What would "perfectly ideal" language learning look like? - Patreon Q&A Archive - April 30th, 2022

[@ITNoetic]

26:43 I would add, for people who are, for whatever reason, hesitant to fail "so many" cards, that whatever it is you're failing is in the 1k or 2k most common words in that language, so there's no danger of you not learning the word. Immersion will catch you up, with the side effect of learning being way easier if it's happening during something you're enjoying.

[@Geo_Babe]

I live for Matt video drops!

[@pathologicpicnic]

Where did he go? He hasn’t uploaded in nearly a year

[@w花b]

​@@pathologicpicnic he's in Japan now. I don't know what he's up to aside from that

[@FellowHuman18]

One of your best Q&A's. Thanks a lot.

[@christopheradrien4643]

I like what he's saying about leaches in memory

[@pohlpiano]

Well, in our language (Czech) we actually do train our kids for pronunciation, all kindergartens do have specialists in speech therapies and there is abundance of medical practictioners specializing in this everywhere, so practically all kids would have certain pronunciation training, some of them a lots of it, going on for years, so it perhaps depend on the language.

[@LukeCantCommunicate]

14:55 how does that little amount of water make that much noise

[@thebeardsolution]

Hi Matt Hoping for your insight. You recommend reading a lot to become fluent. I'm learning Sinhala and from everything native speakers tell me the written and spoken language is distinctly different (almost like a separate language). In this instance what would you recommend?

[@Refold]

Hey! Those are called "diglossic languages" and are fairly common. Your best bet is probably to focus 100% on the spoken language. This is slower and will be harder, but may actually increase your fluency later on. And then once you're intermediate/advanced, you can also learn to read. I don't know much about the learning materials of Sinhala, but if you have access to native speakers, movies, radio, and things like that, you can go down the comprehensible input/ALG route. Here are a few videos you might find interesting: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n53PcqOdlrGafaM kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4ibfmeAqJmIeKM I hope this helps you in your journey! - Ben

[@thebeardsolution]

@Refold thanks so much for your reply Ben!

[@piadas804]

RTK may have a low sucess rate, but it is still the first thing you should do before learning Japanese

[@DevinDTV]

More accurate to say you should do it in parallel with other forms of study such as immersion and vocabulary memorization. It's highly inefficient to *just* memorize kanji for months when you could be developing your language skill at the same time.

[@Nikolai.A.McGuire]

Can someone tell me how the hell they find these dictionary's? I have been looking for one in Russian and the only things that come up, only show example sentences, and nothing more, or they say they are a dictionary, and it's a translator. So if anyone knows any good monolingual Russian dictionary's, please do tell.

[@Alec72HD]

Russians call Monolingual Dictionary as Толковый словарь. Regular Dictionary (Словарь) is considered by default as bilingual. Interesting fact, but Russian school students don't commonly use Russian Monolingual dictionaries. Russian language has 3 times LESS root words than English. So, average native speaker knows just about all the words that exist in Russian. Some may say that Russian has more words, but they are counting all the noun cases and verb conjugations as separate words. Horror show ? Хорошо ?

[@ino9393]

Thank you Matt

[@BreachMcGuire]

How can I sentence mine without at any point seeing the text of the sentence or the target word?

[@sakuraikeizo]

Speech is not a series of discrete phonemes, but a continuous modulated flow of vocalized sound. What we produce in speech is a continuous flow of modulated frequencies. You get a notion of how this sounds when you play speech backwards.

[@rad4805]

Further regarding your statement "reading has nothing to do with pronunciation", what about subvocalisation? Isn't it a sound (albeit a figment) we're hearing based on our current perception therefore not ideal? Or is it just negligible difference for those who aim to be conversationally fluent? Also - what would you suggest regarding fear of creating bad habits early on of cross-translation, as opposed to thinking in the TL? Is this something that you've seen or heard people naturally transition to? Or is it ideal to catch yourself translating and do recognition of meaning or something instead?

[@noah-j00]

do you speak other languages aside from Japanese ?

[@tapankumarnayak5931]

What is better listening to podcast or listening to actual movie for learning a second language

[@fearless6947]

Both. I love anime or Korean drama that have sub in my target launage thai

[@fearless6947]

I also listen to thai cartoons or thai youtube podcast while cleaning. I think movies you like keep you engaged

[@tapankumarnayak5931]

@@fearless6947 what is your first language

[@fearless6947]

@@tapankumarnayak5931 English and cantonese

[@pathologicpicnic]

What happened to Matt? Why hasn’t he uploaded in ages?

[@supporterofkira56]

You didnt hear? He got a lot of backlash for scamming people with his Uproot Japanese learning course that he started with known scammer Ken Cannon. If you go to Reddit you can see stories of people who were scammed.

[@pathologicpicnic]

@@supporterofkira56 yeah I know about that. But why hasn’t he uploaded? Because he is busy scamming “whales” as he called them? He’s in Japan now, right?

[@TheFiestyhick]

@@supporterofkira56 Scam people? I am aware he used kind of manipulative sales tactics, but I don't see any evidence that his Uproot course was a full-on scam. I think most people found a fair degree of value in the course. Correct me if I am wrong.

[@Shockocksthegreat]

I just wanted to add on the "perfect pitch" bit. Its definitely easier to learn pitch accent and tones as a musician, partially because of the ease of perception, but also because the concepts are already ingraned with different vocabulary attached. Music is its own language, and being fluent in that langauge gives a big leg up on learning tones or pitch accent. I don't speak chinese and only watched one video on tones out of curiosity, but I can still remember of the tones, they're generally split betweeb the 1st and 5th scale degree and theres the one that goes from 5 to 2 and the one that goes 5 to 3 and the 4 to 5. Something that would be complex without the knowledge, essentially has a "one word definition" in the language of music. Its like the difference between a word like 建前 that doesn't have a direct translation and needs a cultural explanation and a word like 橋 that means bridge.

[@찍찍-f9o]

I think being an extrovert really helps with learning a language

[@unownnnn]

Helps when you need to output in the later stage but can hinder you in the early stages when you don't wanna stay inside and immerse all day

[@Abdurhman_English]

4:35 this me 😂👌

[@Tyler-Al]

6M

[@Tyler-Al]

S

[@jocu475]

21:20 I don’t agree at all. I can watch Japanese tv and stare at a Japanese book for 20 years and not know more than a few words .

[@pninpnin1]

That's true. I used to watch a lot of movies in German for at least two years and I managed to pick up a few words tops. So I didn't achieve much.

[@devdofuturo]

5:35 I know a guy here on KZbin called “Vem a mim língua russa” that speak Russian better than your native language (Portuguese). Even Russian become chocked when he say that is a Brazilian.