The RIGHT Time to Start Speaking a New Language
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
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Is it better to speak from day 1 or wait a few months, or even years, before focusing on speaking? It's that even the right question? Let's find out.
Edited with Gling AI: bit.ly/46bGeYv
#linguistics #languagelearning #italki
#polyglot #multilingual
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I went to a café in Gothenburg, Sweden after having self-studied Swedish for 7 years and never having spoken to anyone. I have a quite good accent, I've been told I sound almost native. So I ordered a sandwich at this café, and the lady working there asked me if I wanted it with some other word I didn't understand. So I said, in Swedish, in a native sounding accent: "what is mustard?". She just kinda looked at me and showed me the mustard bottle. I was so mortified
Oh this is fantastic hahaa!
Having grown up in Miami, I live in terror of moments such as this when visiting any place in América Latina.
Relatable. I've had a native-like accent in Greek from day 1 (ευχαριστώ, γιαγιά!), so back when I was a teen and couldn't say much (but what I could say was quick and sounded like I knew my stuff) I would always have to ask questions like that! Mortifying at the time, hilarious now.
You hadn't learned the word senap??!?!??!? Have you ever been to an IKEA?! Seriously, though, that's hilarious... I am half Swedish and speak with a totally native-sounding, regional accent, but I grew up in England and don't speak Swedish that frequently, so when I go over there, then a) I sound like I'm in my 60s (because I learned from my mum, who left there 35 years ago) and b) I frequently make errors which make me sound like an imbecile....
@@jayrlbd8355 Believe it or not, at that point in my life I had never stepped foot in an IKEA haha. I learned Swedish from listening to/translating Kent songs! And they're not talking much about condiments! That's funny that you sound older though, does that mean you pronounce words like räv with /e/? Like rev?? I later took a Swedish class at university and the teacher grew up in the 60s in Stockholm, and that was the main noticeable thing about her accent to me lol. But I'm glad it's not just me who has this problem, although it is quite awkward sometimes
Oh man, so many deer in the headlights moments. When I was in Disneyland Paris, I went into a gift shop to buy a mug. I decided to be brave and try to speak French. The shop attendant asked me if I wanted a bag, which I understood and then said yes. But then he said that they were souvenir bags so they weren't free, and there were three different sizes.... and I had no idea what he was saying. I just stared at him for several seconds, then said "nope, sorry, that's the extent of my French" 😅 He was very nice, and apologized, and I told him it wasn't his fault, I started by speaking French to him but then was just in way over my head.
This is awesome!! It may feel embarrassing but you’re one step ahead from those of us who are too scared to speak the language in real life scenarios. Kudos!
To someone who thinks they don't need to speak Sumerian I just answer "Iltam Sumra Rashupti Elatim..."
I'm not impressed if you can't type that in cuneiform.
me wondering which book to use to study Sumerian: I'll open this one
@@fariesz6786 In Sumerian: There is no book, there is only Zuul.
I've had a ton of deer-in-the-headlights moments, but this one stuck with me: I live in Reykjavík. I'm walking along downtown and someone I don't know approaches me and says, in Icelandic-accented English, "May I ask you a question?" I look at him and blurt out "Afsakið?" (Excuse me?) He blinks a few times and asks "Talarðu íslensku?" (Do you speak Icelandic?) I pause for a moment and realize that saying "yes" would probably lead to me not understanding the question he were asking. So, I respond "No." There was a long, confused moment, and then he took a deep breath, said "OK," and asked for directions in English. Problem solved, but it reminded me that routine automaticity for basic one-word responses to things sets certain expectations that I may not be prepared to meet.
The way you told this story, I imagine it to be so funny in retrospect haha
3:27 Sumerian Cuneiform is pressed into a clay tablet rather than chiseled into stone
I learned something today
Bruh thinks they're ancient Egyptians rather than Summerian smh
I figured the problem was that the person was destroying a perfectly fine ancient artifact
Yes!
Also, that wasn't Sumerian. It may have been old Persian or Ugaritic (it was far too simple compared to all the Sumerian I've learned so far).
A moment I had was pretty much the contrary. I rented an airbnb to a Russian. I texted him in russian throught google translate, but once we met things were different.
He opened to me to show me around, but the first sentence he told me was in russian. It basically went like " *unintelligible Russian words* ruski ?".
Remember folks, I never learned the language.
Since I only recognized the word ruski and the intonation, I had (and still have) no idea of what he said.
With the stress, needing to answer quickly to not leave an akward 10 minute of silence, I just answered "Niet".
So I assumed he was asking me in pure russian, if I was or spoke russian. And I answered to him in russian.
It's been 3 years now, and it still haunts me at night...
I think when people refer to "speaking" and "output," they refer to the act of creating original sentences, rather than the physical act of speaking. Great video and I never thought about using a spectrogram to analyze my voice
I feel like what you described with imperfect mapping is just the default when studying Chinese. You get an accurate and consistent phonetic alphabet, meaning with practice you can make the sounds. You also get the sounds mapped to the most complicated writing system in the world. Add that with intonation explicitly taught from day one, and you have a recipe for 唸得出來但卻聽不懂 (can read aloud but cant understand) and people will ask "how do you not understand what you just said?"
I can’t stop thinking about the interesting topics covered in languagejones videos.
I love that he has the academic background he does because for a while I felt linguistics on UA-cam was mostly hobbiest conlangers which was interesting to dip my toes into the subject area but I much prefer this now.
My favorite deer in the headlights moment:
I was speaking to my partner's grandmother, who is Japanese. Her Japanese is old, and she speaks lightning fast and mumbles a bit. Me, a beginner in Japanese, was still able to understand her well enough to give poorly phrased, but fitting, answers. I was amazed.
Then later the same day I go to a convenience store and the cashier asks me if I want a bag. I had no clue what she said, so after some seconds she proceeds to give me a bag and asks me how I want to pay. I reply that I want to pay by card, and she asks me which kind. I say "VISA", and she has no clue what I am on about. I didn't know back then that there is no 'vi' sound in Japanese, it has to be pronounced 'bui'. It took us over 2 minutes to figure out the card payments.
That is when I realised that the Japanese you study from books is fairly formal and old, nobody says 短銃, people just call it ピストル. And that's why it was easier for me to follow a 92-year old grandma than a cashier about my age. Of course I also blame the poor English skills of the average Japanese person for making me look like a fool trying to pay by card 😂
My wife's francophone cousin was visiting, and we were playing a board game called Mysterium, in which one player takes the role of a "ghost". I was the ghost. I said "Je suis ton fantasme". Listen. I got Romance-language dizzy. The cognate works for ghost in Italian. But in French I just told my wife's cousin I was her wet dream... I'm surprised I don't have a frying pan dent in the back of my head. Edit: we all laughed
I'm bilingual and technically a native speaker, but because of my accent, i barely practiced speaking my mother tongue... Which means I can perfectly understand conversation but I can't articulate myself. I think a huge part of language learning when it comes to speaking is overcoming shame. Unfortunately, my family was pretty ruthless about my pronunciation. Really good video!
I can say the same honestly, in my case it was Spanish and damn is there a expectation to magically speak perfect Spanish being Hispanic in the United States despite barely having to use it outside family. I had to do a decent amount of studying to actually sound fluent instead of a deer in headlights. It feels nice to say I no longer have deer in headlights moments unless it’s slang I’m unfamiliar with or a hard accent. Stay strong man you’ll get there 🗣️
Wow, thank you for saying that. I’m also bilingual but struggle in what was my OG native tongue after moving to America as a child, and overcoming shame is a huge block to being able to speak to my family. This last trip I took, by the end of the week they were telling me (in surprise) that I speak very well, and it’s definitely because I was too embarrassed to talk much for the first several days, so I forgot how much I actually know 😆
Even though I'm not bilingual I have the same problem with French. Where I grew up, learning French was mandatory, and I learned it for nine years straight. We learned reading, writing and listening mostly, with heavy focus on written grammar. Now, I can perfectly understand French, but not even utter the most basic sentences. I would love to tell them I do understand everything they say, but from my stutter/accent they infer that I don't understand shit and switch to English immediately. Funnily the Algerians in France are the only ones I can have a deep conversation with, because they don't care that much about pronunciation. I have absolutely no such problem with Chinese btw., which I learned with a totally different approach in a way shorter time-frame.
Place: Piazza Santo Spirito, Florence
Year: 2002
Me (trying to buy things for dinner): “Una gamba di seDAno.”
Old lady selling vegetables behind table cracks up, gathers her friends and makes me say it again for the amusement of all.
She (incredulous): “SeDAno?!! Ha ha ha ha!”
As a consequence, I have never forgotten where the stress falls in the word “sedano”.
You’re right. Social interactions and the scars of embarrassment sear stuff into your memory.
As an Italian I guess they were more intrigued by 'gamba' which means a human leg... we usually say 'gambo' for a plant
@@margedtrumper9325Place: UA-cam comment section
Year: 2024
😅😂
Had a complete system crash the first time I tried to hold a conversation in Spanish with a native-speaker friend of mine. She'd kindly agreed to give it a shot with me in exchange for a coffee, and we'd agreed that we'd pretend not to know each other and start from scratch with introductions and so forth. So I was expecting to be asked where I was from, about my job, brothers and sisters etc, yet somehow our conversation almost instantly veered into her asking me what it was like to live as a foreigner in Asia ... Which is a thing I have a lot to say about, but not in Spanish. My brain turned into a tornado of vaguely familiar words and I couldn't even look at her while trying to construct and phonate a sentence through my flapping jaw - it was painful. I decided I needed to find an actual teacher after that, because I don't want to put my friends through that sort of thing.
i had a similar experience with spanish where i couldnt even respond properly to "donde esta el baño?" its terrifying in the moment lol.
Because you didn't understand enough. It's useless.
The note you said about native speakers hearing your accent after careful shadowing using like praat and audacity, that's basically been my past few years of living in Taiwan. I speak clearly and like Taiwanese people well enough that they think I even speak Taiwanese Hokkien, and then i look at them like a deer in the headlights 👀
Not necessarily a deer in the headlights moment, but I went to the Netherlands last month after having studied Dutch since about the beginning of the year. My comprehension is pretty good but I hadn't had the opportunity to speak to any natives at all so my only production experience was crazily muttering to myself in the house. The first day I ordered a beer at a bar and afterwards turned to my husband and said a few words of English to him. Another guy at the bar then commented that he thought I was a native speaker until he heard me say something in English. We talked for a few minutes and at one point he said to me "Tourists are always telling me to talk slowly, it's annoying. It's nice that I can talk to you normally." I couldn't really formulate a response fast enough so I just said something to the effect of "Yeah...I hear...and then I think...and then I speak...and it's hard," immediately showing myself to be the tourist who is bad at speaking lol😂all the Dutch people I talked to were so nice though, it was a lovely language experience.
I feel like years ago when the whole immersion movement online got started the message was supposed to be “you don’t have to start speaking from day zero” but got corrupted into some weird idea that went a full 180 for no reason.
Back before this happened when I was first studying Japanese I remember a classmate who was really talented at Japanese legit thought it was BAD to speak to non natives because it would make your Japanese worse. Having studied languages before Japanese I knew that was rubbish. But I guess people come up with crazy ideas just based on well probably to fit how they want to learn. He didn’t enjoy speaking to non natives so I think he justified it by convincing himself it was literally bad. I think the same thing happened with a lot of introverts. They didn’t like speaking to natives even so they came up with a theory to explain why it’s bad.
You said the thing. The thing about all of our disagreements being about the meaning of the words we use. I really appreciate you saying that thing.
For what it's worth, I've recently found surprising success with an input-skewed approach even if I don't condone the weird "forced silent period" stuff going on in some of those communities.
I learned German as an exchange student, I started speaking off the jump because I was in-country and I needed to like, buy groceries and file paperwork and stuff. I caught on to the grammar fast enough, and my production rocketed. I speak German pretty well! But my comprehension was actually really low, especially with fast casual speech, and I was too embarrassed to admit it and had no idea how to solve it.
When I moved to Québec and started French, I was determined not to make the same mistake, especially since French is notoriously tricky for comprehension. The end result was something close to 95/5 input/output as a beginner (it's shifted as I've gotten more advanced), and it's taught me a lot. My main takeaways:
- I need a much higher level of comprehension that I thought, in order to feel truly comfortable in a conversation
- Comprehension takes much more time than I'd assumed
- I'll personally always take the embarrassment of not being able to express myself over the embarrassment of asking someone to repeat themselves over and over
- It's way easier to go "hear correct example in your input -> try it in your output" versus "try something in your output -> hear correct example in the correction"
- It's also way easier to be in it for the long haul when my baseline is lots of input with a dose of output, versus the opposite
Overall, an input heavy approach finally linked up a virtuous cycle of learning that I could never quite find when conversation was the focus. My high comprehension has gotten me out of plenty of sticky situations, while high production and low comprehension have gotten me INTO plenty of sticky situations. It might not be the method that helps me pass the DELF, but functionally it gets me much closer to what I actually need to live life in and have social relationships in French.
So useful! Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts :)
My deer in the headlights moment happened this year in Italy when buying groceries at a supermarket. The cashier asked me “voule una borsa?” Do you (polite form) want a “borsa”. I knew that “borsa” means purse or handbag so I couldn’t understand why he was asking that question. So I asked him to repeat the question, which he did in an annoyed tone. Only when he waved a shopping bag at me did I understand the question. “Borsa” also means bag, a definition unknown to me. Just to make it more confusing, sometimes they ask if you want a “busta”, which means envelope but can also mean bag. So I have a B1 comprehension level in Italian but completely failed to understand a simple, every day question.
Glad to see a video addressing issues with comprehension. I've lived in France for over a year now and still have great difficulty understanding spoken French. I remember desperately searching "why can I speak a language but not understand it" on UA-cam and literally receiving the exact opposite search, a bunch of videos on why one may understand a language perfectly but not be able to speak it. Granted, I realize how well I can read/write/speak/listen is largely a self-evaluation, but I still feel comfortable saying my speaking is much better than my listening. I've had somewhat complex conversations with French acquaintances where I've spoken French and they spoke English. I've sometimes even asked them to speak French to me but they say one or two sentences, I don't understand, and they get frustrated and switch back to English. I still can almost never go to a proper sit-down restaurant and carry out the entire interaction without the server at least once having to switch to English. Anyways, I guess that's largely just venting.
As could be guessed above, I've had countless "deer in headlight" moments so difficult to think of any particularly funny. I suppose one that stands out right now is when I did my taxes a few months ago. Immigrants are required to do taxes on physical paper first time around, it can be online afterwards. I'm paranoid about mailing things so I always do stuff in person if I had to pick between the two. So I went to the tax office basically the day before taxes were due with my forms that I filled out as best I could and some other papers. Predictably, I was not the only person who procrastinated on this (to defend myself a bit, the French gov doesn't send out the necessary forms that far ahead of the deadline), so the building was full of immigrants (judging by looks, accents, language etc.). Many of the outside staff understood English quite well and answered questions in English while we waited for our appointments with people in the back offices. I get into one such office and I ask the lady if she speaks English. She did not, and was already in a foul mood before I came in and essentially everything she said was in the form of yelling. So opportunity to practice French I suppose. I gave her my forms, answered what I could understand, and eventually reached a point where clearly I was missing some important phrase and repeatedly asked if I could bring in a staff member from outside to translate as several of them spoke English. I didn't understand what she said but it certainly wasn't yes so we carried on. I remember a lot of "on arrive... on arrive..." as we got closer to a mutual understanding. I remember her repeatedly asking if one of my forms was "chez vous". At the time I did not have a good grasp on how "chez" worked, still don't perfectly. At the time I thought she was asking if I had the form on me and I repeatedly told her no, in retrospect I suppose she was asking if I had the form at home. In any case, I did eventually understand that I had every single form I needed except one, which would help her evaluate the accuracy of the others. She gave me a time and day I could return with the form and I did so. It was only two days later and technically a day after the tax deadline but I went with it. I returned on the appointed day with all the proper forms. There were much fewer people, she was in a great mood, and she made some marks on my forms that suggested I actually had done them improperly (in a way that would make me pay more than I needed to). Barely a word was spoken and I've received my tax refund just a few weeks ago.
I've found it helpful to watch documentaries on UA-cam in the target language (on whatever subject interests you, animals, cooking, history, whatever). I minored in French but I have the opposite problem, I can understand now but I can't produce much of anything, haha! Whereas I listened to so much German, and studied in Germany and listened to German language music, watched the DW news in German, so I don't struggle in German at all these days, unless I forget a random word.
As I said above, I had that same problem with Czech- but now, with French I can read and comprehend speech but not speak.
I thought I had a decent understanding of the basics of German. Then I visited Bavaria. It took me a week of walking around and listening to my in-laws to retrain my ear and actually understand what they were saying, then another 4-5 days to start picking up some of the common dialect differences. By the time I thought I might be able to actually start speaking, I had to go home.
Visit Vienna next!
And then Cologne...
That’s such a common experience! Did you get to go back ever?
@@languagejones6784 Oh yeah, I've been there 4-5 times in the last few years. Its definitely gotten better each time (even got to go to Munich last time which was crazy interesting since they definitely speak closer to Hoch Deutsch than the Franconians do), but it wasn't until I found your videos about a month or two ago that I really cracked down on my language learning. I had gotten pretty lazy and just used the owl mostly. I've improved a lot in the last few weeks and I can definitely say it was because of your tips!
Well, the main problem is that almost nobody in Germany speaks standard German (Standard-Deutsch), they all have some dialect or another. While the land of Baden-Württemberg was very open about it in their slogan "mer könnet alles außer Hochdeutsch" (we can do everything but speak standard German), the Bavarians are convinced they speak German (no, they don't, they speak various Alemannic and Tirolean dialects). There is much more, like Saxonian dialect (actually more like an accent, but unintelligible for inexperienced non-Saxonians), or Berlinerisch (don't get me started), but it comes down to a fact: what we now know as Standard German was arbitrarily defined over time in various conferences, and it continues to evolve. Today German is actually defined as being a continuum of languages and is more focused on orthographic standardisation (with 3 main groups being German, Swiss and Austrian orthographic standards). The Swiss one is particularly interesting as nobody actually speaks this in Switzerland, we only use it as a common written language, we actually all speak alemannic dialects, and very different ones depending on the region
I had my real deer in highlights moment in French, when I was in Switzerland and my host family changed over the weekend from a family in the German speaking part to a family in the French speaking part. I spoke to my host family for the first time when I got in the car to head to the house. I hadn't spoken French in live conversation anytime before then. It was terrifying but I had to speak in French, since they didn't speak English. It was bad, but it was like riding a bike suddenly without training wheels. I eventually got the hang of it.
When I learned Portuguese I was fortunate to be living in Portugal, so I got to hear a lot of Portuguese. Hearing the language is essential for good pronunciation. I used a grammar book with dialogues - I especially liked the dialogues because they were well put together and very useful. However, I didn't start speaking from day one. I used to tune into conversations without anybody realising I could understand a lot more than I could speak. (The would look at me and say " Ela não percebe nada" and I would just smile). After about 6 months I decided it was time to start speaking. Friends were shocked - I think more so because they realised that I had been understanding what they had been saying in front of me, for a long time now...
One thing I learned quickly: Trust your ears. IPA transcriptions are pretty much always approximate (since it doesn't always distinguish important aspects of the position or the articulation), and almost always ignore allophones and sandhi. If you are aiming to sound more like a native you won't pick that up by reading phonetic transcriptions unless they are super accurate (which you usually won't have the competence to determine yourself as a beginner-intermediate). And melody and intonation are just as important for correct sounding speech as the pronunciation, and there is not really any learning material that usually covers that very well.
Yes, indeed. I found it helpful to have learned the IPA while studying German in university, but then over the years, I found that it's still only approximate. These days I am focusing so much more on listening than I used to.
I've found that a great way to start mastering an accent is to approach it as if you were doing an impression. You may later learn on an intellectual, academic level what's actually happening with that spoken language, but if you can ape it almost to the point of comic exaggeration, you can actually gain a solid foothold on it. I think you're right about the melody and rhythms of a language, and it's here that those skilled at mimicry and/or music have a big advantage.
@@ancientromewithamy German is the language I am most familiar with apart from English. I used to practice reading out loud based on phonetic rules and IPA before I came to Germany. I would say it only got me to the level of "clearly a foreigner, but with an entirely unplaceable accent."
With Spanish, I never bothered with IPA. I grew up in Southern California, so I just mimicked the sounds the Mexicans and Chicanos were making. I don't even know how to notate some of the sounds there in IPA, but I know that they are not the sounds I have sometimes seen in transcriptions.
@@SO-ym3zs I tend to be fairly good at mimicry and do it a lot especially for sounds I like, sometimes involuntarily. When I hear an accent I can almost feel the physical sensation of how my tongue should feel in my mouth when making that sound.
@@timseguine2 I come into contact with tons of Spanish speakers, so I hear the language frequently. I only know what I call "baby Spanish," but because I have a good ear for accents, when I start speaking to a native speaker, my accent is so good they assume I'm fluent and launch into full-speed Spanish, leaving me in the dust :D
03:30 as a Latinist I wholeheartedly agree that EVEN for ancient languages, if you get the opportunity to practise speaking it helps a lot. For some like Latin, Sanskrit (and to a lesser extent ancient Greek and Old English and Gothic) you can find communities online - for Latin even in-person in many European cities - which use the languages for communication and even oral speaking. And, in my observation the people capable of holding basic conversation in Latin usually understand the nuances of Latin way way better. Though it's ephemeral and hard to explain. Obviously for most ancient languages one can't practise even with another non-native speaker, but things like self-talk and writing diary entries are great practise.
Also the b-roll is deranged because cuneiform was not made with a hammer and chisel but reed pens pressed into soft clay 🤣
This is my (girlfriends) deer in the headlights: She is Hungarian and we speak English together. We were on a train and an attendant asked her a question in Hungarian which she answered. I asked in English what they said and she told me in Hungarian. When I looked confused, I saw her look at me with shock, confusion, annoyance, and then burst out laughing as she switches back to English
I don't have anything insightful to say, I'm just feeding the algorithm because I like your content ♥
I think it can vary. When I was taking language classes, they made us speak right away and people often are not comfortable doing that.
Now, learning Arabic on my own, I started off repeating what I heard in audio material and UA-cam videos sometimes, but I definitely preferred several months of listening and absorbing before trying to produce much of anything! Stephen Krashen also talks about not being anxious while learning and that this helps learning, and learning on my own, I have no real pressure to speak or produce anything until I feel like doing so. But some people may be too afraid of making mistakes to *ever* start speaking, so that's another argument for speaking a bit.
My deer in the headlights moment was after living Germany for two years. I really tried to learn the language, but everyone I encountered spoke English better than I spoke German. I got pretty good at reading and understanding when people were speaking, but I just couldn’t speak it. It was never a problem until I got lost one weekend and was asking an older German for directions. They didn’t speak English. I could understand what they were saying, but couldn’t even intelligently ask a question.
I'd rather understand but not speak well than not understand well but be able to speak, not gonna lie.
@@block_head_steve240 I've had both and I think they're about equally frustrating.
I also tend to speak (produce) much more readily than I understand when learning a new language. The more I've studied languages & linguistics, the more I've realized the truth: there is no substitute for input and practice; skill with grammar and memorization will yield a useful but illusory ability to produce good utterances.
I hate to be that person, but I just can’t be silent: Portuguese has a shit ton of vowels (open and closed pairs of a, o, e + i, u + nasal a, o, e, i, u + diphthongs + nasal diphthongs). The Portuguese phonetics is really rich in the vowel department
The vowels also often get pronounced in ways you wouldn't expect based on the spelling, like I mostly learned Portuguese through reading at first since thanks to Spanish I could easily guess at all the meanings, but about a month in when I started watching videos in Portuguese I realized just how different many words were pronounced to my Spanish way of saying them. The nasals especially can be hard to distinguish when you're a beginner and don't speak a language with those sounds (shout out to pão vs pau)
Congratulations on your 100k subscribers, very well deserved
Spent a month in the west of Ireland where even the signs in Irish were also in English. Easy. Also, quite often, peasy.
A few years later visited Quebec where the signs seem to all be in French for some reason, which I can read based only on my knowledge of Spanish, so, like, not well and certainly not on a FLASHING EMERGENCY SIGN ON THE FREEWAY. It may have said "Watch for deer in your headlights", I have no idea.
Followed this with a conversation in the welcome center outside St. Alphonse de Granby where the very pleasant concierge spent half an hour trying to find a way to explain what kids might do in the park over there next Saturday afternoon, involving running and flying. Flying something.
She finally drew a picture of an elongated diamond with a squiggly line descending from the lower corner, with bowties every inch. When I shouted "KITE" (always shout at furriners it helps them hear better) she pretended to smile, though I think it was fear. She got as close as "GAeeh" as the pronounciation, which makes her English still better than my French to this day.
I'm 41, studying Chinese and although at first I thought not speaking and only input was great, once I started talking to people (prematurely for some) it made my listening better. Another great vid, thank you.
Learning Vietnamese is one big deer in headlights moment for me. :-) I do have when is the mentioned; because I’ve been really interested in phonology all my adult life and have always been a good mimic, I tend to get pronunciation down very quickly. So it was a quick jump from “I don’t understand you“ to “(long answer in quick Vietnamese that I can’t understand)”. and then the puzzled response, “oh, I thought you knew.” :-)
There is one issue with Vietnamese that stands out (I know I know other people have the issue as well): people hesitating to speak in Vietnamese with me. for example I can walk into any Mexican restaurant in my neighborhood and speak crap Spanish, and they will gladly speak back with me and are happy to try. likely because they are used to hearing their language spoken and all sorts of accents, and at least American, just like Americans are used to hearing English spoken in a million accents. But how many Americans learning Vietnamese does the average grocer encounter? Barbers are great though. :-)
My deer in a headlight moment was during the World Summit of Information Society in Geneva, where I volunteered as an interpreter for English - French as a stand-in: my background is translation (I grew up multilingual (Swiss) German, French and English which are my A and B translation languages, and learned Italian and some basic Spanish), but I had never done simultaneous interpretation in a public situation, only between two people. We had some professional equipment and a interpreter friend of mine talked me into it and I agreed. We were both taking turns during the speech, and it was really going extremely well, the speaker was also very experienced and made micro-pauses after his sentences. All in all a perfect 40 minutes, I was really proud of myself. Up to the Q&A moment, when a lady with a very thick German accent asked a question in English: my friend nudged me in the booth, and there were several people in the audience looking puzzled, starting to fiddle with their ear pieces: I had translated her question into German!
I experienced similar moments with other languages, like being asked something in Spanish and me answering in Italian, or starting to speak English instead of Italian. I guess, despite what we imagine how our brain works, my language areas are a big mush up of vocabulary and it is more luck than skills if a sentence comes out in one language, and the correct one.
I am retired now and I am currently learning Ukrainian (absolute beginner, I am only about 5 months in), which is really fun once you pass the alphabet barrier, and it is truly a European language with quite a few words that are originally from French or German. I wonder what language I will mix in when I start to speak (as in not in an exercise situation) 😉
BTW: if you already speak another language than English: Slavic languages are not more complicated than French or German, the 6-7 cases are not more scary than German, and the conjugation is far easier than the French one! The main difficulty is the unfamiliar alphabet, and some uncommon sounds, but here my Swiss "German" highest-alemannic dialect comes in quite handy: if you can say Chuchichäschtli [ˈxʊxːiˌxæʃtli], you can also handle Slavic pronunciation 😇
do you have any plans to make a video about the whole "nature method" (LLPSI) vs grammar-translation debate for learning ancient languages?
I enjoyed this video btw! made me cringe remembering my refold evangelist era.
I read the Wiki entry for "grammar-translation" and, while I can understand the method, I'm still completely in the dark about how it might fit into the modern language learning environment.
@@davidf3910 yeah I was referring to what he said at 0:53. I have heard claims that if grammar-translation ends up working it's because of what input learners are inevitably still exposed to, but am not sure of papers discussing this. When I hear the term "grammar-translation" it makes me think of textbooks for ancient languages with lists of sentences to translate to and from the language -- not sure if it's often applied to modern languages or not.
Having never spoken German to anyone since I started learning it, I was able to effectively procure marijuana for my mum and brother from a taxi driver in Montenegro.
Either way, I’m convinced that you don’t need to speak with people basically at all. Shadowing is enough
Every time I see italki (the language learning service) mentioned in text it takes me a while to realize they aren't talking about Italian Jews
Same 😂 MoT problems
Helpful! My grammar and reading level is beyond A2 but my speaking level is probably not even A1. I think I am ready to try italki.
I think I have a deer in the headlights moment with all 3 of my auxiliary languages.
I grew up in a fairly white washed second generation Mexican home so I felt like I had a decent handle on the language and could talk about the things I needed to with my family and then when I went to college I met a guy who got super fluent in Spain Spanish and not only could I barely understand the accent but I realized very quickly I had very little vocabulary outside of cooking and house chores. This made me actually start taking Spanish study seriously and while my tenses are a bit rough still I have been able to have full conversations in the language and not just listen to what was needed from Vallarta for Easter. To extend from this bit of arrogance that led to having that experience I decided to study Mandarin over Spanish while I was in college. I was never great but I also never really had access to a native speaker so when I met some fluent heritage speakers in college and I attempted a basic conversation I realized I had no comprehension skills whatsoever and could only understand where the most basic words were in their sentences. I think I'm still fairly vocabulary limited with Chinese but I at least have the capacity to actually ask for things in public or very simple conversations where I substitute a lot of words I don't know with English. It's very fortunate that most younger Chinese speakers, even if they can't speak it very well, have studied English so having individual English words in Chinese phrases actually goes better than I ever anticipated it would. And then French, well I was in the midst of actually taking Spanish seriously when I was selected for a Montreal study abroad program. I arrive in Montreal and I felt like I could comprehend nearly everything written as having both English and Spanish let me figure out what was cognate for most things through context. Then I had to actually buy a metro pass and the person knew no English like everyone else I'd encountered in Montreal. I tried really hard trying to map the sounds I was hearing to the words that I had written all around me but the speed of it and not having a grasp of the phonetic rules yet let to me just dazed until he just told me to go to a different metro station to buy it and let me through.
Congratz on 100k man! I've been here watching your content well before you even hit 10k and you've never disappointed. I love it when a credentialed academic enters the space and clears up a lot of misinformation like you do. Keep doin what you do.
Exactly, when I started learning french I looked at how every letter and combinations should sound instead of just trying to mimic words that I hear, and now my pronunciation sounds legit.
You were so right about the definitions. I usually think of speaking only in the definition #4, i.e. unstructured conversations. I didn't realize that other people might have other definitions.
I never thought about using audacity to compare my pronunciation to a native's before. Cool tip thanks!
Golly. My deer in the headlights moment was when I was in college biology lab course. There was a very handsome male grad student assisting the class. My female bench mate and I started talking about him, comparing his nicer qualities, saying how much we would like to get to know him better (swoon, giggle) ... in French. He was within earshot. Some time later, he came over where we were working ... and greeted us in French!
I learned later that he had studied in Belgium. And he was married.
I went through a whole herd of deer-in-the-headlights moments at the age of 16, when my father took the family to Europe. A native speaker of German, he taught us to say "Ich kann kein Deutsch" so flawlessly that people persistently assumed they had only to speak slowly and carefully, and we would understand.
"To fear the algorithm, to feed her as she must be fed, and never to look upon her feeding."
I think, as you brought up immediately, the question is 'what counts as 'speaking''?
With that said - in every class, we begin with the greetings and short dialogues (in which we just memorize the phrases). Of course - this is mostly students talking to other students, but it does build some automaticity.
I would try (that is, I have done) 'free' conversation, however limited in vocabulary, fairly early - while I knew I was making errors, (1) native speakers would often correct me; and (2) I was successfully using the language to communicate (at a low level).
Through the Alliance Francaise, I participate in a conversation group (somewhat structured conversation on single topics that allow us to explore vocabulary) that meets weekly, and is for students at high A1 through low B1 (mostly around A2); there are separate intermediate and advanced groups too (that become less structured).
For Latin and Attic Greek, I do speak out loud when learning the vocabulary and working exercises - though I don't worry a lot about trying to recreate any particular accent, as I am not planning on using either to communicate, my interest is in reading - but the additional effort of speaking aloud, I think, helps me learn both the vocabulary and grammar forms.
Speaking of vocabulary - I use physical flash cards that I make myself and say the word aloud when doing that practice. If I can 'automatically' produce the word in both directions, I 'retire' the card for a while (and sometimes permanently - like 'etre' or 'avoir' or 'restaurant' or 'arbeiten' - so I can put the effort into words I still have a problem with and make room for new ones. I also use a dictionary in the language (not a translation dictionary) and try to look up words that way (weirdo that I am, I also did that learning English as a child).
I get though that some people are afraid of making errors to the point that they won't ever try to speak to another person - and, like people with sever math phobia, I am not sure what advice to give beyond 'don't be afraid to make a mistake', however if that were enough, there wouldn't really be a problem...
having a good grasp on grammar and very little vocabulary is exactly why they put me in a lower spanish class than they should have in school 😭 they kept teaching me the same grammar concepts over and over (often in ways that tried to erase knowledge i already had, like re-teaching the preterite and pretending the imperfect doesn't exist) until eventually i had enough bad teachers and stopped learning all together :(
This is so solid. And the question is so important!! Even if you magically find lots of time to study a new language, you really want to maximize the learning potential of the time you do expend in language learning.
Can you do a video talking about Pimsleur, your thoughts, and how it would fit the whole language learning process?
It's not a question I ever really thought about. My mother is from Honduras moved to the US as an adult and I also moved to a country as an adult where I had 0 knowledge of the language but a plan to learn. In both our cases, we had to learn as we went and use what we had at the time to get by in whatever situation there was.
I've had a weird misunderstanding once when in a tea shop in Taiwan I asked for a 包中茶 (yup I forgot the name) and the store attendant told me she had never heard of such a tea. The name of the tea is actually 包種茶 and the only difference is the tone of the middle syllable. Was it really THAT hard to understand or she was just kidding??
congrats on the silver playbutton!
the situation i remember was in Greece. i don't really speak any Greek, but i had Ancient Greek at school (alternative to French which i reckoned i would be able to pick up at any point later in life but would never pick up Ancient Greek.. good decision, i still hold) and we had some stuff where we would learn a little bit of modern Greek for a while. so on a later trip with my sis when i was like 16 i went into the golden arches and ordered "εννεά" (which i now realise should have been either "εννέα" or "εννιά" but ) nuggets.. then the person asked me if it's for here or to take away and i had totally forgot that would happen and had to ask if they spoke English.
but honestly it can even happen in languages that you're really good at.
especially with some everyday items that we interact with but rarely talk about. i mean, heck, it can even happen to native speakers! that "things that have no name" effect.
and i think i wrecked my brain for more than a year now over what to call those slightly sturdier plastic vessels that salad or other vegetables are sometimes packaged in.. it's a tray, but i couldn't think of it for the life of me *even though i **_knew_** the word **_and_** this usage,* it just wasn't something i heard people say often enough to ever be able to conjure it up myself.
The best deer in the headlights moment was actually a three way moment. My bf (native Japanese monolingual) and me (native English, Japanese L2) went to a Starbucks to order. The man said something I couldn’t understand and said (in Japanese) “I would like an iced coffee” then he stared at me confused, I stared at him confused, and my bf also stared at us confused because what he had said was in English so my bf didn’t understand either. I realized after was that I had been speaking Japanese so long my English was actively being suppressed so I didn’t recognize English speaking, but the barista had assumed because I was a foreigner I didn’t speak Japanese and was so surprised when I did speak he couldn’t understand what I said. And on top of that my bf, who doesn’t understand English at all, couldn’t understand anything. After a moment my mind processed what he had said and I turned to my bf and immediately translated it into Japanese which made the barista even more confused.
My language (Canadian French) is probably the most difficult one when it comes to learning to understand the spoken words. Not only is French notorious for not matching sounds to writing, but Canadian French takes that to a whole new level. Often completely different vocabulary and grammar are used in oral vs written use.
You get people who can understand and produce the spoken words but have no idea how to write, or the other way around.
I actually don't know how to prevent that, other than basically telling people that they need to learn two different languages at once.
Proud of you for the 100k!! I also really enjoyed this level.
I think my big deer in the headlights moment is when someone ask me a simple question but requires more thought on the question than actually forming the sentence, like my favorite food
Love the recommendation of good tools!
I had the issue of pronunciation that was too good in the early days. I paid a native speaker to hammer on my pronunciation and spent weeks on it. And I experienced people assuming my language ability was higher than it was. It was an odd problem to face. I think in the years since, my accent has gotten worse, but I did have natives believe I was a second language speaker from a nearby country, instead of a native English speaker from the US, so that was cool.
I remember once I was praying the Psalms once in Latin and said "Dominus Manducavit" instead of "Dominus Mandavit". Almost burst into laughter.
I'm a scientist by training. Languages are more of a passion for me. But I've treated learning a language very similar to learning a new field of science, another branch of mathematics, or to be even more on the nose, a computer language. As soon as you can apply even the smallest inkling of knowledge, do it. It doesn't matter if you can only do basic things. Just apply apply apply as soon as you possibly can. You will fail, and you will embarrass yourself, but you have to do SOMETHING to apply that knowledge, or it will languish.
The “hello, world!” Approach to language learning!
Your issue is treating language as a mathematical equation, when it is anything but.
"If you don't use it, you lose it".
@@slicksalmon6948 I think "pointless" is a bit harsh. Forgive the anecdotal point, but in my own case, when I was studying German, it's true that I would rigorously run flash cards and read/use workbooks to practice, but all of that knowledge would likely disappear, or at least be much weaker, if I didn't put it to work as soon as I could.
@@languagejones6784 exactly! It's my favorite approach!
Back when I first learned Spanish in high school (many, MANY moons ago), my teacher, a native speaker, emphasized pronunciation in her classes right away. It was a great foundation, I think, as I have often been complimented on my pronunciation. She also taught us to say, "Hablas despacio, por favor" ("Please speak slowly"). And in the decades since, I have had many deer-in-the-headlights moments where knowing how to say that definitely came in handy!
I hate to be that person but "Hablas despacio" means "you speak slowly" as a fact, not as a petition
the correct thing would be "hable despacio" which means "speak slowly" as a petition but maybe too rude, you should probably say "puedes repetirlo más despacio?" as "can you repeat that slower?"
Not quite deer in a headlight moment but an interesting confusion. I am a native English speaker and can speak some fairly basic Spanish. I am learning German and was speaking online with a native German speaker who told me she lives in Spain. During the conversation I was saying something about 'a glass of milk'/ 'ein glas milch', however, it came out 'ein glas leche'. I knew it was the Spanish word but I couldn't remember the German for milk which has an almost identical pronunciation to English milk. I just drew a blank.
I had a period of time when I could kinda speak English (my third language, after two Slavic native ones) but couldn't understand it, mainly because I learned it at school using post-Soviet methods. We didn't really do listening (because we didn't have a speaker and probably didn't have records) or practice back and forth conversations (probably because it was way too many of us and we were way not enough civil). Usually we either did textbook exercises or memorised paragraphs; on rare occasions we had to speak to a teacher, but still basically one way. I progressed a lot after changing school and taking courses, but really starting to understand it involved a speaking club in a dorm, "The cat came back..." song that was living rent-free in my head for days each time I listened to it, and getting so seek of terribly translated since popular videos that I decided to go for a source instead
I really appreciated the clip of the stumbling reality of an italki session. It took me half a dozen run ups to get a single sentence out correctly yesterday 😅
Jones that disagreement statement is deep af
I am a Babbel Live subscriber. I am taking A1 level Spanish classes because I took through level 5 Spanish in high school and cannot speak. The A1 classes were with people who had significant experience with the language, but not speaking. In fact, one poor completely green student showed up and the teacher basically ran her off saying she needs a few months of study before trying Live because she has no vocabulary.
my most terrifying 2nd language was trying to make a restaurant reservation on the phone.
You, sir, are a gold mine!
Congratulations on 100K subscribers!
Oh and my best deer in headlights moment, I was on the plane headed to germany, and I decided to request a bottle of water in German she then responded to me "certainly can you please turn your request light off"
😳😳😳
She repeated it in English and apparently immediately recognized that I was in fact an enthusiastic exchange student
Thanks for this video :) I’ve been learning Spanish and French and now have pretty basic capabilities with both, but I’m starting to learn Thai which is my first tonal language and it’s good to hear advice from someone with a lot of experience on how to improve
I'm completely stuck with Finnish at the moment. I've been learning vocabulary relentlessly for the past 3 months but I cannot build a simple sentence. I tried looking back at my English study. I basically learnt dozens of sentences that I knew to my best and just changed words here and there. Then suddenly I learnt the language itself. Now I have no teacher to help me set those said "fixed sentences"...
Also a Finnish learner... The sheer volume of cases for every word makes it very tricky to convert vocab to sentences. Finnishpod101 is pretty good for explaining things, but even then, written Finnish isn't the same as spoken Finnish, which isn't the same from town to town so learning the language comes down to what your end goal is 😅
I had your friend's problem with Czech- I took a super fast, intense course which gave me a good grammar basis. I also worked on my accent a lot -- so I went to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1985 I was able to pretty much whatever I wanted to- but I couldn't understand anyone's response. Now, 30 something years after developing fluency in Czech I'm trying to get to a reasonable level with my French. I don't have a whole lot of trouble reading or listening to podcasts (unless they're too fast or too complicated)- but I CANNOT seem to get a complete sentence out of my mouth. The words just don't come. I can't seem to make the connection to the all the passive French vocabulary I have. Every time I open my mouth it comes out in Czech.
I wish I had realized earlier the value of speaking with a foreign accent. Being underestimated can have advantages. Being overestimated sets you up for failure quickly and repeatedly.
0:51 you know you’re a language learner when it takes you like a whole minute to figure out what the word is in your native language. Perhaps a video on native language brain versus learned language brain? I kind of feel like I shift gears between languages almost as if they occupy a different space or shape in my brain. I know it’s been called code switching… And somehow I think it’s easier when I get used to singing songs that are in Japanese with occasional English lyrics.
Actually I think it may be more than language? I trained as a chemist (and like chemistry) and certain things I think in "chemistry" and it is really hard to translate into English (or German)
oh i defeinitely feel this, but also i can comfortably switch between romanian and english without concentration if i'm fine with butchering the pronunciation of one of them
also, higher level maths and computer science is in english but counting feels easier in my native language of romanian
also it's difficult to begin speaking french but also to stop speaking in it
That’s a great idea for a video actually. There’s a lot of interesting science there
@@languagejones6784
Yes please! Also I don't know if it's at all related but I felt like when I started ADHD medication I struggled to recall any terms in English but I had no difficulty thinking of words in my 2nd/3rd languages. Made it so when I called home about it, I had to use Spanglish with my mom because my Spanish wasn't good enough to describe to her what I was experiencing but trying to remember any vocab beyond the most basic terms in English took like half a second extra, it was miserable.
you are superhelpfull, thank you.
As a self-taught German-language learner, I've made the exact mistake of not speaking early enough. I can read books in german casually and follow Die Zeit news podcasts in real time. But every time I've been to Berlin, I simply can't speak to people in German. I probably actually need those iTalki courses 😅
I would not be able to wait for subjunctive knowledge to begin speaking - just "present" (and MAYBE simple past) Thank you for the enjoyable teaching videos!
For some reason, bottoms-up and top-down come to mind. Something like the basis of comprehension can as the word used scaffold things together-- a figuring out process. Where the top down is expression of a pre-built verbal object a kind of re-expression (presentation) of a thing you already know, you've dialled it in to a degree now you're performing it . And the conversational practise is that middle ground of figuring it out from the middle outward of comprehension and expression together. Maybe this has a formal way of putting it, i've no idea lol.
Congratulations on the 100K subscribers! I really enjoy your content. 😊
I learned German pronounciation from a young age through singing classical music. When I actually began speaking it when living in Austria, people often refused to believe me when I said I did not understand something. I just really really did not, and do not that much to this day.
I'm in a weird spot, particularly good pronunciation making people think I'm better than I am. I sang at a high level in college, and I'm fairly familiar with how to *say* most Western European languages properly. I can't necessarily understand them and speak them but if you give me a text I can read it relatively well, and most native speakers won't immediately pick up any "strong" accent. I decided to move to a country where they speak one of those languages primarily, and in nearly every interaction in that language I'm immediately in over my head. Only a few very close friends who I've asked specifically to help can manage to keep their level of vocabulary low enough.
It's nice to hear someone address being able to produce but not understand. I grew up in an American farming town where there are more native Spanish speakers than native English speakers. As a result, I could copy the pronunciation of Spanish words, and even mimic a decent northern Mexican dialect, but my comprehension was much lower. It got to the point where I didn't even bother trying to practice my Spanish when there because I couldn't understand the speed of the responses. Not surprisingly, I've lost a lot of what I used to know.
Great summary
I have had the native speaker speak to me in their language due to pronunciation. Said thank you in Greek to the waiter after leaving the restaurant and he started speaking to me back in Greek and I looked to my Greek mum asking what he said 😂
Super helpful advice. As a fellow geek, I am super curious about what you look for when using praat. Maybe it will be more obvious after I have used the software a bit.
I happily leave you a comment fir the algorithm and I like the content, though I start speaking and listening much later in my learning process, but I evrntually do (after years of reading and writing copies of text). this timescale works for me and feels right
lol BJJ guy sounds like me with Spanish. I've been able to read Spanish forever, and I got on Twitch to improve my listening comprehension, and when I would participate in chats a lot of people would tell me that they thought I was a native speaker. Eventually some of my friends pushed me to start streaming, so I started streaming in Spanish for multiple hours at a time. But without subtitles, I can only understand like 30% of what's being said.
That's interesting. Did your speaking improve drastically after speaking for hours at time?
@@espanol2276 I'd say my speaking improved drastically after *listening* for hours at a time. Before getting on Twitch, I was already pretty comfortable at using my limited Spanish to figure out what to say. But after getting on Twitch, I had hundreds of hours of audio I could draw from.
Don't get me wrong, speaking *did* improve my speaking, but I'd say listening did a lot more.
Is the b-roll incorrect because the Sumerians wrote on clay tablets and therefore they could just press a wedge into the clay instead of using a hammer and chisel?
Jones, I'm still waiting for your livestreams, I miss you :(
The idea I've been hearing is that early connections with the language tend to use and lock in our native pronunciation, leading to a worse accent. I don't know the science of it, but anecdotally that makes sense to me. Many people speak/produce English very skillfully except in accent, which can be borderline incomprehensible even after decades. Kids seem to avoid this problem, but I can see how adults would fall into this trap by transferring and applying incorrect patterns from their native language.
"Speaking a language" usually means feeling confident that you fully expressed yourself in your familiar contexts to a degree that a reasonable native speaker would understand and respond to. That's why it's easier to be fluent as a child - even though a child's personal and relational contexts are highly developed, they are relatively narrow. It's a lot easier to talk about mommy than it is to talk about your mortgage lender's escrow account customer service representative.
Great video mate :)
Me watching this while cutting out the laminated visual schedule pictures in Hebrew 😃
Do you have, or would you be willing to create, a video on using Audacity and Praat to analyze the target language, as you talk about in this video?
I understand your friend's dilemma....when I was studying Spanish...and to an extent even to this day...I can speak much better Spanish than I can understand, and I can read and write better than I speak.
My Deer-In-The-Headlight moment was in 1989 when I moved to Japan to teach English (never having studied Japanese outside of a few sentences), and went to a McDonalds to get something to eat on the first or second day there.
Hot dogs are part of the McDonalds menu there, so I "Japanized" Hot Dog in hopes that would be close. The cashier stood there looking at me, so I repeated it. I was soon served a cup of "hot coffee". She saw that this wasn't what I had ordered and then, helpfully, pointed to the picture menu that was on the counter right in front of me. Oops.
I then pointed to the hot dog, and she said, "Oh.....Frankfurter!!", go me my order and I paid and was on my way.
There are many more, but that was the first. LOL.
Hey, recently I've started learning spanish through pure comprehensible input using dreaming spanish, i was wondering if you could do a video on the affects of this method through the eyes of a linguist
Nope deer in headlight moments just leave my memory 😂🙈.
I will say that I'm planning to produce before comprehending now.
There's an idea of doing a year of purely listening and watching and then talking, reading and speaking afterwards. It seems interesting as an idea, but I would love to hear from someone who actually tried the method.
Love your content, thanks for another great video :).