📲 The app I use to learn languages: bit.ly/3Lp5rpa 🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: bit.ly/3XWPNJi ❓What do you consider more important: vocabulary or grammar? Let me know in the comments!
Hey Steve, what app would you recommend for speaking and expansion for vocab? Would Pimisluer be a good option? Also, should I start reading and listening in my target language? I’m trying to learn Arabic :(( please tell me the books you would recommend!😊
so I was thinking about this the other day myself I’m trying to get Japanese going, and I realize that the big stop is just reading them to start with with all the kana and kanji - I think it took me a long time to realize that I didn’t have to break down and decipher the individual congee before I realized that just memorize the word rather rather than looking up the meaning of the individual kanji individually, I don’t even think Japanese people do that to some extent for some things do they?
I don’t learn the language through the grammar, but I learn the grammar through the language. I see the language in context through sentences, texts and books and through osmosis I see how the grammar works. However, if I only learn grammar, I will never be able to learn the language properly. That is how I learned Mandarin: I would sometimes review the grammar and one should do so from time to time. However, I learned all of the language due to exposure including reading and listening on LingQ. The same applies to any other language: exposure, listening, using. Use it or lose it!
A fine comment, thanks. The comprehensible-input method seems almost too good to be true for people who want to teach themselves without nerdishness or revisiting school methods. Two Bulgarian guys I met told me they learned their perfect English by watching subtitled TV as they grew up. Best wishes!
@@tommybinson being surrounded by the language essentially. Sure, grammar should be known, but the focus should be especially on listening and interaction as hardly any native speakers will notice that the grammar might not be perfect. And that is where I see many people fail, seeing many people not advancing for years in their target language as they don’t do exposure and just go to very theoretical courses instead.
@@tommybinson Interesting, I've heard of children in Africa who learned Hindu by watching Bollywood movies, without subtitles, but just watching thousands of movies, every day.
Totally agree - as a child, we subconsciously identify the patterns of speech without consciously thinking about it! I hope we can all learn like a child 🍼 as adults, too!
This makes so much sense, considering how we learn grammar in our native language. Only after we have a decent vocabulary do we start to pick apart nouns, verbs, sentence structures, etc. And the examples we receive are quite basic so we can really hone our understanding of the grammar itself.
No, we do learn grammar as children without being aware of it. We learn how to join words to construct sentences, the past and future tenses etc without reading the rules in a grammar book.
When I began learning Japanese four years ago, I only read a grammar book once before diving into graded readers and other simple materials. I put all my energy on learning vocabulary. As I progressed to native-level content, I began encountering intricate grammar patterns that I couldn't understand with just a quick dictionary lookup. So I skimmed through all the JLPT grammar, adding every grammar point that thought challenging to Anki and leaving the easy ones. I have since deleted that grammar deck, and now I find reading much more enjoyable. I agree with Steve here that you should not obsess over grammar, but in my opinion there are some grammar patterns that deserve deliberate study.
I have been learning Japanese for about a year and 7 months. I have a hard time with grammar and reading, I only have 4000 words in my anki deck but sometimes I feel like I can't understand basic sentences even with how hard I have been studying. I want to see insight from different learners,should I just keep immersing or maybe there is something wrong.
I think it's also important to recognize that Japanese will take significantly longer than most other languages for a native English speaker, simply due to the lack of commonalities in both the language itself and the culture that each language is a part of. For example, German has a shared root language, many cognates with English (mostly because of the shared root), and has a shared culture with English speakers to a reasonable extent. Japanese simply has too few common points of reference for a native English speaker to pick up as easily as any western languages, and even many more distant ones. Explicit grammar study might help to some extent, but ultimately you just need to spend a lot more time with Japanese than the majority of other languages.
I'm trying this technique with my Italian. I'm working on reading and listening and I already feel that I have a better comprehension. Thanks for all the tips, Steve!
I think that Steve explains the natural process of acquiring a language. We as children first learn to listen, then speak, then write, and that's where grammar comes in, but in an age that we already have enough words in our vocabulary to at least understand the rules, or retrieve examples from our own memories. Maybe learning grammar early as an adult could help us understand the language structure faster, but it may not be as beneficial if our goal is to understand that language at the beginner-intermediate states. In those early stages (and always really), I think words and exposure are the most important things. Grammar is a nice to have.
I noticed for myself it's better to know just one word and then listen a lot and noticing how this word is playing in different situations.. it may be not a word but a phrase etc. i don't use flashcards and stuff like that to grow up my vocabulary, - instead, if i see a new word when i'm reading or watching something, i check its meaning in the dictionary with examples and then it comes to my vocab the most efficiant way. hope it helps someone. thanks for your video you are a great man 🖐
i think flashcards are more usefull the less words you know in the language, learning the top 1000 more frequent words in that language + a list of universal words and sentences you made for yourself: Actions(Verbs), Objects and Places(nouns), Characteristics(adjectives), probably some words will be in both lists, but no problem, i doubt that you can find much more than 600 "universal words" (of course, not counting verbs variations and whatnot)
I couldn’t agree with Steve more . When I started learning English, I focused more in vocabulary rather than grammar. In just learning trough a lot of input, watching movies, tv series, listening to music, podcasts, and so on. And I noticed that I was learning grammar in a natural way. So I acquired the language more easily.
I agree with Steve. I used to regard grammar as highly important when learning a foreign language. But my experience of learning Mandarin has led me to believe that vocabulary, common phrases and common sentence structures are all much more important than studying grammar, especially when time is limited. A short grammar book is all you need, as Steve says.
I think this makes sense. As children, we have to first learn words to begin communicating. We don't study grammar until we've reached grade school. Our parents might correct us beforehand but in general we just aquire words, we start to hear them being used and learn how to apply them. As I'm gaining words, I can start to understand the general concept of things I'm listening to even though I don't know the grammar. I've definitely been taking a more word first approach. It helps to know grammar of course but the issue I run into is not being able t use it because I don't have the vocabulary yet
Words are fairly useless unless one can express them in a grammatically correct manner. This is especially true in highly inflected languages, where learning basic grammar can help us to get the forms of nouns and verbs down. Devaluing grammar seems to be a very American point of view. Americans look at French, Russian, Japanese, etc., as languages, but they think of English as the stuff that dribbles out of your mouth when you open it. So go ahead, memorize words without doing the heavy lifting of learning some grammar. What you'll wind up with is a yard sale of bits and pieces, a little of this and a little of that, but without grammar you'll have a hard time making it stick together.
Hi, I'm Pedro from brazil, and I'm studying English, and French, I study every day, i study a lot at weekends . I want to be a polyglot, fluent in many languages, I want to learn 🇩🇪🇨🇳🇪🇸🇬🇧🇫🇷🇫🇮🇯🇵🇮🇳🇷🇺🇨🇿🇮🇹🇬🇷🇰🇷, For now I'm only studying English and French, but I want to learn German and Spanish soon. -Thank you for your videos Sir. Steve, thank you for your advices.
@@tommybinson Thank you for your comment, i'm pleasure to hear. So try to learn French and Italian, i believe in you . Best wishes from Brazil 🇧🇷 MATE!
@@user-nq6hy2tm2z desculpe, eu esqueci de mencionar o idioma árabe! Mas eu acho o idioma árabe muito bonito, e difícil, e quero sim aprender árabe! Fico feliz em ver alguém estudando a minha língua nativa! O português é sim uma língua com uma gramática difícil,e muitas vezes a pronúncia é difícil, e geralmente se parece um pouco com o Espanhol, por isso existem pessoas que acabam confundindo, mas não desanime continue estudando o português, você não irá se arrepender!
@@Username_45379 muito lindo! Para mim acho que a gramatica da lengua portuguesa e um poco facil porque eu falo espanhol, mas a pronúncia voce tem razão e muito dificíl
Like mr Linssen, teacher Latin and Greek, on Bernardinus College used to say: "Not learn by heart, but recognize the forms," especially the in case of the verbs.
Great advice! My method is along your lines. I listen to pop songs in my target language (Russian), find the lyrics, and learn words from the songs. For instance a song I love has the word “birds”. I like birds, so I learn birds in the target language. I also translate the songs, create the lyrics phonetically, and then sing along. Lots of repetition, but I love learning this way!
that's actually a big struggle of mine with my German learning. for A2 level, we are asked to masterise all the cases perfectly; and many other grammar rules. While I understand that, I feel (maybe I am wrong and I welcome advices!!!) that I need more knowledge in vocabulary, verbs, expressions, instead of cases. I know many people who speak German as a third or four language, they speak quite easily and still make mistakes with cases quite often and have difficulties with that. However, they can have a full conversation with native speakers !
I had an old neighbour who managed to learn German through traditional means, by studying for years and years. Most people don't manage to learn German that way. I also know a bunch of people who *only* focused on acquiring the language by interacting with people. Surprisingly they generally are able to communicate reasonably well after about six months (when they themselves come from a Germanic or at least a European language). German grammar is complex. I have close to zero idea about how the case rules should be laid out, despite having had German in school. On the other hand I learned to read German just fine by simply.. reading German. Back to my old neighbour.. he's the *only* one I personally know (or knew, he's passed) who actually learned German by the "traditonal" way (studies based on case tables and grammar). But wait.. I suspect the reason he actually managed that was because his great interest (and later, job) was in science and research, and that was all written in German at the time. So he probably got his real learning from input, not from grammar studies.
Steve, I totally agree with you. I couldn't understand even only one word of native speakers when I came to Canada though my grammar was pretty good. Then I spared lots of time for listening and reading to learn new words. As time went on, I noticed that I learned tons of new words, and I was able to understand the context. It is impossible to understand or speak well without knowing enough words. Yes, grammar is crucial however, we also need to know enough words. Additionally, to be able to use grammar, we have to have enough vocabulary.
Yeah. It make sense. I feel like a detective when I read some text and don't know the word. I'm so happy when I have to find the word and create new sentence with it and learn. There's that magic of discovery 🤔🥳
My thinking on grammar hass evolved a bit over time. I now think that one should have a reasonable grammatical framework for each language you know. It is really helpful to have the basic terms for parts of speech for instance. With fairly good language you can look at an utterance and work out what is a noun, verb, adjective and so on. If you're good at reading in a flowing way you don't need this and that's great. Every now and then you may be stuck and this will help. I take it as read you will know how many genders your language has. Also how many cases. I do not ever favour learning paradigms - by all means print them somewhere on your grammar book. By all means know ther terms used for verbs - subjunctive, imperative,, indicative, how the past tenses work (continuous past etc) and some awareness of irregular verbs. This doesn't all have to be instruction. A basic dialogue can convey a lot of the information. [[ Are you going shopping today? No I went yesterday. Oh I see, you've already been, Did James go with you? No, he only goes once a week]]. For highly irregular forms I don't think it's a problem to point it out. For the irregular verb to go in English the explanation is quite complex and will lose a lot of students but exposure to it in real life will do the job. If a gramatical feature is present in your L1 and L2 not much inatruction is needed (the genitive case for a German learning Koine Gree for instance). If the feature is very different in L1 and L2 then some exposure can help and set phrase can help. I think my main point is knowing the overall framework is more important than knowing rules. As one reads and listens the categories will populate in one's mind without conscious learning. I don't therefore advocate zero grammar, rather as a language learner one grows in grammatical awareness from language to the next, allowing one's implicit grammar (what you know without knowing you know it) to grow accordingly. And in this setting words are far more important than grammar, in my view. Words in a sentence will almost always generate a working grammar.
I've been using LingQ to learn Japanese for a little while now. Using textbooks that teach grammar and vocabulary felt incredibly slow and boring. However, using LingQ, I really felt like I made more progress, not focusing on grammar. Right from the get-go with LingQ 101, I was really happy that I could read and understand 90% of it, and even it stated to not focus too much on grammar. It really does seem to come naturally the more you read and listen.
I agree. After learning the very basic grammar of the target language, focusing on vocabularies and exposure to the language should expedite the mastery of the language. Learning basic grammar first only helps because we can compare and contrast with our already-learned language(s). But, we mastered our first language without mastering grammar as a child, didn’t we? We don’t need to be obsessed with advanced grammar at the early stage. We will come across with those along the way, and such encounter makes learning more interesting!
I'm studying Japanese, and one thing I'm running into is words that are used in everyday speech vs. words that are used just in writing. I want to read a lot to improve my vocabulary, but sometimes I'll try out a new word during my class, and my teacher will say something like, "Grammatically, that's correct, but we wouldn't use that word in speech. It's only used in writing." I'm reading fiction, so it's confusing when a character's dialogue doesn't reflect real spoken language. I had to pick Japanese, didn't I... Sigh.
I like to remind myself, language isn't like math. You can't really find truly reliable patterns. You learn a language by learning all the idioms and funny ways that ideas are expressed in phrases.
I have been speaking Spanish for a month and I have learned more grammar through Spanish class then I have ever known in English. I'm 33.😅😅 Probably will taking a break soon and working on vocab for awhile.
Really good tips thanks. Fascinating to listen to you and for me it was a reminder to learn more vocab. This is where I get lazy and don't make the effort to commit new words to memory and then get frustrated that I don't seem to be improving. For me, I am happy to learn a few new words every day. I just need to jot them down in a notebook I think and use them in sentences. I am learning Brazilian Portuguese. Thanks for the advice.
Interesting. Now, I think that comprehensive input and exposure have great value for those ADULTS who already have a high level (c1, c2), with abundant vocabulary and good grammatical understanding of the target language. For an ADULT beginner, it is a very frustrating method with isolated information that will not stick in the mind. For small children it could be ideal since they have many years of learning.
A child learns to speak mother tongue through listening repeatedly to the language spoken by its mother, father, siblings and others in the neighborhood.
Steve do you think listening to podcasts in the language you want to learn is useful even if no transcript is provided? Im referring I guess to relatively passive listening when out for a walk or when folding laundry etc. Specifically is there value in doing this when someone is already slightly attuned to the language perhaps from taking the language class once upon a time at school let's say. Many thanks!
Hello. Thank you very much for sharing your useful experiences. Is this method specific to currency pairs? Can it be used for stocks as well? They treat each other similarly. please guide me . Thankful
Hello, Steve! I would like to learn English and use your app, but I can’t register. Please, help me. Always to be written about mistake. Thank you very much. With all the best.
I tried the old grammar-first approach when I started Japanese almost 2 years ago. After a couple months, I saw a video where a guy said "pretend like Japanese has no grammar whatsoever, and it'll start taking shape." Complex sentences still absolutely body me, especially when it's something like: telling a story wherein someone is telling a story - especially when you start throwing in descriptions of things where the description is more than one adjective. OH MAMA! Why is it so ridiculously nonsensical? What was wrong with just using the perfectly fine words in a chain like everyone else? I used to get frustrated, but now I just enjoy the absurdity of human language and how plastic it is. How anybody in the world can quickly understand or produce descriptions in Japanese is still beyond my caveman brain's ability. If I hear too many "notoki" "nokoto" or "_____te ____te ____ai na _____" I just start having what I can only describe as what epileptic people say a seizure feels like. Especially when you get one of those sentences audio-only. It's like saying the secret codeword to deactivate a sleeper agent making them go comatose.
That may be true for beginner level verb conjugations but not nouns and adverbs. Beyond that it’s mostly about having a deep lexicon. For example conjunctive grammar patterns are a lot easier to decipher if you know the subjects without the conjunction rather than vice versa.
I feel a bit ashamed that I can only learn 10 - 30 words a day, making progress a lot slower. The point is though, that the structure of spoken language is foggy to me, to say the least. Even sentences where I know all the words in the sentence, I am still not sure whether the object is "being fed to the verb" i.e. input or "output of the verb". It all has to do with the different kind of conjugation of Finnish nouns and adjectives. I know about 10k words (Lingq count), so I can understand a fair bit of words, but I get confused by words that are alike, but still have different meanings. For me it is not the conscious knowledge of grammar that I need, but I need to "know" the intent of the sentence structure. I cannot get that from grammar books. I have those grammar books more or less the same kind of books that Steve showed. But automatically understanding the intent of the meaning is an other issue altogether. Still, it is this kind of video that gets me thinking: am I doing the right things? Thanks for the video.
Actually, I had the same issue when I was learning Japanese. Understanding the intention behind sentences is something you need to train separately through comprehensive immersion in context. I solved this by watching anime with subtitles in my native language. However, this training only worked once I reached a level where I could recognize sentence structures by ear. At that point, I could match the sentence with the hints from my native language and the context of the story to gain an accurate understanding of everything. To reach the level where I could recognize sentence structures by ear, I trained my speaking skills intensively through mimicry and real-life conversations. When my speech rhythm and mental output sequence matched that of native speakers, it became easier to recognize structures in listening. Vocabulary acquisition is a continuous journey in the language learning process, but how the vocabulary is absorbed determines the final result. Even before discovering Steve's approach, I had already been learning languages similarly. Honestly, it's an approach without optimization. It works well for people who have at least mastered one foreign language, but it's a blunt and straightforward method developed during times of limited technology and resources. Now, new approaches should be explored. Of course, vocabulary remains a core part of the journey, but it doesn't necessarily have to come from reading books. There are many ways to mine words. Good luck. I hope this helps.
Hi Steve, I'm a long time Mandarin learner currently living in Beijing, my level is somewhere between HSK 5-6. Not long from now I am moving back to Europe for probably some time and I wanted to find some good material for learning Cantonese. I also tried LingQ, but the jyutping only appears above 1/3 of the words. Do you have any advice for an aspiring learner of Cantonese.
I was fluent in English at the age of 3; I learned Hebrew at 14. Did not forget Russian still because I was born in SpB. I can modify any grammar at any speed. Do not want to be a translator in any language though.
@@darrentan9579 @darrentan9579 You used a comma after "I don't learn grammar" because you know grammar. If you don't know grammar, your sentence would be: "I dont learn grammar but i can read write and speak english after a lot of unconscious inputs." Comma is a part of punctuation marks which are grammar.
The point is not to focus on grammar thinking you will learn a language. You won't. It's a *part* of what you learn, and also you will learn it *instinctively* like children do the more you focus on other things (active reading and listening, and then speaking and writing). Native speakers barely 'learn' their grammar at all. The point is not to spend your time poring over grammar books trying to make it stick in your head. The more you *use* (speaking/writing) and 'experience' (reading/listening) the grammar, the more you will learn it.
As a person who lives in England I can tell you there are lots of words that are not spoken correctly but are still understood by most UK people...As long as the message is understood... ultimately that is the only thing that matters 🧐
You grammer dont know, you not able learn english. You learn proto language. Man make proto language first. Tough Understand action time, who did action. Man make grammer. Then it became really easy to express the temporal, cases and voices without anbiguity. Now we dont need see facial expressions to understand what the sequence of word means.
A TODOS QUE ESTIVERM LENDO ESSA MENSAGEM, SAIBA QUE JESUS TE AMA, E ELE ESPERA QUE VOCE O BUSQUE E O CONHEÇA, PORQUE É COMO DIZ A PALAVRA EM (MATEUS 16:26) POIS QUE APROVEITA AO HOMEM GANHAR O MUNDO INTEIRO, SE PERDER A SUA ALMA ? OU QUE DARÁ O HOMEM EM RECOMPENSA DE SUA ALMA ? OU SEJA, NAO PERCA A SUA ALMA, NAO PERCA A OPORTUNIDADE DE BUSCAR A DEUS, POR CONTA DO MUNDO, POIS TUDO VAI PASSAR PESSOAL, SO DEUS É ETERNO, POR ISSO A IMPORTANCIA DE BUSCAR ELE. E SO ELE TAMBEM PARA NOS DAR A VERDADEIRA PAZ E ALEGRIA. ENTAO INVISTA TODA A SUA VIDA NELE, ENQUANTO SE TEM TEMPO
Isn't using LingQ a bit like looking up words while you're trying to enjoy a TV series? Total killjoy. As you always say, Steve, expose yourself to the language without obsessing.
Thank you so much for your helpful tips. I tried them out and managed to get 5 out of 6 - a personal best! Your guidance has given me the confidence to keep working on my trading skills
