See what languages I speak and to what level here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ps9lmb2ps9bUn2Q.html

A little tip I recently stumbled onto; if you want to try reading in your target language but find novels a bit too much, then comics, graphic novels, manga, etc are a really good gateway, gets you reading but still has a decent element of visual context clues if you're struggling to follow the plot.

I am a native English speaker. I have travelled all over the world, so that includes a lot of airport travel. I had never heard the word "travelator" before. In the U.S., we say a moving walkway or a conveyor belt. But, because of the images you included with your video, I was able to understand the word "travelator".

What i like about your channel: no fluff, no elaborate flexing, no "i invented this way of learning" no hyperbole in how fast a person will Acquire another language. Just down to earth truths and self admittance about things you struggle with wtc.... You and Vlad should have more subs cause your stuff is better than the rest.

'it' 'was' 'he' 'she' 'there is' 'I go' 'I went' are super common in English, but not in other languages. Pronouns are not used as much in Spanish or Polish as in English, and verbs of motion are notoriously hard in Slavic languages - 'I went to school' can be translated several different ways, One problem with immersion is that very common words often appear in 20 different forms in other languages, depending upon number, gender and case. A common word like 'two' will come up often, but spread out over 20 different forms. You might hear the word for 'dragon' 50 times, but perhaps only 6 times each for each form, because you have your accusative dragons, and your locative dragons, and your genitive dragons etc Of course, this doesn't mean immersion is ineffective, just that it will take longer than anticipated. That is why repeated listening, as in the video, is so important - eventually you suddenly realise that 'dwoch' also means 'two', just like 'dwie' and 'dwa' and 'dwoma' do.

Bro you are so underrated. I would say you are literally the best in the game right now since Matt unfortunately stopped making content when it comes to language learning, but honestly I would say your tips are more practical and his style was more big picture explaining the theory. Either way I love your videos and you have been the reason I’ve gotten into Target language audiobooks, and even now I was watching English content and I was gonna go to the gym and listen to music but this video inspired me to continue listened to Harry Potter in Chinese at the gym instead

Once again, you have nailed it. When I was a little boy, my mother spent _hours_ talking to the woman next door. I just stood there, holding on to her skirt, listening. I didn't speak much, though when I did I came out with lines like "Oh mother, what a beautiful flower!" which cracked up my brother - but of course I was just learning to talk like Mum and Mrs Kerfoops. (We didn't have a TV, happily.) I was always a good listener at school, but my teachers found me a bit introverted. Once I got to Uni, though, I became the garrulous so-and-so that I am to this day. I believe I am a good writer and speaker thanks to those endless hours listening to Mum tell stories, argue, joke and generally communicate. When I heard Olly Richards speak about learning through stories, a big gong resonated within me. I have always hated it when teachers try to restrain the students. Learning French, I was reading novels, but when I asked about the _passé simple_ - a tense used on nearly every page I read - I was told "Oh, that's too advanced. Please focus on your homework." No, please teachers, don't do that to learners. Imagine telling your pre-school child not to use the past tenses because they're too hard. No. We just gently correct them, maybe, when they say "I eated breakfast already." And they soak it up. Languages are chaotic - or rather, patterns emerging out of chaos - we don't learn them in neat, lock-step pattern. OK, this has been a rant, but I also agree 100% about reading books you have already read in English. _Harry Potter_ is a godsend for younger learners. For me, it was Agatha Christie. It doesn't have to be Patrick White or Shakespeare. As with our mother tongue, the best indicator of success is not the _quality_ of what we read but simply _how much_ we read - provided the language is used competently by the author / translator.

I know these techniques but sometimes forget how effective they are. Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll get back to work now.

The final tip is so accurate. I love the story "The Return of Sherlock Holmes- The Norwood Builder " so much that I listened to its audiobook like 100 times or something like that and every now and then, I picked up a phrase or word that I couldn't even hear it before. I highly recommend everyone doing this tip for their favorite films, movie, and audio.

I really like a lot of these tips but for me the best one is the familiar stories. It sounds so obvious that it would work but you don't quite realise how effective it is until you've actually read (or listened) to something in a different language you knew before and you go "oh, I actually sort of got that". That's basically how I bruteforced my Japanese reading. Reading and listening to the books of old anime I had watched before. Adding to this, get into the habit of relistening to it! I did 2 weeks where I listenind to the same audiobook for about an hour a day during a long walk (maybe got through it 2 or 3 times) and my god did it do wonders to my listening... The "set outcome" thing is to true too. When you've seen enough of a genre of book or show you start to be able to guess what happens, who does what etc and it makes subsequent content much easier. Not just because of vocab, but because you know the game so to speak. The last one also reminds me of when I listened to the same 20 episodes of a show 15 times around, and I still felt it was useful and got new things from it on the final run through. I actually rewatched it about 6 months later and got another 200 or so anki cards from it! Great video. Keep up the content!

Because of this video, I am FINALLY not intimidated to learn this new language that I MUST learn to survive...and I thought that at 61yrs it would be impossible for me

Piggybacking on your subtitles advice, I have been watching La Casa de Papel, and I will watch an episode with English subtitles, then immediately restart the episode and watch with Spanish subtitles while the episode in it’s entirety is very fresh in my mind. It’s been a really helpful strategy. Great advice as always!!

Personally, as someone who has been studying languages for a while, I would watch an episode of a show in my target language first with English subtitles to understand the context, then rewatch with the target language subtitles and look for vocabulary I know and how it's used. On the second watch, I also try to carefully listen to each speaker to make sure I can hear how each word in pronounced. There's usually a lot of stopping and rewinding on a second watch, but dissecting how the natives talk and learning new things about the language like a detective is kind of fun like a puzzle. Obviously, once I became more confident in a language, I would just start watching stuff normally in the target language to test my comprehension.

For me a non native English speaker who has never gone outside his motherland I can hear u n understand u well with no sub BTW all what u said is completely true

You are great at exploring more and deeper things already told about language learning, plus new ways, you're great! And adding humor to that, what else...

Thanks for reminding me that I’m not stuck, that I’m making progress when I watch something more than once. There is a lot more to be gleaned from another watching.

Tip n6: when you've finally travelled 50 miles and exited the airport, make sure you get in a real cab.

I do agree ❤

I rarely comment but the 5th point matched a feeling I got for a moment now. Repeating things that you already know is far from being a lost of time as, with some time, it will not require any mental energy anymore to catch it, allowing you to focus this energy on other things

I have watch The Expanse in Italian multiple times as well as having read the first book a couple of times. I like the story and as you said, new things become clearing with each watch / read.

My greatest tool for language learning is TikTok. Short form content that usual it comes with subtitles, and if there’s no subtitles people in the comments usually type out the funny parts. I’ve learned a lot of vocabulary like that.

I love every single one of these tips. I completely agree with you, and I already implement them all in my language learning, to some extent. I love that you completely validated my synopsis trick too. 😂 I’m more of a book reader/ listener, and less of a series/film watcher for language learning, but when I do watch a series I always stick with either a crime series (exactly for the reason you describe), or if it’s a film it’s a romcom. They all have the ‘two people meet, have a great time, fall out because of a daft misunderstanding, and then make up, usually when one chases the other down as their plane is about to leave the airport’ plot. I’d never watch these in English, but in Turkish? Valuable language learning material. Side note, I didn’t realise you had a membership scheme. I don’t think I can see the join button on my phone… I’ll check the desktop.

I hate graded readers. But if you can find translations of books you've enjoyed in the past, rereading them in a foreign language has worked really well for me. I think everyone is drawn to Harry Potter for this reason, and I've read Harry Potter in several languages, but I'd recommend trying out other books.

Watching youtube channels covering the same topic in different languages has been quite helpful for me. For example, I follow video game news and I regularly watch the latest reviews and upcoming games videos in English. Then I'd switch to similar German channels and since I already know what the game is about, it's easier for me to follow the German review.

Awesome as always. I've always been very resistant to the reusing of content because I could be listening to NEW content instead, but one of these days I will try it (for you).

I find this, a "hoot" entertaining.. Absolutely good entertainment.. AND.. as a bonus, makes freaking sense and is logical and very helpful. Super Good Thanks.

Thank you.

As usual solid advice 👍

Audiobooks are also my favorite entity!! 😂 great tips

Wow, finally a reason to watch Pulp Fiction again not just to waste time. Small tip for those who learn German -- Kurzgesagt is narrated in German too. Different channel.

I can say for sure, even when not learning a language, when I was first watching anime I was glued to the subs and in many cases was completely missing the contents of the show itself. There have been tens of 12+ episode shows where I probably have managed to actually watch 30-40 minutes of the show in its entirety, the rest being just reading the English words on the screen. Actually focusing on the audio and the animation (after skim reading the subs) have I actually been engaged with the show. This has actually allowed me to understand Japanese a little on a subconscious level. Granted, after many years, anime is still just content to me.

Amazing video

even if there are no subtitles, it is possible to use tools such as whisper from openai to generate fairly accurate subtitles. works pretty well for languages such as japanese, spanish, german or polish

You made a video on how kids consume content and cite a story of your son "reading" a book in the back sear but is reciting a different story. This is the model. As adults we have bought into the gamification and think that levels and word counts are the reward versus actually learning. Great content!

I learnt Spanish in the beginning with subtitles in Spanish, because there were no other choice. Back in the days the Spanish channel RTVE had a lot series and movies available on their website. I watched águila roja all 11 seasons , I guess it was more than hundred chapters. And the Spanish subtitles helped me really to follow the plot, even as a sort of advanced beginner. (sadly today a lot of content is geoblocked) Now I read books in Spanish. I had once the plan to read every book three times. The first time with barely searching for words, the second time (and most time consuming) with searching nearly everything to understand the very most, and based on that knowledge the third time. But I never realised that plan, I am just too curious and want instantly to know what is going on :D But still I think is not a bad idea.

A bonus benefit from repeatedly going through any sufficiently good content (book, film, whatever) is that it takes you "deep". We have a tendency toward skimming over the surface of things, and one of the things it's essential to do, to resist that, is to slow down (and repetition is the ultimate form of slowing down, if you keep track of all the time the content is taking to consume.) This might even work for other "consumables" with some mutatis and a few mutandis, whatever those are. Dig in, and discover the hidden levels of that game. (Are there such things? I'm not a gamer. I just seem to remember hearing rumours like that.)

Those are wonderful suggestions actually. Sadly, for me comprehending Danish speech is like solving a 10.000 pieced jigsaw puzzle.

Man I’ve never heard "Tjena chicos" before! I’ll have to start implementing that into my list of greeting expressions

I am currently watching all of The Crown dubbed in Italian. It is much like the first time I watched it, except boopity.

Spot on. I literally spent YEARS thinking there was value in deciphering the meaning of sentences I didn't understand immediately. I thought that doing that was like doing math homework and how you learn. I really regret it. It could be the subtitles in a video or literally a Japanese novel - I would know every single word I saw but not understand what the sentence meant. Just that it was vaguely related to the meaning of the sum of all the words. (This probably sounds absurd to the Spanish learners here... But I promise you it is a thing.) Finally realized it is: (1) less painful (2) faster for reaching your goal and (3) more sustainable (less fatiguing) - to *immediately* check the answer. In other words, read one sentence in Japanese, if the meaning doesn't immediately come to my brain, immediately read a translation of it. And repeat over and over as fast as possible plowing through 100s of pages that way, until the meanings do immediately come to my brain.

Don’t forget Galician for your next flexing list. It’s a newer language on Drops, so that’s why it popped to mind. Anyway, thanks for the tips, they do help.

I’ve never heard the word “travelator” - l’ve always used “moving sidewalk”. (And English is my mother tongue 😛)

Hey, Lamont would you like to test and review Story Learning by Olly Richards? Would be nice to see what you think about it, even the free 1-week version :)

Lots of Phrases with subtitles then Move on to Media with subtitles (pick up new words) and then Listen / Watch lots of content (subconsciously your brain will sort it all out) Listen / Read first ("Experience") then Grammar Grammar (look up any questions you have) after you have "Experience" Beginners (you can get a general overview of Grammar) and find a mnemonic system like Michel Thomas Basic General Grammar knowledge (such as Adverbs and 1st person singular (annoying terms like that) Alphabets Mnemonics are the way to go. Annoying issues (made from a combination of internet sources) Alphabet Mnemonics (I had to make mine (not good enough) Only in Russian did I find "THE" one. Mnemonic Grammar Systems (generally half done) MT Arabic verbs and grammar being the best. Grammar Cheat Sheets (I generally had to make mine (not good enough people) French verbs even!

Out of curiosity, what Latin audiobook(s) have you listened to? I'm always looking for more

In a video of yours I watched just yesterday or the day before you said TO go into media, preferably the same piece of media repeatedly. Dive in and listen to it regularly. So I started just that. Precisely so that you can begin to get familiar with the language, even if you don't understand everything. But here you're saying the opposite it sounds like.

Even though you're not a "polyglot" you got the best language learning content.

Greetings from Melbourne. I have applied the same methods that you have suggested, for German. For example, reading familiar novels or stories which were originally in English and reading the German translations. You're already familiar with the plot and also the culture of the original language. As for subtitles in the target language, this is always best when you're around an intermediate level.

I'll say this once just to get it out of my system because Ive been holding it in so long: I absolutely hate the channel name change to "DFNS". I understand why you did it, but boy, do I hate it. OK, done. Carry on.

Are you familiar with the listening-reading (LR) technique?

Hey Lamont (I think that's it right? lol) you say one of your tips is to find content that you watched before in English and watch them in the target language with subtitles. I agree that's a really good idea and I did that a lot for French. But now I'm learning Norwegian and seeing as you've learned Swedish, you probably know that most English content isn't dubbed in Scandinavian countries, so because of that, Norwegian dubs of English tv shows and movies just don't exist, and I would assume it's the same way in Swedish. Another thing I've found is that when there _are_ dubs available (like for children's media) there often aren't subtitles to go with it. So what do you recommend doing in this situation and how did you do deal with it when you were learning Swedish? Thanks!

I am guessing Shrek and Frozen for the 40+ viewings? Or Chicken Run

Suppose you have a film and multiple audio tracks for it, one per language. So, you can make a brand new audio track by splicing the existing ones together, yeah? Well what about making an audio track where only some of the characters are TL, and the other characters talking to them are in English. The idea is you could be freed somewhat of the "seen it a million times" constraint by having high context per scene from the English. Second idea, The Two Towers seems a good thing to be watching in TL, first of all because who among us does not rewatch LOTR at least yearly, and secondly, it has three plots (Frodo and Sam I'd say feel like the B-plot, Aragorn-Legolas-Gimli is the A-plot, and Merry and Pippin seems like the B-plot of the A-plot) that possibly can be pulled out and watched standalone, which would make it about the film equivalent of your 80-minute audiobook

"Starting with number one because... that's how numbers work." You could start with five and count down to one. Leave us in suspense about the number one thing. And numbers don't really work much. They just kind of sit there on the page.

Do you also have some tips on learning a new alphabet? I’m trying to learn Japanese as a native Dutch speaker and it feels like my biggest hurdle is learning a new alphabet.

1st watch: English subtitles, target language audio. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, all the way to 50th watch: no subtitles, or target language subtitles, target language audio. I don't know what to tell you if you can't bear to re-watch media. I mean one, get over it, two, try it a few more times, maybe you'll end up liking it.

I know this is not the subject, but THANK YOU for the "we are not children" remark! I am so sick of this "learning like children" concept. I don't know about others, but I don't have a native speaker at hand, who is 24/7 babbling to me, with the questionable result that I might offer an insecure "dada" in 12 months time. My apologies again, but this rant has been building up for quite some time.

For the repeated watching, how distanced should each viewing be?

who wanna exchange language ? i'm native spanish from colombian, my english level is A2/B1

My best advice - if you read a book, read it. Don't just skim over the sentences, try to understand why the author used that or another grammatical form, look up unknown words, etc.

Youve just got better at Portuguese without even studying it! Portuguese is *exactly* like Spanish, except you talk funny. So one other way to start understanding a foreign language is also to have learned a very closely related language.

The first photo is better

difference between subtitles and closed captions - the subtitles can sometimes be pretty different than the actual spoken audio. How is one supposed to know when they are new to a language when this is happening, especially in a language that is spoken quickly or the actor is mumbling a bit or a scene is intense and there is emotion behind the character at the time?

Yes, you are flexing, mate

To mam włączyć napisy po polsku, czy po angielsku, jak się uczę rumuńskiego?

I'm not sure about the idea that if you can understand 90% written, but only 60% spoken, you should use subtitles. If you do that, how are you going t train your ear to actually hear the words the way native speakers actually speak them (my biggest problem at the moment)

Don't choose All is list with Robert Redford a good film though.

but you didn't tell us those two films you watched so many times... i'm curious now

I think you've spent too much time at airports lately :D

Never heard the word "travelator?" is that a real word?

Polish has way too little subtitled stuff 😢

Did ya say PoLiSh?! *Happy kiełbasa noises*

Ah Kung fu Panda. The TV episodes have been dubbed into welsh but for some reason they are not available in Wales or the rest of the UK. This is a great sadness for this adult learner.

Personally I would choose Harry Potter and the Despicable me films.

4:05 Any weeb knows that you can learn dozens or even hundreds of words just by watching lots of anime with subs in your own language with no prior Japanese knowledge… but it’ll take years and give you very little return compared to time lol.