Absolutely no question. I was painfully shy growing up, as the language part of my brain expanded into foreign language my English improved and so did my social skills. Social anxiety reduced to near zero as language improves even now that I'm older.
1. Find your 'why' 2. Stop trying to be perfect. Get out and talk to someone! 3. Intrupt your daily routine. Do something unexpected! 4. Find your voice, not just accent. 5. Creat your own immersive environment 6. Create your memory palace 7. Learn the 1000 most used words 8. Sharpen your listening skills 9. Practice speaking in stressful situations 10. Practice switching language quickly 11. Get to know the culture. Then imitate it! 12. Watch and mimic body language
I went to a foreign language school that put people learning the same language in a house together with a native speaker. We had trouble at first talking to each other. The native speaker said, "why are you trying to be perfect, your English isn't perfect? Just talk!" It was one of the best lessons I ever had.
My daughter learned Russian in two months. She would learn 200 words per day and after two months she knew 10,000 words. I was working at the time. One day I saw her reading a thick Russian book. I was surprised. This is when she told me that she was fascinated by Russian culture and language, so she decided to learn the language all on her own. Her native languages are French and English. She tried Spanish and was doing rather well but didn't like the language as much as Russian. CONCLUSION: Falling in love with a culture and its language is the key to learn any language quickly. I myself speak French, Spanish and English fluently. When I was 7, I spoke Vietnamese but when I arrived in France with several other Vietnamese children, I was told not to speak Vietnamese anymore. You won't believe but after three years I completely forgot my Vietnamese.
@@EssenceGmod I understand why you would be puzzled. I was myself puzzled. But I know she didn't lie because I saw it with my own eyes, and she is extremely humble. She doesn't go around telling she learned 200 words per day and after two months was able to understand and read Russian. I'm the only one to know and tell. I told her that when I was learning a language, I would learn 20 words per day and managed to speak/write/read Spanish and English fluently only one year after. On top of that I was living in the country like Spain and after America when I was learning their languages--my daughter wasn't in Russia. She studied it all by herself. When she went to university to improve her Russian, students who graduated from Harvard were way behind her. Later on, she travelled to Russia all by herself and had no difficulty to speak and understand Russian there.
Advantage when learning Russian is that Russian has very few actively used words compared to other languages. I think English is something like 10 million, while Russian is about 100.000.
Here is an anecdote: When I was a university student in Montreal, my mother came to visit me. While she was there, I had a couple of phone calls... one in English and one in French. Afterwards she said to me, "When you were speaking French on the phone, why were you waving your arms around and gesturing?" So, yes - our body language changes when we switch languages. I found it amusing that I was gesturing although it was a voice call and the listener couldn't see me!
Ive noticed My whole voice pitch and expressions, reactions change. Sometimes I cringe because I know I wouldn't act like that or make that sound if I was speaking English. Speaking in korean and Chinese and hearing the sounds I make and character change... lord.
@@josandoy I did see elsewhere that the military does have some crazy full time immersion language school, and the candidates are tested for how well they will pick up the grammar of a new language with these tests using a fake language and if they score high enough they pick their top three languages they want to learn and they are selected for one based on the needs at the time. but the school is not open to the public so it’s not really of any use to us and it didn’t say anything about their methods other than it was full time immersion
I speak fluently seven languages and I’ve learned it mostly by myself. As soon as someone starts talking a new language near me, my brain automatically starts analyzing the words’ etymology and phonetics. Living in Europe and working closely to people from all over the continent helped a lot. Sometimes I just put my mind somewhere else because enough is enough, I don’t need to learn an eighth idiom, but, as an example, I have two polish coworkers who sit close to me. I now understand like half of their conversation and as I said, I really don’t need to learn polish.
I live in a German speaking country where my business activities were always in English. I've been often stopped by tourists asking me if I spoke English, and naturally, respond with 'occasionally' or 'sometimes', then answer their question(s). I then usually got a response of, 'you speak good English' to which I generally thanked them, thus not ruining their experience. When speaking German, most people think I'm from the Netherlands, which works for me. I do make mistakes, but keep learning, being aware of patterns, etc. I don't attempt any accents, but am aware of regional differences.
I live in Germany, I am American. When I first moved here people would automatically speak English to me and my family when we went places, but now, I’ve had multiple instances where I’ve been on a bus or walking outside, and a native German would come ask me where something was - like a street or whatever. Do I ever know where the street they’re looking for is? Nope. But they never figure out I’m American so I count that as a win.
I started with StoryLearning a year ago but I was frankly lost, I didn't have the basic tools to even begin - it was missing the first baby steps in Spanish. I gave up and started to listen to Michel Thomas Spanish. This gave me the basics and allowed me to take my first faltering steps. After completing this, StoryLearning opened up to me and I find it a wonderfully thought out and immersive course. I still find the spoken stories neigh on impossible to comprehend because of the speed at which they are narrated however the rest is solid and using VLC I can slow the spoken text down. You have ignited a fire in me for Spanish and I thank you for that, Olly.
Re: perfection: on UA-cam, I often find that the difference between 99% native-quality and 100%, is that the non-natives are too perfect. Native speakers drop endings, slur their words, etc. One good example of such a 99%-native English speaker is the "History with Kayleigh" channel.
It's not that they're "too perfect" it's that natives speak in a natural accent or dialect. These non-natives (who are technically brilliant) sound like they have swallowed the dictionary with the standard British or American pronounction.
Nice to see they don't use story learning method due to the slowness. Thanks for the truth. i almost signed up for the story learning courses. You saved me so much money and time! I am going to study how spies learn languages more.
Over a year in a government language school is nuts. In government and military schools you are reminded that you are on duty and getting paid so at alot of them they emphasize extreme immersion, so over a year in an extreme immersion 24/7 school in one language is intense.
I learned American Sign Language in 6 weeks. I had a Bible study with a deaf lady, who was also a little mentally slow. Now I would like to be able to speak just enough Spanish, German, Italian, and Russian to speak to people I meet. 15:16
AT 21:03 WOW the flowers things- SUCH A SMALL THING- but I would have noticed that too- not sure what to make of it, but it would have gotten my "that's odd" spidey sense up.
I had a teacher once who told us a story of when-due to a plane issue-he got stuck in Spain for a whole week with no knowledge of a single word. He had to quickly pick up the language in order to get by until he could return home.
Actually, you can pretend to be a Brazilian if you don't say anything. Literally any people in Brazil can pretend to be a Brazilian while not speaking.
When I speak my native language, Danish, I often get asked if I'm from the US (I'm not, I'm ethnically Danish). When I speak English I get asked if I'm from Finland or Eastern Europe, and when I speak Russian I get asked if I'm from Germany. No matter what I sound like a foreigner to people, even to my own countrymen 🤷♂️
The ironic thing about this one. My mom (American of Polish descent) is hen my Dad (Scientist of Polish National) while he was on an exchange program (during the Cold War) met my at a party. She went to live on Poland for a year when he went back home to Warsaw. The KGB thought she was CIA agent when she REALLY was an average USA National with intermediate understanding of Polish.
Thanks for an awesome video. I would add one more point. If someone was exposed to a certain language in their childhood age, they might blend in target language environment to the level of pretending to be a local. My native language is russian, and at some point I realized that having a perfect russian is simpler for native speakers of one language and harder for native speakers of others. For example, people who have english as their first language almost always sound very alien for the russian ear simply due to the very different phonetic systems in our languages. I met a wonderful lady from Seattle who spent a lot of time volunteering in Russia, she knew the language perfectly, used it for many years and even worked on her accent but still a couple of words was enough for anyone to understand that she is not a local. She started to learn language in an adult age and that’s why her phonetics is always recognizable. On the other hand I met a guy from Iran in Moscow who spoke the language almost completely indistinguishable from a native russian speaker and he told me that he lives in Russia for just 6 years and started to learn a language about that time ago as well. That problem is something that I haven’t noticed in people who spoke and listened to russian for some period of time in their childhood. I met a guy in Uzbekistan who lives there most of his life but spent several years in Russia when he was a kid. He didn’t use the language for many years and forgot most of the words, but his pronounciation of those words that he did remembered was so perfect that if he would increased his vocabulary to an average level, I would never even suspected that he is not a native russian speaker.
Languages are also taught to the LDS Seminary students who are going over seas to be missionaries. They often learn a language in 6 weeks in order to share the gospel to the ppl in that foreign country in their own language.
I can't believe I"m typing this but this video is awesome so I'm happy to add my input having blended in some weird places. It's never good to lie or even stretch the truth but sometimes things get weird. If it's a casual tourist type affair then just be careful like you would anywhere you're from, try and pick up some of the language for fun and simply be polite. If it's more serious than that there are some additional things to consider. If I'm going to a country to work and it's less obvious than a slam dunk where I'm going I show up a few days early to get acclimatized, become familiar with the city, get past jet lag, feel the vibe, see what people are wearing, how they take coffee, what they eat, how they walk, etc. You're in deeper than that, probably shouldn't rush being on the ground because your story that isn't absolutely true will never stand up to any level of scrutiny.
In the USA you have many Americans that speak foreign languages because they grew up as kids in a bilingual house hold. Mom and Dad are from the old country, or Dad is an American and mom is from overseas; however, all your friends in school speak American English . You watch TV in American English. You are also not only bilingual, but bicultural as well. You are a born American, likely a shade or two darker than your “regular American “ that most foreigners expect. If you grew up speaking a foreign language it makes it easier for you to learn another language as well. Recruitment from an American University where diversity reigns supreme, makes the college campus an intelligence agency’s recruitment job much easier.
Europeans are in the most part multilinguals and do not bother them this a bit.It's so natural for us that we do not make a fuzz or talk about it... Yet for Americans who do not travel abroad at all it is kind'a supernatural... When I was in the group of Europeans when we switch from one language to another bystander who happened to be an American yelled at us: ''such a showoff!,, ... it was on Thai beach... He couldn't rap his head in an idea that being multilingual since a kid in Europe is just matter of everyday life...
I cannot agree more about the ‘perfection’ factor. I have absolutely no interest in rivalling Dumas, Hugo etc in French despite a certain owl based app demanding perfection. All I want to do is communicate.
This is an extremely interesting video to me. Language has turned from a hobby when I was pre-K to a way of life as I got older, got some travel under my belt, worked in various foreign countries and had a natural affinity for things outside of the comfort zone. I'm typing this before I watch the video because I have my own tricks to learning a language and eliminating as much accent as possible the longer I'm there, wherever there is. I've been learning languages for fun since I was 3 and my grandpa taught me some French from his days in Europe in the late 1930s. I also grew up around some NE Brazilian Portuguese speakers since I spoke English and can function in Brazil and weird places like Mexico City and Madrid like a duck to water. It's not necessarily a raw intelligence thing learning languages as 3 year olds from every place start speaking any language fluently, it's a mindset and MOST IMPORTANTLY a lack of fear. The hardest time I ever had blending in outside of places I'm obviously Gaijin like Japan was in Hungary. I usually look at signs of things I'd recognize, hear a few of the sounds of a language and use hand gestures until I caught some nicety rhythm. From that you can usually start faking body language, just point to stuff on a menu. laugh at jokes when it appears everyone thinks something is funny, carry cash and pay slightly too much at a restaurant, get to know the hotel staff, there are a ton of ways to blend in outside of an ethnically homogenous place such as Japan. Once you learn how to walk around a place spend a ton of time observing without making yourself obvious and you'll begin to pick up how to communicate.
At a reception : staffer asked ‘hey so-and-so, how did you learn 8 languages ?’ Answer : ‘stop asking indiscreet questions’. Yep. That’s how you do it. Total immersion.
I am 80 and just decided I want to learn another language. I do know a little Italian, a bit of German and just getting into Russian. I teach the Bible I thought it would come in handy.
what's the point because if you know English you can get knowledge related to everything. because we are not living in ancient times where translation and the internet don't exist
@Skyo.o Millions of people don't speak English and don't use English in their day to day lives. Some monolingual English speakers still believe that the world only revolves around English. It is so annoyingly myopic.
I have to point out considering you mentioned the James Bond movies, if you have ever read all of the novels you will see that the novels make the movies look like children's fantasy stories! The novels are more nitty gritty, realistic, down to espionage and much more sophisticated than any movie has portrayed them. In fact you could never watch a James Bond movie the same way again after reading the novels.
Here's a good one, which is consistent with what you're saying. When I watch Netflix I'm primarily watching movies or shows from Spain or Italy. I've spoken street level, sense of humor stuff in Portuguese since before I remember. I was educated in English so all of my applied linguistics, meaning technical for a specific field, are in English. Even in a native tongue no one speaks technical level stuff unless you're educated in it, accounting, engineering, chemistry, law, etc. I listen in for example Spanish which matches their facial expressions and mouth movements but I'm reading in Portuguese with the subtitles. Eventually Spanish and Portuguese begin to merge where I don't really need to watch the screen to follow the plot. My spoken Spanish is total merda but my passive understanding of Spanish improves. Same way I started learning Dutch. Dutch is a very important business language in Western Europe especially for logistics and entity registration. Took German in high school, speak English instinctively, I always have a Dutch translator no matter what because the Dutch will drop into Dutch casually when convenient at dinner or whatever. Back of my brain hears what they're saying which is either confirmed or contorted by the translator. My goal isn't to learn Dutch per se but knowing what people are saying assists the negotiations the next morning.
Olly- Thanks for this video. My English, Spanish and Portuguese are good. My French is bad. The best way to learn a language is live with the people and pay attention to how they say things. You can do basic things such as classes in person or computer classes or tapes or watching television and listening to the radio. But, to really learn a language you must TALK, PRACTICE and PAY ATTENTION TO HOW THE ORIGINAL SPEAKERS SAY IT. I enjoyed your video.
😊1:00 Pierce Brosnan clearly delivered that line like an Englishman, but in that scene was Bond pretending to be German, or an English businessman? In "The Quiller Memorandum", the American agent Quiller (George Segal) speaks German haltingly, or not at all, or like a German, as the situation requires.
Funny you made this video as when I was a kid my dream was to be spy 😂! I didn’t really know what it meant but I was facilitating by their skills. I speak 4 languages and practice martial arts, maybe I still have a chance 😂
Hello Olly! I have done the Beginner Spanish Story program. Is your 10-day challenge the same program, in only 10 days? Or could it be used as a follow-up? I did not find the challenge on the Story Learning website. Can you please put the link (rather that QR code)? Gracias!
This is very complex. Mirroring is good but mirror mentally way before you mirror physically. One thing I learned to do is watch how dudes about my height and weight walked. Your gait can give you away really fast. Example ... Brazilians spend a lot of time playing soccer, a lot of time barefoot, and a lot of time on the beach. Your muscles develop differently than someone who went to private primary and secondary schools rowing or playing rugby. I spent a lot of time growing up stretching and being flexible along with specifically targeted workouts for whatever I was doing growing up. Being active by nature and environment I incurred lots of different kinds of injuries large and small. Someone introduced me to yoga before yoga was cool so I could mimic movement pretty well. Bottom line is like anything else, you can try to learn the micro or the macro or both but a also a lot of luck in really blending in effectively. One more tip and I'm done ... the way people use vulgarity is interesting, it dominates a lot more of a conversation in any language than people notice.
Because the traditional way of learning a language is too slow, and I don't like the education system in my country, and my biggest purpose of learning a new language is to be able to understand movies, play games, read novels, and sometimes talk to locals, understand the humor in the language and feel the "missing" part of my culture. So it seems that sometimes some people think I'm like a spy, but I really don't care
Danke für das Video, Olly. Ich werde es mir später auf jeden Fall anschauen, wenn ich mehr Freizet habe. Übrigens, habe ich dein deutsche Buch für Ausländer gelesen und vor Kurzem für Mittlestufe gekauft. Ich finde diese Methode ziemlich nützlich, besonders wenn du ins Park gehst und dort die Bücher liest. Bis später.
01:22 Perfection doesn't matter, striving for perfection does. I had to rewind 3-4 times to make an educated guess about what they were talking about🤣. I'm a native Russian speaker, by the way.
Of course they never hire linguistically talented people who learned the old fashioned way. That would be too easy. Question: Are there no "brown guys" that speak perfect French with a southern accent in France? I'm pretty sure that there might be one or two.
😂 Michael Fassbender in "Inglorious Basterds" is the perfect example of that "uncanny valley" being half german he sounds ALMOST german, but a german instantly "smells the rat"
For spies, making a good cover story is at least as important as learning the language well. If you pretend to be Russian, but don’t know it perfectly, you can say that you grew up overseas for a few years. This is normal since there are lots of Russian speakers abroad. Maybe, your cover is that your Dad worked in Estonia and you went to an international school where people spoke dozens of languages. Then he was transferred to Austria when you were 11. Etc etc. you’d have to be careful. For example research to make sure none of the people around you know Estonian and learn some basic Estonian and German. Make up an anecdote about being bullied for your accent when you came back to Russia.
My aunt is Romanian and her father also lives in the US but he started pretending to be Italian and somehow that made him more popular, until his new friend group had an actual Italian friend move back into town and his cover was completely blown
I’d believe you’re Brazilian, @Olly Richards. George Santos is Brazilian; and UA-camr David Pakman is from Argentina. Not into learning Spanish these days, but let me know when you’ve got a similar story based course in Cherokee (yes, I’m serious.) Btw, I mispronounce all the time in my mother tongue (US English) when I’m tired, so I disagree that mispronunciation is an ‘out.’
Many people think they are but what they are is competently fluent enough for a native speaker to understand you. Most people are kind and want to communicate if they see you making an effort. Your video on the hardest accents for non Americans to understand is based on this bias. Hollywood doesn't have too many people speaking regional dialects unless it is a stereotype. You missed one that even other Americans claim they have a hard time understanding Hawaii. I used to be able to tell what island you were from but accents and dialects change over time and the trend is towards blending or smoothing out towards the 'standard'. When travelling in England I have found it hard to understand some, I can hear they have accented English but can't tell you where they are from. Lastly, those who think they are fluent but can't understand native speakers of that language or even hear dialects are functionally fluent but not really fluent because they can't hear the differences. It took me 2 years to hear the different dialects of Swedish. In the first 6 months it was hard to be able to distinguish Danish from Skanka dialect.
1:22, his accent was so thick that even though he spoke Russian, to me, he actually sounded Polish or some similar Slavic language . Thank god for subtitles .😅
the irony the guy "talking about beating the bad guys" whist having literally worked for some of the worst of the bad guys on earth, the cia ;D good tips though
One of the very first things I had to learn was that I would not actually die of embarrassment. That made me much more willing to go out on a limb and get it wrong until I got it right.
A lot of this is really interesting and useful, unless you're learning a spoken dialect and not learning to read it. Then some of it is useless. I took high interest in memory palace technique but you can't visually store sounds =(
Using that snippet from The Americans tv show is ironic, because the real Soviet "illegal" (sleeper agent) the show was partially based on, Bezrukov, actually never had a good American accent: in fact, the guy's cover was "a European businessman", so a weird non-specific accent didn't set off any alarms, since it wasn't a typical Russian one either. Phonetically imitating a foreign language perfectly requires a talent, not just hard work, so sometimes even spies have to be okay with a persistent foreign accent, as long as the cover is consistent.
in 2005 i went to china for 3 weeks to learn chinese, i never have prior education, only listening the language from kungfu movies, 1st week is tough because not so many people speaking english, i often times go to internet cafe to hear chinese movies and news, the 2nd week i start to be able to chat with locals, and find a girl as a date, the 3rd week i already speaking like a local. it's actually easy, you just need to think of language as your survival tools, dont learn it because you like it, learn it because you need it, and your brains will wire things up for you
Spies are not better at learning languages. Spies are picked from people with more abilities than most of the population. Actors used to have speech teachers, so Bond and company are not the best examples. I speak 7 languages and it is not easy for most people. There are many factors involved… I’m bad at math but awesome at languages.Hubby is a walking calculator but only speaks Spanish and Catalan. Anyway, I learnt perfect Spanish in 3 months, so I guess anyone can, or not… I know lots of people speaking Spanish like Tarzan spoke English and they’ve been living in Spain for 25 years.
[6:45] Only a note: He looks like the descendent of a "pied-noir". Therefore having an accent from the south of France would be absolutely not surprising. A Belgian accent would or one of from the Normandie would surprise more, but still be easy to explain.
The Welsh guy, hard to understand his English😂 I think today with so many people migrating and multilingualism on the rise using language as a disguise has become pretty easy
From all movie clips here only one european actor sounded "russian" in Russian. All the rest - unimaginably hilarious parodies. Hollywood is bad with Russian apparently =D
I got 22 minutes of red like exposer with an app and picked up a memory trick. The language learning berrier is still just as challenging today as ever. Someone poision me with testosterone. I want the chase to feel good again. Damn pfas.
Learning languages give people ability to develop their brightness and also educate towards history of countries. Spies learning secretly with very good teacher, in relatively fast track, as well spies are people with extraordinarily language talents. Spies do not have accent, which make them melted in crowd...not accent😂❤
I ve tried many methodes how to learn languges fast and it turns out it is one month ; i can learn two ot three languges at the same time , one after the another. Learn three times a day and listen to it 0-24 hours - use a rewerse mode on a deck . The usually it takes 3-6 months . My father speaks like 16 languges . In my opinion it is a matter of repetition and love . The stars are not far away but people are too small. Regards from serbia . Grusdich aus serbien. Arivederchi de la serbia
8:40 problem here is less the accent, and more the fact that he used formal polite German as if he was speaking to a high Commander while speaking to a lowly grunt. They would not use Sie /Ihr form rather they would use du/dich. I love this movie, but that shit always bothered me. C2 German since 20 years
When I was learning tagalog, I was banging in 50 words a day. Portuguese is much better nobody speaks a word of English in my village, total immersion.
Can you change your personality by learning a language? 👉🏼 ua-cam.com/video/NZDGYKQSd1k/v-deo.htmlsi=Y2EKYhqDLT6NRfNE
I think to some extent you do. Learning languages expands you, changes you for the better.
Absolutely no question. I was painfully shy growing up, as the language part of my brain expanded into foreign language my English improved and so did my social skills. Social anxiety reduced to near zero as language improves even now that I'm older.
Yes!
@@storylearning the Sapir Worth hypothesis says you can.
1. Find your 'why'
2. Stop trying to be perfect.
Get out and talk to someone!
3. Intrupt your daily routine.
Do something unexpected!
4. Find your voice, not just accent.
5. Creat your own immersive environment
6. Create your memory palace
7. Learn the 1000 most used words
8. Sharpen your listening skills
9. Practice speaking in stressful situations
10. Practice switching language quickly
11. Get to know the culture. Then imitate it!
12. Watch and mimic body language
Terimakasih atas rangkumanya
Thank you for this
😃👍👍👍
I went to a foreign language school that put people learning the same language in a house together with a native speaker. We had trouble at first talking to each other. The native speaker said, "why are you trying to be perfect, your English isn't perfect? Just talk!" It was one of the best lessons I ever had.
Was your only shared language with the other learners English?
@@darcash1738 yes..however we had all signed a contract to only speak French so we were all honoring that agreement.
Cool. @@darcash1738
Well, I'm knackered then. My English IS perfect.
@@darcash1738 yes
My daughter learned Russian in two months. She would learn 200 words per day and after two months she knew 10,000 words. I was working at the time. One day I saw her reading a thick Russian book. I was surprised. This is when she told me that she was fascinated by Russian culture and language, so she decided to learn the language all on her own. Her native languages are French and English. She tried Spanish and was doing rather well but didn't like the language as much as Russian.
CONCLUSION: Falling in love with a culture and its language is the key to learn any language quickly. I myself speak French, Spanish and English fluently. When I was 7, I spoke Vietnamese but when I arrived in France with several other Vietnamese children, I was told not to speak Vietnamese anymore. You won't believe but after three years I completely forgot my Vietnamese.
I believe you, children can forget á language in very short time.
200 words a day...
@@EssenceGmod I understand why you would be puzzled. I was myself puzzled. But I know she didn't lie because I saw it with my own eyes, and she is extremely humble. She doesn't go around telling she learned 200 words per day and after two months was able to understand and read Russian. I'm the only one to know and tell. I told her that when I was learning a language, I would learn 20 words per day and managed to speak/write/read Spanish and English fluently only one year after. On top of that I was living in the country like Spain and after America when I was learning their languages--my daughter wasn't in Russia. She studied it all by herself. When she went to university to improve her Russian, students who graduated from Harvard were way behind her. Later on, she travelled to Russia all by herself and had no difficulty to speak and understand Russian there.
Advantage when learning Russian is that Russian has very few actively used words compared to other languages. I think English is something like 10 million, while Russian is about 100.000.
She must have an incredible method, I can't even manage to speak only two languages at once 😅 let alone 3
"Why do you learn so many languages? Are you a spy?"
Guilty as charged!🎉🎉🎉🎉
Bourne theory 😅
😂
Nah, just need more money 😅😅😅
Iike laoshu 50500
Here is an anecdote: When I was a university student in Montreal, my mother came to visit me. While she was there, I had a couple of phone calls... one in English and one in French. Afterwards she said to me, "When you were speaking French on the phone, why were you waving your arms around and gesturing?" So, yes - our body language changes when we switch languages. I found it amusing that I was gesturing although it was a voice call and the listener couldn't see me!
Ive noticed My whole voice pitch and expressions, reactions change. Sometimes I cringe because I know I wouldn't act like that or make that sound if I was speaking English.
Speaking in korean and Chinese and hearing the sounds I make and character change... lord.
Japanese people still bow while on the phone. It's wild.
I imagine it's the same for Italians, they'd gesture while on a call as well.
Imagine you speaking in Italian 😂
Do you air kiss them on the cheeks through the phone as well 😂
Imagine your Italian friend had called you 😁
8 minutes into the video and not one word about how spies are learning a new language
Thank you for this comment so I could skip past that part but I’m at 11 something and still no talk about learning languages
22 min, still nothing useful
@@josandoy I did see elsewhere that the military does have some crazy full time immersion language school, and the candidates are tested for how well they will pick up the grammar of a new language with these tests using a fake language and if they score high enough they pick their top three languages they want to learn and they are selected for one based on the needs at the time. but the school is not open to the public so it’s not really of any use to us and it didn’t say anything about their methods other than it was full time immersion
I read these comments while the adds and I skipped it
Thank u
I speak fluently seven languages and I’ve learned it mostly by myself. As soon as someone starts talking a new language near me, my brain automatically starts analyzing the words’ etymology and phonetics. Living in Europe and working closely to people from all over the continent helped a lot. Sometimes I just put my mind somewhere else because enough is enough, I don’t need to learn an eighth idiom, but, as an example, I have two polish coworkers who sit close to me. I now understand like half of their conversation and as I said, I really don’t need to learn polish.
Slavic language like Czech, Polish, Russian etc have some common words and English is so international it works for lots of the world population
I live in a German speaking country where my business activities were always in English. I've been often stopped by tourists asking me if I spoke English, and naturally, respond with 'occasionally' or 'sometimes', then answer their question(s). I then usually got a response of, 'you speak good English' to which I generally thanked them, thus not ruining their experience.
When speaking German, most people think I'm from the Netherlands, which works for me. I do make mistakes, but keep learning, being aware of patterns, etc. I don't attempt any accents, but am aware of regional differences.
I live in Germany, I am American. When I first moved here people would automatically speak English to me and my family when we went places, but now, I’ve had multiple instances where I’ve been on a bus or walking outside, and a native German would come ask me where something was - like a street or whatever. Do I ever know where the street they’re looking for is? Nope. But they never figure out I’m American so I count that as a win.
I started with StoryLearning a year ago but I was frankly lost, I didn't have the basic tools to even begin - it was missing the first baby steps in Spanish. I gave up and started to listen to Michel Thomas Spanish. This gave me the basics and allowed me to take my first faltering steps. After completing this, StoryLearning opened up to me and I find it a wonderfully thought out and immersive course. I still find the spoken stories neigh on impossible to comprehend because of the speed at which they are narrated however the rest is solid and using VLC I can slow the spoken text down. You have ignited a fire in me for Spanish and I thank you for that, Olly.
According to Olly, spies don't use story learning methods.
Re: perfection: on UA-cam, I often find that the difference between 99% native-quality and 100%, is that the non-natives are too perfect. Native speakers drop endings, slur their words, etc. One good example of such a 99%-native English speaker is the "History with Kayleigh" channel.
In real life, too!
That's a good point. Inner net, Internet.
It's not that they're "too perfect" it's that natives speak in a natural accent or dialect.
These non-natives (who are technically brilliant) sound like they have swallowed the dictionary with the standard British or American pronounction.
Not perfect in that they are not using connected speech and reductions which makes everything inefficient/slower and harder for the speaker.
@nathanwaterser8218 Verdad ese, hogares.
Nice to see they don't use story learning method due to the slowness. Thanks for the truth. i almost signed up for the story learning courses. You saved me so much money and time!
I am going to study how spies learn languages more.
how’s it going with it
Over a year in a government language school is nuts. In government and military schools you are reminded that you are on duty and getting paid so at alot of them they emphasize extreme immersion, so over a year in an extreme immersion 24/7 school in one language is intense.
I learned American Sign Language in 6 weeks. I had a Bible study with a deaf lady, who was also a little mentally slow. Now I would like to be able to speak just enough Spanish, German, Italian, and Russian to speak to people I meet.
15:16
AT 21:03 WOW the flowers things- SUCH A SMALL THING- but I would have noticed that too- not sure what to make of it, but it would have gotten my "that's odd" spidey sense up.
I had a teacher once who told us a story of when-due to a plane issue-he got stuck in Spain for a whole week with no knowledge of a single word. He had to quickly pick up the language in order to get by until he could return home.
Obviously.
No better way 🎉
I came to find out how they learn fast but a quarter of a video is gone without a word on it, so I've to drop it.
Actually, you can pretend to be a Brazilian if you don't say anything. Literally any people in Brazil can pretend to be a Brazilian while not speaking.
Sounds like Finland
@@hyperion3145 Really?
in poland too but you need also to keep sad and angry looking face all the time
Yeah, Brazil was a poor example. I've seen Brazilians that look like him
Agreed! Brasil is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society. Millions of Brasilians look exactly like this vlogger.
When I speak my native language, Danish, I often get asked if I'm from the US (I'm not, I'm ethnically Danish). When I speak English I get asked if I'm from Finland or Eastern Europe, and when I speak Russian I get asked if I'm from Germany.
No matter what I sound like a foreigner to people, even to my own countrymen 🤷♂️
Hahaha good 👍
The ironic thing about this one. My mom (American of Polish descent) is hen my Dad (Scientist of Polish National) while he was on an exchange program (during the Cold War) met my at a party. She went to live on Poland for a year when he went back home to Warsaw.
The KGB thought she was CIA agent when she REALLY was an average USA National with intermediate understanding of Polish.
Its not just language.. the culture is Extremely Important.
Thanks for an awesome video.
I would add one more point. If someone was exposed to a certain language in their childhood age, they might blend in target language environment to the level of pretending to be a local.
My native language is russian, and at some point I realized that having a perfect russian is simpler for native speakers of one language and harder for native speakers of others. For example, people who have english as their first language almost always sound very alien for the russian ear simply due to the very different phonetic systems in our languages. I met a wonderful lady from Seattle who spent a lot of time volunteering in Russia, she knew the language perfectly, used it for many years and even worked on her accent but still a couple of words was enough for anyone to understand that she is not a local. She started to learn language in an adult age and that’s why her phonetics is always recognizable.
On the other hand I met a guy from Iran in Moscow who spoke the language almost completely indistinguishable from a native russian speaker and he told me that he lives in Russia for just 6 years and started to learn a language about that time ago as well.
That problem is something that I haven’t noticed in people who spoke and listened to russian for some period of time in their childhood. I met a guy in Uzbekistan who lives there most of his life but spent several years in Russia when he was a kid. He didn’t use the language for many years and forgot most of the words, but his pronounciation of those words that he did remembered was so perfect that if he would increased his vocabulary to an average level, I would never even suspected that he is not a native russian speaker.
Lots of speakers from ex Soviet Union know how to speak Russian some are mixed culture too
Languages are also taught to the LDS Seminary students who are going over seas to be missionaries. They often learn a language in 6 weeks in order to share the gospel to the ppl in that foreign country in their own language.
Missionary students. Not seminary. Seminary is taught 9th to 12th grade, no language is taught.
I can't believe I"m typing this but this video is awesome so I'm happy to add my input having blended in some weird places. It's never good to lie or even stretch the truth but sometimes things get weird. If it's a casual tourist type affair then just be careful like you would anywhere you're from, try and pick up some of the language for fun and simply be polite. If it's more serious than that there are some additional things to consider. If I'm going to a country to work and it's less obvious than a slam dunk where I'm going I show up a few days early to get acclimatized, become familiar with the city, get past jet lag, feel the vibe, see what people are wearing, how they take coffee, what they eat, how they walk, etc. You're in deeper than that, probably shouldn't rush being on the ground because your story that isn't absolutely true will never stand up to any level of scrutiny.
In the USA you have many Americans that speak foreign languages because they grew up as kids in a bilingual house hold. Mom and Dad are from the old country, or Dad is an American and mom is from overseas; however, all your friends in school speak American English . You watch TV in American English. You are also not only bilingual, but bicultural as well. You are a born American, likely a shade or two darker than your “regular American “ that most foreigners expect. If you grew up speaking a foreign language it makes it easier for you to learn another language as well. Recruitment from an American University where diversity reigns supreme, makes the college campus an intelligence agency’s recruitment job much easier.
Europeans are in the most part multilinguals and do not bother them this a bit.It's so natural for us that we do not make a fuzz or talk about it... Yet for Americans who do not travel abroad at all it is kind'a supernatural... When I was in the group of Europeans when we switch from one language to another bystander who happened to be an American yelled at us: ''such a showoff!,, ... it was on Thai beach... He couldn't rap his head in an idea that being multilingual since a kid in Europe is just matter of everyday life...
@MaxQWERTY-d5xyes I agree 👍
I cannot agree more about the ‘perfection’ factor.
I have absolutely no interest in rivalling Dumas, Hugo etc in French despite a certain owl based app demanding perfection. All I want to do is communicate.
This is poor.
@@rosedewittbukater4203 What is poor? Apart from your command of the English language? Your comment makes little to no sense at all.
@@cgisme You have failed the owl.There is no hope left for you
The owl does not forget, the owl does not forgive. Be prepared.
This is an extremely interesting video to me. Language has turned from a hobby when I was pre-K to a way of life as I got older, got some travel under my belt, worked in various foreign countries and had a natural affinity for things outside of the comfort zone. I'm typing this before I watch the video because I have my own tricks to learning a language and eliminating as much accent as possible the longer I'm there, wherever there is.
I've been learning languages for fun since I was 3 and my grandpa taught me some French from his days in Europe in the late 1930s. I also grew up around some NE Brazilian Portuguese speakers since I spoke English and can function in Brazil and weird places like Mexico City and Madrid like a duck to water. It's not necessarily a raw intelligence thing learning languages as 3 year olds from every place start speaking any language fluently, it's a mindset and MOST IMPORTANTLY a lack of fear.
The hardest time I ever had blending in outside of places I'm obviously Gaijin like Japan was in Hungary. I usually look at signs of things I'd recognize, hear a few of the sounds of a language and use hand gestures until I caught some nicety rhythm. From that you can usually start faking body language, just point to stuff on a menu. laugh at jokes when it appears everyone thinks something is funny, carry cash and pay slightly too much at a restaurant, get to know the hotel staff, there are a ton of ways to blend in outside of an ethnically homogenous place such as Japan. Once you learn how to walk around a place spend a ton of time observing without making yourself obvious and you'll begin to pick up how to communicate.
At a reception : staffer asked ‘hey so-and-so, how did you learn 8 languages ?’ Answer : ‘stop asking indiscreet questions’. Yep. That’s how you do it. Total immersion.
I am 80 and just decided I want to learn another language. I do know a little Italian, a bit of German and just getting into Russian. I teach the Bible I thought it would come in handy.
I’m 78 and decided to learn Vietnamese. I found a nail tech willing to help in exchange for helping her with English. Sin chow.
Bro I know 7 languages and my teacher asked if I was a spy 😭
what's the point because if you know English you can get knowledge related to everything. because we are not living in ancient times where translation and the internet don't exist
@Skyo.o Millions of people don't speak English and don't use English in their day to day lives. Some monolingual English speakers still believe that the world only revolves around English. It is so annoyingly myopic.
Lol, are you
I have to point out considering you mentioned the James Bond movies, if you have ever read all of the novels you will see that the novels make the movies look like children's fantasy stories! The novels are more nitty gritty, realistic, down to espionage and much more sophisticated than any movie has portrayed them. In fact you could never watch a James Bond movie the same way again after reading the novels.
Sutho, I have found only one story that wasn't ruined by being made into a film. Agatha Christie's "Witness for the Prosecution".
Here's a good one, which is consistent with what you're saying. When I watch Netflix I'm primarily watching movies or shows from Spain or Italy. I've spoken street level, sense of humor stuff in Portuguese since before I remember. I was educated in English so all of my applied linguistics, meaning technical for a specific field, are in English. Even in a native tongue no one speaks technical level stuff unless you're educated in it, accounting, engineering, chemistry, law, etc.
I listen in for example Spanish which matches their facial expressions and mouth movements but I'm reading in Portuguese with the subtitles. Eventually Spanish and Portuguese begin to merge where I don't really need to watch the screen to follow the plot. My spoken Spanish is total merda but my passive understanding of Spanish improves.
Same way I started learning Dutch. Dutch is a very important business language in Western Europe especially for logistics and entity registration. Took German in high school, speak English instinctively, I always have a Dutch translator no matter what because the Dutch will drop into Dutch casually when convenient at dinner or whatever. Back of my brain hears what they're saying which is either confirmed or contorted by the translator. My goal isn't to learn Dutch per se but knowing what people are saying assists the negotiations the next morning.
Pls more videos like this. It's thrilling 😅
I agree!!
Olly- Thanks for this video. My English, Spanish and Portuguese are good. My French is bad. The best way to learn a language is live with the people and pay attention to how they say things. You can do basic things such as classes in person or computer classes or tapes or watching television and listening to the radio. But, to really learn a language you must TALK, PRACTICE and PAY ATTENTION TO HOW THE ORIGINAL SPEAKERS SAY IT. I enjoyed your video.
I saw an operation of the US army in afeghanistan and the soldier was talking a very fluent arabic with locals, dude that is insane !
They used Afghani locals to translate to.
They don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan 😂
😊1:00 Pierce Brosnan clearly delivered that line like an Englishman, but in that scene was Bond pretending to be German, or an English businessman?
In "The Quiller Memorandum", the American agent Quiller (George Segal) speaks German haltingly, or not at all, or like a German, as the situation requires.
Funny you made this video as when I was a kid my dream was to be spy 😂! I didn’t really know what it meant but I was facilitating by their skills. I speak 4 languages and practice martial arts, maybe I still have a chance 😂
What languages?
@@politelephant I speak Portuguese, Ingles, Spanish and German 😁
@@abernardes2What is your level in all of them?
Legend 🤟😎
yes but you shouldn't say it under a YT video
21:24 We in Germany also carry flowers upside down. It's better for the flowers and more practical and easier to carry.
In America, you'd be considered weird.
20:55 I started to order my drinks shaken, not stirred.
Jesus loves you so soooo much ❤️
20:12 Or how to indicate the number 3 with your fingers the native way...
That was a pretty cool video friend. I hope them spys you was talking to don't get into too much trouble for blowing their cover for a youtube video.
Hello Olly! I have done the Beginner Spanish Story program. Is your 10-day challenge the same program, in only 10 days? Or could it be used as a follow-up? I did not find the challenge on the Story Learning website. Can you please put the link (rather that QR code)? Gracias!
Not convinced about the Spanish course. Got any more info
This is very complex. Mirroring is good but mirror mentally way before you mirror physically. One thing I learned to do is watch how dudes about my height and weight walked. Your gait can give you away really fast. Example ... Brazilians spend a lot of time playing soccer, a lot of time barefoot, and a lot of time on the beach. Your muscles develop differently than someone who went to private primary and secondary schools rowing or playing rugby. I spent a lot of time growing up stretching and being flexible along with specifically targeted workouts for whatever I was doing growing up. Being active by nature and environment I incurred lots of different kinds of injuries large and small. Someone introduced me to yoga before yoga was cool so I could mimic movement pretty well. Bottom line is like anything else, you can try to learn the micro or the macro or both but a also a lot of luck in really blending in effectively. One more tip and I'm done ... the way people use vulgarity is interesting, it dominates a lot more of a conversation in any language than people notice.
I'm autistic, but can switch to near fluent neuro-typical very quickly. Mad important survival skill!
I seriously want to find some of the sampled videos in this!
The London Taxi Knowledge is great for building a memory palace
Because the traditional way of learning a language is too slow, and I don't like the education system in my country, and my biggest purpose of learning a new language is to be able to understand movies, play games, read novels, and sometimes talk to locals, understand the humor in the language and feel the "missing" part of my culture. So it seems that sometimes some people think I'm like a spy, but I really don't care
Danke für das Video, Olly. Ich werde es mir später auf jeden Fall anschauen, wenn ich mehr Freizet habe.
Übrigens, habe ich dein deutsche Buch für Ausländer gelesen und vor Kurzem für Mittlestufe gekauft. Ich finde diese Methode ziemlich nützlich, besonders wenn du ins Park gehst und dort die Bücher liest. Bis später.
Mit Bücher wird man nicht abgelenkt 😂
_"Bond should have been dead a long time ago"._ Agreed. I do some very bad German as second language, and even I do better than that!
He was pretty bad in Mama Mia, too.
I feel like I am doing total immersion. I live in the Czech Republic with my Czech family and there's no English happening.
You really enjoy recording yourself and talking without saying anything right
1:56 14:56 guy's just look in the description to get to know how! You'll thank me later
01:22 Perfection doesn't matter, striving for perfection does. I had to rewind 3-4 times to make an educated guess about what they were talking about🤣. I'm a native Russian speaker, by the way.
Of course they never hire linguistically talented people who learned the old fashioned way. That would be too easy.
Question: Are there no "brown guys" that speak perfect French with a southern accent in France? I'm pretty sure that there might be one or two.
Came here to comment that 😂 France is incredibly diverse he would not be out of place in France
Great video Olly. Really interesting!
😂 Michael Fassbender in "Inglorious Basterds" is the perfect example of that "uncanny valley" being half german he sounds ALMOST german, but a german instantly "smells the rat"
Now you know how I feel as an American listening to Brits play American. Uncanny irritation is more like it.
For spies, making a good cover story is at least as important as learning the language well.
If you pretend to be Russian, but don’t know it perfectly, you can say that you grew up overseas for a few years. This is normal since there are lots of Russian speakers abroad. Maybe, your cover is that your Dad worked in Estonia and you went to an international school where people spoke dozens of languages. Then he was transferred to Austria when you were 11. Etc etc. you’d have to be careful. For example research to make sure none of the people around you know Estonian and learn some basic Estonian and German. Make up an anecdote about being bullied for your accent when you came back to Russia.
My aunt is Romanian and her father also lives in the US but he started pretending to be Italian and somehow that made him more popular, until his new friend group had an actual Italian friend move back into town and his cover was completely blown
I’ve learned Indonesian with a score that surpassed a military linguist standard as a Green Beret in just 4 months. 💁🏻♂️
As an Indonesian, I have to say you’re amazing. Well done!
@ terima kasih, pak! 🙏🏼
Wow
How?
@ 40 hours a week of classroom immersion
I’d believe you’re Brazilian, @Olly Richards. George Santos is Brazilian; and UA-camr David Pakman is from Argentina. Not into learning Spanish these days, but let me know when you’ve got a similar story based course in Cherokee (yes, I’m serious.) Btw, I mispronounce all the time in my mother tongue (US English) when I’m tired, so I disagree that mispronunciation is an ‘out.’
I love the memory palace idea. I always remember where I was when I heard something.... I think it could work.
I've been using them for over a decade I highly recommend you give them a try
Do you have any suggestions to learn Hindi?
Do you have the method for other languages ?
Many people think they are but what they are is competently fluent enough for a native speaker to understand you. Most people are kind and want to communicate if they see you making an effort. Your video on the hardest accents for non Americans to understand is based on this bias. Hollywood doesn't have too many people speaking regional dialects unless it is a stereotype. You missed one that even other Americans claim they have a hard time understanding Hawaii. I used to be able to tell what island you were from but accents and dialects change over time and the trend is towards blending or smoothing out towards the 'standard'. When travelling in England I have found it hard to understand some, I can hear they have accented English but can't tell you where they are from. Lastly, those who think they are fluent but can't understand native speakers of that language or even hear dialects are functionally fluent but not really fluent because they can't hear the differences. It took me 2 years to hear the different dialects of Swedish. In the first 6 months it was hard to be able to distinguish Danish from Skanka dialect.
1:22, his accent was so thick that even though he spoke Russian, to me, he actually sounded Polish or some similar Slavic language . Thank god for subtitles .😅
the irony the guy "talking about beating the bad guys" whist having literally worked for some of the worst of the bad guys on earth, the cia ;D good tips though
I'm fairly interested in this.
I love thie series
Tomorrow is my german final, will this help?
Anyone who has taken intensive foreign language courses
is already very likely to know excellent learning techniques.
One of the very first things I had to learn was that I would not actually die of embarrassment. That made me much more willing to go out on a limb and get it wrong until I got it right.
Is comedy inserts part ot the memory devices? Genius.
A lot of this is really interesting and useful, unless you're learning a spoken dialect and not learning to read it. Then some of it is useless. I took high interest in memory palace technique but you can't visually store sounds =(
For the memory palace, well what if I can't visualize well outside of dreams?
Using that snippet from The Americans tv show is ironic, because the real Soviet "illegal" (sleeper agent) the show was partially based on, Bezrukov, actually never had a good American accent: in fact, the guy's cover was "a European businessman", so a weird non-specific accent didn't set off any alarms, since it wasn't a typical Russian one either. Phonetically imitating a foreign language perfectly requires a talent, not just hard work, so sometimes even spies have to be okay with a persistent foreign accent, as long as the cover is consistent.
Burn Notice is awesome.
in 2005 i went to china for 3 weeks to learn chinese, i never have prior education, only listening the language from kungfu movies, 1st week is tough because not so many people speaking english, i often times go to internet cafe to hear chinese movies and news, the 2nd week i start to be able to chat with locals, and find a girl as a date, the 3rd week i already speaking like a local. it's actually easy, you just need to think of language as your survival tools, dont learn it because you like it, learn it because you need it, and your brains will wire things up for you
Spies are not better at learning languages. Spies are picked from people with more abilities than most of the population. Actors used to have speech teachers, so Bond and company are not the best examples. I speak 7 languages and it is not easy for most people. There are many factors involved… I’m bad at math but awesome at languages.Hubby is a walking calculator but only speaks Spanish and Catalan. Anyway, I learnt perfect Spanish in 3 months, so I guess anyone can, or not… I know lots of people speaking Spanish like Tarzan spoke English and they’ve been living in Spain for 25 years.
Thank you as always Olly!
[6:45] Only a note: He looks like the descendent of a "pied-noir". Therefore having an accent from the south of France would be absolutely not surprising. A Belgian accent would or one of from the Normandie would surprise more, but still be easy to explain.
The Welsh guy, hard to understand his English😂
I think today with so many people migrating and multilingualism on the rise using language as a disguise has become pretty easy
He sounds more like a sourcy trying to speak regular English.
You are the sweetest. Thank you for making me 😂😅.
Thanks for the Intel !
From all movie clips here only one european actor sounded "russian" in Russian. All the rest - unimaginably hilarious parodies. Hollywood is bad with Russian apparently =D
I got 22 minutes of red like exposer with an app and picked up a memory trick. The language learning berrier is still just as challenging today as ever. Someone poision me with testosterone. I want the chase to feel good again. Damn pfas.
🍅 🍅 🍅 GO STR8 TO THE POINT!!!
17:17 Tandem is great for that
0:50 dude almost sounded scottish, then out comes a super natural CRIKEY. ah. the aussie has been spotted. 😁😂💛
*EDIT*: and nope he's welsh! :D
Learning languages give people ability to develop their brightness and also educate towards history of countries. Spies learning secretly with very good teacher, in relatively fast track, as well spies are people with extraordinarily language talents. Spies do not have accent, which make them melted in crowd...not accent😂❤
I ve tried many methodes how to learn languges fast and it turns out it is one month ; i can learn two ot three languges at the same time , one after the another. Learn three times a day and listen to it 0-24 hours - use a rewerse mode on a deck .
The usually it takes 3-6 months .
My father speaks like 16 languges .
In my opinion it is a matter of repetition and love .
The stars are not far away but people are too small.
Regards from serbia .
Grusdich aus serbien.
Arivederchi de la serbia
You could definitely pass as a Brazilian.
I learned 200+ languages, but I forgot them.
Great video ❤ thank you!
8:40 problem here is less the accent, and more the fact that he used formal polite German as if he was speaking to a high Commander while speaking to a lowly grunt. They would not use Sie /Ihr form rather they would use du/dich. I love this movie, but that shit always bothered me. C2 German since 20 years
Where's the link to the $10Ten Day Spanish Challenge?
When I was learning tagalog, I was banging in 50 words a day. Portuguese is much better nobody speaks a word of English in my village, total immersion.
Underrated info
Olly is still going! Amazing his subscriber list is so low considering all this great content.
Good video
Helpful.😊