A Polyglot's Daily Linguistic Workout - 15 Years Later
Вставка
- Опубліковано 15 бер 2024
- What do I do now that I did not do then? Listen to me talk about how I now use audiobooks, art, conversations with myself, reading aloud, recording myself, holding Germanic and Romance branch congresses in my head, memorizing and reciting texts, engaging philosophical & theological questions, honing a sense of time, and incorporating kinesthetics into language work.
Please note that this video is an update to some of the same questions that Michael Erard asked me when he interviewed me for his book on polyglots back in 2009. You can see that video here: • A Polyglot's Daily Lin...
Subscribe to my monthly newsletter: www.alexanderarguelles.com/ne... Join my academy: www.alexanderarguelles.com/ac...
Join my virtual academy and meet with me every week to get a systematic theoretical framework for long-term language learning in the Path of the Polyglot: www.alexanderarguelles.com/ac... Join also to read and discuss French, German, Italian, and/or Spanish literature, to learn sacred languages such as Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, or Old Norse, to develop conversational abilities in Latin, and/or to read and discuss Great Books of Western Civilization or the Comparative History of Religions in English. And subscribe to my monthly newsletter at: www.alexanderarguelles.com/ne...
If you are in a position to support my educational efforts, please consider making a contribution at: ko-fi.com/alexanderarguelles
Join my virtual academy and meet with me every week to get a systematic theoretical framework for long-term language learning in the Path of the Polyglot: www.alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ Join also to read and discuss French, German, Italian, and/or Spanish literature, to learn sacred languages such as Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, or Old Norse, to develop conversational abilities in Latin, and/or to read and discuss Great Books of Western Civilization or the Comparative History of Religions in English. And subscribe to my monthly newsletter at: www.alexanderarguelles.com/newsletter/
Talking to yourself is a very powerful and underappreciated language learning tool. I built a functional English fluency solely by talking to myself (and thinking) in English without ever interacting with any English speakers (because I don't live in an English speaking country). And when I finally had a chance to interact with English speakers I was already conversationally fluent (of course no one is going to mistake me for a native speaker, but that's not the point). It's a perfect practice for people that are timid and afraid of making mistakes because no one is there to judge you and you can say whatever. Also finding a conversational partner (though perhaps preferable) is not always feasible, and there's honestly a limit to how much people will be willing to put up with you if you aren't already fluent in the language...
Thank you for confirming my observations and experimentations with you own experience.
@@ProfASArMy pleasure and thank you too for sharing your knowledge and insights with us.
Glad to have somebody like Alexander to keep inspiring us with our language practices. A really beautiful mind.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I do feel a deep sense of obligation to share what I know and to inspire others to do more.
In my opinion, high quality audiobooks paired with text are the best nutrition for a language learning diet. Aside from conversation practice, you get to exercise so many aspects and skills of language use simultaneously and (nearly) organically. Massive vocabulary acquisition in context (that I'm not sure is possible from any other practice), parsing the acoustic stream, relatively dense language (which makes understanding normal everyday type of speech much easier), input that is catered to you personally, mass amounts of repetition (provided your getting lots of input, which renders the use of things like anki more or less useless), exposure to deeper conversations in the culture through the language, the list goes on...
Thank you for the substantive and detailed validation of the reasons for using audiobooks.
Merlin's meowing was cute and interesting input! 😂
Indeed, and if you understood what he was saying you would appreciate it even more!
I assume Professor speaks Feline 😎
That one is definitely of your best videos, for sure. Really inspired me to become more polyglot and polyliterate before the pandemic. I've no shame in saying that I have often rewatched it for motivation.
I am glad to hear that and I hope this one is as inspirational for you down the line.
Language learning is a never-ending story - even when you have mastered the process of learning, you discover new ways of approaching it and making it fresh for yourself.
Thanks, Liam, for stating the message so succinctly.
my pleasure! @@ProfASAr
Im so glad that you mentioned Thomas Aquinas, professor. I remember that you encouraged me to memorize more latin prayers in your response to my Long Term 7 Language Plan for Philosophy and Theology. Your answer was very important to me and I still reread it from time to time to not give up. Saint Thomas has a lot of beautiful prayers and hymns. And his philosophy is a treasure. Knowing that you appreciate him gives me even more admiration for you. Because I like to have more things in common with people. I also love Saint Augustine, Blessed John Duns Scotus, Saint Boethius, Saint Albert (Aquinas' professor), Saint Bonaventure, Blessed Ramon Llull (he wrote hundreds of books in latin, catalan, arabic. I also want to learn catalan just because of him, to learn his ars magna and works) and many others.
The part where you talked about movement made me recall about Aristotle and his peripatetic school where he taught while walking with his students because I think he believed it helped learn better, according to his philosophy. I don't remember the exact explanation so I will just speculate one. If you know about it, professor, please tell me. I believe that according to hylomorphism soul and body are perfectly united like a marriage (the body is the body of the soul and vice-versa) and if you stimulate many parts of your soul like the sensitive part of it which is linked to our body and imagination it's like you are augmenting your faculties' powers because of the deep union of our faculties, intellect, will, the five exterior senses and the four inner senses. I believe it might also be linked with the core aristotelian theory of knowledge: the principle of knowledge is in the senses (Metaph. i, 1; Poster. ii, 15) and in Summa Theologiae, Q84, A6, Sed Contra.
By the way, do you know the website aquinas.cc? It's awesome how they have almost all Aquinas' works and his commentaries on Aristotle in bilingual (english/latin). It's very practical to read and compare. I just used it now to locate the citation that I've mentioned. It helps me learn latin as well while I learn philosophy and theology haha! Also, it's interesting how you can basically learn the main philosophical culture of the west through the authors mentioned by Aquinas' in the Summa Theologiae. He references an enormous numbers of authors in it.
Certainly, this made me more eager to study Aristotle and Aquinas, professor.
I am looking forward to read what are your thoughts about it, sir. This is in fact a question that peeks my interest a lot. And I'm sorry if my english might be weird. It's been a while since I stopped using it to write or communicate with others. I mostly get exposed to it passively nowadays through listening or reading.
Thank you for your teachings and for inspiring me and many others.
Greetings from Brazil!
Hello again and thank you for your shared interest in using Latin to access Aquinas. Anyone who reads this should appreciate the link you provide to see all of his works in nice bilingual columns. As for Aristotle and the logic behind his peripatetic approach - I am not sure about that and I am also not sure that the fact that movement = life and energy requires any logic to support it.
TYSM for the Aquinas link. I took Latin in h.s.
@@ProfASAr Yes, sir. It's an intuitive and simple conclusion. Although the simpler things for their simplicity can have the most profound explanations. Just like in catholic theology God is simplíssimo (i forgot how to say the superlative in english) but we have to ascend through each of Wisdom's stair steps and penetrate through the most complex and contingent concepts to better understand God's simplicity, looking for unity in multiplicity and explaining his simplicity through complexity. Because this is how we operate through the nature of our discursive rationality. Although being able to explain complex things clearly and with simplicity is always better. This is an imitation of Christ, in this sense: of God's simplicity.
@@californianorma876 that's awesome! I wish they would enforce it more into the teaching curriculum.
Here in Brazil in the past they would teach french and latin. Nowadays this is instinct. We learn english and spanish, which is understandable since those are the most spoken languages. But latin is the most spoken and vivid universal language, if we consider the amount of culture one can access knowing this language. It's been only two or three centuries since it stopped being the main intellectual and academic language in the west.
There's the concept of the global villager, right? I believe in the concept of the universal villager. Which is thinking of all human history as a big village in progress. And when we learn languages and history, we can be part of this universal village. Because we are living together and having conversations with our ancestors, we are taking part of this epic poetry that will be unveiled in eternity and told to us by God Himself.
The majority of academics and scientists nowadays, I believe, are oblivious about this, ignoring what has been done in the past and thinking that our present civilization is the best. It might be the best in the technical advancements and possibilities, but you can see why they live a kind of ignorant provincianism when they think to have discovered something that already was centuries ago. Or when they look behind to authors of the past with contempt. They do not know, for instance, that some Newtonian laws were anticipated by scholastics and Aristotle in the Physics books.
I really enjoy listening to this channel.
I am happy to be of service.
I've enjoyed revisiting the video for a number of years. Always inspiring. Thank you
You are very welcome.
Keep it up dude! Been inspired by you for years now.
I am glad to be of service.
You’re really inspiring, thanks
Você é uma inspiração, obrigado!
Muito obrigado!
Inspirational!
Thank you for that, and for keeping excellent older methods available!
Thanks for underscoring the tremendous advantage of reading aloud, both for yourself alone and also for others, particularly one's children.
You are very welcome. I wish I had realized this myself sooner.
Ya I love all these videos, would like to see even more, it makes me want to study more and try and achieve more
Thank you for letting me know that I am having the desired effect!
Wow! Just this morning I was showing my girlfriend the video from 15 years ago and then a few hours later you post this. What a crazy coincidence!
Indeed! Thanks for letting me know!
Great point Alexander to actually record yourself reading aloud, rather than unwittingly slipping to mumbling. Also, I like the idea of memorising poems (or whatever that is deep) and then saying them to yourself at different times so that the different dimensions of the piece can come alive due to new contexts of emotion or scenery or mood or environment in which they are recited. Memorising seems to go extinct these days with all access to info and AI on top.
Thank you for the support and understanding.
Damn this guys replies are honestly intriguing (in a good way of course)
Thank you so much for your support!
Hello, professor. What are some audiobooks you recommend for German? I'm at an intermediate level in the language and I've already read quite a bit, but I haven't listened to many audiobooks.
Great video, thank youu!
Thanks for the great question. As I mention in the video, to get the most out of an audiobook, you need to really resonate with the narrator. I would recommend you spend some time on Audible listening to samples of various kinds of books that interest you, listening out for a narrator whose voice and delivery you love. When you find someone and think, "I'd like to speak German the way she speaks German," use her as your model to get as close to that as you can.
Your videos are always inspiring. I've a quick question though - I'm at that level now in a language where I can't listen for comprehension to low-advanced content. How should I approach that? Do I listen to the same low-advanced level content while reading simultaneously and hope it will work eventually? Or I should simply brute-force the listening?
I am not sure I understand your question, but certainly there is a stage before you can simply consume audiobooks in a foreign language when you need to go over the same passage several times - sometimes reading along, sometimes not. That is normal.
Interesting how you mention the kinaesthetic aspect of learning, because even when I stop reading a book in my own language, English, a particularly important subject in the book might invoke me to stand up and go for a short walk outside while I have an internal conversation on the subject, almost as though my brain needed a kinaesthetic stimulant to help express a reflection upon what I'd read.
Thank you for confirming the value of what so many ignore.
Oh wow I did all of these things without knowing 🤯 it just felt natural to me, and I managed to learn pretty effectively, I don't know if is the most efficient way though, it is effective for sure.
Thank you for the validation.
@@ProfASAr Oh my god my commnet sounds so pedantic in retrospective, I didn't mean to say it like that, it was an honest ralization. 😅 Apologies 🙏🙏
@@roblonsote I did not take it amiss!
Can you do an improvised international congress? Could be an interesting watch.
Thank you for the suggestion.
hello professor, thank you for your videos and work! where, besides audible, can we find audiobooks and audio resources in a non-english language? grazie!
As you signed off "grazie," I am guessing this might be a good site for you: liberliber.it/opere/audiolibri/
thank you!@@ProfASAr
Professor, I took your shadowing advice very seriously a long time ago and gave it a solid run. I came to the realization that there are probably different brain types, I have a friend who claims to be able to watch a TV show while talking to me on the phone. If I listen to audiobooks in my native English while walking city streets, I have long blackout periods where I miss up to 30-60 seconds of audio and must rewind because my brain didn't hear anything due to a person walking across my path or a stop light (example). When you jog or march, do you actually hear foreign audio 100% of the time just like when sitting at your desk? Or do you have blackout periods of 30-50% of the time where your brain doesn't even hear anything, like would happen for me? Deadly curios about this. I ultimately concluded I cannot make productive use of shadowing. I can increase blood flow and do Pimsleur tapes or audiobook listening with increase productivity in the RARE circumstance where I have access to a large indoor walking track or basketball court when no single other person is there. So at least thank you for that!
No, I do not have blackout periods as you describe. There are two possibilities, not mutually exclusive, for your unproductive shadowing. One is, as you surmise, that there are different strokes for different folks. The other is that you are doing it wrong, and I do see at least one hint of that in what you write, namely shadowing should not be done on city streets, but in parks, on private paths, etc. If this is the case, don't feel bad. Despite all of my efforts to share and spread shadowing, and despite the fact that many people say they profit from it, when I watch them doing it, it is very rare that I find anyone doing it optimally and with good form. That is why I propose to give workshops in parks when I travel - to provide corrective feedback.
Commentārius deīs algorythmī.
Iterum!
Who was behind the camera interviewing you?
Xing Hao, the academy administrative assistant and graduate student at the University of Chicago, he came to visit me over spring break.
🌈🌈🌈🌈Replaying repeat materials in your head will work for some languages but not all unless you are at a decent level, without the audio your languages will not improve. I am speaking for languages such as Modern Standard Arabic, which is very difficult to learn and acquire without audio.🌈🌈🌈
I am going to start replaying stuff in my head that I acquired earlier without the audio. I have tried that before. I am going to use that technique with Brazilian Portugues and Dutch.🌈🌈🌈🌈
I wish you the best of success with it!
Does anybody know how many languages he speaks well?
Please read the information on my website.
i sense that language learning is not the ultimate goal here,
for it is already a form of meditation to hold only a poem in mind for a period of time, while walking or not,
and a better sense of time has really not much to do with language learning, though it indeed showcases that something is enhanced and language learning wouldn't be the only thing to benefit from it, i presume.
There is a reason why I call it "The Path of the Polyglot"
Does he speak Cat? His cat sure does.
Merlin knows everything I know and a lot more as well.
Is it your camera or lighting? constantly adjusting brightness.
Why would you notice that of all things?
@@ProfASAr It was disturbing and annoying to my eyes.
🌈🌈🌈I am acquiring Swahili, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch and Modern Standard Arabic.🌈🌈🌈
That is an fascinating mix: best of success with all of them!
@@ProfASAr I heard you mentioned Egyptian, you mean you acquired Arabic as well?
@@user-hn6wn6tp1r Yes - I lived in Lebanon for two years and the UAE for six in order to do this.
@@ProfASAr United Arab Emirates, Geez, I would have been scared to go to Lebanon, a very unsafe country.
Can you read Egyptian Arabic too?
🥱🫤
???
First (as usual)
You are slacking off: last week you did it in 8 minutes, this week it took you 11. You'd better watch out or someone could beat you next week.
@@ProfASAr next week will be difficult because I will have guests the time your video goes online 😁
Catwrestler
I usually lose.
Isnt English good enough for everyone?
It’s good to want more
No, it isn't.