Does Language Learning Get FASTER With Each New Language You Learn? | Daily Language Diary 020 

So many successful language learners that I talk to these days have the same story. In middle/high-school we were forced to learn a language, and we all sucked at them. Until, we decided that we really want to learn it on our own. Cheers!

Your determination & dedication have been essential to where you are now, really great to see how your hard work is paying off

Robin, you can express your ideas in such a clear, simple, and elegant way that listening to you in English I learn how to better speak in my native language.

I very much agree with the assessment on how the confidence of knowing what works for you and trusting the process helps. I would add to that, that at least in my case, I'm also comfortable not understanding everything. I see so many people who won't move on, because they have 2 words in the chapter they haven't mastered. Which is why it gets very hard for them when they try to use this language when traveling for example: you always encounter words you don't know or just don't understand because the person has a bit of a different accent that makes some words unrecognizable.

I've been self-learning German (my first second language) a little over 3 years now. Es war sehr schwer and I still have a ways to go. But I thought about how much reading affected my English, so I recreated my reading from my youth. I found it quite helpful. I couldn't remember what ,,sonst" meant until I read it over and over again in a Dennis die Nervensäge Taschenbuch. And seeing it with context really helped too. I have German editions of Marvel and DC comics, as well as comic strip collections like Peanuts, Garfield, Hi and Lois, etc. I read them in addition to my lessons.

I fricken love your contact dude, it’s amazing and you’re always bringing so much value and a fresh perspective!

I always appreciate your vids. Thanks for your effort!

RU-vid should ban people from posting videos titled "I learned X language in a week!" tbh.

I've studied three romance languages, but not Italian. One day I'm gonna document me trying to learn Italian as fast as I can, but also be honest and thorough n shit.

You are soooo right (again and again and again). There is not such thing as “learn a language in 7 weeks”. It’s a marathon. Thanks for sharing it. Professor X here. Stay safe.

"Did you really think I will forget a cup of coffee on a daily diary?"🤣

People like you and Matt vs Japan who learned Japanese to a really high level in a few years is really inspiring. Both of you were still relatively young when you did it though - high school / college. Not even on the Internet have I seen someone duplicate that after college age say 26+. I started Japanese at age 34 busting my butt in my free time (single guy with a full time job so 2-4 hours weekdays and 6+ hours on weekends) and I was semi conversational before I moved to Japan to teach English and study Japanese (yeah crazy to do at that age but whatever). I had N3 before going to Japan (I would say that took me 3 years) and I moved to Japan after already studying 4-5 years. After a year in Japan, studying Japanese 6+ hours a day, I finally got N2. The progress was *so* slow and it was just sheer stubbornness and not giving up that I eventually got as good as I did. Obviously, a lot of your viewers are young students so they may well have a similar experience to yours but older adults I think will find it slower going. But I'm curious how someone like yourself who is talented at languages does now that they're older and don't have the advantages of youth. Maybe you can still do it. I would get if you think you know too many languages already and don't need any more but if you decide to take on a new difficult language (similar to Japanese) I'll be very interested on how it goes.

Hey Robin, love these daily diaries..please continue. Could you focus on Japanese or languages that are harder to learn because of their script etc. I know that you have a beginners series here, but for more intermediate learners...Although I don't know if everyone here is interested in it..thanks 😊

Perfecting your language learning habits is essential and can definitely make the subsequent languages quicker. I spent years dabbling in language apps but once I figured out how *I* learn, my language skills have improved exponentially! It's made me fall in love with learning. Thanks for the video's man, they're very reassuring. I have never spoken another language other than English and I am two months into Polish and I never would have guessed I would know this much. I'm still just scraping the surface but I can see the work that needs to be done. Slowly but surely, it will be done. Bardzo dziękuję.

great video!!

i also have an interest to learn language. your video is very helpful to me. thank you for sharing.

Hey robin loving this series! That’s why I subscribed. I was wondering what your thoughts are on constructed languages like Esperanto. Would it even be practical to learn these?

Great vid robin. My native language is Amharic and I learned English at the age of 7 (yeah I was pretty young lol) But, I can say it took me 3 years. Since, my native language was very different in comparison to English. Later on I tried French in school and failed haha through out the years I have picked up Spanish, Chinese and Korean.....(I wouldn't say I am fluent in them)...studying them on and off. So, what I wanted to say was Spanish took lesser amount of time than English. Since, I was already at a high level in English when I started Spanish......But, Chinese is still taking a long time whereas Korean is kinda taking less time since, there are similarities between it and my native language and including chinese haha. Anyways, I agree with your points. Plus, learning a language in 7 days is pretty hilarious....if that was possible I would have learned my 1000th language by now lol Keep it up....love your vids and appreciate that you are sharing your perspective to your community :)

EDIT: This comment turned out to be way longer than I expected. Sorry about that. God, by now I'm as good as addicted to your videos pal! Even though you don't have a huge base of followers it's awesome that you are putting so much time and effort into your videos ❤️ Speaking of your videos, do you think you could maybe make one talking about how you go about learning words that don't fully overlap with others you already know? I feel like this is something I struggle with a bit. Often I try to find the closest direct translation in English or my native language and stick to that first, before gradually developing a better intuitive understanding of the word/concept as I pay attention to how native speakers use it. However, the main drawback with this approach is that I initially often refrain from incorporating the expressions into my active vocabulary, because I don't feel like I fully understand them yet. Also, what's your approach to learning grammar? When I learned German I was being a real grammar freak. I felt like I needed to fully understand the grammar before I should even think about speaking. As I result I was barely able to utter a few phrases my first few years of learning (albeit I was learning in school, didn't use German much apart from that and wasn't all that interested to begin with). Fast forward till now and I feel fairly confident carrying out colloquial conversations in German. Suddenly the grammar just clicked and after further expanding my vocabulary (most of it is really similar to my native language Norwegian anyway) I felt like my hard work had payed off. That being said though, I'm currently questioning the efficiency of my method. Maybe it's better to focus on vocabulary and common expressions first, just getting used to actively using them. Would it be a good idea to postpone the process of thoroughly analyzing them and truly understanding them until you have reached a higher level in your target language? In that case at what level? I just feel this need to really understand the grammar from the get-go if you know what I mean, but maybe it's actually quite unproductive? Or maybe not? Maybe I was only so slow at acquiring German because I didn't use it more in my day-to-day life outside of school? What is your personal approach, Robin? Regards from Norway! (Ps: you still doing Norwegian? 😁)

Outstanding!

One of my friends got N1 after 10 months' study of Japanese. She knew nothing about the language before she had started and she had to work full-time job at the same time. I'm so impressed by some people's talent in language learning, but I also believe that consistency, methods or strategies for learning play a critical role here.

Squeezing 'donkey eating carrot' into a sentence, fair play bro! hahaha

An important point you haven't mentioned: how many hours a day did you spend actively/passively/ and at total in each one of the languages highlighted in the video? Could you do/answer an estimate? Because years/months are still vague time measurements. Thx in advance!

I hear you. When I started learning my first language in school at age 12 my granddad said before the school year started: "Don't worry, you will never be good in English. Because I myself and also your mom were not good in English." So I just took that at the truth - 'cause my granddad said so. The result was that I never really studied well enough because I'd never be good in it. As a result I was missing essential parts in grammar and vocabulary for nine looong years of school English. But it took eight of these years to actually FEEL that I could communicate. And that never happened in school. It happened on the third day of a holiday trip with a group of international young people where English was the only language everyone knew at least a bit of.

That was another really insightful video! I am a part of an Facebook group for language learners and those who love to travel. On there someone had posted after having a long debate with friends and still not come to a conclusion. They couldn't decide at what point you could say that you speak a language. Whether it was as on the low end at B1 as this is the base level for citizenship in some countries, or as high as C1 as this is thought to be a high level of fluency. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this!

You know how on devices usually Spanish (US) is a language you can choose, what characterizes USA Spanish? When you type in Spanish what input method, grammar and spelling conventions do you use?

I appreciate your honesty on how long it took you to learn Japanese because I just started my journey in this language. I think having realistic expectations will help tremendously. But I still have one question. When you say that it took “insanely hard work” can you explain exactly what that means? What exactly did you do? Your process?

Robin, when did you find your "method" of learning, or how you learn? I feel I'm still trying to find the best method for me.

6:00 so after 2 years you can consider that you felt comfortable talking japanese?

What tools and programs would you recommend to teach yourself at home in the most effective manner possible. If you had 90 days to learn a new language to a B2/C1 level, how exactly would you do it? Please be specific.

As someone who went from French learning as an English and Spanish speaker, to Mandarin, I can say *fuck no!* lol