Can You Ever TRULY Understand Native Content In A Foreign Language? 

What a wholesome and reassuring video. I’m 2.5 years into French and understand some radio programmes almost perfectly… or at least really well. Then I’ll watch a tv show and it’s like I’m back at A1 again. I know all I can do is keep the faith and keep going. So thanks for the encouragement we all need from time to time (and sometimes hour by hour 😂)

The point about being finally able to anticipate what someone will say is a great one! It's very satisfying when it happens

We miss you robin !! Hope all is well and that you return to making RU-vid videos soon :)

We miss you Robyn, I hope you return soon! 😢 😭 💙

I'm so glad you mentioned the phenomenon where you're understanding chunk after chunk, but struggling to keep what you've already heard in mind while processing the next chunk. This happens to me so much... I listen to some things and feel like I understand most of it, but would struggle to explain or translate it to someone else because I'm just barely keeping up!

It still surprises and brings me joy every time I realised I'm listening someone speak and English and I'm understanding every single word without even struggling a little bit. And even more when I think that I only started to really focus on learning English like two years ago. I just love languages and I can't wait to learn many more.

Goes to show again that our brains just love patterns. So when you've acquired and solidified a number of language patterns, you automatically start anticipating the end of a phrase whenever you recognize the beginning of one. Same goes for driving or chess... It's wonderful, really!

I so agree with this. I have been studying Spanish for 4.5 years obsessively and I don’t have many problems one on one or face to face, but when there are multiple native speakers or I am listening to their songs it is often more difficult. I am constantly telling myself, you got this you should be so proud of yourself and then I find myself saying, are you ever going to understand completely or arrive. Very frustrating.

I would like to share something about this topic: I have been living in Spain for nearly twenty years now and have learnt both Spanish and Catalan to an advanced level. Every time there is something I don't get, a person I have difficulties in understanding, I try to put it into perspective. And usually it turns out that I'm having difficulties with this person's accent because they are from another region or another Spanish speaking country and I'm not familiar with this accent, or because they are mumbling or slurring. Normally my Catalan boyfriend tells me that he is having difficulties as well. When this occurs, I tell myself that I would probably have the exact same problems in my native language in a similar situation, and that really reassures me.

Thanks for your fine talks. Best wishes!

10:06 "You see what they said, but when you listen to it, you're like "! Absolutely! When I was studying Chinese, I was asking this question all the time, mate.

Lo que dices es cierto es como entenderle a algunos y a otros no, hay series que entiendo muy bien y otras que "niente", me gusta tu canal porque es el más realista sobre aprender idiomas que he visto en youtube, sigue así

You have such a pleasant air about you. Always so encouraging. Dankeschön.

This video hit home so much, and described exactly my journey in Spanish. You feel great after talking with a single person, then you watch a show, and have to pause, look up words, rewind, etc. It leads to a lot of frustration. So great to hear that there is light on the other side. Thanks for the support.

What an excellent video! You have touched on some very important points that for some reason never seem to get mentioned. Especially the part with the anticipation is spot on. Thanks.

I’ve realise that I’ve not been seeing his video notifications. Thought YT unsubscribed me or my notification is offed.. so I came on YT specifically to search for him but now see that he hasn’t been posting recently. Is he doing ok? 🥺

This guy is such an inspiration for me. Legend.

Absolutely spot on with this video. Really interesting break-down of everything. I feel like I'm just dipping my toes into this kind of ability in one of my foreign languages but have doubts about whether I'll ever manage it in my second, so thanks for the motivation and reassurance!

Your videos have been a great comfort to me this past week. I am in an “awkward” place with French. My listening comprehension seems to be improving quickly, but there is soooo much as don’t know! In the same day, I could feel like I am progressing well and feel as if I am not learning at all. All of this to say, thank you! This is my first time acquiring a language and it helps to listen to these videos. Keeps me motivated

You have a truly unique way of wording things! And I always feel that the knowledge you share comes from the steps you've taken and the journeys you've been on. This is how I've been feeling with my Malay for a long time. yes it's enough to get through pleasantries but it cannot sustain the bombardment of meaning and context that happens when I sit with my family and their friends who speak natively and fluently. You not only help me put things in perspective, but also motivate me. All the best!!

I’m absolutely loving your channel. I might have to admit I’m getting addicted to it. I’m from Colombia but have been living in the US for the past 14 years, of which I’ve been in a relationship with an American (yes I said American, the name of the country does have the word America:) for 9 years, have native speakers as friends and colleagues and yet I continue to find myself in the very situation you are describing!!!! (Adesso sto imparando l'italiano e senza dubbio soffro molto di più di questo fenomeno). Please please please continue to keep up with this wonderful, down to earth and such a breath of fresh air channel. Felicitaciones por tener tanta autenticidad. Un pequeño defecto de este video: no vi café!!!

Man. You always have encouragement right when I need it. Thank you for staying positive and joyful about learning ❤️

Absoloutely love your videos Robin. They’re so motivational and encourage me to keep on going with my language learning. Thank you. 💜

What a wonderful message. Thank you!

What a fantastic video. I can relate to everything you say. I have asked myself that question so much and it’s such a relief to know that yes it is possible! Thank you so much x

Thanks Robin. Your honesty about the struggle and the process is super encouraging :)

Miss seeing new videos from you. Hope you’re well.

It’s certainly possible - I have a friend I talk with in depth most weeks for an hour or so and she is Norwegian and is completely fluent in English and I never make any concessions towards her, we just talk completely freely and openly. Just occasionally she won’t know a word and will look it up. But she’s been learning English for probably 50 years and has an English husband! That might be rather a discouraging story, so here’s some of my own experience. I spent a year working on my ancient school French which was in a really ropey state when I began, by the end of which process I could understand at an intermediate level and read at high intermediate level - and I still find this astonishing. I’ll be listening to a podcast pitched to intermediate level and find it really quite surprising that I understand what is being said without needing to find out by looking anything up. This process of learning is thrilling and frustrating by turns! Thank you for describing the process so precisely and being so encouraging! I found your video series on extensive reading with Jared Turner really really useful.

I'm only at a A2 level but THIS WAS SUPER HELPFUL! It clearly explained the stages of understaning a language not from theory but from prractical experience. So it even helped me understand how I follow my native language.

I think at some point you will be able to really understand the native content, it does take time though. As a native Dutch, having learnt English at school/ from television, somewhere along the line you get to a point where you can follow tv-shows without subtitles. I sometimes even dream in English.. My German and French are at a lower comprehension level, but I'm still able to hold a conversation with a person in both languages. Right now I'm learning Cantonese and I'm at that stage your at as well, finding that I'm able to follow quite a bit and then not understanding a chunk.

Thank you, Robin, for so succinctly describing my current experience with my TL (Irish). I'm exactly at that point, or perhaps past a little with easier content. But I listen to alot of interviews and your description of listening to two people converse being different than listening to one, is something I hadn't thought of until you mentioned it. Also that concept of anticipating the next word reminds me of an experience I'm having lately with using "Clozemaster" where I find myself not even looking at the English, but instead looking at the sentence with the gap and more and more just immediately knowing what goes there. It really is a very exciting stage of language learning. Thanks for sharing your experience, as always and congratulation to you too!

Narrowing down on one singular dialect (regionalism) expands your listening skills to the point that your brain becomes more “elastic” on the range of sounds that it assigns to words or phrases. It’s rarely discuss in language acquisition. I follow a youtuber that’s working on this for Korean. You put together 3 Latinos from one country and 1 from another, and the foreign Latin if not familiar with that dialect will have a harder time following a conversation than a second language speaker that regularly speaks with the 3 Latinos. I mention this example because I’ve witnessed a Swede following a conversation with three Dominicans while the Mexican was lost. It goes beyond slang, and more about the brain/mind opening up the sound range. After I get a bit more comfortable with standard Korean sounds, I want to dig deeper on a dialect. I’ve heard for Chinese the Beijing dialect is interesting. Interesting video, thanks for sharing.

Missing youuuu ❤️❤️❤️❤️😭

I could start to understand the gist of native level podcasts in Hebrew within a year. I've been studying for about two years and I still have room for improvements. I can watch TV shows, but it still needs a lot of concentration. I think with TV shows I can understand more than my brain can hold, so I've been doing a lot more reading lately. I've also gone back a bit and listened to podcasts from a year ago. I'm noticing a lot of details and nuance I didn't notice last year. It makes a lot of podcasts more enjoyable. It does seem easier to notice going from low or no comprehension to okay comprehension than okay comprehension to improved comprehension.

I can relate, I'm learning Russian passively, natives say I speak really good, but I do feel my vocabulary is very limited, some podcasts I can understand big chunks as you call them, but in some chapters, I just get random words. I do remember when I started understanding jokes from Two and a Half men, while I was learning English, it was really unexpected and kind of automatic, just by watching a lot of series in English. So I can definitely relate to what you say.

Hey dude you're accent sounds very great I like. When I was practice my pronunciation in English I sounded the same I left English for a long time but I'm back again 😎✨

My experience and that of others I have met and watched on youtube is new levels of language comprehension arrives in overnight jumps. Literally not understanding to bingo what happened, I got all that. A sign of advancement for me is when I no longer translate what i read but merely know what is being written, Mandarin is tough for many reasons but imo the 4 tone aspect is overstated. I never bother with them and while my Mandarin is poor I experimented on 2 occasions saying a pre-planned short sentence to 2 different natural speakers.They both understood me perfectly one speaker spontaneously saying I said the sentence perfectly. Whaaat!.Ok so oral comprehension is the big hurdle.If we can understand what is being said then we are in the game. I understood your mandarin speaking video but that is because you speak with my accent, speed and word separation ie: not running words into one another. The bottom line is repetition and frankly getting the basics of word order down especially with mandarin (lots of awkward grammar for English speakers) ....cheers and thanks you made a lot of unappreciated observations.

Interesting idea. I used to agree with this idea, that the ability to anticipate is really important to natives understanding native speech. Nowadays, I don’t really see it as anticipation, but rather, that they’ve been so highly exposed to the language that the interpretation of the speech is automatic. So, I kind of lump anticipation in with automaticity, and I think one should be careful not to chase anticipatory abilities, but it is good to recognize when it’s happening; it’s another tiny win, you know? Really, I believe automaticity is what we should all be striving for.

♥️♥️♥️ Miss your charlas

Very interesting story. I appreciate how you explain the experience and how you are progressing. It makes the journey possible. I have found listening to “Ros na Rún” in Irish with Gaeilge subtitles frustrating for the exact reasons you describe. Some actors mumble, and the subtitles are not even related it seems. Another observation is, as a native English speaker, we can easily pick out the words of non-native English speakers. In one case, with a native Vietnamese, I was surprised at how little of an English word I needed to understand him. That is the essence of native speakers, don’t you think? The actual amount of sound needed for our (native) ears to comprehend a word or sentence, is a fraction of what is uttered.

Hi. This is not relevant to your video, but I just wanted to tell you that I listened to your interview on "You Can Learn Chinese." I actually got a little jealous because I've been living in Japan for 10 years and my Japanese still sucks. I can read way more Kanji now, but I still haven't made a breakthrough in the spoken language. My speaking skills are still very basic. Most of it is due to not having contact with enough native speakers who can't speak English. And also because I don't study enough and have almost no motivation. Then, I started learning Chinese during the pandemic. And for some reason, rembering Chinese characters is so much easier for me right now in the beginning stages. I don't know if it's because of my excitement to learn this language, but I spend most of my studying working on an app and reading graded readers and watching lots of Chinese content. I also try and transcribe phrases I hear that sound familiar while watching something and I find that to be lots of fun and also motivating. I don't use anki like I do for Kanji (it's so boring, but it works for me for Japanese with their multiple readings for one character) and generally just write out homework for a tutor I meet once a week for 30 minutes. Your interview was very inspiring and I wish there was a way for me to get paid to stay home all day to learn languages. I also live in Fukuoka, by the way, but I haven't been as lucky as you to have met a lot of people. And because my interactions at work are primarily in English, it's hard for me to get to a point of fluency in Japanese. What I do know is that I'm taking on a completely different approach to Chinese and getting familiar with characters right away. But like you, I'm now sitting in that spot where I have to choose between simplified or traditional for the basic characters. I guess the simplified makes it easier for me to remember the characters though. Sorry for this long comment, I really just wanted to share my experience with you because your interview was very inspiring. You also inspired me to 頑張ります through my Japanese Thank you so much.

Very relatable

Salut, Rob ! Ça va, vous ? J'étudie français depuis quelque temps maintenant et le sujet de cette vidéo, c'est une chose pour laquelle je me fais pas mal du souci, qui est comprendre 100% (ou presque) ceux qui parlent la langue en tant que locuteurs natifs, quel ce soit en personne, quel ce soit à travers de films ou séries. Je dépense bien de heures tous les jours à écouter, regarder, lire, faire mes flashcards, on s'en passe, sans mentionner tout le temps en écrivant de textes et une heure hebdomadaire de conversation avec mon tuteur. Néanmoins, je sens que ma compréhension de la langue à l'oral est très loin de celle que je voudrais, c'est-à-dire, je peux comprendre plein de choses quand je me mets à les écouter, y compris la radio, les vidéos sur youtube, des émissions sur netflix. Pour autant, je comprends moins que je voudrais, je rate encore beaucoup de détails, c'est un peu frustrant, ça, car je voudrais bien comprendre toutes (ou quasiment toutes, je sais que comprendre absolument tout, c'est un peu impossible) les nuances. Je suis au courant que atteindre ce niveau, c'est pas une chose facile et, en tant que telle, il faut patienter, parce que forcément ça va prendre du temps. J'en suis au jus. Mais il est toujours important de renforcer ça avec de contenus de gens comme vous qui ont déjà pas seulement passé pour ça mais à la fois ont déjà surmonté ce plateau, cette phase dans laquelle on risque de se convaincre de que quelque chose ne va pas chez nous, et que, donc, on a définitivement un problème envers l'apprentissage de langues, ce qui pourrait bien nous pousser à jeter l'éponge. Comme j'ai déjà dit auparavant, c'est toujours très important de écouter que ça, cette difficulté, c'est normal, qu'il faut continuer à se clouer aux études, s'enfoncer là-dessus et jamais penser à les abandonner. Merci pour cette vidéo, je me suis mis à regarder vos vidéos lorsque j'ai commencé à étudier le français, il y a plus d'un an, et un tas de trucs a changé depuis ce temps-là.

I’m a big mumbler in every language I speak. Especially English. There’s all the filler words I have to say for grammar’s sake and then there’s the word with all the meaning that I want to say. I know what you’re saying about native speakers grading their language when they talk to non natives but then there’s people like me. I will often just go full out unless I can really tell that you’re struggling. Btw gratz on leveling up your Chinese.

Hey, Robin! Is that shirt you're wearing (one of) your favourite(s)? I've seen it quite often in your videos. I don't blame ya. it looks really good on you

I used to get a bit discouraged by the fact that when I listened to people talking naturally and unscripted in a language I could understand it almost perfectly. Yet when I watched TV series I struggled to understand a lot of it. Finally, I realised that actors are not really speaking 'spoken' language. They are reciting scripts which are written and contain a wider range of vocabulary and more intricate phrases than most people would ever use in everyday spoken language. The art of the actor is to try to make this written language sound like natural speech. Unfortunately, many actors in their efforts to sound 'natural' end up either subconsciously or deliberately adopting a manner of speaking, which is basically more mumbling and rapid than most normal speech. If everyone spoke like some actors we would be constantly saying 'sorry, what did you say?' I have heard so many people recently say they turn on subtitles in their own language because the actors are hard to follow. I still work hard to master the vocabulary and phrases that I come across but don't feel so bad at finding it hard to understand sometimes.

Robin! How are you doing? Could you help me with something? When it comes to making progress in any language, especially from a high level to another, how do you find a content that you like and at the same time is able to take you from one level to another? And also, if you want to maybe study a series of 25 short interviews, for example, what do you do after you finish them? You just look for another material for you to finish it? I'm personally struggling a little to find something that I really like to study that is really effective for me

I'm native English and get this with 3 or more other native english people speaking in a group 😅...I think some of us just prefer 1-2-1 conversations and get lost or overwhelmed in groups of people even in our own language.

I had a point in my Chinese learning progress where I can have a discussion to a native speaker about my day but I wouldn't understand when a cashier is talking to me if I have a membership or not because the cashier would mumble her/his words cos it's just a passing question. It was really frustrating. Of course now that I listened to the same questions for years, I actually do catch what the cashier was saying but I thought it was a bit funny.

I didn't even realize. I was watching you at 1.5 playback speed hahaha

Do you mind telling me if english is your native language? Indeed l watch all of your videos they are really useful, keep it up

As an almost native speaker of German I do understand everything that I hear or read in a way that I would understand it in bulgarian. Even with that, after spending all my conscious life immersed in German, some friends can tell me apart from a german native speaker :)

Hey robin, im starting to lose motivation of learning russian do you think you can help giving me more motivation?

So it has been said if you know 10 verbs, 10 nouns and 10 adjectives you can make 1000+ sentences, what 10 of each do you suggest?

Hello, why have no other videos been uploaded for the last four months?

Your voice sounds lower, Robin! Intentional? Sounds fine to me either way fwiw

I think one' could eventually truly understand native content just like in ones' native tongue but it just takes time and patience.

I like how you can take this weird abstract thing like describing 2nd language listening comprehension and talk about it for 14 minutes and somehow make sense. I’m pretty sure I would fail horribly.

Hey Robin - I notice you haven't put up any new videos for 5 months. Not like you so you must be going through something. Hope you can return soon.

Where did you go, man? You still alive? Hope you’re ok!

I see you’ve stopped posting - it’s been a month since the last one - I hope you’re ok?

Can you make a video to share with us what methods you have used in language learning that FAIL? And tell us why those methods are useless.

I am wondering where you are? I wish you well..

Where are you?

这哥们儿呢？好久没发视频了

I start learn my 6th language.The Deutsch😂Wünschen Sie mich die gute Gluck😂

Where are u now

Where have you gone, Robin? You’ve not posted for 2 months…. Hope all is well?

The background music is too loud, I'm having trouble hearing you.

Where are you? 😞

Whats happend to your voice and accent ???????? Something feels wrong

Skill issue

Where are you?