How I Learn to Speak Any Language in 24 Hours 

Want to learn a language with me? Check out streetsmartlanguages.com/

We don't ask infants to learn to write, read, and spell before we start teaching how to speak. Makes sense.

It’s where the myth of “kids are the fastest language learners” comes from. Children learn languages naturally while schools try to jumpstart you into the semantics of the language. If you learn a language as if you were a baby, you don’t start with the alphabet, you start with speaking and listening. Literacy should be the LAST thing you learn, not the first

My French teacher in HS was amazing, she started off class day one by only speaking French and no English at all unless it was absolutely necessary. We were all assigned French names and she made us feel comfortable with the language very quickly because she put us in a position where we had to adapt and learn by watching her and listening to her and just repeating everything she said with small conversations or little games.

i feel like getting to the level of saying hi how are you im hungry its not that hard, but gettin actualy able to understand others when speaking is just hard asf

Try writing a daily journal in your target language for a week. You’ll naturally use the most relevant vocabulary to your life and learn a ton of grammar.

"HOW I LEARN TO SAY A FEW PHRASES OF EVERY LANGUAGE WITHIN 24 HOURS"

I am definitely going to try this approach. My Japanese used to be pretty decent, both verbal and written. But in 2010 I had a brain tumor removed from my parietal lobe. Two years later I was working in Wuxi, China. I began to have bad headaches. The school I teaching English at felt it was best I return to the US for treatment. When I got back home, an MRI revealed that the tumor a growing again and radiation was needed. Long story short, treatment has damaged long/short term memory. Now I am returning to university or an MA in international relations. So I am going to have a language requirement. Either Mandarin or Japanese are the two options for me. Sorry for being a chatty Kathy. I’ve enjoyed your channel since before the lockdowns. 🤙

So fluent and well learned in so many language as well as camera friendly you are a standout person indeed. Love your videos

The approach of being spoken language first makes sense for someone like Xiaoma who has great auditory memory but it is much less good for someone who is more visual and needs the written language as a support. There is also a personality component - he is obviously quite extravert and feels very comfortable speaking to strangers even when not fully understanding what they are saying. This is admirable, but not everyone is like this.

This was actually very informative. I'm now using Anki which is perfect for my Mandarin practice. Turns out that I've been instinctually structuring my learning in the ways you're describing so I feel like what im doing is valid now.

I've had to learn a few languages for work (German, English & Japanese), and learning languages is ultimately about learning about yourself. You know, how you retain information, what resonates with your interests and makes you look forward to it instead of it being a chore... "The thing that anchors you discipline without it being a burdening thing you're forced to drag", is a phrase a friend told me and I thought it was fairly accurate.

Your channel (you) today ,compared to a few months ago and a few years ago is night and day in terms of confidence and personal growth.

The alphabet/script is the funnest and easiest part for me. I wouldn't dare skip it. I'll gladly spend hours learning a new way to write.

Just checked out those magic sentences. That's really cool. Thanks!!

3:45 from finding your channel about a week ago, and seeing around a dozen or more videos of yours, I had a strong suspicion this was a big part of your learning experience when learning a language for a video. You usually have your default phrases you go to, especially when ordering food or buying things, and a cheat sheet is certainly a very handy way to get started, like following a script. But what always makes me respect your approach is that you don't just do the bare minimum, you do your research as well, trying to learn the unique cultural cuisine they have and such. And yeah I fully agree that practical phrases and words are far more important to start out than all the nitty gritty details. I imagine the main thing that makes you far more proficient in learning faster is that not only do you probably pick up on patterns far more quickly, but you also just GO for it. You apply your knowledge immediately with little hesitation, and aren't afraid to make mistakes and learn on the spot. I imagine that'd be the part that scares a lot of people when intending to apply a new language, like studying for an exam for weeks/months. Just for some context, I'm bilingual (native Spanish, English second as a pre-teen) and just started learning Japanese a few months ago, and I definitely found the process more enjoyable and easier to swallow if starting with basic, practical phrases and words. Hiragana and Katakana can be learned alongside it but there's no *need* to learn it all upfront. I took French class for 4 years; barely retained any of it. But I also partly feel like learning a language AND attending school can be a lot to handle. I'm just learning Japanese in my free time and it's stress free and I don't need to follow any curriculum and learn at my own pace

That's a very useful and interesting video! Thank you for all these tips! 😁

I can eat a whole pack of chips in under five minutes.

I use a similar method for Japanese but with a bit more focus on reading since I needed reading for JLPT. I watch a lot of Japanese RU-vid and TV, making Anki cards for words I want to learn. Every show I would practice reading the Japanese subtitles before and after hearing the dialogue. It really didn't take that long before I could read 80% of common Japanese vocabulary. I then started reading things like short news articles, easy manga, and kids stories. Then I moved to things like young adult novels and watching shows with no subtitles. Every day I still made sure to make at least 10 sentence cards for Anki until I had learned a lot of words both through Anki and just naturally from reading and watching a lot of shows. I would say the entire process going from absolute beginner learning hiragana for the first time to proficient speaker and reader took about 4 years of daily study. I'm still not perfect but it's to a level that I can communicate most topics I know in English in Japanese as well. I still work my day job in English here in the US so there's only so much time per day to study Japanese.

I am from italy, I've always been interested about learning english and I felt that my level post high school was very poor. I started watching movies in English language and subs in italian. At the same time I moved to the UK, which helped to push myself speaking and interacting with people in English. Then with time, when I felt comfortable, I started to remove subs from movies and I've started to be way more fluent since then. Btw welcome to Jersey, I probably live in a building next to yours lol. See you on the waterfront.

Thank you for existing b, this is amazing to know, thank you. Eye have this on my list of things to get done.

My epiphany was when I realized the key to master a new language is to remove my native language from the role of the middleman and be able to think in the target language.

Been waiting on something like this

Well said Ari, great info and great way to learn!! 🙂

neuroplasticity, semantics, literacy, writing, speaking, listening... all lead to one result = total immersion.

Well said & done sir !!❤❤❤❤

Those are good tips. I love studying languages and very few of them am I fluent. I’ve learned enough to understand and can pick up new things as I go.

Love your vidéos great example for new generation!

Thanks man! 我开始学习汉语 because of you :D

I love that you live in Jersey now, This way we get to see only the beauty of NYC.

You’re my inspiration Ari. I’m still trying to attempt learning Hebrew. I sure wish I had a personal trainer

I totally agree. Speaking is essential. I'm Polish and was learning German and English for 10 years at school. I came to Scotland and I was scared to say a word. I was communicating very poorly using hands and gestures. After 10 years of learning! I started watching movies in English and speaking as much as possible. Then finished Art at college and now after 13 years in UK I can say I'm fluent. I'm learning Spanish now for 2 years and I struggle a wee bit, I wouldn't pull even basic conversation, so this video was helpful to remind where to start.

Hi Arieh ! Totally agree with you, speaking from day 1 allows you to get a hang of the language way faster. That happened to me with Spanish. However, our memory can wear itself out over time and we tend to unlearn some languages. Otherwise, could you make a vid where you give tips on how you've monetized your language skills ? I'm myself a French polyglot 🇫🇷🇬🇧🇩🇪🇷🇺🇪🇸 but language skills are undermined down here in France...

You convinced me to subscribe to the teacher AI! Let the speaking begin!

Magic phrases is a good term for my theory of a cheat sheet of words I often encounter while traveling. After putting together my Japanese one I slowly understand certain phrases in foreign media and how a word can be used in different context

Amazing! 💖

Yurr. I hope all who read this are blessed beyond measures! One love !

I remember watching his video speaking welsh where he subtitled stuff to make him look way more proficient than he was, and some subtitles were just straight up not what he said, more like what he implied. There’s a part where he just says “Cennyn Pedr” which means “leek”, but the subtitle shows “Saw some leeks over there”. Another example was when he said “Pa blasus?” which transliterates to “Which tasty?”, but is subtitled as “Which one is good?”. What he said was grammatically incorrect and should’ve been “Pa un yn flasus?” Alot of the video had all these tiny things in almost every subtitle that made him look (to non speakers) way more proficient than he actually was. Most of the time he never even used articles but put them in subtitles. He really is the biggest language subtitle catfish of all time. Also I’m pretty sure he deleted a youtube comment pointing this out ahahaha

best method using anki i got. My flashcards are made of native speaker's audios, I save phrases capturing audios and i put into the anki in front side, after that , i write exactly what was said to show as back side. I never seen nothing better than that. You wont find this on youtube, nobody teachs this correctly

The time one spends banging one’s head against textbooks is not wasted. On the contrary, I have found studying charts to be very helpful in laying out a foundation for language learning, even as a skill beyond that particular language itself. Memorizing charts helps you organize your mind. You don’t forget that, and although you may forget details, just encountering them once can leave an impression in memory that contributes subtly to learning.

Hey Xiaoma, I've watched every one of your videos and I don't want you rushing new content, BUT I want to see more! Can you recommend any other polyglot RU-vidrs like yourself I can watch too? I already watch Ryan Hale speaking Chinese and the German guy spekaing Vietnamese, but I want more content like yours!

It feels easier when you already know how to by now.

Thanks Xiaoma! Just like exercises, I guess most of us felt that we kind of know and guess what we should do to learn and what we need is the commitment... Personally, the first 10 days work out great and after what I got hard time is when my learning start to confuse where I start for example to confuse 2 learning elements... which make me feel that I am actually getting worst. But, I guess the exercise analogy is good where when the progress slow down, we still need to do exercises, but perhaps need to adapt the learning program at that point to solidify the previous learning..

Thank you for sharing! Been wondering how you do it….

Thanks, Xiaoma!

you look good mate! just turned in after some months the first time. gj :D

You are amazing

So come to Cherokee NC and learn our language pls!!!

Learning the bare bones basics for a language in a day just isn’t enough to “know” a language.

Looking forward to the Scottish Highlands episode! I hope you will learn Gaelic (Irish) too, it is one of the most beautiful languages in my opinion.

If you are coming to Scotland to try and speak Gaelic/Gàidhlig you will need to go to the islands in the Outer Hebrides such as the Isle of Lewis to find speakers. Will be hard to find speakers in mainland Scotland unless you arrange before. There are much less speakers compared to Welsh and Irish which you have done before.

Love your Videos Ari!!! Just wanted to say too that I think it would be a cool video to one day see you go over to Louisiana's cajun country and New Orleans to speak Cajun French and/or Louisiana Creole. I think it would be cool to see that you don't need to travel far to find a new culture and language that could be right in one's country. 🇫🇷 ⚜️

As a Scotsman, I am looking forward to seeing your video in the Highlands. It's such a beautiful country but a bit like your Wales video, I think you'll be surprised by how few people speak Gaelic. Definitely more speakers of it in the highlands than in Glasgow or Edinburgh

Hits ya with the masterclass at the end 😂😂😂 common my guy.

hey thanks for sharing the magic sentences! is there a possibility you can share the 50 -150 common sentences you mentioned that you save on anki ?

Very nice 👍🏻

Great vid, Thai is kicking my butt

New Jersey suits you. Beautiful views over there!

Gonna say when I had some aha moment in calculus it was only due to treating it like exercise. I think the same problem applies in math education where the curriculum is too focused on moving forward than helping people progressively attain a comfortable level.

We need a collab with Languagesimp

This makes sense 100% I instantly remember myself struggling to writ in English but I could speak it I was 10 from Uganda because surrounded by people I learned how to speak English within 6month but struggled writing.

THANK YOU THIS IS USEFUL IMA TRY THIS OUT TOO

Two things: 1. What service do you typically use for speech tutoring? 2. How do you direct the tutor when you use them? I tried Baselang for a while, but found I was having trouble instructing the tutor to help me just get better at the speaking. Is this where your magic sentences come in?

Quick shout-out to Ari's arms in the thumbnail. If they get any bigger, this is gonna be a gym channel! Keep up all the hard work, dude! Looking great!

There's a lot of new Chinese restaurants for you to try in New Jersey to surprise with your Mandarin skills. Go get em!

Hi Xiaoma, You mentioned once that your dad is an Lithuanian- american. I want to ask you if you can speak Lithuanian or do a video where you speak Lithuanian in one of the many streets in NYC. Thanks Broliai❤

Can you do the Aztec language? I watched all of your Mayan videos. Awesome stuff!

In elementary school we had a French teacher who had to work under these rules: no reading or writing, ten-minute daily lessons per class, no homework. He had trained using the Defense Language Institute system at Monterey which uses lots of homework--hours of listening to tapes. So, on the fly, he had to develop a whole new approach to teaching and learning. Our grammar was terrible (I thought the infinitive "to be" was "soir") but our pronunciation was quite good. Later he based his approach to teaching lower-division French at UC Berkeley on his improvised teaching system. Even months into the course, he was careful to introduce new vocabulary by sound first, with the written form at least a day later. I have noticed that a lot of English speakers who try to learn French get really thrown off by the spelling.

Pratice makes perfect. The phrase didn't come out of nowhere. But yes textbooks make you learn, but doesn't make you know. This is applied in everything I think, not just languages. Good video.

Amazing! How do you go with retention of, say Creole, after learning 10 other news ones? Seems like there’s a lot of cramming, as for an exam, which might then disappear quickly. I did hear another polyglot say he learns a new language vis a recent\known one to kinda double-up.

Are ever going to learn Finnish? :) would be facinating to see your progression! I understand why you are learning languages that you are. You live in USA where is many many ethnics, languages nearby! Love you content!

through listening and watching like playing .❤

I like the movie the 13th warrior and the way he learned the language. Forced on a boat with a foreign language being spoke and he just sits there listening starting to pick up phrases. The other great trying to understand a language show. Star Trek TNG. Darmok and Jarad at Tanagra. Great example of thinking you know what they are saying and having no idea what they actually mean.

Youre English is very good!

hey man i was wonder if you can do a kurdish (kurmanji) video sometime in the future, since from all the language learning app/programs etc I have seen it is not on any of them.

actually, this is a pretty cool learning method.

I'd love to hear you speak Scottish Gaelic, I was born in Cambridge, England but grew up in Midwestern america. Ive been learning for about a 1 1/2 years, it would be amazing to see other people speak it.

Scripts are some of my favourite parts of learning new languages. Because it feels like a code.

This is your best video. Language learning should be fun and practical. I can find a bathroom and order a beer in 5 languages because I want to. Spending hours Conjugating verbs in school is ridiculous.

Absolutely floored that Xioma/Ari is learning Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic)! Deagh obair a charaid!

That's insane! Congrats on your accomplishments!!

I love the enthusiasm and the amazing commitment he has for learning and teaching but man chill out with the clickbait

hey, i was wondering if you could learn Faroese? My friends in the Faroe Islands would love to see it happen!

In conclusion: how do you learn to speak a language? How to speak a language: by speaking it

Could you try Taiwanese Hokkien? It’s a harder compared to mandarin and a dying language

Have you learnt how to speak Afrikaans or isiXhosa? if so ill love to see! Much love from South Africa!

Learning a new language is insanely difficult, this guy has a special gift. There are words you can learn but you don't know how to pronounce them, so to anyone else it sounds like gibberish.

Ahh this is amazing news, I’m so excited for you’re going to go to the Scottish highlands! I hope you’re visiting the western / outer Hebrides where they most commonly still speak Gaelic?? (Glad you said gah-lic and not gay-lic) 🎉

I taught myself basic french by speaking in French group online chats (when those were a thing back in the early 2000’s 😂) and listening to music. I would have a translator and dictionary to work on my simple sentences and then would create my own vocabulary list taken from the conversations. I would then listen to french songs, print the lyrics and sing them to practice pronunciation. (Pronunciation only because my singing is awful 😂) I also changed all of my tech devices to French and would only think in French while speaking instead of translating it in my mind.

I'm still waiting for you to do POLISH ! the grammar is hard.. are you up for the challenge!?

My hubby’s brain works best studying languages by learning grammar, parts of speech, etc (he speaks 6 languages) but not me! lol needed to hear this! Thanks!

nothing beats talking to native speakers. great video, thanks!

Yeah it makes sense, you learn through immersion much quicker from everyone Ive talked to who knows more than English and especially lived abroad. My three year old niece can’t read yet but we can have a conversation in english. I always thought that they taught it backwards. How are you supposed to have the context of the alphabet and grammar without having basic speaking skills yet.

I just speak Spanish (im half Mexican so I had a decent grasp of it growing up, then filled in the rest with self teaching) and Japanese. (self taught in my room, it was a tough year but changed my life) I don't really care to learn any more languages but I do like seeing other peoples language journeys and polyglot reaction content of course.

Yeah, I guess this method works fine. The issue with learning languages at schools (at least in Germany) is that they are too much focusing on the written language. If oral speech was as important as written speech, it would be more useful.

You mention your teachers, how do you find people to teach/speak to online? Apologies if I missed this part of the video

First! Thank you for this

Have you tried "Elfdalian" / " Älvdalska" ? Norse/ viking language only spoken by 2000-2500 people in Sweden. Its called a "dialect" here in but they are debating if it should be a language of its own.

加油。我知道你在挑戰 老鼠先生的事，雖然他不在了。但看到你繼承了他的遺志。很高興

Im trying to learn japanese and its quite difficult but i am going to japan in less than a year so hopefully that could help me with speaking it and learn it more