The Grind | How to ACTUALLY Learn a Language

[@neutrino109]

It is an [understandably] unpopular sect of monks who indulge in self-flatulation. Haha. It reminds me of that old Beano commercial about monks needing it to keep their vow of silence.

[@Evildea]

I just accidently revealed the true language learning secret; self-flatulation. Man, I could have wrapped that up in a course and sold it!!!

[@themistake8904]

I would be scared of people who can train their bodies to make other people flatulate. (flatulence is farting, evildea and you probably meant flagellation)

[@Evildea]

Yes I meant flagellation but I don’t edit out my happy little mistakes :p

[@atoms.channel]

​@@Evildea unfortunately such a course would just be vapor ware... Bean there, done that ;)

[@wardm4]

I've never heard of you. This just came up on my front page. Wow. Best language learning video I've ever seen.

[@Evildea]

Thank you

[@wardm4]

@@Evildea Maybe I'll clarify a bit. I've been trying to learn various languages for 20 years but just never got very good. I tried all the methods: textbooks, Pimsleur, pure input, apps, teachers, lots of reading, early speaking, and on and on. I basically jumped on whatever get-fluent-fast-and-easy method I could find. And then when I wasn't understanding anything after a few years, I'd just change languages and try again. It wasn't until I used a similar grind you show here that I finally started understanding what I was hearing instantly without translating and saw huge improvement.

[@Breadn]

Thank you for fully explaining your process. I don't think I've ever seen someone go this in-depth with what they actually do, it's always just general advice.

[@Evildea]

I know crazy right, that's why I started making these videos haha

[@ntrg3248]

one thing I like to do with comics specifically is screenshot it, crop to the panel I want and Boom, I've got a sentence card with the art there too, I can immediately remember the context from when I was reading it and more easily understand the sentence. In my opinion, the easier your cards are, the better, because you can retain more information quicker.

[@Evildea]

Oh, I've done that a few times with screenshots from movies. That does help yes.

[@bielyoung]

I always did that, but actually if I understand reading and listening I move on, I used to repeat too, but it would take to much time, cuz I review around 120 sentences a day in my anki, but I practice listen (without subtitles) with videos and shows (Great channel ❤)

[@Evildea]

Yeah it can be time consuming and I’m playing with ways to optimise it. I kind of do what you do as well.

[@m943-r3i]

Good stuff, some of the most important language learning information in one short video.

[@Evildea]

Thanks for that! :D

[@saviourself4701]

This helped me so much you have no idea 😊cheers ! Thank you so much

[@Evildea]

Glad to hear that!

[@Osakaxx]

This is the best video ive seen for language learning, no bs straight to the point

[@Evildea]

Thanks!

[@Yessir113]

Mighty endeavoring right here!! Thank you so much. Completely flipped how I have been feeling about the ambiguity regularly resident in my language-learning methods. We really do have all the materials and resources we could need for fruitful and quality language learning! Integrating a healthy and engaged mindset leads to thriving- not just surviving.

[@Evildea]

Glad it helped you out mate!

[@Yessir113]

@@Evildea Absolutely! Certainly helps a great deal with the widely-spoken/documented Spanish and Arabic as primaries. The troubleshooting continues as I attempt more of the indigenous Mexican languages Tsotsil (there are a few dialects of this living Mayan language) and Mixteco (there are quite a few dialects of this Oto-manguean language) as my secondaries. Not a ton of written resources exist for these yet 😂 As a fledgling anthropologist living in a largely agricultural region of California in the USA, I have idly exchanged contacts in order to do English-for-Tsotsil lessons and English-for-Mixteco lessons with migrant workers who speak these less-documented, dying languages. There are still hundreds of thousands of speakers of each, despite the dominance of Spanish in Mexico! I haven’t quite yet articulated a better methodology for this process, but it is so urgent- many among these migrant workers need better access to information about opportunities and resources for healthcare, legal issues, housing, job opportunities, education opportunities, etc. Many of these folks can’t reach out or be reached out to very well because of communication barriers, so I would like to figure out ways to help. 🤌

[@Evildea]

That's an awesome endeavour. We have similar issues in Australia with out own indigenous languages. Usually they all lack materials and the few that do have some resources are usually very limited.

[@T0mmyPL]

Can you make more of these?

[@Evildea]

Sure, I’ll make some more next week.

[@F61Wolf]

Great video, straight to the point. Let's keep up the grind

[@tarantababu1149]

Hey 👋, Great video! Could you please also show what you do for speaking? Do you first complete listening and the turn them to speaking cards? Thanks for the video man! Really appreciated

[@Evildea]

I do listening and speaking at the same time. First I listen to the card, understand it, then I repeat it back and sometimes I try create new sentences on the spot using the structure I just heard. But I’ll put a video together at some point just on speaking.

[@tarantababu1149]

@@Evildea Thank you! I've been applying this approach for two weeks. When would you say, "I believe this language learning method works"? When was your moment of realization for this approach?

[@Evildea]

I noticed it worked when I would be watching vlogs etc and words I have previously learned via this method started to just pop out and I’d understand entire sentences where I didn’t before. Additionally if doing the speaking component you’ll soon find yourself naturally just saying the sentences you’ve practiced or variations of them in conversation without even thinking about it. The more you follow this system, the more you’ll notice the above effects. In 3 months I noticed I was able to follow entire vlogs that I couldn’t before with ease and my conversations rapidly improved.

[@SemenRetentionKing-k8i]

🌈🌈🌈 It is impossible to get enough comprehensible input if you are learning or acquiring foreign languages as a hobby like I am. The advice in this video is useful for me. I do both. I do comprehensible input 5 days a week in my foreign languages and I do the methods stated in this video because I like to acquire languages through visuals through KZbin videos.🌈🌈🌈 🌈🌈Depending on how far I am with the language, I throw in a short compelling story in that language to boost my comprehension.🌈🌈

[@Evildea]

I see comprehensible input put as something I do for pleasure but I don't count it towards my active study. Nothing wrong with your schedule though!

[@matthewsnow6317]

5 minutes of pure gold.

[@CharlesWatson-h7b]

I’m going to copy this! 1 question - how do you choose which sentence structures to repeat? Is it ones you’re learning at the time or do you get chatgpt to give you a variety of different ones?

[@Evildea]

I pick a sentence structure from native content then I ask chat gpt to swap out its nouns, verbs etc depending on what I mainly want to study

[@jlcarrasco]

yeah this guy's right

[@francegamble1]

Off to catch them all! (Words, vocabulary, and sentences). 😂 Without the whip.

[@Evildea]

The whip is crucial. Never leave the whip behind.

[@CaptainWumbo]

interesting workflow. from a theoretical perspective it looks like blocked practice to me, which can give high retreivability in the short term. maybe that's preferrable for the content you enjoy.

[@Evildea]

Thanks, at the end of the day my method works for me but there are many methods to reach fluency. As long as one keeps grinding.

[@jumbus8292]

Hi thanks for explaining this, I've started using something similar for my studies. One question I have is about how you tackle grammar with this method. I don't know too much about Chinese, but I think that, for example, the tenses are a bit different than English or spanish (sorry if im wrong about this, I only took one intro mandarin course like 3 years ago), so I noticed that when you make cards you don't have to worry too much about practicing all the different tenses in the same way you would if you were learning English for example. I'm learning Spanish which u may know has different conjugations for tense and subject, so my question is if u think this study technique would be better for focusing purely on building vocab, since it might be a bit unrealistic to make 50(for example) cards for each conjugation of each verb since there's like at least 20 conjugations for each verb across all the tenses. this ofc means learning grammar from maybe a book or something which isn't horrible for me but yeah mainly wondering how you deal with grammar and if this technique is mostly for vocab. Thanks you!!

[@Evildea]

I’ll use Esperanto as an example here as it’s more relevant to your question. An Esperanto verb can come in a tonne of different tenses and they can even stack. Here are a bunch of variants of “to buy, buy, brought, etc…” aĉeti, aĉetas, aĉetis, aĉetos, aĉetus, aĉetanta, aĉetinta, aĉetonta, aĉetintus, aĉetita, aĉetata, aĉetota etc... Additionally nouns and adjectives have various endings depending on the role they play and they must be in agreement. It’s similar to Spanish just more regular and not gender or number based. So what I’d say is when first learning just build sentences around all major tenses for the first few verbs of either category just to get a feeling for the different categories then as you advance you can start to not worry about ever tense for every new verb you introduce as you’ll start to get the feel for it. Instead focus only on real sentences as real sentences will contain certain patterns. In real sentence there may be hundreds of instances of “aĉetas” meaning “purchases” or “buys” but like near zero instances of “aĉetota" meaning “going to be purchased”.

[@mmzenglish4238]

"I can't exactly figure out the order in which you're proceeding. Do you first create the sentence in English on the front side and try to recall it to form the sentence, or do you create the Chinese sentences on the front and, if you don't understand them, open the back side with the English answer? Greetings from Germany!"

[@Evildea]

On the front is the Chinese audio / Chinese sentence. On the back is the translation. I listen to the card without looking at it. If I need to look I'll see the Chinese sentence. If I still can't figure it out I can flip the card and see the full English sentence.

[@mmzenglish4238]

@@Evildea Thank you. So you're only doing 'Selective Comprehensible Input', right? I thought one had to do active recall with the sentences, meaning from English to the target language. Why the other way around?"

[@CaptainNim]

谢谢你！非常有帮助

[@Evildea]

你的评论真的让我很开心啊！

[@lovipilowu9766]

Denove spekti filmetojn de Evildea donas al mi tre enhejmecan senton

[@Evildea]

Awwwww dankon!!!

[@Timeless-taales]

Mmmmm Interested!!!.. But I have a little further question.. Can I apply this through new vocabulary and sentences?.. Putting sentences and vocabulary from Inbot after which I will review them in last day in Anki . Is this grinding?

[@Evildea]

Yes, I’m always adding in new stuff but the new sentences your adding should only contain one word or one structure you don’t know so you can learn it in context with everything else your already know

[@jeremymorris6738]

Are you saying you make 50ish cards out of around 15 words? And do you do any production cards or l2 to l1 only? How long does it take you to do your anki reps? I find that for me if it gets to where it takes more than 30ish minutes I tend to stop after a few weeks.

[@Evildea]

I make 50 cards which are focussed around 15 words. All cards consist of full sentence in audio form on the front with translation on the back. If 30 min is your limit than do 30 mins. That's still progress.

[@Anna_Batista-w6v]

Can I ask for more? 😘

[@Evildea]

I might get violent but okay

[@keepitshort4208]

I'm a very slow learner and I want to learn Turkish. I'm more of a reality escapist, so it's hard for me to have interest in things. what's the best way for someone like me who is way below average level ?. Also would appreciate if you could let me know the prompt that i can use to learn the language through chatgpt.

[@Evildea]

Find a very specific thing you want to do in the language. Lets say your specific thing is watching cooking videos. Then do what I do in this video to learn all the most important words used in those cooking videos. This means you'll only need a small subset of the overall language but you'll also feel like you understand a lot more. Than once you get comfortable expand out.

[@keepitshort4208]

Where to start is something that I get confused with it seems.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

I just wrote in my comment under another language video to use Chat GPT for grammar. Coincidence? I think not! And I agree with grinding. Learning a language is not easy, but it is rewarding.

[@Evildea]

Yeah, it's a very powerful tool

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@Evildea I wish I had the possibilities kids have these days when I started my languages journey. :/

[@Evildea]

I watched it all unfold. I started learning Esperanto with a book and a correspondence course but within a year there were giant websites dedicated to the language. Was kind of crazy.

[@yhf1]

Please I have a Question... As a learner of French at the A2/B1 level, I can understand podcasts and news (sometimes). I don’t know. Don’t you feel that 15 new vocabulary today is too slow? You have to learn 40 to reach 1,000 in a month. For example, 20 daily vocabulary means 600 in a month. Okay, but... how many sentences should I put in a word as a maximum, for example... and there are also many... Words... literally many words and synonyms. What is the solution? I encounter many words that have synonyms and it bothers me..I live in France and I want to learn French and next year I am studying, and here people speak at an insane speed .. What is the solution?

[@Evildea]

I usually create 6 or so sentences for each of the 15 words. I mention in the video these are the words I’m focussed on learning but I’ll add other new words that I’m not necessarily focussed on it they are obvious from context. Yes, 15 words a day probably doesn’t seem like much but these are 15 words by the end of my session I can use in every context and have a deep understanding of.

[@Kwonjon12356]

I've tried to do this, but the audio was absolute garbage. What is your set up to get such good quality?

[@Evildea]

It took a while for me to find a good text to speech engine. I’m assuming you’ve tried a bunch. If you can’t find a good one then the only real option is to clip audio from clips or record yourself speaking the lines.

[@based-p2b]

5:51 LMFAOO

[@AnonymousPerson-cu7yz]

So, what you are saying is that I can just play a language learning video while I sleep and this way I will learn the language?

[@Evildea]

Why even bother with a language learning video :D Why not a cat fight video ?

[@AnonymousPerson-cu7yz]

@@Evildea That sounds like a good strategy, thank you, sensei! On a more serious note - thank you very much for the video, I didn't know about existence of Anki before, so now I am happily diving with full speed into the rabbit hole :D

[@Evildea]

@@AnonymousPerson-cu7yz A prayer to you, another lost soul on the road of language learning :P

[@AnonymousPerson-cu7yz]

​@@Evildea Oh, you don't know just how correct you are with "lost soul on the road of language learning". I need to significantly improve my Swedish because I actually live here, I also need to travel to Japan for several weeks and no one speaks English there, so naturally I am sitting on your channel and watching WoW videos in Esperanto for beginners :D

[@Evildea]

Hahaha, thanks for the chuckle

[@123456789tube100]

Why dont you agree with the comprehensible input method, such as using lingq and graded readers? what if i get the words that are low frequency from these books and then sentence mind those.

[@Evildea]

Comprehensible input works great for your first 1k words. Hell, you can even learn an entire language like Toki Pona via it. The issue is beyond those initial 1k words you need to keep absorbing more and more content for less and less return. Better to just brute force it at that point. My issue is lots of people talk about comprehensible input like it is the magic bullet. Just keep watching more videos they say.

[@123456789tube100]

@@Evildea yeah but i am reading not watching videos, and yes i understand the words will become less frequent but, how is sentence mining a book not going to work?

[@Evildea]

Sounds like our understandings of comprehensible input are different. Comprehensible input generally means you don't sentence mine. You just learn by watching / reading. Starting with easy stuff and slowly increase. If you're sentence mining you're kind of not using pure comprehensible input anymore. I find comprehensible fine for pleasure, just not active study.

[@123456789tube100]

@@Evildea i use graded readers for chinese like lingq and duchinese but if i see words i dont know then i put them into a sentence and review them SRS style. I think what you are talking about is actually immersion not comprehensible input. Immersion is like what refold and matt vs japan does, which only works if u do 8 hrs a day for 5 years lol. but comprehensible input is when you break the sentences down into chunks and well you read material that is designed for learners and slowly work your way up (stephen krashen).

[@An-it5sw]

Whats your opinion on Glossika? Worth it?

[@Evildea]

Probably the best thing out there besides making your own decks. The only thing is it can introduce things in a very random and haphazard way which I'm not the biggest fan of. Making decks allows you to structure your learning around you own needs. But if you can't or won't do that then Glossika is definitely a good option.

[@tylerscape]

Hello, i've never tried learning a second language because I am a stupid American. Recently I memorized the Cyrillic alphabet, in an attempt to maybe learn Russian one day. I am just curious about something. Whenever I listen to anything in Russian, my brain stops working with how fast they are talking and I can't even tell when one word ends and another begins. Even if I knew the words it all just sounds like they are blended together and I just can't tell. Is this normal when first starting off or should I just quit while I am ahead and not even waste my time? Maybe some of us just aren't built to learn a second language.

[@EvildeaChinese]

This is normal. Follow my steps in the video to make very basic sentences at first so you can start learning to distinguish individual words. It’s just a matter of repetition. You gotta learn to crawl before you can walk and run.

[@tylerscape]

@@EvildeaChinese Wow thanks for the quick reply. I will keep grinding and hopefully one day I can come back and tell you if it was successful. Cheers.

[@MarmaladePeaches]

Use the playback speed if it's available, slow it down so you can actually catch the words. If you have the funds, I suggest lingopie. They have Russian shows and it's designed for language learners

[@themistake8904]

How often do you notice chatGPT is wrong for explanations? I believe it is a valuable tool, but I have noticed that it is wrong sometimes when it tries to explain certain grammar points (I am learning Korean). 좋은 영상이요. 감사합니다.

[@Evildea]

I don’t ask it to explain grammar points only give examples. Of the examples it gives it’s 99% correct but there have been a few instances I’ve caught it making a mistake but that’s usually when I’m asking about some really obscure words.

[@Gidizz]

jan Evildea o, sina awen kama sona e toki pona anu seme?

[@Evildea]

tenpo suli pini la jan Evildea suli li kama sona e toki pona

[@Gidizz]

@Evildea mi kama sona e toki pona tan ni: sina pali e sitelen tawa kepeken toki pona la, mi lukin e sitelen tawa ni la, mi wile kama sona e toki ni a. sina pona.

[@Evildea]

ni li pona a!

[@Silentema]

Hola

[@Evildea]

Hola

[@iamclarity]

Bad ass fuckin video.... sheesh

[@Evildea]

Thanks man

[@EminjoenJapanio]

There are toki pona hentai videos? *googles

[@Evildea]

Haha let me know how you’re search goes :o

[@Gidizz]

Speak for yourself; I watch hentai purely in Ithkuil.

[@Evildea]

A man of true culture and sophistication :D

[@justaway_of_the_samurai]

Flash cards for sentences are ineffective IMO because it encourages you to memorize the sentences rather than build up your comprehension skills. It is better to memorize vocabulary for individual words and read books (or listen too speakers, if that works better for some), translating pieces little by little as you need to until you can comprehend the text without translating. That way, you will be getting spaced interval recognition based on the words natural frequency in the text you are reading, as opposed to debatable vocab orders Anki cards may use, and you will also see the same words pop up in many more different sentences instead of in 2 or 3 example sentences, so you have to actually decipher the sentence instead of just immediately recognizing it.

[@Evildea]

If you're learning words using flash cards in isolate then you're just wrong. Your brain has no context to hook them up and you're just making it harder for yourself. Everything else you said is fine but slow.

[@frechjo]

I don't know, the thing he showed is exactly the opposite of memorizing a single sentence. He made like 10 different sentences for a single word, so how are you exactly memorizing them all in isolation? You are gonna def make connections between them through the words in common.

[@spookyscarygraviton5944]

Bruh, stop relying on google translate and chatgpt. They're holding you back. Go talk to natives and get them to check your anki cards. Your language skills are too robotic right now. You need to loosen up and learn how people actually communicate

[@VanegeEsperanto]

Bad advice. Even if you live with people who speak your target language, they don't have the time to correct everything you do. They also are not forced to suffer from you if you are still a babbling beginner. ChatGPT is good enough. Sometimes it makes errors but you will notice that yourself with time and you will suspend the dubious Anki cards.

[@spookyscarygraviton5944]

@VanegeEsperanto WeChat, weibo, discord, anything. Just go there and chat. People do have time and are willing to help. You can drill some patterns and words here and there, but acquiring the language is impossible without practice, an actual communication