How to Learn a Foreign Language Like a Child Does! 

"2-16 year olds" Me a 15 year old: time to learn as much as I can

the key to be fluent in a language is to have curiosity

People I know: How can I learn languages like kids do? Me: Be consistent, start from the basics, expose yourself to a lot of media in that language People I know: No, kids have magic brains I'll never get it, because I'm old

This is true. My native language is spanish and I've had to learn english in school since I was like between 9 and 12 years old. My parents also made me attend some special cambridge english classes and take many exams for 8 years, more or less. Let me tell you, I HATED it! And I never became fluent, it was so hard. However, one day I decided I wanted to try to watch some english youtube videos (Pewdiepie's videos, since it was popular at the time, haha) and, even though I could barely understand what was being said, I enjoyed it. It was really fun and I learned so much more than what I was taugh in class! Watching someone play a videogame while commenting what they were seeing or how they were feeling helped my brain understand phrases and expressions like if it was my native language, so many things that have inaccurate translations or are non existent in spanish! In conclusion, I didn't learn to speak english, I learned to think in english :) (Even though I still make silly mistakes here and there, I can at least understand perfectly when someone speaks and communicate pretty well)

"Children's material repeats itself, then adds on to that, than repeats those two things, adds something and so on." So... this is why almost every country on earth can fill concert venues with people who can fluently shout, with basically perfect pronunciation: DU DU HAST DU HAST MICH DU HAST MICH DU HAST MICH GEFRAGT DU HAST MICH GEFRAGT DU HAST MICH GEFRAGT UND ICH HAB' NICHTS GESAGT

I learned English by watching 3000+ hours of content but damn it was worth it.

Spongebob is a great show to learn languages. It's dubbed in many languages, and it's still entertaining as an adult. The first 4 seasons are the best.

The key to be fluent in a given language is to love someone who speaks that language.

i'm sorry but when you said your wife told you your son wasn't even reading from harry mclearry and just randomly shouted out that paragraph i burst out laughing that was my favorite part of the video

This is really interesting. I never thought about it like this before. Just learning vocabulary not really caring if it is useful in the current moment or not. Simply just learning the language. I'm gonna start doing this. Thanks for the help!

I was able to roughly recreate the process when I was 18 by moving to my family's village in greece. I went from nothing to maybe a B2 level in 2.5 months. I did it not with vocab lists but by existing and doing all of my tasks exclusively in the new language (conversing at meals, family outings, playing with neighborhood kids, etc.). By acquiring almost all new vocab exclusively in context, I memorized it without an insane amount of effort. It was my life for an entire summer. Unfortunately, adults with jobs and kids don't have the luxury to set aside life for such a task, so I always encourage others to seek out immersion opportunities early on if they're serious about language learning.

I took a "2 months of holiday" by not learning French at all, after 1 year of French intensive class (25 hours/weekdays)... plus DELF B1 & B2 *sigh I still watch French films/series/youtube videos and see French memes everywhere, but I took a step back from "intense study". Because I don't want to feel overwhelmed, I want to enjoy French and use it unconsciously.

When you return to your favorite children's movie as an adult and realize some jokes went over head

So from my understanding I just read and absorb and watch the language as much as I can and I can learn a lot just from that

Think about how many songs you heard as a child, over and over again, especially on TV in commercials. You did not understand all the words, but you can not help but retain them since they are saved in your subconscious mind. I am using songs in Norwegian to help me learn. It is fun, not boring.

'Aight, I'm gonna listen to disney songs in Icelandic now

The language is already there. We just have to discover it, imitate it and assimilate it (internalize it). I always would try to learn phrases in context and apply them immediately. Instead of learning just the word December, for example, I would write phrases which are important to me. Christmas is on December 25th. I was born on April 17th. Everything in context. I would pay close attention to the sentences natives used and imitate the structure, accent and intonation. I always would write entire sentences so I'd also learn the grammar simultaneously. Children spend immense hours exposed to the language. They are also tested constantly in the language during many years of school. As a self-taught language learner, we have to be very pro-active and creative a learning environment.

It's cool to hear that my habits with music are actually pretty good for learning! I just thought it was good for combating my auditory processing issues (apparently it's an ADD/ADHD problem) which makes it hard to understand words at times. I've been listening to Japanese music for years but in the last three or so months since I picked up German I can hear a lot of words even if I don't know them.

Dude, thank you so much for recommending troll hunters. Just started watching it in Spanish and it’s perfect. Honestly a pretty damn great show.

I been using tv and music to learn German i was able to pick up a few words here and their. But i'm gonna keep at it as it seems easier for me to learn a new language by listening to the language for about 2 hours a day.

We should compile a list of kids' books as resources for language learners hahahah. Thanks for the video, I'm embarking on my journey with my fourth language (German) and I have found this, great video.

Fascinating... Thanks for all the great info.

I generally read children's books. With Estonian, I'm doing like that.

I really recommend watching and listening to kids songs/rhymes in your target language if you're an absolute beginner. It's awesome for comprehensive input. Not only do they increase your vocab, but they give you a vague sense of the grammar in that language. Directly relating the words to pictures helps tremendously, instead of using your native language to connect to your target language. Like he said, they're repetitive and help us to comprehend better.

I'm a native Dutch speaker. I learned English from a young age in school but I was always at a higher level then they would teach in class. How did I do it? I have no idea. All I did was game in English and talk to English people in game and watch English RU-vid. But how did I learn English from that? I truly don't know. Now I'm learning Korean. And I find myself learning on purpose. While with English I was never learning on purpose. So I think I should try to recreate what I did with English.

You just gave me a reason to watch my favorite episodes of my favorite anime over and over again. Thank you.

Tack så mycket! Allt detta är värt att begrunda.

I get motivation to learn my target language from your videos, thank you !

Thanks. I really like this approach. I've been keeping a journal in French using Google translate. I write the English sentence then copy the translation while I listen to it pronounced and repeat that. I write about the woodyard I manage so a lot of repeat phases come up each day. Some days there's new phases that come in when something out of the norm happens. I kept this up for three months each day and I noticed a lot of recognition of the spoken language when I listened to French programs. I do that quite a bit too, for example guitar lessons. Since I know guitar when I listen to a lesson in French the subject is familiar and though I don't understand everything I pick up on some of it. Thanks.

Adding on to acting like a child, a great tip that helps a lot is to watch kids’ shows in your target language. I watched Arthur in French when I was learning it and following along with the plots were effortless.

Im 15 and I watch Chinese children shows with my little sisters who are 3 and 4. Its like they repeat the words they like. It's entertaining to be honest

The way he set of those languages books behind him, good point.

Brilliant! Thank you friend.

Awesome video! Thank you!

my best friend and I are starting to learn Dutch together I'm 15, and they're 16 gonna see how far we get with this kinda stuff, and learn all these tips to learn it quicker and easier! wish us luck!

I’ve been trying to understand movies in my target language, even tho Im able to understand fast podcasts to an extent of 95% , movies tend to be way harder, because of mumbling, therefore changing the frequency of the sounds, like matt says. The thing is, I always watch without subtitles, and when im not able to differentiate the sounds , i rewatch at least 3 times with maximum focus, and then i turn on the subs to see what i missed, then I turn it off and try to this time catch the sounds that I initially missed. Although its been working, I cant tell if the process of watching with substitles and searching for the sounds is helping, or just the fact that im increasing my active listening(if thats even doable haha!) just thought about sharing, love your enthusiasm about languages, its great! wish i had found this community earlier ;)

Great vid and great point about not worrying whether or not certain words are useful or not! The amount of time you spend worrying or strategizing on what to learn, could have just been spent learning it. Good channel Subbed.

Thanks, my friend. Cheers!

This is one of the smartest tips, the very best advice I've ever heard on learning a second language.

This is the only video that explain in detail way how to learn a language like a kid

2:44 I couldn't agree more. I decided to learn French recently so I set all my devices to the language. I learned the days of the week and words like tomorrow solely through seeing when my assignments for school were due on Google Classroom. I hadn't looked at a single wordlist.

"don't remorize random words" M8 that depends on the goal, my goal for Vietnamese is to understand music and translate live, it's just about starting to come together If your goal is to speak to someone to work in the language I think days of the week, numbers and stuff related to the job would be best If it's just an interest go with what you're interested in

This is one of your best videos Lamont, very good advice here. I need to quit wasting so much time on DuoLingo and start focusing more on books and video. I'm close (I think) to breaking through to a level in which I can finally start enjoying "real" content. You video on Bookmate was great as well...I think the hardest part of learning a language is getting over that initial hump and getting to a point where you can start consuming content that doesn't bore you to death. Maybe that would make a good RU-vid video, "How to break through a language"....just a suggestion. Keep up the great work!

honestly a proper channel

thanks, helps a lot....

Thanks for this video, it really helped! I started to speak Russian when I was 3-4 years old, I learned them through cartoons. Like you said, I watched the same episodes many times. My third language is English, which I started to learn at school, but I really started to speak and understand after watching videos on RU-vid. I'm now learning French and since you are as well, can you give me some advice?

Watching my 5 kids' language development has always been my favorite. I love language, and watching them memorize things like this, and correct themselves is so fun. A couple of days ago, my 4 year old said to me that "If I say, 'I don't not want it,' that would mean I do want it!". I live seeing kids figure things out like that. :). My kids all love audiobooks, and my 9 year old has a bigger vocabulary than i do, because he uses English words all the time that he learned in context from some audiobook.

Totally agree with the children's books. Shortly after hitting the intermediate level in Russian I dove straight into the children's tales, not only because of their inherent potency for language learning but also they give so many insights into the culture. Aside from each story clearly extolling the traits they find important, there's an instant emotional connection when you bring them up in conversation as most of them have read these stories in their childhood too. Most of the time the vocabulary's also quite nuanced, to nurture imagination. I like to say I'm a child in the Russian language =)

I love this guy approach to truth.

On this moment, I'm learning the Russian language and every day I watch some Russian Miffy on RU-vid. It's really fun. Especially when you recognize more and more words.

I am learning to write and read Japanese and putting most of my focus on that so that I can read stories and build up my vocab through that and videos

This is so interesting. I started learning English around 17-18 and got my C2 certificate by age 22. Now I want to learn another language and I don't even remember how I did it the first time around lmao

there are three main takeaways for me here. memorization permutations repeated watching/reading of insert media and with all these, they are things that matter to you, and things that you enjoy.

Hi... thank you it was very good 1- almost all thing kids do help them learning 2- stop memorizing words but books or songs or ...that you like and enjoy 3- it's very necessary to repeat them .... read that book over and over again and kid books is very good and full of words we may haven't heard before kids may don't understand the meaning and don't search for words that is useful for them they just learn all of that and it's not waste of time it may be useful for u one day [however when we use something we like so we don't think about waste of time i guess ] did i understand it well?

As a developmental psychologist, and a learner of foreign languages, this is an interesting view that never occurred to me. (Although, I would add to you point, that most of what children do from birth helps their language learning - not just from 2 - as the non-verbal communication cues they get from others, helps them learn to respond, and adults talking to them, greatly helps their vocabulary later on).

Here's something I picked up, as an Australian you sound very different from most other English speakers, as a kid I watched a lot of American movies, shows, and other stuff, cause it was aired here. I soon picked up on the different ways they pronounced words and so in my everyday speech now I will sometimes say it in an American or even British accent, cause of the exposure I had to it as a kid.

Thanks! I will learn some songs! but not lists

as native german i learned dutch in one month. and i know i learned it very well because i had to write scientific papers and communicate on a high level in dutch after this month. so its actually possible.

I remember playing word games a lot as a young child, such as wordsearches and seeing how many words I could make using just the letters from one long word. I was read to a lot and also read books by myself. I have fond memories of 'Roger Red-Hat' and 'Jennifer Yellow-Hat' etc. Not to mention writing short stories. Once upon a time....

I pretty much always have octonauts playing in the background of my day to day life in spanish and if im bored ill watch encanto for the quabillionth time in spanish and you absolutly start to see the difference in your understanding

An audiobook read by David Tennant? That's good stuff

Thanks

I would really love to translate your videos, would that be possible? they're amazing and have helped me a lot :) thanks in advance

finally! a no BS method.

You can combine grammar study with memorisation in context. If I'm studying a pattern like, say, possessive pronouns, I'll gather together some useful vocab I want to learn and make a story that works the pattern to death. It can either be an outrageous mnemonic story, or a useful "language island" that will come up regularly when I'm taking to natives. Then I learn it off by heart till I can recite it at conversational speed. It's very helpful to use the techniques actors have developed when they memorise lines. They don't use brute-force rote learning. Instead they follow the thread of the story - the logic and emotional development behind it - and they hook the words onto that. And they act it out, with emotion, gestures, and moving from spot to spot as the story dictates. Studies show that simply making the right movement can trigger their memory many years later. This form of multi-sensory learning helps create strong recall. And it's fun - beats massive flashcard decks any day of the week...

Love this video. So true! My kid grew up bilingual and she makes mistakes and brings words from one language to another but in the end she gets it right. I don't really correct her, I just make sure that she hears the right word more often when I hear her make a mistake frequently. I'm not a native English speaker and my kid learned English in daycare from her New Zealandic teachers. I spoke with her occasionally out of fun as a baby. And they said, she was by far the kid who had the least issues with understanding them, sentence structure and pronunciation. We've lived 3 mo in Sweden now and she also does well with the language. Now that we don't have English daycare anymore, I will speak English with her. No, I don't give a crap about whether or not I'm perfect. I did my CIII test and I see languages like sewing. Sewing helps me to save money and do something cool everyday! Am I a master seamstress/fashion designer? Nope. But I'm still capable of making my own clothes and I don't give a rat's buttocks about the level a pro seamstress is at. And mostly, I don't need her permission to teach my kid some decent sewing. However, my problem is, I want to really level up my English and I'm at the point that I'm just not getting better. I can say everything I want in English, but I want to do it in a more sophisticated way. If you have any tips on that, I would love to hear about your approach.

My son would also like to know how kids learn languages so fast. We spent a whole year in Germany when he was six. He went to a German school. He learnt zero German.

I think you are wrong. Children learn lists of words in school as they are growing up, starting in the 1st grade. They learn the days of the week and months in a list.

I'm 11 and learning Japanese and ive been learning for a couple months and i know atleast 10 kanji all hiragana and about half katakana

What should I use so I can learn a language like a baby?

When I was around 6 or 7 I would watch Frozen over and over and over. I was obsessed and I still remember most of the lyrics to “let it go” after not seeing the movie in years lol. I’m saving my money to get a manga I like in German (the language I want to learn) and I plan on reading it over and over too

4:27 "I read a book called, 10 Ways to Destroy Your Child's Imagination." I didn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes after hearing this part 😂😂 It just killed me 😂

years ago i started to watch german chanel for kids without knowing the language. i didnt study it also. then i stopped and forgot about it, but when one year ago i decided to learn german, got the motivation, i found out how easier it was for me than for all my friends whos learning german with me. i guess thats because i already had an experience of listening the language for a pretty long time and i understand it better intuitively. I also know some phrases and words i never learned, thats really cool thing.

I learned 3 languages in school formally, reading, writing, and speaking. I learned 2 more at home because it's what my grandparents and my parents spoke. Now I'm trying to learn another language and I'm noticing that with the 2 languages I speak at home I learned them basically by just hearing my family speak it and them telling me how to say things for years and years and years. I wasn't taught grammar, I can't write or make a blog in those languages but I speak fine and native speakers understand me. I'm trying this approach in my 6th new target language and see where it gets me in 6 months. I'm also trying the gold list method for every phrase or sentence I would like to say in the target language. I just hope the translator is correct LOL.

omg, i did the same thing as a kid!! i can’t remember what book it was, but my mom said i would “read” the same book, no matter what book i actually had. i’m still pretty good at picking up stuff that rhymes and memorizing from repetition, always have been. why have i not been listening to audiobooks on repeat in korean? what a revelation lol

I have a pretty perfectionistic personality, sometimes bordering on obsessive thought-patterns, so my languages are always improving, because I hate making mistakes and usually remember them and subsequently correct them in my mind as they happen. I live in Denmark and my partner is Danish, but my native language is Faroese, so I speak Danish pretty much all of the time. He usually corrects any mistakes I make in pronunciation, but my grammar skills are above that of most native Danes, simply because I really focus a lot on using "proper" Danish. I think my English is pretty close to a native level as well, if I may say so myself... lol :P What really helped me with my English was actually playing World of Warcraft in my teen years. xD

as a 13 year old, i do a bunch of this stuff when learning icelandic, i always find the best way to learn a language is hearing and seeing as much of it as possible

I am twelve and learning Japanese 😊Good luck in Swedish

Im twelve but this still helped me

I need alll the repetition in my language learning.

these days I'm learning french from scratch and it's hard to save an entire phrase it's easy to save it word by word . what do you recommend

Heyo mr. guy! I’m danish and when I was learning english as a younger child I would learn how to pronounce, speak by videos, and with roblox (stupid ik) I would learn how to spell, It wasnt hard considering It was just using the same letters as from the danish alphabet but minus the 3 special letters we have (æ, ø, å). That way it was easier to type, I would figure out what “know” meant because other people used it more than “i no” so I knew I was making some mistake. But now I want to learn japanese, I can do the same listening seeing expressions and all, but. My issue is. How will I be able to SPELL japanese? They are using completely different letters, I have to learn the japanese alphabet before getting to yk speak it, and with the scripts in 3, hiragana, katakana, and kanji (sorry I spelt some wrong) it’s gonna be really hard for me. Especially when Kanji is the hardest. How am I gonna get to learn the alphabet? Is there any way? Any tips or something? I have very strong will to do this so I need help on this.

I watch oui oui to get familiar with french sounds

Because children can watch the same tv shows 50 times and i am amazed how focus they are when they watvh tv

which children's books on english, spanish or german do you or anyone recommend?.

Eh. I was required, as a child, to memorize lists of things; vocabulary, poetry, geography, authors, grammar rules, etc, etc, etc. It vastly improved my abilities in these areas. It's imperative to do, both as a child and an adult language learner. It's just that adults have a choice and they are generally too lazy to do it.

Just one question should I watch shows in my target language as for the subtitles, or should I have them turned off or in my native language?

There is a difference between children's brains and adult's brains. Children's brains, up until around the age of 5 or 6 are geared toward learning and memory. They're like sponges, they soak up everything. Adult's brains are geared towards honing. That is, to let go what isn't essential and to strengthen what is essential, like specialised language for careers. For adult learners to get the best results from both, do everything you said, but spend more time focusing on what is of particular interest. Still read the kid's books for fun. Still watch the movies for fun, and to develop a sound loundscape in the mind of the new language, but put the focused energy into a passion, baking, history, reading about stamp collecting, etc.

i just wanted to add more evidence that kids do learn faster in terms of language which is my sister and i. we're both born and raised in the ph but were exposed to a lot of english television and books which resulted in us learning english first before our mothertongue. i remember my mom and dad telling us their experience with my sister and i when we were kids saying that they could barely understand us when we spoke english to each other (cause at that time they could only understand bits of english) lol. gotta give prompts to our parents tho cause if it weren't for them buying all those english books and cd's, we wouldn't be able to speak fluent english. and ofc we learned filipino along the way cause we were then exposed to a public school (i was 6y/o and my sister was 8y/o) where most of our classmates spoke tagalog/bicol.

7:11 so is the Rattlin' Bog a Children's song now?

Your son is language goal 😂💗

I got an advert for Duolingo before this video... 😂

But kids do memorize the names of the months. I remember doing it in school

"2-16 year olds" me who's 16 in October: time to become fluent in every language.

Why are the bookshelves so empty :'(

I have a question, it better to watch shows and movies with subtitles and if yes, should they be in my target language or in my native language?

That's the exact reason I use Duolingo; despite the fact that I've unlocked all the levels or lessons in it (yes you can do that) the first or second day after I dowloaded it. I know it's so easy and I'm probably in a more advanced level than it but to get a crown you have to repeat the same lesson so many times...rather irkingly so many. But it's that repeating I want, my knowledge in french may exceed it but that same knowledge is slow, non-efficient and it'd rather take me so long to say a legitimate sentence. It's like Dingluo is polishing that knowledge. Does this mean that I recommend the app for sb who is starting out in a language, NO NOT AT ALL. In my opinion, rather tarting by a proper grammar book, which should also contain exercises or you want benefit a teenzy bit from it, is much much better than starting from scratch by Duolingo, or maybe you can use it as a practice tool, in that case only, I'd reaaaally recommend it.

My problem isn't pride - my favourite book series is CHERUB (check them out for French) which is aimed at 8-12 year olds, but it's that repetition is boring and the mind drifts.

I’m here because I’m learning Korean before I move to Korea in a few months and absolutely nothing is sticking. So I’m looking for a new method. Might have Train to Busan on repeat for the next few weeks lol

Love Troll Hunters. I would comb my daughters hair to it.