Speaking 11 languages from 8 language families | How and why I learnt each one

[@JustOrgil]

Great work man! I like how you kept the authentic parts where you struggle and mix the languages together xD I can so relate

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thanks a lot mate, yeah it happens a lot lol, I need to practice switching languages more fluidly

[@kilanspeaks]

Your Indonesian pronunciation is great! Bintan doesn’t sound like a typical destination for most international tourists, unless you’re based in Singapore I guess. But aside from the national language, locals also speak a dialect of Malay which is very similar to the one spoken in Malaysia but the main difference is it has less English influence. I admire your passion in learning languages, truly an inspiration!

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thanks so much! You have some really interesting videos on your channel - I'm looking to learn more Austronesian languages in the future so I'll definitely have a close look through your channel

[@kilanspeaks]

@@Ewan_Smith Thank you! As for now I only have 5 videos on Austronesian language and 1 West Papuan language, all from Indonesia. But I’ll be sure to add more the soonest I can get my lazy ass up and work on editing the stuff that I got in the pipeline. Cheers!

[@amirfromlfc]

Wow this is very impressive, so natural and not scripted!!! Сәлем и привет из 🇰🇿 지금은 한국에 살고 있어요 ㅎㅎ

[@Ewan_Smith]

Рахмет! Thanks for the feedback, I didn't want to make a video with cuts every 5 seconds haha.

[@Sophia-bm7pb]

I'm also a language lover. My native language is Cantonese, I speak Korean, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish in different levels. And I dabbled in Mongolian and Indonesian before. I'm learning Turkish now, it's so interesting to learn since the grammar is somewhat similar with Korean, but it is definitely much harder than Korean for me. Thank you for this Interesting video, it's so inspiring 👍

[@Ewan_Smith]

That's great! I'd like to learn some Cantonese in the future, and I've spoken to a number of Turkish learners who all notice the similarities with Korean. Keep it up!

[@Sophia-bm7pb]

@@Ewan_Smith Glad to hear that ☺️ Thank you! And I forgot to say it was also interesting to learn Mongolian since the grammar is also similar to Korean. But because of the difficult pronunciation, I couldn't learn it deeply, hope can relearn it someday :)

[@Ewan_Smith]

Yeah that was one of my motivations for starting Mongolian too, and you can easily get past the difficulties in pronunciation.

[@delgerdalai7143]

@@Sophia-bm7pb Hi Sophia, I am Mongolian and I am trying to learn Chinese these days. I know little Korean and my English is I think intermediate. If you want to practice your Mongolian with me, I also would like to practice my Chinese with you (not sure the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese).

[@ishtenatus]

I am from Turkey and I understand approximately everything what you say in Kazakh language. Normally I understand about %40 %50 but the A2 level makes it more understandable.

[@Ewan_Smith]

That's really cool, I'd love to learn more Turkic languages and see the crossover for myself!

[@oDaxy]

Damn man you are very inspiring…✨keep going and goodluck.

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thanks!

[@LucasFerreira-dv6ol]

Great job dude! That is impressive! So motivating!

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thanks man!

[@瑾瑜郝]

Haloooo 👋 Saya orang Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia anda sangat bagus. Teruslah mengunggah video tentang perjalanan belajar bahasa anda. Saya telah berlangganan saluran anda. 👏👏👏

[@Ewan_Smith]

Terima kasih! Tahun ini saya benar-benar ingin meningkatkan bahasa indonesia saya

[@sai9507]

Your French is pretty good !

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thank you! I need some more practice though, je toujours bloque quand je parle

[@geovannaferreirat]

Rapaz você tem talento, que português hein, continua gravando aí pra gente

[@Ewan_Smith]

Obrigado, estou focando no meu português hoje em dia

[@gaukharkamshybek1339]

Ewan, сіз қазақ тілінде күшті сөйлесесіз! Басқа тілдерді үйреніп жүргеніңіз таңғарарлық хобби деп ойлаймын! Hello, Ewan! I want to tell you that your kazakh pronunciation and grammar structure are so cool! I am really impressed by your kazakh language skill! Also, In my personal opinion learning languages as a hobby is a really impressing... 😊

[@Ewan_Smith]

Көп рахмет! Мен әлі де қазақша қабілетімді жақсартқым келеді бірақ уақытым жоқ 😞 мүмкін келесі жыл Қазақстанға саяхат жасауды жоспарлауым керек...

[@arctrix765]

(Edit: sorry for this long text) Very recently I started to be interested in languages. Before that i hated them. Short (edit: not short, long) backstory. I am from Germany, wehere the grades are like this: 1 is best, 6 is worst, when you get one 6 ore two 5 in your certificate you don't pass. From 5th to 9th grade (or until 2020, when the first lockdown started) i was pretty horrible in English and Latin (that btw was my 3rd language, which I absolutly hated and i am glad I don't have to learn it anymore) I wrote mostly 5 sometimes 6, just enough 4 to keep my average good enough to pass.(mostly, in 7th and 9th grade i got 5 in both of them, so i had to repeat). As i changed my shool in 2020, where i didn't have to worry about Latin anymore, i started getting better in English. I think the most important aspect for my sudden improvement in English was KZbin. You see, as the lockdown started, i got bored from the German content on KZbin, so I started watching more English content, which i genuinely enjoyed. As the months and years passed, I got better in english so much so, that i was a little bit disappointed, as i saw, that my grade in my final exam this year, which is waaaaaay harder than the small pieces of paper, i was given the years before, was just a good 2 and not a 1, which i hoped getting. And to this day 90% of the yt videos i watch are in English. This showed me, that it dosn't matter how good you are in a language, when you get enough input, you will improve your language skills without even knowing it. But something I hate my english. I can read scientific papers with complicated sentences and understand more than an average native English speaker does. But as soon as I have to create something (Like speaking with another person or just writing anything, like this comment) I absolutely fail. My vocabluary gets cut in half like 3 times over, to a point, where it isn't funny anymore. I literally had to Google "disppointed" , as well as a few other words, cause i couldn't remember them. My comment is already way too long and i hven't even come to the main point, i try to say. I wanted to learn Russian since i've been a cild. in march or so i finally started to take this challange seriously. I started learning the kyrillic alphabet, a few words and thats it. I had to learn for my final exams and just forgot about it. But like 2 or 3 weeks ago I started learnig Russian again, just out of my own curiosity, fun and boredom and this time I reaaly want do do it. So (finally) here is my question for you. How i REALLY can get started (cause honestly this 2 or 3 weeks havn't really been much progress compared to what i've learned half a year ago, whixh wasn't that much either) like apps / websites / books etc. and do you know some russian movies / TV series / KZbinr i could watch, which are easy to understand for a beginner like me. Okay, this comment was long, I'm sorry :(

[@Ewan_Smith]

Hey, thanks for the comment. First of all don't worry about forgetting foreign words when you speak, it happens to everybody, even for fairly simple words if you haven't said them for a while. It's extremely common to be better at comprehension than speaking. As for Russian, I like trying to listen and read as soon as possible, and exposing myself to the language as much as I can from the beginning. Don't worry if you don't understand a lot, just keep looking up unknown words and grammar and things. There are lots of good channels - Russian Progress and Russian with Max are two that I watch. I also recommed LingQ, which has tons of content that you can listen to and read, including beginner dialogues and stories. Learnrussian.net is a good reference for grammar if you want to check something. Let me know if you have any other questions!

[@sumyadul5495]

Objective=Зорилго ive never seen foreigner speaking in Mongolian great work mate

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thanks a lot! I've really enjoyed learning it

[@Adrian4239]

Es sorprendente tu habilidad para hablar otros idiomas y saludos desde Ecuador! 🤚😀🇪🇨

[@Ewan_Smith]

Gracias! En el futuro quiero concentrarme en español sudamericano también!

[@jsweebles2150]

Great video man I really was surprised to see you learning Kazakh and Mongolian I really want to study these haha. Currently I am working on Russian and Spanish. If you don’t mind what did you use for learning Mongolian? Anyways great progress 👍

[@Ewan_Smith]

I used the textbook Colloquial Mongolian, and the youtube channels Nomiin Ger and Easy Mongolian (although there aren't many episodes). I've also read a lot of news articles in Mongolian

[@jsweebles2150]

@@Ewan_Smith Oh okay great 👍

[@jsweebles2150]

@@Ewan_Smith Do you find the colloquial series very good i've seen them a bit?

[@Ewan_Smith]

@@jsweebles2150 I like them but I noticed in both Colloquial Kazakh and Colloquial Mongolian some of the grammar points and vocabulary they introduce are not that useful. I mainly like them for the dialogues and audio, so I listen to and read each dialogue a number of times and skim the explanations usually. The main reason I use them for Kazakh and Mongolian is because there's not that much else. I have some scans of older textbooks for Mongolian but they are a bit harder to use to be honest

[@DiliAr-u3w]

У вас очень хороший уровень русского языка, очень хорошее произношение. Вы даже не представляете, как меня обрадовало, что вы вслух «признали» изучение этого языка. На фоне происходящих событий, нас, русских, очень по-детски радует это💔 казахский тоже очень естественно и красиво звучит…

[@Ewan_Smith]

Спасибо большое за добрые слова!

[@sologangan8778]

Wow so impressive 🎉 It’s hard to study pronounce in Mongolian language but you’re so good at it🇲🇳🇲🇳🇲🇳btw How did you study all this languages mean by youtube or books or what..?

[@qazaqrouran3868]

your Kazakh is excellent !

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thanks a lot! I need to improve it more though

[@Mongolian.Script]

Amazing 👍 bayarlalaa.

[@Ewan_Smith]

Thanks!

[@jeehyessica500]

이 사람은 신기하다

[@Ewan_Smith]

아 고맙수다예

[@ryanolsen294]

Will u learn German next? 😅 this was still a good video.

[@sanoatdodoboeva5817]

У вас замечательная речь на русском. Молодец!

[@Ewan_Smith]

Спасибо! Хотя я все еще хочу улучшить свой русский

[@sanoatdodoboeva5817]

@@Ewan_Smith Удачи и сыл Вам!

[@Cherryberrymom]

Вау, какой хороший русский 🤩

[@Ewan_Smith]

Спасибо!

[@russian-korean5869]

Hi

[@Ewan_Smith]

Hi!

[@saibolbaktybayev4319]

Күшті!!!

[@Ewan_Smith]

Рахмет!

[@kisero]

Чи үнэхээр авьяастай юм, амжилт хүсий 🇲🇳

[@Ewan_Smith]

Баярлалаа найз минь!

[@MB-rb9tk]

Only one dialect of central Mongolian uses the fricative l, just use the non fricative l it’ll be more intelligible.

[@Ewan_Smith]

Khalkha Mongolian is the predominant dialect in Mongolia, almost all the Mongolian I have heard has been in Khalkha pronunciation, and every Mongolian I've spoke to seems to understand my pronunciation fine. Why would it be more intelligible?

[@MB-rb9tk]

@@Ewan_Smith because the fricative l isn’t as forced or pronounced as the way you use it. Khalkh Mongolian is not a dialect, it’s called central Mongolian. Mongolian dialects are divided into tuv umard dornod and urnud, Mongolians speaks tuv. The voiced l is equally acceptable as a majority of mongolic speakers use it, even western and some northern Mongolians use a voiced l.

[@Finally23]

Қазақ тілі жалпы жақсы, жарайсың! Қиын, орташа, әлде оңай болды ма?

[@Ewan_Smith]

Рахмет! Қазақ тілі қиын болды, бірақ грамматика корей тіліне ұқсас, сондықтан тым қиын болған жоқ.

[@DS-rv2no]

How many languages can you speak? I invite you to learn my native language too