so many ways to listen to Russian. A few years ago I found a Russian kids show on the alphabet. Each show took one letter. Check it out. Now, I get the Russian audiobook and follow along with the printed text. For shows, I will flip on Russian subtitles for shows so I can see how spelled and pronounced. Kitty’s favorite is Коты Аристократы. ;-) I am now trying to learn Latin from you. I listen to your Latin conversations even if I do not understand everything just to get use to the intonation, pronunciation, and cadence. Thanks for all you do.
I learned Cantonese while living in Hong Kong. I also learned Tagalog while living there. I learned German while living in Germany. But I never reached a fluent level. I’m now learning Spanish and find it extremely easy (compared to those other languages), but my biggest worry is that I won’t be able to get to the fluent, conversational level. Thank you for this video. Romanes Eunt Domus
I'm going to use this advice to learn Italian which I've been currently teaching myself for the past few weeks. Afterwards, I'd like to apply it to learn German and Spanish. I actually will try to read italian as fast as speech to push myself to be absorbed in it even if I don't understand it. But, I found that this is also how we learn any language including English from an early age, by pushing yourself to read and speak the language so you can comprehend it by listening. I will often watch news in italian and just listen to how they pronounce words and they often have italian subtitles which is extremely helpful.
Haha. Great! You read so nicely. Makes me motivated to do this in the languages I'm learning. In the Romanian reading, there was a mistake. The text says "masa", which is singular "the table". The reader read incorrectly, he used the plural form "mesele", but you read the actual written word. Also, a tip: "el" ("he"), is read as [iel] the same way as "este" ("is") is read as [ieste], which you did correctly.
Okay firstly your voice is extremely soothing. Secondly I agree that reading is important for langauge learning. Coming from a book worm ofc hehe. Thirdly, the way you said Portuguese makes me think you might learn it in the future. Fourthly your video was awesome.
This is the way I learnt to read in my native language (spanish) and the way I learnt fluently english and do relatively well in german, portuguese, french and italian. Also helped me a lot in latin when I studied one year, far too little, in the spanish educational system in 1984. The teacher would leave me on my own with a dictionary and latin and english texts while my classmates strugled with basic vocabulary.
Alô do Brasil! The de > dzhi rule for PTBR failed you because it does not occur in "podem". Great job!!!!! I' much rather say 'design' the english way, dropping that same rule again. And my dialect applies it very consistently.
Brazilian portuguese exception: for verbs podem, fodem etc, the D is pure, unlike the 3sg pode, fode where it does go "dji". don't ask me why, i only became aware of it when you stumbled :D
Thank you for thoroughly explaining the method, I appreciate the ample examples and also the length of the video! I will definitely try this, but definitely not with the book I'm currently reading, as War and Peace would then become the last book I will have read in my lifetime. But it does seem like the perfect method for reading short stories, which most of the time even in their own right deserve to be read a couple of times in one sitting. One experience I found interesting and fun was trying to read at a pace even faster than the rate one would speak: Because there's no time to vocalise the words in my head, it's like the mind goes straight to processing images from the text itself. The level of comprehension naturally goes down a bit as you don't have time to figure out specific words from morphological clues (which is actually really fun especially with Russian), but because doing so helps 'imagine' scenes it can become even easier to figure them out based on context. I understand this is what people do when speed-reading in their native languages, but doing it for the first time in the process of learning a foreign language with comprehensible input added a new layer of enjoyment to language-learning for me. It could even be inserted somewhere among the 7 steps of reading :)
Wow, I have no words, I am completely speechless for this gigantic help that you've given us. This website you mentioned is just AMAZING as well as Storybooks Canada that someone commented here. I don't know how to thank enough! Wow!!!Wow!!! Wow!!! Thank you and you have a new subscriber! I`m going to share your channel as well as the websites you provide on your video. Just amazing!!!!!
Very interesting about how to stay in the target language, stay in the phonological loop and think in it. Music helps because it proceeds along at its own pace. You can't lag back worrying about a missed word if you're trying to follow foreign lyrics. But first, I have the audiologo book you used for your Portuguese demo. I got to the end using the Reading Pain technique! This increased my vocabulary but was a bit of an effort. But I'll now go back and read along, and visualise, and "translate" what's going on from my visualisations rather than from the text. Re music, I started Portuguese naturally by trying to understand what was going on in their songs. There are lots of music videos on UA-cam, some with Portuguese lyrics but few English translations. So you get lots of context and emotion, but basically a set of puzzles. "She looks sad, now she's thrown herself in the river, but continues to complain loudly about something!" Next step after that was to find the lyrics in Portuguese and try and follow along. This was surprisingly hard at first because the sounds were unfamiliar. Jumping to the right place in lyrics was the first step in getting to grips with the language for me.
Timestamps & Links
0:00:00 Intro
0:01:18 Step 1: Read at the Speed of Speech
0:03:00 Step 2: Analyse
0:04:46 Step 3: Repeat Aloud
0:06:02 Step 4: Recite Aloud with Vivid Imagination
0:07:16 Step 5: Tell the Story to a Child
0:08:18 Step 6: Re-Read at the Speed of Speech
0:08:53 Step 7: Re-Read at the Speed of Speech SILENTLY
0:09:27 Summary of 7 Steps, and additional steps
0:11:27 Phonological Loop: the tape recorder in the head
0:18:37 CI & Extensive Reading
0:20:46 Definitions of Extensive vs. Intensive Reading
0:29:01 Latin Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique
0:39:17 Ancient Greek Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique
0:47:56 Romanian Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique
0:58:43 Portuguese Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique
1:01:00 Lucian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek
1:07:39 Russian Demonstration of the Re-Reading Technique
🦜 Alexandros (beginner Ancient Greek book) audio:
www.patreon.com/posts/41402787
🦂 Support my work on Patreon, and get access to tons of Extensive Reading audiobook in Latin & Ancient Greek!
www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri
📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks:
luke-ranieri.myshopify.com
This is perfect! Thank you!
I’m really interested in trying this technique, now. First stop, French. Next language; who knows?
Hello,dear Friend ! I wanted to ask You : which is Your mother language ? Thanks and greetings.
You like E flat chords!
Well that's my journey now: I'm on an english UA-camr's video for learning latin while being a German native speaker XD
Thanks for the vid!!! I completely got your very well described "deep dive"-method. I love it. Since I've (somewhat) successfully learned english I do know what you mean by the issue of this translating behaviour. I can write and speak and listen to english without doing it. Since I've done a ton of connections btw the meant thing and the language rather than the told/written word and my native language! Means your first steps gives me the substance to kinda move a bit within the language and for getting better it is better to deal with grammar later. tbh I'm not surprised that schools fail at that one as well. It is quiet the opposite LMAO.
I want to get fluently in Latin before I go to University (which demands the full set of latin since I'm on to gradue in Philosophy). And I think you've made me clear how I should do it. But I didn't find ANY audio books for latin and I'm not even sure which is the correct pronounciation for my course then (it hasn't any details). :SS But I've ordered the first Book of Harry Potter in latin. I gonna try your method - THANKS AGAIN
Reading is, honestly, a very underrated form of language acquisition. In most cases, an advanced vocabulary will be got from reading a wide range of material. In fact, I once *read* in a study that the optimal number of books one ought to read if one wishes to acquire a large vocabulary is 137. Of course, that number should include books on a vast array of topics, say, from theatrical classics and provincial fables to scientific papers and business reports.
Well said!
Polyglot Steve Kauffman is also an advocate of reading AND listening.
Agree, and it need not necessarily be books. I read one Spanish and one French newspaper article online each day to retain my skills and increase my knowledge. One aspect I focus on is the various ways a sentence can *begin* because grammar books never go into these formulations; they tend to be very conversation-centered, as if the only topic one might wish to speak about is oneself. Connected with this, newspapers generally report, so it's an excellent means of learning to speak in the third-person/past tense.
There’s potentially a trap here which needs to be recognized before it’s encountered.
We are spoiled as English speakers as our written language mirrors our speech for the most part (not counting formal legal documents or other prescribed formats).
French, as an example, has verb tenses which are only used in written French but never in spoken French - AKA the “literary tenses”. Not knowing which is which can lead to awkward (yet humorous) conversations.
www.thoughtco.com/french-literary-tenses-1368875
There's this short analysis that points to this very same number:
puroh.it/reading-for-a-fine-vocabulary/
It's error prone in many assumptions and it misses a few extra ones, but I believe it's a fairly reasonable conclusion.
There are a bunch of UA-camrs sharing their "tips" for learning languages/discussing language, but your channel is the best.
Luke is the real deal.
Aw thanks! I’m very grateful if you find it helpful
He has the best advices.
Only the mighty gold slinger, Jugurtha himself, could corrupt this one.
Started doing this for Spanish. An extra step I do in step 2, is to write down the sentences or phrases that include a word or grammar structure that I don’t understand. Adds time, but is worth it! This has taken my learning to the next level. Thank you!!
The “read it to a child” step is fantastic! I struggle with sounding very monotoned when reading non-native languages (sometimes in my native English as well), so the emphasized emotions and the like is helping me tremendously.
Following cognitive science research helps explain why this method is so successful.
What you’re doing is training your language parser so that your brain can interpret appropriate phoneme sequences innately instead of “mechanically” (i.e. rote vocabulary and grammar study).
As you listen to natural speech your brain is actually running about 7-8 parallel “execution threads” of what the next phoneme MIGHT be and immediately prunes the incorrect paths in real-time as it moves on the the next sequence.
This is why just listening to your target language helps train your prediction engine. This is how infants learn to optimize their language acquisition, so why too shouldn’t we as adults? Doing so not only helps train phoneme sequence but also tone and pitch accents as well. Native speakers often aren’t aware of pitch accent but know when it’s incorrect when a foreign speaker does it; they just can’t name it.
Having a “good ear” for mimicry helps a lot too. I’m often complimented on my pronunciation, but it can also get me into a bind because it signals to the listener that I am more proficient than I actually am.
Well said!
What you said about how languages are usually taught with an emphasis on grammar translation resonates a lot. I've heard many teachers advise thinking in the language you're learning, but having been taught the standard method, I find myself always trying to translate from English. They're saying do it like this, but they teach in a way that counters it.
Right!
Luke, you really surprised me. Many Romanian language learners have trouble pronouncing the "i" at the end of the words like "cărți", "astăzi" because it's whispered. But you pronounced it naturally, like a Romanian. I also noticed that you pronounced "el/este", "iel/ieste", which is the correct way of saying it despite how it is written. Just be mindful of the fact that this invisible "i" before the "e" is only pronounced in the pronouns (ieu/iel/iele/iei) and verbs like “ieste, iera” but not in regular nouns that begin with "e". Like you don't pronounce "engleza" or "elefant" with an "i" in front because these are just regular nouns, so they should be pronounced exactly as written. Glad you decided to learn Romanian.
Nice comment Octavian, agree with you. Glad you took the time to explain this concept to others who might not know. I've noticed a trend throughout most people that have not had an interaction with the Romanian language, in which they assume it is pronounced and enunciated the same as Italian due to the many similarities between the two, although that could not be further from the truth. Ai dat sfaturi foarte bune si tangibile!
With that being said, I'd like to mention to everyone else that this is not perpetually applicable, as the whispery "i" phenomenon has, to my knowledge, predominantly become popular through, and generally used, in colloquial contexts. Natural, flowing Romanian conversation might feature the "i" or not. I use both "este" and "ieste" depending on how I feel or what want to convey. "Este" is formal and correct, clean, and "Roman," while "ieste" is organic and more emotional. They're both the same. It's simply a matter of accent or dialect.
I agree that you can use either "este" or "ieste" depending on what you want. But I do think that "ieste" is actually the actual way to pronounce it, and "este" comes from how people started pronouncing it, due to its spelling. It's kinda how we say "eu sunt" instead of "eu sânt". "sânt" was always the pronunciation of the word, but because of the spelling reform, people started to shift the â into a u. But again, the way you decide to speak is your unique way, and we apreciate it :)
@@dimitalle3530 I was taught that the pronunciation of “sunt” is actually more archaic than saying “sânt” as it comes from Latin “sunt”. Therefore, it makes more sense that “sunt” is the older pronunciation. It’s worth pointing out that there is no one “correct” way of pronunciation. It depends on the region. But I think that with respect to “ieu/iel/ieste” this is fairly standard. Maybe there are regions that I’m not aware of that don’t pronounce the “I”.
Your accent in Portuguese is really good, you can pronounce the nasal vowels perfectly (this is hard to hear from a native English Speaker) Awesome!
You’re very generous! Obrigado
@@polyMATHY_Luke You don't have an English accent but a Roman one when speaking Portuguese. If you ever came here and talked to me, I'd ask if you were Italian or Sardinian or something like that.
Excellent advice! Much better approach than that take with Latin when I was at school. (Fortunately I was/am bilingual: English/Spanish). Now (at 83) I’m learning classical Greek.😊😊😊😂
That’s great! Keep up the great work
I am learning Romanian and I think it is limba cea mai frumoasa. I like this idea for getting away from the internal translation that can happen when you try to learn through vocabulary and grammar studies. Thank you for sharing and demonstrating your method.
It’s fascinating how the technique you describe is essentially the exact same way that a child learns to speak and read. Makes one wonder how true it actually is that we get worse at learning language as we age.
Repetition rocks!
My mother learned French at 54 yrs old. Pretty fluent now. When they say you can't learn over a certain age, they lie.
I’m pretty sure the factoid about kids being better at learning languages was proven to be false, or inaccurate.
@@JesusOfPaign it was
I learned to read at the age of four or five (not sure exactly.. it happened when I got my glasses, I was half blind until then). I wasn't taught the letters or anything, it happened because my father used to read Donald Duck & co for me. I kept watching the pages as he read (after getting my glasses, at least). He used his finger when he read because he wasn't a good reader himself, having suffered dyslexia as a child. Anyway, I kept watching and listening.. then, my father later told me, one day I urged him to turn the page when he was only half way through. At that point I had started to read myself, and much faster than he could read to me. From then on he figured I could very well do the reading myself, he was done with it!
(A much more recent example of learning to read without being taught is a little Japanese girl I know, she isn't living in Japan but she speaks Japanese - she loves to listen to and sing Japanese songs, and, as she actually has access to a mobile phone and a tablet, she watches UA-cam videos with Japanese songs *and* Japanese written lyrics. To the astonishment of my wife, who is also Japanese, the girl had taught herself to read Japanese (or anyway the subset available to her) purely from watching those song videos with written subtitled lyrics.)
As for kids being better at learning languages.. I believe it's true to some extent. It seems that they're better at, in particular. two major things:
a) Memory. Words just.. stick better. I remember elementary school, our teacher was only interested in music, he didn't bother teaching us mathematics, geography, all that stuff. Instead we were taught songs. The thing is - he repeated the song *once*, and we remembered it. To this day, now that I'm getting old, I can still remember those songs. When I got a bit older, late teens, I lost that ability. Completely. Not for lack of trying, I assure you - I play guitar. Can't remember lyrics to save my life, with any amount of practicing or repeating, however long.
b) Imagination. Small children, in particular, seems to be able to quickly imagine what it's about. They quickly understand, or can guess, what you're saying. Their imagination runs wild and it works. Whereas when my wife tells me something I don't understand (as mentioned above she's Japanese) I try to imagine it, but more often than not I don't get it, but when she or I translates it it's always "of course, why didn't I see that?". And it's even worse for my wife, the other way. Children are much better at this stuff.
But it's also true that in practice it doesn't mean that children are so much better than adults - the adults have a lot of other mental tools to help learning. And, after all, children have time. Years, even.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the ancient Greeks were known to be masters of both recitation and memorization. They even promoted memorization through recitation as a means to improve comprehension and command of the information being presented in the text or oration.
Definitely something to be said for this approach, even when studying texts in your native language. Many times I’ve noticed a difficult poetic line or paragraph in a piece of literature becomes much more comprehensible to me after I recite it out loud
I'm a native Portuguese speaker, and I can say that, indeed, your pronunciation sounds better than the announcer’s. I was born in Brazil, so I think your accent is more familiar to me. Your channel is the best on UA-cam for languages. I started a deep immersion routine five days ago, and I reached level B1 in only five days, before that, I was at A2. i'm just spent all my day typing with GPT and shadowing everything along my day (thanks for teach this method), the rest of my time i just watch movies/series and youtube, and perhaps i'm start to listen some podcast because too, my routine has something between 16~18h/day, i wish be able to speak fluently in only 2 weeks, and really thoght this is archivable. Today is the first time I'm able to understand almost everything someone says. Your pronunciation is excellent!
The 7 steps are amarvellous idea...I'm almost finished with Olberg 1, and now I will go back with the method. Thanks, Patrick
PS the course by Satura Lanx is pure genius.
I am 15 minutes into this video, at almost 1am, and I resonate with the problems with just grammar-translation. I have 6 semesters of Latin under my belt. And I feel like I know NOTHING in Latin still. I cannot read it quickly, I end up stopping at almost every word, and just slowly struggling through a sentence. I often lose track while doing this and have to begin again and again. This video has me super excited about Latin again! Latin and Greek had been a major cause of anxiety for me due to the pressure of feeling like I had to be able to see and properly translate a passage immediately. I have a 4-year-old, and I want to try this method now and see if I can even teach her some Latin in the process.
Amen. Me too.
One of the best ways to learn something is to teach someone else. Be thankful for your 4-year-old. S/he will help you!
As you learn Latin in school, you should practice the language at home too. Ie keep reading and listening. Consume Latin content. Sch is mostly just theories and limited practice. You have to actually drive to drive a car.
THERE ARE WEB VIDEOS THAT DESERVE A DOUBLE AND TRIPLE LIKE, WHICH UA-cam (ANYONE FOR THAT MATTER) DONT HAVE. YOURS DESERVE IT. INSPIRED.
Your comment about ambiguity being fun reminds me of something CS Lewis said in his essay On Stories:
I happened to remark to a man who was sitting beside me at dinner the other night that I was reading Grimm in German of an evening but never bothered to look up a word I didn't know, 'so that it is often great fun' (I added) 'guessing what it was that the old woman gave to the prince which he afterwards lost in the wood'.
That is such a great essay!
I just love all your Latin videos. How I wish someone would do this with the Icelandic and Old Norse Sagas, too! The extensive reading method is absolutely the best way to truly aquire a language.
I, as a Russian speaker, am impressed that you included it in this video. If it be of some help to you, your pronunciation is good as far as nuances of vowel reduction and intonation go, although foreigners' biggest struggle (i.e. hard-soft-consonants distinction) remains. Many thanks for sharing the method. Btw, I'm not criticising you as overall it was great especially the 5th step, I am just pointing out the small things you yourself might not notice you might want to improve.
You’re absolutely right! 😊 Another helpful thing when learning a language is to record oneself, as I did here, because then I was able to catch the same things. Great points.
A suggestion I have for learning your target language's pronunciation if you dont have an audiobook is to listen to songs in the language and sing along to them. I've been doing it the past 3-4 months and it's superbly helpful.
I learned a lot of Spanish by reading. I also learned to let the language wash over me and accept ambiguity. Previously it never occurred to me that the two might be interrelated in a cause and effect relationship.
Luke, this was one of your best videos! I am currently learning Russian as a hobby and It seems like I've been unconsciously using similar (albeit less refined) techniques to study it, however, your approach makes so much more sense and I can't wait to test it on my Russian studies!
Thank you so much! Yes I find this technique really helpful as well for Russian, which has stubbornly remained rather opaque to me for many years.
Russian is such a fun language to learn! It's challenging but totally worth it.
Luke - this was very helpful to me. Unfortunately, I learned Koine Greek in Seminary (2 years) but only from a grammatical standpoint. Thus, I never really “learned” it. Now I am “re-Learning” the proper way. I appreciate you and your work!
And I appreciate your support!
I’ve been copying this technique exactly to learn Russian via LingQ and it has helped immensely. You learn words, learn how to pronounce them, and learn how they work in different contexts all at the same time.
I've applied this method and re-read Familia Romana in this manner. It is amazing! Definitely learnt a lot more than my first run and I'm starting to understand Latin as it is instead of trying to figure out what it means in English first.
Familia Romana, using pictures and context, gives you a lot information about not only meanings of words in Latin, but also many nuances of meaning that cannot be translated accurately into other languages.
Dear Luke, thank you for this content. It really is a blessing to be able to access all this information for free. As a student myself I always have to look for the cheapest option in order to acquire knowledge or practice my hobbies, so this is just perfect for me. Greetings from Germany.
Ich danke dir für dein Kommentar! The pleasure is mine. Thanks for watching and sharing my video!
As a Romanian I can confirm that your accent is much better than the general American accent. Many people have trouble with our ș, ț, ă and especially â.
You truly are a genius. This research you've done on languages is so beneficial. I'm going to try this method. I've never tried a method like this before. I try to learn by brute force, but it never works. Thank you for sharing !
Try it!
Justin Lee Miller raises a very important point about access to texts of interest. A former Classics professor suggested this to me when learning another language. And it speaks to Polýᴍᴀᴛʜʏ's initial comment about not needing to know the text initially. I humbly disagree. For my professor said that a good way to learn a language is precisely to go for that familiar genre (who-dunnits, sci-fi, religious, poetry, etc.), or even a selfsame favorite book (Αlice in Wonderland, the Little Prince, Harry Potter, poems of Catullus, the Bible, etc.), or a piece of a book ( a book from the Bible, a chapter from a favorite novel, a cherished poem) in the target language. That way, one already knows what the text means, and then it becomes a string of aha-moments whereby you learn the structures, vocab and nuances of the language through how the story is told in the target language. It makes it easier, I ween, to move through a text in a more native-speaker pace. You can't get more 'comprehensible input' than that, I think, and it would help each of the seven steps, IMHO. 👍 ἔρρωσο
Absolutely!
Come to think of it, I did this without knowing the term haha! I have a copy of Dante’s Comedia in Italian, which I’ve been using to learn the language. Dante inspired me to learn Italian in the first place. Narrator isn’t so bad either lol!
This summer I’m putting on my big-boy pants: I’m going to read Don Quixote in Spanish.
I’ve been trying to do this every summer for 30 years. I’ve started the prefaces several times and never made it to the first chapter.
And for some dumbass reason, I wouldn’t *let* myself make it past the prefaces and just *enjoy* reading.
I just gave up.
I have to say I’ve got a really good Spanish vocabulary. I’m subscribed to many Spanish language news sources. If I have to look up more than one or two words a day, it’s a rare.
But Don Quixote was a blow to the nards.
(Before you begin: I know this is old Spanish. I’ve read the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Diario de Cristóbal Colón.)
I even bought the Trapiello edition that’s been adapted to modern Spanish.
There’s C2 vocabulary, and there’s C2+ vocabulary-words you will likely only see in literature.
And the prose, like much modern Spanish literature, is very florid-props to Trapiello for keeping that.
I just need to gird my loins and read past the words I don’t know-then go back to some of the really interesting ones, because I generally understand the gist without knowing every single word.
Incorporating some of these techniques should definitely help!
This is why I always download subtitles in the language of the movie I'm watching. So German subtitles for German movies, English subtitles for English movies etc. Myself, I'm Dutch and I'm trying to learn all the Indo-European languages.
It's very helpful!
There’s over 400 of them!
@@nathanbinns6345 The main ones still in use. Of the many Indian languages, my focus has been on Sanskrit, Hindi and Bengali.
you can also try language learning with youtube and netflix. It is free but the paid version allows you to save words. It has double subtitling.
@@romaios1609 sounds very intriguing
Luke, i can't express how grateful I am to you for creating and sharing this technique. Absolutely brilliant information on the aspects of acquiring a language. And your content is unique among everything around. I find your method so suitable for myself and positively effective. Thank you so much! Спасибо от всей души!
I'm really glad to hear that!
I used to go to Barnes and Noble to buy the "Corriere della Sera" (an Italian newspaper) to read it. I would read an article in Italian and a word that I didn't understand I would write it and translate it; then I would read the article again with the new word I've learned to understand the article better and at the same time I acquired a new word for my Italian vocabulary. Luke tu sei molto bravo, stammi bene amico.
Grazie a te!
I feel blessed by having found your channel. Totally agree with your method, happy to see you mentioning Dr. Arguelles and here in the comments people remembering Steve Kaufmann's advocacy for reading and listening. This is the way to go, this is the way Lomb Kato and Stephen Krashen would like the word to be spread. :))) Happy to see the language I yearned to learn since I was 6 being taught by someone so passionate and well informed as you.
I think before whenever I'd encounter a long paragraph or piece of text filled with unfamiliar vocabulary or grammar, I'd just ignore it under some impression that I simply wasn't advanced enough to tackle such texts. I have to say just hanging in there and really breaking down such a text and being able to say it and comprehend it confidently really helps counter the demotivation one feels when studying the same pieces of vocab and simple grammar. Thanks so much for the advice.
Thanks so much for taking the time to do this!
Of course, Beth! Thanks for watching! 😊
Wow congrats man , you sounded almost native in Romanian ,it not everyday you see a foreigner read our language so correctly!👏👏
Wow, by step 7 you'll know the text by heart. You'll be just like a child, whom you can not cheat by skipping a passage in its favourite good night story. 🙂 Naturally this is all great advice! Do pick up a book you really would enjoy, and you'll have a great time and fabulous results. A personal choice will reflect your personality and things you'll like to communicate and share with others. If you want to improve your English, "Therapy" by David Lodge could be a choice that keeps you enthralled for its many levels: theater, comedy, TV, philosophy, psychology, health, religion, youth and old age, first love and divorce, home and travel, even car-choice - and an immense range of styles and vocabulary, delivered wittily by this professor-author and literature-expert.
For an amateur philologist like myself, a reading method such as yours is invaluable to apply!
I'm very happy for having found this video, because I started using a somehow similar method to learn German reading Die Unendliche Geschichte, loosely based on what Ranciere explains in The Ignorant Schoolmaster and on other feedback. Although I had some German classes before coming to Germany (I understood the basic grammar), when I arrived I realized I couldn't effectively communicate with other people. I started reading slowly aloud, then used deepl to give me a (roughly) translated version of the paragraph whenever I felt I needed it, and as I was living with a German speaker, she corrected me whenever she heard something odd. At the begining I put a lot of emphasis on remembering words (I usually wrote them down and looked for them in the dictionary), but after a while a could go on more or less fluidly, looking for words less and less (I used almost 20 pages to write vocabulary and notes for the first chapter, and not even half a page for the last one).
I wish I would have seen your video sooner.
Is there a similar method (and set of videos, if possible) for learning Arabic?
This video clearly outlines how to go about learning another language. I liked how you explained the method, and how you demonstrated the method in the 2nd half of the video. I always feel like I need to look up every unknown word, but I'd still like to try out this method! Thank you for making and posting the video!
You’re quite welcome! Give it a try, and come back here to let us know how it went. Not every method words for everyone, but this method works for me.
Sō true!;) Look, listen, read, and imagine, all at once! I did this with Greek and now Anton Tasos seems slow! The Bible can be your Rosetta Stone. Once you basically memorize the text, you can pick it up in multiple languages using this technique! I used to walk listening to 1st John recorded in 7 languages! I am def not a polyglot, but once you've memorized the text it's easy! (Doing this now with John in Lucian!!! 😊)
Coming back to languages, particularly Latin and Koine Greek, after a few years hiatus, I'm getting a jolt of inspiration to dive into your method - such an insight-filled video, thank you for all your work!
Thanks for watching!
It reminds me of having spent three years studying Koine Greek from 11 to 14 years old. I couldn't actually read the New Testament until I started to listen to the audio recording from both the Erasmian and modern pronunciation. That's how I picked up Greek.
That was 10 years ago. Now I'm 24 and a junior at the University of Evansville in Classics with Language and Literature Concentration, double major in Religion.
I have a long ways to go to get to the level of proficiency in this video. But simultaneously, I do have a very good plan and also agree with what he's saying. Speak Greek. Speak Latin. Speak Russian, German, English, Sanskrit, whatever. Speaking is the key. That's how I picked up both Modern Hebrew and also German and Russian.
Great video, Luke. I have just recently started to teach myself Latin and having recently received my copy of LLPSI I find myself translating it into English in my mind, which I know from your videos is not a good method to use. So I started listening to your LLPSI readings as I follow along in the book. Those videos are gold btw - hearing the words pronounced correctly is great. Especially since I’m more interested in speaking Latin fluently more than reading/writing fluently. Thanks for inspiring me to learn a second language.
Salve! I’ve started doing this with some of the texts from Latinitium and have been really enjoying it, my pronunciation has improved so much. But I’d love for someone to release an audiobook of Harrius Potter because I’d love to try this with it too.
ITA! Esset tam mirum si aliquis audiobook facere posset🥳
Teachers were becoming repetitive in high school with Spanish.. We were actually forced to learn Spanish by age 12, then relearn the same exact thing in high school Spanish class. I got bored and went to learn Modern Greek at the library since the library was a walking distance to the high school and I worked in the library not far from home later on, so I was also able to gain access to many books, dictionaries and newspapers in Modern Greek.
Brazilian portuguese speaker over here and I just wanted to thank you for the tips and congrats you for your great Brazilian accent and pronunciation. Keep going dude ;)!
I'm clearly late, though currently learning Japanese. And most textbooks I've gotten that have "tips" to learning language often have asked me to read books translating as I go when I reach (specifically kanji, though words in general) that I do not know.
I'll definitely try this method, though! I've never heard of it before, thank you for making this video!
I tell you, this method really works for me with classical Greek!
This was the first time I’ve heard you speak English and I’m shook
Just when you are ready to say the internet is a failed experiment and everything is awful out there, you come across something like polýMATHY.
It’s a feast of riches. And as a fairly new Latin student, it’s a huge gift to have all this help, not just from you but from all the creators who do Latin teaching. (But YOU are the man)
I don’t know why I took up Latin (3 months ago). Some version of middle age crazy, I guess. I’m I’m still going. So thank you so much for everything you do.
Very cool. I've been studying Italian for a year starting with Duolingo then UA-cam learning some solid A1 skills. I then started approaching my studies using some of the elements you outline here. I will be tweaking my approach to better match your system. I often "act out" the Pimsleur audio lessons or yell at my kids in Italian. I also write out sentences and things I want to talk to my online instructor about. I transcribed a lot of videos including a lengthy one recounting the history of Caraffa using the closed caption in Italian. Thanks for the great videos, from one rotorhead to another.
I'm learning French and I was about to begin reading Le Petit Prince tomorrow. It has 27 chapters so I was going to do one a day for the whole of Feburary (I guess I get a day off). I'll be sure to try out this technique!
Let me know if you find it helpful! or if you modify it.
Luke, I stumbled across your channel recently and I love it! You inspired me to relearn Latin.
Also, you really, REALLY need to look into Classical Arabic. You don’t know what you’re missing, trust me. A highly inflected and poetic language with crazy mathematical morphology and phonology, unbelievably large and wacky vocabulary and an ancient tradition that is mostly unknown to western audiences. It would be right up your alley. Try it, you won’t regret it!
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
I adore Fusha! I only know very little. I promise I’ll learn it! Thanks for being here 😃
Loved this all! I want to learn ancient Greek, then ancient Hebrew. This video was a great intro. I think I can do this!
Esse método é maravilhoso, muito bom mesmo. Escrevo na minha língua nativa pra você já ir treinando seu português kkkkkkkkkk Abraços do Brasil, professor Luke, Deus te abençoe.
I'm from Brazil too
I ve been using a similar method for quite some time especially for English and French. And I ve come to belive that learning a foreign language is almost as spiritual as reciting holy Sanskrit texts iin Buddhism. Your video sort of confirmed my long-held hypothesis(?) and I thank you for that.
Great suggestions Luke, thank you. Personally , when I am learning a new language, I like to listen to songs and read illustrated stories for children, so that I take andvantage of music and illustrations to memorize new words.
Thanks for sharing your method. I’m Brazilian living in Germany and despite of reading and writing German at a C1 level, I speak it as A2-B1 level. I have been told to read my books in German loud, but this was not so appealing as your method. I will surely try it. 😉
This is not an unusual situation when learning a language. Some parts of learning a language come to a person more quickly and other parts take more time. So how is your hearing comprehension and ability to spontaneously engage in everyday conversational language skills with another person in German? Since the spoken German Language is heavily influenced by the region of German you live in, how are your skills for understanding the local dialects? Lastly since you have a Romance Language as a Native Speaker, how your are your pronunciation skills for pronouncing word groups, such as: "ach: mach, nacht, lach, usw" "ich: licht, nicht, mich usw.", "ag: mag, Tage, jag, usw." "sch: schon, schön, vermisch, usw." You might want to spend some time with the YT group Easy German: ua-cam.com/video/_NXDM9XXhQ4/v-deo.html.
I already do like 3 of those steps at a given time. I maybe add more steps when I am comfortable those 3 steps are working for me right now.
I'm sharing this video with literally everyone I know
Aw thank you!
Hi Luke,
This is a great method! However, I would like to make one suggestion to add to this: accent reduction.
I completely agree with your method and this sort of thing absolutely works. However, one of my strong points in language learning is accent reduction and it's something that I've noticed a lot of people struggle with when learning a language. What I like to do is when I hear a language, I listen for the sounds that stick out for me. For example, when I was learning Persian, the "-at" sound that they make at the end of some Arabic loanwords (e.g. istarahat, ijazat, salamati). This sound combines an /æ/ sound with a palatal "t" which adds a strange quality to words I already knew as an L3 Arabic speaker. What I did was I would find recordings of individuals using words with this sound and try and mimic the specific motions they are making with their tongue, throat and nose to produce that sound. I suppose you could compare this to tuning a musical instrument. Basically, what I did, was I would start with the most odd sound that, in my mind, captures the essence of what the language sounds like. Once I feel that I've sufficiently mastered that sound, I would work my way to less and less prominent sounds. Once I've mastered some of these sounds, I move to intonations (e.g. the question intonation or the "joke" intonation).
This is a very important process since it helps you understand how native speakers use the language and adds some cultural context to the texts that you read.
I'm learning English right now listening to you, with such a sweet voice❤️🔥 Luuukeeee
How come I didn't get any recommendations from YT to this phenomenal channel? Thank you very much for the free content!
As thanks so much!
I think you did a great job with your Russian. I've been studying Russian for around 4 years now and I'm between B2/C1. Reading definitely helped expand my Russian. I'll read Russian news, then I'll highlight the text with my phone and put it into Google translate to have the app read the Russian to me, then I repeat the paragraph.
Very helpful! I'm trying to learn German at the moment. I'd heard of comprehensible input theory from the 'What I've Learned' channel, but I really appreciate you breaking it down here into actionable steps.
I do this using a Modern Greek Reader from Routledge and it's a really exciting way to feel a language! Thank you for this video!
Luke, tu trabajo es realmente impresionante. Tu generosidad por compartir tus conocimientos y tu amor por la enseñanza de la lenguas hacen que para aquellos que tardíamente nos iniciamos en el estudios tanto de las lenguas clásicas como de las modernas el camino parezca menos cuesta arriba. Si fuera sólo por tus conocimientos sobresalientes, ya diríamos que este canal es uno de los mejores canales para adentrarse en el estudio del griego y el latín. Sin embargo, lo que distingue este de otros canales es tu pasión por poner en movimiento a través de la práctica todo ese conocimiento, por mostrar cómo se despliega el proceso de aprehender otra lengua, y sobre todo cómo ese proceso puede ser arduo, pero a la vez gratificante: un recorrido lleno de aventuras semejante al de aquel héroe alejado del hogar por el designio de los dioses, un viaje con sus idas y venidas, sus escilas, sus caribdis, con el anhelo de la patria siempre distante distante pero también siempre presente.
Bien dicho.
I just started watching the video. The first step, just hearing to the audio book and keep reading, seems to me one of the best advices I've ever heard to learn a new language.
It helps you with the fundamental ability to tokenize the sounds of the target language, separating all the stream of nonsensical sounds into words. Surely, many of those words make no sense at all at first, but while doing this, you train your brain to recognize individual words and to give them a separated mental "life", so you can go from "mamamamimumemopatispatispatisblablablaporosporos" to "μου αρέσει να μαθαίνω γλώσσες", whatever that means.
Now I keep watching the rest of the video. 🙄
Wow! Great example. Well said!
@@polyMATHY_Luke thanks to you! 👍
This is a wonderful technique. VERY WELL DONE-THANK YOU for this post!!!!
Thanks! Enjoy
I use a very similar method. It helped me tremendously improve my Spanish. I used Harry Potter and finished the first 5 books. Very helpful! I am using almost the same method with French using Assimil and some Olly Richards books. This is legit! Thanks for sharing!
❤❤❤thank you! Great topic! I think letting them play at night (low volume) while sleeping 🛌
I remember hitting that point in German. I was able to read at a high school level (though I didn’t understand everything). I thought it was like watching a drive-in movie (remember those?) in a rainstorm. The story was there to follow, but sometimes the bad weather would blot out some of what was on the screen. Overall you can still enjoy the movie and the more you watch, the more you can watch.
Interesting. I naturally did many of these things when I was a kid and then wondered, how I learned English so well. Reproduced it many years later to better learn the languages I was learning in school at that time and boom.. love for languages was born. And like you mentioned I as well am not very fond of pure reading. I don't really prefer to read books.
I wonder if this very technique could be implemented into regular schools.
I said to one of my English teachers how making the students translate everything was not good and her response was: "I know, but they are not good enough to start learning to do it the other way." (Like... Not learning the language through a filter of another language)
"When are they going to be good enough? They have been learning English in school for the last 10 years, when are they going to be good enough? Their English is pisspoor" I thought to myself.
I told her that they should be reading a lot, not doing written exercises in their books. She didn't even respond yet a few minutes prior she was angry at the low level of English proficiency in students.
This way, we could bring people to reading books and learning languages by themselves. Book's are attractive to teachers. They keep complaining, that kids aren't reading enough, yet they make the students not read, when they could be reading.
My Ted talk is over. Thank you for attention.
So glad I came across this video. I just picked up the Japanese audio version of the Sorcerer's Stone the other day and planned to listen to that alongside the copy of the book I bought ages ago but only ever got through the first few pages. I imagine I'll be in reading pain for a while but I'm glad I found a methodology to work through and hopefully make more progress this time around. Your mention of the brand of reader that you use for Romanian allowed me to find a book in the same brand for Japanese! So I'll be picking that up at some point soon as well. Heck, if I like the book then I might consider grabbing it for French too as that's something I've been wanting to start up sometime this year.
Thank you so much for your in depth explanation of your method but also you actually going through the steps as an example. I think there's a lot of language learning channels out there that talk about how to learn a language or the theory behind their practice but they never actually show exactly what it is they're suggesting. This has been really helpful.
I’m really glad you liked it! Thanks
I'm going to get acquiring latin started, reading some easy cpmprehensible latin texts aloud, including such a Via Latina or per se illustrata or something. Recently, I got started latin textbook with named " latin made simple through stories" which had purchased on amzon. That is very easy and funny explanation with comprehensible English level. Though I like ecclesiastical latin more than classical about pronounciation but no matters how many gaps We have, I think you are a passionable Teacher and humanist might be useful polymath helping us with your insight and knowledege into classical greco-roman world. You are right. Comprehensible input makes me work my English skills out right way these days. I'm going to go on my work. Thank you.
Just I think it's all when We got fluent in latin or other lamguages. No matter how was it pronunciation or pitch or how many had it ancient or medieval grammar's gaps.
Olá, Luciano. Chamo-me Gabriel, tenho vinte e quatro anos. Sou do Brasil, portanto, brasileiro. Gosto muito dos seus vídeos. Estou aprendendo latim, francês e planejo aprender italiano, grego e alemão. Seus vídeos têm me ajudado muito, principalmente quanto ao latim, mas também com as indicações para o francês. Aprecio muito o seu trabalho com o latim. Eu aprendo latim para estudar filosofia e ter acesso à bibliografia universal necessária para os estudos da religião católica. Mas também não só por isso, porque o latim te torna mais livre pois é possível entrar em contato com praticamente qualquer homem que já pisou pela terra. Por isso também quero aprender o grego. Eu também tenho descendência italiana. Meus sobrenomes são Pagliuso e Arsuffi. Sucesso para você, Luciano.
Thanks for the comment! I’m very glad you find my work useful. 😊
@@polyMATHY_Luke De nada, Lucas!! I'm sorry I called you Luciano. Your name is Luke, right? I thought it was Lucian hahaha!!
I’ve used similar methods. The most difficult part is getting your hands on interesting texts. I think it’s one of the reasons people think you have to go to the country. It’s just easier to find interesting media.
Well said!
I love the video! Thanks for the mention! Much appreciated :)
Thanks! I can't wait till the French and Italian series are done! I'm going to binge watch them.
Is the french series done?
@@nsevv yes!
We did something very similar in language pedagogy classes back in the 1980s. Forget the name of the technique. I took classes in ESL teaching at the time.
Your Russian is pretty good. Watch for the softening of of consonants and vowels. My Russian learning readers ( graded readers) did provide accents and footnote glosses of vocabulary). So, such exist. When I struggled to learn Russian, we had no internet to listen to native speakers. Barely any books. But now, oh my, so many ways to listen to Russian. A few years ago I found a Russian kids show on the alphabet. Each show took one letter. Check it out. Now, I get the Russian audiobook and follow along with the printed text. For shows, I will flip on Russian subtitles for shows so I can see how spelled and pronounced. Kitty’s favorite is Коты Аристократы. ;-)
I am now trying to learn Latin from you. I listen to your Latin conversations even if I do not understand everything just to get use to the intonation, pronunciation, and cadence. Thanks for all you do.
And thank you for your great comment! I appreciate it. Haha Aristocats. 🐱
I just realized that i did the step one accidentally by watching UA-cam in English but with captions, around 10y ago.
I learned Cantonese while living in Hong Kong. I also learned Tagalog while living there. I learned German while living in Germany. But I never reached a fluent level. I’m now learning Spanish and find it extremely easy (compared to those other languages), but my biggest worry is that I won’t be able to get to the fluent, conversational level. Thank you for this video.
Romanes Eunt Domus
I'm going to use this advice to learn Italian which I've been currently teaching myself for the past few weeks. Afterwards, I'd like to apply it to learn German and Spanish.
I actually will try to read italian as fast as speech to push myself to be absorbed in it even if I don't understand it. But, I found that this is also how we learn any language including English from an early age, by pushing yourself to read and speak the language so you can comprehend it by listening. I will often watch news in italian and just listen to how they pronounce words and they often have italian subtitles which is extremely helpful.
One of my favourite channels for sure
Very kind
I wish more language teachers used this.
Haha. Great! You read so nicely. Makes me motivated to do this in the languages I'm learning. In the Romanian reading, there was a mistake. The text says "masa", which is singular "the table". The reader read incorrectly, he used the plural form "mesele", but you read the actual written word. Also, a tip: "el" ("he"), is read as [iel] the same way as "este" ("is") is read as [ieste], which you did correctly.
Indeed
Okay firstly your voice is extremely soothing. Secondly I agree that reading is important for langauge learning. Coming from a book worm ofc hehe. Thirdly, the way you said Portuguese makes me think you might learn it in the future. Fourthly your video was awesome.
This is the way I learnt to read in my native language (spanish) and the way I learnt fluently english and do relatively well in german, portuguese, french and italian. Also helped me a lot in latin when I studied one year, far too little, in the spanish educational system in 1984. The teacher would leave me on my own with a dictionary and latin and english texts while my classmates strugled with basic vocabulary.
Alô do Brasil! The de > dzhi rule for PTBR failed you because it does not occur in "podem". Great job!!!!!
I' much rather say 'design' the english way, dropping that same rule again. And my dialect applies it very consistently.
Brazilian portuguese exception: for verbs podem, fodem etc, the D is pure, unlike the 3sg pode, fode where it does go "dji". don't ask me why, i only became aware of it when you stumbled :D
Right! The vowel sound is /e/, right? That would seem to be why. When e>i like in “gente” it seems to cause this
Thank you for this. I never thought about it this way before.
the practical part has been very useful!!!
Thank you of this video!
You give me motivation for learning " linguam Anglicam et linguam Latinam"!!!
I’m delighted to hear that!
Thank you for thoroughly explaining the method, I appreciate the ample examples and also the length of the video! I will definitely try this, but definitely not with the book I'm currently reading, as War and Peace would then become the last book I will have read in my lifetime. But it does seem like the perfect method for reading short stories, which most of the time even in their own right deserve to be read a couple of times in one sitting.
One experience I found interesting and fun was trying to read at a pace even faster than the rate one would speak: Because there's no time to vocalise the words in my head, it's like the mind goes straight to processing images from the text itself. The level of comprehension naturally goes down a bit as you don't have time to figure out specific words from morphological clues (which is actually really fun especially with Russian), but because doing so helps 'imagine' scenes it can become even easier to figure them out based on context. I understand this is what people do when speed-reading in their native languages, but doing it for the first time in the process of learning a foreign language with comprehensible input added a new layer of enjoyment to language-learning for me. It could even be inserted somewhere among the 7 steps of reading :)
I have a really difficult book that I'm attempting to read in French - "The Art of Losing". I plan to use this method. Thank you!
This is a legitimately great approach.
Thanks!
Wow, I have no words, I am completely speechless for this gigantic help that you've given us. This website you mentioned is just AMAZING as well as Storybooks Canada that someone commented here. I don't know how to thank enough! Wow!!!Wow!!! Wow!!!
Thank you and you have a new subscriber! I`m going to share your channel as well as the websites you provide on your video. Just amazing!!!!!
Very interesting about how to stay in the target language, stay in the phonological loop and think in it. Music helps because it proceeds along at its own pace. You can't lag back worrying about a missed word if you're trying to follow foreign lyrics.
But first, I have the audiologo book you used for your Portuguese demo. I got to the end using the Reading Pain technique! This increased my vocabulary but was a bit of an effort. But I'll now go back and read along, and visualise, and "translate" what's going on from my visualisations rather than from the text.
Re music, I started Portuguese naturally by trying to understand what was going on in their songs. There are lots of music videos on UA-cam, some with Portuguese lyrics but few English translations. So you get lots of context and emotion, but basically a set of puzzles. "She looks sad, now she's thrown herself in the river, but continues to complain loudly about something!"
Next step after that was to find the lyrics in Portuguese and try and follow along. This was surprisingly hard at first because the sounds were unfamiliar. Jumping to the right place in lyrics was the first step in getting to grips with the language for me.
Nice. Thanks for the comment.
Proust was the best French teacher I ever had