What I like about this guy is he is so authentic. There is none of the charlatan aspects of other polyglots. He basically says learning a language is very very hard and you have to put in huge amounts of time.

@TheHonourableGrandMasterJay

5 жыл бұрын

I think you have a point. I have been learning Chinese for the past 2 months using mainly Glossika, LingQ and, Zizzle. I use each app once throughout the day; everyday. I speed-read though a grammar book every now and then. I also made a Chinese Spotify playlist and I will watch Chinese TV shows just to hear phonology. I don't try to remember anything. I just give myself constant exposure through the course of the day; in small doses. Just today I sat though a Chinese church service and I was blown away by how much data my brain could process. I could read more than 50% of the characters on the projector screen and I could even understand basic phrases spoken at full speed. This was the product of very small learning seasons that punctuate my day. I still have time to study and write my essays. I go to the gym 3 times a week. I can play games with my mates. Language learning does not need to be a time consuming endeavor. We need only constancy and focus: our brain will do the rest.

The more I learn about your biography, the more impressed I become. You should do a bio doc or a Q&A sometime.

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

YES I second this. I'd totally watch a live Q&A

@jamohalo1937

6 жыл бұрын

hi everyone ,if anyone else is searching for how can i speak italian language try Tarbetti Amazing Italian Tutor (do a search on google ) ? Ive heard some extraordinary things about it and my friend got excellent results with it.

@facundorammstein

6 жыл бұрын

Not certain about the points made but ,if anyone else wants to uncover learn to speak japanese try Jadonite Simple Japanese Buddy ( search on google ) ? Ive heard some super things about it and my work buddy got excellent success with it.

Exactly, a lot of time. There is no magic pill.

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

YES, couldn't have put it better myself

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

Btw, I like your channel. Just subbed :-) Looking forward to future videos.

@chit-chatchinese5396

7 жыл бұрын

I like your channel too Azren, I just subscribed. I like how you talk about process. That is a really important part.

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

Chit-Chat Chinese ooh glad you liked it! thank you :)

@williamfoxlord

5 жыл бұрын

不错

With LingQ my problem is lessons and content. Duolingo has the little circles to click on. LingQ is harder to organize what lesson to do next.

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

you are right and this is something we are working on. Stay tuned.

@mikesimmerman4457

7 жыл бұрын

Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve the English to German audio dictionary is helping alot for me to learn German an the English to German translator app I play with helps

@mikesimmerman4457

7 жыл бұрын

Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve it is hard cause I only been at it for a year an a half an it is my first 2nd language

Thanks to your advice, I decided to give myself an entire year of listening to Polish before making a real effort to speak it. Now that I've reached the year mark and have put in hundreds of hours listening to podcasts and audiobooks and have read around 30 books in Polish, I feel I should finally start to try to speak. My conversational skills are horrible right now, but I feel I understand the language to a much greater degree and simply enjoy it so much that I can't wait to start speaking (this year's goal). Anyway, your guidance makes learning a language a much more adventurous and enjoyable endeavor!

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

When you start speaking, don't worry about how you perform. Just keep at it. You can only get better. You can't get worse.

@aleks1364

3 жыл бұрын

how much have u been listening to polish ?

Good luck with your Korean. I find these videos to be inspirational. I always get frustrated with listening, but you stick with it so I will, too.

@MarkBH70

7 жыл бұрын

I have problems with Portuguese. Tenho problemas com Português. Listening is hard. It sounds like all the words are just syllables, and they all run together. By the time I get one word, maybe five more are spoken. It's coming though. I'm understanding more. Best wishes to you!

7 жыл бұрын

Aquarian, are you learning brazilian or portugal portuguese? My native language is Brazilian Portuguese :) And my second one is english

@MarkBH70

7 жыл бұрын

Estevão Costa Brazilian, sir.

I can say the same for French people learning English for years at school. It might be better now but I know that most of us took English classes for years but could barely understand simple sentences, let alone actually speak the language. I actually learned more thanks to internet chatting than to school. And you say a quite logical thing but that some people forget. You put it the work for hours and hours and the languages you are the best at are the ones you used the most. Very true. I love challenges. It enables us to create good habits and ritual and push us to do more. I'm sure you will do well until the end of your 90 days challenge :D I enjoyed watching your video. Thanks, Steve.

Steve thank you for sharing your point of view. :)

steven i can't watch your vid without being excited, specially cuz I lived in Canada, attendedn U of T during an exchange program, it was soooo cool :)

@Thelinguist

6 жыл бұрын

Glad to hear it.

This must be Steve's second 90-day challenge in Korean? He did one a couple of year's ago. One point, "50,000 word vocabulary" to understand spoken and written Korean seems a bit much, as we only need to understand 20,000 words to be very fluent in English.

@coolcool5181

6 жыл бұрын

vegetablecracker 11 months old, but he mentions that his linq numbers actually include different forms of words. So 판매된다, 판매돼, 판매될, 판매된, 판매되겠다 and many many more forms will each count as a word, when really it is only 1 word learned.

The opener about you talking about the past schooling with the gentleman on the golf course reminds me of how they teach languages in school. Why do they think that they need to hammer on grammar, conjugating, etc? If they would actually work on speaking and reading for a few years and then start to kiss the grammar a little now and then I would think that students would leave high school fluent. Just think about how people learn their native tongue. Even in the first grade I could obviously speak and understand people but I didn't know any grammar rules. The spanish that I took in school was just a waste of brain energy and time. So much focus on conjugating and studying to the test. We should have been learning it by talking, reading (only with tiny sprinklings of grammar rules here and there), and listening. Even if you never learned grammar rules you can still speak fluently. I wager that most people, after a lifetime of speaking in their native tongue could barely pass a grammar test. Grammar is important but it should be taught to students after they hit high school age and have had the first 7 or 8 years just speaking, reading, and listening.

The US Foreign Service Institute says it varies from 150 hours of class ( 6 weeks minimum) for Esperanto , to 2200 hours of class ( 88 weeks minimum) for Arabic, Korean, Japanese or any variety of Chinese. For native speakers of English who are already fluent in a second language, that is

Love lingq!!

Hello! Did you say you lived in Japan for 9 years? So, only you show and tell about learning a language to people you know a lot cultural stuff. It's awesome!

People are generally in too much of a hurry. It takes a lot of time, a lot of repitition, forgetting more than you remember. It's a very long marathon. There's an old saying " If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen " It's a good way of saying " if you are too impatient go and do something else with your time "

Pozdrowienia z Polski, Steve! Od kilku miesięcy uczę się hiszpańskiego i dzięki Twoim wskazówkom idzie mi coraz lepiej :) Powodzenia podczas kolejnego wyzwania!

@thevitruvianman9781

7 жыл бұрын

KonstancjaG Could you understand Russian?

@KonstancjaG

7 жыл бұрын

Kay A Some words, yes. But not everything as I don't speak Russian and it's not that similar to Polish. Why are you asking?

@thevitruvianman9781

7 жыл бұрын

KonstancjaG Just wondering bro

thanks from Egypt

I'm 18 and I'm so eager and excited to learn as many languages as I can, and I'm pretty scared I won't be able to because my future studies will not allow me to have that much time to spend on language learning. Also, sometimes I feel down because I only know English (apart from my native language, Italian), and it seems so little to know as a millenial. But what can you do apart from being as determined as you can, right? I listen to the BBC World Service for at least 1 hour a day, while commuting, or running or taking a shower, and I try to read as much as I can in English (especially newspapers). I hope this way of learning English would benefit me in the future!

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

what languages do you want to learn? Life is long, even if your career isn't in languages later on, you can still learn many different ones assuming you live for another 50+ years.

@ahmaquindi

7 жыл бұрын

Azren the Language Nerd thank you for answering! I want to study Polish, French, Russian as soon as I can, and later also German, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic.

@ahmaquindi

7 жыл бұрын

Azren the Language Nerd and I forgot Portuguese and Spanish. They are too many! I wish life was longer just for this

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

marta haha you have plenty of time to learn all, if not many, of those languages!

@dajdasdq

7 жыл бұрын

you should first of all set concrete goals. why do you want to learn a certain language? in order to travel to a certain country and be able to experience its culture/lifestyle and communicate with locals, or maybe find your love there? you decide. but a strategy of learning them just for the sake of learning or just because you want to know a certain amount of languages is not going to work out in the long run.

Seems like this is one of those questions that get asked alot.

Steve, why don't you open-source the LINGQ database so people can crunch the numbers? There is an answer to these questions and LINGQ is well suited to answer these questions e.g., "95% of LINGQ users get to 30,000 Russian words between 1,000 and 2,000 hours... 2.5% get there in less than 1,000 hours and 2.5% get there in more than 1,000 hours". People really should have the data to evaluate the ROI of learning a language. I'll bet you could even get a State Department grant to support the additional IT work needed for this.

Just thanks

MANY THANKS!

How long does it take to fully make sense in Japanese? Most of the time I struggle to find out where the words go and what words to put in it.

The answer to this question like any other when people ask how long does it take to learn something. "It takes as long as it takes!" There are many variables with each individual to just say one definite timeline. There are Americans who live in a Latin American country for over 10 years and still can't speak Spanish.

@mcmerry2846

2 жыл бұрын

there are latins living in the USA for 50 years and still can't speak english lol

@alanguages

2 жыл бұрын

@@mcmerry2846 Look at the title: "How Long Does It Take to LEARN a Language?" The people you are talking about do NOT attempt to learn at all or gave up. That is the difference. I also know of some Americans who live in Central American countries, like Mexico and Guatemala that stick to their bubble of English speakers. 20 Years and still can't speak a lick of Spanish, because they don't try to LEARN. Edit: The ex pats I met in Mexico were over10 years living there. In Guatemala the guy was about 24 years in country.

hi! great video,i'm italian, what do you advice for beginner level to learn american english? the grammar it's important? if yes wich grammar rules it's important to american english? thanks a lot! byeeee

So if I understand correctly, the order is: Read (build vocabulary and such) Listen to material Speak Is this about right? I'm trying to learn Russian.

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

I read and listen to the same material. Sometimes I read first, sometimes I listen first and then read. I do it using LingQ. When I feel up to it I start speaking. Good luck.

Dear sir, Mr. Steve, how long have you been listening to Korean: I am curious. I've been listening to Portuguese for over a year now. It's still hard to understand but it's getting better! Mark

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

In total well over a year. It has been in spurts. Two 90 day challenges and a six-month effort about six or seven years ago . It just takes time. The main thing is to enjoy it

@MarkBH70

7 жыл бұрын

Ok! I do! It feels good to progress. Thanks.

Really interested his take on hindi as being an indian......

hello! Could you please tell me how do you know how many words you know in a foreign language? I wish to know about my English, Portuguese and Italian but I'm not very keen to sit and count :D

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

You could look at it by guessing your approximate level. I.e: Beginner: 750 words or less Pre-intermediate: 750-1250 words Intermediate: 1250-1750 words Upper intermediate: 1750-2250 words Advanced: 2250+ Again, this is a "broad way" of looking at it. Another more precise would be to take some sort of placement test to figure out where your level sits, and take an educated guess at your word count based on that.

@kasztankap

7 жыл бұрын

right, thanks!:)

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

kasztankap you're welcome!

@oakenguitar3

7 жыл бұрын

Type 3000 words in Portuguese, feqwix has some good videos on youtube, I corrected his Spanish video. The way I know how many words I know is that I had tons of free time so I took a Spanish 5000 most common words course on memrise. Did 50 words a day with break/review days. Took me about 2 years because I did half of it and then took a couple months off and then did the other half. At the same time, I read 2 very small student dictionary of about 3000 words each with basic example sentences and then a medium student dictionary with about 10,000+ words and 20,000 example sentences. Almost read these 3 books twice. Now I'm like 10 pages into a 20,000 word pocket dictionary with no sentences, going to read like a page or 2 a day so I learn and review. Mostly just focusing on words that I want to learn really well and others just to recognize them passively I guess, since 20,000 is a lot of words.

@kasztankap

7 жыл бұрын

Great! Thanks a lot! I will check it out soon at home:D

do we necessarily need to go abroad to learn the language that we are dreaming of?

@ronaldonmg

6 жыл бұрын

No, there's books, movies, radio, internet, couchsurfing...and cultural associations

i have a question, to what extent can you say that you can speak a language?

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

I think you can say that you speak a language if you can say a few things in the language. If you say that you know the language you should be able to understand well when you listen and read. If you say you are fluent in the language you should be able to express yourself comfortably, even with a few mistakes, on a wide variety of subjects.

@user-nq2et6jz4h

7 жыл бұрын

thank you

@ronaldonmg

6 жыл бұрын

When you're confident enough to go to the country without needing a dictionary nor needing to speak English

Hi, I'm new here and couldn't believe you actually said 50,000 known words! As far as I know, a native speaker knows 35,000-50,000 words and for C2-level (which is supposed to be indistinguishable from a native speaker) one should know 20,000 words passively and 10,000 words actively...

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

At LingQ we count every form of a word, and new words that are combinations of other words, as new words. I think I said in the video that 50,000 might correspond to 20-30,000 words. I would also suspect that as a learner, one's active vocabulary is quite a bit less than half of one's passive vocabulary. At any rate, these are numbers that LingQ generates and really only measure our degree of activity in the language. The greater the number, the better, or at least the greater amount of reading, listening and LingQing (saving words and phrases) we have done, and that is a good thing.

@supanontra

7 жыл бұрын

I see. This is why one needs to know 43,000 words in Korean whereas it only requires 17,000 in English to reach Expert 2 level.

Hey Steve where do you find resources for Korean language ?

@Thelinguist

5 жыл бұрын

bookstores, googling online, and looking at what we have at LingQ which is not inconsiderable. What is your level?

no sound nod sound i can't heard

Does that mean it is only a matter of how much effort you put in learning a language? It has nothing to do, apparently, with any method. All the methods lead to learning as long as there is effort and will.

@Thelinguist

5 жыл бұрын

Your attitude is the biggest factor, time is the second most important factor and the method you use his third. Obviously you need to use a method that maintains your motivation and represents an efficient use of time.

我很好奇，您在学习韩语的时候，如何保持汉语和日语等其他外语的水平？ 您会十几门语言，需要每天都复习十几门语言吗？ 我感觉太困难了！

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

汉语日语法语和其他我讲得比较好的语言，没有问题。不用他们可以维持我的水平。 讲的不那么好的语言是要回复一些但是问题不大。

@user-tb9wh7zm6d

7 жыл бұрын

谢谢您！ じつわ私は日本語がじっよとだきます。でもね今わ全然忘れました Now I'm in Belgium as a visiting student. So I have to improve my English. At the same, I'm learning Dutch by myself. It's hard to me. Dankuwel.

I have accumulated over 60 000 Chinese words on Lingq and have watched hours and hours of KZread videos and still have a lot of problems to understand.In French i have put much less work and i can understand almost all without strain.

@anthonyboul54

7 жыл бұрын

Hi there. I recommend you to watch the same video several times. Watch something interesting, that catches your attention. To memorize a word that you don't know you have to see it at least 30 times. This way you'll be able to use this new word in a conversation. It's a long process but repetition is the key to success. Bye. A French native speaker who learns English and Spanish.

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

This is not surprising. The more different a language is from a language we already know, the more difficult it is.

@AzrentheLanguageNerd

7 жыл бұрын

60k words in chinese? Thats impressive.I'm studying it now and I am nowhere near that

10 ай бұрын

@@AzrentheLanguageNerd its not have been already memorized. Its just a number to stay motivated.

It takes about 1500 hours to learn a language. My job is done, you can thank me later.

@user-jd9sj1mq2b

3 жыл бұрын

Laughs in japanese

I'm going to get a lot of hate for this comment, but if you really want to fall in love with a language and truly have it for the rest of your life, stretch out your learning for as long as possible. That's right, do the exact opposite of rush. Savor it slowly. The roots you send down into your mind in a relaxed, happy setting will stick with you forever. I had a 9-month unavoidable break in my German learning, but I still remembered 90% of what I learned prior to the interruption. Also, wanting "quick results" is such a Western mentality. I'm sad to say this, but it often is a sign of 1) ego, pride, and wanting to impress others 2) impatience and wanting to avoid real work, and 3) the false belief that you can't enjoy something before you have mastered it. Can a white belt in karate not enjoy martial arts until he is a black belt? It's a privilege to learn a language. Take your time, and make it a real joy.

Let me correct your English sir at 0:50 "...someone who is six years younger than I" hehe.

@pauler694

7 жыл бұрын

You had a bad teacher of English grammar, or what, eh? ;-)

@LundyHolbrook

7 жыл бұрын

If you listen to Steve's reply you hear him explain the logic behind my critique. I am right grammatically. However Steve is arguing that grammar is subjective when being used. This I don't agree with and I will explain why in a reply video in the near future.

7 жыл бұрын

Have you watched the video that Steve make about your correction? lolol

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

That is not what I said. I said that "younger than me" is grammatically correct, as is "younger than I".

7 жыл бұрын

Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve yeah, Steve, I already watched it :)

WOW ! what a life !!!! Can you adopt me ? but I'm 22 hhhhhh

7 жыл бұрын

lolol

Do you speak Arabic?

@Thelinguist

7 жыл бұрын

Not yet maybe I will try next year.

@soywaz6645

7 жыл бұрын

Okay, I'm learning it. It's pretty hard!

@edededo5134

6 жыл бұрын

i speak Arabic and i can help you if you want to