I used Surfshark and it was good and also inexpensive.

it sounds like you say siema chicos at the beginning :D siema is whatup in Polish :)

Where do you get your audiobooks?

@@halina328 I say "tjena chicos" - tjena (pronounced "shenna") is a casual Swedish greeting.

Will this allow me to access more spanish content on Netflix?

I use brave normally so I re-downloaded chrome and I use chrome solely for my target language and made a Google account for it. This means that even my KZfaq in my study time is in my target language! Though there's still lots of English videos there just by pure volume I guess

Set hard minimum study times each day before you’re allowed to watch English content Start off with amounts of time that aren’t even useful like 5 minutes just so you get in the habit and gradually increase that time while attaching your ego to the time you study each day Also apply a approach guided by what Lamont talks about in this video, majority of you study time spent immersing, minority of it spent studying grammar and/or memorizing vocab Seek power and meaning, not happiness

Try making a youtube channel for only yr target language

Next tier procrastination lol

Next level procrastination is Tim Urban from Waitbutwhy who literally started Waitbutwhy.com as a procrastination from writing music, which is what he had moved to California to do.

Yeah, I find this is something helpful for me. First time listening, it's just Peanuts adults talking. But over time my ear started picking out the natural breaks in the language that indicate punctuation, which helped identify sentences, and from there I started picking out words, even if I didn't understand them. And now that I know a decent amount of vocabulary, it's even better. Now I know that there's a word there that I don't know and I can make an effort to learn it (or not).

Your writing is super fluent, so your strategy is serving you well, great work! 💯👏🏼

Yes. Find something you would love to read or watch again but it feels indulgent. Then try to find it in your target language. Is there a book or movie that you quote to others and have seen a dozen times? Watch that in your target language.

I find Spanish tv boring so I just watch dubbed versions of American tv or i watch KZfaq channels by Spanish speakers

That's just it! I know exactly what you mean... you've reached the stage where you know the lines as well or better in Arabic than you do in Urdu, like me with Spiderverse in Spanish!

It's not hard. If I can do it, you can! (Totally not a tech person here. I have to ask my co-worker to adjust the settings on my work cell every time they push an update. So very not a techy person....)

You just install the program on whatever device (PC, Mac, phone, whatever) and then sign in with the account you created, and then it's like flicking a switch.

Thanks so much! Haha, honestly his preschool is about 4 minutes away and it's all school time speed limits (26 mph), I was hoping more of the fact that I was driving like a bank robbery would come out. The people who know the soundtrack to Baby Driver would hear that that was the track I used haha.

Thank you!

That's it!

I guess my recommendation would be to ease off your expectations of "comprehensible". Like, you're just not going to comprehend more than about 20-40% of a TV show for adults... so if you don't want to watch stuff for kids, then you've kind of got to expect that. My recommendation would be what I did with Rango and Into the Spider-verse haha. Whether you do that or not, there is about 50-100 hours (200 if it's Mandarin or something) that you just have to grind through. I don't think there's any way around listening to at least 100 hours that you don't understand very much of.

I recommend learning basic vocab some other way besides visual/audio methods where you don't comprehend much. You can learn basic vocab thru translated texts and subtitled videos. A lot of ppl use books like The Little Prince, etc-- books that are commonly translated into other languages. Once you get a foundation of 500-1000 or so words you can then use audiobooks, movies etc to "acquire" the language further.

I think it comes from the average number of hours required. Some people might need more and some less, but the middle is somewhere in between

I was more being "comprehensive". It obviously depends a lot on what you mean by "basic fluency" but 2000 hours certainly couldn't hurt.

Hahaha, the original plan was just to have him look deadpan at me because I thought that would be funnier, but he was so excited just to be on camera that he was laughing and smiling the whole time. Also, fun fact, it's actually in a different car and the shot is flipped because the car used to film the kid has the booster seat behind the driver's seat, so it was very clearly the wrong side (strangely, our brains are much better at picking this sort of stuff up than you'd think).

Little Miss Sunshine (I think)

Haha yeah, it was funny, I got some footage of him yawning, and I thought that would be funny to have in there while I was driving like crazy, but it just looked weird, somehow it didn't work... so the shot of him grinning went in. It's flipped too, because he actually sits in the seat behind the driver, so I looked at the wrong seat when I did that take (he wasn't there for real of course). The footage is most definitely NOT Little Miss Sunshine, which is a drama about beauty pageants... similar title though: Mr. Men/Little Miss. It used to be called The Mr. Men Show, and now the KZfaq channel is called Mr. Men Little Miss.

Austen can understand Swedish pretty well, and occasionally says words in it. But yeah he doesn't "speak" it.

I think you're a great example of someone who wants to be good at the languages they already speak. You could so easily be a "she shocks natives in 10 languages!" kind of person, but you choose to focus on French. Good on you! (Not that there would be anything wrong with learning a bit of 10 different languages either.)

@@daysandwords Thanks, that's nice of you to say! I'm actually going to start to learn another language soon, but who knows how long I'll keep that up😁

Ooh, is it another one of Switzerland's ones, or are you venturing further? (Or maybe you don't know yet...) Edit: Just watched your video on where you're studying abroad, so now I know!

Honestly I made it up because it goes well with the "12 hours a day for 6 months" thing, BUT... 600 hours is laughably short. I think their definition of basically fluency is the ability to pass a B2 exam and understand most of a conversation and take part in it. I think that person would be a long way from "fluent". When I think of basic fluency, I am talking something more like my own level of Swedish which is C1 and can handle basically anything but would get lost when explaining complex topics that I had deep knowledge of. The other thing about the FSI is that that it highly optimised (in a program) and recommends study outside the program that isn't counted in the 600 hours.

​@@daysandwordsIndeed. As a language teacher myself, it's fairly standard to recommend doing 1-2 hours outside of class for every one hour in class. So that's 1200-1800 hours already. No way anyone is getting to a high level in any language with 600 hours.

It's a quote from,"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse". :D

Yeah, it means "I love you" but it's said in an unusual way because "lo" is the formal "you" in this context, so it's a good example of how even simple stuff doesn't really translate. In the English, the character says "I love you" to a character who thinks they're a stranger... but it's actually his dad. In the Spanish, the kid has been referring to the older character as "lo" the whole time because it's correct for the situation... but it makes no sense to say "I love you (sir)"... however the dubbing team couldn't exactly just ditch the formality for that line... So I just think it's interesting.

​@@daysandwordsoh that makes sense, i've been learning spanish For 18 months but i completely forgot about the formal way to say that. I thought You we're saying "i love it" 😂

I was gonna ask what he meant too. I love you?... I love it?... I love him?... WUT?... lol

@@daysandwords Campaigning for the return of the singular thou.

All of these questions answer themselves for your case and your skill level etc when you remember this question: - What will make the target language the most comprehensible to me, without just making it English? For example, if you watch a German show but with English subs, you'll probably end up just reading the subs. So maybe watch the episode FIRST with English subs, then with German subs, and then if you're really keen, in German again, NO subs. With the book, I was actually referring to listening to the audiobook and reading the same language book (German audio, German text)... But choose a book you know the story of. You'll be surprised how much you can follow doing this. Understanding 50% IS beneficial, despite how weird it may feel.

@@daysandwords thanks man I really appreciate this, now to decide wether to do something by Tolkien or to do Horus Rising lol

That is fair. Although I think in the end, you end up hearing stuff even if you've trained yourself not to. It's like people who say they're impervious to advertising, like "Advertising doesn't work on me." but then they are wearing Nike running shoes, even though there are many good options for 80% of the price. For about a year I listened to a Swedish audiobook thinking it wasn't doing anything, and then one day I could kind of just understand Swedish. Another year later I could speak it.

I don't really consider "passive listening" as study time, although I could see how people may fall into that trap, especially if they're very focused on hard targets for time spent learning their new language. I don't track time spent learning or time spent immersing at all. To me, that doesn't seem like a productive way to measure my success at acquiring a new language. I don't want to say "I spent 200 hours learning Swedish". I want to say "Jag kan svenska" regardless of how many hours or days it took to get there. Maybe I have a different mindset about it though.

Does anybody know which countries get Italian, English and Portugese? I have very limited options selecting Italy as a nation.

Haha, nej... bilsituationen är lite invecklad. Den här bilen är varken min vanliga bil eller min frus. Vi kör varsin Volvo... min är en S40🇧🇪 och hennes är en XC70🇸🇪... den här Mazdan var en mycket billig "beater" bil som jag köpte föreåret och inspelningen av den här videon var en av de enda gångerna jag körde den.

@@daysandwords A beater car. Hmm... do we have any word with similar meaning in Swedish? Några "bilord" på svenska: Rishög, skrothög, skrotbil, budgetbil. Rishög = heap of twigs or a car in [a!?] bad condition. My car, which isn't from Göteborg, nor from Belgien, but from a Swedish town near lake Vänern is not a rishög in my eyes?, no that's probably swenglish; i mina ögon, hmm... from my point of view? Cambridge dictionary: "in someone's eyes idiom" not Swenglish but pure English:-). In my eyes. A bit rusty near the back doors (rear doors?) but otherwise I like my car. Men det är definitivt en budgetbil.

Nah, it's a quote. I know it's "wrong" for what I'm saying, but yeah, it's a quote.

These AI comments make me think that AGI is further away than it was in 1950.

@@daysandwordswhat does this mean?

Everyone has that.

@@daysandwords it’s good

@@daysandwordsfun fact. There are some people who honestly don’t. I watched a documentary on it 😂

Wait, the easiest way to explain is the video I made on it: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g9qphqmKrdGUpqM.html

My son (the older one who was filming) was like "Aw I thought we were gonna do handbrake turns..." and I was like "WE DID. How the heck else do you think I got a front wheel drive car to turn on its axis like that?"

@@daysandwords Oh....handbrake turns on ice. You gotta try it sometime! Or overcorrected tailspins on ice are fun as well. Sort of.

Thanks! There's a really nice shot of them both right at this time stamp: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gteVlJCpq5y4YZs.html

"Should you beat yourself up if you watch something in a foreign language and you don't comprehend it '100%'?" In what dimension did I ever suggest this???

@@daysandwords I think that was meant to be a rhetorical question. At least, I hope it was...

Hopefully your 100% comprehension question was rhetorical. Otherwise this reply is going to be way off base. Knowing the words being said is almost irrelevant to comprehension. Even without understanding a word of the language, there are enough clues in body language, facial expression, dramatic music, etc. in most shows and movies for the average person to at least have a general idea of what's going on. Once they start recognizing 20 or so key words, their understanding of what's going on will increase, and from those original 20 or so key words, they'll be able to start inferring the meaning of surrounding words and phrases. They may never comprehend exactly the same as a native, but at the same time, what I get out of a movie may be totally different than what my husband gets out of it, despite speaking the same language and having a large chunk of shared life experiences. We can still both enjoy the same movie and discuss it intelligently, and that's really the goal with speaking any language - the ability to communicate thoughts and opinions with another person in that same language. If I have to resort of using hand gestures and body language because I can't remember the exact words, does it really matter? As long as the other person understands. And honestly, how many people can say they've never had to resort of hand gestures and made up words (anyone else use 'thingy-bobber' as a substitute for almost anything?) in their own native language? Defining the level of comprehension is moot.

I also just can't listen to things where I don't understand 90%. It's torture.

Oj, det var länge sen nån frågade mig... Jag har glömt svaret haha.

No they're from the Mr. Men Show (KZfaq channel is called Mr Men Little Miss).

@@daysandwords so they are. Well this is embarrassing being so wrong then corrected by the channel owner, haha. I suppose while I have you I should thank you for your Spider-Man video. It made me realize that rewatching things has value. Up to that point I had only been watching every video once (I am learning Spanish as my first foreign language and I hadn’t thought to rewatch things) I think your Spider-Man video and the video explaining it will have had the biggest effect on my language learning journey should I be successful.

No need to be embarrassed. It's not like you were adamant. Thanks for taking the time to show your appreciation!

Realistic expectations are definitely important. I do put stuff on in the background, and I do actually get a lot out of it. I'm not expecting to become fluent based on passive immersion, but it does help a lot with training my ear to hear the sounds and tones of the language. It also helps me gain familiarity with grammar usage and word choice from a native speaker of my target language. Active immersion is a different technique for me, more akin to what you're describing - requiring focus and active listening, and likely a notebook and dictionary. I have different expectations of what I will accomplish with active immersion vs passive immersion, which is also different than my expectations on what I will accomplish when I sit down and specifically focus on learning new grammar or vocabulary.

​@@berkanathurisa That's cool that it works for you. What difficulty level of material do you usually use? I mostly use easier, more familiar stuff, so it's more of a review/reinforcement thing. When I use harder stuff at the edge of my abilities (i+1 as Dr. Krashen calls it), then I very quickly start missing things and get completely lost after a few minutes. After that, it's just noise that my brain naturally tunes out. And that's not fun or useful. What's your experience? Anyways, it's like you said--another tool in your toolbox. I just think people too often exaggerate its usefulness and downplay the work required.

@@JohnnyUtah488 Honestly, difficulty level depends a lot on what type of content I'm using and what else is going on around me, which also impacts what I get out of it. The podcasts I listen to the most are aimed at language learners, so they tend to use more direct language with less slang, but the ones I go back to fairly often are by people who are just sharing stories in a natural manner so they're good for picking up intonation and more natural word choice and pronunciation. Watching Disney+ with my girls in Swedish can range from super simple to moderately difficult, depending on how well I know the story already, the language level of the original, and how many times I've seen it recently. For example, my youngest is obsessed with Bluey, and I could probably recite entire episodes in either English or Swedish. It's also a show aimed at young children, so the language used is fairly simple, which can be a huge bonus when someone is starting out with a language. For some reason a lot of adults seem to think that they have to start at an "adult" level when learning a new language, but watching children's shows with my youngest early on was a very easy way to boost my neonatal language skills. Watching movies or shows filmed in Swedish requires a lot more work from me. The first time through I usually just watch it with English subtitles and enjoy the show. The second and subsequent times I spend more effort actually picking out words and phrases I know and identifying ones I don't know that I may or may not want to make an effort to learn. It's more work, but I'm still usually multitasking; folding laundry is a favourite tv watching chore at my house. If I miss something, it's not the end of the world. I'll catch it next time. I think that's the key though - If I miss something, I'll catch it next time. I rewatch and relisten to most of the things I use for immersion, multiple times. Over the course of two or three months I will watch or listen 5 or more times to most of the content I use for immersion. I don't rely only immersion to learn, but my schedule can fluctuate significantly along with the amount of time I have to dedicate to learning my target language. There are days when all I manage is 15 minutes listening to a podcast in the morning on my way to work, but 15 minutes of listening is better than nothing. Other days I can and do commit a lot more time to immersing in and learning my target language. I think that it's important for people to realize that there are options for language learning that don't require sitting in a classroom and pounding your head against lists of vocabulary and grammar rules. It doesn't have to take hours every day, and it doesn't have to feel like work. The number of people who have said "Oh man! You're so dedicated to be trying to learn a new language right now!" when I tell them that I'm learning Swedish is ridiculous. Learning Swedish isn't hard. It takes effort and persistence, but it's not HARD. I enjoy it, and it has become a way of relaxing for me. I don't have concrete minimums for what I HAVE to do or how long I HAVE to do it for. I don't have a schedule outlining what I need to do each day. I know there are people who do that, and if it works for them, then great. My brain doesn't function like that, and I've learned to go with my brain, not with what other people tell me I "should" be doing. I do have goals, and I make sure that I do something related to learning my target language every day; I just make sure that the minimum is something easy and achievable, no matter how hard the rest of my day is. Saying that immersion is the easy or "lazy" way to learn a language makes it feel accessible to others who, like me, run screaming at the idea of being forced to sit down and DO something that can quickly come to feel like just another chore. I think that showing people ways to approach immersion as a valid learning tool is important. For some people, giving them an easy way to get started learning a language is just that - a starting point. Sorry, that was a very long answer!

​@@berkanathurisa Thanks for the reply! That is a good point about making it accessible for people who are put off by more traditional "textbook" approaches. It's definitely important to give yourself options and flexibility for working the learning into your daily schedule. My routine is similar in that I try to have at least _some_ contact with the language every day, but the minimum is only 3 minutes. It's mostly random YT videos and a few Anki flashcards. I try to focus more on creating a sustainable daily routine and less on results (which are hard to gauge anyway). The funny thing is, I have a pretty strong perfectionistic/workaholic streak, so I actually have a hard time NOT turning it all into a chore. I promised myself in the beginning I wouldn't, but I've had only partial success. My actual rule is: "At least 3 minutes daily while hardly paying attention and not even feeling bad about it." But that is the advanced course that I haven't fully mastered yet! 😁 So I'm working on it. The danger of"lazy" approaches, on the other hand, is that progress can be very slow, and that is also demotivating. It can still start to feel like a chore, even though the effort is low. I guess, like everything else in life, it's about finding that elusive middle way.

@@JohnnyUtah488 I feel you on the perfectionism thing. I've struggled with that most of my life, but I've gotten a lot better about accepting "good enough" in the past few years. For me, I started learning Swedish after rage-quitting on Spanish because I wasn't advancing the way I expected myself to despite putting a lot of effort into doing things "the way I was supposed to". I had this crazy rule of a minimum of 1/2 hour of focused learning every day, and if for some reason I didn't get it done, then I had to make it up the following day. I had set high expectations for myself, since I already had a good basic level in French, and "Spanish isn't that different than French", right? Switching to Swedish was easy, and fun, and I progressed very quickly in the beginning - mostly because I had absolutely zero expectations around how fast I SHOULD be progressing, and partly because I was having an adult temper tantrum and refusing to do ANYTHING that looked remotely like what I had previously considered to be "proper" language learning activities. Around that time I stumbled across Lamont's KZfaq channel; his videos were entertaining at the very least, and they often gave me something to think about, or somewhere else to look for other resources. From here I started looking for additional new resources. I've tried a lot of different things, made notes, adjusted, filed some for later, and just been having fun in general. I sat through some great linguistics lectures, which reminded me how much I love language in general, and completely re-ignited my motivation to learn my chosen language. I love your "advanced course" of a minimum of 3 minutes per day. I have a list of simple language tasks daily, and as long as I get at least one of them checked off, I'm good. Duolingo is even on that list, since I have friends who use it as they will poke me if they get too far ahead of me. And honestly, it takes less than 2 minutes to go through one exercise, which I could do in the elevator at work. Passive immersion, anki card review, and anki card generation are also on my list. No time limits, just do it. And I don't track how often I get each thing done. That was very difficult for me in the beginning; I love the dopamine hit from looking at an unbroken streak. If the streak gets broken even once though, motivation tanks. So no tracking how many times I get the tasks done for me! Not having a concrete end goal in mind helps me avoid the feeling that I'm not progressing fast enough. We're planning a trip to Sweden next summer, but that isn't a language goal for me. I know I don't need to be able to speak Swedish to be able to communicate there, since so many Swedes speak better English than a lot of people I know. I've noticed that, without concrete mini goals, my progress tends to be in spurts. I'll sort of stagnate for a while, not really acquiring anything new, and then one podcast will cement a concept in 10 minutes that I struggled with for months, and I'll progress rapidly again for a while. Make it fun, not a chore. It may help!

LebAnese (with an A) is not the language. Levantine Arabic is a language. Other things that are not languages: American Mexican Pakistani Indian Kenyan Eskimo etc.

THANK you. @@daysandwords

Is it not a little bit rude to assume someone copied your video? Listening is quite a common recommendation. It's good to hear that you've benefitted from listening too, Irish Gaelic is a lovely language.

I've literally never seen this channel.

Taleb will say he'll fight people for all kinds of dumb reasons.

Hahaha there is a stereotype from the 90s of Lebanese people in Australia always wanting to fight over stupid things, and involving massive amounts of gang members to fight like one 11 year old kid and stuff, so he wouldn't exactly be challenging the stereotype. Besides, Scott Cramer already destroyed everyone who goes around calling languages by names that they're not known, e.g. it's Levatine Arabic, not Lebanese.

Oh I did. Not that day though... because we were filming.