Natives WON'T Correct All Your Mistakes

[@mattvsjapan]

Make sure to follow Sachie on Instagram! She agreed to be in the video on the condition that I advertise her Instagram 😅: instagram.com/saaachie91/ Supplemental reading: www.antimoon.com/how/mistakes.htm In hindsight, I wish I had found a less proficient English speaker to try and prove my point. Sachie has lived in the US for a year and actually has a pretty decent grasp of the language. It's not really comparable to someone who's been studying a new language for a few months. Sorry if the video quality looks a little weird. I accidentally left the ISO on my camera on “audio”, so the brightness was constantly changing. Also last week I went outside for the first time in a while and got pretty sunburnt. I’m also quite overdue for a haircut but haven’t been able to get one due to the pandemic. Here's a fun little skit I made together with Kaz from Eigonodo and Misa from Japanese Ammo with Misa. It's a tribute to Ken Shimura, the recently deceased Japanese comedy legend! kzbin.info/www/bejne/hmfci6h7nKaqhNE

[@merkain6019]

what do you suggest for the learn ahead limit on anki for RRTK? Heres a link to vlads anki setting reccomendations, should we still follow this?: vladsperspective.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/optimize-your-anki-youre-overtesting-yourself-on-too-few-cards-make-huge-gains/

[@mattvsjapan]

@@merkain6019 I don't think the learn ahead limit really matters.

[@IntelligentAtheism]

Did she know you would use her conversation for youtube? (before recording)

[@IntelligentAtheism]

Second part of this video should be: Matt trying to write Japanese and Sachie will check. xD :D

[@k.5425]

@@IntelligentAtheism 😂😂

[@rubykr]

Sachie is a trooper for allowing herself to be put in the spotlight like this. Good tips as usual.

[@NukeMarine]

I'll take it one further: constantly correcting or getting corrected during a conversation sets up either an adversarial or student/teacher relationship that ruins the mood for what should be a fun conversation. It's also somewhat egotistical or arrogant to expect friends or strangers to do for free on their free time what tutors get paid to do as a job.

[@obscurus1344]

Hey Nuke vs. Japan.

[@Rimmer7]

I keep reading your name as 抜けmarine.

[@nicklaurindo1916]

@@obscurus1344 oh no

[@seanbrownmedia8429]

This x100

[@noodletribunal9793]

i just wanna be helpful

[@user-sz9vr9mu6g]

I swear your channel is the most useful language learning resource I've found, and I'm glad I found it .

[@punikachi]

I agree with everything you said. Most native speakers don't correct your mistakes and even when they do they will only correct the things that stand out. The fact that the little mistakes don't get corrected leads to your brain thinking that anything which isn't corrected must be correct which of course leads to bad habits. Even when natives do correct us we are not likely to remember it anyway. For example, I correct my girlfriend's English all the time yet she still makes the same mistakes constantly because she already has the bad habit formed. I think this ties in well with your ideas about early outputting and why it's not a good idea.

[@mattvsjapan]

Great points!

[@RedFighterNL]

I consider myself a pretty good English speaker but mistakes still do happen. For example sometimes I tend to say something that is a litteral translation from Dutch to English. You will probably understand me just fine but the sentence just doesn't sound right in English😂

[@obama7325]

IamMe the goal is to speak like a native you could get by in life and express whatever you want with caveman english

[@smrtfasizmu6161]

Dude what's the point in correcting all the minor mistakes. Even you made one in your comment. You should have used past perfect instead of past simple in your first sentence. I am not surprised that someone who wants to overcorrect others makes mistakes himself.

[@smrtfasizmu6161]

"I agree with everything you have said" not "I agree with everything you said"

[@anewhope538]

Hard to get my Japanese friends to say “loud voice” instead of “big voice.”

[@uchuuseijin]

That's also partially because English teachers in Japan are trained to say that

[@k_wang64]

anewhope538 probably due to the word 大声 (which literally means big voice). We have the same word in Chinese so you’d expect a Chinese native speaker to make the same mistake haha. I used to make this kind of mistakes really often in the past

[@VioletEnds]

@@k_wang64 In the spirit of this video, would you mind if I correct a mistake that I see in your comment? 😅

[@12rstevenson]

Kudos to her... If someone did that to me I would never want to speak Japanese again.

[@マスター禪]

Robert Stevenson lol

[@nootics]

This made me think about how I learned English. People at school are impressed by my English skills in things like pronounciation and vocabulary. Native speakers here will probably find many mistakes, but without trying to sound arrogant my English is better than most of my friends' and classmates'. Then I realized I'm more the antisocial type and learned English through watching thousands of hours of English KZbin and observing and never worrying even a tiny bit about outputting. Seems like I've used a form of MIA without even realizing it for decades XD.

[@lewessays]

haha..lol the same applies to me. But, I am an introvert haha. According to standardized tests I am a c1/c2 but, jeez I feel like I am a A1 lol especially when it comes to writing and speaking. But, my reading and listening skills are top notch...because of the thousands of hours I have spent reading and listening. Now, I am applying the same techniques towards improving my Spanish, Korean and Chinese.

[@nootics]

@@lewessays actually this kind of applies to me as well. Although I can speak and write well, I actually have issues speaking without pauses and hiccups and I sometimes have weird sentence structuring. But this actually applies to my native language as well so it's more an issue of actually interacting with people that I do so little. Also, I'm trying to expose myself to a lot of japanese at the moment. I'm not understanding much, but slowly getting the intuition for what is natural and what not. Immersion works but at some point you just have to output xd

[@lewessays]

@@nootics Yup, your tongue should get used to the language :D Output at some point is necessary. My English is good enough....but, I am not satisfied so, I keep on working on it. Now, though I more focused on Improving my other languages.

[@巻木トリスタン]

@@nootics if you want help with pronunciation, read aloud with a mic and listen to your voice and compare, audio books helps a lot with this topic try to imitate, i improve my japanese and english this way

[@ReReChan]

That's how I aqcuired my English as well. plus my west coast accent.

[@awesomesepp3670]

now take into consideration that Japanese people try to be as polite and non-confrontive as one just can be. Thats wyh 99% of "make a japanese friend on the internet"-platforms are so 日本語が上手. Just try to remember the Scene in Harry Potter forced to write "I must not lie" and he litteraly feels the pain while writing. I think thats what it is for a japanese to tell you YOU made an error or fault.

[@noodletribunal9793]

don't you 上手 me! ٩(๑`^´๑)۶

[@HumansOfVR]

I see you're a fan of the movie Whiplash

[@mattvsjapan]

In general, I wouldn't assume that just because I used something as B-roll footage, I'm necessarily a fan of it. But, in this case, I do happen to like the movie Whiplash

[@lapischicken]

not my ファキング tempo!!

[@vanshika9920]

@@mattvsjapan just asking but shouldn't it be 'necessarily' (3rd line)?

[@daysandwords]

@@vanshika9920 Yes it should be, he's just made a typo in his hurry to reply.

[@JayAreAitch]

Days of French 'n' Swedish smh Matt clearly started outputting English too soon.

[@FilipP88]

Yeah not even a paid teacher would correct all those mistakes, it would interrupt her too much and she couldn’t relax and talk more Anyway good video Matt 🙏

[@kevinmendoza3243]

When i was in high school a friend of mine would make fun of me because i couldn't speak english, but it actually helped me a lot with the pronunciation because he would pronounce the words right and i learned a lot from him, it does really help when someone is correcting you.

[@m.neuville5389]

@Matt tbh I'm not a native English speaker and totally not used to listen to japanese people speaking in English. I had a very hard time to understand what she said. I have to confess that English pronunciation is bloody hard. Specially for japanese people since they have few phonems and only 5 vowels in their language.

[@trevkyleaa]

Fantastic video. I believe, in order to reach a near-native level of fluency, one needs to spend an enormous amount of time is with native speakers in countless, real-life situations, observing closely how particular words and constructs are being utilised and stressed in specific scenarios. A keen interest and correct utilisation of pitch and stress are the game changers in convincing native speakers you’re one of them.

[@epenies]

I also wanted to add that level of education also influences your style of speech. Someone with a very articulated or advanced speech may still sound off to an average native speaker.

[@grumpyrabbit1934]

As a native Chinese speaker, I often saw this on HelloTalk. Sometimes, a Chinese learner post something in Chinese on his moment, many natives correct his post in different ways, people from different regions have different way of talking. I guess as of a foreigner it must be frustrating, not only because of too much information, he probably won’t even know the difference. I guess it’s the same as we Chinese learning English, we probably should learn it from a specific region. Otherwise, we probably speak English in a very weird way from the native point of view.

[@Mateo-et3wl]

There's less variation among educated English native speakers than you imagine, and nothing compared to the linguistic variety in China. If you talk with an educated person with a fairly standard accent, you'll be fine. For American English, probably 30 states have no discernible accent

[@jbohman9]

@@Mateo-et3wl I think this is especially true for younger, more educated people. It seems to me that accents are consolidating quite a bit in the us. Yuppies, even from places as distant as Seattle, Toronto, Houston, and Atlanta often have very few discernable differences.

[@justakathings]

But if an English person, a Scottish person, an Australian person etc corrects your sentence and they’re not learning that accent you’re gonna sound weird. Yes the vocabulary can be standard but the pronunciation and stress patterns won’t be.

[@鲁迅-d8m]

​@@justakathings To me, it seems like you could say there are multiple different "standard types" of English (unsure if linguists would call them dialects). However, the vast majority of content learners watch is in standard American or British English, so no English learners I've encountered have those problems when learning. Many, however, struggle to understand the more distinctive accents (India, Scotland, Ireland) even after reaching a very high level in English

[@巻木トリスタン]

the same with spanish, the first thing i tell to people is choose a region and a country to learn, most of people dont care, because they are learning from a native so its a way to get vocabulary.

[@zb333zb4]

7:06 For a moment, I was confused with Matt's moving eyebrows which got blended with his hair.

[@anonymousname2651]

That's crazy. I heard almost nothing wrong first time around hearing her. I only notice it when you pointed it out. I'm surrounded by foreigners though, so I hear kind of poor English all the time and got used to it.

[@ItsameAlex]

lol I just watched the first minute and 30 seconds, and it already seems wayyy too petty. When I heard what she said I thought ''I didn't notice any mistakes''. We don't pronounce the ''r'' in UK English either, so the way she said turned 30 was just fine to me.

[@epenies]

If she had changed the sentence order to “she has a shy personality” it would sound natural.

[@benbisogno5578]

In real conversation though natural english speakers would generally say "she's shy", though. Correct =/= Natural.

[@geraltofrivia9922]

No it wouldn't

[@JustinK0]

@@benbisogno5578 "she's shy" can mean, in this specific situation "she has a shy personality" can mean, that shes shy all the time, they arent exactly the same but there is some overlap.

[@brendon2462]

I'm a native English speaker. I have never heard another american say she or he has a shy personality. I've always heard they're shy.

[@Joshx2415]

only likely if they're stressing just how shy the person is, fx "she has quite a shy personality" but again more often you'd just hear "she's very shy"

[@yurin642]

日本人です。この動画めっちゃためになります…！

[@rodrigodf234]

I think that everything really depends on the goals of the learner and also on how the whole signaling mistakes thing is done (I haven't written "correcting mistakes" on purpose, see below). For me, a good way of making progress in a language would be to combine two elements: free oral practice (or something near that) and very nitpicky tutoring since the beginning. With the first one, you could work mostly on your fluency and have a more relaxed conversation. With the second one, you could get a way better grasp of how the language works (phonetics, grammar, intonation and so on). I think that the nitpicky tutoring is easier to be applied with beginners, because the teacher will help the learner with the building blocks of the language, step-by-step. With this element, the teacher could signal (nearly) all your mistakes but it's up to you, the learner, to correct them. What I find fun about it is that, most of the time, the learners can get to the expected answer themselves with the right guiding from the teacher. Furthermore, this way, the learners will be much more conscient about their own mistakes (and hence more capable to correct themselves later on). I would like to give two concrete examples based on this video, supposing the conversation with the girl was a language class: 1) When she says "Her personality is shy", the tutor could say for example "your sentence is not wrong grammaticaly, but you can try to say it in a different (or more natural) way". If, with this hint, she's still not able to say something natural, the tutor could say "Try to make your sentence simpler" or even give other kinds of hints like 2 words + shy. Or giving her a fill-in-the-blank exercice : "___ ' ___ shy". You can also give "visual hints" with your hands to show her there are three words in the expected sentence. Three fingers wouls be up in this scenario - each one representing a different word - and, by putting your two first fingers together, you can show her that there's a contraction (she + is > she's). I'm sure she knows the structure "she's + adjectif". It's up to the tutor/guide/teacher to make her know that she can use it in this context. Maybe she will say another valid answer: it's obvious that the teacher should accept it... but it's also possible to show her other ways of saying what she wants to say. 2) If you, as a teacher, think that she said "berry" instead of "very" you can ask her to repeat what she just said to check if you heard it right in the first place. If she pronounces "berry" (or something not very clear) again, you can try to concentrate on this particular word. One of the many ways would be to tell her "oh, you've just said 'berry' - you can write the word at this moment - but I think you wanted to say another word". Maybe she will be able to correct herself. Maybe not. It could be just the case of an automatism - she knows how to pronounce the V sound, but she got used to pronounce the word "very" as "berry". If you know she knows how to pronounce properly other words with the V sound, take "victory" for example, you can guide her through the process of taking this V and replacing the B sound in "berry" to get where you want. The number of scenarios is pretty large and, again, it's up to the teacher to find a good way to make her get to the result... Not by giving her the answer, like lots of teachers do, but by giving her tools that will ALLOW HERSELF to get to the answer. I'm aware that this method could be frustrating for a person who can already communicate quite well, like the girl in the video. But I still believe it's the best method if this person wants to speak like a "native speaker". And as I said above, it strongly depends on your goals. I prefer to concentrate on nitpicky tutoring and still I have lots of fun with my exchange language partners while doing it ^^ I see it as kind of a discovery process and also as a game at the same time :) A lot of the things I said in my examples were inspired by some readings (and discussions with friends) about what Caleb Gattegno wrote on learning/teaching. I end my message by sharing with you a series of videos that I find super interesting about the Caleb Gattegno's approach : kzbin.info/www/bejne/gJ2vkKWZh75ombM

[@tokyostudies]

Great addition to the Language Isn't Math video!

[@ErnieV76]

I agree 💯 with this. I have been learning Italian for a year this month. All I’ve done is listen, listen, listen. Some reading, and some hello talk texting. Went from understanding not very much to about 90%. This next year I’m starting to speak and the comprehension of the first year has made it so much easier to think in Italian and not try and translate from English. Its been a great method for me. Now its about listening more to native content, continue learning vocab, and speaking as much as I can. 👍🏼

[@mohammedlarbifaradji4711]

1 year of listening helped you ?

[@ErnieV76]

@@mohammedlarbifaradji4711 Definitely. That’s not all I did but I listened to a lot. 👍🏼

[@mohammedlarbifaradji4711]

@@ErnieV76 thanks 👍, good luck for us

[@mustaphaafkir378]

Guys I'm MIA-er i love this guy he knows everything he's saying.... I started watching his content like 6 months ago even though i didn't understand more than 30%.now i get everything he's saying so i'm wondering if someone could tell me where I'm now as an English learner 😅 I know it's not even a question but you still can answer 😂

[@videoguy640]

Seems pretty good. "Know" (sounds the same as no) should be "now" (rhymes with wow)

[@zachyboodles2673]

If I were to take the same format as the video, sure. "he knows everything he's saying" while grammatically correct probably doesn't mean what you want. better would be "he knows a lot about everything he's saying" after "guy" you need a period or some sort of conjunction if you want to combine the sentences. You can't use 30% as a noun like that. You have to say "30% of it." You cannot contract I am in that context. You can only contract it when the next word or phrase describes you like "I'm a nice guy" or "he knows I'm bad at this." So it should be "where I am." know -> now (spelling is tuff) Just like our guest, your English is pretty good, with the occasional mistake. You are completely understandable.

[@tacofop600]

Small little bit of feedback, but for whatever reason, a native English speaker wouldn't really contract "I am" to "I'm" in the phrase "tell me where I am now as an English learner." If you drop off the extra bits at the end, the basic phrase is "tell me where I am." And a native speaker would never contract that to "tell me where I'm." On the other hand, if the phrase were something like "tell me where I'm going," or "tell me where I'm supposed to be," then a native speaker would almost always use the "I'm" contraction.

[@mustaphaafkir378]

@@zachyboodles2673 😅😅😅😅 I already knew all of what you mentioned, it's just when I was writing this cmnt I didn't think of it as writing exercise (I write like I speak which means " guys , 30%....." Are not mistakes 😂 I just wanted to write them like that. Know/now,It's not the first time it happened to me a lot even though I definitely knew the difference between them Honestly if I read it before I posted it I would notice that. I'm not sure about the first one i still think there's a difference between the two sentences If you say "everything he's saying" doesn't mean a lot of what he's saying ( not for sure but the way I feel about the two expressions is different everything > a lot of if you know what i mean ! Come back to my question when i asked where am I now I meant in the whole process in other words how much time I still need to reach "fluency" if I keep immersing more than 4 hours a day active listening and reading for example.(now i understand more than 90% of matt's content )

[@mustaphaafkir378]

@@tacofop600 thanks, i thought we can use them the same

[@katakana-kun2122]

for some reason 7:10 made me laugh. I also tend to break out dancing as soon as I hear my target language.

[@tayl5960]

Hi Matt, I'm not even learning Japanese (German and Spanish) and yet I stumbled across your channel a while ago and consistently see great advice applicable to anyone's language acquisition journey. Keep coming with the great vids!

[@constanza1648]

I came from the vid "Why You Still Can't Understand Your Target Language" and this is a good prove about the problems of understanding sounds when you are not a native: I can't understand anything she said. All the sounds are off and I can't be able to separate one from another and I cannot get any clues from context to solve the deviation. After hearing what you have to say about her pronunciation and listening again, I was able to understand the sounds and the words. Like decoding a young girl/old lady photo or the blue and black/white and gold dress. Once you know, you are able to visualize the other way around.

[@joshrey789]

Thanks Matt. I just started learning Japanese about a few months ago because of my trip there last year. Bro I just learned about the mass immersion and it works. I just watch shows in Japanese at least an hour or two a day and I catch myself studying without trying because I'm thinking to myself, "what does that mean?". Your motivational videos along with the mass immersion and pimsleur and busuu should help my basics until I decide to get a tutor. I'm 29 so I'm pretty old but I'm sure I can do it. Thanks for your videos man

[@ujika8164]

Good for you,friend!!

[@angelodou]

I wish someone would go over my English like this. I feel like I still have a German accent, but people tell me I don't. I feel like they're not being honest with me.

[@emeraldsstudio8352]

KuroJo It is fine if you do have an accent, as long as you are clear and easily understood.

[@siegward00010]

I don’t know your goals with english but, I think it’s fine to have an accent since so many english speakers do. I think accents can be pretty charming but if you want to work on it good luck!

[@narayana8249]

I feel like there’s an idea that no less than a perfect accent is acceptable. In reality, your English can still sound super natural even with a clear German accent. In fact, as long as there’s no difficulty in understanding people it becomes a quirk that some people actually enjoy from your speech. Just like everyone speaks a little differently, a slight foreign accent can actually be preferred to certain native accents lol

[@ItsameAlex]

You can't change accent, if you're past the formative childhood years, and don't live in the country of the target language. Pronunciation yes, correct word order yes, accent no. It boggles my mind that almost everyone doesn't seem to understand this.

[@paulwalther5237]

I feel like this isn't a problem for English speakers learning Japanese as much as it is for Japanese people studying English. When I was in Japan I was asked so many times to please correct every mistake. I felt like a broken record explaining why I wouldn't do that. It got so I was like, sorry, I hate correcting people and I hate it when they correct me too. I don't know how my saying that to them made them feel. I hope it didn't make them angry or hurt their feelings. I wish I could make Japanese people watch this video but it would need Japanese subtitles.

[@IlhamLingq]

Thank you for the Grammarly keyboard which has helped me a lot in correcting my grammar.

[@LadyViolet1]

I wouldn't even want someone to correct every little mistake I make; it'd get in the way of us having an actual conversation. Instead when I'm talking to my friends in a different language; I might ask them "what are the mistakes that I make the most often?", "what are the worst mistakes that I make?" or "what are the mistakes that I make that make me sound stupid?"

[@ClowdyHowdy]

I'm one of the small numbers of people putting MIA to the test to learn Korean. I have to be creative when finding comprehensible content as a beginner, (nothing like the vast library of anime) but I found some good quality high school webdramas that use really simple sentences. I also know a lot of food and produce vocab so I immerse in cooking shows and cooking podcasts. I'm not in high school and I don't cook, but its a way to get my foot in the door and I take it where I can get it. Unlocking the language is the fun part anyway.

[@ClowdyHowdy]

@@wanderingdoc5075 I just watched your videos recently when I was looking for MIAers studying Korean. I'll do regular short updates on my channel as time goes on.

[@snowangelnc]

After graduation I took a summer job in Mexico, partially because I needed a job and partially because I wanted to improve my Spanish through immersion. There was an American family there whose teenage daughter was born had spent most of her life in Mexico, so she spoke both English and Spanish as a native. She would correct everything. It was very difficult to have a group conversation with her present because she would constantly derail people's train of thought with her corrections. It's frustrating talking to somebody knowing that whatever comes out of your mouth is going to picked apart for grammar and pronunciation to the point that the content of what you are trying to say falls by the wayside. It tapered off a little after a staff meeting about a month after she started. We had an American addressing the group, but she (as usual) wouldn't let him complete a single sentence without interrupting to tell him what he was doing wrong. Poor guy was being made to look like a complete idiot. Our supervisor finally stepped in and told her to stop that, she wasn't helping. Which was true. She even admitted afterward that they guy she was correcting spoke very good Spanish, it's just that he still had an accent. When I speak to native Spanish speakers I know I'm making mistakes. When they speak English to me they do the same. I do the best I can and listen to them in order to pick up on the way the language is supposed to sound. An exception would be when one of us doesn't know a vocabulary word and describes it instead, then the other will fill in the blank. Or when one of us is unsure of a grammar rule and asks for clarification. For me it would be something like asking whether a verb I'm using should be conjugated as estuvieron or estaban. In turn, I would be asked something like should the word less or fewer be used.

[@Abhayjeet1998]

I have, unknowingly had tons of Input in Spanish before learning it, which is why I am able to "study" Spanish very quickly now. I may be studying for just over a week, but I have listened to Spanish music for two whole years.

[@derbar7051]

I agree with nearly everything you said about how native English speakers (using your dialect) would say those phrases. Was pretty interesting watching as a native Brit. There were phrases that we would say differently haha 😅. I agree that most native speakers won't correct you. I teach music as a living and my instinct is to always correct the speaker but this is not realistic even as a Brit. I took your advice on learning from a non-native speaker for my German and it has made a massive difference. Thanks!

[@BackiNator123]

Hey Matt, just wanna say thank you for all the amazing videos and helpful material. Started MIA on Feb doing like hardcore RTK for 4 Months but here i am now comprehending like anime without subtitles like しろくまカフェ and 響けユーフォニアム. sure not all words . i probably understand only 30 to 40 % but i get the meaning without subs which i was never able before and to be honest also didn't believe in lol. so this method clearly works if you put daily effort in ^^ thx for creating such a great guide ^^

[@zoo8203]

Long time ago I gave up on articulating my speech, including speech grammar. In general my speech ability is weak, even in my native language I can not talk properly.

[@water1374]

As long as you can order what you want at Starbucks and say "How are you" or "Hi" in whatever way is natural for your native language then you're probably fine.

[@JezzmanGAMES]

That's the problem i'm having right now: i'm studying Japanese at university as a first year student. First semester I was struggling, but managed to keep my grades pretty good, but now 2nd semester, corona hit. As before: reading, writing, listening is a struggle (especially grammar), but I'm managing, but when it comes to speaking: now there's no teacher to correct any mistakes. It's not something you can really practice on your own, or even with other students for that matter, because I know that we don't know our stuff well enough, to correct eachother's mistakes. I'm at my wit's end here. Speaking exam is coming up, the first saturday of June. It's depressing to think about.

[@k.5425]

Check out his "how to start outputting" video.

[@ASquidWithC4]

5:46 Very nice sync.

[@Sabin41]

I'm not fluent in other languages but have known people wanting to learn English and you're right, out of not wanting to be rude there have been a lot of things I haven't corrected even though they've asked me to help them. I've told a Brazillian friend that he's missed a bunch of words or said them in the wrong order but not that he's pronounced certain things in a really unusual manner.

[@OatmealTheCrazy]

Tbf, for "her personality is...shy" The gap there actually makes it sound more natural than otherwise, as it gives an air that you changed the way you were delivering your message in the middle of the sentence and kinda glued the two together. Of course, the more likely way in a completely planned sentence is as you said "She's shy" "She has a shy personality" also works though it you would like to sound more posh 😂

[@Sabre-dt2ng]

While native speakers sometimes do have to course correct mid-sentence, the thing is, a native speaker would very rarely if ever start a sentence with the words "Her personality is". I don't think I've ever heard someone say that naturally; it'd only come up in a book or something where they're using more poetic speech like "Her personality is one that would have everyone running for the door". 99.99% of the time you'd start with "She's", and if you had to pause to think, you'd do it like "She's... pretty shy". Native speakers have an intuition for how the sentence will be constructed even if they don't have all the words ready to go, and so the structure of the sentence will still usually be pretty natural.

[@kazma4444]

I moved to LA from Tokyo when I was 18 and I have one american friend who roasts me every time I make a mistake with my English. We've been friends for like 4 years now and I get roasted less today lol To be honest her roasting gets pretty harsh and painful sometimes but at the same time I'm actually quite thankful for her because surprising amount of people now tend to think I'm a native English speaker when we first talk.

[@Sakura-zu4rz]

I have a frustrating experience. Not knowing where to begin or hitting a plateau can feel demoralizing and make it hard to hit the books and study like you know you should…Having friends from other cultures makes me more creative. In fresh ways about space and how people create their own world and environment. It is best way to connect between creative thinking and cross-cultural relationships😘🤗😁

[@aikonatsumi5611]

Nice work! Being strict and humble are the perfect tag team to learn a language. Learn from mistakes!

[@mathdoer5127]

Solid video bro thank you for making these 🤙

[@ToKiniAndy]

I get what you are trying to say, and you're not necessarily wrong. Ingrained mistakes are hard to fix. But the message that I see most people getting out of this is one of misplaced relief: "Whew! I don't have to ever get out of my comfort zone and speak. I can just sit in my room and listen to media all day." If your goal is "Sound like a native" then yeah, maybe listening to it for a year before uttering a word is the way to go. If you live in the country and actually want to use it for what it was meant for, ie. communicating with the people around you, then you need to suck it up and accept that you're going to make some mistakes. Fear of mistakes is a sure way to fail. Once again: Is your goal communication, or perfection?

[@mattvsjapan]

“Communication or perfection”? I don’t see why you feel the need to paint such a black and white narrative. You’re making a stawman out of my argument. It’s all a matter of degree; it’s not all or nothing. For many language learners, their new language will become a life-long companion. For those people, putting off speaking for 6 months to a year may be a small price to pay for a life time of improved language skills. If people aren’t yet living in the country and are not pressed to communicate in the language, I don’t see what’s wrong with optimizing their language learning path by delaying speaking practice. I also think it’s a bit condescending to assume that most people won’t have the self awareness to make use of the content of this video without abusing it to justify outright procrastination. It doesn’t make sense to say that people should “get out of their comfort zone” just for the sake of it, even when it’s not what’s the most efficient.

[@ToKiniAndy]

@@mattvsjapan I'm not seeing how it's a straw man. I'm suggesting that the language you use when you present your argument paints a certain picture. Namely, that your method is the best and only method that makes sense. It also could be interpreted as "one shouldn't even bother speaking." Though I know that's not what you are trying to say. I'm then saying that I agree that ingrained mistakes are difficult, and I mostly agree with you. Where I'm arguing care should be taken is that the language you use when explaining those things could easily be taken as an easy excuse to not bother speaking and I've seen more than a few of your followers argue just that. They think they will magically be able to speak by passively listening to content despite the fact that the majority of content they are most likely listening to doesn't sound anything like an actual day to day conversation with a real person. I'm just here to have some healthy debate. I respect your level of Japanese. It's impressive. I question some of your followers fervency and tendency to attack other language learners who want to try different things, which may, without you noticing, be related to the polarizing language you tend to use. So where is the straw man?

[@mattvsjapan]

ToKini Andy I feel like you filter everything I say through the lens of some imagined AJATT elitist, and then respond to what you think that elitist would say. It’s honestly a bit frustrating, as I can’t control people misinterpreting what I say due to being influenced by AJATT and my less mature past self. No matter how nuanced I am in my expressions, those people will still hear nothing but justifications for what they already think. If you have a bone to pick with AJATT elitists, go debate them. If you want to debate me, please respond to what I’m actually saying, not potential misinterpretations of what I’m saying. I have a whole video talking about how I think some people in the community are overly scared to output, called “is early output a sin”. Like I said above, your comments also seem to paint black and white narratives. We should be talking about “how much to do/not do x”, not “should you do x all the time or never?”

[@ToKiniAndy]

@@mattvsjapan Fair. That is perhaps the lens I view it through. I am sorry for that. Perhaps because the material is so similar. I'm not sure. But often, your tweets at least, are criticizing some other form of language learning, which opens the floor for debate in my opinion. I'm sorry. I should should watch more of your content before jumping down your throat.

[@wolfemooney7188]

Hey Matt, I’ve seen a lot of your videos and the MIA approach seems to make a lot of sense. The thing I stubble with is how to go from COMPLETE beginner to getting a lot of comprehensible input. Should I start with basic grammar/vocabulary and then have the input carry me from there? Just starting Korean, and I’m not sure exactly how to start.

[@punikachi]

In the very beginning it's not a bad idea to get a pre-made anki deck of the top 1000 most common words, or use a textbook. But after that you should start using native material to immerse imo.

[@mcmodmod5533]

Read the MIA website, if you haven‘t already

[@geeksaurusrex]

There's a subreddit for Korean MIA, look for us

[@LittleMissMadeline]

Wolfe Mooney Why wait? Why not start immersing now?

[@wolfemooney7188]

CheetahGamer I’ve been doing a lot of immersing, but I have no clue what I’m hearing. The sounds are becoming more familiar, so that’s a plus

[@salva2685]

This is extremely accurate. You just cannot rely on native speakers to correct your mistakes because it would render communication difficult, which is the final aim of learning a foreign language. If you’re a beginner, they may not correct your mistakes as long as they can still get a grasp of what you are trying to say. Actually, beginners make mistakes every now & then, and unless they prevent you from making yourself understood, native speakers will mostly write them off. In fact, if you want to be friends with a native speaker just for the sake of improving your, say, Mandarin skills, you should hire a tutor instead. A tutor will correct your mistakes (as that’s what they’re paid for) and help you reach your goal, which is fluency (which means no mistakes in simple conversation). There’s no way in having your mistakes corrected by someone everytime you make them if they are not being paid to do so…

[@JazzGuitar-qs1td]

I work in Australia for a French company. At least half the people in the office have English as a second language. They all have excellent English - perfect use of grammar, perfect use of words, broad vocabulary and fluent speech,. They all still use Euro centric expressions, for example: today morning instead of this morning, yesterday night instead of last night as a native speaker would say. They're all aware of this and none of them are interested in adopting the local usage - they want to maintain the European usage. So, not everyone who has a second language is even interested in speaking like a native. No matter how long they live in Australia and speak English, they will NEVER lose their French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Portuguese accents. They understand and can be understood by native speakers. That is what matters.

[@daysandwords]

Fantastic as always. As an English-nerd, I love doing this to people haha. I do it to native speakers in my head (don't tell them!) "Her personality is shy" is not _grammatically_ incorrect as you said, but it is when you consider her meaning. I don't know the proper linguistic term for this but basically she is implying that the personality is a shy creature, like saying "My car is shy" or "my bear is shy". When she said "opposite" I thought she had switched to Japanese to explain what she meant haha. I noticed yesterday that Swedes, when expressing a past conditional, e.g. "I would have preferred to have gone..." they often just say "I had preferred to go..." which has the same grammatical meaning in Swedish as it does in English, but in that context MEANS "I would have preferred to have gone..."

[@Rimmer7]

Fun thing I've noticed is we Swedes tend to say "wery" instead of "very" and "are" instead of "is". I have no idea why "wery" is a thing, but "are" comes from both "is" and "are" being "är" in Swedish.

[@muhilan8540]

Swedes also say "it is many people"

[@erikjernqvist3862]

​@@Rimmer7 It's called hypercorrection. If you're accustomed to make the conversions vinter->winter, vi->we, var->where, et cetera, then it's easy to overextend the rule of "say w instead of v when speaking English".

[@daysandwords]

@@Rimmer7 Hej Rimmer - Yeah, I think it probably comes from them being 'wary' (as in, careful) of not putting a V sound on all our W sounds, but then taking that too far. Call it 'overcorrecting'. The French sometimes do the same thing with "H"; they have learnt that many English words have a pronounced H like "hat", so they start saying "the haeroplane" and "habstract thinking" etc. The 'are' vs 'is' thing is generally not just in standard sentences, you may have noticed. For example, they will say "He is coming later on." - Fine. But then when some complications get into the sentence, they will forget what the subject is and that it should be conjugated with "is", e.g. "That guy who learnt 15 languages are very good at all of them." - They are accidentally conjugating the "15 languages" with "to be" ('are') rather than the guy who learnt them, "is". PewdiePie still does this too, which backs up Matt's claim that some things actually need to be trained out no matter your level of experience. Och sen så har vi den klassiska som du även har gjort just då... 'the fun thing' / 'the funny thing'. 😉 Men du har ju mycket bra engelska, mycket bättre än min svenska och det var därför jag inte skrev hela kommentaren på svenska (och för att det hade tagit fan långtid.) Och förresten, jag menade att svenskar använder den konstuktionen när de pratar SVENSKA, inte engelska. Så jag vet inte om jag har rätt förstått hela grejen, men så vitt jag förstår kan man säga 'Jag hade istället ätit pizza...', men i engelskan skulle vi säga 'Jag skulle ha istället ätit pizza...'

[@ketchup901]

Days of French 'n' Swedish "Därför att" should be "därför". "Därför att" would mean that the thing that came after is what caused the former, while in reality it's the other way around.

[@CHAP_SEC]

Interesting video. As someone who speaks a different version of English, there were some points that I found natural, but they were only minor things. It made me think about my own language.

[@soyboymia136]

For the longest time I thought Matt’s eyebrow was connected to his hair, so it freaked me out when it started moving.

[@Sナツ]

Agree with all languages the key is fluency not accuracy(this comes later or depends what your goals are with the language)....its one of the reason Japanese english learners struggle to hold a conversation in English they are trying to text book perfect!.....which is a kinda of the opposite with Japanese learners thats more a story about the educational system.

[@mari-h7q]

Interesting video! 👏🏼 I learnt English thanks to immersion when I was 13/14 and I didn't even know it was a thing. After studying it at school for some years I realized I still couldn't understand interviews of the singers I liked nor easy songs so I just started to listen and look up the reoccurring words and after some time it just worked. I know this method works, after all these years of immersing I could predict everything you corrected (kudos to Sachie btw) but I only have one concern... I am not sure immersion is useful when you're not already at a low intermediate level reached by studying words and grammar. A week ago I started doing MIA with a lacking vocabulary background but sometimes I think that if I'd be at a low intermediate level (in my case it could be reached by studying more words) it won't take that long to recognise the new words once I immerse... I can tell when words begin and finish, I can hear the words and the grammar patterns I know but I feel like if I would have known more words I would really be doing the exercise of active listening. But now it just feels like I am wasting my time and I won't never understand more until I'll learn more vocabulary

[@字幕なしで]

At the beginning I thought the same, then I tried it myself and saw other people around me try immersion too. Pretty sure they went from true beginners all the way up to high intermediate (whatever it's called) lmao In one year or two we'll probably be only speaking in Japanese to each other.

[@mari-h7q]

@@字幕なしで yes it's correct lol Maybe we could do that in 5 years (or more hahhaha) because I'm now studying Korean. Hopefully at some point I'll be comfortable enough with my Korean and I'll start studying Japanese, I like its sound! You seem to have started some time ago though, keep it up 😊

[@rashidah9307]

Great video and you make some valid points! However, I still disagree that this is the only way to learn how to speak a foreign language well... If you're a young, single person without kids who can come home from work or school and spend hours listening and watching comprehensible input in your target language each day, that's great for you! But many of us are not in this category. If I had waited until I had accumulated hundreds of hours of listening in my TL to start speaking, I would've probably given up. Speaking from almost the start has worked for me. And, if you start one-on-one lessons with a tutor very early on when you're just learning how to put basic sentences together (like "I am married," "I work at an office," "I like chocolate"), your teacher CAN correct you a ton and help you avoid the most important mistakes and help you work on your pronunciation of the sounds of the language. You can also practice those very basic sentences with flashcards until they become automatic for you. Sure, people who don't follow your immersion method who wait until an intermediate level to start getting input from a teacher typically make TONS of mistakes because they have many bad habits and they're trying to express complicated ideas. But that doesn't have to be the case.

[@turmat01]

I can see how that would be impossible to correct everything. What I intend to do is tell my interlocutor that I am trying to learn Japanese, and if they see the same type of mistake often, at some point just interrupt me to correct me, without trying to correct everything all the time. This way you always improve on your biggest mistakes, which I think is going to make the biggest difference for the least amount of coaching, and I think it would be a fair thing to ask. A friend of mine did that with me 15 years ago. She was perfectly bilingual so we spoke both French and English, but whenever we would speak English, there was a couple of mistakes I would do all the time. She'd mention one or two things here and there, without being annoying, like literally once or twice a day and that's it, and over time, it really helped my spoken English.

[@KuroShiiiiro]

thats a universal thing. no native is going to point out every small mistake. cant ever expect your peers to be your tutors! lol. plus i knew everything she was saying even tho english is a stress language. if you want as close to fluency as possible you have to jus pick it up over time thru listening! its the strat im trying esp since its v hard for me to speak japanese at all in my day to day life

[@k_wang64]

Yeah I agree I’m a Japanese learner myself (and also a English learner). I’m also taking French, but it seems to me that I can’t even handle the most basic scenes in French. Some of my friends are native English speakers, so I’ve got the chance to talk to English native speakers. Since I’m going to go to college in the US, I learned English really hard in the past like 3 years (now I’m a high school senior). I did nearly my entire coursework in English and watch like bio or chem related videos on KZbin. However, if you ask me, I would say that I didn’t benefit a lot from chatting with native speakers. I did the language exchange thing and expected it to work well, but the fact is that most people get tired after maybe just 3 days of intense language learning. It’s unrealistic that they point out and correct every mistake you make and tell you why it shouldn’t have been said that way. It’s just impossible and ridiculous. Most of the time people are just looking for native speakers of his target language to chat with, and you simply appear to be one of them. And if the conversation is full of lectures little people would still be interested - not everyone is a language nerd. It seems to me that the best way of learning a language is to actively immerse yourself into that language regardless of where you live. I live in China, so no one really speaks either English or Japanese here. I’ve been to the US several times before but never really stayed there for more than a few weeks. Also I travel to japan really often, but that simply didn’t help much. Now I’m able to at least speak “seemingly correct” English (good enough considering the fact that my English was like shitty 3 years ago), and I think I benefited the most from listening to whatever I was able to find, looking words up in the dictionary, and take notes really often. Other ways of learning the language like talking to a native speaker would certainly help, but it’s not the best way for a beginner and is not even close. (Also さちえ is cute haha

[@mohammedlarbifaradji4711]

Thanks

[@ShahbazMS]

I thought this video was about how native speakers would be too polite to correct all of your errors. However, Matt made an even better point. Native speakers simply *CANNOT* correct all your errors. As a beginner, you could have more errors than there are words in a sentence. They might correct some obvious errors. Some problems with word choice are difficult for native speakers to even explain.

[@Andrei-vo4eq]

Hey Matt, Amazing video. Thanks for sharing. I am a Spanish speaker learning English (bad phrasing? Maybe) and I've been doing a lot of input for about 4 years now. It was recommended to me to read aloud to improve my pronunciation but I worry I may end up building bad habits that way cuz my instinct is still not good enough to catch all the pronunciation hiccups? and I would say.. the stressing isn't perfect yet. Should I stop the whole thing and go back to input mode or is it possible for me to start outputting that way trying to be as aware as I can be. Thanks again for the content. It is highly appreciated.

[@drewcudiamat9078]

Matt has a video on starting output. You should check that out!

[@Mateo-et3wl]

He has interesting advice about output. I will add my advice, since I'm a professional english instructor. Reading out loud is overrated. Shadowing would be better. Reading aloud is am entirely separate skill from just speaking a language. For example, unless someone is a trained actor, i can tell from a recording whether they're reading text or speaking normally. So if your goal is to produce natural stress and intonation patterns, skip reading texts out loud. Try shadowing people. And if you want to test your pronunciation of some text for which you don't have audio, you should say the sentences from memory. You don't need to memorize it, but you should read a sentence (silently), look away from the text, and then repeat the sentence from memory. This will remove the artificial pronunciation that comes from readinf text directly. In either case, if you aren't recording yourself and analyzing your own performance, you're wasting your time.

[@mahdiyussuf9804]

edit: Cool video! Now reverse the roles haha

[@daysandwords]

If the roles were reversed: *Matt uploads two hour monologue of Japanese* Teacher: "Ummmm, well... look.. ah, I guess if we're being picky then he pronounced "begrudgingly" a bit off."

[@kanjiNaem]

@@daysandwords wouldn't the reverse just be the videos kaz from　英語喉　made with his permission

[@kurootsuki3326]

@@daysandwords oho he has appeared

[@alexferreira1069]

Awesome vid, Matt! I'm always trying to get people to understand that...

[@jvu2ilj26]

I don't really understand WHEN you should start outputting ... ?! I've been learning Japanese for more than 5 years (although I didn't know about Ajatt and Krashen until about a year ago), but I still make mistakes when I speak and there are still many things that sound unnatural. Have I been doing it wrong? I input a lot too.

[@pia_mater]

I've been learning english for almost 20 years and i still make lots of grammar mistakes. Learning a language is a continuous process that NEVER ends... and it's impossible to speak 100% like a native speaker unless you're a genius like this guy lol

[@catboyhole]

after 5 years you should probably start outputting if you want to. talking to people is pretty rewarding.

[@Ryyza7]

what happen to all the manga pages in the background?

[@Iancreed8592]

Hey matt, digging your content. I started learning Japanese around 12 years ago, and went to a language school in Japan for 2 years from 2011 to 2013 and passed the N1. I have continued passvely studying ever since...I feel like my comprehension is really good but my output ability is meh still. I guess I'm just paranoid that if I were to go back to Japan right now, my speaking ability would really get me down. What do you think the best option for someone in my position is to improve? Luca style written translation practice? Shadowing?

[@k.5425]

Watch his "how to start outputting" video

[@zrosix2240]

In my opinion, immersion is the only way to learn. And direct translation is probably one of the worst ways to learn. Otherwise you’re going to be translating sentences from English to japanese (or any other language) that MAY work in English, but don’t make any sense in Japanese. Because in most languages you use a figure of speech or a popular expression in almost EVERY sentence without even realizing it. And every language has different figured of speech that don’t translate exactly as it’s said

[@DJDCann]

Matt out here enlightening us.

[@hopefillledday9026]

I'm Englsh and am now questioning how I speak, British English though... The only things that really stood out to me were 30 because I though she said 7, and opposite because I heard aboji, and of course and 2 years and a half. The inflections, I didn't really find an issue, and thought it was nitpicky, however if you were trying to sound like a native I suppose it makes sense. But that would depend on which English speaking country you were from, and even which region. It was interesting to watch though :)

[@DengueBurger]

I think both Japanese people and English-speakers are pretty tolerant of accents and different language aptitudes, as long as you can get your meaning across

[@Nussbaum123YT]

Hey Matt, right now I am fluent in german and somehow in turkish and english aswell. I speak turkish to my parents and english to my boss. I have no problems understanding someone else in one of those languages, but if I have to talk in turkish to someone else except my parents, I always switch to german, because it's easier to express myself in that moment. Talking to my boss is hard too, as long as I am not in front of a group of people and doing a presentation. This doesn't make sense to me, because as I said I am talking to my parents in turkish without struggling. The sad thing is that I noticed that if I am speaking while I am drunk in english or turkish I am totally fluent. I am also used to have conversations for several hours in one of those languages without switching to german. I don't know when it happened, but in the last four or five years I started trying to express myself like I do in academic german (I worked for a local newspaper, study at the university and spend a lot of time with politicians). Do you have any advices how I can get rid of this behavior?

[@LympyDownunder]

I agree with mostly what your saying (if I understand it right). What confuses me about your message is when you say "output" do you mean not talking at all, just to yourself, to close friends, strangers etc.? The main reason I say this, is that I practice talking to myself all the time to improve my pronunciation and it is awful unless I repeat it. It's like how K-pop trainees record themselves to watch back to see how they perform, I record myself speaking and listen back to compare how I sound saying these sentences I hear and I am awful until I practice more. Thanks for the content as always, I love the thought provoking videos you provide.

[@sidma5661]

He recommends you start talking once you get to a high level. Matt also recommends recording yourself speaking and listening it back to pick out mistakes, just like you said you were doing. But you can't notice the mistakes you are making if you aren't efficient at your target language. So, he recommend not outputting until you become efficient in the language.

[@LympyDownunder]

How is "efficient" defined in this context as it makes no sense in my understanding of English? It's a word that literally means nothing unless it is defined. Efficient can mean talking from day 1 as you make the most of your effort vs time.

[@ReddAngry]

7:41 Have you thought about making a video explaining why the Japanese accent sounds the way it does when speaking English? After learning Hiragana and Katakana, some of the reasons seem clear to me. With all of your experience with learn Japanese and understanding of how language works in general, I'd love to hear your opinion on this.

[@kanjiNaem]

how would that be helpful for anyone in any way?

[@matthewbitter532]

Dominic J Redd could it be the huge influx of butchered English words (in katakana) entering Japanese the vocabulary?

[@ReddAngry]

@@kanjiNaem Use your imagination. I'm sure you can come up with something.

[@ReddAngry]

@@matthewbitter532 Lol, no, that's not what I mean. I'm talking more about how the sounds of one's native language effects others learned. In Japanese, parts of words are not stressed (as far as I know) but we constantly stress sounds in English so that's one reason the Japanese accent sounds the way it does. I think it would be interesting to get Matt's point of view.

[@MuttFitness]

The main issue is they don't move their lips as much in japanese as in English

[@cp5679]

Thanks...Excellent again..

[@martinkn.5161]

There's more to it than just mistakes. Not everything that a NNS says that isn't the same as a NS should be considered inherently a mistake, they just communicate meaning in different ways (because they are limited in their language knowledge). TBH, English is not the best example for this: there are too many varieties of English that have formed with its globalness that consistent dialects have been formed from large NNS groups (reinforced "mistakes" become dialectal qualities). There are some good papers on Interlanguage for those interested.

[@AConnorDN38416]

while I think it is definitely true that to gain near-native level fluency in a language you have to learn how natives express themselves through thousands of hours of immersion, I'm not really convinced that speaking early will be detrimental to your language learning. As an example, Xiaoma takes the opposite approach and dives right in to speaking. I can't speak Mandarin so I guess it's possible that his Chinese is a bit unnatural sounding to native speakers, but I don't get that impression. Personally, I think bad habits really aren't that hard to break. As an example, when I was fairly new to muay thai and boxing, I had a lot of bad habits like letting my elbows flair out when I punched, not rotating my fist far enough or locking out the elbows and so on. When I achieved a certain level in my boxing, I took the time to really pay attention to these habits and after a bit of practice I was able to correct them. It wasn't a painful process, it just took effort and focus. I think the same thing goes for developing your language ability and correcting bad pronunciation and unnatural expressions. You might say something in an unnatural way for a while but then if you're really focused on learning to speak more naturally, you will hear a native speaker express the same idea but in a different way. I've definitely experienced this many times while learning Japanese. Personally, I think you're going to make a lot of mistakes when you first start outputting no matter when you start because speaking is its own skill (as Matt has pointed out in other videos). If you're the kind of person who isn't that motivated to speak right away, I think its probably a great idea to just spend all of your time immersing. But I think for those of us who really enjoy speaking our target language, there are many benefits to speaking as soon as you'd like to and I think they likely outweigh whatever bad habits you pick up along the way. That being said, Matt is vastly better at Japanese than I am so take this for what it's worth. The big point of this video that I definitely agree with is that you can't rely on others to correct your mistakes. I think it goes for any skill that the vast majority of learning is done through your own personal efforts. The important thing is developing your ability to notice what masters of your target skill are doing differently from yourself and how it makes them better.

[@Toyking10]

I love you, Matt

[@ahmadshiddiqn]

i think it's that japanese people learn english with their own pronunciation which makes it hard for them to really use the native dialect

[@lucasnunes7534]

yeah there are a lot of tips and advices to improve the knowledge of a language learner, but STILL and the most important effort you can make is be exposed by the language as possible as you can, thousand of hours listening to it, by that ,Certainly it’ll get you a higher level in the language

[@sumperdeph]

I'm happy to see that I was right to hear that my intuition was right in how I should learn Japanese, it made me more determined. I am currently working on my own theory of how to optimally learn a language, but I work on a lot of different ideas generally and my discipline is subpar so it's still in the early stages, I want to check the MIA method out to see your idea of it and yours will be naturally more developed because of your experience and dedication, it seems like we have some similar ideas so I look forward to see how much I got right. If I have some ideas you haven't touched I would be happy to give some suggestions if you are willing to hear them. I really think it would be wonderful if learning languages was made easier. Keep up the good work, you are doing important work.

[@rooftopfight6210]

I feel Matt would roast my English so hard😳😳

[@delilah3556]

I totally disagree. I grew up going to a bilingual school were French was spoken 9 hours a day, for 12 years. I could understand everything perfectly, but I was a shy kid and I spoke only in English with the few friends I had. Fast forward to high school, and my French essays are filled with anglicisms and my spoken French was still unnatural and frequently corrected. It was only when I got french friends that I started to improve. You need input and output from as early as possible. Babies spend time absorbing language, yes, but toddlers still make many, many mistakes. They still end up speaking their language perfectly. Even following your logic, you're not going to magically speak your target language without any mistakes when you do come out and do it after "thousands of hours of listening". You need to exercise what you've learned or it will not even stick around long in your brain. Also, while a native will not correct all your mistakes, you will eventually correct your own with enough input, AND output. I've been learning Russian for about a month, and the only thing that's propelled me farther than anything was speaking with natives. A few weeks ago, I struggled to spell пожалуйста and come up with my own simple phrases (Здесь ночь felt like a huge achievement), and now I'm speaking in full sentences. My grammar isn't perfect, but it's improving very fast. If you're not speaking with natives, you're not learning much about the culture or habits of the people either. TV, music and radio is input but it isn't real life.

[@rodrigodf234]

Yeah, I also think output is essential, since speaking a language is a savoir-faire. I think you need to manipulate and exercice the language to learn better how it works and, most importantly, to practice the mechanisms or the configurations you "learned" (or thought you learned, because it was only theoretical knowledge until then). This is valid for whatever "savoir-faire" you'd like to learn: you can compare it with riding a bike for example. For me, input is super important, ESPECIALLY if we understand "input" as a mix of 1) exposure to the language itself + 2) feedback that guide us into the new system adopted by this language. This feedback is also very important! You may have heard/written the language and spoken it for years (exposure to the language + output) and still not be able to sound like a "native speaker" in many ways, because there are lots of "awarenesses" lacking. For example, you could be able to understand quite well the language (to make a lot of sense out of it) and to make yourself understood, without using the system of the language itself (phonetically, syntactically, etc.). And sometimes we don't even know that we're saying something that may seem unnatural. Good feedback tells you immediately that there's something wrong and also allows you, the learner, to try and correct the "problem" mostly by yourself. For me, that's the best way of rising awareness within a language learner.

[@soimpressivesodogetothemoo8027]

hey matt what do you think about try to read a novel and make an audio file with an text to speech program to listen? im using VOICEROID2 to do it you think its useful? because its really hard for me to find audio book with text to read and also in this way i can listen every google search that i do like articles and stuff. You think that is a reliable resource in this case? or do you think that its not too natural as a language material?

[@rc1749]

Once again thx Matt for the video. What do you think about typing / chatting with natives for practicing output? As it allows more time to think / google proper sentence structures.

[@mattvsjapan]

I think that text chat is the best way to begin outputting. That said, I still don't think outputting through text chat is going to be fruitful if you don't yet have a sufficient foundation in input.

[@Kibouo]

In addition to native speakers not correcting (which is understandable when you just want to have a normal conversation) a lot of Japanese people excessively flatter the Japanese proficiency of foreigners, saying that their japanese is “perfect” or sounds “native”, even when it clearly isn’t. Often this is just a conversational norm but it can hinder improvement in language proficiency for those that genuinely wish to achieve as close to native level fluency as possible.

[@isaacmalcolm2020]

Hey Matt, I've got a suggestion. Have you watched "Scissor Seven" on Netflix yet? It's the only semi-popular Chinese animated series in the US. The animation is amazing, it's got some hilarious jokes, and I'm sure you could get some quality immersion with the origional Mandarin. The second season just got released, and I'd love to hear how you like it! I've always been a Japanese kind of guy, but this show seriously made me coinsider Mandarin as an option.

[@FilipP88]

I wouldn't recommend learning from that show, I just checked out episode 1 and they were speaking with a strong Malaysian-Taiwanese accent (no differentiation between s/sh, c/ch etc) I personally don't want to talk non-standard Mandarin like them, but if someone wants to do that then go ahead

[@arunraman6630]

@@FilipP88 Oh that explains why I was having so much trouble making out words. Thanks for the info.

[@jennifermarea8011]

How did you know she was trying to say, "She just turned 30?" is it because you speak Japanese so you can tell more of what she meant to say? I understood 0% of that sentence.

[@tanyabc]

He said they're friends. Usually when you talk a lot with someone with a super thick accent they become easier to understand over time. At least that's how it's been for me with native spanish speakers. I had trouble understanding her too, but I also don't know any native Japanese speakers so her accent is unfamiliar.

[@SlavicRatnik]

I understood 0% of your sentence because Japanese and English are two different languages

[@ultracapitalistutopia3550]

I heard “She just trendsetting”. Japanese treating /th/ as /s/ consonant is a deep rooted disease which can only be cured by MIA.

[@MCA0090]

@@ultracapitalistutopia3550 Good point, I noticed a lot of them saying things like "Thank you" as "Sank you" and I thought: They could just say "Tank you" and it would be much more clear to understand (I know it because in my native language we don't have this 'th' sound, so most people replace it by just a T, or an F when it comes at the end of words).

[@k.5425]

Same. Didn't know till he corrected her mistakes.

[@ItsameAlex]

I was looking for that Latina in the comments to say this: You can't change accent, if you're past the formative teenage years, and don't live in the country of the target language. Pronunciation yes, correct word order yes, accent no. It boggles my mind that almost everyone doesn't seem to understand this.

[@mellow-mike]

lol I know youve put BBNG in the background before but I wasn't expecting sour soul, love that album

[@ultracapitalistutopia3550]

I think the risk of making early output can be mitigated by google each section of your sentence with “exact match” condition. If there are little to no results, you at least know that your sentence is unnatural.

[@UnlistedAccount1]

Do you recommend listening to native speakers who are speaking at an intermediate pace that I can understand much better or full-speed right from the get-go? For context, I’m at A2 in French and I barely understand maybe 10% of full speed French compared to 50%+ of intermediate speed that I can use to build my vocabulary much better.

[@gothicchocobo]

Not to mention regional differences. As a British English speaker, I would say that some of the things that you say, as an American English speaker, are incorrect, and would want to correct them so that a non-native speaker wouldn't make those same 'mistakes'.

[@suhailps2488]

Hey should start a KZbin channel in Japanese.. that would be great

[@モモちゃん-q7p]

Great video as always Matt and I definitely agree about corrections. (Think I need to take a step back from online lessons for now) Question.. I was on the MIA site and noticed every overview after stage 2 is gone. Will you be uploading the individual pages again?

[@Rocksteady72a]

Dogen's channel has brought up the phonetic dictionary of words a couple times now. Would you say that this rule set is almost always used, or is it purely situation-by-situation based as suggested in the video?

[@aymenmh2697]

Sir, you are the best !

[@aikonatsumi5611]

I like the map on your wall. What year is that depicting?

[@mattvsjapan]

1914 I think!

[@jamesjp2750]

Hey matt, love ur vids and u should do more vrchat ones. Anyways, I recently watched your full 3hr ajatt journey from a couple years back and you said something along the lines of you think it would've been better had you stopped the ajatt 2 years into it when you weren't sure if that's what you wanted to continue doing it. You said you would touch up on it later but it didn't come up in the rest of the video. I found it interesting and wanted to know why you felt that way, if you still remember your mindset from a couple years back, and if you still feel that it would've been better to stop at that point? Sorry for the long and messy question btw

[@JamesWongLife]

Hey Matt, what do you use to record your conversations online?

[@enthra1728]

Maybe this is a high request, but would you mind compiling playlists of full-Japanese KZbin videos that you would recommend for those learning Japanese to watch for immersion purposes? A big part of the immersion thing for me is that I have a hard time finding good sources to immerse in. KZbin is something I’d like to immerse in, but I can’t efficiently search Japanese KZbin because I don’t know enough of the language yet.

[@mattvsjapan]

What videos I would recommend would totally depend on the specific interests of the person. So, I can't really make that sort of generic list.

[@enthra1728]

@@mattvsjapan That's a fair response. Thanks for the reply! I'll try my best to find some Japanese KZbinrs that interest me. Trying to buckle down on my practices this time around.