I learned 93% of Spanish in one day

[@daysandwords]

Thanks for watching! Get the same awesome deck of flaschards in Spanish or another language here: Spanish deck: refold.link/refold-es1k-lamont The sounds of Spanish deck: refold.link/refold-essounds-lamont Japanese deck: refold.link/refold-jp1k-lamont Korean deck: refold.link/refold-ko1k-lamont French deck: refold.link/refold-fr1k-lamont German deck: refold.link/refold-de1k-lamont Italian deck: refold.link/refold-it1k-lamont English (in Spanish) deck: refold.link/refold-en-mil-lamont Sounds of English (in Spanish) deck: refold.link/refold-ensounds-lamont Japanese (in Spanish) deck: refold.link/refold-jp-mil-lamont Korean (in Spanish) deck: refold.link/refold-ko-mil-lamont German (in Spanish) deck: refold.link/refold-de-mil-lamont Italian (in Spanish) deck: refold.link/refold-it-mil-lamont All decks: refold.link/refold-decks-lamont

[@k.5425]

Lamont, within those 6 hours, what would you recommend doing? I'm a complete beginner in Korean and haven't yet incorporated Anki into my learning yet (I'll do so later). I have a schedule/plan for the day which should roughly add up to me interacting with Korean 3 hours a day, but most days I end up not doing and end up doing way less.

[@Ripcurlgrl]

Lamont, this refold link isn't working anymore - any ideas?

[@daysandwords]

@CRASSrules - yeah they revamped their system, I should have a new one within a day or so. Sorry about the slow reply - I'm actually much less likely to see replies to comments than I am to see new comments.

[@ChrlzMaraz]

I'm getting a 404 on this link

[@jhjhjh3931]

Hi i want to buy the words but I get a 404 error!

[@Refold]

For anyone watching, if you want to convert your cards into sentence cards like he did, there's a much easier way to do it. You don't need to copy and paste each word individually. If you open the "card" formatting, you can add a variable to the front of the card {{Example Sentence}}, and it'll automatically show up on every card. - Ben

[@brizzstudies1570]

I’ll be using this tip thanks ✍️

[@kdc.archive]

Thanks!

[@lynntfuzz]

That will save your wrist from having to cut and paste so much

[@daysandwords]

Yeah, and for the record (for those reading), I knew you could do this but I was scared of messing up the formatting and I also thought that I might only need like 400 with the changed formatting. It didn't occur to me until night time that I should have done this earlier.

[@paulwalther5237]

… what did he do if he didn’t do this?😂. I have to watch the video again. I was driving when I listened to it.

[@religdeb]

Mate I'm British but I've lived in Spain for years and have spoken Spanish now for over 10 years. I'm completely fluent and really looking forward to your first video where I can hear you speak Spanish for the first time :D

[@frankserpico9450]

I'm Latin American. I speak both English and Spanish natively and I'm very curious as well

[@FOXMAN09]

I'm Stewart and I speak fhshwjd. I look forward to ajbdhdhd as well.

[@conorx3]

@@muffinberg7960 Be curious

[@yngknj]

@@FOXMAN09😂😂😂😂

[@pathologicpicnic]

Graham?

[@poleag]

All the learning research I've seen shows that spacing out your learning over time is far more effective than cramming your study into a short amount of time. In the long term, you spend less time studying and you retain the information longer. That said, I think we need to consider that we're not robots that can just program a long-term schedule and execute it flawlessly. Human passions wax and wane. In the beginning of a language learning journey, our passion is often at a peak. I like to take advantage of this swell of motivation and do as much practice as I possibly can whenever I start something new.

[@bethb5915]

That's a great point and smart to do!

[@daysandwords]

Yeah... Obviously, 20 words a day for 50 days would be much more sensible... but the other thing is, it would mean making two more videos to gain the same kind of traffic that this one might gain, which would in turn mean less time for Spanish.

[@J.S.3259]

Pomodoro Method is the shit

[@daysandwords]

My problem with Pomodoro is that it has you artificially stopping for no good reason other than the clock saying so. I tend to be on Stephen's (aka Coffezilla) side when he says that if he finds a state of flow he can go for 5 or 6 hours. OK not with language study, as it's a little more intense... but certainly 3 hours. I'm pretty sure someone basically just came up with these 25 minutes on 5 minutes off rules.

[@agatastaniak7459]

Depends on situation. Some people due to professional reasons have to get down to cramming in a very short amount fo time. But yes, agreed, this is exhausting. No doubt about. As for this experiment to get credible results it should be repeated in a longer span of time in accordance with retention check-ups as suggested by well- known and relatively well-tested forgetting curve. Personally I do not love this way of learning vocabulary, however it may seem time-effective just becuase it's to boring for the brain to score high in terms of rapid and permanent transfer of new input to long-term memory and this is what real retention and language learning should be about. SInce I'm not interested in how high are score in some gamification game. All I care about is how effectively I can get to near native level in my target language. If I have to give it more time, I give it more time if I may afford it. But I'm not really interested in methods that will get me stuck well below C1 level. To everything like this I will always say "thank you very much, not so interested". But for me aany new language is a practical tool, so well, my expecations differ from expactations of holiday makers. For them cramming like this maybe might be of value. For me, yeah, when I need it but as someone really passionate about languages not the most effective method I know and not the most engaging. At times I literally feel my brain falling asleeping in the middle of such training sessions. As for passion being at the peak at the very start, I think people who never reach fluency in their target foreign language have this problem from such thinking,putting to much trust in this passion. Would any of them would do so if let's say this would be their job or school? Would they wait for the moment of a passionate inspiration to get anything done and to make any progress? I bet the answer would be: NO! it's the same with foreign langauges. Just accept it's a process, sometimes it's the last thing you wanna do but you know you have to do it daily. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass and sometimes it's utterly frustrating, just accept it. Anything that makes people gain any tangible results- job, studies, school, gym, any training, language learning just needs time, repetitive effort, learning by constant trial and error, getting tired, getting annoyed, going through periods of being bored with it as well as through phases of enjoying it. It's just normal learning in order to get tangible effects thing. There is little diffrence between bulking up at gym and this. Having said so I think I will take break from German and Spanish now given that French, Italian and Swedish do deserve some love it. If my life and work would be any less hetic I would love to add Swahili and Hindi to the mix but as for it probably will have to wait till summer. ;-) As for cramming, professionals are given 2 years tops to achieve C1 in a new one, so yeah, obviously professionals as adults are cramming. But other experts in other fields are also cramming. All adults know what it is like to go to a 2 day training with curriculum normlally covered within a year and someone at work epxecting you to pass some exam and to get some certification within next 2 weeks or 2 months tops since completion of such training. ;-) Nothing new to adults really. we simply do not like to discuss it in public.

[@pynchones]

If you want a good vocab test, I would suggest the Vocabulary tests of Uni Leipzig. One test takes 30 minutes and they have tests for several languages for both active and passive vocab.

[@boznok]

I’ve learned that the quickest way to improve your language skills is through a montage. How did I not think of this earlier?

[@daysandwords]

Hahaha, I know right!?

[@mayoroftrash6667]

this inspired me to set a challenge of learning 500 new japanese words today. I only ended up learning about 110 but thats way more than i would've had i not seen this video, and also way more than i've ever learnt in a day so big thanks for making this video! I love challenges like this that seem impossible, and sometimes might be but its fun to try anyway!

[@rakiyt3876]

Knowing both the meaning and reading of that many kanji must be shit damn

[@canchero724]

Attempting this in Japanese is madness.. Wow respect!

[@karadx950]

I did that too about two years ago, I learned 70 - 100 words per day in Japanese. It was because back then, I hated the thought of having a deck for more than three months. Now I've calmed down a lot and I'm learning 20 - 35 per day. I'm not sure how I used to do it, I can hardly do my reviews now lol

[@nsevv]

I think it is quite a good strategy to just go through 1000+ words as early as possible. I notice some just stick after just seeing it once and other don't, leaches. So I think it is good idea to learn all the words that will stick around as soon as possible.

[@monsterthenergydrink]

@@karadx950 youre a monster for that, when I was actively studying Chinese I would do 30ish words a day and on saturday mornings do 100 words and after just a couple weeks of that it was over 2 hours on anki to clear the day each day which took a number of weeks with no new words to get down to a more reasonable time

[@samseveryoneenglish2275]

i've been a full time language teacher for 22 years, and just found you recently because of the video reply you did to Cristian Canguro. love the channel. wish i wasn't teaching 40 hours a week, i might be able to put some effort into my video like you do. keep up the great work, mate.

[@MBTIinRealLife]

It's so cool to know that in this kinda niche subculture of language learning nerds there's someone who does such experiments and makes it public on KZbin. It allows us to relate to each other.

[@ThatTrueCJ201]

I did something similar with 200 cards a day for an entire week. Worth it 💪

[@doonspriggan9616]

This has actually inspired me to try something like this myself. Just go crazy at my Spanish for an entire day.

[@beorlingo]

100 is a lot, but totally doable. 1000 though, wow! Very ambitious!

[@lazstan]

Probably my favorite language learning channel... I'm born bilingual English Hungarian... Started Spanish for real at age 50 and 2.5 years later i haven't missed a day... I watch Steve Kaufman and krashen and Lindsey and you and Luca and Olly and like 3 others for inspiration... Yours is the most real ...for me.. thanks... Of course french farsi and Portuguese are next

[@nsevv]

Wow! Nice, it is rare to find people who can speak from birth especially 2 languages.

[@maja2197]

@@nsevv yeah I've never met a bilingual newborn or monolingual either

[@mateerdokozi123]

És most hogyan megy a spanolod?

[@LlibertarianGalt]

It's true when you push your boundaries everything before that point seems a lot easier. I used to work 12 hour shifts 4 - 5 days a week, once I stopped, going into 9 hour shifts was like a cake-walk, felt like I was cheating the system.

[@vilo159]

"When there's something I don't like doing but that I should do more of, the key is not to 'try to do more of it.' For me, the key is to set aside a period of time in which I do nothing but that thing... Doing things that you think you might not like or might be really hard is primarily about the way you frame them and the environment you set up for them." This is my biggest takeaway from this video. I can think of tons of things in my life that would benefit from this kind of structure, this gives me lots of ideas and motivation to go tackle some things I've been putting off.

[@daysandwords]

It's really powerful. The hardest part is finding the time, e.g. my yard/outer house is in terrible condition but it'll take like 2 days to fix and I can't make a video out of it haha.

[@vilo159]

@@daysandwords Haha true. For me it's professional development stuff, like coding. I know improving my coding would be super useful for my job and career, but it's not something I ever have time at work to improve and I just haven't been motivated enough to do it for very long after work. Just dedicating a whole Saturday to it would make it fun, and build some momentum that would make me want to keep going. I think one key to making that day successful is having a plan, if you start your 24 hours with no clue where to begin then it's gonna be tough. For this you had a clear goal, get through a specific Anji deck. "Get better at coding" and "fix up the yard" both needs more structure to make them less icky. Then again, if you have the whole day, you'll kinda figure it out as you go and a couple hours in you'll probably have a good idea of where you want to end up.

[@speaking_of_languages]

Hey man, just wanted to say this is an absolutely incredible video. It's a great idea for a video, but I must say it's really the editing and structure of the video that made it so incredible. I was absolutely hooked all the way through, by the end I couldn't believe nearly half an hour had passed (and I would consider myself someone with a relatively short attention span). The interesting facts and shots directly addressing the camera interspersed with shots of the "action" (you actually doing Anki), as well as B-roll, but with a high-quality voiceover. It just felt like a really seamless experience, something I'd expect from a KZbinr much bigger than yourself. No doubt, with videos of this quality though, you will soon be part of that "bigger KZbinrs" group. I've been dabbling with making KZbin videos myself ever since I was 16 (2016), and only recently made the commitment to myself to really give it a proper shot with this current channel I have (the one I'm commenting with). My videos are nowhere near the quality of yours yet, but I will definitely be saving this video in a private playlist you have inspired me to make, of videos that represent the level of quality I would like to achieve someday. Also awesome to hear you're Australian (I am too), as I don't see much of us in the language learning space here on KZbin. Hopefully my comment here doesn't appear too over-the-top, I just rarely find myself so absorbed by KZbin content nowadays so I really felt the need to say something, especially since your channel is in the ball-park of what I would still consider a "smaller channel"--I thought since you might not be seeing the positive feedback in the numbers yet, I'd really like to give it to you in the form of comments. Hopefully you are seeing the feedback in the numbers, though, and if you aren't, I'm sure you will soon. Ok that's it from me haha.

[@virtheon]

It's been really fun to watch your videos get better and better through the years. You're honestly the best language learning youtuber I know of.

[@daysandwords]

Thanks so much, I'm always trying to make them better.

[@midcolumbiains]

I love the idea (13:45) about adding the example sentence (in the target language) to the front of the card. Sorta makes the card a version of learning the word in context. I would keep the English version of the sentence only on the back side.

[@michaelrobinson2069]

Hi Lamont. It was thanks to you that I am studying Spanish via Speakly. It seems that learning the 4,000 most frequently used words, which will enable me to have a normal conversation, is great incentive to keep going.

[@hajimesenpai7996]

Putting the example sentences on front of the cards is an absolute game changer......I'm going to try that out!!! That sounds helpful!

[@dancinggiraffe6058]

I started watching your video when I was already very sleepy, and somewhere near the end of it I actually did start falling asleep. In my pseudo-dream, all the numbers you were saying changed to describing reps of some physical feat such as push-ups. I started thinking, “I could never do 340 push-ups in that amount of time!“ Then I woke up and watched that section again, and it made much more sense that you were talking about words. 😄

[@dylloz6735]

I've been learning Japanese for over a year now but lately felt like i've been slacking off a little bit. This video motivated me to keep the grind going!

[@MonolingualBeta]

The idea pf resetting your limits was quite interesting.I'm currnetly in the position when i have to tremendously increase my level of comperhension in the Kazakh language, the last language you'd ever call easy, and i noticed that after doing 300-400 anki card a day, the regular 80 seem like nothing.

[@meganmccaferty]

Amazing. Thanks for your hard work! You are by far the best language learning channel on KZbin. Your dedication shows.

[@sasasaiha8185]

Might try this with german refold, got a lot of enjoyment from watching this and hearing your thoughts

[@KonstantinYN]

Thanks for the music at the beginning of the video, very beautiful. Now I'm going to watch the main part

[@CouchPolyglot]

Hola Lamont, a partir de ahora voy a escribir los comentarios en español, espero que te sirva para practicar 😄 Todo el mundo habla de Anki, pero no lo he usado nunca todavía. Me da un poco de pereza porque no me gusta mucho aprender vocabulario con listas y cosas así... Pero gracias por hacer este experimento, me parece muy interesante 😊 Aunque pueda ser aburrido estudiar de modo tan intensivo, seguro que te ha servido y es impresionante que estés ya leyendo libros, enhorabuena 👏👏👏

[@daysandwords]

Thank you so much Laura! Honestly, I COULD understand everything ("a partir de ahora" I figured out from context... from now on, right?) - and the last word I will have to look up in a second... I think I understand everything else, but I won't try to write in Spanish. 😬 I'm only able to read very slowly and I miss a LOT... but I can follow along in some way... like a 5 year old can watch a romantic comedy and sort of get the idea I guess. Anyway, I will keep enjoying your comments in Spanish!

[@HeidiSue60]

Gracias por el comentario español. Aprendo para hace cincos semanas, y aprecio la práctica.

[@CouchPolyglot]

@@HeidiSue60 de nada :) Escribes muy bien si solo hace cinco semanas que aprendes el idioma, sigue así :D

[@SomedayKorean]

Loved the silly 80's montage! I like the idea of resetting your normal -- jet lag forced me into a natural early-bird schedule that turned into daily life, but I've lost it a bit this past week. Hoping to regain an earlier schedule before the next semester starts up so I'm not always so tired at work. Maybe I'll tackle two goals at once and also reset my normal to include much more language exposure in a day. :)

[@clairejoy1053]

Thanks for the effort you put into this 😃 I really didn't mind the length of the video either. It was good to have something long enough to do a chore while watching

[@andrewjgrimm]

Having several things in “watch later” is useful for chores. KZbin will play them all.

[@deepblue188]

Learning a foreign language by yourself mustn't make you feel ridiculous. Learning a language by yourself means to be able to solve problems, to stimulate your brain cells, to improve self esteem and, last but not least, expand your knowledge. I am teaching myself Turkish and Romanian. After learning the basics, I keep on repeating words and phrases in my free time and I do not feel ridiculous at all! Many people say that learning a foreign language nowadays is a complete nonsense, because we've got apps that do all the job in no time, but people that have a functioning brain know that most of the translating apps are useless and do not translate correctly. Keep up with the good job!❤️

[@shamicentertainment1262]

Even if they do translate perfectly, I don’t think it’s at all comparable translating by an app what you want to say as opposed to genuinely speaking with a native speaker. They’d feel more engaged speaking and the connection would be more genuine.

[@portraitofalion]

Great to see the extra production quality.

[@sarahkorean3984]

That was epic, I can't believe you actually got through them all! Looks like ES1K doesn't have images yet, but it will soon! That should be a big aid to memory too. What I most want to comment on is the sentence on the front format. I totally agree with you that even for beginners, the front of the card should have a sentence. Which is why the Refold Korean deck version 2 which is coming out soon will have the sentences on the front *and* will be entirely 1T, *and* it considers grammar as a target as well, not just vocab. So there should only ever be one new thing per card. I'm part of the team building that deck and it is almost ready, hope you will consider checking it out when you are back from Mexico! It has been a labor of love!

[@daysandwords]

Ah ok, yeah images are cool. I use ShareX to add them quickly in mining.

[@nsevv]

Are they doing similar for French deck?

[@xelad1235]

My Spanish is now advanced and I think it sped up my progress to learn 50-100 new words a day for a time when i was A2, i think i did that for about 2 months

[@Tinyy-Bubbles]

That's insane! Did you follow a certain list of words or added words by reading/ watching TV/ etc? I should do this for French. I'm lower advanced but with an incredibly simple vocabulary ...

[@xelad1235]

@@Tinyy-Bubbles i used a list of 2000 words and also read a book and looked up words!

[@amerikanskdansker8771]

Good stuff Lamont, I' d really like to see you continue using Anki regularly...perhaps a video explaining an easy way to mine sentences from immersion content? I'm trying to get myself motivated to start doing just that myself, but could use a little push to get going. Your content always seems to give me a good kick in the rear!

[@fuwa7358]

"an easy way to mine sentences from immersion content?" Migaku

[@amerikanskdansker8771]

@@fuwa7358 Ya, I've started screwing around with Migaku...but the setup is kind of tough for me. I'm not a big computer guy, and I'm a lazy language learner :) Cant figure out how to get a dictionary loaded, I'm learning Danish which is not fully supported by MIgaku.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah Migaku is definitely not the easiest thing to set up. I haven't watched it but Ben (Refold) recently did a 30 minute video on Anki so it's probably got some of the tips he gave me, in that video.

[@wmjessemiller]

I need to save this and copy your setjup

[@chandlerscadden6717]

Really interesting. I’ve been using refold to learn Spanish for about 6 months or so and am considering doing this now as I’ve kind off fallen off with Anki but probably still have like 400 words I don’t know just due to lack of exposure after I stopped… great video!

[@Clarabella-cl6gb]

This video inspired me to just say "fuck it" and learn 500 new Italian words that I was planning on studying longterm (seeing 4 new words a day, the way you explained it in your video about Anki). I'm glad I did it, and afterwards I simply carried on as usual, just with those 500 cards more in my repertoire. I'm planning on getting the french refold deck and doing something similar, maybe 300 words during my next train ride home. Thank you for this video Lamont, you're my biggest inspiration!

[@jaydenwise30]

Been waiting for this one

[@adriantepesut]

Spanish is by far my strongest foreign language and although I did not have anki when I started it was nostalgic seeing a lot of these words flash across the screen. I know you’re going to get to b2 within at least as soon as two years and at 3 or 4 you’ll be struggling with Borges and Cervantes

[@daysandwords]

Well given I can slowly read novels now I don't think it should take longer than a year haha (to reach B2).

[@Learninglotsoflanguages]

Wow, nice. Interesting experiment. I won't be doing something so extreme, but I signed up for a Korean proficiency test that's happening in 2 months and based on going through example questions with a native speaker, I severely lack vocabulary. So I ordered a book that does 30 vocabulary words a day so that in 30 days you learn 900 words. Will be curious to see if that tied with lots of input will get me enough vocal to pass a certain level on the test. Actually I've done something similar in Japanese. 500 words in 30 days and I still remember a vast majority and was so surprised by how much cramming those words in a short time. Been almost a year since I did that. So I do think these little bursts of big effort can be a good launching pad. Maybe I need to do this for Spanish. Send my husband with the kids on a trip XD

[@patchy642]

Compadre soy inglés pero llevo años viviendo en España y hablo español desde hace más de 10 años. Tengo dominio completo y mucha ilusión por ver tu primer vídeo donde te pueda escuchar hablar español por primera vez :D

[@jeffreybarker357]

Bought the ES1K deck after months of messing around on Anki trying to find a good one. Glad I did! And Quantized is cool. Anki is fine I guess but Quantized is just so easy to get started!

[@dylanalliata4809]

Well done video very thoughtful about the pros and cons of your approach.

[@Akab]

Oh god... I'm already at my limit with learning 20 words per day on my Japanese journey (any more and my retention will just go down the drain) but respect for your perseverance 😁

[@rashidah9307]

What an interesting, inspiring experiment to watch in such a well-done video! Thank you!

[@sevret313]

I'm finally inspired to go back to language learning, I won't do 1000 words in a day, but I do try a rapid pace as to catch up with everything I forgot during my long break.

[@julbombning4204]

Cool video! More videos about Spanish!

[@flanershat]

Yo no entiendo como rayos llegué aquí pero ajá, genial que puedas aprender español tan rapido y ojalá que ahora lo puedas hablar. Es un idioma divertido pero confuso cuando te das cuenta que en casi todos los paises lo hablamos diferente (unos más rapidos, otros más coloquiales o con diferente palabras), pero es entretenido, buena suerte con eso!

[@JPLowe]

That was very good man I enjoyed it, 80s montage and all👌🏽 Me encanta español Así que esto fue genial

[@mayflowermatriarch5284]

Very interesting, I will check out the refold to help with Russian, since I'm already using the story learning that you find helpful.

[@TheRussianGenius]

Love this video!!! Such a great absurd idea

[@Charlotte-ti2yk]

What an interesting video! I’m not a fan of intentional SRS generally (I like the ‘natural’ SRS we get from just reading), but I can completely see how something like this would be incredibly valuable at around an A2 ish level, even if just to make more complicated (aka interesting) content more comprehensible. I’m going to look in to something like this for my Turkish (not 1000 in a day though… but maybe 50-100 over a few weeks could be beneficial). I’m getting about two to three hours a day of Turkish in (an hour and a half of that is passive listening of content on repeat), but I still see that this could be a worthwhile exercise. If not, it’s only two weeks and I don’t have a deadline like you. I’m still doing about two hours of Swedish (all passive audiobook listening) though and I have a question: I’m guessing I’m a high B2. Not C1 yet though as I don’t speak enough to be at that level. I’m finding that I hear a word that I don’t know once but then never hear it again. I don’t do any ‘active’ Swedish study now, but you mentioned that you took some time and wrote words like that down… did I understand that right?

[@daysandwords]

From B2 Swedish to C1 I did Anki with sentence mining... I did the writing the words down at more like A2 but I thought I was B2 when I did that (I was wrong).

[@HK-cq6yf]

Setting aside one day to do all of it instead of regularly doing a little I feel this, right in my ADHD

[@declangodfrey]

Good work mate! Maybe I should look into getting pre-made flash card decks. I find whenever I make my own, the process of making them really helps me to learn the words without even reviewing them.

[@studyinginthedesert7690]

This is actually interesting! I think I'm now going to experiment with a 30 cards-a-day 2-3 day lifespan side deck for Japanese that'll also sit as a backlog of optional new cards for my main Japanese sentence deck. I agree that you do, on some weird level, have stored everything you've encountered.

[@daysandwords]

If you DIDN'T somehow store everything that's ever happened, then trying to learn anything would be pointless, when you think about... like if you fail a card 6 times and then the next 6 times you're confident with it, what was the difference? You obviously pick it up on some level, otherwise you'd just keep it failing it forever.

[@paulwalther5237]

How do you setup the 2 to 3 day per card lifespan?

[@studyinginthedesert7690]

@@paulwalther5237 I'm trying to use an old Migaku add on 'retirement' (you can still download it & the migaku website still has the instructions) but if I can't get it right I might just swoop in every few days and scoop them out by 'browsing' the deck, sorting by the card's interval & manually changing their deck.

[@zesttv4305]

I'm impressed with your effort and dedication to learning spanish because that's way too many anki cards to review in one day. The most that i did in one day was 300 anki cards in japanese and when i finished i was frazzled, now i do 15 anki cards every day and i see some progress because i am also doing immersion for 4 hours. Y bueno te deseo mucha suerte al aprender español.

[@natashacallis2736]

Been looking forward to your new video!! Great as always! 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 🇩🇰

[@daysandwords]

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching!

[@sicko_the_ew]

I see I forgot to make a comment last time I looked at this. Something that has helped me (to still not be able to speak French, but then I haven't put in the necessary hours) is reading a book very slowly. A "proper book" instead of something easy. The one I used was Madame Bovary, and it was way beyond my abilities - still is, actually. I had an English translation, and a Librivox narration in French. I forget the work flow, actually. I think it was first read a chapter in English, then tried to read that same chapter in French, aloud, then pick through, being careful to try to look up everything I didn't get, then play the audio book chapter, reading along with it silently (and with a finger on the pause button). After the chapter was done, I'd clean up all the notes, put new words and idioms on Anki, and then I think I might even have done yet another read through. Sounds tedious, but it just took a long time - like a year. I think it might be a bit like watching the same anime over and over again. What happens is you start to really "grok" the book. The attention to detail makes it really come alive in one's imagination. I might not have learned how to speak French from it, but I can see the sentier that Emma would walk down, down near the river, I can see Monsieur Homais and his cap, and I remember how they made the poor porter with the club foot submit to the operation that had piqued the curiosity of Homais - just to relate some of the fine detail that has a place almost among my own physical memories, as something almost physical. The trick is to just allow it to take as long as it's going to take, forget about when it'll one day all be over, and then just do what's possible to do in the circumstances of this current week, iteratively. I can't speak French, but my comprehension of French spoken carefully enough to get through to an idiot is reasonably good. If I click on a French video recommended by KZbin, I'll know what's going on - and even sometimes pick up on a nuance or two. Main thing is I've read that book, all nice and deep like that. And isn't that the point of learning a language - or one of the points? To experience the world through that way of looking at it. For French that's often something like "animated calm", for instance - a mode of being you don't often encounter in English - especially the brutalist version of English I live in. Extrapolating: Pick something that you feel might make learning the language worthwhile, and then take the time it's going to take to work through it. (Let it take as long as it takes, because things are going to take as long as they take. Everything takes as long as it takes - or longer, if you try to push it faster.) Oh shit, this comment has gotten out of hand. I should've just written, "this is a comment" or something like that. Sorry.

[@vendingservices8900]

Damn. I have averaged learning 40 words a week, past 10 weeks. You just kicked my ass

[@daysandwords]

40 words a week is good going though! Obviously what I did here (even if I really DID learn 1000 words, which I didn't) is not replicable long term. I think 20 words a day for a year would be super intense, but doable.

[@vendingservices8900]

@@daysandwords I’m learning the 40ish with Duolingo, so I think a lot of it is also conjugations and stuff. Probably closer to around 30, now that I think of it…. I’ve decided I’m okay learning at this pace, but I also need to develop more of a routine with reading Spanish short stories in morning, and will incorporate a version of your ‘50X Spider-Man’ viewing’ for myself, for night times’.

[@vendingservices8900]

@@daysandwords Despite your videos, I do feel you can become fluent with Duo, and I legit enjoy the platform. I feel the streak is great for keeping me accountable. I just can’t rely on it for comprehension of the vocabulary that it gives. That’s the mistake that so many make.

[@daysandwords]

I am not saying (and have never said) that Duolingo does nothing. Obviously, if one knows nothing, or very little, then the app will teach you SOMETHING. But you're NOT becoming fluent with Duolingo... *big breath* alone. You're not becoming fluent with Duolingo alone. Not even close to fluent. You're going to have to use other things... and if you do that, and you become fluent, that's fine... but I'm sick of people walking to the airport, flying over the ocean, and then telling me that they walked over the ocean. It's ridiculous.

[@vendingservices8900]

@@daysandwords Ha yeah. Vocabulary knowledge is what gives you the knowledge to start flying the plane. What you do with the knowledge is going to determine whether you ever reach conversational fluency.

[@fjlm24]

This is amazing, I was planning 1 annual leave day per month or every 6 weeks for a “super focussed” learning day - this video has totally inspired me to push ahead with that… and I bought the Spanish deck and got back on anki!

[@daysandwords]

Awesome! Are you raining your kid/kids in Spanish, or is that in a different language?

[@fjlm24]

@@daysandwords 🙈 very poor Spanish since we are a household of monolinguals but Netflix is always Spanish. I have every confidence though that it is possible and and by the time they are 5 we will be able to manage entire days in Spanish.

[@daysandwords]

Same! From what you're saying it sounds as though my Swedish is more advanced than your Spanish, but I do try to raise my younger one in Swedish, but it's still hard because although I can speak Swedish all the time, it often seems impractical when you've got to tell him not to run on the road or not to throw my mug down the stairs or whatever lecture it is for that day/morning/minute. But he understands quite a lot of Swedish and just recently even seems to be choosing it appropriately, as in, using it to say some things to me, but not to other people. I also TRY to keep content in Swedish but sometimes mum (my wife) ends up putting anything she can find on. I am hoping to get a video out about this in maybe a month or so. Keep it up in any case!

[@fjlm24]

@@daysandwords 🤣 noted “learn key phrases - do not throw that mug down the stairs!” That’s amazing though! I am def looking forward to that video

[@l.u.c.a.s.]

I'm a Spaniard with C2 English who's just getting started with Swedish. So we're basically linguistic (and geographical) antipodes :)

[@daysandwords]

Yes! Although I don't have C2 Swedish, and depending on what you mean by "just getting started", it's possible my Spanish is a bit better than your Swedish. It'd be good if that were the case because then my slightly better Spanish would make up for your English being better than my Swedish. Damn that just went a bit Inception-ish.

[@l.u.c.a.s.]

@@daysandwords Ha, you definitely speak better Spanish than I do Swedish, especially after what you did in this video! I also speak decent French tho, if that helps. By the way, do you have any strategies for practising your target language while on a plane? I have a long haul flight soon and I wanted to do a bit of learning. I'm thinking I'll probably just do passive learning since saying words aloud would be kinda awkward with so many people around

[@austinlang6946]

What’s up man. I got to a conversational level in Spanish in 1 year, still going obviously also at a very high level in American Sign Language, totally fluent. For Spanish I would really really really recommend Spanish with Paul’s structure course. Bc when you get to the more advanced grammar, the subjunctive and these type of things his approach to that is far superior than anything I’ve seen. No fluff, no acronyms just “you have phrases that will trigger the subjunctive” es bueno que, es importante que, es malo que etc etc. So if you take that approach you will handle to subjunctive 100 times better than having the typical acronym that you will see used that basically allows you to talk yourself into it and out of it with basically anything you could think of. He gives you a lot of verbs and gets you fully comfortable with the top ten verbs. As someone who got a 13 /100 on an English grammar test in school that uses proper grammar in Spanish there is no better structure course on the internet. Every course he has is fantastic, I did all of them. His basis is Michelle Thomas, that’s how you learn all the grammar…..I also spend 4 hours plus a day on Spanish, but that’s beside the point. The resource is sound, it will get you reading at an high intermediate level quickly bc the structure will make sense. I can recommend other stuff as well, but I would really suggest doing at least his structure course. Enjoy the journey!

[@austinlang6946]

Just like in couch polyglots comment she uses “es impresionante que” that will ALWAYS trigger the subjunctive. So in reference to my comment it’s really easy to build up a Catalog in your head of subjunctive uses…..there are some other ways spanish speakers use it creatively etc. Some things that only use it sometimes but Spanish with Paul covers those.

[@Legorreta.M.D]

Insanely admirable. I’m doing 3-4 hour of German a day, and like Spanish to you, German resembles nothing I know, so I understand the struggle. Sure, French helps with the similar order of sentences and similar conjugation, but it isn’t as similar to Spanish as say… Italian is, for example. Not easy at all. Well done!

[@daysandwords]

Cheers buddy!

[@maheshpun4804]

Doesn't German resemble English which you seem to speak

[@oisinmaguidhir2902]

You know you're cheap when you make anki cards of the vocab words you didn't know and were shown in this video instead of spending €20 on the anki deck.

[@daysandwords]

Haha in Sterling it's even less isn't it?

[@Adrián-f9z]

​@@daysandwordsI definitely do the same haha

[@distempr]

Great video, very inspiring, makes me want to up my game. Please do a Spanish novel recommendation at some point, with the level you think they are and a short review! I'd love to sink my teeth into a bit of reading while I keep on binging Dreaming Spanish.

[@stevencarr4002]

That sequence of lifting weights, and the weights were Spanish books was inspired! The boxing sequence gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'hitting the books'

[@FOXMAN09]

Thanks for gutting this out. I settled on the fact I'll never include flashcard reviews in my daily life. Especially when I found this research study which said "Participants viewed pictures of 2,500 objects over the course of 5.5 h. Afterward, they were shown pairs of images and indicated which of the two they had seen. The previously viewed item could be paired with either an object from a novel category, an object of the same basic-level category, or the same object in a different state or pose. Performance in each of these conditions was remarkably high (92%, 88%, and 87%, respectively), suggesting that participants successfully maintained detailed representations of thousands of images." I came to the conclusion that I have the patience to do massive single run through decks and then just trash them after because the chance I'll recognize a word (within reading at least) will be significantly higher if I just give it one chance to see it/remember it. My one and done decks never got past 150 so 1000 is quite a feat. I think I'll give a 1000 one a go soon but over 3 days instead of 1 day haha.

[@paulwalther5237]

I think we have a similar relationship with Anki. But I haven’t crammed 1000 new words in a day before I think I topped out at about 600. If you take the advice that you should do what you enjoy instead of forcing yourself to do what you hate then stuff like this makes more sense I think. I really enjoy cramming new vocabulary but I don’t like reviewing the old vocabulary I’ve seen before. Obviously I try to find a compromise but I really relate to this video.

[@SvengelskaBlondie]

"What's bigger than a ballpark" A big ballpark 🙂(id guess a stadium is the correct answer, there's one that fit 100.000 people, forgot where it's located but I remember it was rarely used due to how absurdly big it was).

[@Refold]

Let's GOOO!!

[@erenparla3869]

Refold you are the GOAT

[@durangoelmango]

A lot of hardcore users use controllers to do their Anki reps. Makes it a lot easier to rep cards.

[@spaceCowboy924]

I think it would be interesting to try this with the card in English and you have to translate into Spanish. Or if the deck had 2000 cards with both English to Spanish and Spanish to English. My German deck does that and I find that works much better for ability to recall.

[@johnlawrence3781]

Days of French and Swedish, In your experience, what foreign language are Swedes most likely to speak after English? French? A Swedish friend told me Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese are widely taught in schools.

[@daysandwords]

Hmm, it sort of depends what you mean. I think statistically the one that Swedes are most likely to SPEAK if they speak a 3rd one would be Arabic, but that's not so much because they want to learn it, rather it's because a lot of Swedes are born into Arabic speaking immigrant families. So let's not discount that but also, acknowledge it as not exactly what you're asking. EDIT: I will keep my original reply and then below show how Googling it made me look silly haha. After that it would close between French and German. French because French used to be a language of Sweden, which is still obvious in tonnes of words like "trottoar" (footpath), and "siffra" as mentioned in this video. It's also popular because it's geographically close and seen as classy. But German is also very common because the trade between Sweden and Germany is huge, and it's pretty easy to learn German if you're native language is Swedish. EDIT: OK here are the real results. It's not "close" between German and French... German seems to have almost three times as many. NOTE that this isn't a measure of third language LEARNT, this is just a measure of who speaks what. So this would include expats (e.g. English speaking natives, German speaking natives etc etc), so some of what I said may still be correct. It's also pretty "in" to learn Japanese. A lot of Swedes are very into that culture. But here is apparently the percentage of people who can speak each of these languages in Sweden. Swedish 96.72% English 53.97% (I think this has got to be a bit low, unless they are not counting people between 5 and 14 as English speakers or something) German 18.66% French 6.85% Spanish 4.78% Danish 4.47%

[@johnlawrence3781]

@@daysandwords Thanks for such a comprehensive reply. 18.66% is about what I'd have expected for German; I think, as might be expected, it's a bit higher in Denmark. I've met one of two Swedes who told me they learnt German in school, but didn't keep it up in their adult lives. I never knew French was a language of Sweden; how did that happen? During the 19th century when French was all the rage? In the UK, about 15% of people are supposed to be able to speak French; I think German and Spanish hover around the 4-5% mark. What about Australia? To the degree that Ozzies learn foreign languages, which do they tend to be? Indonesian and Japanese?

[@Tighris]

man your dreams that day must have been wild :D

[@KC-vq2ot]

Well, the truth is, this is quite a good way to get your language off the ground. People really underestimate how little you actually need to communicate. Not just invite the other person to a guessing game, but to actually communicate. It would be roughly 500 words and a very tiny subset of verb conjugations that allows you to indicate whether an action was completed or is still in progress, whether something is a true fact or just a possibility. And that can be accomplished in roghly a month in literally any language. In Spanish this can be abused to extremes with estar + gerundio and haber + participio, and you can even delete tu and vosotros to shrink it even further Granted, you won't receive standing ovations for your nuanced prose and there still will be a barrier to breach, but that moment when you start explaining yourself and not just giving some cryptic clues as to what you mean and the other guy can just speak a bit more clearly and shouldn't rely on "me Tarzan -- you Jane" type of communication gives an immense motivation surge So, challenge yourselves It is fun

[@janedoefamily6458]

I love your KZbin channel. I love that I don't feel like a total dumb-butt after watching your videos . I've been working on the same 2 languages for several years now. When I watch the super hyper polyglots who can learn a language in 9 months to a year, I wonder if I'll ever become totally " fluent."

[@daysandwords]

I know you're probably aware of this, but you know they can't actually learn languages in 9 months to a year, right? It's easy to make it look as though they can.

[@janedoefamily6458]

@@daysandwords I do agree that no one can become really fluent in that amount of time. Some of the " greats" do seem to be able to progress much quicker in that amount of time than your average Joe (or Jane), though. 😊 🌷

[@FelixHdez]

I'm in Mexico, at least in my little corner, the people around me wouldn't use some of the words there, like "atar" I don't think I've ever said it, we instead use "amarrar",, also "beber" to drink, it's common but also "tomar" is used as well, "I'll be right back I'm gonna drink water" -> "Ahorita vengo, voy a tomar agua"

[@ferlou2373]

I kinda accidentally did the same. I wanted to take an ibuprofen before going to sleep, but took a caffeine pill instead by mistake, so couldn’t sleep. Instead of sleeping, I spent my whole night doing Anki. I learnt 933 new French words that night. I also kept up with the reviews afterwards - it was during the holidays, so I had a lot of time. A French friend I was speaking to afterwards whom I hadn’t spoken to in 2 weeks (she went home over the holidays) talked to me, and, unprompted, remarked that my French had considerably improved.

[@ballistic63]

awesome video and challenge!!!

[@ade5710]

Probably been mentioned already but cifra also has a cognate in French with 'le chiffre'.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah, it all stems from Arabic for "zero", because Latin and Greek didn't actually have a word for that... but with the introduction of Hindu-Arabic numbers, the value "zero" sort of got mixed up with just representing numbers in general. So Swedish (en siffra) probably got it from French, and apparently it's where we get cipher/cypher as well.

[@EasyEasyEnglishCom]

Your reasoning at 14:42 really sheds some great insights and I gotta say that I agree with your viewpoint! Do you forsee yourself doing this regularly with new decks of words spanning various degrees of difficulty?

[@Fizzicist21]

Can anyone offer direction in how to set up cards so that the ESK1 deck shows the example sentence (without English translation), like in this episode? Bonus points if you can for Ankidroid/Ankiweb. Thanks for such an awesome video! I especially love the humor. I so appreciate you posting!

[@daysandwords]

If you sort comments by "Top", then there should be a comment from Refold reasonably high that explains what you want, I think.

[@coolbrotherf127]

Honestly, I might try this too with my Japanese. Sure I won't remember everything, but I could use a good boost for my general vocab knowledge.

[@yxtsama]

Same, even if I forget a good portion it will be probably easier to relearn

[@smorrow]

6:58 Onion in Czech is cebolka(!)

[@businessclasslanguages7555]

All English words ending in -tion can be changed into Spanish by making it -ción. There’s about 1,000 of them and all feminine gender thus taking the article ‘la’. And that was less than a minute.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah, unfortunately I already knew that so none of those would count. Also it's not true, there are English words that end in "-ion" (whether it's tion, sion, cion) that are not the same word in Spanish; that is either they don't exist or they mean something totally different.

[@kastanie7445]

Well worth the wait!

[@trichechus20]

Thanks for the cookie🙂

[@ErykKrzeminski]

Amazing. You learned more Spanish in 2 months than I did in 2 years Congrats!

[@daysandwords]

I learned to recognise and understand a lot maybe. You probably speak better than I do.

[@2MARR8]

This video makes me wanna learn Italian in 7 days

[@daysandwords]

Very possible with montage.

[@JJStarr]

"I'm going to have a beer because I'm Australian." Excellent.

[@Stupendomarveloso]

Best language learning video on KZbin at this present time. Out of the ball-park bro

[@daysandwords]

Thank you! Haha, maybe it's found in the same sized ball park that LingQ are guessing my vocabulary to be in.

[@Stupendomarveloso]

@@daysandwords Ain't that truth. Great at language shite at maths

[@j5679]

Amazing! I really liked this video. I guess it would be a bit harder for languages like Japanese or Chinese where you not only have to recall the meaning but also the reading. I might give 1k a day a try too at some point, but perhaps only for on'yomi words where the reading is easy.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah it would totally different. I mean you could set up Anki so that it shows it to you 5 times no matter what or something.

[@vendingservices8900]

Watching this again, I’ve decided I’m going to spend a week learning new vocabulary with Anki, rather than Duolingo. I actually would like to take a similar test to what you did at the end, before and after my Anki practice. This seems like it would be literally 5x or more faster than Duolingo.

[@daysandwords]

I think probably 20x. Duolingo would teach a similar amount of vocabulary in about 2 years.

[@vendingservices8900]

@@daysandwords I’m at 750 words on Duolingo after over 3 months of probably around 45 minutes a day on average. I guess that’s not awful, but the pace of new vocab keeps slowing down with each unit. The app isn’t garbage, but I know it’s only attractive to me because of ‘the ease’.

[@vendingservices8900]

@@daysandwordsMan, it really depends. I test out a lot with Duo, but then that sort of defeats the entire purpose of their app. I actually really enjoy the structure of it though. I just wish that maybe the units were half as long. I made it almost to unit 4, when I stopped using it. Got bored and began experimenting with other things. I haven’t found another method that I really felt was more productive…. Besides Anki. I finally paid for it and this deck for the first time today. I made it through 500 words already 😂

[@vendingservices8900]

It’s worth noting that I have a girlfriend who is from Mexico, so Duolingo is good, due to me being able to hear the words almost immediately after I learn them. You learn so slowly with duo, that every word that is introduced is basically embedded in your head during every conversation you have for a month.

[@pawelzabicki7785]

So now, 30 day challenge. ;)

[@ashleykumar6341]

This video has really inspired me. I’ve felt so stuck and discouraged in my language learning (I’m learning Tamil) due to limited resources available internationally for the language. I’ve felt like lack of progress in my vocabulary memorization has really held me back. I found a great list and I’m going to plan a few days like this in a smaller proportion. Thank you so much! I feel so motivated to keep going. 🤍

[@Stephanie-gv8rh]

This was brilliant. I’m really curious to see how your Spanish journey goes! In regards to retold, is it worth it if you have attained b1 level already?

[@daysandwords]

I would say Refold is even more worthwhile between B1 and C1 than at the early stages where basically anything will sort of get the job done. I doubt my speaking is at B1 yet, I've not really tried.

[@laurencetaylor5046]

Such a great video

[@daysandwords]

Glad you think so!

[@changingme1412]

This was a sweaty one. Phew!

[@doonspriggan9616]

Superb video!!

[@daysandwords]

Thanks!

[@waternomad1251]

A ver, voy a escribir en español para que no te falte barrio cuando vengas a México :D 14:12 eso que mencionas de poner un ejemplo de cómo se usa la palabra, a mi también me funciona mejor. Estoy aprendiendo japonés y aunque todavía estoy en básico, quizá muy cerca del intermedio, en algún punto me pasó que ya no podía aprenderme una lista de vocabulario tan fácil como al principio y me es más fácil acordarme del significado de una palabra en una oración que si solo me preguntas que significa tal palabra. Supongo que el cerebro prefiere aprender entendiendo que memorizando una lista de datos arbitrarios