What is Your Motivation to Learn New Languages?

[@JohnMorrisonmindsmart]

Your website for learning a language is the best I've ever seen, thank you for creating Lingq.

[@Thelinguist]

+John Morrison Thank you!

[@Casteloira]

I am seeing your videos for years, since 2012 maybe, and you inspire me a lot Steve. All this energy you have. Well done! :)

[@shyofshyness]

wow you added the transcript. This is so awesome, you are helping so many people learn English, while learning about how to learn English (or any other language for that matter) also I'm curious as to if you have retrieved the video when you went to poland (or was it czech) for 5 day immersion. would love to see the progress myself

[@Thelinguist]

+Sung Hoon Yang All my recent videos have transcripts and are lessons at LingQ. I hope it helps. I sure would appreciate if someone could point me to something similar for Korean. -:)

[@Ideophagous]

Arabic has one big problem, which is that you have to choose the variant you want to learn among 30 or so variants that exist. You can go with Standard Arabic, but that will not help you much in communicating with people if you go to an Arabic-speaking country. You will be understood by educated people, but few would be able to respond in correct Standard Arabic as well. As for the semi-educated or uneducated, they can only communicate properly in their local dialect. And when I say dialect, I mean languages that sometimes are as different from each other as French and Romanian, despite sharing a common origin. If you want to go with a dialect, go with Egyptian or Syrian. They're the most widely understood.

[@evilaziaferreira7738]

Good I will see all your videos. Thank you so much.

[@episteme0507]

Thanks as always, Steve.

[@colinpjohnstone]

I forgive you for the light on your head.

[@Thelinguist]

+Colin Johnstone I kind of knew I could count on you Colin. Cheers!

[@thefuzzyhandhd7346]

Great video, once again!

[@LuizMisterio]

Grandes conselhos Steve! Obrigado por mais um excelente material. Continuo aprendendo o francês no meu 90-days challenge. Já assisti todos os seus videos em francês, muito bons (y)

[@ninamimi6622]

What's the pilters 100 stories? I've never heard of it. I tried searching but I might be spelling the name wrong.

[@JohnMorrisonmindsmart]

could you please make a video to address brain freeze. the other day I was trying to say something to someone in a foreign language and even though I knew the word very well I could not bring it to mind. why does it happen and how can I keep from happening more frequently?

[@Thelinguist]

+John Morrison Good question and I will talk about it in my next Q and A video.

[@lapatria100]

+Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve I wonder if you'll quote Robert Bjork and his video on 'the role of forgetting in human memory'

[@globeex]

Hi Steve, I am an avid language learner myself and enjoy your advice a lot and also make use of Lingq. I am currently living in Hong Kong and therefore spend a lot of time learning both Mandarin and Cantonese. As you are able to speak both I would like to seek your advice. While it is relatively easy to find material for Mandarin, Cantonese is much more tricky. And as it is a very spoken language and rarely written in the same way as spoken, the input based language learning method is not so easy to make use of. I spend a lot of time speaking. How did you learn Cantonese? Any suggestions? Thanks a lot!

[@Thelinguist]

+Oliver Frei I got a hold of some books. I also did a lot of listening to local radio. I had some friends record texts from the newspaper etc.. It is not easy.

[@globeex]

+Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve Thanks a lot!

[@soywaz6645]

Thanks for answering my question :) O en español, gracias por contestar mi pregunta :)

[@byronchandler5000]

Hi, Steve. That was really impressive. You are one awesome foreign language teacher, that and Moses McCormick. I am truly inspired by your amazing accomplishments. I have a question: can you tell if there are differences and similarities between Dutch and German? Please let me know.

[@amirswr7179]

+Byron Chandler There are differences, of course, for these are two different languages (with a handful of dialects); but there are also similarities because these two are the nearest to each other, being West Germanic languages (and so is English, too, from this branch, but there's too big influence of Romance). Basically, take a Dutch-German wordbook - and most of the words will differ only slightly: groß/groot, Sand/zand, Tag/dag, ich/ik and so on.

[@byronchandler5000]

Amir Swr Thank you for the tip.

[@kleschtremania]

+Byron Chandler the languages are fairly similar. I made the experience that coming from German makes Dutch easier than coming from Dutch and learning German. German is my native language so I can`t verify that, but a lot of people in Amsterdam told me so. Reasons for that is, that Dutch has an easier Grammar than German. It is very hard for learners to actually build a correct sentence on their own. Because there are quite a lot of facts to pay attention to. That`s why most learners ignore a lot of grammatical features in the beginning. For example they do not apply cases when talking. German natives can understand you like that but it doesn`t sound good. Most people won`t mind that though because they`re happy that you learn their language. Pronounciation of Dutch is also easier in my opinion because it is regular and more phonetic. German has a lot of pronounciation rules but they can`t be applied to any word. So you end up having to learn them by heart. The thing is, if you don`t know a German word and read it it`s less likely to pronounce it correctly than in Dutch. z.B. Valenz(elektronen) if you don`t know the word Valenz you can`t possibly know wheter the V is pronounced as an F or as an english V... There are of course tons of things more. I don`t want to discourage you though, German is an interesting language with one of the best literatures worldwide. (my opinion)

[@dragan176]

+Amir Swr A "wordbook" is called a dictionary in case you didn't already know

[@amirswr7179]

+dragan176 I did, but I do not like Latin words in English and try to use the germanic ones.

[@sheymic1]

Hey Steve, how long did it take for you to become conversational in Russian and what system did you use

[@Thelinguist]

+Richard Ewan I spent most of my time listening and reading using LingQ. I really didn't start speaking until I was able to read Tolstoy and understand radio interviews. Probably more than a year. But then my speaking improved quickly.

[@willspram7219]

HI Steve, How do i go about teaching someone english. I've been trying to teach my girlfriend english, but after a few months of doing so i don't see any progression. Would you recommend any method of teaching a non native english speaker english.

[@Thelinguist]

+Tanawin Pramualratana Lots of listening and reading.

[@willspram7219]

+Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve thanks Steve

[@LuizBGomide]

What is this approach that you mentioned for learning grammar? Something 100 stories?

[@Thelinguist]

+Luiz Borges Gomide Check out realpolish.com

[@LuizBGomide]

So far I think this only applies to polish, I wasn't able to find it for anything else (I'm looking for japanese sources like that).

[@Thelinguist]

We may try to develop this for other languages.

[@sheymic1]

Thanks for the reply Steve, my challenge is to speak Russian by the end of 2016. I will let you know how I am progressing.

[@selmanlazy]

steve kaufman , I can teach you arabic , because my native is arabic , and I have such a good level in this pretty langauge, really I love my mother tongue (arabic) so , Im here to aid you to speak it fluently

[@jeffreyd508]

Great vids Steve! Do you consider yourself a 'language snob'? I wonder why someone would want to spend so many of our limited hours on Earth doing something most would consider unenjoyable. The effort-reward scale seems unbalanced, especially if you don't live in that country. I feel many polyglots feel like its one thing they can do better than anyone else if they simply put in the time, so that motivates them.

[@Thelinguist]

I have lots of interests. I enjoy it. I have lots of friends who have no interest in languages. Don't really understand your point.

[@kleschtremania]

A-t-il quelq`un qui aimerait parler un peu de français par exemple sur skype? Parce que pour moi il serait important d utiliser mon français, je n`ai pas souvent la possibilité de le parler. J`ai déja passé le test pour le niveau C1, alors on peux simplement mener une conversation normale. En échange je pourrais aider avec l`allemand car c`est ma langue maternelle.

[@monaha8102]

have you ever considered learning Persian?

[@AfterlifeOkamiHD]

+Mona hojat ansari I think languages are so amazing in that they bring out unique experiences; for example, my father learned russian because of the Soviet union and had to interact with a lot of Russian speakers; years later he became a elementary school teacher and had quite a few Farsi speaking students; so he began studying the history and language and had a lot of fun doing it.

[@alperatilla6734]

i want you to make longer videos and per 2-3 a week please

[@2tz02]

+Alper Atilla Have you already watched all of his videos? :D

[@alperatilla6734]

+2tz02 yes i watched.

[@EasternPearl]

hi Steve, I m starting Arabic because I just have a couple as friends. I found their culture is totally strange, they asked me to join my other non Muslim friends for dinner but they refused to go because among my friends there is a same sex couple. they always talk about infidelity because they despise them for having sex outside of wedlock. I suppose they obsessed with these things in their soul.

[@jeffreyd508]

Im gonna answer based only on the title. "Girls"