Zack aus Amerika it's not just America, the world in general. only a few places seem to know working at it making it quality slowly and carefully beats speed.
Till today i have never really ever enjoyed any youtubers videos. But this video- you just changed so much in my life. Im 18 and have little time left. Thank you so much!! You are a true inspiration
There's a TED talk about studying something for 20 hours to become essentially good enough on that something. By 20 hours I mean 20 hours of dedicated studying, focusing your mind to that particular thing you want to learn. Turns out it's true! You don't have to spend 10k hours to become a master. It depends on the person!
***** You chose to complicate my statement. It's up to you on how you want to argue about it with yourself. I was able to learn Japanese by reading Japanese subtitles of "My Boss my Hero" episode 1 and having it converted to English, kanji per kanji, looking them up by radicals, until I reached the point where I really understood everything in that single episode for just 16 hours of learning while completely focused the entire time. After that episode, I can understand around 60-70% of the contents in the next episode. Of course there are some breaks but I was tracking how much time I spend in order to help me determine how long it would take me to learn something else. In just 16 hours of dedicated use of time, I was able to learn a decent amount of statements. What you mentioned in your first reply clearly did not get my point.
Not really. It's all about two things: - what one means with "learning a language" and - what one means with "20 hours". If you put in 3 hours a day, in a week (after 21 hours) you could have A-level in language. (Could have, meaning, if you put the 3 hours in smart use) That's "basic level", "elementary", "beginner". It's very simple, but enough to be able to read and watch television and movies. One would, of course, not understand every word, but enough to learn more by reading and watching. Now, I would say that's "learning a language in a week". Where could one go if one used 20 hours in one day? To the level of a 3yo native speaker.
This is so true, a year and a half ago I could only speak English, now I can speak Cantonese and French at an intermediate level, after about 40+ skype sessions during that period, the time really flew by.
Nice. French is what I tackle at the moment - what a beautiful language. I also really like English, it´s one of my favorite languages, I especially enjoy (somewhat dated) British English! So classical! Russian and Chinese are next on my bucket list :)
I became fluent in 16 languages using the Pimsleur approach. Learned the basic language in 10 days, for only a half hour a day. The entire language could take up to a month. I learned 3 languages a month, for 5 months and the 6th month for the last. 6 months over all just to learn 16 language, where I could've learned an overall of 18. I have learned 5 more since my first use of Pimsleur when I was 16 and now here I am a few year later, completely fluent in 21 languages.
This is your best video yet--Bravo! I have been using a variation of the "80-20 Rule" for many years now in regards to my diet. If I eat good, wholesome foods 80% of the time, I try not to worry too much about the other 20% when the "real me" finds where my wife has hidden the chocolate cake.
Nice twist at the end! :) There is something more to take into consideration: regularity multiplies gains. Here's what it means: it is much better to study a language for just 20 min a day, 6 days a week, than it is to study it for 2 hours in a row, once a week. The total time spent is the same but learning is much more efficient when you apply yourself regularly. I could share more ideas but too few commenting space on RU-vid!
@FluentCzech i couldn't agree more with your statement about maintaining a language. i agree that with languages nothing seems to be permanent, i know this because i change my accent in German sometimes, and i relearned how to use certain words and expressions.
Great points. By the way, becoming a doctor has a genetic component to it as well - some people don't have the intelligence/memory/whatever to pass medical school (at least in Europe where it's extremely competitive). But yes. Mastery can only come from practice, and sometimes genius is required atop of that (like for being an outstanding physicist/mathematician/olympic runner).
Anthony thanks great video I don't know about high level mastery but Im really fascinated with the whole polyglot realm.This is the kind of fad that the world needs to catch on to rather than the usual video games Hollywood be bop.Can you imagine how life would change on this earth if being a polyglot was the in thing just awesome.Im so pumped thanks so much.
this video has a good message about really loving language learning (or anything you want to be good at). at first i wasn't a fan of the video but it started getting better.thanks. good wrap up
@PaulSLambeth Thank you. When I make a videos I am never sure what the reaction will be, so I am really happy to hear that people are enjoying this one.
agree with all you say other than the "genetic difference". As a genetist I can say, each of us having a different genetic background has a different "physical" appearance; epigenetic is the science that studies how our own genes can be mutated by the environment and ciscumstances. No one is born with the "dancer" or "body builder" gene. There are genetic predisposition to physical appearances as well as to cognition and memory; but ultimately perseverance towards one or another goal will define us as masters in any discipline.
I think that if from a young age I had trained hard at sprinting, or at weight lifting, or any number of physical disciplines, I could become extremely good. But there is a reason why you see Kenyan sprinters and Russian weightlifters win so often - there are certain body types that work better for certain physical activities. A tall person has a disadvantage when trying to get a weight from the ground to overhead simply because they have to move the weight further. A person with short legs will struggle to run as fast as someone with longer legs. A lazy Kenyan won't outrun someone from another race who tries really hard, but a hard working Kenyan has an advantage.
Thank you, I have been researching ways for the best way to learn languages/skills and this i guess you could say "scientifically" explains it. Thanks again
Hello ! thanks for this very good video ! Since I'm learning polish, I just wonder if polish and czech are very similar and to what extend? Can you understand polish if you speak czech and vice versa? Thanks !
The whole 10,000 hours is mostly for complex skills which don't relate to what you already know. Because of transfer between skills, learning a language closely related to a language that you already speak will take less time (like going from a six-string guitar to a bass guitar). Learning a language more distantly related (or less similar to) a language which you already speak will take more time (like going from guitar to violin, or even further, to a trombone).
The problem with the German example is that studying and being immersed in a language make the process so much faster. It's still the 10,000 hours, but instead of studying 2 hours a day, you are immersed 24 hours a day. You speak your second language constantly, and you begin dreaming and thinking in that language, and at about two years of full immersion you have reached your 10,000 hours.
I managed to build (just at the beginners level) my body in only 6 months !!! I have visited the gym every day, 7 days a week :) 180 days x 3 hours plus reading about nutrition and practice every day , let's say 3hours x 180 days = 540 hours :)
@Torbyrne Richard, it is you more than anybody that helped me realise what true passion for language learning is. You helped me see clearly the difference between short term lust for results, and long term love for and commitment to the whole experience of learning languages.
Please make a reply video, and I will be very happy to link to it in this video. Given your deep experience and insights I am sure that many people, including myself, would benefit from what you have to say.
Now, how impressive, man. My method consists first thing in learning how to read it and pronuonce every sound correctly and next in familiarizing with the new language by reading a lot and doing a lot of listening of vids in youtube. It doesn't matter you don't understand the language, just read and get how words look like, the kind of syllables, prefixes and suffixes, plurals, etc...
Practice does indeed make perfect and anyone CAN learn a language, but for some it requires much more effort for little reward in the short term. As a language teacher and as someone who has been through the British education system I can tell you that natural ability does play a part in second language acquisition. Some get it right away, some struggle but make progress and some make virtually no progress at all.
All the research that has been done on this has concluded that talent does not play a part in language learning when you are learning in a natural way. When you piece language together with vocab charts and grammar rules it almost becomes like a form of maths, in which case of course talent enters the picture. If learnt in the same way as children it is the same for everyone. Which is the reason there are no regular healthy brained children that dont acquire their first language until they are 12, for example... its roughly the same sort of timeline for each child.
Gary Hewson L1 and L2 acquisition aren't quite the same, but there is a lot of evidence that the communicative approach does work, albeit in an immersive environment, which most classrooms are not. Even so, I tend to disagree because I know that if I (a language teacher) and someone else with no background in languages, were taken to some unknown land with no prior knowledge of the language spoken there, I would be the first one to become competent in the language. I know this because I would know where to start, how to build my vocabulary and how to apply the rules of grammar. Adults are not children and they cannot learn like the latter.
in my humble opinion the secret of learning a language is reading a lot and watching tv .to learn a foreign language it s easier than it use to be and it s also less expessive.
Good video. I think "fluent" is one of the most overused terms in language learning. But I also wonder a bit about the calculations. It might take 10,000 hours to master a completely alien language, but often that's not what people are doing. An English person learning German already has a pretty good base in the language. They know or can guess a large amount of the vocab, they can expect the same stress and intonation patterns. Put simply, they're not starting from scratch.
hi but even some native speakers don t master their own language, it doesn t matter if you make mistakes. when we learn a foreign language it s not to master the language we are learning but its to understand others and be understood by others in every circonstences .and even in our own language we learn every day in my opinion fluent doesn t mean you know every thing but you manage to say what you have to say without thinking too long and to get that level doesn t take years but 6month .
Well everyone is different. I learned these languages pretty damn quick. If you want to learn something better, just before you go to sleep or before you take a nap learn some of the subject matter. That is how things are learned better.
Very nice video! This 10000 hour principle seems like somewhat of an oversimplification to me (even though it probably is a good and well-grounded approximation) but I am kind of sure that you don't mean that talent and the actual thing you are trying to learn play no role at all. I agree though that talent plays a whole lot smaller role as compared to what is generally perceived.
A question.. I am learning French at the moment and if you're putting in 6 hours a day should you be working on learning new concepts through out the 6 hours every day or mastering what you already know and then move on to new concepts?
@jmichaelrout Great analogy! Fantastic video Anthony. It's introduced a concept I wasn't aware of and a book that I'll buy if I see around :) Definitely deserves such collective praise.
Hmmm. If you applied the Pareto Principle to the results of the Pareto Principle, you could get 64% of the results with 4% of the effort. If you applied it a third time, you could get about 50% of the results with 0.8% of the effort. If all this is true, you could spend a well chosen 80 hours and get half of the results of someone who spends 10,000 hours mastering a subject. Could this be true?
If my math is correct, at an hour a day, I should be able to do 2000 hours of study in 1 day, 9 hours, and 20 minutes and still have 1380 hours left in each day.
im so glad this was the first video i saw when i looked how to become a polyglot. thank you so much. this knowledge you have passed on to us csn be applied to basically everything, and I love that. thank you
Excellent video and show how difficult it is to MASTER a language rather than being able to grasp some basic principles and have the native speakers to use "foreigner talk" when conversing with us. I also play the guitar and took me YEARS to be able to say I know the basics. Cheers
@FluentCzech My theory involves Music. Those who can successfully tune a guitar can usually mimic sounds more easily than others who can't. More research on this later.
There are two thoughts I have on "practice makes perfect". In my mother's book, So Your Child Wants To Take Piano Lessons, she states that Practice Makes Permanence. You shouldn't be worried about perfection, because you will always have flaws, but instead be worried about keeping these skills you practice with you throughout your life. My band teacher says "Perfect practice makes perfect performance." Practicing but not very well won't get you perfect, only perfect practice will do that, where you can practice it perfectly.
I'm Learning by myshelf Italia, Turkish, Hebrew, English, Norwegian and Chinese I'm Learning by myshelf top Japanese (but only for whatching animes in the O. V.) original version
totally agree. However, now that you play the guitar, it would be very fast if you were to pickup Bass or Ukulele. In the same fashion, somebody who already speaks Spanish should be able to pickup french, Italian or Portuguese very quickly! But you are totally right, lets not kid ourselves, nobody can be native level in a couple years. Having that solid 70-80%, yes, probably.
I whole heartedly agree with the main point you are making here, that it is hard work over talent when it comes to language learning, i couldnt agree more. I do have just a couple points i take issue with... 1. You are not actually defining what you call 'mastery'. 2. how old the person is you are comparing yourself to ( from the country of your target language). what I mean by this is that 80% of mastery comparing yourself to a 40 year old native would clearly be beyond the level of a 2 year old native. There are people that have, like you say, lived abroad and become fluent. I know of one adult that took a vocabulary test and had the range of a middle school student of that country. If that isnt 'mastery' then i dont really know what we are talking about? If you are defining it as having the exact same level as (for example) that 40 year old native, then you would have had to put in 40 years of 24 hours a day work, other wise how could you ever be the same? But this is trivially obvious to point out. So again, how are you defining mastery?
I find that the more i can do with something the more i can do. Exponential skill growth. I also play guitar and you obviously have a very quick learning curve where you go from not being able to hold it to being able to strum simple tunes relatively quickly but there are often plateau's but these can be put down to practicing the wrong way. There is a difference between time spent and QUALITY of time spent. I only know this through experience and it's hard to explain unless you've recognised it yourself. As far as language learning is concerned, i think living in the country is the ultimate best way provided you are living a reasonably sociable life. No good moving to say Spain but sitting indoors all day. 12 hours exposure per day is around 4k hours per year which would mean if you added this to some serious private study you could be near-fluent in just a couple of years i reckon. I'm moving to Germany this year though so i will be testing this out for myself!
I insist: When are we going to see these so called "polyglots" speaking the languages they claim to speak fluently with native speakers in extensive conversations to be exposed so that people would realize how little they speak, if anything at all. There are a lot of "polyglots" out there who are not what they claim to be. Sad but true. Even sadder is the fact that people praise these individuals as if they were better than the rest. Pathetic. 😂 Each day, more and more people have started to doubt the self proclaimed polyglots. It is well known now that you can search a few phrases on the internet, listen to a few Pimsleur audios, and read a script, and voila!! You're now a polyglot fluent in different languages. Come on people. 😂😂
If you haven't read The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten, I think that you would love it. It's one of those books that you have to keep buying because you end up giving your copy away.
How many hours have you put into learning English? If it is your native language, then you are exposed to it constantly since birth. More than 4000 hours a year, in fact. So, you should be pretty good in English by the time you are two and half years old. If English is not your native language, then I would be very interested to hear how much exposure to the language you have had. If you have mastered the language quickly, please share your experience.
I am not so sure. Certainly, I have met many expats living in Prague for 15 or 20 years, who married a local, love living here, immerse themselves in the culture, yet can hardly speak a word of the language. Their spouse translates everything for them, and they manage just fine without the language. Although I have found that speaking Czech has improved my life here, many others have found that they can have a perfectly fulfilling life with knowing just a few words.
@verapamil07 I do mention courses such as FSI in the video, pointing out that a diplomat will study a language for, say, 2000 hours, and reach an 80% level - which is enough for daily business. Only complete mastery takes 10000 hours. In terms of children learning languages quickly, that is true, but then they can only talk about childish things. Being able to hold sophisticated adult conversations on complex topics is what takes most of the time, and that is beyond children's abilities.
@flashatizer I am certainly no expert on this, but I have read that people who are poor at accents usually cannot hear the differences in sounds in the target language and therefore cannot mimic them. Some people believe this ability needs to be developed in childhood, or is lost. Other people believe that everybody can improve their accent if they want to - but most are simply not interested. It is undeniable, though, that some people do pick up accents very quickly and with little effort.
@getreallanguage That is very kind. I have never been a teacher. Many years ago I was an academic who had to make lots of presentations defending my research at large scientific conferences, and there I startedd to enjoy explaining my thoughts on things. Making youtube videos reminds me a little bit of that, in that there is a very short time to get points across, and you can never know who will be in the audience. I enjoy it very much.
@loki2504 Now that is a good question. Even though Polish is from the same language family (west slavic) as Czech, it is surprisingly different. There are lots of similarities, of course. For example, you do have a "head start" once you have absorbed the complexities of aspect and case. much of which relates to both languages. Even so, also lots of unexpected differences so that after learning one there is quite some effort required to learn the other.
The point of the video is quite brilliant and I really enjoyed the whole thing. However you mention that advantageous mutations only exist in sports and other physical things, but I believe that the person who speaks the most languages has a brain mutation which enables him to learn as easily as a child would do.
I love this video~ I dont know why but i got all teary eyed with the quote. It gives me hope that maybe i did not have to be born in Korea to learn Korean and its not my moms fault that she didnt teach me many languages i seriously thirst to know fluently and fully to this day when i was growing up.
i think that the most important thing to do in order for someone to learn a second language is to master his own language, and maybe for english native speaker is easier, and even though my first language is italian and i still have several problems with the grammar :(
i do love the languages, and i do enjoy learning. my concentration skills are rather poor to begin with, though, and trying to do so for any length of time is really hard for me. :( if i wouldnt get burned out so often i would study all the time, seriously.
@loki2504 That is correct. It is similar to an English speaker hearing French. They will pick up lots of words, but the differences mean you have to concentrate hard and will miss a lot unless you deliberately study the other language.
"Practise doesn`t make perfect. Perfect practise makes perfect" -some kind of football coach dude. However I´d agree that pretty much any kind of immersion leads to improvements in a language. I made it a habit to consume any sort of entertainment (such as movies books etc) in either English or Spanish if available and even though I barely speak to someone in these languages I found that in the rare case I do communicate with a native speaker I can hold a conversation on pretty much any topic effortlessly and be 100% comfortable... which I think is extraordinary given the little amount of practise I have talking to someone.
@laoshu505000 Hello Laoshu, thank you. I am really happy to hear you like it. I enjoy watching your own videos, and seeing your own passion for languages.
This is spot on. I've been making music in the same program since I was 12 and have done it for hours a day every day for nearly a decade now. I was never really after a tangible result, I just really liked doing it. And now I have releases on several different record labels and a fair amount of fans on Soundcloud. You really do have to fall in love with the learning process to master it.
I also do a search by Google for a list of verbs in X language, list of prepositions, list of nouns, list adverbs, adjectives, everything. I had to tell my relatives and girlfriend to stop giving me grammar and course books with audio as birthday and Xmas presents 'cause it's all in the net. XD Anyway, I couldn't tell you how long it takes to me to learn a new language. It depends on how close it is to the ones I already know.
And when listening the point is to get used to the sound of the entire language and capture words. Everyday you capture more words than the day before, even words you haven't read before, and normaly it takes you 1, 2 or 3 months to capture all the words depending on how close is the new language to your language or any other foreign language you learned before. In the meantime of it all I study the polite expressions everybody learns in the beginning and start inserting new words everyday.
FSI or Foreign Study Institute teaches diplomats almost every language within a year or two to a very high level. 365 days x 7 hours equals ~ 2500 hours of serious language learning. Also , adults learn a way better than children so it is possible to be almost native like fluent in a less then 5 years, including moving to a foreign country. Liked your video but it was a little bit discouraging :) I am kidding.
