How Do I Maintain My Languages?

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

You reminded me of a time when I hadn't used my Chinese for a very long time. I went to stay with some friends I knew from when we all lived in China. One evening, I friend of their came for dinner which only spoke Chinese. I was able to follow the conversation, but couldn't contribute much. I barely slept that night as my brain proceeded to 'download' what seemed like the whole language. The next morning, I was able to speak quite fluently.

[@OrientalPearl]

I was wondering this for a long time! It makes sense that when you go back to a language you never start from zero again. I’m a bit afraid to take on another language because of losing something with the ones I already know. But like you said, it’s never gone completely. Thanks for sharing!

[@melekpolyglot5387]

try to learn the another language by the language that has you been learn in this way you will learn another language and you will not forget the language that you had been learned

[@frankdittel3508]

Wow the girl of the beautiful Japanese tone 😄👋

[@ColeLangs]

This is some fantastic insight Mr. Kaufmann! I was just saying recently that my biggest problem as a language learner is my lack of maintenance but after watching this video, I realized that it's not such a big deal. Thanks for the video!

[@sarithmejia]

Personally I rather learn a couple than many, and focused completely on those I love or I really need. Even though your journey is so inspiring and I watch your videos every day

[@LangJourney]

So it's like muscle memory when going back to gym

[@rarelyuse4107]

Its like this for almost any skill the human mind is fascinating

[@mrk3357]

For example school, if you don't write during the big break, and go back to school you still can! That's the simple answer.

[@bobbylewis2]

This is true. I tried learning Russian with Duolingo multiple times but kept quitting when the case system got too hard. Another year later I decided to use LingQ's ministories and I can actually use them, not just A1 and introductory content. It makes me realize I didnt waste all that time after all.

[@twoblocksdown5464]

Красавчик. Не сдавайся) чем дальше тем легче, зная русский язык ты можешь читать нашу литературу в ОРИГИНАЛЕ! А это многого стоит.

[@yialoussa]

Thanks! Good points - you never lose a language - even years later - something remains and you can bring it back. It happened to my Portuguese which I had taken classes in decades ago and found I could speak (not well) but able get by in Portugal. I found myself saying things like "Não vale a pena" or "no outro lado" without thinking. Strange thing is that exposure to a language brings it back again and you can move up to the next level - with some self-study.

[@IKEMENOsakaman]

You, sir, are my sole motivation in maintaining my languages.

[@billinusa3832]

Thank you, Steve. You hit upon everything I ever wondered about regarding how a person can, or should, keep up with several languages that he has learned or is just beginning. Sometimes it is more pleasurable to begin a new language (at A1) than to keep visiting a language you already know (say at B2 or C1 level). The brain wants a challenge. So ... I find myself neglecting the ones I "know" and spending a lot more fun time on the new ones. It's like a new crossword puzzle each day. But what you say helps tremendously. thank you ..... Bill in USA

[@LiamPorterFilms]

Your mind is so sharp! I hope I am as “aufgeweckt” as you are in my senior years. Long may you run. Steve.

[@ななな-b8u]

英語の勉強にもなるし、英語でいろんな言語の話聞けて楽しいなぁ😌

[@Son_of_Jonah]

Thank you for a refreshingly honest viewpoint! Don't feel quite so bad now about all I've forgotten.

[@rashaal7954]

Thank you Steve. I like how you clearly put things together. I am a fan of the idea of 'language seeds'. I can't wait to watch you speak in Arabic. نحن في انتظارك🌹🌹🌹

[@antoniobanderas4466]

What a beautiful metaphor with those fields, and it’s true

[@EasyFinnish]

Steve, you told the truth that many language learners think about and wonder a lot. Nobody speaks fluently 20 languages or even near the native level, but it is not the question I think and need to... I did table tennis as younger and then got back after 10 years and felt good, but couldn't play like I did before. I lose my Swedish all the time, every day because I only study French. I don't care...perhaps some day I make it happen again with Swedish language.

[@SilentJaguar68]

Thats a nice point about the investment and going back to a language you worked hard on in the past. I'm currently learning Portuguese, and I've been wanting to go back to Romanian and Russian. especially Russian since I wasn't able to get that language to as high a level as Romanian. So now I can feel a bit better that it's not like starting totally behind since I won't have lost as much)) Большое спасибо Стив!

[@MrDidymus88]

Thank you, Steve!! I enjoyed listening to you speak. Encouraging.

[@ytang8158]

I think you are right. I can pick up the dialect which I learned many years ago and never use it for many years. By the way, I like the way you talk about the language, full of common sense.

[@paulwalther5237]

Before I clicked on this I was thinking I wonder what Steve does to maintain his languages because God knows I don’t maintain mine. 😂. And I worry about it sometimes. Like Steve says, I know they’re still kind of there in case I ever want to go back to them but there’s a chance that I may never go back to them. I think that’s ok. Like anything else in life the experiences I had and enjoyed learning those languages makes it way worth it and if I decide to just keep learning new languages instead of “maintaining” or brushing up old ones that’s ok. I’m just fascinated with Asia right now for some reason and can’t be motivated to immerse in the European languages I used to enjoy a lot.

[@egwpisteuw]

This is my experience as well. The patterns are imprinted in your brain. When you go back to a language you have learned but have not used in a while, it is very easy to get it back and surpass your previous level.

[@learnalanguagewithleslie]

I find this topic/theme very interesting. It's why I've limited myself to learning "only" 5-6 languages. I already understand 4 reasonably well (English, Spanish, Russian and Italian). But I already feel like my brain is full because sometimes it takes me a while to think of ENGLISH words that I haven't used in some time! I never thought that would happen, but it has. Also my english spelling has become atrocious! Anyway, I just don't think I have time to maintain more than 5 other additional languages. Spanish was my first second language and I don't put much effort into it because I lived in Spain (Canary Islands) for 8 years. I don't think I'll forget it in a hurry. And I do try to recall Spanish words and phrases now and then. All I have really done is watch Moneyheist, that's it. Next, I have put 3 years of daily effort into studying Russian (and it was hard). I enjoy it. It's the language I have put the most effort into recently. Italian almost feels like I am cheating because it is so similar to Spanish. And I studied that for 2 years alongside Russian (well it was staggered by one year). I'm currently starting to watch a few Italian tv series. Which is good, because I left it for a few months and I was already starting to lose it. I also decided to attempt Finnish, "just for fun". There aren't all that many TV shows in Finnish with subtitles (that I know of). So I watch what I can. I don't expect to ever get very far, but I find it really fun anyway. What I'll probably do is watch a series in Italian, then when that finishes, watch one in Finnish. At least, that's the plan. Lastly I am starting to learn Japanese. It worries me because I know it's going to be difficult. I don't know if I'll have enough free time to watch series in ~5 languages. Once I've put that much effort into it, I really don't want to forget any of them!😧 At one stage I was interested in more languages like perhaps persian and/or portuguese, but I've decided to just scale it back and to focus on 4 or 5 languages for a while (like a decade). My plan is to continue to do Russian daily (and now Japanese) and then alternate between Italian and Finnish for a while. That way it's only three per day.🤕

[@timothydouglas9474]

It helps if your lifestyle/job involves the use of languages, i.e. if you can integrate languages into your everyday life.

[@valentina_fantasy]

Many thanks indeed! It's the question that bothered me and frustrated, prevented from going further in learning languages - Why to spend such time and take great efforts if as some time passes, the language will be forgotten/lost. You helped me a lot to find a correct answer. So now I am sure will re-activate my German, which I learnt at the University and much forgot, in addition to learning Turkish. Of course, with LingQ. MANY THANKS INDEED! BRAVO!!!

[@annap1871]

Polish movies are often weird. In some, people use bizarre language. That is why we never watch them (in Poland). If you have some questions about learning polish, don't hesitate to ask me. I'm a big fan of your videos.

[@elisabeth3254]

Thank you for being so honest! I agree with everything you said! I know 15 languages and you made me feel better about getting worse at some of those. Nevertheless, I'll try to find a way to stop that decaying process

[@jernyarias9269]

Honestly, You inspire me to learn new languages...thank you so much.

[@omarcosve]

This was a great insight, thank you

[@neilkendall5499]

The best way to maintain all the languages one speaks is, in my experience, to use them as much as possible in your everyday life, to integrate them into your life and live part of your life through each of them. That means speaking, reading, writing and listening in all the languages you speak. If you do this for long enough, they will go into your long term memory and you will never forget them. You may get a bit rusty if you don't use them for a while, but you'll soon get back to a high level if you start using them a lot again.

[@nirvanaahmed900]

في انتظار رؤيتك تتحدث باللغة العربية😍 سلام من مصر

[@osonhodeleon]

You're a great inspiration. A true polyglot.

[@ESCNOR-ge1nc]

Your Arabic is great

[@user-cd7lp2fj2l]

I can speak some english . And I really enjoy the moment when I understand whatever in Enlish . I like the way I speak in English . I do it for sheer enjoyment. As an ordinary chinese guy , I find my life is unusual when I try my best to express anther version of myself in a foreign language.

[@joxheunfff100]

„when I try to express another version of myself”. I couldn’t agree more :) I love that my personality somehow seems to change a little bit, depending on the language that I use at that moment! Cool to see, that other people feel the same way!

[@efebayndr888]

You speak fluent already:)

[@annaromanova1233]

Such an interesting idea! I have never heard anything like that before. Thank you for sharing with us ❤️

[@CN_show]

Good advice, I had some doubts before.

[@Sapphireia]

Dina videor är alltid lika insiktsfulla! Tack Steve! Jag håller på att lära mig turkiska och min italki-lärare sade att jag hade bra koll på grammatik och uttal men dålig hörförståelse och litet ordförråd, så nu har jag skaffat premiumkonto på Lingq! Ser fram emot att se hur mycket jag kommer att förstå om några månader! PS. Ett sätt att hålla igång sina språkkunskaper kan ju vara att läsa kommentarer på olika språk haha

[@Thelinguist]

Tack för din vänliga kommentar. Jag tyckte om att läsa den på svenska och skulle gärna läsa mer svenska. Lycka till på din turkiska på LingQ. försök att lyssna på ministories även om och om igen, för att förbättra din lyssnande förståelse.

[@lucianodomingues2290]

Great video teacher!

[@nobbb890ggg]

Great attitude !

[@melekpolyglot5387]

l really agree with learning languages investing yes maybe for now I don't use it but l believe in future will definitely help me

[@evelic]

Great philosophy.

[@artiesolomon3292]

I like the encouraging words and maybe some day I can go back to Hebrew and Hungarian sounds which are in the past.

[@JohnPaulCauchi]

Steve, can you make one of those classic polyglot videos "Speaking in 20 different languages" where you introduce yourself and speak a little about your life and language-learning in all of your languages :D that's how you get millions of views haha

[@gabrielenglish7341]

Nice

[@japanese-english-vlog]

I dream to become a bilingual tourist guard volunteer after the pandemic’ ending.毎日自宅でセルフトークと奮闘中50代です。自由自在楽しく英語の練習は続けられると思います。

[@wolfscott306]

Very young and handsome! How do you maintain it !?

[@witekzak]

Greetings from Poland, Steve! When are you coming over? And what was the film you wife watched? 😁

[@Parso77]

The analogy I use is that it is similar to apps on a smartphone. You have some apps that you are actually using; others that are running in the background currently; others on your phone but not running; and still others that you once had but would have to make the effort to download again if you wanted to use them immediately. Not that I ever had anything like 21 apps to start with, mind :)

[@samykiani944]

For me it's painful to see that my level dropped significantly in a language. Especially if I put a lot if work and time into it. As a consequence of that I decided to limit the number of new languages I learn so I can have enough time to maintain the others. I'm currently learning my 6th and 7th language. I will probably stop at 8.

[@timothydouglas9474]

And I also find that I learn things better the second time round - some dishes are more tasty if recooked, like Polish Bigos :)

[@martynazurawska1497]

Steve, czytanie po polsku przynosi najlepsze efekty - mam nadzieję, że w przyszłości zechcesz wrócić do naszego pięknego języka! :) It's nice to hear that people watch Polish movies on Netflix. To be honest, I prefer the French ones. :)

[@annasamek5179]

Hi Steve! I hope this will make you feel better about your Polish: I am a native Polish speaker, living currently in the US, and this year I had watched the movie "World on Fire" on PBS where some actors spoke Polish, and I could not understand what they were saying !!!: I don't know what it is: my speakers are poor, the actors mumble, sound mixing is weird... I really could not understand... So, just because you can't hear what the actors in a movie are saying, doesn't mean you don't know the language.

[@yourfirstsecondlanguage4782]

I think I’ve pretty much lost Greek and Italian to the point where I can no longer say I ‘speak’ either at all, though I was never that good to begin with. Hopefully like muscle memory it’s there somewhere

[@learnwithdavid4539]

1:35 Talk to a lawyer? Yes legal terms are generally Latin and you can easily understand them, but daily casual conversations are so different

[@dodgermartin4895]

I'd like to know why I can pass the B-2 French DELF test, but have trouble putting together a coherent gramtical sentence in an oral conversation ... I can pull a book off the shelf and translate it into French... its like doing Algebra, rearange the words, putting the pronouns in French order... but can not say the same sentences on the fly in a live conversation... perhaps we can do a video about that.

[@amazingemrys2939]

If u did that where u never only spoke one language but implemented multiple and switched them every time

[@michaelrespicio5683]

As an enjoyment learner who learns so many languages that it's hard to maintain them all, given that we can always go back and improve in a language anytime, that still begs the question - why invest so much time knowing you'll forget some of it like other languages? Eventually you'll have to leave the Middle Eastern languages which means letting them get rusty over the course of months if not years, all while learning other languages. I think for enjoyment learners who want to learn lots of languages, time is better spent on building a foundation in multiple languages so they can go back to improve AND this way they're not missing opportunities because at least they know something when watching a movie or meeting a native randomly, which is certainly better than nothing. By watching a movie or conversing in a language you're rusty in, you won't get much anyway

[@michaelrespicio5683]

Example: investing so much time into Middle Eastern languages knowing full well they will get rusty overtime, then meeting a Vietnamese speaker tomorrow and knowing nothing in the language because you never had a base. To some extent, we learn languages to create opportunities and prepare for them at the same time. If you want to learn lots of languages and you meet a native of a language you don't know, that should be motivating to some extent. Imagine meeting lots of Vietnamese speakers and never bothering to learn some of the language. You're constantly missing opportunities by doing nothing

[@amazingemrys2939]

I always wondered if say u had children u wanted to teach them languages an exercise I always wanted to play is every day or week at least in the house hold u made them speak and write one language one week or day and just kept switching it up one week English the other Japanese the next French so on

[@brilmakeup]

No entendí nada. Porque hablo español

[@muhilan8540]

jajajaja estas aprendiendo ingles?

[@arnoldsuarez6718]

Steve es tremendo. Sigue su canal. Él tiene muchos videos en español😊

[@screamtoasigh9984]

So ask someone to add Spanish subtitles.

[@redwood3723]

Spanish - English Whatsapp Group: chat.whatsapp.com/BlUzrtllVAzAn5KLDUnprq

[@rafihandrian]

hi steve.. i have a question to ask, really love lingq, been using it a lot and got a lot of lingqs under my belt, but i wonder if i had to review all the lingqs or not? it's becoming too overwhelming for me to review it all, instead i just try to read more and adding more lingqs without reviewing it at all, what's your opinion on that? thanks

[@Thelinguist]

Yes, I rarely review my LingQs. But I will do a video about how I use the vocabulary section. Stay tuned.

[@alexwhite3830]

I don't bother with them, if I read enough I memorize lingqs by just seeing them again. You see the same word several times and eventually, it just sticks to your brain

[@murataubakir8437]

Me: have learned only English and learns French. *worries af* Steve: has learned 20 languages *maintaining?? We don't do that here*

[@dukekenny9340]

Reading

[@thirdworldpolyglot2095]

Hi Steve! I wanted to ask, do you know the work of Jiddu Krishnamurti?

[@stangrzymala]

So what did you watch? Which movie? Cheers from Poland:) I have family in Brantford.

[@ahmedsaleh7904]

Do you have the Urdu language available in LinqQ ?

[@Thelinguist]

After our LIngQ 5.0 rewrite we will add both Urdu and Hindi. Mini-stories are being recorded now.

[@EtoBazaPacani]

Hello

[@catboy721]

Steve -- you said you'd put the livestream info the description, right?

[@elizabethlebel9239]

It's there :)

[@chokrihamouda9114]

It's quite impossible to maintain many languages at the same time. Learning more than five or six languages doesn't make any sense because you're going to lose those you don't maintain. So it's much better to learn fewer languages at a pretty advanced level than learning many and ending up with just a few and a lot of frustration.

[@meari1581]

I'm trying to learn Urdu or Hindi . Can anyone give me a channel teaching one of these languages ?!

[@Thelinguist]

We hope to have Hindi and Urdu at LingQ after we complete LingQ 5.0 rewrite but it is taking a while.

[@meari1581]

@@Thelinguist Thank you for your answer .💜💜

[@jorgeromera3861]

You are a human being, Steve. The nearest example of polyglot at your level is Al Pacino in "The Devil's Advocate", but then he is not human...

[@olesiaklein9212]

I agree with you Steve. When I was a child my father made me watch animated series in German. Just that. When I started learning German as an adult, at 36, it was much much easier then learning English. It's really incredible.

[@celinaduguay6484]

I'm trying to learn Polish but I have no idea how to learn the language. I only speak English (I'm from Canada) and Polish is the first foreign language that I want to learn. My goal with Polish is to be able to hold basic conversations/communicate with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins in Poland (they only speak Polish). If anyone speaks Polish (and English) and would like to help me, let me know.

[@tschewm1353]

Do try this. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGStYpV9jdJjaJI That's how Steve started with his Polich

[@Thelinguist]

I always recommend realPolish.pl and of course our mini-stories at Lingq.

[@casper9029]

Polish is very easy. It's very flexible. You don't have to be even good at grammar to communicate! You can make loads of mistakes and people will understand you! Unlike in english! Trust me, I am a native speaker of Polish ;)

[@mohammadmahdi7223]

نگران نباش رفیق.من میتونمکمکت کنم

[@sajza1728]

Your Persian has fallen off?! You haven’t had someone to talk the language with?

[@Thelinguist]

i'm doing a lot of listening and reading and that is enough for me at this time.

[@sajza1728]

@@Thelinguist whenever you wanted to talk to someone in Farsi I’m super happy to talk to you for free. I don’t need money, just to make friend.👍🏻

[@dawidthedumpling]

To jest polski komentarz, którego szukasz.

[@VB-nr3po]

You just try to speak positively of your experience with languages. But, to look at it from the negative point of view, you have simply lost a lot of time for nothing, for something you don't need and probably will never need. The point is if you enjoyed that time. I think you didn't. Learning languages is pretty hard. But for you it is profitable, because you have a youtube channel and make money of your polyglot view. But for other people, which are watching you, what can be the reason to learn languages? From my personal experience I can say if you don't see and don't understand how you are going to use knowledges that you acquire, then you will not use them at all. And it is relevant to any knowledge, not only languages.

[@mckcheezy835]

This guy does no age, watched a vide from 8 years then this only diffrence is arabic