Top 5 linguist hacks for language learners

[@FredoCorleoneJB]

I asked for toilet water (acqua gabinetto) instead of tap water (acqua rubinetto) at a restaurant in Italy

[@languagejones6784]

This made me actually laugh out loud. Unfortunately, I am going to find it very hard to not call it this from now on.

[@vindelanda]

Hahaha I made a very similar mistake in Germany! I asked for dish water (Spülwasser) instead of tap water (Leitungswasser). Awkward.

[@Skenderbeuismyhero]

In Albanian, the word for excited is eksituar but it actually means to be aroused. Thankfully, someone warned me about that one when I was learning the language but I did have the problem of accidentally using the word 'car' when speaking English in public there (it means dick in Albanian).

[@jamesdewane1642]

Spanish ser and estar are both "to be" in English, but they have different applications and can change the meaning of the other words. In a restaurant "No estamos listos" means "we're not ready" (to order), but I said, "No somos listos" (We're not smart.) I assume the waiter said something snarky in return, but of course none of us had enough experience to catch it.

[@gatosospechosop3]

Ahh that’s tough, but I feel like mistakes like that will help you remember faster than any amount of practice will lol

[@vindelanda]

During an oral exam in my German class in university I said I had “Baumschmerz” (tree-pain?) instead of “Bauchschmerzen“ (stomach pain). Once the teacher started laughing I realized my mistake and made a joke about being very environmentally friendly. I managed to save my grade somehow.

[@languagejones6784]

That's delightful, although I'm sorry you were in pain!

[@maalikserebryakov]

aw this is so cute 🥰🥰

[@suzkstein]

What a great story!

[@Hawkfeet]

My friend almost gave this answer to the professor in an exam The question: what is your nationality(ما هي جنسيتك ؟ in Arabic)? My friend answer: "sexuality" Real answer :saudi What happened? Google translate

[@Itzak15]

You will never forget those 2 words now hahah

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

My grandmother who really spoke perfectly fluent English once managed to ask a woman "When do you shut up?" after several minutes of polite conversation with the very talkative receptionist of a small hotel in England; when what she really meant to ask was "When do you lock the doors for the night". Apparently the receptionist understood what she meant anyway; because she just answered "No, it's always open!" ...either that, or maybe she she actually never stops talking.

[@camelopardalis84]

She meant her mouth.

[@6Uncles]

In Cantonese, from Rush Hour 2: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rpPXpKGFl7x6l5I Kung Fu Kenny (Don Cheadle): "Why are you hanging out with 7/11?" [referring to Detective Carter (Chris Tucker)] Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan): "7/11?" Kung Fu Kenny: "His mouth doesn't know how to close!"

[@mrjoe5292]

Goes to show how communication isn't just about what words you use. Context, tone, intent all play into it to. Asking someone when they shut up in a different context or a different tone could be considered very rude or insulting, but because your nan asked in a friendly way to someone she'd been having a friendly conversation with her intended meaning was conveyed, even though she used slightly odd wording. tl;dr: neat

[@carstenschultz5]

A dictionary tells me that that’s actually the correct expression in British and Australian English.

[@topilinkala1594]

@@carstenschultz5 What does your dictionary say about elevator going down or going up. To me those are jarring as i'd expect descending and ascending. Those gu and gd are heard in most of the subway elevators in Helsinki.

[@spage80]

When I arrived in Germany in November 1982 with the US Army, I was given a one week training in basic German. Not long after that I attended a party. I needed to use the restroom and tried to ask in German where it was. Many English and German words sound similar so I asked " Wer ist die Toilette" thinking I had asked where is the toilet. Instead I had actually asked "Who is the toilet".

[@Robertsdogs]

hahahahah, that's funny.

[@triforce_xiii]

yeah, we got that mixed up in first year of english as well.

[@philipppaasch8929]

Passiert

[@Caine61]

I'll do you one better: WHY is the toilet?

[@hybrismc4105]

At some parties that's actually a good question.

[@samwisegrangee]

I just picked up a book called “The Loom of Language” and one of his best tips is to learn the fixed parts of a language first. Little particles like conjunctions (and, but, etc), prepositions (over, under, in, etc), adverbs (fast, very, often, etc), and even interrogatives (what, how, when, etc) tend not to change. For example, I remember being surprisingly relieved when I learn that “si” means “and” in Romanian, and I saw dozens of them on the page: words that have a fixed form and a relatively fixed meaning take quite a burden off a new language learner. Depending on the language, you can have a huge part of your working vocab established before even getting into the inflection that comes with verbs, pronouns, articles, etc.

[@AdultSupervision.]

This makes sense to me.

[@russianlitnerd5265]

This was very helpful why’s everyone learning languages in 2023 😮

[@maalikserebryakov]

@@russianlitnerd5265 i learned all my languages in 2022. German, classical Arabic and of course Engrish.

[@alpenglowist]

A similar, probably related, strategy is to learn words in order of usage frequency. In English, this would be; the, be, to, of, and, a...

[@mihainita5325]

Romanian here: "si" is there name of the musical note (the one before "do"). The Romanian "and" is "și" (pronounced like "she" in English). Maybe you knew, but didn't have an easy way to type it. Or maybe you visited some sites maintained by sloppy people (they are many). So let's say this is for others. Or a sacrifice to the KZbin algorithm goods :-)

[@tmcantine]

I accidentally inflicted an embarrassing language moment on one of my Japanese professors when I was an undergraduate minoring in the language. We had just started learning about the passive voice, which in Japanese can have an additional implied meaning for verbs we don't normally think of as transitive. For example, we might say in Japanese "I was died by my pet" to mean I was affected by the dying of my pet. Trying to be helpful, I mentioned to the professor that we had a somewhat more colloquial way of saying this in English: "My pet died on me". She thanked me, and moved onto the next example: "I was doing my homework, when my friend came on me." The native English-speakers in the class all winced.

[@EarlHayward]

I almost cried reading that… I don’t have an example from any formal education, just a more personal one… I lived in Hong Kong, married a woman born in HK, and consequently speak some Cantonese (and some Mandarin from living in Singapore previously)… Anyways, in the morning I would say good morning in Cantonese, but sometimes (without good pronunciation) it can sound like “morning fword”… So, sometimes I still get lazy in pronunciation and get a look…

[@tmcantine]

@@EarlHayward Really? My spouse is also from Hong Kong. (We met in the Japanese conversation club at university, and I took Japanese instead of Mandarin because it wasn't tonal. Ended up having to learn Cantonese which is twice as tonal as Mandarin!) But I just asked her now if there's some way to mispronounce Cantonese "good morning" with that kind of disastrous (or fortuitous?) result, and she has no idea. Are you saying something that sounds vaguely like "Dzo sun"? Or is there some other morning greeting?

[@DrWhom]

come on Eileen

[@davidjimenezlopez]

This reminded me of my own awkward moment with my Japanese instructor. Once I said, in terrible Japanese "I really enjoy eating tacaco." In Costa Rica, there is a vegetable we call tacaco (Sechium tacaco), a small and tasty type of squash. Of course, Takako (exact same pronunciation) is also a female name (I didn't know that at the time). The instructor, who had been in Costa Rica for a year or so, knew that in our slang, "comerse a [female name]" has pretty much the same meaning as "eat [female name] out" has in American English, and thought I was making some sort of sexual remark.

[@miss.honey02]

Sheesh😭😭😭not came on me lmaoooo

[@MiKenning]

My girlfriend is German. Her family invited friends round for food the first time I came to visit. I did not speak German at all at the time, but one woman who didn't speak English spoke Greek, and fortunately I spoke enough Greek to have a conversation. Her husband, who was German, was there, and I asked in Greek when they got married. Except I didn't ask when the wedding was (póte ítan o *gamós*) but instead asked them them they fornicated (póte *gamiéste*). The lady laughed, told every one in German what happened while I rushed to explain what happened to my girlfriend in English. I haven't forgotten it since. It's a good memory.

[@Woodman-Spare-that-tree]

Sounds more like a reason never to even try to speak a foreign language

[@MiKenning]

@@Woodman-Spare-that-tree No, not at all! We have been very friendly with one another ever since. We still laugh about it.

[@frenchimp]

@@Woodman-Spare-that-tree On the contrary! Speaking a foreign language allows you to say the most outrageous things without people taking exception, because you didn't say them on purpose - or so they think.

[@TheEnglishCoach]

“Remembering is about forgetting”- 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@DrDavidThor]

I used to know that.

[@topilinkala1594]

About that. I don't speak Swedish or German. Except if I go the Sweden I start to speak when I get to the central railwaystation in Stocholm. As Finland has multiple languages and Swedish is one of them I keep up with my understand of Swedish on reading all announcements in Swedish. I also read the English ones and send corrections when I found out that they've once again written some poppycook by using google translate. German is harder to keep up when I'm not immersed to those wonderful German television series that run in Finland's television. But still when I arrive to Germany it'll come out, I know.

[@leirex_1]

As an introvert I found that consuming media and talking to yourself in the target language is a relatively good substitute for having real life conversations, at least at the beginning. It's the way I learned English. Yes, this might make you look insane but as long as nobody sees it it's easier than having embarrassing conversations with strangers. And once you're somewhat fluent you can start trying having real conversations, because the anxiety of sounding like an absolute fool is significantly lower.

[@MrSqurk]

I was walking along the cycle path randomly speaking Czech and a random Polish man thought I was speaking to him and then corrected my pronunciation. I was mortified.

[@WeiShiQiang]

I've had many, but my favourite has to be in Cantonese when someone asked me what I like to do on weekends. I wanted to say I like "hiking" which should be 行山 hang san, but instead I said 鹹濕 ham sap, which means "to act in a perverted way towards someone" That was a fun conversation!

[@EarlHayward]

Can also just be horny (but, not necessarily in a good way)… Personally, I would sometimes mispronounce good morning (zóu sân) as something closer to cho than jo; which, as my native Cantonese speaking wife has explained means “morning fword”… I am sure you get the picture… So, I often use Mandarin words when I cannot pronounce certain Cantonese words, or am worried about how mispronunciation of certain might come across as… Kind of like with hai (which I avoid as if I don’t say it perfectly I get dirty looks from my wife)..

[@CouchPolyglot]

Despite being a linguist, I am not a very theoretical learner and prefer just sticking to material I like (series, books, podcasts, etc.), so mostly using the natural approach with comprehensible input. It is just the way that feels most fun to me anyway, though it might not be the most effective one for everyone or for every language 😄

[@saiminayatullah6620]

I studied linguistics at university and input-based methodology does make up the backbone of my learning strategy, but I think that those of us with an academic background in linguistics can quite easily take the theory for granted and forget what it’s like to not know it. Someone without a background in linguistics might benefit even more from getting some theory under their belt as a supplement to an input-heavy approach, as they start with a low baseline of metalinguistic awareness.

[@carloslohen]

I can relate

[@californianorma876]

I want to support the concept of providing polyglots, amateur or professional, with additional tools. I consider myself an amateur. I have dabbled in more than a dozen plus American Sign Language. I believe that the sign language introduction has really helped me bridge all barriers, as the construction of sign language differs considerably from the spoken word.

[@peterl0815]

I'm with you but pronunciation with this pronunciation alphabet can be worth try if you are new into one language. You have a extremely good German pronunciation ... what's your approach for that? I have the impression that it's always hard to speak German with a very good pronunciation.

[@CouchPolyglot]

@@peterl0815 you mean me? Well I have lived in Germany for 10 years and I speak German at home, so I guess that has helped :) For all my languages, I like to sing along, and I think that helps too. That being said, I still have a Spanish accent, most of the time I pronounce "b" and "w" the same hehehe

[@tennesseedarby5319]

My personal approach to language learning is based upon what my first language teacher taught me. And his work was partially based on the theory of comprehensible input and the ideas of Stephen Krashen. Essentially, largely forget grammar, and spend all of your time consuming the language the way it’s meant to be. Read, listen, converse, and especially if you can do it in simple, repetitive, in context stories. In the video, the French subjunctive is brought up. I little formal education in what the subjunctive is, but I naturally do it because it sounds right to me. I do it because I’ve seen and heard it enough that it sounds wrong without it. This is the method that works for me, and I think it is the most natural for the way our brains are programmed. That also makes me very interested in your last point. It’s something I’d never considered, and I believe that that is actually very key

[@Robynhoodlum]

How fast and thorough is this method for you? I only ask because I’ve heard that while this is the way children naturally acquire language, it is also one of the slowest ways. This channel did a video about the wugs study that seems to show this. As adults, we can leverage skills to learn how to learn at faster rates. Also, just consuming media is a very passive way to learn and the consensus I’ve heard is that you have to be actively learning. For instance, when watching a foreign film, you shouldn’t just listen and try to understand the meaning of one word, but try to recognized the patterns caused by grammar. Is there a base word being conjugated? Are there compounds? Is one word based off another? Etc. Or do you do that already?

[@tennesseedarby5319]

@@Robynhoodlum I find that it’s actually pretty fast. I’m actually in France right now putting all my practice into, well, practice, and I find that after just 2 years of study, I can communicate rather well with most people. One of the problems with one of the things you mentioned, trying to study the grammar and conjugations and all that, is that we end up focusing on that too much, and it can be difficult when speaking or listening to understand because you’re too focused on getting everything right. In the end, it’s not too serious if you say something like he want candy, because people understand you. But the most important thing is that you are actually able to understand people, and you only get that from listening practice, at least in my option. But also, when I’m listening to podcasts or watching a video, I don’t just listen just to listen, at least when I’m trying to learn. If I hear something I don’t know, I’ll go over it again and try to figure it out based on the context and maybe look it up in the target language. So it’s not entirely as passive as I made it sound, but there is little focus on grammar

[@curse_77]

I've fallen in love with linguistics at an age of 12 years, decided to learn English because of that and improve my native language (Arabic) even more. Right now I wanna learn Spanish and re-learn French after a long time of ignoring it in my school! Your tips are very helpful, thank you so much!

[@Rahat-tw8vg]

Nice

[@1983SpringBonnie]

How is your language learning going?

[@SPVRINNA]

i've had zero interaction with linguists in my life despite it being my major in university, but holy hell has understanding some basic linguistic concepts turbo-blasted my ability to learn my languages. suddenly consonant gemination in italian or diphthongization in spanish make total sense to me, but completely stump my peers. suddenly the use of the analytic "voy a hacer" instead of the synthetic "haré" makes perfect sense given the historical evolution of the language. it's even given my the opportunity to learn some pretty challenging regional accents that i've been told i recreate very convincingly, (like my tuscan accent in italian, which turns unvoiced stops into fricatives, but ONLY post-vocalically, and only then in situations where syntactic gemination does not occur -- tricky stuff to remember if you're not familiar with at least a little morphology!) great video.

[@languagejones6784]

Yes!!! Now I'm wondering whether I could teach that Tuscan rule effectively to an interested lay-audience. And honestly, raddoppiamento sintattico was one of the lessons in grad school that was really hard for me! I still vividly remember the first time I learned about it in 2013. Thanks for the compliment!

[@MRat-ru2lz]

If I can ask, what sort of resources did you use to find these historic origins of tenses in languages? It seems like a great way to learn grammar as well as being more interesting than a dry table (I have a book that teaches kanji based off of their historical pictographs origins and it literally has never been easier)

[@sholme]

I work as a flight attendant and English is not my first language. On top of that, the engine noise can be extremely loud in certain areas of the plane. All of this to say it's not so uncommon to mishear what passengers are saying. I remember once, during the bar service, a passenger asked me for drinks and after a while added: "Merry Christmas" We were nowhere around Christmas time, but instead of asking him to repeat what he'd just said, I just laughed and without a second thought replied "Happy New Year". I guess the look of confusion on his face made something click in my head because only then I realised he had said: "Maybe some crisps" and not "Merry Christmas". Oh well.

[@monotremata44]

Flying from the US to Taiwan last year, I decided to speak Mandarin as much as possible (I'm very comfortable but not fluent). The drinks cart arrived and I said to the young woman, 一罐 [yi guan, one can] Ginger Ale, since it's more convenient than asking for refills. She handed me a can, then said Be Quiet! The lights had been dimmed but it was mid-afternoon. I apologized for being so loud. Again, she said, Be Quiet! Weird, I thought, I wasn't shouting. Then she held up a glass of ice cubes and repeated, 冰塊 [Bing Kuai, ice cubes]. The neighbors started laughing and so did we.

[@sergea6446]

I studied linguistics in undergrad, so I used most of this which may be why people think I have a "knack" for it (I don't and my memory is horrid). I think my biggest obstacle to language learning is time and dealing with ADHD which makes the former a larger obstacle

[@pretty.odd.]

I've been struggling so much with ADHD and retention. Without retention the res tis so much harder. I've been learning Korean for 2.5 years now (consistently for almost 2) and am so far behind my peers. I remain on the hunt for any advice/system to help ADHD folks with retention beyond brute force (which i'm currently doing but that contributes to burn out). Good luck!

[@ginabee1212]

I am also ADD, but one of the "positives" of ADD (if it can be harnessed) is hyper-focus. Hyperfocus is the ability to go into this strange focus mode where you don't want to attend to anything else. I have heard ADD/ADHD referred to as issues with selective attention, but when we get immersed in something we might disappear (at least I do!). I recently started learning Russian at the end of September using Pimsleur. I used Pimsleur to learn some Polish about 15 years ago and I found I STILL remembered certain phrases and sounds. I was equally pleased with Russian. I got a monthly subscription of 51 languages unlimited and it is one of my all-time favorite apps! I then added Ukrainian when I heard it was similar to Polish and now I am finding myself learning and comparing all three (but mostly Russian and Ukrainian). I am SO excited that I can already sound out some words and recognize familiar words. I use channels on KZbin (now including THIS one) to supplement Pimsleur. Now, I just need to find some native speakers!!

[@Skiis44]

Tack on dyslexia and aphantasia to the ADD and you get where I’m at. Can’t see a thing in my mind.

[@geniussnake497]

ADHD, a tad dyslexic, and prone to aphantasia - are we the same person? 😁

[@acchaladka]

I was an English teacher with a habit of filling in my pauses with "Um....".one day, about my sixth month in country, my students informed me that they had been giggling for months because in Central Asian languages, it was a term for a lady's vijayjay. So proud. I switched to saying "ahhh" the rest of my two years there.

[@letswatchhank2867]

Nobody ever talks about the difference between "translating" a language and "interpreting" a language which I think is one of the most important distinctions you can make in language learning. When you're socailizing with people they're interpreting what you're saying so you better make sure you're saying what it is that you want to say!

[@sarahshawtatoun6492]

This is great! I fell in love with the Czech culture, language and literature in the 80's when I began working with several international organizations trying to free Vaclav Havel and other Czech dissidents. It turned out the head of my local Amnesty adoption group was Milan Kundera's translator- and a professor of Slavic languages at UCLA. He convinced me to take his 1st year Czech course, telling me that my year of Russian would help (it didn't) and that I could take it as an external student, so I wouldn't have to worry about grades and exams. THEN he told me that he was off to Russia for the semester, so he wouldn't be teaching the course. The teacher who taught in his place started off by telling us it was a course for graduate students in Slavic linguistics who were already fluent in at least one other Slavic language, that he expected us to have a reading knowledge in 10 weeks- and to learn all the case endings by the end of the first week. I've always attributed my eventual fluency in Czech- and my complete failure to learn Russian- to the fact that they threw ALL the case endings at us at once, giving us a basic structure to hang everything else on. (Of course moving here in 1990 and marrying a man who spoke no English also helped.) For the past couple of years I've been trying to reactivate my ancient French in the service of spending some time in Morocco (I fell in love with the country the same way I did Czechoslovakia)- and also learning Darija. I had the bright idea, inspired by youtube polyglots, to also study Russian, since I've discovered it's similar enough to Czech that I was actually able to have some pretty good conversations when I took the Transsiberian in 2009. And that would bring me up to 5 languages, so I could call myself a polyglot by age 70. Well, I turn 70 this coming year and it's clear that ain't happening. My knowledge of French isn't actually too bad, but I find all the terror of speaking I remember from studying Czech returning- and also every time I try to respond to anyone Czech comes out, making it incredibly frustrating. I had pretty much given up, but you've given me the impetus to try again, so thanks! Off to study the international alphabet now. I'll let you know how it goes!

[@eurovicious]

Love this story. I have the same problem - whenever I try to speak my third or fourth language, I end up veering into my second (German). It's like the speaking part of my brain only has two categories, "native language" and "foreign language".

[@prst4190]

I assume you’re speaking of the brilliant Michael Heim at UCLA as Kundera’s translator. A truly brilliant man I had the pleasure of knowing.

[@modjohnsenglishdisco]

I lived in Prague for several years in the 90s. Toward the end I was working at a translation company, written Czech to written English, not the other way around, but I guess my Czech was getting pretty good. I haven't been back since 2002, but I'm always playing around with it, seeing what I can remember, translating things in my head. Czech, as you know, is not a global language. Then I was at a 7-11 in Denver helping some Spanish speakers communicate with the clerk, who was from Ethiopia. He said, "So you speak Spanish?" I said, "I studied it in high school." And for some reason I mentioned that I also speak some Czech. Without missing a beat, the dude starts speaking Czech. He'd studied engineering in Prague in the 90s! For a few months I went in every week and had a chat in Czech with an Ethiopian, puzzling all witnesses... and to be honest, the both of us. I do find that my latent Czech is alway interfering with my Spanish!

[@eurovicious]

@@modjohnsenglishdisco Great story John!

[@drithligh]

I definitely recognize who you're referring to in your first paragraph. Michael Heim!

[@SB-lc5qg]

Some people object to using the IPA, and yes it might be an obstacle for some (I have only used it a little myself) but it is useful for learning to hear and pronounce sounds not native to you. Having a uniform and scientific guide for how sounds are made is very helpful for learning things (as a native English speaker) like nasal vowels, “r” sounds in various languages, anything with a diacritic, clicks, etc.

[@DNA350ppm]

If your native languages is English, remember that your alphabet is useless for other languages, the IPA is probably invented most of all for you! For some students with first languages (like Swedish, Finnish, German) with fairly phonetically logical spelling according to their own alphabet, it really pays off with International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), to deeply realize that other languages (like English and French) spell their languages really without much logic according to their languages. And the other way around, students with English as their first language need IPA to understand that their alphabet is of no use (!) when learning to write or pronounce other less illogical languages. I can't stress enough what a huge stumble stone the English alphabet and spelling is! In my first term with English in my Finnish school, we didn't look at one single word in English spelling, only in IPA. That helped to ingrain a deep mistrust towards trying to guess pronunciation from the written forms of English words! Sorry to be so blunt!

[@jlittlejohn97]

lol this doesn't sound blunt to me. Even native English speakers have huge difficulty spelling. It's way more memorization than it is rules, but the school system in the US nonetheless insists on 'rules.' Like "i before e except after c." That's a lie!

[@semioticapocalypse9774]

I think it's the opposite. Rather, the alphabet of other languages is useless for parsing English spelling and pronunciation. Consistent spelling does not connote consistent pronunciation. Assuming that two languages with consistent spelling will make it easier to pronounce the other's words could lead to a false confidence. A German "r" is very different than a Spanish "r." It takes very little time as an English speaker to realize your wonky spelling/pronunciation is barely useful when learning a new language. It's far more about ingrained mouth-shapes and tongue positions and the ability to actually hear sounds not a part of your everyday experiences. This also assumes that languages are monoliths, rather than evolving, regionally divergent, and essentially arbitrary systems. Kudos to your English teacher; pity that isn't more universal.

[@DNA350ppm]

@@semioticapocalypse9774 Why am I not surprised that you didn't get what I wrote? 🙂 A german R always sounds like a German R and a German U always sounds like a German U. In the helpful invention IPA one sign always stands for the same sound across languages. But many languages are rather consistent within a language. BTW English kids are the most dyslectic and Finnish kids the least, according to studies I came across (long ago). In Finnish A can only be spelled one way and pronounced just one way and Ä is a different sound, always same as in English can 🙄 which phrase would be written in the Finnish alphabet like this: "oolueis seim äs in Inglish kän" (and that would be enough to help all Nordic readers to realise the pronunciation - practical, isn't it!

[@semioticapocalypse9774]

@@DNA350ppm Maybe I didn't "get" what you said because it wasn't in the text. Might be that disconnect with a language that isn't your first. (Insert passive-aggressive emoji of your choice.) My first thought of "why" you're not surprised is either arrogance or bigotry. That's usually the source of such a feeling, so food for thought. I don't think you "got" what I was saying since it wasn't a criticism or rebuke of your comment, but rather that learning English requires more phonetic assistance if you're used to a less slippery alphabet vs. the other way around. It's backed up by your example. My personal experience watching English speakers learn other languages and vice versa is that there's not really any difference. Both have similar problems and need phonetic assistance. I was trying to be subtle in my comment. You seem to be quite smug about Finnish being a better language than English and I was trying to hint that that's not really a thing. I actually admire the fact that you learned with IPA. Finland also has great healthcare and a wonderful program to help their homeless.

[@andrewdunbar828]

French spelling is actually very logical but it looks crazy to English speakers who haven't learned it yet. The same goes for Polish or Welsh, but not for English itself. English spelling looks crazy and it is crazy. I wouldn't blame the alphabet, just the spelling.

[@Jack-uh6zz]

i am at c1 in german and am happy to say that a lot of these were familiar to me! language learning has become so much easier due to the internet, i can just call people instead of travelling there. i always just tell people accent is super important... they will be friendlier anyway. active vocabulary compared to passive vocabulary is important too. it's even helped me improve my speaking in english/L1

[@7c2d]

I think the most important thing is making it relaxed and playful. How you do that is up to you but you can create your own systems to learn anything effectively in the right environment. I also think you can bring immersion to you by immersing yourself in language in all its forms (written, spoken, various types of media). Create as many associations as you can at once. It's not perfect but it's better than telling everyone to learn all the boring stuff.

[@juliaalvessoares]

I'm so happy to see you have a list of patreons now, ranging up to VIP's. You deserve it so much! Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I'm an EFL teacher in Brazil, and despite having taught for the last 8 years in multiple schools, I was never properly taught HOW language takes place in people's heads. I noticed I've been teaching through trial and error and *some* theory. Although many people tell me I'm the best teacher they ever had, I can see I haven't actually been able to take them to the level of fluency they want. It's just all the other teachers lack the same knowledge as me. So that's why I'm here, binge watching your channel and taking notes of it all, trying to visualize in greater detail the ways acquisition takes place, to teach better! To guide them through the language, use my tools in a smarter way and prepare them to also study on their own. I really look up to you, your academic life and approach. It would be a dream to get on a call with you someday, - when I have a stronger grip on all of this - and exchange ideas. I want to help all the people in Brasil to learn English so the world opens up for them.

[@Luxiferah]

Majority of my Spanish class in high school didn’t take our learning seriously so when it came to the oral exam, we were all unprepared. I had to learn a few words right before. My and my partner’s conversation was filled with “PUES….” But we did good somehow😂😭

[@atfernando1]

Usa “este…” en vez de “pues” ;)

[@pachilin]

Pues muy bien!

[@EricSheffey]

Great tips, and great to see someone with a background in linguistics approach this subject. The polyglot community has inspired me time and time again to keep pushing myself as I learn Spanish, but I think they often miss the mark when it comes to giving advice. Your channel and content has been a bit of a breath of fresh air. I'm about to start my final semester of my BA in Spanish, and one of my classes will be a 400 level Spanish linguistics class that "Applies linguistic principles to the teaching of Spanish". As someone that is fascinated by language acquisition, I'm really looking forward to this class, and hopefully I can dive a little deeper into linguistics as opposed to Spanish literature, which composes the vast majority of the rest of my degree.

[@blotski]

I've embarrassed myself several times over the years. I remember once being introduced to a young woman in the Czech Republic (actually it was Czechoslovakia at the time) and meaning to say 'těší mě' which means 'pleased to meet you' but actually I said 'těším se' which means 'I'm looking forward to it'. I was teased about that for a long time. I've had comprehension embarrassments too like when the landlady of the room I'd lived in for a year in France asked me if I'd enjoyed my time in France and I just said "no". I'd misheard her and it was only the startled expression on her face that made me realise. I'd actually had a really good time. Talking of misunderstandings I worked in a high school in England and we used to get trainee teachers from the USA over for a few weeks sometimes. It was some kind of exchange scheme with a local university. We used to just wait for the reaction the first time a child would ask an American student teacher for a rubber. It was inevitable. The best was when a boy asked a male student "Sir, have you got a rubber I can borrow?" For those who don't know, a 'rubber' is what we call the thing Americans call 'erasers'. 'Rubber' is also an American slang word for a condom.

[@maalikserebryakov]

These specific mistakes you mentioned make me think you do not actually know how to study a language. Secondly if you’re that embarrassed about what appear to be minor mistakes. I think you are lacking in the necessary mental strength too. Be braver.

[@blotski]

@@maalikserebryakov Wow, harsh.

[@lylyscuir]

@@maalikserebryakov Native speakers misspeak and mishear things too. However, since you seem to know a way to study that will make one's speech and comprehension flawless and beyond reproach, please share it with me, so that I will not go through life in ignorance.

[@kengruz669]

@@maalikserebryakov Learning a language includes how you say something, which is part of the meaning of what you are saying.

[@annabellethedoll3764]

@@maalikserebryakov edgy

[@barrysteven5964]

I was the examiner for some teenagers in the UK doing their speaking tests in French. I always remember one lad on the topic of what he did outside of school was desperately trying to tell me he was in a band. He ended up saying 'je bande'. (= 'I have a hard on').

[@kenfowler9409]

I believe that learning doesn't stop after school, So to that end at 81, I am learning Scottish Gaelic as I was born in Scotland and raised in the USA. Thank you for your insights.

[@smwechsler]

a Swedish kid was showing off his Italian but forgot the word for cookie, so he substituted Swedish. Unfortunately the Swedish word for cookie is kaka.

[@lucacolombo7603]

Most underappreciated language channel out here

[@DeggaTheDev]

I live in Uruguay but I'm from the states. I forget words all the time. I try and explain around them until they kinda get what I'm saying or blurt out the word I either forgot or didn't know yet. I know that if I pull out my phone to translate, I won't retain as much. Speaking it is the best way to learn it. Everything else is secondary.

[@andrewdunbar828]

Being able to explain in other words when you don't know the specific in your target language as a very important and underrated milestone.

[@justincain2702]

I think the point about written language not being the true language makes sense most of the time, but there are definitely exceptions. For instance, the Kanji used in Japan have a long history of co-evolution with the Japanese language leading to many words that gained their roots from the meaning of the character; the pronunciation of the character was secondary. There's also many examples of the same word having multiple readings, while the stable aspect is the characters. Of course, this goes both ways. There are also examples of words that definitely predate their kanji and as such, the kanji are often the ones that change.

[@eritain]

Yeah, linguistics overcorrected a little from the early 20th-century attitude that written language (and especially written classical languages) were The Good Stuff, of which regular talk (especially *non-elite* people's talk, eew) was a sloppy copy. Speech, we do instinctively. So it has high participation, and it's a major way that the patterns of language impose on and are imposed on by the patterns of human pronunciation, thought, and society. Sign is instinctive too, for those who have exposure to it and social reason to acquire it. Writing is not instinctive, and it constitutes a small fraction of the total history of human interaction with language -- but we went a bit far when we said it was only a reflection of speech, and ignored the influence flowing the other direction.

[@chrislowe6926]

This is a very good point for Japanese. I find that having used Heisig’s method to learn the kanji separately from studying Japanese grammar and vocabulary, I now find it much much easier to connect them together and remember new vocabulary that relies on the kanji for the meaning. It is also a huge benefit when switching over to studying Mandarin Chinese. I think that treating the kanji as a separate system at the start pays off in the long run.

[@moongloomable]

Really helpful tips thank you.

[@rban123]

100% agree about falling into the "advanced vs beginner" trap. When I first started learning spanish I was using duolingo, and honestly it helped me learn the absolute basics and simple constructions/frases. But I started to get frsutrated that I was not learning about the past or future tenses, and I had no idea the subjunctive even existed yet. Once I chose to actively study these things for myself, my level of spanish skyrocketed. It's never too early to start learning more "advanced" concepts. The sooner you start familiarizing yourself with them, the faster you will improve. If you put off learning "advanced" concepts like the subjunctive, that's really limiting to what you can express. Even for very simple ideas like "I want you to tell me" or "I wish I had known sooner" rely on the subjunctive to be expressed properly. Nothing stopping you from learning it ASAP.

[@JeffreyGVny]

As a student in Paris, I went to the post office to send a sweater off to a friend. I was tired that morning and when asked what I was sending for the customs form (un pull), I heard myself saying “poule” before I could stop it from coming out of my mouth. I started turning red as I corrected myself, but the agent was already giggling over the chicken I was apparently sending back to the states. Oops.

[@ginabee1212]

Great tips!! I am a speech language pathologist and I have found IPA to be VERY helpful in learning languages, especially now as I am learning the Cyrillic alphabet to learn Russian and Ukrainian after a friend told me that Russian was a phonetic language. I first used the IPA to learn a bit of Polish over 15 years ago. I wish I knew the IPA when I learned French back in college, but I will definitely use it more, going forward, including my analysis of verb conjugations!! Such fun for a linguist like me. Hmmm...maybe I should go and work on a linguistics degree!!

[@andrewdunbar828]

Every language is more "phonetic" than English, but few if any are totally phonetic. In Russian you have to know which "o"s sound like "a"s and where the stress goes in every word. Even you speak another Slavic language already.

[@ginabee1212]

@@andrewdunbar828 Yes, figuring out when Os are pronounced as As has been quite tricky. I have recently learned that the Os are usually pronounced as As in unstressed syllables, but so far, I have very little idea of which sounds are supposed to be stressed.

[@encapsulatio]

The thing is...the biggest actual experts in the field of dialects that are hired by actors for movies seems to value Knight-Thompson Speechwork many orders of magnitude more than any phonetics and phonology training from any fancy university in the world...because those universities have no clue how to transfer precisely and fast the accent characteristics to their client. Knight-Thompson Speechwork can do it. It's somehow pathetic that all the fancy phoneticians from the most prestigious universities on the planet don't have the skills that Knight-Thompson Speechwork supposedly teaches.

[@barrysteven5964]

I've tried just about all the 'methods' linguists advise and I've come to the conclusion you just have to try them all and see what works for you. I've often tried new methods and been excited by the progress only to find that long-term it didn't really work that well. I do know what doesn't work for me. Seeing words on a screen - especially out of context. I've tried those things like Anki and Drops and I may as well just not bother. Nothing sticks at all. Ever. I do remember well things I've heard though but it has to be in context not just random. So I use videos a lot especially with subtitles in the original language. When I learn a new word this way it tends to stick a lot better and I can often even remember who said it in which scene. One enormous change I made not too long ago was to stop trying to memorise words so that I know them actively. It takes SO long and is soul destroying. I now just do that for basic words then I just learn as many words as I can passively until I've built up a good enough passive vocabulary to be able to use 'authentic materials'. I use these materials a lot and gradually the words I knew passively I begin to learn actively as a natural process. I'm big fan of phonetics. I studied Russian at university and we had a specific course in Russian phonetics both here and when we were studying in Russia. It's both fascinating and really useful. I always want to know these 'tricks' for getting the pronunciation right in any language now.

[@eurovicious]

Agreed, watching videos with subtitles in the original language works great.

[@midchicken6599]

By this do you mean watching videos in the language you are trying to learn, with subtitles in that same language?

[@barrysteven5964]

@@midchicken6599 Yes. I don't find subtitles in English really helpful. If I don't catch what somebody has said I want to see the words I didn't catch on the screen. Seeing what they meant is less helpful.

[@jeremylee48]

I'm only a 1st-year linguistics student so I'm not at all an expert on SLA theories and practices. But I've been interested in Usage-based stuff - basically a very input-heavy approach with the view that your mind has an innate, subconscious knack for recognising patterns and imitating, abstracting rules from chunks of languages. This sorta viewpoint explains rlly well those learners who aren't academically gifted but because they spend hours on KZbin and Twitter per day in their target language (basically just doing what they love without explicit attention to learning) they absorb and imitate so many chunks of language and so become weirdly proficient. This doesn't mean to do away with all the grammar books and vocabulary notes, but they're only there to prime future inputs, helping the mind notice and record it better. And communicating (texting, writing paragraphs like these, or like the video said, talking), aka usage, is vitally important. This is a really big theoretical hunch, but it explained things really well when I reflect on my english learning journey and how I've gotten to this point. I'm just tryna replicate it for learning other languages now.

[@internautelambda6417]

Glad to have you back!

[@languagejones6784]

Always glad to be here!

[@Alex-up9dj]

French person here. I really love the tips you give in the video, however, there is a little mistake at 5:16. "Ils finirent" is past tense (one of the many we have), future tense would be "ils finiront". Not to be annoying or anything, but I still thought I should point it out. Great video otherwise, thank you very much :).

[@windsaw151]

I have tried learning several languages and have failed with all of them except English. I had two main problems. One: I usually chose languages where 5 is almost no option since too view people (if any at all) speak it and material that encourages immersion and casual reading (like side-by-side bilingual texts) are rare. That's my fault. Well, at least mostly. It seems there is a lack of understanding in those who would like to spread the use of those languages about how important these little tools are. There's no shortage on learning material for beginners, but try to find anything for the more experienced learners! Two: In the long term, everything stands and falls with the ability to memorize vocabulary. And memorization tools advocated in those "learn languages fast" books are usually only easily applied to nouns. Which, IMO, are the more easily memorizable words to begin with. In my last two attempts to learn a new language I managed to get a really good understanding in the grammar and it's patterns. But I maxed out at somewhere around 1500 to 2000 words vocabulary. After that, spaced repeating gets more and more difficult, I usually fall behind more and more. Because new words become more and more uncommon. And (and that was a surprising realization) because I started to see the pattern more and more. Which, to me, had the unfortunate side effect that words more and more sounded all alike to me.

[@kjn3350]

I've found that reading in a foreign language on a Kindle or similar device which has a translation or dictionary feature is actually quite good for immersion. Unless you're choosing to learn very obscure languages, that should make things easier, since they've got a good range of languages they cater. And I don't think the memorisation technique works well beyond 2,000 words simply because it just gets boring and complicated by then - at that point, you have enough fluency to learn through immersion, like as a child. And it's complicated because the words become more difficult even in the native language - I'd never remember the word for prostrate because I hardly think of prostrate anyway, so there's no solid link.

[@jacquiecotillard9699]

2 minutes in and this is more helpful and digestible than anything else I’ve seen on mnemonic techniques (on KZbin). The potential for the IPA as foundation for a more complex mnemonics is so vast, and yet not once of these gurus ever talk about it during their sales pitches. Thank you.

[@khun_alex_uk]

I feel lucky that I seem to follow these steps naturally, ever since having exchange students in my high-school I had realised the inherent social nature of language. Learning in context and via interaction is key. It is also interesting the point that you make about grammar, I have always looked at it as providing a structure or a simple springboard with which to launch oneself into a conversation. If you already have the dough and pizza sauce (grammar) then it's easy enough to add the toppings (vocabulary).

[@kevinkasp]

Doing my bit for the algorithm, liked, subscribed, leaving a comment. Just discovered you and this stuff is fantastic! I am one of those who just never "got it" when it came to English grammar in elementary and secondary school. I didn't understand tenses because the explanations didn't actually explain, they were full of logical holes, so I couldn't figure it out. Thank you for your videos. I'm ready for the one on "mood."

[@JJ-rv7tt]

9:18 It's "Die! Eule" I think you'll find 🙃 I think Duolingo (or apps in general) get an unfair rap from some people. Sure Duolingo's not going to make you fluent, but it _will_ give you a good foundation which you can _use_ to get fluent, and it does that while being fun, I think that's pretty valuable, as long as you remember not to _only_ use Duolingo

[@andrewdunbar828]

I agree. I only found Duolingo had Chinese after returning from my 4th trip to China and it filled in a number of important gaps I hadn't been able to succeed with by hanging out in China trying to teach myself.

[@kjn3350]

If you ask me, it's fantastic for vocabulary. The grammar or speaking or writing (not translating) part of it is not terribly good, but it gets words into your head quite quickly without you having to sit there reading the same word over and over again. Plus, it does help you build good sentence structure, even if it's not always perfect, which is a help in dissimilar languages.

[@ThatEuropeanChick]

i am so happy and surprised to find out i have already been doing all of this since i was 11, without having been taught any of this! it just made sense to me intuitively. glad to know i am doing things right!

[@Reulon]

I want to feed the algorithm for you, so I'll just retell a "false friend word" story. My acquaintance (Croat, like me) was dating a Serbian guy and wanted to take a break from their relationship because he was overly pushy and jealous. She tried to be tactful and instead of telling him the reason directly - she said "Dosta mi je nevere, sad trebam mirniju luku." (I can't deal with sea storms, I need a calmer harbour now). He suddenly flipped; stood up and started yelling about how he was completely loyal and that she has no business accusing him of cheating. Apparently "nevera" doesn't mean a coastal storm in Serbian like it does in Croatian. It means infidelity.

[@sarahshawtatoun6492]

Nevěra also means infidelity in Czech. And 'virgin' in Czech means 'whore' in Polish- you can imagine the ramifications of THAT! 🤣

[@Reulon]

@@sarahshawtatoun6492 Ahahhaha. I didn’t know that! My fiancé is Slovakian and we had so many strange misunderstandings… Apparently “užasni” doesn’t mean horrible/disgusting in Slovak (and probably neither in Czech). Quite the opposite, I learned. 😂 I thought her mother was calling my work horrible.

[@eleanorryan7373]

So delighted to have found your channel. I had realised that what I really needed to improve my language learning was more interaction with native speakers, but the tip about the IPA is a revelation. Many thanks!

[@czyko]

Great video showcasing unique strategies and aspects of languages that others don't usually focus on. *btw le futur simple du verbe finir, c'est «ils finiront»

[@tina-marino]

The example you gave with French conjugations made so much sense and clarified a lot of confusion for me. Thank you for sharing your expertise.

[@jaysterling26]

A friend suggested I need some IPA to speak languages better. He was right - my constant inebriation was making it a lot easier to talk to strangers in a foreign tongue...of my own making.

[@languagejones6784]

I see what you did there! To be fair, it does relax some inhibitions...

[@andrewdunbar828]

I found I didn't need IPA in Mexico and that Sol, Bohemia, and Negra Modelo all could turbo charge my Spanish learning.

[@gcanaday1]

I think the best tip is the one you mentioned but didn't give by itself, "language is just talking." I got over a bunch of roadblocks by keeping that in mind.

[@bhutchin1996]

I started learning French 34 years ago with a Berlitz phrasebook and an hour-long cassette, so I didn't really learn the proper pronunciation of words until years later in university French courses and even nowadays when I'm going through Assimil's French course, which I do learn a few new things from, as well as watching French content on Netflix. I had French pen-pals for over 10 years, so I learned how to write it well, and I'm no slouch in speaking it either, but for me there's always room for improvement. I think that French has the same amount of phonemes English does, but they're not the same phonemes!

[@brinistaco1970]

Loved your video. I spent 1 year learning Latin and 3 in classroom learning French in high school. I went to France on a foreign exchange for a summer and came back fluent, learning more in a summer than in all those years in class. Don't ask me to read it but I had a perfect Parisian accent and could converse freely. It faded over time but it was a wonderful experience that I will cherish. Sure , there were some embarrassing moments but the key was I had no choice but to continually ask comment tu dit? because the family would not accept English as my first language! I had to speak French but their children got to practice their English when responding. Also, I noticed that I no longer changed thoughts in my head back to English. Thoughts were in French by the time I left. Thank you for reminding me of this experience some 35 years ago.

[@Nikelaos_Khristianos]

Social language is GREAT for modern languages, but it’s not very useful for ancient languages if you’re studying them at university. Hence, why I have to use other techniques, like reading out loud and and speaking in front of mirror. It feels silly, but it works. And it also works for modern languages too. Especially if you know the vocab well enough because you can start to add your own reading style to the mix. I recommend. ☺️

[@languagejones6784]

Very true!

[@fantasysunonlyforyou]

I'm a Slavic Studies major specializing in Polish. In Polish, if you want to say you're *at* someone's place you'd use the preposition U + the genitive case. I wanted to say I spent the weekend at a colleague's place to study and said that I was "w niej"... which in that particular situation would roughly translate to "inside her". Yes, in *that* meaning. I said it in front of native Poles. And I had a grammar exam the next day. I aced the exam, but, oh, the looks on their faces when I said I was there to just study...

[@cliffenyprize8489]

Being at the beginning stages of learning a dead language makes the social aspect tough! Luckily there are enough Sanskrit learners out there that it's not completely impossible to take adventage of!

[@krishnanclips]

Ashrams in India, especially in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have scholars speaking fluent Sanskrit. If you can find a tutor among them, you can talk for hours together!

[@cliffenyprize8489]

@@krishnanclips that is very helpful, thank you!

[@GamerWithAttitude1]

When I learn a new language, I start with the basics (self presentation, personal tastes, small talk, asking directions), and "irradiate" from there to more complex categories that will interest me. Kind of learning your mother language.

[@Gilvan_silva]

Your channel is amazing. I'm a student of linguistics in Brazil but I'm taking the online version, so no interaction with other language enthusiasts, and on KZbin if you're looking for anything related to language learning, you'll mostly find just polyglots, which isn't bad .they do have interesting tips , but you're actually a specialist. I wanna be just like you when I graduate 🤣 thanks for inspiring me!

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you so much! Do you have a favorite subfield of linguistics?

[@nicoleraheem1195]

I'm a student of Linguistics in America.😍 Howdy !

[@thedenalski4038]

this is probably one of my favorite videos on youtube i’ve already been taking a systematic approach to learning languages and this has reinforced that :p

[@ConlangKrishna]

Great video! Much more honest than most "learn this language in 30 days" vids. As you insist on using the IPA, allow me to point to my KZbin channel, where I uploaded some videos with me pronouncing the IPA chart, and some special parts of it. (Krishna the Conlanger)

[@alexandra.v]

I'm so glad this video exists. I studied linguistics too (up to Chomsky's theories!) but unfortunately I didn't find any use of it. Now this man proves that it can speed your language learning! Surprisingly enough, I was always a natural at finding structure in grammar. I never really found grammar meaningless.

[@prestonsmith1136]

One time I was visiting a friend in Colombia. I was outside with her son when I saw a parrot or (Loro) in Spanish. So I said "look Miguel a (Lobo) or wolf in Spanish., He ran inside and got his mom. Haha. She explained it to me later

[@СтивС-к8ф]

Interesting the confidence with which you contradict both Chomsky and Krashen.

[@languagejones6784]

Wait what did I say that contradicts Chomsky’s current program??? And yes, the last 30 years of SLA research hasn’t been kind to Krashen

[@malku65]

Great video, I use the verb markers for French, I think the future use the r and the verb to have because that is how it was done in the past (they are similar to Spanish -which I speak- and also Italian). Is interesting how much from one's own language you discover when learning another language (sometimes is shocking). I am trying Greek now and etymology helps me a lot to remember new vocabulary. Many Greek words make complete sense but sound so technical because we use Greek roots for many technical words for example Siderodromo for train tracks:literal iron road or Xenodoxio for hotel.

[@Speechbound]

I love that you compare the IPA with conjugations, while teaching people to look at roots and analyzing conjugation tables. Would love to chat with you one day and exchange knowledge! Best, Manu (one of those aspiring polyglots)

[@roes92]

Once I called a Warteschlange (waiting line, literally a "waiting snake") a Warteschnecke ("waiting snail") 🤷🏾‍♂️ The guy laughed his ass off, but did agree that those behave more like snails than snakes to be fair haha

[@alice_hml]

I wish there were language learning textbooks/methods for linguists, but I guess the audience for these wouldn't be huge. Thanks for the video, it's really helpful!

[@languagejones6784]

You're very welcome!

[@BGTuyau]

Great points, particularly about memorization and the social aspects of language learning -but I remain baffled and intimidated by the IPA, for all its fundamental uses and importance. Thank You.

[@germanus7302]

I dont use many of your techniques as im one of those "talking polyglots" but i do use the approaches you mentioned. I often just think im sounds even though i might not have an arbitrary symbol attached to them. and i remember stuff often by social situations. And my greatest mistake in language was in Russia, it was my friend's birthday and his grandparent's were visiting (very old fashioned) and im complimented my friend's mom's by calling her a good cook (хорошая кухарка). And they laughed the first time i used it, and after that grandma got pissed and i was just very confused.... Turns out i was using kitchen wench which was funny once as like a intellectual joke but after that i was essentially calling her a slave 😅 Now I'll never forget the right word is повар

[@danielbrueske]

These are great tips. I teach biblical languages and am working on a dissertation that demonstrates the benefits that linguistics can bring to biblical studies (I'm drowning, btw). I'm going to be sharing this video with my students and incorporating many of the tips.

[@languagejones6784]

I'm glad it was helpful! Drowning sounds about right for being in the process of writing your dissertation. I'm assuming biblical languages is classical Hebrew, Aramaic, and some Greek? How do you take on the vav-conversive with your students?

[@danielbrueske]

@@languagejones6784 I've only taught Hebrew and Greek. Vav-consecutive is always tricky. For first year students, it's usually easiest to pretend like it converts the pragmatics of the verb to the opposite conjugation--though I have to hold my nose whenever I explain it that way. With intermediate students, I usually introduce them to the idea of the narrative preterite for the vayyiqtol.

[@timor64]

You are so right on the fact that you always remember the situation where a words fail you, or you can't understand a written sign or word and need to use a dictionary (or these days google) - the situation and that word are linked forever.

[@KevinAbroad]

LMAO the bit about Patreon and Anders Torgerson! I died. Anyway, amazing video! I loved how you explained the importance of IPA in language learning. I've tried to do it but you have done it so much better!

[@languagejones6784]

I just watched that one yesterday! I also messaged a bit with Anders, and he was super helpful in telling me some good directions to take a Patreon. I'm glad he had a sense of humor about it!

[@Banksie2009]

Amen to you my friend! You put techniques I instinctively use into words. I love your work and the way you think about languages, linguistics, language learners and multilingualism.

[@Arrabella2024]

You had me till we hit #5. As an introvert (and a language lover), it's hard enough for me to speak to people in my own language! ☺️ But, as you said, interaction is necessary.

[@languagejones6784]

Oh, yeah. I hate it. But I schedule it and benefit from it. Cruel irony that to speak a language fluently you have to speak it badly way more.

[@DotLevine]

I just started watching your videos and I'm super excited! I'm gaining functional usage of a 2nd language finally at the age of 37, and I'm really excited to collect some more in the coming years! If you're still in west philly, please feel free to reach out. I regularly perform music in the area. Sometimes in Hebrew and Yiddish!

[@DotLevine]

as for linguistic slapstick, I'm too new to speaking other languages to offer anything embarrassing I said that wasn't in English.

[@floppyearfriend]

Thinking about the most embarrassing time I forgot a word (or in this case, a conjugation), it was probably when I was speaking Polish to someone on discord and he said... something, that his sister thinks. I wanted to ask "why does she think that?", which would be "dlaczego tak myśli?", but because I was so used to saying "I think..." in the first person it came out as "Dlaczego tak myślę?", i.e. "Why do I think that?", to which I received the expected, if confused, response, "I don't know, why do you think that?"

[@johnlastname8752]

Reminded me of the time I had just arrived in Berlin after a month in Poland and accidentally said "dzięki" instead of "danke" when I got a map of the city.

[@floppyearfriend]

@@johnlastname8752 Hahaha, yknow I had something similar when I VC'd in Italian for the first time in ages (after months of having a polish tutor to practice conversations with). People asked me questions and I kept accidentally saying tak instead of sì because I was so used to speaking Polish outloud, and so un-used to speaking Italian.

[@bigscarysteve]

@@johnlastname8752 One of the biggest fails I've seen is in a foreign language class (especially a beginning one) where someone (or several of the students) has/have studied another language previously, and they blow the word for "yes." Something so simple--but also so automatic.

[@blotski]

@@bigscarysteve It's the automatic ones that are the worst. After living in France for a year I found the first couple of days back in England I couldn't stop myself saying 'pardon' instead of 'excuse me' or 'sorry' in public. It just came out without any thought process.

[@curie1213]

I started learning French, just because I wanted to speak with a girl. After 8 months or so, I was able to speak French quite fluently, and we started talking in French. Now I am learning my sixth language, Dutch. I never would have imagined it. Without her, I wouldn't have started learning French, and without French, I wouldn't have started to learn foreign lanugeges. Thank you.

[@PabloGambaccini]

Thank you for the video, I loved it. I currently speak Spanish, English and Italian at the same level, but the language I teach is music, (a "meaning-less" tone language 😂) and I think most of your recommendations can also apply to learning solfege and sightsinging. I was thinking lately that learning aural skills must be like learling a first level of difficulty language (like from spanish to english) as it takes approximately 2 years to get fluent on it. What do you think about it? 🤔

[@SalsaMummy]

Just discovered your channel and I'm so happy! At last someone who talks sense about languages! ❤

[@Jinx-YouOweMeASoda]

500% the truth, all the things I've been figuring out myself while I've been learning russian for the past year+ and screaming at my language exchange friends. I only took intro to Linguistics at Temple years ago but it has been absolutely INVALUABLE to language learning and even just my own native English. I'm very fond of saying "English spelling only makes sense in the context of history" and showing my friends how that works has been useful for them. Showing them things like points of articulation and other pronunciation details that i learned from IPA and learning to listen to minor details in intro to Linguistics. It's been super useful to learn russian the way you analyzed french verbs, and even see the sound shifts in other slavic languages (haven't gotten to studying yet) or understanding why Polish is written the way it is (just rewatched langfocus's video overview of Polish last night). Please make more videos like this 🥺 i sound like a crazy person when i try to explain this stuff to my language exchange partners and even my russian teachers!

[@languagejones6784]

I'm honestly surprised at all the comments like this; I was afraid nobody would find this useful. I'll definitely make more!

[@danielbedoni4844]

Yo estoy estudiando sobre la cocina hondureña porque me gusta mucho comer y, cuando aprendo una lengua, yo empiezo mi "lectura de lengua verdadera" (real stuff reading), por la cocina, lo que me ha puesto un poco gordito. Bueno, gracias por las dicas: nunca he puesto mucho esfuerzo en la gramática, porque es aburrida, pero lo intentaré ahora que empezé a aprender el italiano en nivel intermedio. Usted se ganó una inscripción. Abrazos desde Brasil.

[@SoyVeronica321]

I mispronounced and said “i’ll kiss you later” in stead of “i’ll see you later” to a hostel volunteer in my first week in Sao Paulo! Apparently the b and the v are pronounced much more different in Portugues than in Spanish! Jajaja thanks for all the awesome videos!

[@languagelearningdabbler]

You convinced me to like and subscribe lol. I had to take clinical phonetics in college years ago so being familiar with IPA has really helped my language learning.

[@ichliebebaeumeweilbaum]

Wasn't my most embarrassing thing but in one of my earliest korean lessons my teacher asked me what my favorite color was. I said: "Harry Potter". Well 색 and 책 were just way too similar xD

[@languagejones6784]

I don't know enough Korean to understand the mix-up. Delightful though. 😂

[@SiKedek]

@@languagejones6784 ㅋㅋㅋ. Well, 색 [sɛk̚] means 'color' (色), while 책 [tɕʰɛk̚] means 'book' (冊), hence the humorous mix-up.

[@RockyJoRocket4]

LanguageJones! I really enjoy your videos. I have always enjoyed language, especially the fun ways that language varies in different areas, cultures, and groups. I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. The people near to me and told me stories grew up before television and came from multiple cultures. The language was descriptive and fun. Also!😊I’m the same person who noticed your Maigret novel on your shelf) I am definitely not a polyglot. I can read Hebrew Greek Italian and of course English. I am comfortable speaking Greek, (though it is grammatically awful!😉🤭 and I understand a lot. My reason for this little text is some experiences I’ve had that you might enjoy hearing about while in Greece. The first one is that as you probably know every Greek noun, verb and article etc. are conjugated by context of the sentence. I was walking in town one day when a mother picked up her son from kindergarten and as she was walking home with him he began telling her a story about pirates. She stopped him in the middle of the story and asked him to name the forms of the word pirate. He then went through the forms (nom.acc.gen. dat. voc. in male female neuter singular and plural!) Lotsa words. Also I’ve noticed that when Greek speakers speak English, they speak very quickly, almost incomprehensibly fast. I maybe figured out why. In Greek every single word has one or more accents so the speaker learns to stop at the accent in Greek. English has no accents and so a Greek speaker tends to not stop even at the end of a sentence marked by a period. English speakers speak in Greek ignore the accent so they have a incomprehensible boring flat Greek to the Greek “ear”. ‏לשנה טובה תקעה תבו

[@dorjem.4166]

One summer I started learning Italian and Spanish ahead of holidays to both countries. During the second holiday I asked a waiter in Barcelona for butter to go with the bread he’d given me - the problem being that “burro” means butter in Italian, but donkey in Spanish. Needless to say he looked at me like I was a madman…

[@urielcontrerasvaldez8752]

the first time i watch this video i didn´t understude the first point but i learn a little bit of the IPA and now i understen it. thanks it help me a lot

[@sawsanalh2802]

I love new scripts the most, I could never give up on the reading practice. I'm also too socially awkward to talk to people so reading, writing and listening are my main goals. But I'm pretty sure everyone who listens to your advice has me beat in no time lol, so I gotta give you kudos for that.

[@nuckleman81]

Couldn't agree more. For decades I have noticed the patterns in language structure, and used them at a simple level to help me recall information. I've never looked into the patterns to this degree, so this strategy is very helpful. Also agree that speaking the language with people is the key to success. In 2000 I was giving a presentation in Spanish in Guadalajara, MX. I didn't have the presentation really well internalized, so I was basically reading as it was my company's first trip into Mexico and I wanted to present in their native language, even if it meant I was reading. While talking about electrical circuits, I spotted the word "ligera," and pronounced it with an aspirated g, resulting in a sound like "lijera." Everyone laughed so it was clear I'd made a mistake, and on prompting a woman in the audience told me I'd basically said something like "women's underwear." I'll never forget the correct pronunciation of the word "ligera."

[@cobra02411]

I got annoyed with my Spanish studies and decided to pick up some Norwegian for kicks. Seeing how various languages are created was very helpful and I flip back and forth between learning them and are improving both. Fun experience - I was reading some reviews and there was a French reply. I had context on what the few paragraphs were about but I was able to read it absent a few words and when I later plugged it into Google translate I confirmed I understood the overall message. I thought it was pretty cool.

[@geerliglecluse5297]

I would like to mention 2 additional hacks that have helped me tremendously to learn foreign languages. The first is what I call the "wheel of learning", basically a feedback-loop. The more mistakes you make, the faster you'll learn. Take this to the extreme, and the results for your language learning will be truly mind-blowing, I can tell you from my own experience. The only other thing you'll need to do is keeping an eye on feedback, cause in many (non-Western) cultures people tend to be hesitant providing feedback 'cause too direct, hence impolite. The second is akin to the paradigm mentioned in the video. I usually call it patterns. In a lot of languages the way you say something is contingent on the situation, on whether someone you're talking to is older/younger than you are, social status, whether it's at work or some other sort of formal occasion, etc. This is not only true when it's about nuances or details, but also basics like introducing yourself, asking for something, excusing, complimenting someone, etc. Literary translating from your own language usually won't work in these situations, and grammar rules aren't very helpful either. The social situation and culture simply dictates how to go about saying something, and there are social rules or habits for the appropriate level of directness stemming from that.

[@jfjoubertquebec]

I am a linguist, and also learning languages for 30 years, these suggestions are really good. Very true. Except for the generative grammar comment which is just silly. UG portrays all languages as "exceptions" of a "perfect, simple form" of an unconscious, genetically inherited language that, lo and behold, happens to be surprisingly close to English. I agree with the "learn the rule" not the exceptions comment though. Great video.

[@yiannisroubos8846]

I have a personal experience. Background I speak English as a first language (Australian) my second language is Modern Greek (I'd say I'm a C2 level but I've never done a test) and I speak French as well (I'd say C1 level but I can't be certain). I used to live in the outback and I tried learning an indigenous language called Eastern Arrernte. It's only got 2,000 speakers but because most Arrernte speakers don't speak English and because I saw it as an exiting opportunity I wanted East Arrernte to be my 4th language. There is almost no material in the language so I joined a class which I did for two years. I really struggled as did everyone else. There are no grammars or text books written to learn the language but there was a PHD written in the 1980s about the structure of the language which I found online. I read the entire thing multiple times and tried to use it to learn Arrernte. A dictionary was published for Arrernte in 2019 and I bought it straight away and tried to memorise words. All this was the most incredible failure of my life. I did not learn anything. After 3 years of trying I did not retain even 1,000 words. Keep in mind the entire language only has about 5,000 words. I thought I would be able to learn it in a year but I gave up it was so hard. I now live in a city so there are no Arrernte people around. I never became good enough in the language to speak to a speaker as well. Deep down I still want to learn it even though where I live now there are no classes and no speakers. But I don't know how to learn it. I'm no newbie either as mentioned above. Any advice or comment?

[@majorcynic]

I remember the very minute I discovered that you can make practically any verb reflexive. Those were the keys to the kingdom!

[@writerofthought8084]

There's a lot of Spanish speakers in my area and I was trying to give instructions for a carnival game since I was the only one of my coworkers who spoke fluently enough. I forgot how to say "attempts" as in "you have 3 attempts" and the family was kind enough to help me out with "oportunidades" and I was like "oh, duh, opportunities." And I have not forgotten it since.

[@blackrookgaming]

As a South African trying to learn isiZulu, I appreciate the reference!

[@isabelab6851]

New subscriber. Some things to try out. I am fully bilingual (Spanish, English). I am now trying to learn a third language as an adult (French). It is difficult because the pronunciation has been a challenge. I completely agree that learning the basics of grammar early on are critical to being able to have meaningful exchanges. For me, it provides the framework for putting words into phrases and sentences and eventually full thoughts. Thank you.

[@k4ix0]

I really like your videos! I also got into linguistics because I liked learning languages, and I don't think both things are as separate as many linguists like to think, I do believe it's ethically better for linguists to learn the language(s) we do research on, even if we don't do fieldwork, but particularly if we do.

[@willowtree6657]

Very interesting perspective on learning that I was not aware of :)