Lýdia Machová - Ten things polyglots do differently [EN] - PG 2017 

mgspunk Thank you!!

thank you

mgspunk Merci beaucoup! :-)

Thank you, saved me 40 minutes

Is not the polyglots' gathering an instance of paralel-multi-lingual learning when her focus jumps among her tongues? It is about focus favoritism. Naturally one tongue is the winner of that focus. The BS is in her excluding learning using methods, materials and contents among or between our L2 to Ln tongues where L1 is the tongue of the environment. Also No 6. has its mavericks such as Emanuele Marini who when beginning a new tongue, habituates himself with passive methods' boost.

Agree! I love listening to her! She's self-confident, skilled with a positive and pleasent presence. 👍👍👍

@@Tina-wk2pr How odd. I found her to be condescending, not engaging and a little full of herself. I speak 4 languages and I was looking forward to this talk but as much as I wanted to, I just couldn't watch the whole thing. English was the first language I learned and it is the language that I use everyday. It is true that you have to make the process fun. Music has been a huge way for me to get involved in a language.

@@letsgomario I know, right?! I agree with your opinion about the speaker. She also seems to be more concerned with quantity over quality. My native tongue is English. My language-learning goal is communication, but also for the purpose of understanding nuance, culture, idioms, expression of emotion, etc. Music is helpful for me, as well. Pictures also help me. I often label items in my home to help with natural identification of characters instead of letters.

@@laraspecter5653 she had a ton of examples of different styles different people use, as opposed to most presenters who just relate what works for them as if its self-evident that it should work for everybody. Even if her style was unappealing to me (which it wasn't), I would have wanted to watch the whole thing. I think maybe some people are threatened by such a confident Eastern European female.

I agree! I like her self confidence. This is my third time watching this video.

Happy to help!

@@Languagementoring Most of those so-called polyglot aren't polyglots at all. They're just attention seekers who are trying to show off as a kind of special breed.

@@kishanchali8752 That’s true but Lydia is a real one

You want to know a language that will give you depth whereby you'll be able to figure out hidden meanings? Classical Arabic. Arabic has diacritics and dots, but in the past, they used to write Arabic without diacritics and dots. If you learn Arabic, then learn it first with dots and diacritics, but if you're done, then go to the next level by understanding Arabic without diacritics and dots. This way you will maximize your depth. Your contextual comprehension will become better. Why is this? For example; without dots, the Arabic B, T and TH look exactly the same. So if you read without dots, you'll have to figure out the context by digging. It's like a code language. A secret language. Lots of letters will resemble each other without dots in Arabic. Classical Arabic without dots makes you dig, and this is good for creativity.

thanks, that's a good summary!

Gratias ago!

+meusisto Latine scio?!?! Optime! Nostrorum non multi sunt.

Ita est, rex Keegster, latine loqueris! Latine etiam ego loquor. Magnam laetitiam mihi dat scire te latine loqui posse.

perquam bene! :) Obiter, si mecum Latine loqui uellis me offendere possis in Discord aut Skype.

How very, perfectly, true!

AWESOME

Do you have suggestions for fanfic sites?

Rebbeca Chunn watpad

Hi, what is fan fiction? (I'm too lazy to google it)

How?Do u learn vocabulary with writing down them somewhere?Can u explain it, please?)

Ha!

Jajajajaja

😂😂😂 I'm laughing in 3 languages.

ROFL nice one! Seriously, i barely could bare watching it once...

I've watched friends 9 times in english (and I didn't even know english, that's how I learned it), and now I'm planning to watch it in german. all people have different tastes, can you guys believe it? for me 10th circle of hell is "game of thrones"

Wozitoya Dude it is so wonderful and encouraging to me that you are seventy years young and still want to improve the languages you speak and I believe you will improve. All the best to you.

Wozitoya Dude, I'm a 17 yrs old Kenyan girl and wish to tell you that we have a similar goal. So far I'm conversant with 4 languages but still thirsty for more e.g. this language I'm typing with, I learnt it. It is not my mother tongue. Success!!!!!!!👍

My rule of thumb: polyglots are those who speak 4 or more languages.

I applaud you! I am several years older than you and have had a challenge in learning only Spanish well (I am a native English speaker). The older you get the worse your short term memory becomes. So eventually you will forget as much as you learn. At that point you will be at a Mexican standoff thereby going one step forward and one step back. Good luck!

all the best

Great story :-)

very courageous ! Why did you not apply for a grant or a scholarship with the German DAAD ? The problem with the crucial German language lies in its history and the dialects. The only persons who speak well German are the teachers and professors. I taught to Thai administrators German and used the method which no German teaching course entails: old songs (Volkslieder). Singing gives you a feeling of a language's melody. Each has got one - more or less articulate. In the USA there is a program to teach children born with grave brain damage. They never learn to read and write, but by singing a text memory is created and that helps in the long run to speak. In my long career I came to Tehran and observed that there are groups with no academic background, mostly selling food and goods. They all speak fabulously 5 to 8 languages. So, I guess, there are genetic patterns which help learning a language. I wait for a respective genetic infusion letting me speak 30 languages without any accent.

bemdav Great!

Maith an fear! ;)

Well done. Are you and your family still living in Ireland? We are blessed to have such a beautiful country.

Same for other countries. There's a huge underlying problem in the languages that are taught in schools around the world, because majority of them are "taught by the book" and do not represent real world languages. And sometimes even mistranslating things , because of missed cultural contexts. As a native Russian and English speaker it pains me every time listening to those translations , even at the highest levels (Putin translations are also very vague and are contextually wrong alot of the times ) they miss alot of stuff... There's also this famous Russian evening show called "Vecherniy Urgant" and I will never forget how some "professional" translator from that show translated one of the most famous Arnold S. quotes "get to da choppa" as "get to the chapel" in Russian, I was facepalming so hard🤦‍♂️...

Totally agree

@Elielson da Rocha she is from Slovakia :-)

+Tibo Rikk Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, good taste is in the tongue of the beholder, fun is in the eye of the beholder. What is your trash is my treasure.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zVjlRMGVV74.html

Amazing. Kazi safi sana

Funnily enough, so was I. 7 years of french and I still can't carry a simple conversation without a great deal of effort and concentration! Yet my accent fools most into believing I'm a native speaker, which gets me in WAY over my head, TOO OFTEN!!😳🤦‍♀️

I think learning a language in school most of the time doesn't achieve great results. I did French for 5 years and Irish for 10 and I am still at only beginner level. The difference is that in school you have like 8 different subjects with homework from each so time and brain energy is scarce. I was never introduced to things like Duolingo or encouraged to use resources other than my books. Now I am doing my masters so only have 2 subjects at a time and much less homework. I am learning German for the past few months because I want to get a job in Germany when i graduate (bf is German). Now I have huge motivation and I already know more German than the other 2 languages. Being fluent in Polish helps also because some words are similar.

Thank you for your kind words! :)

If you speak a Romance language, it will be easy to learn its siblings.

@@danielblue4460 Definitely.

My parents pounded a few things into my head!

Che buono! Stai imparando l’idioma con il modo più efficace! Good luck!

I learned a lot of Bengali online and in chatrooms for two years

Yes . But not everyone has that talent / ability . You probably have good music learning skill too.? It's a gift .

Audio CDs do wonders here. I started learning Spanish a month ago, and the very first learning I did was using Michel Thomas' Spanish courses. In those courses, he stresses pronunciation heavily, so I tried my best to model my speech exactly as how he instructed. I really enjoy his method for getting an overall feeling of the language, but I believe that pretty much any audio CD where you listen and repeat can be used to achieve the goal you mention. Then, you can practice your pronunciation more by reading out loud in your target language.

Luiz Carlos Sá excellent. You are an inspiration to do that at your age. I'm naturally no good with languages

Bom trabalho na força de vontade, eu ainda consigo ver muitos erros na tua escrita e com todo respeito acredito que tu estejas um tanto quanto distante da fluencia, não falo isso como forma de te desmotivar, mas como a Lydia mesmo falou no video: "Poliglotas não tem medo de errar porque é corrigindo-os que ficamos fluentes". Não deixe que te digam que está velho demais pra aprender, não existe essa de gente mais velha ter mais dificuldade, todo mundo tem dificuldade principalmente quando estão aprendendo a primeira lingua estrangeira. Está aí Steve Kauffmann para provar, ele tem 65 anos, salvo engano, e é um dos maiores poliglotas, inclusive aprendeu russo aos 60 anos para acabar quebrar esse paradigma. Um abraço e boa sorte aprendendo Ingles.

Parabéns. É bom continuar apesar da edade.

do you really think I will take the time to make my youtube posts grammatically correct?

I'll just correct you to help you (I'm a non-native speaker). *I can learn (after can you don't need "to" for the infinitive). *fluent. Good job. Keep going! Your English is very good. I'm sure you're going to be fluent very soon.

J Babb or "can you give me your flashlight for moment? ", in Slovakian

:D I think the photographer couldn't understand English and was bored to death!

Jeff most unprofessional photographer I’ve ever seen.

Don't mind your age. It doesn't matter so much. Most important things in learning in general are: be fascinated about what you learn and want to know it at every price (feel it) Learn when you relaxed and rested. Drink a lot of water. Eat light, nutritional food. Don't distract yourself with thinking about some other stuff during learning (concentrate on your learning). Have a fresh air (open window from time to time). Think in a language you learn, talk to yourself in that language. During learning listen to music that synchronize brain's lobes - when your lobes are in perfect balance you absorb everything much faster. Enjoy :)))

I apologize in advance grandpa, you're old, not dead. That dude Lucas learned a language in one hour!

@@billykranberry6077 - he is not old, ok ? I modern society many people in their 50-ties look and are in better condition than those in their 20ties and 30ties :P

@@billykranberry6077 - typical answer of pseudoscientist, like you. Real scientist is open-minded - you are not. I am not going to waste my time as you have no the foggiest idea what I am taking about but you necessarily want to be right. Ego. And you are not the first person with such an attitude, so again - I am not going to waste my time with you anymore.

@@billykranberry6077 I'm 77 and I'm learning French and loving it. I took it in school years ago, but I really understand it now. Listening to podcasts and practicing with DELF exam material has helped. Has my rate of learning slowed down? Yep. But it's certainly possible. You can do it.

Marek Cupák By the way, learning a language is very similar to learning playing a musical instrument, there are many common points.

I was learning piano and guitar both without any structured focus at the same time ... which she says the polyglots do not do

well some people may learn 2 languages at once but it'll definitely slow down your progress

Libor Supcik kaufman and lucia do, but the others at the conference don’t

Io parlo italiano e spagnolo Yo hablo italiano y español I learned Italian and Spanish at the same time, Italian took me a year only and I can converse. It just depends on your method and preferences

+lfmb4real Tim Ferriss style, "Give me the apple, i want the apple, he ate the apple, she has the apple, they gave me the apple, we have the apple, who has the apple?, it is my apple".

I should've did this!!!!! My method was treating other languages like it's English and adding it to my English vocabulary so I'll learn 10 words a day and I'll put it in a sentence (I only do that with nouns & verbs) overtime it gotten stressful. Im definitely doing this method

@Jonas Felipe Modena de morais The thing with those is that they are not really spoken, but written.

I actually find that listening to people speaking with accents is a good way to learn a language though. For example; if you listen to a native Japanese speaker and you aren't very familiar with the language it can be incredibly difficult to decipher what they're saying and figure out where a word ends and another one begins. If you speak English and hear native English speaker speak Japanese with an accent it's suddenly a lot easier to relate to because they'll typically speak slower and clearer and pronounce words in a way you're more used to. Which is not to say that you shouldn't try to sound like a native but learn the language first. I don't mind accents myself though.

If you want to sound like a native, that's great! Definitely a valid goal. But for me, personally, it's primarily about understanding and being (easily) understood; everything else I consider expendable, unless you're a spy or something and need to blend in lest you end up killed. :p

1mo11m1k

That smugness gets pretty tedious. First, I loath to be around people who mistake curiosity for a lack of discipline. Second, dabbling helps relieve boredom and can fend off burn-out. When I stayed hyperfocused on one or two languages, I always got burnt out. I would get sick of studying for months, sometimes years, I was stuck at B2 level in those languages and couldn't understand why I couldn't improve, and it was costing me valuable time I cannot get back now. Today I study multiple languages and dabble in others and I don't get burnt out. It's enabled me to improve my advanced languages beyond what I could before and get past basic level in others simply because I'm not getting burnt out and not going for long stretches without studying or maintaining my languages. My progress is slower in each languages but so what? I doing it because I love learning languages, not to impress people like those at these conferences.

@@languagewitch6442 The problem isn't dabbling in languages if that's what makes you happy, the problem is the sheer amount of people who claim they speak 8 languages or something and only know some basic phrases in the language they claim to be fluent in. I see no problem in learning whichever way works best for you, I do find people who claim to speak a bunch of languages but can usually speak 1 or 2 fluently and a tiny bit of the other ones tedious and beyond pretentious. There are plenty of examples of this on youtube, I can see a video of a woman I've seen like this who claims she speaks 12 languages in my recommended videos literally right now. It's obvious to the native speakers of those languages that she doesn't actually speak most of them. Nothing wrong with not being fluent yet or taking a while to learn a language, but the fact that some people are so disingenuous in bragging about speaking languages they obviously don't speak is absurd. I once met a girl who claimed she could speak French and German and it turned out she could only understand some basic medical terminology because she worked at a hospital, and she couldn't even come up with a complete sentence or two. Why lie? To seem ~worldly or some such nonsense? This isn't tedious? I very much doubt the woman in this video learned languages so she could impress people at conferences, especially since she already speaks a couple of languages simply because she comes from another part of the world and her first language is obviously not English. Especially since she helps people in her country to learn English and other languages, which they do so can get jobs in the west. I'm familiar with these programs. Yeah, I'm sure she does all of this and helps people just so she can brag about knowing multiple languages at conferences. You think she doesn't do it because she loves learning languages? There's no need to get so defensive, especially when the "shade" of the original comment wasn't really directed at you to begin with. But since we're being honest, Anglo or western people who want to base their whole identity on knowing languages because they think that makes them seem more interesting and go around calling themselves "language witches" seem oddly smug to me too. I simply LOATH to be around people who try to base their identity on the fact that they like learning languages, I also loath to be around western people who treat languages from Other regions of the world as obscure/rare gems to collect and brag about knowing, and these people are increasingly common.

@@amaliab6682 A lot of envy and frustration in these comments! 'Just so she can brag about knowing multiple languages?' I don't think so - it's also her profession (interpreter etc.) Try not to be so resentful just because someone is successful in acquiring languages seemingly easily.

@@bertsanders7517 Your reading comprehension seems to be a bit off, try directing your comment to the person directly above me, they seem bitter because some people genuinely learn languages instead of just dabbling? They're the one who called the woman in the video "smug", not me. I didn't say the woman in this video learns languages just to brag about it, I said the exact opposite. I was raised in a multilingual family of immigrants so I have no reason to be resentful about people speaking many languages and being able to learn other languages fairly easily as a result, because that describes my whole family. It describes a lot of people who speak multiple languages as a result of their experiences (like the woman in the video) and not just treating languages as something to collect. As I said, the issue is not actually learning languages, it's "dabbling" and not doing much else, being able to say a couple of basic phrases and then claiming you're fluent in all those languages. Being able to say "hi my name is" and "how are you" in a language does not mean you speak that language. When I only know the very basics of a language, I don't claim to speak it. This is out of basic respect and common sense. There's no shame in being a beginner, these people can just say that: "I speak this language at a beginner's level". What's so hard about that? What I take issue with is people I've come across who just seem to want to "acquire" pieces of languages so that they can collect tiny bits of other languages and cultures they find "exotic", as if they're collecting pretty rocks. It's embarrassing and it can even be disrespectful. I believe the term for that is "culture vultures". Plenty of people all around the world find this trend obnoxious. So in case you need it spelled out even more clearly for you, here is the point: people can dabble all they want but if you can't actually speak a language, don't claim you do. Simple. I know plenty of people who can actually speak the languages they say they speak, so people learning languages easily is not something I have an issue with. Which is what I said above, and is what the original commenter (Victoria) is also implying with her quote. Therefore I agree with Victoria and I agree with the woman in the video who said "I don't dabble in a bunch of languages" to begin with! Try reading what the other person is saying before giving out life advice.

@@languagewitch6442 She didn't say anything about lack of discipline, you read way too much into that. i think she was just stating a fact. Smugness?

It was a German saying that lol

Germen grammar ist a nightmare like English pronuntiation.

@@bilbohob7179 pronunciation. Spelling is worse!😁🤷‍♀️💞

@@highstandards6226 yeah In English it is the another face of the SAME coin (pronuntiation-spelling) because both differ a lot between them

4 is not a lot

The problem with that method is that you might spend too long on easy material, tho, and it can be very boring, because what interests a child is not what interests an adult.

King Keegster That's true, but you should progress as fast as you can - I've done this, moving on to older children's books and teenage books. But you need other material, too, like newspapers and television.

It's not isolated to just that, children's books are just a starting point. I watch children's tv, listen to the radio, talk to people in the bar, watch other tv shows that look interesting. I just said i felt it was a good starting place. It's helpful to get examples of proper grammar early.

Excuse me, does that take you much time?

I didn't feel that it took much time, while i was in the native country i was able to learn rapidly and had no problem communicating with people. I got to 6 year old speaking level in about 4 weeks. I'm actually going back there next week for 3 months. I'm hoping to get some level of fluency this time.

Hi, from our experience, that often happens, as many of our clients start with a different approach to language learning and end up using those skills to improve other areas of their lives.

Everyone has enough mastery of his own native language

​@@Maria-jt7hu you would be surprised, but where I'm from, a lot of people make mistakes when writing or speaking our own language haha

@@Maria-jt7hu - no, not children who can't speak well yet. And many of people of modern generation who don't read the books they are very poor at their own language....what a pity.

Mimi na ongeza french na korean

It's all about self-confidence. When you are self-confident you seem cleverer than you really are.

Timekeeper? lol

So, you are in a real big four-language mess. I would advise you to put your priorities in order and don´t get lost in words. Focus on really being well understood by one person and not half-understood by more and more.

@@spanixtanspanixtan8757 I don't see that person as a mess. I think them not paying attention to the language shows that they speak it naturally and fluently without having to think too hard. Aka they've acquired the languages rather than just learned them. They don't translate every phrase they hear.

The "don´t translate" myth and the "natural fluency" thing make no sense if you know how the brain areas work, and also about translation itself. But, first of all, think of other persons: if they will understand you perfectly; and avoid the self-centered view. People realize it the hard way when they try to work helping others as interpreters or translators; Then, you have to minding other people´s interests and capabilities, not yours.

@@Nicole3900 I agree with all your points!

also known as Voltaire

I totally don't agree with that. I believe each language is the key to a totally different castle. That's why I learn languages, not to keep getting into the same castle lol

You definitely can give that key to your children, even if you don't have it yourself!

Nikki Diamond-Christudas have you learnt at least one of them by now ? 😂

I will teach you hindi

Здоровенькі були! :)

Hlooo..... I'll help u to learn Hindi nd can u help me to learn english ?

do you really think she can teach anyone any lang. as she seems to think?

She doesn't teach.

She is just a show off

he's not wrong

if I knew a ton of languages I'd be a show off too

Алексей Сильверов. Her pronunciation is accurate, but the accent isn’t perfect.

I speak Portuguese(my native language), Spanish, English, a little bit of Italian(much more I understand than I speak), and I try to learn Arabic language now. At moment, It's my biggest challenge. :D