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

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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!

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.

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

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 😄

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.

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 say, 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.

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

One trick I've found is to treat each word you learn as just another word in your language that happens to mean the same thing. It stopped me from having to mentally translate I can just speak

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

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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😂😭

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').

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 KZfaq 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.

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.

Most underappreciated language channel out here

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).

Glad to have you back!

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.

Really great video, solid and helpful advice. Especially agree with that of learning the paradigms.

Great post and thanks for the tip on analysis using IPA. I needed to learn IPA as a voice performance major, but never considered using it to break down and understand verb conjugations. Good stuff and keep it up!

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.

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!

A refreshing thought process. Nice to hear something a little different.

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.

2 minutes in and this is more helpful and digestible than anything else I’ve seen on mnemonic techniques (on KZfaq). 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.

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...

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!!

i came across you recently, i do only really the last tip, but the IPA on french conjugation was a massive eye opener, i'll be adding that to my routines thank you so much bro. and yes yes im putting off subjunctive i'll get around to it eventually!

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!

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."

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

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.

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.

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»

These tips are awesome, thank you

Loved this!

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.

Thanks for the video!

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.

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

Great video!

This is brilliant!!!

Thank you for the video.

refreshing content, glad YT recommended it!

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!

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

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

I've been following the development of constructed languages (Lojban and LidePla are at the top of my list right now) so I'm finding your tips helpful. I also have a teenager learning Spanish that I feel will benefit from your content.

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)

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.

Such great content worthy of my first comment ✨I went down the rabbit hole of IPA while starting to learn French this past summer. I abandoned the approach once I had some familiarity of sound. Currently, I’m seeking to increase my phonological/syllabic awareness. Not really sure why, but it has something to do with pattern recognition and matching uttered sounds with the visuals presented in the French writing system. I hate grammar because I don’t understand it. Frankly, I’ve actually never had a formal grammar class in the entirety of my education. I speak multiple languages yet have zero grammatical awareness 🐣 This video was inspirational. You’ve inspired me to learn the basics of grammar. Any recommendations on where to start as an adult grammar illiterate?

A native Spanish speaker, speaking English friend of mine accidentally called me than hung up. I text her and said hey whats up… etc. She responded with “opps, I booty called you.” I was like either she is messing with me, she really does like me or she has no idea what that means. So I called her and after some discussion in Spanish, I laughed and told her “booty call” and “butt dial” mean completely different things. 😂 I realized something though, that mean exactly the same thing, (rear end) booty/butt (cellphone) call/dial. I was relieved but also kinda disappointed. 😂

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.

At the Englischer Garden in Munchen, I could not think of the German word for 'leaves' (it was fall, and I wanted to exclaim about the leaves blowing in the wind), but I have just learned 'drache' for 'kite' and said something about die drachenchen, much to the amusement of my friends (who would not let me speak English while I was visiting them). The quickly reminded me of die blaetter, that happened some 35 years ago. I don't know much German anymore (focusing more on regaining French in the last few years, and haven't spoken either much since the 80s), but I remember that!

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.

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.

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.

Great video

My mom managed to mispronounce "manger" (eat) as "marcher" (walk/march) once when asking for a nice place to eat in Paris once; the guy just smiled and responded "anywhere you'd like". More annoyingly when in Italy she kept specifying that we wanted "latte caldo" (hot milk) instead "latte freddo" (cold milk) which we really wanted; because "caldo" sounds so similar to Norwegian "kald" (cold). After having to eat cornflakes with boiled milk a few times; eventually me and my brother learned to order cold milk ourselves in Italy.

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

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

In the final exam for an early level of my Italian classes, I wanted to write that I had stayed in a nice hotel (albergo) but instead I dropped a letter and wrote ALBERO, which means "tree". I was amused to think of the laugh those checking the essays had at my mistake. In a later level I was writing about trees/ALBERI , but instead I wrote ALBERGHI which is the plural for hotel. Seems I am destined to spend time sleeping in a tree overnight!

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."

Spoken French verb conjugations are really just elaborations of 5 base forms. Using "Mettre": - Base stem (/mɛ/) - Stem that always ends in a consonant (/mɛt/) - Past participle (/mi/, irregular) - Future/Conditional stem (/mɛtʁ/, ends in /ʁ/) - Infinitive (/mɛtʁ/, ends in /e/ or /ʁ/)

Thanks for the IPA tip. As an American living in France I’ve learned it and forgotten it several times in my phonetics classes but really just need to stop being lazy and commit it to memory as it’s a great tool.

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.

Thank you thankyou thankyou! Your break down of it just being "to have" tacked on the end is blowing my mind. I have been learning French strictly from French speaking teachers, and oh man, teaching languages is, as many French people have admitted to me, not a strong suit for the French.

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 :).

Amazing analysis. Very intuitive compared to KZfaq polyglot videos I've seen.

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…

I'll never forget when I was telling a story to my language exchange friend about the time I gifted someone a bofetada (slap) when I meant to say bufanda (scarf). She laughed it off and told me about she would love to gift some of her family a bofetada too.

I didn't think of the phonetic alphabet at all when I was learning Japanese, but it has come in handy with arabic. I not perfect with it, but am getting better.

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!

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 KZfaq 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!

THANK YOU SO MUCH! IM SUBSCRIBING AND WATCHING ALL YOUR VIDEOS FOR INFORMATION!

A couple of the more useful tools I've used are learning songs and memorizing poetry from native speakers. They make it easier to get the rhythm of the language, and can be great for fixing grammatical structures. "Canta y no llores" (from "Cielito Lindo") demonstrates the form of the imperative familiar, the subjunctive, and the rule that the subjunctive is used instead of the imperative when a command is negative. I hadn't thought of using IPA itself, but I find spoken Dutch much easier to understand than written. However, the visual cues in French make it easier to comprehend the written language.

I was born in Colombia and moved to the US when I was 6. I learnt English fluently and I am currently learning French! The more I learn, the easier it feels, at the start it seemed so confusing but now it makes more sense. I’m still not that good, but I can make basic conversations in French.