Why speaking a language DOESN'T lead to fluency.

[@daysandwords]

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[@InsaliQ]

I heard a quote from someone which resonated a lot in me. "Speaking happens from mature listening" The emphasis on "happens" says you don't need to focus on it, it happens when the time arrives

[@amikecoru]

Well, many would like to force things and start speaking sooner than it would _happen_.

[@daysandwords]

@@amikecoru Yes but that goes against the huge power of the subconscious. I'd love to force a 3 hour marathon without training. Not a very good idea though.

[@livedandletdie]

The problem with that, is that if you don't combine listening exercises with speaking exercises, and hefty amounts of Vocab... you won't get anywhere. It's not that you shouldn't speak, or that you should, you should obviously learn common phrases, but you still need that 2-3000 word vocab to be able to hold the most basic of basic conversations, or perhaps read a news article, or a book... or watch a movie, without sitting there, hahaha I don't get it... If you want to learn a language, let's say I really wanted to study Spanish again... then I'd have to get a dictionary in Spanish, and I'd have to sit there looking at it, and then I'd have to watch something like a Telenovela, for hours to accustomize myself to the language, and then I'd have to actively try to replicate the sounds. Mi gato es rojo, tu gato es blanco... And if you have a hard time concentrating finding a medium that you enjoy for listening exercises perhaps it's music, then you can have the song lyrics in front of you and read them. Suavemente... sing alongs are incredibly good for both listening comprehension and for speech practice. And it gives you ample opportunity to look up words you don't understand.

[@thedavidguy01]

I know some speak early speak a lot language learners who have reached a reasonable ability to make themselves understood. But they are really annoying to have a conversation with because their comprehension is limited, which forces me to speak unnaturally slowly and repeat myself. And when I ask them a question I get a blank stare. So even if you can get to a good speaking level with that method you can’t have a good conversation. Communication is not just about making yourself understood.

[@daysandwords]

Also, you CAN'T get to a good level of conversation by just speaking a lot because what you'll really have done is learned a lot of set phrases. You won't be able to say anything that you haven't memorised word for word, essentially.

[@littlered6340]

It's kind of weird talking to people who can only speak because like they can't read anything you try to share with them and often their grammar is... Shockingly bad. Like the words are maybe all there but something simple isn't in the right spot, something that is very very basic. It's interesting lol.

[@dragonicbladex7574]

What I'm confused about is that don't you have to get input in a conversation anyway like you have to attempt to process what the other person's saying just like if you're watching a piece of media or something​@@daysandwords

[@QichinVODs]

Speaking early is basically just doing a lot of guesswork with nothing to base your guesses on. Also, speaking early without understanding what you are doing can build bad habits that can be very difficult to get rid of later. I keep seeing this in my students who make the most bizarre mistakes when speaking English, but are no longer able to recognize that they are making these mistakes.

[@daysandwords]

Yep. This, people. Right here.

[@rebeccahill1561]

Exactly! I teach ESL, and this is spot on. There is even a word for those kinds of entrenched habitual mistakes: "fossilization." I also encourage my students to watch simple English KZbin videos by native speakers instead of doing the trendy "partner activities" in class that just give them lots of practice copying each other's mistakes. Recently I had conversations with three very high-level speakers who almost had their own "dialect" of English because they all made the exact same mistakes. The odd thing was that they were from three different countries, but they had studied English at the same university in the US.

[@caller145]

What I don't like about the "if you wanna learn to SPEAK a language you need to SPEAK it" is that it simplifies "speaking a language" way too much. In reality, if I say I can speak English, I don't mean just being able to make sounds with my mouth in a way that produces English words and grammar, I also mean being able to take part in conversations, understand what is said to me and what I say myself etc. Even reading and writing is sometimes included in that, but that argument never means all of these things. So I guess no, I don't want to learn to speak a language, I want to learn the language as a whole.

[@daysandwords]

EXACTLY.

[@purdysanchez]

A wise man once said "There's a reason you have two ears and one mouth"

[@mybestideas1]

Love your channel, especially how realistic you are and how you don’t feed people false expectations about how quickly they can learn. Here’s what worked for me (learning French as my third language after Croatian and English, both of which I speak at a native level, with English possibly stronger): 1. Started with the Pimsleur Method - This was genius. It gave me the confidence to speak and understand simple phrases, and it helped with my accent, which everyone praises. However, Pimsleur will not get you to an advanced level. After completing all five levels, I was somewhere around A2. That said, I still listen to those lessons in my car as a great refresher. 2. Switched to a tutor who shares my perspective - After trying a few native-speaker tutors, I realized they didn’t really understand my struggles. I switched to a tutor who also learned French as a second language (and also spoke Croatian and English). This made a huge difference. 3. Avoid “conversational exchanges” unless you’re at a high B2 level - Otherwise, you might just reinforce bad habits. 4. Grammar is essential - When learning a language as an adult, understanding grammar will speed up your progress significantly. Unlike a child, who learns a language over 15-20 years, an adult can cut this time in half. I’m talking about mastering it to an advanced level, like Molière-level French. 5. Understand what B2 really means - It’s called “independent,” but is it fluent? Yes and no. At B2, you’ll feel comfortable having small conversations, but mastery starts at C levels. C1 is where you’ll feel truly comfortable in the language. I’d argue that C2 isn’t necessary unless you’re a writer, journalist, or in PR. Most natives don’t even speak at a C2 level. Keep in mind, reaching C1 will likely take 3-7 years, depending on your efforts, and an additional 3-5 years to complete the advanced levels. 6. Use AI to your advantage - We’re lucky to live in this era. I practice daily on Advanced Voice with ChatGPT and use other tools for grammar practice. For $30 CAD/$20 USD a month, I get at least 60 private sessions customized for me. The advanced voice feature has pushed me to a completely new level, and it even grades my sessions! 7. Talk about your day every day - Record yourself daily, speaking about your day, plans, thoughts, and what you’ll do tomorrow. This helps you build your own vocabulary. You don’t need to learn the entire dictionary-focus on what’s relevant to your life. With persistence, this exercise will give you a major boost. 8. Seek constructive feedback - Friends and tutors might tell you that you’re doing great, but to truly improve, you need someone who will point out your mistakes and tell you what to work on. 9. Immerse yourself for faster progress - Watch podcasts at your level, listen to the radio, do grammar exercises, speak, and read. (Don’t start with fables-they’re for kids but often use archaic language forms that you’ll only encounter at advanced levels.) 10. Reading alone isn’t enough - While reading is important, you won’t magically absorb the language. You still need to actively practice. For me, with a lot of effort and trying countless methods, this approach really worked. I’m now at a C1 level after just under three years. Keep in mind, I’ve been investing 4-5 hours daily throughout this time.

[@hilmaguedes5000]

Wow, thank you!

[@Azure_Abree]

As someone who’s learning Serbian, this is INSANELY helpful. At first, I tried rushing myself into speaking because I thought it’s what I had to do, until I realized I could barely understand people when they spoke. Now that I’ve been working more on listening, it’s been easier to understand which makes it easier to speak.

[@mybestideas1]

@@Azure_Abree Serbian is a hard language to learn, so good luck: ) Luckily we Croatians speak and understand it by default : ) Yeah, I just confused and frustrated myself so much by speaking early. Be kind to yourself and take your time!

[@Argenswiss]

I am learning Danish and i can't help but speak, my mother tongue is Spanish but i already speak English and German, and because my wife is Danish I've had a lot of exposure to the language, so now that im actually learning it i am picking it up very quickly, and i find myself completely unable to shut my mouth 😂 it does motivate me to consume it when i sporadically speak it tbf

[@Sgrunterundt]

Hej! Fedt at du lærer dansk. Jeg er ved at lære spansk og mit modersmål er dansk. Hola! Estupendo que estudias Danese. Estoy aprendiendo Español, y mi lengua nativa es Danese.

[@coolbrotherf127]

I felt the same way with Japanese. I had heard it a lot growing up watching anime and playing Japanese games so once I learned some vocabulary and grammar it felt like playing a sport I had watched for years. Kind of awkward at first, but I picked it up quickly and was speaking confidently after a few months.

[@JibAtTheFence]

I expect a “I learned Romanian by listening to “Dragostea Din Tei” 500 times” video from you now 😆 nu ma nu ma iei

[@coolbrotherf127]

I definitely agree. It's much easier to speak when we understand what we are actually saying. I know with my Japanese, I didn't really speak at all to a native speaker in the first 2 years. My only speaking practice was shadowing and reading out loud. When I did start to speak to real people, I had already acquired a lot of grammar and thousands of words of vocabulary so the words very naturally came to mind. Definitely by year in, I was thinking to myself in Japanese fairly often, sometimes completely unintentionally speaking Japanese to people who didn't even understand me because the Japanese words were the first words that came to mind at the moment. I wasn't struggling to speak Japanese, it was almost difficult not to speak in Japanese because it was what I had focused on learning so heavily for months. I definitely didn't sound like a fully fluent adult native speaker, but friendly conversation was no issue at all. We just have to stay patient and trust that if we build up our comprehension, it's not going to be that difficult to output what we comprehend later on.

[@TheCompleteGuitarist]

@@coolbrotherf127 that is a great anecdote of the process.

[@Windikite]

Hey! Could you elaborate on how you boosted your comprehension for Japanese? Also, did you pay any special attention to grammar or did you glean what good Japanese sounded like mainly through listening? I have reached a point where I have obtained a lot of vocabulary and some knowledge of grammar, to the point where I can pick out words and expressions from shows that I understand. But I am still struggling to find the method that will help me understand more of what I hear.

[@coolbrotherf127]

@Windikite The only thing I can really say is pay close attention to your input and really think about how and why words and grammar patterns are used. I spent a lot of time doing intensive listening and reading exercises where I would take a small passage I didn't quite understand either from a book or conversation in a TV show or KZbin video and study every word and grammar point to the point that I understood 100% what was being said and why. Then I would write out a summary of what I had learned also in Japanese. Sometimes I couldn't figure it out myself though and had to find a native speaker to explain it. That kind of exercise really helped find holes in my vocabulary and grammatical knowledge so when I came across similar content later I wasn't confused by it again.

[@sambeawesome]

I do always find your tip-toeing around grammar learning so funny to me, but very understandable. It's not at all controversial in my mind, but some people are just SO passionate. I won't name-names (or language), but there is a really big language KZbinr who is extremely strict about learning grammar/structure to fluency, and they sound very stilted, and themselves mention how difficult it is for them to speak unscripted. I saw a video of them interviewing another non-native speaker and saying how wildly impressed they were at the language and accent, and like...that person did exactly what you said, just listened. Like, if we never took English classes in school, we'd still know English. I think grammar is helpful, but not #1. Honestly, I think babies have it best. Listen for like two straight years before you babble your way to mastery. Now if only we could have people talk at us for two years for free LOL (Also LOVED the baseball analogy, that was perfect. Great video!)

[@hillmanntoby]

Great video! I have a few thoughts so I will spread them out. The thing with Usain Bolt I'd elaborate on is most people watching this type of video do not even remember how they became Usain Bolt in their native language. As in, they literally couldn't even form memories yet. They just started having been forced naturally to do that work. Then we don't really know how to learn like you said. There's also the phenomenon where once you know how to learn, because you've done it once as an adult, you can just do it again if you want. My son is in a Spanish Immersion daycare, and while I personally am not very interested in learning Mexican Spanish, it would be a shame if he just had no one in his life he could talk to (when he starts talking) or lost it. So I've been learning very slowly, at most a half a day of immersion and I try and do the daycare pickups in Spanish. I will listen, ask when I don't understand and get corrections when I speak. Yesterday was the first time they said I was perfect (and said more than hasta lunes)! The thing is, I'm not really trying to be perfect, or fluent, but I know that if I did what I'm doing for long enough I could be Usain Bolt in Spanish.

[@ramav87]

Excellent video. It also tracks with my own experiences, and indeed the experiences of babies. They don't say anything for around 2 years! They are trying to understand what is said and making some sounds, but not really trying to speak for quite a while. I started learning Spanish a bit over a year ago and focused just on listening and reading. I made a decision to not speak unless I had to (e.g., I had to during some travel). Now I have started speaking lessons after ~400 hours of listening. I can understand my tutor 100% without expending energy. If I had tried to speak earlier I would have been completely lost in the lessons, because my brain would be working overtime just to understand the dialogue. Conversations go two ways, only one part is speaking - the other part is understanding.

[@Maxime_37193]

I totally agree with you, there is no point in speaking if you can't understand what the person replies to you. It is also much more enjoyable to acquire a new language through enjoyable and comprehensible input rather than trying to learn pre-made sentences. However, I must say that practicing pronunciation from an early stage is also important (in my opinion) because it trains your mouth muscles to produce new sounds, and to articulate better. It was the case with me at least, because English pronunciation is very different from what I'm used to in my native language. I would also say that learning some grammatical structures that you struggle with can be a good idea, once you're advanced enough, because sometimes when I speak with anti-grammar learners in my native language I notice that even though they have way more vocabulary and confidence than other learners their grammar is very odd at times compared to more traditional learners 😅 (but my grammar is odd too when I speak another language so there is no judgment here 🤣)

[@xelad1235]

I agree about grammar, I spend less than 5% of my language time on grammar study but a little bit is a good idea

[@daysandwords]

Pronunciation/accent is an almost entirely separate and somewhat optional part of it, but I will tell you that my Swedish accent got a LOT better (and I mean a lot) when I STOPPED talking so much and just listened.

[@lukefagan2431]

@@daysandwords You can't self correct your own pronunciation if you don't 100% know what you're meant to sound like. And depending on the context, speed, and emotion it might be pronounced differently anyway (something a native speaker might even struggle to find real examples of for you), you just need tons of input to learn that.

[@Sideofbeans158]

@@lukefagan2431you can correct your pronunciation better with input. Have you ever travelled to a different city and picked up their accent accidentally? It’s a common phenomenon, and it exists for a reason - we are a LOT better at informing our mouths what shapes to make after being exposed to it at length. It’s a natural form of mimicry to enable language and communication in it’s raw form - to understand and to be understood. To carry on from this - did you know that your brain can understand almost every sound the human mouth can use to make a noise as separate sounds as a baby? But as you grow to adopt your mother tongue, your brain ignores subtleties in speaking in order to speed up comprehension! As such it “ignores” sounds that other languages use, it’s part of what forms accents and the differences between languages. In order to overcome this and speed up your grasp of the language - you have to provide input, so that your brain can recognise that these subtle sounds and shapes of the mouth are valuable now, not to be discarded, but interpreted. Now without the input you wouldn’t as easily recognise them, thus how can you correct what you can’t hear? Let alone correct yourself on playback? You can mimick and improve your accent, it’s a bandaid fix though, you brain simply does not understand the sounds it’s trying to correct. For trying to become that last 20% native sounding, dialect coaching can be useful. But to speak and interpret correctly - my girlfriend never had a dialect coach or listened to herself talk. Yet she sounds perfect in english (albeit a little canadian) and accent entirely provided by socialisation and input. To finish my blog post, i too have seen improvements from listening more - i’ve been listening to french music for 3 years now and am watching the office. I have a long way to go - but mostly because I haven’t been actively working on my french since the first year. I can feel a clear difference between starting the office and nearly having finished it.

[@daysandwords]

Actually, you CAN correct your own pronunciation. USB microphones exist now. Also, my Swedish can fool a lot of Swedes into thinking I'm Swedish, and I did that mostly by NOT talking.

[@shcrub5]

Three videos in a week? YESS!

[@daysandwords]

If I don't die at the keyboard with Da Vinci Resolve still open in front of me, there are actually 3 more coming!

[@eibhlinniccolla]

we're eating good 🍗

[@ramonek9109]

If you are not completely obnoxious and unpleasant, you will spend at least the same amount of time, if not more, listening as you are speaking. And at the start you won't even have the chance to be obnoxious and unpleasant because you have very little to say to begin with. What is the point of speaking, if you will not understand the answer?

[@LanguageMaus]

I think the speak from day one approach got popular in contrast to the traditional classroom learning method. For those who are not into languages is such a big revelation "I don't need to learn all the grammar and vocab before, I can speak right away!". It is a good mindset to just go for it and not be afraid of making mistakes. But turns out it is less effective than focusing on comprehensible input and letting the language become second nature - then you can speak in a spontaneous way, your brain automatically knows what's right without struggling finding the right sentence structure and vocab. Speaking must be trained too of course, but I would argue that being exposed to the language improves speaking more than speaking practice itself. I know after binge watching a brazilian show, my brain is so ready to switch to portuguese and my speaking improves a lot.

[@Fubuki_Lofi]

I'm English and live in Austria. Because of work, kids, and housework, I hardly have time to study the language, and the German I have studied sounds very different than how it is spoken here. I can't have conversations with people, but I know much more than I can speak. By listening, hearing kids movies, and reading, I pick up more and more, and understand a lot of what is said to me. Yet if I hear two people talking amongst themselves, I may have no idea what they are discussing. So, there's something about understanding a language that goes beyond words.

[@daysandwords]

Yes, that's true. There's context, which you often don't have when you are listening to two other people talk.

[@cicolas_nage]

it took me a while to get on the comprehensible input train but now that i'm here and i managed to actually learn to understand and speak german (basically never speaking with anyone), which is a huge accomplishment for me, i'm never getting off

[@GeographyGeek]

Great analogy! I wish I’d known how important input was when I started.

[@eclecticdreams]

I've had a hard time understanding how one is supposed to speak a language without understanding it first for a long time. That hasn't seemed logical or reasonable to me.

[@philipdavis7521]

My current ‘summarise it in one line’ view on language learning is ‘you learn languages through input, you learn to output through output’. I know there is an argument that active recall is important in embedding the language in your brain, but the advocates rarely consider what you are actually embedding - too often, you are embedding incorrect pronunciation and syntax through outputting too early (imo).

[@TheCompleteGuitarist]

Something that is completely over looked by language teachers and learners is that native speakers are ALWAYS learning more about their own language and learning better ways to express themselves simply by listening to others speak (or of course reading in their native language). Put basically, most native speakers can spend most of their lives improving their language skills just by listening. (Native) Kids in school are learning to improve their vocabulary, accuracy and richer modes of expression simply by sitting in a class and listening to the conversation taking place. Their language development is taking place mostly in silence. Knowing a language is defined by comprehension, not by output. Output (communicative events) is something that we do with our language skills once we have a mental representation of language.

[@orlandocarrasquillo4481]

This sounds good, but especially with the last paragraph you definitely need far more output than you think because natives are surrounded by their language. They still have to use the language regardless of said comprehension. So, it's not just listening you have to speak it in order not to lose it and figure it out as well just like everyone else. Foreigners will not have the community like natives do so in order to replicate such an environment people have to fail a lot more than native would in things before they thrive with it. Too many standards of having too much of the perfect listening routine and whatever else will lead to very little speaking will definitely negatively impact your outcome. Natives have no choice, but to do the heavy lifting foreigners can avoid things forever for whatever reason. This a problem of overthinking it and not getting in the game because of whatever advantage the other side has. The polyglot conundrum of too many metrics and analytics leading to low output but expecting monumental gains without going through the hard times.

[@TheCompleteGuitarist]

@@orlandocarrasquillo4481 reading, because we all read with an inner voice this counts as a form of output and makes up for this need. Think about what happens in a conversation. The important part for you is comprehending what they say. This is all the excercise you need to maintain your language. Output is really a communication skill and of course it is something that you develop to a degree with exercise but your communication skills are also developed significantly with input. But consider this, if you want to develop "conversation skills" but have no one to converse with because you are isolated, why do you want to speak the language? With whom are you planning on conversing with? Of course that is a dilemma, but I live in the country where my second language is spoken and I even teach in my second language. But aside from that, 80% of all other communications are input not output. And talking with people in a casual situation only provides me with about 20% of my linguistic needs. The rest I get from reading. I am a language teacher, language is mental representation. Speaking is a related skill but has little to do with forming mental representation. Only using what is already there. When students are ready, they will begin to speak. If you force them or they force themselves they form errors which become difficult to rebuild in a second language context. In fact, when a person is forced to speak, generally they form a strategy to fill a knowledge gap usually by translating and often incorrectly and then this becomes incredibly hard to fix. Example: In english we say "I am 10 years old" in spanish they say "I have ten / tengo diez" and if you force someone to speak their age before they have the language in place to say it in English they will use the strategy of translating from spanish to english I have/tengo and it will stay for a long time. Language emerges when messaages are understood and students are ready to speak. There is also an order in which certain parts of language are learnt. In English it is mostly present continues followed by simple past (irregular verbs) later regular then simple present. Talk about what you are doing now, talk about what you did yesterday etc later talk about routines and habits and lifestyles etc.

[@TheCompleteGuitarist]

@@orlandocarrasquillo4481 Search for this reference for a paper on linguistics "PLOS ONE 7(3): e32974" everything in quotation marks. From the paper: *The results demonstrate that substantial periods with no L2 exposure are not necessarily detrimental. Rather, benefits may ensue from such periods of time even when there is no L2 exposure.*

[@orlandocarrasquillo4481]

@@TheCompleteGuitarist Again, focusing too much on what they can do more or less rather than putting in the effort and reps to get better. Who cares about the degrees of this or that is endless pontificating about of the perfect comprehension, internal dialogue or whatever psychobabble. This is just wasting time of whatever perceived notion of what's said in books, science or myths that run in language learning communities. Yes, you can read, but everything from listening, and writing is to ultimately leading to speaking. You going to have speak way more in order to understand what to do when you're speaking. Having set plans or strategies can come and go in the moment and you have to adjust things and develop new things on the spot like everyone else when speaking. Downplaying speaking is not smart for real world usage. If you said you split reading, listening, writing and speaking about 25% a piece that seems more logical. Even with that it can become a never-ending perfectionist trap. Unfortunately, metrics, analytics, methods always change, cycle in or out, and whatever else still so worrying about the hamster loop of mental trappings. This long-winded science report just clutters the field with unneeded obstacles that prevent people from utilizing their speaking skills because it be just another case of never speaking enough because so called study said so. In order to speak well you have to speak no internal dialogue or magic comprehension percentage will do that for you.

[@TheCompleteGuitarist]

@@orlandocarrasquillo4481 And you know this because.... ? Are you a linguist or a language teacher? You are dismissing a lot of science. I have been teaching for .... 37 years. My anecdotal experience coincides with the science because I have paid attention to my and my students development. If you think speaking is important for you, go ahead. Speak as much as you want. No one is stopping you.

[@stephaniegeisel]

What a great analogy. Another fantastic video. Thank you!

[@TheFiestyhick]

Great topic 7 years ago, that was what almost every language video was pushing due to Benny's influence (not hating on him). All I kept thinking was, "this don't make sense, how can I speak from day one when I don't really know sentences and can't understand anything? Doesn't it make more sense to take some time to build up vocab?".....All those" speak straightaway" folks kept making us skeptics sound like we is idiots for questioning the logic. Glad to see that these days much emphasis is put on CI as the foundation and not forced speaking

[@Cyber_Dunes]

I love when you put the analogy together how you showed visually the options you have in speaking English. Also It's honestly so frustrating how most people think if you're not speaking a language, you aren't learning it :p

[@mercy2351]

I think you've found a great analogy. As a native speaker of "baseball," I can only imagine how bizarre it might seem to someone who didn't grow up with it. The rules make perfect sense once you understand how they work, but the reasoning behind them is often quite strange and due to quirks in the sport's historical development. You can't just jump right in, even if you are familiar with other sports. And language is so much more complicated that you can't make assumptions even though you've already learned one or more languages in the past.

[@Gizk4]

I agree! It certainly convinced me since I did not understand a single thing from the baseball clips. Total confusion, just like hearing an unknown language.

[@time_luck11]

@@Gizk4 Same lol. I’m American but have only ever watched one game of baseball.

[@AmbiCahira]

I found the same thing. In the options between tortoise and the hare the hare will be beneficial as a youtuber making content in many languages, but otherwise taking your time pays off in the long run.

[@eibhlinniccolla]

Last time I was this early I still thought immersion learning was dumb and that I just needed to speak more and study grammar

[@lynette365247]

I agree whole heartedly. I'm learning Korean and I utilize every resource that I know of to learn. I take an online course that teaches grammar. I take another online course that teaches vocabulary through story. I study and memorize whole K-dramas to get intonation, etc. Occasionally I book a lesson with a tutor so I can practice speaking. This also keeps it interesting and fun when I have something different every day to focus on. Of course I have no exact measure of how well I am learning, but I feel very satisfied with how quickly I am able to understand.

[@FRENCHFAIRE]

I like to be able to say/speak something, my name, where I live, from the beginning. That motivates me. And there’s no pressure. I hear people say to think in the language and this is crazy.

[@vytah]

The only thing that speaking early gives is getting used to phonology of the language, which makes you both sound better and listen better. But you can get the same by just repeating words and sentences, not producing new ones. In the baseball analogy, it's like doing training practice.

[@AlinefromToulouse]

One language learning advice: go slow to go fast.

[@azarishiba2559]

Soy un autista hablante nativo de español, y en mis últimos años, sé que primero necesito ver antes que nada la descripción técnica lingüística de un idioma (fonología, fonética, escritura, gramática...) antes de siquiera poder presentarme. Con japonés no me pasó igual, pero eso es una historia completamente diferente (mi primer contacto con el idioma fue a los 8 años, pero no fue sino hasta los 20 que por fin pude llevar un curso de japonés formal y presencial). Con portugués sí pude aprender más rápido a hablar sin una introducción amplia a la gramática, pero eso fue posible a que mi idioma nativo y portugués pertenecen a la misma rama lingüística, idiomas iberromances. ¿Pero con polaco, el idioma que estoy aprendiendo lentamente? Nop, necesitaba primero esa descripción. Así sabré qué cosas raras hay en el idioma comparadas con las que ya he visto en los idiomas que sé, y así evitar sorpresas que dan puñetazos gigantescos. Y así voy, poco a poco.

[@danielsykes7558]

1:30 I bet there's an interesting bell curve slanted in one direction on this topic Like how much you use your native tongue, learn grammar directly, etc Speaking to native speakers versus experienced learners from your own native tongue, etc

[@mrkingsudo]

The batter you showed at 3:45 is my favorite player, Carson Kelly! I have my first toss up signed by him directly! Comparing different languages to different sports was very clever, im gonna use this analogy all the time. This also helps explain the relationship between language families. It makes sense that a tennis player would have some skill in racquetball, but not nearly as much in football. Replace the sports with spanish speaker, portugese, and Russian, and youve got an exact match.

[@MaricaAmbrosius]

Reminds me of when Norwegian children think they're singing English. Just belting whatever sounds they think they heard the singer make.

[@ChristiansEntertainmentEcke]

Your baseball example was really clicking to me being an European with next to zero knwoledge about baseball. Good job! :)

[@stevencarr4002]

Yes. I always thought baseball was easy as a fielder, if you could run and catch to a professional level. Try to catch somebody out, or field the ball and throw it back. Simple! But apparently not.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah... actually, after just a few hours with a decent baseball glove on, catching is really quite easy. There is a certain fluidity with which experienced players do it, but otherwise there's no difference between the likelihood of a pro making a routine catch and an under-14s player... the glove makes it very easy. But WHERE to throw it is one complexity, as this video points out, and how well you make that throw is a huge factor. In cricket, the throwing level has typically been very poor compared to baseball, because it so seldom makes a big difference. In fact, the Australian cricket team leads the world in this department precisely because in the 90s, they hired an ex-major league baseballer to be their fielding coach and for the next 20 years, out-fielded every other international team by a long way, especially in throwing. In baseball, a poor throwing team will just have runs stolen from them constantly, and when the scores are something like 5 to 3, stealing 3 runs is obviously a very big deal.

[@ChristiansEntertainmentEcke]

@@daysandwords great explanation! Thank you very much. Funfact: I just recently watched Mooneyball and was very excited about it. Even though I didnt got all baseball-specific nuances, it was a pleasure to watch nevertheless :)

[@kiragillett8338]

Hi, just a little feedback --if your signoff phrase is in spanish (maybe its swedish y mi mente la percibe como si fuera español; if this is the case, please disregard): to say “I love y’all” it would be “les quiero” or “os quiero”(Spainards). “Lo quiero” means I want it, I want that, or could also mean in certain contexts “I love him”, or “I love that”. Some dialects you could say “los quiero”(plural) but it could be seen as less polite than “les quiero “ as los y lo are frequently used for things and le y les for people (again depending on dialect). Love the content!!

[@87advil]

Hi Kira, "lo quiero" is a reference to a Spiderman movie. Los quiero is the standard and more common way to say it "I love you (pl)" - les quiero is leismo so more geographically restricted, and even in leísta regions it's less common in the plural than in singular.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah it's a reference to Spider-verse, when he accidentally says "I love you" to a police officer.

[@SirRobinDeSway]

Production follows comprehension, often after a considerable interval. This is an observable reality around the world, it is an observable reality in your own life. Therefore the simplest of truths is demonstrated to be true: we acquire language by understanding messages in that language. Production is a natural by product. My opinion is that we are evolved to acquire language because it is an essential survival tool.

[@MarcoCuauhtemocMejia]

Thank you, the baseball bit helped me grasp the theme 👍

[@js27-a5t]

To me, the main issue with speaking first as a kid in a language class is that kids really worry about their peers and what they will think. So to be forced to get up there and make mistakes in front of your peers as a kid is social suicide. And many of us just clam up. This is exactly why I thought I was "bad at languages" until I was an adult. I have found that learning how to comprehend a language first and knowing a lot of vocab makes me more confident and therefore I feel better at trying to speak it when I'm starting out.

[@Kayeinel]

You put a lot of effort into your videos; just the analogies that you use requires time to conjure, and then to sequence it properly for thorough understanding takes more effort. This was a very well-done video

[@daysandwords]

Thank you!

[@masscreationbroadcasts]

*watches a 2 week old video with a 2 week old video in its thumbnail* That. That is beautiful.

[@joaofonseca4236]

Very nice video. I loved the analogy and explanation, it was very clear! Just a small note: for some people (like myself) it might be very easy to get stuck on the "learning to understand" part, and never get to the speaking part. You can even start creating a lot of anxiety for yourself, because you think "you won't understand it well enough", and what then?? DDDD: Right now, in my case, I've been learning Dutch for 1 year and a half, and while I can understand most of the written and spoken language, I still shit myself when I have to speak it, which is very frustrating, because, as most of us will know, if you're stressed and speaking a foreign language, most of what comes out of your brain are brainfarts. I think that if I had started to speak earlier, and conditioned my brain to being okay about making mistakes and not understanding sometimes, that a lot of the anxiety I feel wouldn't be there. So, I think that the balance between these two camps is a subtle and important one.

[@daysandwords]

Sure, but it just isn't what's being discussed in this video. I know you weren't necessarily telling me to make a different video, but I get a lot of comments along the lines of "But you didn't mention xyz..." and I'm like "Yeah, because if I mention xyz then I have to mention pqr and if I mention that then I have to mention ghi and before you know it, the video is 1.5 hours long, has taken me 4 months, and gets 73 views... So, no, I did not mention xyz because that's not within the scope of this video."

[@TatiHardt]

From my own experience, I totally agree with you. I have a French teacher who barely speaks English while I am at level A2 in French, and it is sooooo hard to communicate with her. I mean, I'm glad I can make myself understood, but it's very stressful. Today I have a trial lesson with a French teacher who also speaks English, hopefully it will be easier.

[@СумирэЛаоши]

With all respect to you and your point of view, I don't see why we have to choose between immersion and speaking instead of practicing both in somewhat equal proportions. I am a linguist myself with 11 years of language learning experience (english, chinese and japanese are the foreign languages I speak). And during my language learning journey I was doing all kinds of stuff: listening, reading, watching videos, retelling, speaking, communicating, writing messages and essays, doing grammar drills and what not. And since you chose sport as an analogy, let me give you my example. I have been doing fencing for more than two years now. I started from level zero, absolutely nothing. I would watch my peers spar and have no idea, who won. So, I really have been in this situation you are describing. And let me tell you, both of the options (you don't know what to do and you don't have necessary physical abilities and skills) equally suck. Both of them are painful. So I chose the third way: I train every aspect: do footwork and bladework drills, freeplay and sparring, read all sorts of stuff, watch every competition and tutorial I find. Am I perfect in the mental or physical aspect of fencing now? Far from it! But at least I can somehow defend myself and strike back, this is way better than prioritising one side, while neglecting another

[@daysandwords]

Because you're massively massively behind in one aspect and that aspect is the subconscious model of the language. If I know what sounds to make with my mouth in order to speak the language, then I don't really need much practice doing that because it's not actually difficult. I said that at the end. That's why we don't practice them in equal portions.

[@midtown0101]

great editing and visuals on these, love the set 👍

[@Simrealism]

I like to study ancient and biblical languages, so this advice is especially irrelevant to me. The only living language I care to spend time learning is Mandarin Chinese, and speaking well only came after intensive listening. TV shows, Dora, Pepa, little fox, then teen dramas, then night time drama and finally the news is what really got me there. Speaking came naturally once comprehension blossomed.. I didn't have to work on it, but the months of pronunciation drills were instrumental in being well understood.

[@daysandwords]

"especially irrelevant".

[@devin6272]

I legit have this same feeling. like I'm floundering in a place I don't belong because I'm being forced into speaking in the classes I had. I can read fine and my accent from what I'm told is immaculate but I don't the instinct for when something sounds right let alone know all the baseline rules that are assumed when speaking. Not to mention slangs and eliding. I just need more exposure. I have been struggling with comprehensible input options in Portuguese however. Almost everything is too advanced or children's television.

[@BrunUgle]

Find yourself a long telenovela. Read a description of it so you know the basic plot and then just watch it. At first, you might not understand much, but telenovelas are pretty repetitive and the story is usually pretty obvious, so as long as you get the gist, you’ll be fine. That’s what I did in Spanish. I started out watching “La fea más bella”. All I knew about it was that it was a remake of the same telenovela that the US sit-com “Ugly Betty” was a remake of. I’d never seen “Ugly Betty”, but I’d heard of it. All I knew about it was that there was an ugly girl who fell in love with her boss and he pretended to be in love with her to save his company. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get started. At first, I didn’t understand much of what was said, but I understood some words and phrases here and there and with my very basic knowledge of the plot along with the visual clues, I more or less got the gist. The series was 300 episodes of about 45 minutes each. By the time I got to the end of the series, it was as if I were watching in English. I understood every word. When I started a new series, my comprehension went down a little. I had to strain my ears for the first few episodes, but it quickly became easy. So, my advice is to just dive in, but pick something long so that you don’t have to keep getting used to new voices and situations. And accept that you won’t understand everything at first. Just keep watching anyway.

[@stevencarr4002]

Of course, the 'speak early, speak often' school has had a huge push in the past 6 months, with people saying 'Just talk to ChatGPT'. I think not.....

[@michaelli3667]

I have never heard anyone saying that to speak as early as possible, all I hear is that they encourage you to listen as much as possible before starting to speak.

[@daysandwords]

It's a very common "method" people talk about. Benny Lewis is one of the more famous proponents of it but he's far from the only one.

[@daysandwords]

I found her... the other one whom I couldn't remember before: speakfromdayonewithelisa.com Oh and look... a bunch of BS on the homepage. "Hi, I’m Elisa. Since the age of 20, I have taught myself 24 languages." LOL, either they're very similar languages, or they are to B1.

[@TheHakon98]

I subscribe to the comprehensible input hypothesis, but I am also convinced that in order to improve a skill, one needs to practice that skill. In order to speak well, one needs to practise speaking. I am experimenting with about 10% output and 90% input after some years with mainly just input. What do you think is the optimal input/output ratio?

[@daysandwords]

Yep, just like one would need to practice baseball to get good at it. I'm NOT disputing that. I'm disputing the extremely prevalent idea that language is only practiced or improved when one practices speaking.

[@TheHakon98]

@@daysandwords Yes, I agree with your video. But do you have a quantitative opinion on the optimal input/output ratio?

[@daysandwords]

Nah, it depends a lot on the person and the language in question. French? You can have a crack kind of early on.

[@ydalir]

My two most proficient languages are Japanese and Korean. When I moved to Japan, I hit the ground running and achieved a strong level of fluency rather quickly. Most of what I was learning felt vaguely familiar to me already because I had spent my whole childhood immersed in Japanese content of all sorts. Years later when I moved to Korea, I expected that my background in Japanese was going to make the process even faster. While it gave me an edge, the process was far more arduous than with Japanese. It took me a lot of work in immersion to catch up to where I was with Japanese.

[@littlered6340]

I don't know sportsballs and no, I wouldn't know what to do in that situation. In fact, when you mentioned the points, I realised I actually *wasn't* sure if higher points were better 😅. 😂 So hey, your analogy is good 👍

[@DracTeutonic]

12:07 I hope that one day we can watch your video "I read "The Casual Vacancy" in Estonian 50 times in a row in order to become fluent"

[@daysandwords]

Oh my goodness do not tempt me with Estonian. BTW I only have that book because it was 4 euros in this beautiful bookshop (and everything else was like 30 euros) and then the woman said that technically you had to be a member to get that price, but she was nice enough to use her friend's member number.

[@CookieFonster]

Your section on piano is a really good point: my mom always wanted to learn piano as a kid but never did until 2020. She picked up piano very easily because she saw me and my sister play it so much: she was a good observer. She's like Jonah in your baseball analogy.

[@daysandwords]

Well I think 90% of the difference would be that she already knew music.

[@CookieFonster]

@daysandwords Good point there-she did already know how to read sheet music from childhood guitar lessons. So maybe that's comparable to learning a language similar to one you know.

[@daysandwords]

Well yeah that's a different scenario AGAIN but I'm saying that people often compare language learning and music, but in music, we know what we're trying to play sounds like. It's actually interesting that if you try to figure out a song on the piano and you're WAY off, like chord vi instead of chord V (totally different sounds), then you know... but if you're close, you often think it's right, but then when you hear it being ACTUALLY right you think "Oh yeah that's way better." I think a similar thing happens in language learning, like you can say something that sounds OK and then a teacher says "You could say..... *whatever*" and you think "OH YEAH now THAT's a good way of putting it." That scenario would only happen after input though.

[@hillmanntoby]

I actually recommend speaking early to people while recommending that they spend at least 80% of their time immersing. A lot like saying speak early while doing the thing that works. A little time with a tutor early on can be motivating and help with cultural immersion. But just understand it will not work on its own.

[@daysandwords]

No of course not on it's own... just like Jonah wouldn't be able to take the field and play baseball at a high-level, but he'd be in a better position to be taught than Usain would.

[@bofbob1]

Personally my preferred option is still to move to the country and speak from day 1. There are a handful of skills that you develop really fast when you're confronted to strong limitations to your output. But it's probably not relevant to most people. I've found those skills to be transversal so you just do it once and don't really need to do it for other languages (it has more to do with cognitive strategies than language per se), and more importantly, the only people who would actually care to gain them are people who enjoy playing around with language. If you're more of a utilitarian type, like "I don't really care about language as long as I can just communicate", then there's really no point worrying about it. If you've never thought "I wonder if I can make it through the day without ever using the word "the"" or if you've never been in the middle of a conversation with a banker and suddenly wondered "hey, let's see if I can squeeze the word "iguana" into this conversation while making it seem natural", then yeah, this advice probably isn't for you ^^ But it also has an advantage that applies to a broader demographic. Namely that real life is just by far the most compelling kind of input you'll ever find. Something about a fellow ape staring right back at you and expecting something... And to get that, usually it means you also have to speak. I don't necessarily recommend it though. Not across the board. The truth is that for most people it's just too much. They get overwhelmed. They either leave or crawl back to the safety of a native-language bubble. For those of us who push through though, it really does deliver. The funniest part is how your body basically goes back to child mode. Like, in the first few months I'm back to sleeping 10 to 12h a night, as if my body was saying "OK buddy, you've learned enough for today. This is as far as you go. So shut it down and let me take over to make it all gel while you rest." ^^ Of course there's nothing wrong with prioritizing input and there are plenty of people out there to confirm that it works. But that framing of input vs output leads a lot of people to overlook the simple fact that we're not computers; we're social animals. And along with that comes hormones and emotions and a whole slew of things that affect our cognition. Put it this way: the guy who hesitates and fumbles because he doesn't know if he should throw to 2nd or 3rd base or whatever, he won't need any spaced repetition or variety of contexts to remember that. He'll go through the uncomfortable experience of being chided by his teammates and that lesson is learned immediately and permanently. I don't even know if it makes sense to call it "long-term memory" in those cases. It's more like "embodied" memory because the emotional charge that goes along with it is what's really doing the heavy lifting. Anyone who has had any kind of social life in their TL will know what I'm talking about. Most people won't object to that, but they'll just think that it's a way of learning that is better used later on, once you've already built some familiarity with the language. Which is fair. You certainly make less of a fool of yourself that way. But I don't think that means it's not effective to do it from the outset. It's just about whether or not you're comfortable doing it. Most people aren't.

[@daysandwords]

"There are a handful of skills that you develop really fast when you're confronted to strong limitations to your output." Yes, that's absolutely true. But they develop like LIGHTNING when you get a lot of input at first... I found my Swedish getting noticably better within half an hour of my landing there. You can of course just go there... but that's not an option for most people.

[@TiffanyHallmark]

I love that you chose Romanian 🇹🇩 💙💛❤️. I know it was just an example, but it's a good one. I definitely went my own route to learn limba română. Eventually I was able to be in România and speak. I like your views on the idea and your baseball analogy really made sense.

[@daysandwords]

Oh yes, um... just an example.

[@TiffanyHallmark]

@daysandwords 🤔😁🇹🇩 Noroc! Este o limba frumoasă

[@anna7276]

The baseball analogy is fantastic! BUT… when I saw the glove in your left hand it gave me flashbacks to high school and being a left hander and never getting the bloody correct glove! One right hand glove only and we had like 4 lefties in class. Us lefties would run to the tub and tear through all the gloves looking for that one elusive right hander. As someone who was ultra competitive sporty tomboy having to throw like a lame duck with my right hand was traumatic! Thanks for inadvertently bringing back one of my many high school trauma stories!!! 🤣🤣🤣

[@daysandwords]

Despite being a right handed thrower, you are preaching to the choir. I'm a left-handed batter and my brother is the exact opposite (right handed batter, left handed thrower) - so I'm fascinated by this topic. He wanted to be a catcher when he played as a kid, but the frustration was finding catcher's gloves in LHT because catchers are sort of "supposed" to be right handed, because of the throw-over to 2nd base and the pivot to throw to 3rd... Also, I got hit quite hard in the right ear by quite a fast pitcher... and it's because I was wearing a right hander's helmet, so it didn't have the protection on the correct ear for me. Stupidly, every other helment I could have chosen from was ambidextrous design, but the one I was my step-dad's helmet and I just wanted to be like "I'm so pro I've got my own helmet" but it didn't occur to me that the ear was on the wrong side... all the kit helmets just have both of course haha.

[@anna7276]

🤣🤣🤣

[@masscreationbroadcasts]

I never watched a full baseball game, And yes, I didn't understand the stakes.

[@hillmanntoby]

Last one, as an American I enjoy the usage of baseball here. But for the Americans that want want to get the effect of not understanding what the sports commentators are saying, just watch a quick clip from cricket. What do you mean he took his wicket? What's an over? What on earth does that box score even mean?

[@stevencarr4002]

'He took his wicket'.... This is straightforward. There is one player on the fielding team during each over trying to take wickets while another player on the same team is trying to keep wicket.

[@hillmanntoby]

@stevencarr4002 I'm sure your answer is accurate and yet I am left with more questions.

[@daysandwords]

"he took his wicket" is kind of a rare situation to refer to linguistically though. "He" and "his" would refer to 2 different people there, so we'd have to know who they both are before you could say that. If Toby was the batsman (in cricket it's batsman not batter or hitter) and I were the bowler, the commentator might say something like "These two have some history. Lamont bowled to Toby in 2022 and took his wicket." - it means I got you out, Toby. Much more likely would be something like "Lamont's picked up the wicket of Toby Hillman three times over the five times they've faced each other." Where is gets really really confusing though, is that "wicket" refers to not one but TWO other aspects of the game. The "pitch" which is the strip of dried, hard grass that they play on, and specifically its condition can be called a "Wicket", e.g. "It's been hot and dry for the last 5 days and the wicket is looking very flat and true" - but also, less often, the wooden pegs that sit in the ground at each end. More often they're called the stumps, but then a "wicket-keeper" is the one guarding them so...

[@hillmanntoby]

@@daysandwords see I think you're just proving my point that Americans have literally no idea how cricket works. I had two remote teams in India reporting to me in a past life, one in Chennai and one in Bengaluru. In our weekly meetings I would ask then about stuff they liked. Most commonly: films, cricket and soccer in that order. I, who have only seen cricket played in Bluey, would every week try and understand the rules for cricket and am still totally lost. I did learn though, that there are many "woods" beyond Bollywood, and the one they cared about most was Sandalwood and maybe Kollywood? I remember Tollywood was also mentioned, but I think that was just to explain that there is far more to Indian cinema than Bollywood.

[@daysandwords]

It is actually a dream of mine (that I would do if ever I got a massive windfall in income or something so I could create whatever I liked), to do a sort of ~1 hour video breakdown of everything about baseball and cricket and what the interest in the two sports actually is. Overall cricket is definitely easier to understand than baseball. I find the rules of both sports to be reasonably intuitive once you realise what the overall goal is, but baseball has more rules that just seem like once in 1897, a 12 year old got upset and said "THAT DOESN'T COUNT!" and then it became a rule, e.g. dropped third strike, except if there are runners on... except except if there are two outs. Like... come on. Is it out or not?

[@StachLach]

What work quickly?

[@daysandwords]

This one.

[@MissaOftheDawn]

I would love to hear your opinion on something if you have the time. I'm technically a B2 level in Italian, and just completed an immersion program there and now have a B2 with a score of 90/100, but I've only been learning the language for 9 months. Most of my time is dedicated to immersion, listening to podcasts watching KZbin videos etc. A mix of content created for learners as well as native content. I also do weekly conversation tutoring on iTalki and do two online courses. One is prerecorded, and other is over Zoom and encourages tons of speaking. That being said, I feel like there is so much I haven't internalized with the language. I can understand a lot but I feel like I still don't know how to express myself with so many things that sounds natural. Do you think even at what is technically considered a high level (honestly though I feel like a beginner) it would be better to pause speaking for now and just focus exclusively on immersion? Or would what speaking ability I have decline a lot by taking a break from it? I feel like I'm at a strange middle point in your analogy. I know how the "game" works and understand it, but when I've got the ball I feel like I don't know what to do it. It's like the more I learn the more I realize how much there is that I don't know. To clarify I mean more than just recall on the fly but there's also just so many thoughts/feelings that I don't know how to express in Italian that doesn't sound stiff and too anglophone even if technically correct grammatically.

[@vforvalorant1019]

That was definitely me with German. I did a B2-part-2 German course after 6 months of learning, before which I'd done only a few italki lessons of speaking practise. The course....helped, to s great extent, and got me speaking at a basic level, but it was unbelievably helpful to go back to the UK for 9 months after that and just do a ton of high level immersion (plus a few more italki lessons). When I came back to Germany, I could understand at a C1 level, more or less (the gap between B2 and C1 is *massive*, and I'd crossed it but only just: I went into a C1 class and definitely learned things but was way ahead of the rest of the class), and my speaking began to really take off. I could really feel all the places where I had no idea what the right word was at B2, or could put together a sentence I knew was comprehensible but probably incorrect, and I don't think masses of speaking would have helped me at that point. I really feel like I've now found the point in language learning where massive amounts of speaking is really helpful, and it's "could easily pass a C1 exam with only a little test-specific prep". Sadly, I'm a massive introvert, but every time I have a long German conversation I really feel the gears turning in my brain because understanding is effortless and I can talk and still have enough time for my brain to do some learning -processing in the background.

[@niklase5901]

Living in Sweden, I hear English 1000 times more than I speak it. I listen to English daily, but months can pass without me speaking it.

[@daysandwords]

Ja just det! Och har du nåt problem när det kommer ett tillfälle att faktiskt säga nåt?

[@niklase5901]

@ nu höll jag på att svara på engelska, vilket är rätt knäppt! Jag är bättre på att förstå engelska än vad jag är på att tala/skriva engelska, men det är inte 1000 till 1 skillnad, kanske en 1.5 till 1 skillnad.

[@kennethwdc]

So Manny was right to step on the third base with the ball because he caught the ball off the bounce, and consequntly didn't get the batter out, and bases 1 and 2 were loaded.

[@daysandwords]

There were runners on 1st and 2nd base yes but there's another key element: 0 outs. Had there already have been 1 out, then the correct play would have been to step on his base (3rd base) and then throw it to first base. In theory you could also throw it to second but that's not a good move because the runner on his way to 2nd base will always be there sooner than the batter will be at 1st base... so 1st is the "sure" out. Had there have been 2 outs then I think just step on his own base would the easiest. It would also have changed had there have been a runner on 2nd base but NOT on 1st base.

[@kennethwdc]

@@daysandwords This baseball analogy reminds me of when a Swedish girl and I set up a baseball game in a Paris park and French people would casually walk their dogs between the pitcher and the batter.

[@DNA350ppm]

It seems there is a trap built into the English expression: "Do you speak x?" as it isn't "Are you learning x?" Learning is the life-long stage we all are in. We can't speak well enough for many purposes, if we don't learn a lot. A bit boring and non-spectacular thing about language learning is "that it all depends". There are many traps, one is: do you sound like a native? Oh, yeah, some people manage to sound like a native before they even have a vocabulary of 20 words. Another is: do you understand turist-phrases and can you give a suitable reply - the level of a phrasebook for visitors to a country. But are you able to you talk meaningfully with somebody without a set pattern, without burdening your interlocutor unduly? Then, to live a full life in a foreign language, we do need a little of everything from the start, vocabulary and pronunciation, grammar for sentences, and being used to comprehend written and spoken language, and humility to make mistakes and learn from them, indeed, to use the language and understand the language better and better, by and by. We need understanding of language levels and cultural references, all in all, it is difficult but surely an adventure!

[@NoemieY]

I started this video thinking "but that's so stupid, you can't learn a language if you don't understand how it works" and by the end of it I actually remember someone who does 😅 the guy speaks horrible English, forget to add prepositions or adverbs but adds "be" where it shouldn't etc. I told him once (nicely) and he said he didn't care as long as people understood him. However, from his POV, he thinks he's fluent 😅

[@YukiAki02]

I know nothing about baseball but the analogy was perfect!

[@daysandwords]

Thank you!

[@georginatoland]

The really amazing thing to me is that he found a clip where my hometown team was actually winning. 😂

[@daysandwords]

Padres? They won a LOT this year... just a shame they couldn't finish off the Dodgers in the NLCS.

[@PETSWORLD_]

We can learn a lot from nature. Babies and toddlers do nothing but absorb the language through context. Then they replicate what they hear through words, simple phrases, and finally sentences. How can a 6-year-old speak fluently? I promise you it's not through grammar lessons at school.

[@eduardoidiomas5216]

Well done, nice analogy!

[@wingsundersun3058]

As someone who learned Japanese understanding the structure and grammar of the language helped so much before attempting to seriously speak. I got a decent grasp of the order Japanese speakers think in when forming sentences. So I was better able to formulate my sentences in a way that sounded like how they would naturally put things. What shortcuts would they use or what things would they typically omit in certain contexts. Without that fundamental understanding I wouldn't of been able to trust my own judgement when in moments of confusion.

[@natashacallis2736]

Also- when you acquired your first language, you didn’t just speak. Babies listen and listen for months before they produce a word. Great video btw.

[@daysandwords]

Thank you.

[@lolaloliepop]

never did I, a San Diegan, think that our team would end up on Days and Words

[@daysandwords]

Debuting my SDP hat in the video coming later today!

[@daysandwords]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/aH65oKCdrdZjgtU

[@exercisethoughtsanddiscussions]

Your best video so far!

[@daysandwords]

Thanks!

[@exercisethoughtsanddiscussions]

@@daysandwords they are all good, but this one was exceptional well planned, produced, and delivered. Keep’em coming!

[@vforvalorant1019]

I like the discussion in the comments but mostly I'm thinking, oh thank god someone finally made this video so that when someone is super on their high horse about the grammar translation method being the only way I can just send them here. Let's hope we get less overall nonsense of this flavour.

[@daysandwords]

Just to confirm, you mean let's hope we get less overall nonsense of the "Grammar translation method being the only way" flavour?

[@vforvalorant1019]

@daysandwords yes! Oops. Apparently the ol' first language communication still needs work....

[@Stephanie-gv8rh]

I personally feel both are really important, some learners can get stuck just immersing themselves in the language but never actually use it. They gain the knowledge of a language not the skill. Which isn’t a bad thing depending on your goal! But agree that immersion is integral especially in the early days. Language is more than just grammar, it’s culture and nuance. Another great video!

[@religdeb]

absolutely spot on. input input input

[@truthserum3050]

I've been learning Japanese on and off. I bought my first anime book. One Piece. I've yet to read it. It has furigana too so Idk why I'm nervous to get into it.

[@GimGainor]

Not sure about the juxtaposition, what about both consuming content and speaking? I would rather have Usain Bolt on my team, just explain the basics to him or get him to watch one or two matches with me explaining to him what is going on.

[@daysandwords]

I'm NOT saying don't speak. But it's extremely inefficient to spend much time doing that before you've got SOME feel for how the language works. This isn't a guide on what to do on which day: it's a shake-up of the thinking that speaking = real practice and listening = lazy doesn't do nothin'.

[@daysandwords]

The other thing is: Most people are skeptical about the idea of learning to understand the language through immersion, and so even if you start to convince them with sound arguments, they will naturally want to push against that with "Oh but I still do want to speak..." But remember the PRIMARY difficulty. The primary difficulty with speaking isn't the act of flapping your jaw. The primary difficulty is KNOWING the language. So, sure, if you want to have a chat every now and then, ok... but if you have 100 piles of washing to do, and a very slightly dusty floor... You should be doing the washing much more often than you sweep the floor. The primary difficulty is knowledge of how the language works, and that is practiced by listening.

[@bdeana2961]

Ok, I am attempting to learn Spanish but I have no idea what you are talking about. In order to begin an understanding, I first have to learn some vocabulary. I can’t pick up a book in Spanish and just read it without knowing what any of the individual words mean. When I read in my native language I actually say the words mentally as I go. If I have no ability to say a word it usually means I have no understanding. I have watched dozens of videos about how to learn a language and unfortunately I am more confused than when I started. I understand what you are saying in the baseball comparison but I have no understanding about how to apply that to learning a language. Where do you start? What do you do? Are you saying learn a new word but don’t speak it? Where do you begin? I have looked at children’s books in Spanish but I get nothing from that. I have listened and watched videos of short stories in Spanish. They are meaningless to me. I find the most pleasure in listening to Spanish music because even though I have no clue what they are singing, I can still enjoy the music and the quality of the voice singing the words. I took French in high school but I never learned to speak it. Pretty much all of my friends have had the same experience. I know that approach doesn’t work. My daughter and son-in-law both speak fluent Japanese but they studied it in school and then liven in Japan for 3 years. You have made an intellectual argument but you have provided no hint of what to actually do to learn a language.

[@daysandwords]

"I can’t pick up a book in Spanish and just read it without knowing what any of the individual words mean." No, of course not. But there is a camp out there (in fact, the majority voice) would say: Go and just start saying "Hola!" and go from there. Try Dreaming Spanish the KZbin channel, the super beginner videos. Tell me that you REALLY DON'T understand anything... I think you'll find that you can't say that and be telling the truth.

[@nissevelli]

I agree that input is preferable and effective as a language learning methodology- but there’s a catch. That catch is that early input which is comprehensible for beginners is as boring as burying one’s nose in a textbook. In addition, many languages simply don’t have a lot of adult-centric comprehensible input for beginners. Finnish certainly didn’t. People talk a lot about the intermediate plateau- but they don’t often talk about the beginner’s struggle to reach a level where engaging comprehensible input is an option. My personal opinion is that people should do whatever it is that can keep them engaged for half an hour or more a day, every day. Languages are such complex and massive undertakings that a high level of proficiency is measured in years. My advice to anyone would be do whatever it takes to be interested. If you wanna speak a lot speak a lot. If you wanna read textbooks read textbooks. If you wanna watch Peppa Pig for 2 hours then watch Peppa Pig. Once you do reach a level where you can understand most of what you read and hear is when the real fun happens- but it takes a while and looks a little different for everyone. Thanks for the video! It was a fun watch.

[@daysandwords]

My point here is entirely separate from what people WANT to do. My purpose here is to get people who have the mimetic attitude of "You have to speak cos speaking is what I want speaking is what I want I must speak get practice speaking" to shake up their thinking. What they want to do is a topic for another day.

[@minederion5411]

I actually thought it was common sense... Well, maybe because I'm an introvert and I don't have anyone to speak to anyway.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah it seems obvious once you realise it but if you just look at some of the ridiculous takes in THIS comments section you can see that it's far from common sense.

[@minederion5411]

@daysandwords Seems like it. Anyway, great video!

[@pikXpixelart]

I loved the baseball references - and they were actually illustrating great points, too. That triple play was traumatizing at the time, though.

[@daysandwords]

LOL it was so much fun.

[@ristoshikongo7730]

My goal is to be basic conversation. Not fluent. Acquiring a language through reading and Comprehensible Input takes way too long. I'm not doing that again. I don't care about fluency.

[@daysandwords]

The trouble is, you don't get to choose when you'll need which skills. You can play a LOT of music, most music in fact, by learning 5 chords. But you're in big trouble when the topic of conversation becomes Bohemian Rhapsody... You can "not care" about fluency but if you don't have a subconscious model of the language, you're really just acting as though you can speak it.

[@Lusinic]

Yes bring on the annoyance

[@marktubbs8033]

Excellent analogy.

[@Retog]

Nobody says this anymore. Everyone says get a lot of input before trying to output

[@daysandwords]

Umm, no. This is absolutely not true and it's very easy to check using the search bar on KZbin, Reddit, or by opening even newly published books. You have probably just created a bubble of Krashenites around you; just like I think there are far more Swedish learners than other languages, because they tend to crowd around my content.

[@stevencarr4002]

''The primary difficulty is the fact that we just don't understand what the pieces of that language are where they go how they move'' In baseball, you have to learn the rules. The rules of a language are called 'grammar'. 'What the pieces of that language are' have technical names (object, subject, locative, future, dative, etc) You can speak from day one, but you need to copy other people's sentences. You won't be capable of original sentences for quite a while. Having to concentrate on the sounds of a language (and making a hash of them!) helps with hearing that language.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah copying other people's sentences is fine. The thing is, I'm trying to shake people free of this mind-prison they're in where they think: "You have to practice. You have to speak. You have to practice. You have to live in the country. Speak. Practice. Speak with natives." It's the same crap over and over again and no one ever stops to think if it's even applicable to this particular field. My argument is that most of us are Usain and we don't know how the game works, so we should first learn how it works. I think the "rules" point is an unhelpful way to put it because it leads back to the same old thinking "You need to know how the language works." If that were true then 12 year old kids of hippies wouldn't be able to speak their own language.

[@Carlos-ln8fd]

I swear it worked for me bro

[@daysandwords]

It kinda works for everyone. It worked to an extent for me too but assuming you EVER get AS fluent as you would with SAMCI (mass cognitive immersion), then it's going to a) take longer and b) wind up with you doing SAMCI ANYWAY... It's significantly more logical to do the MCI FIRST for the reasons explained in this video.

[@dallassukerkin6878]

Good argument there, mate.

[@daysandwords]

Cheers!

[@_Mike.P]

Because I’m too lazy to do anything.

[@mronyszko]

Speaking, listening, reading and writing are tools and separate skills. We should be using all of them. All of those tools help us to learn new words, and grammar in context. It helps us to understand more and improves our ability to express ourselves. They say we should speak early because it speeds up the learning process. People usually settle on passive learning like listening or reading, and the result is that we can understand a lot but we can say nothing. The balance is a key, so learn vocabulary, use it in speech, in writing and listen a lot.

[@daysandwords]

The evidence doesn't really support most of this, as much as it might intuitively seem to be true.

[@alpacawithouthat987]

I don't agree. To get better at writing, you have to read. You cannot get better at writing if you are never exposed to other people's writing. I think it is the same for speaking. The majority of your speaking ability is affected by how much you can understand and the size of your vocabulary. Your understanding and the size of your vocabulary is directly affected by how much input you get. Obviously you need to speak at some point, but the most important thing is that you understand the language that you want to speak before you actually speak it.

[@TheStickCollector]

I would say full immersion only is effective if you have someone to make sure what you are saying is correct why it is wrong.

[@daysandwords]

I wouldn't. I don't know "why" things are wrong the same as I don't know what order I need to move my muscles in to walk.

[@stevencarr4002]

@@daysandwords Correct! How many English speakers know why you sometimes say 'a fast car' , but when you make a question you often reverse the order? 'How fast a car is that?' I know 'How a fast car is that?' is wrong, but I can't explain why.

[@BrunUgle]

@@stevencarr4002Exactly. The point of immersion is that you hear things said the right way so often that anything else sounds weird, just like in your native language.

[@kingly71]

Lamont, do you need me to send you a Mets hat??

[@daysandwords]

You know what... yes. So, I DO have A Mets hat... but it's not in the right colours at all for this jersey (and don't worry, I've considered before that yes, a road Mets hat (the black with blue and orange logo) would match this jersey well both colour wise and thematically). But I think my only Mets hat is a dark greeny colour that doesn't look great for that logo. I DID ORDER a road Mets hat when they were on sale after players' weekend, it was 39 Edwin Diaz... I ordered a lot of hats in that order (it's my vice ok) - but the ONE hat that was cancelled was that one. I can't complain, I have like 40 hats but still... I was sad that I still don't have a proper colour scheme Mets hat.

[@daysandwords]

P.S. Don't ACTUALLY send me a Mets hat. If I ever stop trying to make 53 videos at a time I'll go get one from Lids Australia haha.

[@kingly71]

@@daysandwords ya know I didn’t even notice the (sorta) Mets colored jersey. Just haven’t seen you sport an Amazins cap yet and I can’t abide it haha. Love that you’re such a huge MLB fan, and a budding player! Getting to follow the Mets this postseason (unbelievable September too) was such a thrill, first year they’ve made a run since my daughter was old enough to get into it a little. Oh also if you haven’t already watch Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary from the 90s. It’s like a 10+ hour epic series, you will lap it up with a spoon.

[@daysandwords]

Oh it's not just the colors of the jersey that are Mets themed... I'm pretty sure in Spider-man lore, Peter Parker is a Mets fan because they're more on the Queens side, no? This jersey is more Spider-verse than traditional Spider-man and Miles is from Brooklyn... and I don't know which team that's closer to. Yeah in total I have 22 of the teams although I bought some of them to resell and/or give as gifts, so I do have a Mets one but like I said, it's in a green that is only OK... My current favorite is Padres in the "City Connect" watermelon kind of look... very cool hat.

[@kingly71]

@@daysandwords haha you're spot on with Queens.... the history of the Mets is pretty interesting. So infamously for NY baseball fans (particularly National League fans) the Dodgers and Giants both left for the west coast in the mid 50s. 6-7 years later the Mets emerge and choose their color scheme from the two erstwhile squads, and take the iconic Giant logo. Also the choice to play in Queens (originally at Shea Stadium) was a bit strategic as well, as the business guys wanted to appeal to NL fans of both persuasions, and felt a team based in Brooklyn or the Polo Grounds would alienate the other half. Have a nice day Lamont!

[@ethanhastings7816]

Good analogy

[@heethanthen]

3:55 should’ve called your hypothetical person Baseballersidiot

[@Automation_Optimal_Control]

I completely agree with you, but the argument of the people that recommends to just start talking is that we just did that when we were babies and learned our mother language in that way. They mostly say this when arguing that learning grammar is not needed to be fluent in a language. I disagree… Lets say that you as a baby learn from your parents and lets presume that they are not teachers and they never went to school. If that baby grows up for example as a hillbilly, and never goes to school, he/she will probably talk with a lot of errors but is “fluent” but… will everyone outside his environment (area, town, hill) will understand him/her? I don’t think that all will be understood. There is another argument that says that by learning just vocabulary you will be able to communicate. For example saying just the word “food” means that you are hungry if you also make a gesture that you are hungry, but what if you are on the phone? Will people understand you with only words and no conjunctions or grammatical rules? I don’t know, but I guess not. For me what works is learning the rules of a language (like Paul Nobel courses where he teaches grammar but it does not feel like the burden of grammar) then read a lot, watch series in the new language that I have already seen in my language,then start practicing once you know a lot of vocabulary. But hey that is just me.

[@kevingeoghegan294]

You can't learn to play baseball by just watching games. Think about it.

[@daysandwords]

Um, that's not what this video says.

[@kevingeoghegan294]

@@daysandwords No, it says you need to learn a lot about baseball before you even learn to play it. I don't think that information is initially of much use for learning to play. First, you need to practise basic skills like hitting the ball and throwing and catching the ball. Knowing how a triple play works is irrelevant to learning the basics. It would come in handy later on when you have some of the physical skills to play a game. Why not just do what most people do when they pick up a new skill and learn about the skill as they practise it? You might make faster progress as both should reinforce each other. As far as language learning is concerned, I would start with comprehensible input and pronunciation so I wouldn't speak from day one but I'd definitely speak early starting by repeating some of the previous input out loud. There's no need to wait until you understand everything.