I learned Russian in school for 6 years. Why am I not fluent? (And how to fix it!)

In this video, I'll share some thoughts I had on my experience of learning Russian in school for 6 years, and what I would do differently if I could go back in time, as well as some general thoughts on language classes.
MUSIC USED:
John Rye - How Many? ( • How Many? - Free Scall... )
Ghost Trick OST - Cabanela ~ A White Lovely Lanky Man
steventhedreamer - synchobonk ( / synchobonk )
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - Awaken
Old School Runescape OST - Food for Thought
Old School Runescape OST - Yesteryear
bald and bankrupt video about not learning Russian grammar:
• Do Not Study Russian G...
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[@TheItalianoAssassino]

I'm Austrian listening to an Estonian man talk about Russian and Japanese in English Mr. Worldwide

[@a.r.4707]

I'm Finnish listening to Estonian man speaking in English.

[@kennnnneth]

I'm Australian listening to an Estonian man speaking in English about Russian and Japanese

[@martinschmelzle4864]

Servus Oida

[@BassBoostingBrony]

Na dann, Servus fellow bua, von wo komschtn?

[@chargeurfou]

dude, I'm a belgian currently living in Rome and learning Italian and spanish while having my girlfriend living in Ecuador. This video recommandation of Mr youtube was really great though!

[@voodookitten7718]

Russian in a nutshell (from my experience as a native): "- Here, this is *the rule* . Pretty simple and somehow obvious, isn't it?" "- I see! So, if I would-" [slams a giant pile of papers on the desk] "- Fine, here is your *fuckton of exceptions for the rule* " P.s. *that one dislike is from Рыжий*

[@alittleofsomething]

Абсолютно! That's what made it hard!

[@nicolasnamed]

Better or worse than english? (as an American considering starting to learn Russian)

[@jrockenjoyer]

@@nicolasnamed Russian isn't hard to speak,but the writing is really hard because you have to remember all the rules and HAHA exceptions for them. So if you want to speak it-you should practice,like.. find some russian friends who won't flame you because you mispronounced something. And just learn the words and how to build sentences

[@alittleofsomething]

@@nicolasnamed You're better off with learning vocabulary first. Also, you'll have to learn the concept of gendered language and how to say the endings of the words correctly, which makes it harder. But, that helps a lot. Russian is much harder, than English.

[@user-ov7ti4pc5x]

@@nicolasnamed I'm not sure. I think It's worse in russian. I'm not really much of an english speaking person, as my speech is weird region-wise. with the words like armour and colour, center and metre. but more often than not I can find the words i need and I don't stutter too. And even though i'm a native russian with russian being my mother tongue i can't say the same things about it. i often stutter and don't know what words to use and I'm even worse at writing. In other words: russian is a very hard language, wouldn't reccomend learning

[@ichiyama898]

English education in Japan has the same problem. Many Japanese study English for about 10 years, but we cannot speak English. Difficult English grammar is given as a tool for university entrance exams.

[@zeratultasadarov401]

I think the problem is that it isn’t necessary for Japanese people to be able to speak English in their country. But if you don’t English in Europe....good luck to find a normal job

[@fuckthereijkee]

@@zeratultasadarov401 As a Lithuanian, I can tell you that the lack of content in your native language forces you to learn English.

[@zeratultasadarov401]

@@fuckthereijkee yeah. That’s why most of the Northern Europe knows English fluently

[@cakeisyummy5755]

@@fuckthereijkee I live in Bosnia and herzegovina. There are like... 2 Intresting KZbinrs who make content in Serbo-Croatian... And i only enjoy like... 10% of their Videos.

[@gazerew]

English has no difficult grammar, don't embarass yourself

[@onethirdofabrain]

I relate to this so hard. I remember writing 1000 words about my life, hobbies, family and stuff in French and reading and writing it just fine. Because I memorised it. Now my French is limitted to whatever gibberish I remember. I was motivated to learn German, but our lessons nitpicked our grammar rather than making us understood, so I never got beyond A2.

[@jbiden5225]

Sheiße

[@sherisheikh8535]

@@jbiden5225 scheiße

[@overlordchrissama7235]

@@sherisheikh8535 Achten Sie bitte auf die Wortwahl. :)

[@sherisheikh8535]

@@overlordchrissama7235 wtf was ist dein problem? Ich habe nur das Wort korrigiert, wie es richtig geschrieben wird. Denk erst mal nach bevor du was schreibst xD schönen Tag noch. :)

[@overlordchrissama7235]

@@sherisheikh8535 das war ein witz... .-.

[@starlightofme]

Russian is my native language. I can't imagine what pain did you go through when learning it with no motivation. We learn russian language at school, and even though me and my classmates are all russian, it is still a pain in the ass because of the amount of stupid rules and a pile of exceptions to them. Of course we don't have problems with speaking russian, but writing in it is much more difficult. It is scary to think how poor students had to learn such a language when they didn't even want to.

[@copiumforthepeople]

Same! And I also have a second language, which is German. I love both Russian and German, they're beautiful languages, but... I would never learn either of them voluntarily 😂

[@DansuB4nsu03]

We have the same problem in Finland: students are forced to learn Swedish on a national level, even though they know that it's stupid and pointless (because most people know English at least on a minimum level) and the supposed "cultural value" the teachers and politicians give to the Swedish language itself is questionable at best. This may sound dumb, but this is my point of view as a typical Finnish yokel, so please, don't be too harsh on me. :/

[@starlightofme]

@@DansuB4nsu03 We have the same situation with Belarussian language (not sure if that's how you call it in English) in Belarus. Literally no one speaks it except the officials and old people. Everyone speaks Russian. But we still have to learn it at school. The language itself is pretty stupid, because it's basically Russian mixed with Ukranian, that's how it sounds to me. It's not as beautiful and good as its originators though.

[@tomaswoodall]

@@starlightofme Wow. Being Brazilian I always thought Russian was the hated school language in Belarus, not the contrary. That's why our best Dostoevsky's translator is indeed Belarusian 😯

[@Qaster01]

да согласен, изучать русский язык довольно трудно, из за письменности, мне даже сейчас трудно удается правильно писать сложные слова. Хотя это скорее из за того, что я не изучал русский язык с помощью школьного учебника, а благодаря художественным литературам. Самое смешное, что я не знаю базовую русскую грамматику.

[@copiumforthepeople]

the vocabulary guy is spot on... like, I studied Japanese for over 3 years at uni and passed all of the tests with good grades and our program was hardcore (very focused on kanji), but I still can't speak it at all and have no listenning comprehension whatsoever... I'm at a point where I'm not even telling people anymore that I studied it lol

[@Livakivi]

I think the biggest way to fix that issue is to get a lot of input in the language, just by consuming a lot of Japanese content.

[@kuroodo_]

Vocabulary is king, but grammar is queen. Sure you know all the words, but you still won't understand anything if you don't know the grammar. Thus in my opinion you should be learning both. If anything, spend more time on vocabulary than grammar at first because having more vocabulary makes learning grammar easier, which then combined makes immersion overall more efficient.

[@lurklingX]

This was the same with me. I did a lot of self study and also had two years at university. University liked to make you take a bunch of tests and memorize useless words like “ear nose throat doctor”. I did not come out of it with a lot of comprehension for making my own sentences. I have a lot of vocabulary (most of the memorable stuff was from self study or from picking it up from anime, so basically CONTEXTUAL), but it’s all separate and floating around in my head. I have also watched 1 million hours of anime. It’s not enough to create the glue needed to string your own sentences together. I’m hoping that the new course from Paul Noble will connect the dots. I have his audiobooks for French and Chinese and find them to be SO useful. It has you constructing sentences from the very beginning. Learning how to work with the language.

[@JM-kj3dx]

@@kuroodo_ it's more like the Prince

[@rutabrivlauka4911]

I'm from Latvia. Literally everyone, who I've met, who didn't spend time with Russian speaking kids as a child, now can't speak Russian properly even if they learnt it for years in school, so when i saw the title of this video it spoke to my soul.

[@k.5425]

Same with French in my country

[@k.umquat8604]

@@k.5425 Belgium?

[@nimkati5627]

It's same with Russian-speaking Latvians. Only those who had Latvian speaking friends can speak it on a good level. In the school we were taught dry grammar rules and no speaking. I'm a very introverted person with no friends so I never had a chance to learn to speak fluent Latvian. I no longer live in Latvia, but I love the language and have a good understanding of it and sometimes read articles and books in it so that I don't loose touch with it, but that's pretty much it. I can't speak it properly. It's so sad. Funny thing is that I started actively speaking Latvian only after I left Latvia. I and my Russian Latvian colleagues often speak Latvian with one another so that our colleagues from Slavic-speaking countries could not understand us.

[@anti-emo4721]

@@nimkati5627 They may think you are being possessed by the devil!

[@nimkati5627]

@@anti-emo4721 We have quite a few colleagues from Poland. They understand what we say in Russian 60% of time. I guess that when we speak Latvian they think that it's those 40% that they don't understand. However, there was a lady from Moldova speaking fluent Russian who quickly realized that sometimes we are switching to a "secret language" in her presence. She even started taking offence at this.

[@_APV_]

My native language is Russian yet I somehow learned the language of my country (Lithuanian) by only watching TV. My parent's still don't speak it, I never had Lithuanian speaking friends. But when I was a little kid some TV was only available in Lithuanian so I was watching it out of boredom since childhood, and a bit later there were some interesting cartoons and my favorite stuff at the time - Dragon Ball, which I watched obsessively and somehow understood most of without any training or lessons. By the time Lithuanian language lessons started in school I was already able to understand most of it on the fly and speak fluently (but with heavy accent). Writing and reading was a problem I never fully overcame for the lack of motivation, and I still do plenty of grammatical mistakes. But even though I stopped watching Lithuanian TV in like 5th grade I was praised for my speaking and understanding for the rest of school (in comparison to my other Russian native peers). With English it was kinda the same, but a bit delayed, I was below average at some point in middle school, but then PC stuff like games and internet came to my life and I quickly improved, becoming best at my class in just a year or two, together with a couple of other fellow gamers, lol. And since I also started reading some stuff online, plus some English science fiction in highschool, unlike with Lithuanian, my grammar also got quite good without ever memorizing the exact rules(unless they were already obvious ones), just going off "intuition". There are still some holes in my grammar with rare cases of stuff like simple present perfect continuous tenses with "have had had had", but it almost never comes up. Not sure why I wrote all this, I guess it's just that this video made me remember the way I learned my second language and I'm suddenly impressed with my young brain, lol.

[@catlover12045]

That's the same way I learned English, I watched ton of english youtube videos when I was 5 or somthing.

[@kurosu532]

Вэлкам ту зэ клаб, Бади

[@einfachmisha]

будь здоров!

[@Luiming-]

@Heater64k Вери стрэнж это когда я пишу на славянском польском с латиницей на алфавите сириликом)

[@kashinimeyo]

As someone with advanced degrees in linguistics and as someone who has learned multiple languages, I always found that curriculum is never your friend when truly learning a language and a lot of it stems from personal motivation and interest in the target language and culture. I say you have to be interested in the culture because you're going to have to supplement a lot of your learning with watching shows or videos in your target language if conversing with native speakers isn't readily available to you. It's probably why I still know a considerable amount of Russian despite not having used it for nearly 6 years-- I watched Russian KZbin, Russian movies, Russian shows, read stories in Russian, and annotated absolutely everything. It takes a serious amount of dedication to learn a language, and you really have to be inspired of your own accord to learn a language, or else you'll just become burdened by expectations superimposed on you- making the whole experience negative and bitter.

[@550077]

It’s true what you say. Just wanted to point out the the school curriculum has only one meaning: to inspire children to be insterested in something. It happened to me: I was "forced" to learn French at school and it actually became my profession. All the learning process actually happened outside of the school.

[@mickmenn2]

Я скажу так, у меня были те же проблемы с английским, хотя он гораздо проще.

[@minjosof]

Learned French from Grades 3-10 and learned more in 2 months of talking to Minecraft players online than in 7 years of school because we only learned limited phrases/situations

[@pilkpog7952]

id recommend listening to different french music

[@minjosof]

@@pilkpog7952 some of my favourite artists are french speaking but personally music doesn't really aid my learning, I already have the bases of the language so it's mainly everyday conversation that I have difficulty with!

[@pilkpog7952]

@@minjosof i meant more anthems bc they usually have english translations n stuff but thats cool that u already know the bases! gj!

[@minjosof]

@@pilkpog7952 ahh ok I see and thanks!! I'm okay with reading and writing but speaking is a whole other story... thanks so much! are you fluent in french?

[@pilkpog7952]

@@minjosof no absolutely not but i learned some german from listening to german music. anyways np

[@ihopeicanchangethisnamelat7108]

My plan is: - Do the bare minimum in Spanish lessons in school - Watch Marvel films in Spanish - Go and stay in Spain at some point - By the time I die and no longer need to know Spanish, I should have some understanding of the language

[@mr.german9146]

Greeting from Russia! I had the same problem in the past when learning the Tatar language in Russia. I am not tatar myself and I almost didn't have the reason to learn it and I had no motivation to study more. I actually feel that I also wasted much time back then, however, in my opinion, the problem is that I was obligated to learn the Tatar language instead of free choice!

[@Livakivi]

I agree, having the choice to learn brings about way more motivation than being forced to learn it. I actually learned Russian for over 100 days after I had already graduated, which I enjoyed far more than back when I was learning it in school.

[@gamermapper]

I think for preserving the culture of the Tatar nation, all people in Tatarstan should have to learn Tatar, in the same way all people coming in Russia are expected to learn Russian. Although Tatarstan isn't an independent country, they still need to protect their language and culture. The problem is that foreign language learning is really inefficient. Learning Tatar alongside Russian since kindergarten would've been better, as well as having better foreign language learning tools overall with immersion etc like this Estonian guy said.

[@gamermapper]

As a Belarusian living in Alsace, I really wish I knew both Belarusian and Alsatian. But sadly I only know French and Russian. But I know that the foreign language classes were super annoying

[@studijasymrov7630]

Сәләм! Хәзердә синнең татар теленең белеүе ул нинди? Минең урта, әмма мин татар телене 1 ел укыдым. Миңа татар теле, рус телене караганда җиңелрәк булды. Әмма татар кирилъ языуын ул... Башкорт теленең унайлырак, җинелрәк. تاعن مين ياڭا ئيملە ئوقپ بتردم! Häm min zamansa latin yazıwında tatar telene beläm!

[@user-xc2hy1ur2h]

@@gamermapper нет, не должны. Язык это инструмент, если инструмент устарел, то его нужно заменить, а не заниматься лицемерием и некрофилией.

[@mirko8260]

As Estonian, I approve this video. EDIT: I got a little story. I have learned Russian for about 5-6 years and I'm still a bit awful with it. It's doable, but like said I forget everything. The first real test with Russian was when I had a trip to Belarus last year. I thought I would fail miserably, but I somehow was good enough to speak basic things as a tourist, without google translate (just in case I downloaded the offline package). My Middle school Russian teacher was very decent and i was a good enough learner that. I'm good rn.

[@einfachmisha]

Did you travel to Minsk or Brest or which city? I am from Belarus (living in Germany) think that the country-borders were closed. How did you feel in present of the Coronavirus and that those president said that no Coronavirus exist in their country?

[@Old_Hickory_Jackson]

Lmfao I learned German in school for 8 years and I know shit (only understand it) while I learned English for 4 years less and I know it pretty well, like it's my second language.

[@aoelp]

Well being native in German is some kind of cheat in that regard, though I admit the language is needlessly complex, yet stupidly simple ("Flugzeug" [basically "flight stuff"] as "plane") at times and just incomplete in vocabulary. I was reluctant to learn English during my first years in highschool which resulted in me barely getting a C- grade equivalent (3.4 in German marks), but I passed my diploma on another school with 12 (or 13) out of 15 possible without extensive studying. French mainly was bad for me due to our teacher being really spiteful towards anyone that was not decently fluent after the first years (despite not doing that so much in Latin class with those who chose that). I now (mainly due to some dialects I know) am getting really far in Dutch Duolingo and somewhat decently in the Chinese. Though at least for the latter I am not disillusioned to believe I'd get somewhat fluent without ever speaking with natives. Retraining my French also helps, but I need a lot of vocabulary for the most part.

[@arealnowhereman8255]

'i only understand it' i don't even understand german after 7 years of learning lol

[@ardababa4549]

Most of the languages you learn in school are like that. You can merely understand the language but can't create proper sentences because it's taught as a regular school subject so there's no practice put in it, you just memorize words and sentences then enter the test, get good grades and just forget it as you've never learned it. Just an endless cycle. You also need to be motivated to learn a new language whether you learn it in school or on the internet. I'm also learning german for 2 years at my school and I know nothing but basic sentences and conversations. But I'm pretty fluent in English and the only reason I'm more decent in English than german is I actually tried to learn it. It's much more useful than German, if I tried learning German rather than English I'd just have a language that I'd probably never use in practice, so I'd just forget it like I never learned it. But since when I was a kid I'd see stuff about English everywhere! On the street, on the internet, in a restaurant, etc. It just influenced me to learn the language because It's actually useful for me to learn so I got motivated by it. Even while I'm making a comment below a random video on the internet I still use English. Long story short: If you want to learn a new language, you need motivation, confidence, and nothing else.

[@aoelp]

​@@ardababa4549 Well that's a tough one. As a native German speaker I obviously cannot relate to tediously learning German as I grew up with it, but you are right that we probably wouldn't be as good in English as we are now, if there were no use for it. But that can be applied to Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hindi and even German as there's many decent forums, stories and other content that are exclusively or best enjoyed in their native form. I understand that you might feel frustrated when doing the usual grammar mistakes, but in the end it's not as hard as some people make it out to be when you know the rules. Some of the vocab is really easy are just riddled with loanwords from English or French so you don't really need to learn all of it to converse with most native Germans (only the older generation knows most words that don't only exist as "Denglisch"). Some languages like Japanese or Finish are much harder to learn for someone who already knows English - by far. Based on your profile you probably are Turkish, that alone will help you get by in Germany as there is actually a sizable Turkish community here. I know multiple Turkish-background people myself.

[@ardababa4549]

@@aoelp German indeed contains a lot of loanwords from English, that actually made me learn the vocabulary faster and since I'm Turkish it also made me grasp sentence construction in german a little bit faster because some of the rules are similar to Turkish. I wasn't trying to point that out though. I was trying to say no matter how hard the language is if you're motivated enough to learn the language you'll have no problems while doing it. I just don't see any use in learning German right now. But I also want to say that German is a beautiful language and I'd actually try to learn it for real if I can make it past my university entrance exam in the future :) P.S: Oh and also I've heard about the Turkish community in Germany as well. Do they cause any problems in Germany like we see on social media or do they make them look bad? In Turkey, we don't appreciate them much since they just seem like greedy and rude pigs to us. Many of them say nothing but Germany is worse than Turkish even though they live in better conditions than we do.

[@StacieStreams]

I grew up in a Russian family in Lithuania. The problem is with learning languages at schools is that it's mostly grammar and relying on memory. I had 3 German teachers throughout my school life and the 2nd one was the best. Because I had a spike in the German language thanks to her. We were singing songs, we were trying to speak it and most importantly listen to the language in cartoons and only then came grammar. Because with mother-tongue we learn to speak first, then read and write. But unfortunately, she moved away to Germany and up until year 11, we didn't have any German. So all of that knowledge wasn't used and it kind of is on the shelf somewhere deep in my memory. Then in year 11, the new teacher expected us to already do translations of texts from German to Russian or vice versa. Which didn't make any sense. And she pretty much killed all my motivation to continue to learn German...

[@gamermapper]

I suppose you didn't struggle with Lithuanian. Because it was taught from kindergarten just like they teach to kids. If only they taught a foreign language the same way...

[@azatshakenov195]

Wow, your situation is quite similiar to mine. I'm kazakh, living in Kazakhstan all my life. I'v been learning kazakh in school for 9 years now, but i don't even lnow the basics og the language, and i think it is easily explainable. In Kazakhstan we speak russuian and kazakh, i speak only russiuan and english. My situation says a lot about how important immersion is. I don't have anyone speaking kazakh in front of me among siblings, friends, teachers etc. even though i have motivation for learning this language, i won't have much benefit from speaking kazakh, so i put all my effort into english, because not only do i like english, learning it will definately pau in near future. Some of my relatives and friends are humilating me for not knowing my native language, and most of the time they don't speak english... so i think i won haha. My favorite thing about english is how many stuff is available in english only, and how accesable information is in english.

[@fletchermunson]

They don't speak English because they learned Russian instead of English. Most likely your friends and relatives do not speak Kazakh at the same level as Russian.

[@messofcake2082]

Same thing in Kyrgyzstan. Most of young people prefer or can only speak russian, and they get humiliated by old generation for not knowing mother tongue and called "mankurt" or "kirghiz" (russian-translated word "kyrgyz"). It gets to the point that people are divided to "russian-speakers" and "native-speakers"

[@azatshakenov195]

@@messofcake2082 in kazakhstan we use the word "Mankurt" too

[@polly9753]

I'm native Russian and somehow I did almost everything you said with my English few years ago. I guess it's just the way to learn efficiently. Therefore I am trying to do the same with Korean rn Thanks for making such a nice list)

[@lelikiocok4073]

I myself from Russian and I used to learn German in school for like 4-5 years and today, two years later, I cant really remember anything (almost). And I liked those classes! Our teacher was nice, but we had only one class a week. All we did back there was just translating text and stuff. It's kind of sad, because I love German and I have German roots. Honestly I cant understand why our school have those classes anyway. Like some of the students learn English for second language, some German, but for some reason they decided to add third language for "гуманитариев" (humanitarians). However, we have English classes like 10 years 3 time a week of whatever and, you know, at least I can use and understand it. But I think main reason of this is that I use it everyday while watching videos on youtube and playing games lol. And yes, I decided to write this comment because I want to test myself in English. I hope that there are no mistakes in this text. I really liked this video, especially волка-лисицу) Great job and thanks to you I have motivation to learn German (again)

[@poproporpo]

Hey Livakivi, thanks for the video! I am a student in a US Boarding high school and decided to pick up Russian during middle school. When I was in middle school, there were no Russian classes available, so I self-studied and mostly goofed around with a few native speakers. I found grammar pretty much impossible to study because I didn't spend the time to study it systematically. When I finally got to take Russian in high school, I was placed into an intermediate-level class (basically second-year Russian). I breezed through that class thanks to my "strong linguistic intuition" as my teacher would say-I knew most of the vocabulary from immersion and had a good feel for the grammar. Sadly, the class was all about forcing correct output out of us, and it had pretty much every flaw that you mentioned in your video. I began to struggle in that class after a year-when I was in third-year Russian. Due to my workload I had no more time (nor interest) to immerse with Russian anymore, and not to mention, I've also lost my Russian friends who went to different high schools. (Might I add, my school did say that they are trying to make our Russian course a completely immersive course, but instead we are forced to focus on grammar and pre-mature output with basically no input, and lots of worksheets and tests, so I think the "immersion" aspect really backfired.) Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to come across your video in time, and before I got to force myself to change up my study habits (and various unsuccessful attempts to use Anki), I decided, ultimately, to quit Russian. I'm currently making plans to start learning Japanese starting next year, and I want to do it right this time, so I'm just taking some time to study a bit on my own before I formally join a class. Because I had some Chinese training growing up, I know about 2000 Chinese Characters (both traditional and simplified), which means I could probably understand at least a third of the 常用漢字 even though I cannot read them. I'm glad I came across your channel. I really love your content and I will probably binge the rest soon. Happy new year!

[@Livakivi]

Thank you for the story! With that Kanji knowledge, you'd definitely have a small head start when it comes to Japanese. Good luck! I'll most likely make a guide on learning Japanese soon as well.

[@poproporpo]

@@Livakivi Thanks, I’m looking forward to it!

[@ch3mvolx100]

Quality content. Looking forward for more like this.

[@popkinbobkin]

I didn't know until seeing this video that Russian is still taught in Estonia (I thought it had been excluded from everywhere because of the politics and all that). But what is more surprising is that despite having a lot of native Russian-speakers in Estonia and literally bordering Russia people there still face the same problems I had with English. Man, it really blows my mind to think that the way the language is taught plays such a big role. Just imagine how many hours are spent almost for nothing and what could've been achieved with the more efficient system. We really need to rethink how we teach languages in schools.

[@mustshell3672]

I'm in such a situation. I'm german and have been learning english for years with great results, but not from school, but from hearing and speaking the language. The exciting thing is that I didn't even have english classes in elementary school because the teacher weren't trained to, so we spend our time in english classes with useless songs, animal names and the basics. I was far behind my other classmates when I eventually went to high school and had to catch up with them or fail miserably. The teachers and other classmates didn't have the time or patience to teach me a whole language so I had to learn it by mysealf, since my parents also aren't fluent. So I watched videos, shows, and played videogames and I learned the language that way. Over the years it has gotten better but it still isn't perfect and a native speaker would easily find many mistakes in my comment, but I'm still proud of my growth and I will continue to improve. :)

[@Mike-fd6np]

You did great job writing this comment man! Keep it up

[@rebeccarachel243]

This is great! Wow!

[@MelissaJetzt]

I'd say your comment is on-par with some native English speakers. It's not academic level, sure, but you've basically achieved fluency as far as I can tell. Now if only I could be at this level in German. 🙂

[@dariascott2267]

No your fine! I did not notice the fact that your comment was not made by a native English speaker before I read it fully!

[@flet__]

Mate, you said you might have mistakes in your comments. Where are they because I cannot find any

[@jovajoestar]

Great video! As an estonian, I have a simmilar experience but we actually began learning russian in the 5th grade. I was lucky enough to be the only estonian kid in my music school and art school courses, which means I spent a lot of time around russian speakers and as a result, actually started understanding most things and my pronounciations got pretty decent. My high school girlfriend was also half-russian, so we'd often watch russian films, even tried reading books, etc. Now after 3 or so years of university and not using the language, I still somehow manage to understand most things my squadmates in the military are saying, but speaking has become a lot harder. It is a great opportunity for re-learning the language, despite conscription being quite a waste of time in general. Also used this time to learn spanish, in a similar way you learned japanese!

[@ragnarlaine4065]

Why do you need Russian language? There is more useful and practical things are available like better job, experience, culture and profit if someone learns Finnish or Swedish

[@jovajoestar]

@@ragnarlaine4065 the government doesn't really want to support people leaving the country for better work opportunities. A third of the country is Russian and thus they have a lot of influence here.

[@Antonneposeda64]

That's interesting... I am a ukrainian myself and I speak russian on a daily basis. Although I don't speak ukrainian most of the time, but since I'm in the ukrainian environment most of the time (tv, sudden ads on the internet, learning classes etc.) I'm pretty much fluent in both of those languages. I also know english which I think I'm fluent in, but I've never thought too much about it. I started learning english in the 2nd grade and honestly it just went on smoothly. We had a damn great teacher though. I only realised I understood english when i played fallout 4 for the first time in english. I had a disc version for xbox one which only contained english language for some reason. That was when that clicked. 4 years in and I know 3 languages and can use them freely in my daily life. Now I'm trying to learn japanese for some reason and, honestly, it's confusing only because ukrainian and russian are so gramatically different not only in sentence formation, but in tenses, counting, how little words can be used for so many things in contrast to ukrainian and russian where for every gender, quantity of people and a persons rank (amongst other things) there is a different version of a word "do".

[@anon_d9256]

I've never learned English grammar the proper way but I still think that my English isn't that bad. I've always been intimidated by grammar and I was never able to actually understand how things work by looking at just grammar structures, I kinda know how to form sentences and things are naturally coming together cuz I've heard the language for long enough to know what makes sense and what doesn't. I have a little bit of a Bulgarian accent when speaking (Bulgarian is a slavic language very close to russian) and I don't know how to write A LOT of words so i'm trying to change my pronunciation and to write more. I learned it entirely by watching youtube videos, movies and listening to songs even that this is my 9th year "learning" it at school I can still say that It didn't taught me anything. I think that I'm like a B1 or B2 (or lower lol) but I have no one to tell me for sure. I don't think that I'll ever be able to say that I'm fluent in it, I'm trying not to underestimate myself tho cuz I have a bad habit of doing that. Well who knows? Maybe I'll be able to say that I'm fluent in it but only time will show

[@sophiatheczech1918]

Same for me, even though school is already teaching me it for 5 years, I can say that it didn't teach me it. I could speak English even before school started doing so, which proves the fact that school didn't teach me it. I don't need to sit for hours trying to memorize grammar, I just know what feels right and natural, just like you. My accent isn't that good though, I have Czech accent when reading English (Czech is also a Slavic language, but it's more similar to Polish than to Russian). Good luck with your learning English journey!

[@Numb_Diggers]

"нет он купил курит" watafaq... Wolf(fox)

[@user-bj6gr8kk4k]

Сын ты что Кирил? Нет это друзья Кирил а я просто рядом стоял!

[@Numb_Diggers]

Харош

[@differentone_p]

шорах

[@2belowfreezing]

Another good video. I haven't practised my German for a bit and now I have some more motivation. Thanks!

[@FedoKingbruhmoment]

wow this is so high quality you definitely deserve more subs

[@JM-kj3dx]

I've been learning German on my own for 5 months now, but when I changed schools this year I found myself in a German class, and even tho everyone else's been learning already for a year or so,I still feel like I have a better grasp on the language than most of them (Kurzgesagt immersion coming in cluch XD)

[@narayana8249]

Absolutely. I had been self studying using textbooks for a long time, and I made very little progress. Only a few months ago, I started immersing and using anki. In that time, my ability to listen, read, and speak skyrocketed. I found that doing tons of immersion has been key, because it helps you get a natural feel for how the language works. I always fumbled over my words in Chinese and had to consciously think about certain grammatical particles and uses, but now I can come up with natural sentences super easily. And if it’s not a better method for any of those reasons, you make much more progress anyway because it’s not a drag. I can’t watch Chinese content on things that I’m actually interested in, which makes it way easier and more enjoyable to learn the language.

[@cyberlingualpanther]

Hi Livakivi I have learned Russian now for nearly one year in school and I'm grateful for your tips! Especially for Anki and concentrating on vocabulary. I've already used Anki since yesterday for Japanese after watching your video about your Japanese learning experience. I've started learning Japanese two weeks ago. It's kinda crazy cause I'm like you just a couple of years earlier. Thank you - спасибо - ありがとう

[@leol.9671]

I learned the very basics from my granddad because he speaks almost exclusively russian and then through consuming russian content in a few years i could fluently speak russian and learned proper grammar by looking at text and listening for context and i still have no idea what rules determine how i write what. The only reason i am taking russian at school is because i wanted to learn to write and not waste my own time on it and also i gave up on german because of the problems mentioned in this video. TL;DR This video is very true can confirm

[@tinhornproductions4769]

In High school I learned Spanish for 3 years and even read a whole book for a class. 4 years later I’m relearning everything on Duolingo and listening to Mexican music and learning so much faster

[@myentertainment55]

I am Russian. We are learning english for up to 11 years in school (it was 6 years a decade ago) and for 1-2 years at University. After all those years level of english is still subpar for majority of students. Very poor understanding of spoken language and almost non existent conversational skills. It took me almost 5 additional years of self study to achieve level of english where I can comfortably watch movies and listen books without looking some words. My grammar is still all over the place, but I will fix it with professional tutor later. I can watch movies and read books - that's already brings me an immense enjoyment.

[@ilovemilfs69420]

Your English is amazing!

[@myentertainment55]

@@ilovemilfs69420 Thanks :) I consider it at least sufficient.

[@aidanf4618]

@@myentertainment55 If you want a good show in English (American dialect) you should watch 'Justified' It's a great show.

[@luainygo4932]

I'm from Chile, I've always loved language as a concept, the idea to be able to communicate with everyone via sounds, is... So beautiful. When I was 15 I started trying to learn russian, for the meme, but abandoned it some weeks later because I wasn't motivated enough to even learn the alphabet. 3 months ago I decided I was going to learn a 3th language, I was thinking of Italian or Polish, But remembered Russian and started again. Now, I've been looking how to, "learn it" the inteligent way, interestingly enough, youtube recommended me this. rn I've only used duolingo and music. катя лель и стас костюшукин are examples of artists i'm listening to. Translating the lyrics and leaning slowly how you form a sentence is super fun. For example, thanks to songs I learned the diference between меня моя мой (мои?). As here in spanish we only have "mi, mia/o". Soon, I'll try and play metro 2033 in russian. I actually don't know what I'm doing, I'm just... having fun learning, doing duolingo classes when I feel like it, Listening to russian songs everyday, talking in russian alone, playing with russian subtitles. I don't know if it's efficcient, or, if it's good, but i'm learning, right? that's important, right?

[@Livakivi]

Enjoying the process is more valuable than making slightly faster progress, as one is more likely to keep you consistent, than burning yourself with methods which you don't enjoy, for most people.

[@DergnNamedSkye]

The video and your content in general is really impressive! Keep it up :3

[@capitaopacoca8454]

Man I feel obliged to thank you. I've been studying Russian for almost two years. The first year I focused on grammar. It was a wasted year. Learned almost nothing of vocabulary and my grammar was not on a decent level. The second year I've been learning vocabulary using Anki, but I only wrote down the words, not complete sentences, and I felt uncomfortable about not studying grammar. This year was much greater than the former, but I was still feeling demotivated and almost giving up, and wasn't very sure about comprehensive-input, but you opened my eyes and now I feel motivated to carry my dream on. Блогадапю вас! Sorry if anything is confused, English is also not my first language

[@Kordell_11]

I studied french in School for 4 years. Half a year after graduation I basically forgot everything. Like most students i didn't even want to learn it. I have absolutly no use for french. I wish we had more math and english lessons instead.

[@b1jou447]

this channel is one my new favourites man, for sure. 10/10 content and explained so well paired w osrs? yes please

[@theodorobretas3326]

excellent video, quality advice

[@korterkaks]

Ngl at first I though you were Finnish, turns out you're Estonian (like myself). I learnt all of my English through KZbin basically, haven't taken a test but I'm quite sure in it when saying that I speak like a native, maybe a tiny bit worse. I've picked up quite the good accent as well just from being around the internet and totally immersing myself in the English language day in and day out. I speak English considerably better than anyone around me or from my English classes bcs I am such a KZbin addict, and when I am not on KZbin I pretty much exclusively speak English, bcs well, internet. A lot of the times I speak English better and more fluently than Estonian ESPECIALLY when it comes to non-everyday words, I always get stuck speaking Estonian bcs I translate a lot of my sentences from English, as in I think of what to say in my head but in a mix of Estonian and English (when speaking Estonian) with the everyday words being in Estonian and pretty much everything else than the bare basics in English. I've become quite good at translating words from English to Estonian that way, but it's a problem, I speak Estonian in such a weird way now, I sound really sophisticated tho bcs I use all of these complex loan words. English has been really easy to pick up for me for my entire life, never had an issue with it in school either. I am thinking of learning Japanese as well so I guess I gotta immerse myself in a different culture now. I've picked up so many words from anime without even knowing it, but sadly I am not as interested in anime anymore and even more interested in Japanese culture. The one thing I haven't done when learning Japanese really naturally like this is consistency, but it has still worked out way better for me than I could ever expect, I can read 50% of hiragana and katakana even tho I haven't studied it too much, a little duolingo. I understand some of the most basic words when watching to vtubers (which I do really rarely but should do a lot more) and always pick up more, I hear a word that sounds really familiar and I might know an approximate meaning of, so I google it and there we go, a new word instantly learned, meaning pronunciation and context n all. But actually it wasn't immediate, I've just heard that word so many times before in different situations without noticing it so it has kinda stuck, at some point I started consuming all Japanese media in a way that I pay more attention to the words they're saying, and with almost no effort put into memorizing or learning those words I have picked them up. I know this is a really long comment with a lot of repetition and very little thought put into it, but I bet someone'll read this and gain some useful knowledge.

[@GameyGamer75]

Very slick editing style and also a well produced informative video. Enjoyed it 👍

[@3dvultworld1234]

Just discovered your channel yesterday and I'm loving your content. I've been learning German for the past three years and I'm already pretty far, now I mostly just imerse myself through games, movies, music, etc. Even though your tips could've helped me a lot at the beggining I still find it very entertaining, and since I'm interested in learning other european languages I'll probably apply some of your tips. Keep it up with the good content.

[@jackiethejackjack]

As forced learner German in my middle school with no choice to pick English, but I have reasons to learn it, Issues like the waste of time with homeworks, constant need of memorisations, teacher not able to please everyone's level at the same time, only to see almost all my class have no clue in German except for one or at least two, because they learmed basics from school or through their experience with the language before. And after vocations or weekends, we forget what we just learned nonsense. It's best to individually find your way to learn the language without need constant of reminder that you must remember them, but to see their reasons use of words/grammars through our experiences, especially around people who use them for communication. It doesn't have to be perfect, just as long as you can understand what they mean through conversation, that's a good sign what all struggles need to see hope in. X~x With my German teacher, it's not her fault we got into this situation, where she has to teach students who didn't have german before, we don't even have the books for beginners! Many people here complained but unfortunately we can't do anything about it now, So far I'm finding my way to learn it, using Duolingo for the basics and using vocabulary cards tactic, wanting to include few classmates to learn them with me so that they wouldn't struggle as I do And eventually know enough to start comunicate comfortably in that language

[@TheSusOff]

За 6 лет школы тяжело стать хорошим в русском, особенно если неправильно учить этому языку. Тут надо как в японском, читать, смотреть и тд. Это помогает. Но главное знать правила с граматикой, чтобы понимать что и почему.

[@TheSusOff]

Aga eesti keel on nii raske, et ma tahan teha suitsidi selle pärast

[@Livakivi]

​@@TheSusOff Isegi eestlastel probleeme eesti keele õigekeelsusega :)

[@ndrechtseiter]

Сначала я думал, что ты из России, потом увидел что-то на эстонском и охуел 😳😳

[@tabifiedler6944]

I took Spanish for three years in school with minimal results before deciding to self-study the language on top of continuing taking classes at school. I’ve learned so much and I’m so happy about it! It’s nice to have that foundation of a school class, but in my experience it’s near impossible to become fluent with only that. Also I love the South Park clips in this video; I’m a huge fan!

[@jonathanm8588]

Listening to you is so enjoyable, I had no interest in Russian what so ever, but since I liked all your videos about Japanese I thought I'd come by and again: I loved it! Thanks for the content, very instructive!

[@SB-lc5qg]

I’m a native English speaker and I’m upper intermediate in Spanish after years in school and a study abroad experience cut short by coronavirus. I decided last summer to start learning French totally independently and my favorite thing to do is listen to podcasts. At first I could only understand some parts (based on my English and Spanish knowledge) but now I can totally understand those for foreigners and I can understand some podcasts made for natives pretty well too, depending on the topic/formality. It’s a great way to fit authentic listening practice in every morning while I get dressed and eat breakfast.

[@a.Sunbell]

I'm from Sweden and I had pretty much the same experience as you. In Sweden, you can start learning a third language in 6th grade. You can choose Spanish, France, and German. I ended up with Spanish which was my second choice. That probably lowered my motivation a lot to considering I actually wanted to learn France. And the reason I'm fluent in English is that I watched a lot of KZbin videos in English. Also because my brother and I would speak a lot of English with each other.

[@ProudNL99]

The kliksphilip soundtrack haha. Great video!

[@MelissaJetzt]

Yup. I learned Spanish in school for 5 years and... While there are a handful of words I'll never forget, even when I was taking the classes I'm not sure how I survived and passed. I did the bare minimum and the speaking exams were brutal. I've been learning German on my own for the last year and have made so much more progress in comparison. I did spend 3 months on an A2-level course online but I would not call that my main learning, I did it so I could force myself to study some more grammar (because German grammar is pretty tricky). I'd say it mostly worked, but now that I've done that I'm not sure I would plan on doing another one.

[@aesero-np5gk]

As a student from the UK we have about 2 years to get about A2 level in a foreign language (that we choose) such as french, spanish or german. I watched this video early on into this. 2 years ago and using your advice made anki cards on the vocab we were learning and immersed. As a result listening, reading and writing became a breeze (because the exam is really slowed down). I got the highest grade, which is a grade 9 equal to an A*. I still kinda flopped at speaking though. Most of the class time was wasted except on grammar study which did help in my immersion. Thank you very much for making this video.

[@MeesBoterkoek]

I have had german for 5 years in school now, and I still don’t know how to form a basic sentence

[@user-qm6ck1rx7o]

Same

[@CapitanCarter]

There is far more runescape content on this video than I was expecting, still a very interesting perspective. I guess I need to watch more Russian and German videos and immerse myself more, its quite light on for me at the moment.

[@Yiinor]

It's so funny to hear, being russian, how foreigners talking about my language. I was started to learn english about month ago by reading "Clash of Kings" by George Martin and viewing KZbin videos (I was learned only german in school). This is my first try to write something, and i sure i make a lot of mistakes with punctuation and grammar. In any case, i believe, that sometimes i can do this correct. (Commas was stood like they be stood in russian). Thank you for the video!

[@charlotteice5704]

I definitely agree on output vs immersion. English is also my second language and like you, I tend to be quite far ahead from my classmates. I had the same classes as they had and had no extra material, but the big difference is that I immerse myself in English for at least a few hours a day (usually more) through KZbin. Is it as good as living in an English-speaking country? Of course not, but I think that KZbin is an affordable and fun way to have lots of actual language immersion. Yes, the people on KZbin usually don't speak 100% correctly, but which native speaker does? Also, I know a lot of words. If you asked me for their German (my native language) translation, I probably could only give you a rough one, but that's because I learned them based on the context and I would go so far as to say that because I learned them that way and not by memorizing words off a list for hours, I am more aware of their actual meaning and not just of a German word with a similar meaning.

[@lampebrus1832]

My experience is exactly the same as yours. I learnd English through immersion online and learned German for 5 years in school, however got barely anything out of it. Then after playing playing a little bit on Duolingo, I chose to get serious about learning Japanese. During this time I stumbled upon Mat vs japan (I saw bald and bankrupt som time later). This convinced me to focus on vocab and input instead of grammar, and I can confidently say that I have a better understanding of the Japanese language then I ever had of the German (although my level is still low).

[@farrellwilson5468]

I also have learnt mandarin for 9 years at school but still can't introduce myself in mandarin, meanwhile I have studied Russian on my own for only 6 months and only by internet and can understand what people talking are talking in Russian

[@juliawinkel7078]

great video. very interesting and definitely underrated

[@horrisnorris6478]

8:15 I agree with what the guy says about not bothering to learn grammar to some extent, but it massively depends on the language. I learned Spanish basically just through immersion and learning vocab, and was able to get to a conversational level relatively quickly. My grammar was terrible, but I could make myself understood! But I'm currently learning Finnish, and grammar is so important in Finnish that it's possible to know hundreds of words and still not be able to form a very basic sentence. Word endings/conjugations communicate so much in Finnish that learning grammar is as important as leaning vocab. I imagine it's similar with Estonian too, it seems even more complicated than Finnish!

[@dicenia3881]

Oh the nostalgia hearing that runescape music. That game was probably my first introduction in trying to actively learn English because I didn't know a word when I was introduced. Went to high school and had one year of bilingual education( English) but because I had no basics I didn't understand much of the other subjects and dropped the bilingual part( grammar was better explained in the "normal" classes anyway). Later through youtube and reading I learned it quite well though I am not that fluent speaking it. I cant remember when I started understanding or how it happened it just did. Very odd to think about how bad I was and I can understand it just fine now. Well that was my English practice for today, the weird spelling really makes things more difficult than it'd have to be.

[@eridan11]

This is really interesting to watch as a Russian, and you make a lot of good points on why its a hard language! When I spend time remembering some grammatical rules of Russian, it becomes a nightmare. They're always so hard and stupid and inconsistent, although it does feel nice to brush up on your native language...

[@al1x.]

I relate to this a lot.Ive been learning English for 8 years at my school and most of my classmates can't even have a conversation in English (keep in mind they are all supposed to be at a C2 level),while I've been fluent for years.

[@ida3399]

I’m currently learning French in school, and I’m in a quite similar situation. Might try this method. (Great video btw!) Edit: fixed some grammar lol.

[@EvGamerBETA]

Absolutely effin true. I've become fluent in English without putting any concious effort. I've just started watching movies with subtitles and at some point, I just didn't need the subtitles anymore. Knowing grammar was helpful to have certainty then gut feeling tells you the way. You connect you knowledge of grammar with the gut feeling on the other side

[@_ENDERmitca_24_]

Makes me remember my one year Deutsch as my 3 language in 5 grade. In our school we have 1 subject we can choose out of possible options. Well, it probably started that year, because I didn't chose Deutsch, instead I chose Science and Physics as one option, but I needed to go to what i chose and Deutsch. And the funny thing is there were more than 2 options and I can change my choice, but if I changed it I still needed to go to freaking Deutsch!! Our teacher was very nice and I was understanding everything [until i got sick and missed some lessons], but 1st) Deutsch was only 2 times a week and even one of them is extra, so it isn't in schedule, so not very effective already 2) in 6 grade i didn't need to go to Deutch, so why the hell I needed in 5 grade?!? So I can recognise if it's Deutch or not, which you could teach me in 1 lesson?! Because I can only do this..

[@miumjou]

I’ve had a similar experience with learning English, the language learning in school In Germany follows the same theme of memorizing and writing test, the only way I rll got fluent in English is through watching a lot of English yt and if I didn’t know a word, I simply translated it and tried to incorporate it into the English class to use it and get responses from the teacher wether I used it in the right way. Now I’m wayyy ahead of most others in my class that struggle with remembering that you have to add an s when saying he plays. I feel like best to speak a lot, a lot and not so much do writing and memorizing exam stuff, cause if you think of how you learned your mother tongue: there was no one putting 2 or 3 year old you on a desk to have you memorizing and then write them 10 times each… it’s just not natural!

[@ferenccsenkey3343]

OK WAIT A SEC. I have coming to this channel from the JoJo episode and the video reminded me I should pick up Estonian again for some reason. But I love how I subconsciously picked up your accent 😂

[@gapedandamazed6988]

I actually do use rote learning for japanese. Except ofcourse I review the words that still have not stick to my brain from time to time until I always get it right. I continue this cycle on and on and then review those words AGAIN when am deeper into the (N5) book. From time to time I do reviee previous chapters as a whole to make sure I stay in practice (plus immersion/writing ofc) the point of this comment is to make you realise that rote learning can be affective if you're consistent with reviewing words. Those words are bound to slip into your long term memory in no time with enough practice and use of words. Another example when I'm rote learning is when I remember said word in a position in a said page. But due to me reviewing it from time to time again. I begin to remember the word not because of where it is. But because I just know it. It slipped deeper into my brain. So I stop being like 'oh this word is from there so it's' and I'd be like 'I just know it it's (blank)' atleast in my case this method worked. I do suggest physical activity atleast 30 minutes. Your heart will start pumping and your brain will recieve more oxygen and relief your stress from any language you're learning, imroves brain function, and memory. It's like medicine for FLA (foreign language anxiety) Oh and let me tell you. About not learning grammar and only learning vocabulary. It's soooo fucking true! I may only have started learning japanese 2 weeks ago but that IS the case! The more vocabulary and phrases I learn. The more I read/hear/write what I learn. I slowly start realising how the grammar works without really diving deep into learning grammar. I just subconsciously learn how it works. I may be a beginner but I ain't bullshittin. Even though I don't fully understand japanese grammar. I am starting to get the hang of it from the method I mentioned above. You never were taught grammar as a baby. Just vocab and phrases. You subconsciously learned how the grammar works as you grew and learned more. Anyway I ranted because this is kind of a way to scream at myself to not make the same mistake. And just for FYI. I basically repeated what some of the video said

[@Neilcourtwalker]

The fox and bear duo 😂 I would have taken this as a compliment, too.

[@danicarakic2270]

wow, thank you for this video! i was wondering why 4 years of learning language in school didn't help me almost at all

[@zariyahcampos3565]

I just want to share my experience learning other language: I just learned the language by myself and I did not take any classes from university. The most important thing is immersion and learn the grammar minimally like an overview so that you will have an idea how to use it. It's much better to practice using the grammar in terms of speaking.

[@jdougherty927]

Runescape!! Lets go lol... I actually got extremely more fast & accurate at typing through years of talking through a runescape character. :) Cool video, thanks for sharing your experience.

[@wilkatis]

Yeah, pretty much the same situation in Latvia. Learned English 3rd to 12th year (so 10 years total), thanks to the internet I was fluent in it since about 8th grade while some of my classmates still struggled in 12th. Meanwhile I had Russian class from 5th to 12th year (so 8 years total), but as I had no reason to use it outside of the class even tho I finished school with 8 out of 10 in the subject I couldn't put even a single reasonable sentence together. It was just grammar, grammar, grammar. Started working, some of my colleagues spoke practically only Russian and I quickly picked up quite a lot of it. My speaking level is still very low, but if someone speaks Russian to me I have no problems whatsoever understanding them. For language learning immersion is everything

[@PiccoloPoliglotta]

Since my early childhood I´ve been motivated towards language learning. I considered it that a cat could have many names and still physically to stay what it is. But when I started to learn English at school, in the classroom, the teacher used to give us a list of vocabulary to learn by heart. I always got A and forgot it on the next day. After a while, I decided to drop this crap and leave school for a self-learning. Now I am in the online school and I have two more languages in my curricula. The method has changed. There are more interactive tasks with videos and audios, but German does not fit even under this system. LOL

[@UltradarklordHDLP]

Keep it up mate :D

[@HimmelsDaemon]

This made me think of learning German for 4 years, American. A little better I suppose, as really it had a different focus or at least was upfront that is was more understanding and travel, functional. I did love that class though, was super fun and having been a long time ago only really can read basic things with what words I can recall. Not a lot of covering the classes homework on at a time, but lots of class and group work. Also songs or other media in German. Though a language was an optional choice here, so those who were taking German over Spanish had an interest in the class. From what I remember, Spanish was even more so similar to how you described. I can't say for sure or not, but it seems like vocab and words are the substance. At least with native English and my weird use and wording cause I'm odd, it was an interesting fit seeing how what was technically correct in English but not standard would be the grammar order for German. Though those two in particular have more connections than something based otherwise, but yhea. Grammar seems to be mostly structure, even little peeks at other languages just randomly getting shortly interested in ideas here or there. That being if something wants to talk or converse with you, the weird grammar will be worked out or helped with from the content. Similar to non-standard but correct grammar in English. Though with the grammar you can convey more complex and nuanced ideas and concepts by them being in the understood organization and how they relate. Now, I'm sure there are some languages were it is far more important or even necessary to even have an idea, but not sure of them. Also reminds me of once coming across a page on Japanese grammar or well, more a learning Japanese with words/phrases/politeness... Ah, I don't know... just the thought that for basic thing at least, the sorta grammar has a kinda recognizable feeling to it. Perhaps just talking nonsense. There's also the thing about connecting words to what are instead of a translation, but that's a different discussion really and even more dependent on the person as that's learning vocab. I'd say Math kinda has it's own bit that can help some people if they actually care to by learning the more "advanced" but not really things that are held off instead of its "memorization" of other core subjects that flat out rely on knowing... which is why algebra to calculus is mostly ordered that way, but what I mean is other subjects are almost completely just aspects to remember while math has it's own core component of understanding. Anyways, am babbling fox... :d 🦊💙

[@Gabriel-lg7lv]

I'm kinda in a similar situation to yours to be honest. I'm Brazilian and I've had Spanish classes throughout my whole school and still, I can't speak Spanish at all, even though it shares a lot some language concepts with Portuguese (language that I speak natively). I've had similar amount of classes in English too and despite not being fluent in it, I can understand it really well, and kind of speak it and write it. But that's because I have a lot of immersion with it, just like you. I mostly learned it through KZbin videos, social media and TV shows.

[@raykarpp]

Been self learning Korean for over 2 years now, and I can barely talk bc I'm so lazy to study, getting back into studying and learning vocab, it helps a lot, I especially learning vocab from vocab songs, I cant recommend them enough seriously, but I have noticed a big improvement when I learn lots of vocab, I speak to my bf and when my grammar is off, he just corrects me, and it gradually becomes more natural, don't need to learn so many new words because I already know them. Me personally, and Im sure can help others, is make learning fun, listen to songs, study those song lyrics, read a book you like, or watch movies or yt channels. try make friends in your targeted language online or in person, get so immersed, where your main entertainment source is from that language. I learnt so many new words from korean music and phrases from youtubers

[@ekirol1878]

Same with me and Spanish. I learned Spanish from 5th grade until my graduation in 13th grade. From 5-11th grade we would just write essays, do grammar exercises and "learn" vocabulary" without being really immersed in the language. After 11th grade we had to choose which 2 subjects we want to deal with intensively. I chose biology and Spanish because I usually did great on those things mentioned before. As soon as I had my first lesson in the intensified course i was shocked by how little I actually knew Spanish, since for the first time we actually had to converse in Spanish and listen to Spanish. In those last 2 years of really speaking Spanish and listening to Spanish I learned way more than in the previous 7 years.

[@horrisnorris6478]

Funnily enough I was thinking about this the other day - school is one of the only areas in life where you can learn a subject/skill for over a decade and not be expected to have some level of proficiency at it. This links in with what you say about exams - in my opinion if an education system overemphasises exams, it actually shows a lack of confidence in its own ability to educate. Here in the UK there's a strong feeling among both teachers and students that the system is set up so that students aren't taught for their own benefit or to learn useful things, but just to pass exams. I have massive respect for most teachers, but the education system itself is just so horrendously inneficient.

[@andythelynx6705]

listening to this makes me wonder how that could feel since I kinda got lucky and learned russian by myself when I was little (like 7 yo and could speak, understand and read by the time I was like 8) and now I have russian classes which I enjoy quite a lot since I mostly just have to remember how to correctly write everything but that isn't much of a problem tho switching between russian, englisha nd latvian in the same day and having to write in those 3 gets so confusing ...then also I'm learning korena and slowly starting also japanese (rn mostly trying to remember hiragan to have the ability to read it and then when I get better at korena to put more effort in Japanese)

[@NyunProduction]

Now that I've started studying Japanese on anki, I'm like: damn why didn't I know about anki when I was struggling so much with studying when I was at school? I'm the type of person who either procrastinates or goes all-out. But with Anki I find it easier to slowly progress a bit everyday because you can clearly see the amount of work that needs to be done on there, and its unimaginable to learn like 2k words in one sitting.

[@FreezeMango-BlazeLychee]

Learning languages is really dependent on a person. As for me, rote-learning in a way is quite effective. Recently started learning japanese and rehashing material on English(Russian is my native, привет-привет). For example, when I learn English vocab by the studybook, I try to write a little story/essay, talking about the topic of the lesson, using the words from the lesson's word pool. This way I could have an idea of how to use such words, and what topic they are best suited for. As for Japanese, after I try to learn how to write the kanji, eventually I have this feeling of a particular kanji, this way the word 一人, for example, will have a different feeling to, let's say, 二人. What I'm trying to say is that even rote-learning to a certain degree can help you in learning languages. Just find the poison that works for you

[@barrysteven5964]

That was interesting. I have been on both sides of this. I love learning languages by myself and I have also worked as a language teacher in a school. My experience is that language learning is not really suited to the classroom experience. We do our best but really language speaking is more a skill like learning a musical instrument and you'd be better teaching it in really small groups of just a couple of kids. Sadly, there are not enough teachers so if you did it like that they'd only get a lesson a week if they were lucky. I do impress on my pupils that they need to work independently and tell them to do exactly what you suggest. Unfortunately, they only get into doing things like that when they get a bit older. 11 year olds aren't mature enough usually. As a learner I have found that I only make real progress when I start using authentic materials ie materials written by and for native speakers. But you can only do that when you have a really good vocabulary so I concentrate on building up a big passive vocabulary because learning the words actively takes too long. Also once you start exposing yourself a LOT to the language passive soon turns into active. However, it's important to try lots of different ways to learn vocab. Lots of people will tell you 'this method works really well' but you might find it just doesn't work for you. Anki is useless for me, it just doesn't work. In fact, I've discovered words I see on a screen don't stick with me. So you just have to experiment till you find one that works for you. One last word about Bald and Bankrupt. Beware people who boast they've never studied grammar or read a grammar book but they still speak quite accurately. It's bullshit. Nobody would say "I know loads of words but I've never read a dictionary in my life" because nobody sits and reads a dictionary. Similarly, very few people read grammar books. You look things up in them same as you'd look up a word in a dictionary. You learn grammar from lots of sources: course books, teachers explaining to you, online courses, practice, listening, reading etc etc. But if you learn a new verb and then use it in the right person and the right tense then you know how verbs work. You might not call that grammar but it is. Bald can use verbs so he has learned how to use them somehow. This is still grammar. You can't learn every part of every verb, or every form of every adjective by just memorising them. That would be crushingly boring and pretty impossible unless you've got an incredible memory. It's easier to just find out the pattern and use it. And that's grammar however you do it or whatever you call it. Sorry for the long answer. But anyway, this was a really interesting video. Молодец!

[@Livakivi]

Thanks for the comment! Just as a note on the Bald & Bankrupt bit - I don't think the point was to NEVER learn grammar, from my experience and assumption, it was about learning grammar through context/immersion when you're already past the complete basics of the language. The only issue with learning through context/immersion is that it requires comprehension to get the most value out of it, and the best thing you can do for comprehension is learning more vocabulary, which allows you to understand the grammar attached to the vocabulary more intuitively. On top of that, the best way to improve your grammar is to study it when you already have a strong vocabulary and comprehension ability of the language to make more sense of the grammar, instead of trying to brute force memorize it and use it mathematically.

[@barrysteven5964]

@@Livakivi 👍

[@masiv1001]

My mother tongue is Spanish, being such normally implies being taught English as second language in school, so I was "taught" English starting at 3rd grade (8 years old), I was one of the best students in the class, not that I was a genius, but the exercises only required knowing recognizing patters and so, that way I didn't learn English, instead how to do the homework. Skip a few years later, at the start of high school it was the same, but here it was when I started acquiring English through content, mostly youtube, this was also the moment I got into a English Academy, but as I''ve seen that wasn't the thing that made me more knowledgeable of the language. Another year and the covid hit, as we all quarantined, I started doing a lot of immersion, thus improving my English, so much that I can even understand almost anything I encounter at a decent level (inside the topics I immersed with it be) enabling me to not only consume English media, but instead being the main language I now consume the internet. 3 years ago I discovered anime, something that most likely changed my life, not only because of the culture shock, but also introducing me to Japanese, after a year of been watching anime I actually researched a bit on how to learn it, I learnt hiragana and katakana and tried to learn from Genki, but at the end I ended up quitting, skip forward 1.5 years and there it was when I discovered comprehensible input, it hit like a truck, it all made sense, the thing that made me "fluent" in English wasn't the English Courses, neither school, but the hours and hours of immersion in the language. Step by step I discovered guides, videos (like TheMoeWay, Refold, MIA, AJATT,Migaku, your channel, Dogen, MattVsJapan, Wanikani, RTKK and lots of other resources) and I've already started to notice the improvement, I can read and recognize the things being said, some of the written language and some listening abilities, I'm now doing Wanikani (lvl. 21) together with 2k6k improved + Tango N5 decks (both since I discovered your video) I think this has made me aware of language acquisition, and how it has changed and will continue to change the way I see learning in general. Thanks a lot for putting the effort of these videos, with this, I can finally say I watched all of your videos, not only the Japanese ones, but all of them, and (as I've already said previously) have certainly changed my perspective, also motivating me to keep on learning not only Japanese but anything that I may be interested on. I'm so grateful, Thank you.

[@Joshie_Woshie]

I'm probably in the same boat when it comes to my French. Took 6 years in junior and high school, but now I can only get by reading. My French teachers were great, but I just don't click with the traditional ways languages are taught in school. But they did inspire me to learn languages on my own, which was honestly really rewarding.

[@abualamgir1679]

I had five years of French classes in secondary school in the UK back in the 90’s. Didn’t become fluent. Now I’m trying to learn it on Duolingo.

[@D925]

I can't relate more. I have been simultaneously learning german and english for 5 years and my english level radically outgrew my german level just thanks to youtube. Crazy how schools expect students to reach conversational level without consistency.

[@AlJavier06]

I think Immersion really helped me in learning English. It's probably the most important aspect of my 15 year curriculum of English back in school. From games, TV, books, and eventually content creators.

[@CassieCollision]

I self-studied Japanese on and off for a couple of years, and I was honestly shocked when I took a Japanese class last semester because of how shallow and lackluster it was. I used the same textbook as a resource during my self studies as the class did. I got placed in the intermediate level expecting to be somewhere past the first Genki book, but instead we were only on the 7th chapter of the first book and only reached the end of the 9th by the end of the semester. The classes apparently only cover 2-3 chapters of the book each semester, whereas I would simply spend an afternoon at most on one of them and look back at them as a reference as needed. I initially thought that this pace was appallingly slow, but after seeing my classmates struggle, I realized that they had to go at such a slow pace because of the lack of proper practice and exercise that would have actually been valuable. All work outside of class instead just involved filling out worksheets with vocabulary and grammar drills. I could learn way more and at a much faster pace with spaced repetition exercises using Anki and other similar programs than any of the material we were given. Lectures mainly consisted of having your name called in a rotation to speak a basic sentence, and the rest of the time you were just sitting listening to other classmates speak. All my classmates talked in a very heavy accent, which I partially attribute to the fact that the teacher didn't give any feedback about their pronunciation. I honestly felt self-conscious because I had the least thick accent and a faster talking speed than anyone else in the class. Because of my own experience, your point about hearing classmates speak being potentially detrimental really hit home for me, because I honestly think that their accent rubbed off on me a little while I took the class. I expected the class to help accelerate my learning, but if I'm being honest, I felt like it did nothing but hinder me.

[@vanillacoke9052]

i think i am in a similar situation with english? i used to be the best in my class to find that i actually don't know anything about english grammar. yes, i'm immersing myself into english everyday because i watch youtube in english and play games in english but understanding what others say never was a problem for me anyway. i am struggling with making sentences and writing text. though i've got better since i've started to post in social media in english i still feel like there's too many mistakes in my posts. an endless struggle. rn i'm trying to get myself back in learning mode where english isn't part of my everyday routine but something that i should train. It'll be easier for me to keep motivation learning later when i'll get to harder parts that i don't know yet.

[@wango6603]

This video is pure gold I started taking russian lessons again I studied russian for 5 years but i barely know anything

[@calebnegron9100]

In my experience I come from a Spanish speaking country in which english is taught from K-12 (Puerto Rico btw) and the english so far to say are very similar to all of your classes in elementary. It is just grammar, reading, speaking and that’s it. I was fortunate enough that I was interested into Minecraft videos from PopularMMOs and from there I started learning the language by just hearing it since a kid. Now I speak well with other of my lads (that also had my same experience) and we are mostly above average student on speaking english but I do make mistakes from here and there. I can say it truly works to immerse into a language and even a child that gets entertained by anything works like a charm.

[@csigirl12]

I have been self learning Russian for just under 2 years and I feel I am around an A2 level, I have a serious amount of input from reading textbooks, childrens books, video games, apps, tv shows and movies but I am now lacking the output. I have a quite large vocabulary and can read things really well but when it comes down to constructing complex sentences or even holding a semi decent conversation its like my mind blanks and I can't do it well yet. If I pick up a book I can read it cover to cover with maybe the odd words here and there that are new to me. I have been looking into trying to get some adult classes on Russian language or possibly even taking a class in Russia with some of the cool looking family placement programs they offer. I do wonder if there is a difference to being force fed a language in highschool compared to taking an adult class designed for language learning. I was force fed French at school when I was younger and I hated it with every fibre of my being and thought languages weren't for me until I encountered Russian and really wanted to give it a go. I fell in love with language learning and certainly have the motivation to take it to a high proficiency but I am lacking speaking and listening skills and was hoping to meet like minded people in a class environment dedicated to my target language. Do you think your experiences with classes may derive from you being forced in a highschool setting or are adult language classes the same? I have seen some classes that use the acquisition method instead of drilling you on tests and grammar. I don't want to be wasting money nor my time so anyone's advice is most welcome! :)

[@Livakivi]

I think if you're having issues with speaking and listening, the best thing you can do right now is do as much listening input as possible, but its not a bad idea to start practicing speaking through methods such as "shadowing". I really recommend checking this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j3SohIiLdpWqgpI When it comes to speaking in language classes, the other students can have bad speaking abilities as well, so it might not be as beneficial, and not sure how far it will go, but if its a really good environment with motivated students at a relatively high level, and a very helpful teacher, its probably not harmful!

[@Red-di7zb]

I am a russian and I had kind of the same problem with english, the breakthrough happened when I started to listen to videos on youtube every signle day for hours and then I had a really big progress in listening, now 4.5 years later after the start I would like to say that I am fluent in English and now I wanna study Chinese, but I can't keep up with consistency now. You need to find someone to practice your speaking skill. Also, you can learn language with 0$, I had a few classes in english and it was absoletely pointless for me. You may need a teacher only in the beggining, but when you reach B1 level, then the Input is everything that you need. Updated: I had been studying German in school for 10 years and now I can understand only simple dialog, I'd say my level is A2. I study English by myself.

[@Red-di7zb]

@The Crazy Russian Ну как бы да, я согласен. Смотрел его некоторое время.

[@robertandersson1128]

OMG A reference to bald and bankrupt. YOU'RE AMAZING

[@reinisxd]

I'm from Latvia. All of my friends were taught Russian the same way you were for 10 years, they barely speak it. I was taught German the same way and I barely speak it.

[@julie__j2159]

I can relate a lot to this. I have been learning Spanish for the past 5 years and due to not really strict teacher that just wanted to get over with the class, I'm now falling behind in the Spanish course (that has a really strict teacher). I'm already using Duolingo, but I can't really find any good language learning apps/websites or movies/youtube channels. If anyone has any recommendations, they would be more than welcome.

[@myentertainment55]

How I propelled my language learning massively back in the day? I always loved KZbin. It was (and still is) one of my main entertainment sources. I spent couple of hours a day here in my native language. I started to watch some KZbin on target language, listen to learning podcasts but It was slow and painful. I put it away and watched and listen music or watched in my native language instead. It was frustrating. One day I finally made a hard decision that I follow till this day. I deleted my beloved and cherished account that I created when I was still at school and created new one and gave myself a word that I will never watch or subscribed to anything in my native language. (Also I deleted all my music from phone (we didn't have fast internet that I can redownload it outside my home) that I had to listen to learning podcast or stand in silence during my 30 minutes bus ride. My English is soo far from perfect, obviously But after almost 5 years sticking to my guns and following this rule almost religiously (I don't read or watch anything in my native language either) I can watch movies, read books, listen to podcast and don't need any dictionary. 1-2 dozens of words (3 at max) in a 2 hour movie is not that bad in my opinion. Especially if we remember that all those words would be non essential to understanding what's going on on the screen. More than a half of words that I google in movies are cultural (like how some nicknames for planes american were using in ww2 or cultural references to old movies and shows etc.) Call me strange because I even watched anime in english(my target language at the moment) sub and dub :D I hope one day I will be watching it in japanese, but my level is zero, unfortunately. I hope in a next 5 year I can say that I can do it (or at least very close). P.S. No one actually cares but I did exception when there was big election in my country and I started watching some political channels in russian for half a year. and I rarely but watch movies with my family in my native language. Besides that I always followed my rule. (That no one cares about, exept me) Books, games, podcasts, youtube, tutorials for fixing computers, programming and even my job, news I watch in my target language. All my electronics in that language (exept that da** windows pc that I bought with one language licence!). I am so used to it now. It became my second nature after 5 years. You don't have to be so extreme , but I hope it was interesting to learn my experience and help to my fellow language learners.