You missed the best language learning video ever 

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I'm a Spanish native English teacher and I never know how to emphasize to my students enough that the only real way to learn a language it to listen to it a lot, repeat it (even though you might not really understand every single thing you're saying at the moment, also looking it up in any translator helps with that) and try to speak it at every single opportunity. Like, I can stand here for hours teaching you how certain aspects of the grammar work but it's absolutely NOT going to make you speak the language better. Assimilation and shadowing are proven to be the only real way to learn a language and that's exactly how I learned English. No other way.

Completely agree, in fact, I have a theory that if an adult were to use the same method that children do, they'd learn any language much faster than a child does. It takes kids 6 years to learn how to speak it before they learn how to write it, whereas an adult can learn all four skills at once. Being an adult has its advantages.

I appreciate your emphasis on "repetition". Most self-learners feel this sense of burden or "I should know this" when broaching a topic already learned. But nobody counts during multiplication, they just know and that knowing is based off of repetition.

This was actually so true for me. 1.5 Years into learning Korean I was probably only High A1 level to low A2 with some "decent" base knowledge of the language itself but was not conversational at all. After adapting my study to ditch grammar and word lists void of any context, I put all my energy into comprehensible input and started using spaced repetition to memorise as many sentences and words in context as I could find and within 10 months I achieved B2 level, able to talk for hours nonstop with my Korean friends about a wide variety of subjects with speed and fluidity. I would even often forget that I was speaking a foreign language because it became so comfortable. But to achieve this level this quickly I must clarify that, alongside this, I was also doing forced conversations with native speakers weekly, something I never did previously, where my goal was to have a conversation using any amount of things I can remember/have been using from my study in the past week and just did my best to express what I was trying to say and understand what was being spoken back to me. This paired with memorising thousands of words and sentences in context, through spaced repetition is just the most killer combo for language learning. I think I could have gone from beginner to "conversationally fluent" (High B2) in about 12-14 months if I had just studied in this way from the very beginning. For easier languages for English speakers like French, doing the methods outlined in this video, you could probably get to conversational fluency in half the time compared to a category 5 language like Korean. For context, I was doing around 2.5 hours of dedicated study per day and probably another 2 - 2.5 hours of consuming both audio and visual Korean content per day. Although the amount of Korean I spoke per week going from A1 to B2 was a non-linear increase (I spoke more and more the more I learned), on average across the 10 months I spoke around 8-10 hours of Korean a week and as a result got pretty good, pretty fast. I literally remember thinking for the longest time that I would never get good at Korean and thought I just didn't have the brain for it, but here I am several years later chilling at C1 level only wishing I had studied this way earlier. If I can do it, anyone can (seriously)

Man that feeling of realizing you can understand the general concept of text in your target language is so freaking rewarding bcs you’ve invested so much frustrating time on it, doubting whether youll ever be able to learn it.

Summary (notes for self): The general framework for learning a language applies to (virtually) all languages. Have learning goal steps realistic in size that you are satisfied with your progress. Vary your motivation intensity and direction as needed in order to reach the goal. Expose yourself the language as much as possible before you rely on using it. Repeat a short simple language part (recording, text) often to memorise certain basics. Repeat watch a section of a movie or audio book in the language to learn them by heart. Listen as much as possible to immerse yourself in the language. (More time spent = more language learnt). Use translation tools to help learn where helpful. You will need them less and less as you learn.

So, in Jack Black style, does that make this video not the best language learning video in the world but a tribute to the best language learning video in the world?

This is exactly how I learned English growing up all on my own. I never picked up a vocabulary/grammar book, I never took clases independently, all I did was listen to music and watch shows and movies in English repeatedly. I memorized the sound of the words and then I just picked them up naturally, the same way I learned my mother tongue. I memorized sentences and then played around with them and built new sentences with new words based on what I already knew. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to replicate that process 😢

"All French all the time would sound strange" And I took that personally as a French viewer

this is literally how I learned English and I wasn't even aware of it I just like the language and I emerged in it unintentionally!

when I moved to Germany I already had a B2 in the language and that was a huge advantage. Some people still struggle with the language after years if they arrive with 0 knowledge and what you mentioned is so true! If people are used to speaking to you in English, they will hardly switch, even if you get better

You can also hear her Norwegian accent by the way she ends certain words: she says wik (week), spik (speak). They do this thing with their tongue at the end that blocks the throat, sort of. Listening to the language you are trying to learn does that to you - you subconsciously pick up the pronunciation and accent, as well as develop intuition as to how properly pronounce a word you have never heard.

As a person who speaks 7 languages I totally agree with you. Listening and repetition are the key elements of success. And as for me Anki is a absolute star in that considering you have a deck with audio. I remember when I was leaning Portuguese I didn't even bother to memorize all pronunciation rules. It just flew into my brain with all repetition of words and frases. In fairness, being an audio type person it's relatively easy for me. The same way I've learned some Chinese words and frases having no idea how to spell them 😁 But for some reading and memorizing is their superpower. You just have to find yours and work a bit harder on the others

About step one: my two cents are when I started a new language I watched a few episodes of a children series (those educational ones for children that teach shapes, colours, interactions in situations like "x goes to the libary"). It is something you can understand a whole episode pretty fast and intuitively because they use short sentences and visualise what is being said. Of course rewatching your favourite movie you know by heart in the new language will help as said in the video but at least for me I sometimes need the feeling of satisfaction fully understanding a dialogue and plot even if I'm only at a A1-A2 level at the new language I'm learning.

My Taiwanese roommate (who’d never left the island and had *excellent* English) told me she’d just listen to American radio like it was music when she did her housework.

Today I actually spoke Spanish not as a language practice, but I actually exchanged some interesting thoughts and stopped thinking about how to say something but I was actually thinking about the things being discussed. That feels like magic when quantity turns into quality.

Great take. I migrated to a spanish speaking country and did everything wrong and spent 5 years struggling to get to grips. I was in a bit of an English speaking bubble not by choice. But now with the benefit of local literature and youtube I am up to speed. Reading is powerful and simply re-reading and reading outloud or using audiobooks is so useful. Ironically, as the experts in this area note, the science has not filtered down either to the classroom or the text book/publisher. I am a language teacher and advocate these methods in my classroom but all my colleagues are still teaching grammar and exercises and think reading is time wasted when they could be teaching rules.

I watched her video probably 3 to 4 times before, and I thought it was SOOO GOOOD!! And now YOU posted a video talking ABOUT HER's and I'm very happy to have the pleasure of following two such good language learning creators!!

The fact that I was able to learn what Korean is supposed to sound like purely from listening to a ton of K-pop and watching a bunch of Korean content over the course of a decade is a testament to the power of constant exposure. I barely know any of the words, but my brain parses Korean as actual language that I simply don't know very well when I hear it, not as gibberish.

So true! When I was beginning learning Mandarin, I listened to people speaking Mandarin, and I was subconsciously picking up on the pronunciation

This make so much sense. I learned english in school for years, but only after I started watching english content (mostly video game montages) I really learned the language. At first I mostly watched for the visuals and I did not understand much of the commentary until one day I suddenly sat there, watched some DayZ gameplay and noticed "Wtf I understand what they are talking about" I will defenitely apply this to my french studies aswell. I always thought I'd have to set a foundation first, but seems like I don't really need to.

The way I learned english was not unlike what's explained here. We had english classes in school, but I ALWAYS failed those classes. The only things I knew in english were very basic vocabulary, but I couldn't even properly form a sentence. At some point I saw a german youtuber (I'm german) olay my favourite game, skyrim, in english and thought it sounded SO much better than the german version. So, I started playing the game in english, even though I didn't understand anything. The combination of me knowing parts of the game by heart and listening to the english over and over again made me learn english a thousand times better than school. After my grasp on the language got better, I continued to even play new games in english. Then I started to watch shows and youtube in english as well. And now, years later, basically anything I read, watch and listen to is in english. My grammar still sucks, but I've consumed such an astronomical amount of the language, that I'm even thinking in it most of of the time. My listening and reading comprehension of english far surpasses that of german nowadays. Which is honestly dumb, considering I still live in germany. 😂 Edit: I think its pretty visible in this comment though, that I dont write/speak all that much in english. (compared to german) My understanding of the language is far superior to my execution of it. It sadly doesn't translate 1 to 1. It'd be worse if my understanding wasn't as good though.

yes, just memorize. I had somebody ask me yesterday why in Spanish you say ' Vamos a buscar un hotel que sea cómodo.' Why is it subjunctive? Who cares? Just memorize it, because that is what Spanish people say.

Funnily enough I saw this a couple of months ago and saved it to keep reminding myself. Such a good language learning road map!

Her accent in bokmål Norwegian is absolutely amazing!!!

I’m learning Russian and have watched this exact video of hers almost 10 times! It’s amazing advice. So glad you are covering it! 🙌🏾

I didn’t miss it. I had already seen it a while ago. I remember being shocked by how good her accent is.

I have done the thing with Swedish. I started listening to an audiobook in Swedish. And after listening to it for a lot of hours my ears got used to the sounds of the language and I memorized a lot of words and sentences without knowing the meaning. And then learning the grammar and vocabulary fealt really easy.

HHAHA I love when you pointed out that she sometimes can have a Norwegian accent while speaking English. I developed that as well when I was learning and living in Sweden. Now I am back home (The Netherlands) and I lost the Swedish influence again😅

For my high school experience of Spanish, the very best thing that I ever did was learning a double-sided sheet of A4 for the final speaking exam, I always wondered why this worked after I had been swayed by CI theories "I was learning output how could this be good" was my knee jerk response but I think now it really was an input exercise hidden as output practice.

I double majored Latin and Class. Civ., and went on to teach Latin and French for years. When I was learning, writing material was key. If I wrote it, I never forgot it. Eidetic memory? Probably. But later I urged my students to do the same, telling them, “Its muscle memory.” Vocalizing was the second most important learning tool for me. When learning Latin, I sub-vocalized conjugations and declensions all the way to school and all the way home.

I settled on the same conclusions last year, while spending 4 months solo traveling through Mexico and Colombia. As a native English speaker, I had studied abroad previously, though it had been many years since that Spanish course with very little practice in the meantime. Listen, listen, listen. If I was tired of socialization, I would sit in my hotel room or AirBnB at night and flip through the channels. News stations usually had closed captioning, so I'd use it to my advantage. Sitting there, listening, with a translator app in hand. It really helped to drill in those common phrases, basic grammar, etc. Also, whenever I took an Uber or taxi, I would force myself to engage in conversation with the driver. We're talking WEEKS of stumbling through near-nonsensical conversations until it finally began to flow. Those cab rides were instrumental.

This is such a strong and in-depth response video! Ilys's videos are amazing for me as I've been studying Norwegian for around half a year now; with the surprisingly limited amount of videos surrounding the language online, she's been incredibly helpful with her RU-vid shorts, TikToks, and self-made quizzes through her Instagram stories. I'm glad she's gaining more traction from videos like this. It looks like I can learn just as much from you too in terms of optimizing my learning experience. Subbed!

I've been learning Japanese for about four and a half months and last week I was listening to a song I've heard probably hundreds of times (maybe only able to pick out a few words here or there without looking at a translation of the lyrics) suddenly heard the line "翼を広げて" and understood it instinctively without having to think about it. I almost cried when it happened. I love SRS systems and I really feel like they're the only way I can get stuff to stick in my brain, but I find it really easy to let my brain just tune something out if I don't understand it, so if I am listening to something for immersion I have to try to focus really hard. But once I started to properly learn the grammar patterns as well as straight vocabulary it made it a lot easier to pick out those patterns while listening.

I agree 100% with everything in this video, I speak Serbian, English and Arabic and the real breakthrough of my learning Arabic was when I got into the Qur'an... I am not muslim but I was treating the Qur'an as an audio book (literally) because it is recited (some would even call it ''singing'' because there's obvious melody involved but whatever) and I would listen to the recitations while reading and it totally transformed how I saw the language - I started to hear Arabic better (to understand where one word ends and another begins) and to understand how the grammar works just from the text even without memorizing tables and conjugations and stuff and even though the vocabulary itself wasn't extremely useful tbh (remember it's a book from the 7th century) I picked up on a ton of useful things along the way - phrases, metaphores, words, expressions and I even started to understand better how Arab muslims saw the world and what was their connection to God (Allah) like and it opened so many doors for me plus it was a lot of fun to learn tajweed (correct way to recite the Qur'an where every letter has to be pronounced perfectly and the length of every syllable is precisely determined etc.) so for anyone struggling to learn Arabic I can't recommend the Qur'an enough because today's Arabic is hugely influenced by dialects and you can rarely find people who use perfect MSA (modern standard arabic) with all the right grammar etc. so it's hard to concentrate when you have an Iraqi guy for example reading the book with obvious influence of his own accent, then an Egyptian lady reading with her own accent etc. These dialects are a nightmare for Arabic learners at first so I suggest to concentrate on audio books in MSA or even better on the Qur'an (which I repeat has to be read in a very specific way, in a perfectly clear and concise manner which eases the learning process a lot since it's more consistent and you don't have different dialectual influences confusing you). All the best and happy learning! :D

I agree! And it's weird because her video was also recommended to me randomly a few days ago, and when I watched it, it all made perfect sense. I've learned a few languages but these days there was something missing from my learning routine and when I watched her video she gave me so many good tips and reminded me of the routines I used to do.

This is exactly how I learned English! Ofc I had it in school first, but rll watching yt got me fluent in English, I just listened.

I agree! I came across Ilys’ video about a month ago, and was quickly stunned by her depth of insight and the practicality of her suggestions! Though she likely shares here a few things, gleaned from others, I strongly sense that the majority of her tips are born of her natural intuition and her ability to quickly profit from her own experience of trial and error, as if feeling her way through the new tongue, trusting her perfect blend of instinct and intellect. Her video distills all of the web’s best language-learning advice into some twenty minutes of pure gold. Anyone committed to learning a foreign language needs to follow her lead. And every poster of language-learning content should be recommending her, passionately!

Repetition, heavily focus on comprehensible input and slow/unseen acquisition of the language are really golden advices that unfortunately are not that well spread in the language learning community. I remember the first time I heard about input based learning from Matt vs Japan and literally blowing my mind with the results I started getting from it. Not only improved my English, but also my German as well and I'll be forever grateful for creators such as you, Lamont, who also go into the path of sharing genuinely good advice out there. Now, almost 8 years into German and also starting my own language channel, all I have to say is Thank You! 🙂

I remember this video in my recommendation section and I didn’t click it for what ever reason I’m definitely watching now!

I spent a lot of just listening to Michel Thomas and Coffee Break podcast, but I didn't improve a lot until I ALSO starting reading. But I ONLY read and then I hit another stopping point. And, it wasn't until I started watching Netflix shows with Language reading to LISTEN and READ at the same time where I saw another big jump. If only I had connected the dots sooner and did it earlier, I would have progressed so much faster. And re-reading and re-watching seems like such as a great idea. She makes a lot of good points!

As an English only fluent person leaning Turkish, I searched for Turkish childrens stories on youtube. I figured I learned to read English with childrens books, and could begin at the beginning with Turkish, as well. The delivery of words and meaning go a bit slower with childrens stories. I also watch as much of Turkish movies and shows that are cc in English. It has helped tremendously.

I remember my grandma had a german cartoon channel and it wasn't even close to my native language, but as a kid I didn't think about not understanding anything, I just watched and didn't care until I started picking up the context and words that connected to the actions that happened in the cartoon. Language in kid cartoons also twnd to be more simple. German spongebob was my teacher. After a certain time I could understand almost 85% of the spoken language but couldn't write it until I picked up german in highschool, and only then I started learning grammar and writing, and was much easier when I already understood the spoken language. Only now I realised that something I did unintentionally as a kid I can use again

I am currently learning Norwegian and have watched her video several times. She absolutely nails it but it was great getting your take on it. Tusen Takk!

I must have watched that video a dozen times, only for the pleasure of hearing her explaining her learning journey.

I'm so glad that you found this video! I saw this 4 months ago and absolutely loved it! She seems like such a sweet girl and you're right she has such wonderful advice! I took some of her advice and some of your advice and I have been watching the same movie about 40 times . I understand at a minimum 92% of it now and I don't even have to be looking at the TV or my screen to know what is happening in the movie. I can just tell because I understand so much of it now.

Thank you, just thank you. I heard so many times about "you should listen more" but at the same time... I have ignored this advice. I feel like a new period in language learning is beginning in my life

I agree. I’ve been learning English only by watching YT, Netflix, Anime etc. I still have no idea how some structures work/are named and I still struggle with tenses but I can hold a conversation with my friends on DC for hours on different topics. All my library is in English. Some phrases I know just because I heard them many times. For example “It’s worth it”. I remember that I didn’t even know what “worth” means, all I knew that this phrase declares that something is valuable enough. Listen and read a lot! Stop memorizing and do study session, this method fails most of the times. I’m learning German and still use this method. Reading method: I grab two similar books: one in German, one in English. Firstly I read the first paragraph in English and then in German. It helps me understand phrases, not words.

I had seen her video a few weeks back. I really like her video and hope to see more like it.

I saw this lady's video when it came out because it was randomly promoted to me. She is amazing and has some great advice.

The algorithm actually recommended this video to me a month or so ago, glad to see her getting some love

I love this new trend of giving props to other RU-vidrs, who deserve it. I’ve seen it a couple of times in the past weeks in different genres and it makes me insanely happy. Good job 👍🏻

The only foreign language I’ve learned to speak fluently is English, and I did so without the intention to be fluent, I simply wanted to read a certain book that hadn’t been translated into my native language😂 Then there was another book, and it went like that

Alot of my english learning was listening to cds over and over and reading the lyrics in the case to try to figure out what it meant. Many times looking up words in a glossiary. Similar tactics i guess. Worked really well. Well done by her learning norweigan. Im really impressed by your swedish too! Good job!

I did actually watch this video a few months ago and I loved it, thanks for the reminder to go back and watch it again! ❤

I've read somewhere a long time ago that adults can't learn as kids do. But now I have a 2.5 yo and it's actually interesting how he improves his language skills. Like, now he's at the point where he knows how to pronounce quite a lot of sounds. He obviously started with repeating words, then he repeated simple phrases after us word by word, then he started to change them a bit, for example, I told him every evening "Mommy loves Mike", then he said to me "Daddy loves Mike", later he started saying "Mike loves mommy". I've also noticed that he tries to apply grammar rules, for example, he knows "dog-dogs", and he'll say "man-mans". At this point our conversation is usually him telling some phrase, that actually makes sense, but has some grammar mistakes or incorrect word order, and I'll say it back but how adults say it. So, my point is, I speak 5 languages, and his steps in learning a language actually make sense to me too. Listen a lot, especially when you have visual hints, then try to repeat some words that you've heard a lot, then try to make simple sentences, and this is the way to fluency, you just need someone to correct you constantly :D

I love this video! I actually rewatched it two or three days ago. I recently decided to switch from Swedish to Norwegian (my family's from there) and wanted to write down her resources. Too bad she hasn't continued with the videos because they're really good (though her IG is pretty great too).

Tack för att du delade med dig av detta! Vilka guldkorn av insikter kring inlärning av språk ❤️

Yesssss! You are right, great example of the core steps needed to master a language

I watched her video 2 or 3 days ago and like with everything I come across I test it out (there's nothing to lose) and yes, I've been doing what she said for Turkish and I started to really understand better and notice real improvement in my understanding and it does feel natural. If anyone is doubting just test it for yourself and see what happens, for me it worked.

I remember the time i was watching anime but not picking many Japanese words because I didn’t know anything about the basics of Japanese grammar. I started watching some basic grammar videos and immediately started to recognize and remember verbs and their conjugations, then, after a while, started to use Anki for kanji. It’s kind of the same way in which i learned English, by just listening to RU-vid tutorials, even though they teach us some basic English at school 🇲🇦, but the focuses were on French, and somehow I turned up knowing English instead 😅 I guess it's just because I listen to content in English, I’m a Arabic & darija native btw

I could cry right now from relief that I'm doing the right thing. I literally clicked on this video from rewatching and shadowing My First German Book for the umpteenth time this month. I just listen to it on my way to travel and like you mentioned, I know the first quarter well but I get quite intimidated when it moves onto the next part and realize I have to listen to those now. I also feel quite grateful that the languages I'm trying to learn have infinite organized resources online although it can get overwhelming. One of the things I'm struggling with is sticking to one language though. I'm not travelling anytime soon to the countries of the languages so I don't have a big goal so I find myself often jumping between these different languages and feeling inadequate in all of them. Something else I find difficult even in my own mother tongue and English is learning vocabulary as in in writing form. It's my least favourite part especially because of how time consuming it is and often pushs me away from learning, but I suppose the more I practise, I'll get to it eventually. Thanks for this video!

Thank you! I went to see her original video and she has really great insights. I still need to somehow make this work in my target language which has very scarce resources.

Thank you for this video and introducing her channel for us. I learn English and I share my lessons which I learned, so this was really helpful.

I find it interesting how much of this stuff is actually not talked about that often, even amongst real immersion learners. I've been learning Japanese now around 2 years, and within the last few months we've had a Japanese family join the place where I work. I've noticed that not only can I sort of talk with them, but we sort of seemlessly switch back and forth between japanese and English with absolutely no issues, often mid sentence. I truly believe the thing that helped the most with my pronunciation and word flow was my diligence with audio material. Most of my reading for a long time was done with accompanying audiobooks, and I have numerous series where I've listened to multiple volumes over 10 times. Do I know every word? No, but I know the story like the back of my hand and can almost map the wave of emotions in heavy scenes the same way I would in English. Re-reading and constantly relistening to stuff seriously works, and repeating stuff and saying out loud makes an absolutely massive difference. I've been saying my anki sentences out loud since I was a 2 week beginner, and it has had a huge impact. Both videos were great, and I wish more focus was put on the power of repitition. Find something you like, mine a ton of words, and listen to it until you're craving the next part of the story, and repeat all over. Thanks again Mr Australian Swedish internet man!

Yeah, this video is awesomeeee! The advice on how to use writing on it is pure gold. And sooo practical, one of the best videos indeed

This is good advice! I've found an audio drama in Chinese that for some reason I really like, and I've listened to it about three times. Every time I do notice I understand more and more of what's happening, so I need to go back and give it another listen now haha

This video summed up my experience with learning English as a second language. This is exactly the reminder I need as I'm venturing into picking up a few languages. I have got people (acquaintances and complete strangers) 'accusing' me for faking an ABC accent when speaking Cantonese. Next time one of these folks pops up, I'll show them the bit of the video on how one's L2 influences one's L1😂

I love that story about your kid reading in the back seat of the car, very cute and always makes me laugh

Me learning German right now, is literally Anki and "Easy German" After 2 weeks I have already started to see progress in my German classes

I've been working more seriously on my Spanish lately, and it's really been paying off at work. And definitely some of the things that have worked the best are things like reading the same text over and over and really diving into it deeply. Reading it myself all the way through, then looking up the words and plugging in confusing phrases into Google Translate, then listening to the audiobook, then reading along each sentence WITH the audiobook copying all the intonation. Even though flashcards don't work well independently, they definitely work well in conjunction with other things - no need to completely abandon them or whatever. I'm often reading a book and connecting phrases with my flashcards. Thinking "oh this phrase works well with all these other vocab I learned from my lists" and trying them out. Same with lessons. Each week, I do an hour of a self-paced course and when I go into my reading and listening, I find myself paying much more attention to whatever was covered and reinforcing it while exposing myself to stuff that wasn't covered.

Not a hater, think this is fantastic, watched it multiple times, always crack up when I hear her say "pro-noun-ciation." I tested into a level 4 language in the Army language school, and was given Mandarin. After six months of intense, rigorous, time with a native of mainland China, we all walked away speaking the language at a 6th grade level and were illiterate because we were not taught to read and write the language. Within a year, most of us couldn't even speak the language beyond simple greetings that made people's ears hurt. I very much appreciate your videos and approach to the subject of learning new languages as they are rekindling my belief that learning another language in another manner than rote memorization, is very possible.

I agree this is the best language learning video I've seen and I loved your input on the video and the advice she gives as well.

bro I was like halfway through this video cos it was too much info at once and I kept it in my tabs for like 2 weeks always refusing to click cross on it cos I knew I needed to hear it (I'm learning Spanish not Norwegan). thanks for bringing this back it's like a slap in the face but like a good one

Imo, Anki makes this method of learning so much more efficient. If you both repeat a few texts in your target language, and pluck out all the useful vocabulary from it while you are learning, you can get a lot more for your time by using that spaced repetition to ensure long-term acquisition (you can feasible go through a book, rereading it constantly and making it your goal to understand everything from the first chapter, for example). As an adult language learner, you're smarter than a child; why not use that :P

Russian has a lot of clauses for nouns, complex conjugation of verbs. when we as natives learn Russian in school, we actually sort words into clauses not by the rules, but by how we would pronounce them in that context. I think it proves the point that learning clauses like a native child would, by memorizing their usage in specific circumstances and orders, is ultimately better. not from a linguistic point of view when you try to remember a set of rules that natives never remember

Thanks for sharing that video! SO amazing and many more people need to see it!

Always good to hear your comments! I'm curious what your thoughts are on playing video games in your target language? I recently started playing Fallout en español and I find that even though I more or less know the story already, I pay much more attention to the meaning of the dialogue than I might with a book or series. On the other hand outside of the dialogue the vocabulary is fairly repetitive and doesn't translate well to everyday life (''el rifle antialimañas" doesn't exactly come up often). Also a small nitpick, the "Norwegian" uptalk has been a recent phenomenon in English, especially Australian as well, no?

I remember when I used to reread books in German (or other languages). It was before the golden age of language learning and I reread those books because they were the only ones I had 😂.

Good advice. Thank you. Gonna get back to my French. I met a Belgian guy in India who had been a hostel caretaker in Scotland for a few years. Whenever he talked about his time in Scotland he had a full-on, and I mean nearly incomprehensible, Scottish accent but when he spoke of anything else, he had a Belgian accent.

repetition is key....and listening is door way to discover that language ,I learned turkish by just listening to the media and watching series and after a year I reliased that words just flowing in my mind and then I can say them and speak them...practicing the mind to tounge ....fluency was the end gift.

1 minute in and I’m leaving to watch the video 👋 Don’t worry I promise I’ll be back 🙂

Funny because I was trying to figure out how the hell she learned English so well, being French, and not having learned English using the same method.

Omg, Ilys is AMAZING. I'm a huge fan and I love her instagram, she posts the stuff that you'd need to learn to interact with natives

I did watch her video some time ago and it's good to come back to these great tips, now finally ready to properly apply some of the advice. I need the rest to simmer around my brain for another while, but I know I will get back to them too.

I had a kid a few months ago, and what I did before he was born was spend a fair amount of time doing is picking the things in Swedish (and a few other languages) that I would be repeating. Every morning when I hit play on the same episode of the show of the day and let it play. The same with a set of audiobooks, radio plays, music playlists, etc. What I am really wondering is when more of it will be comprehensible to my spouse :). (She is loving Bluey despite not understanding any of it yet.)

"if you plan to live in another country you should understand the language before you get there especially if people from that country are usually fluent in English" (or something like this) you can scratch the "even if". Just do it. Period. People in Germany generally do not speak English well (although most people do speak it) and if you don't have some language ability when you come here, you will not have a good time. In Sweden, the Netherlands, wherever people speak English well, you've have a hard time breaking out of the English bubble and will hit with the "you've been here 1 1/2 years why do you still not speak our language?". If you try that in Germany you just won't have any friends. Nobody is forced to interact with you and nobody will be in any relationship with you. They're not your friends, your family, your romantic interests, whatever. And if it takes people to speak English 99% of the time to become your friend, a very large chunk of Germans, probably over 90%, are just immediately out. A lot of the complains you see on the Germany subreddit (/r/germany) are a direct result of not being able to be part of society at all due to the lack of language skills. Also, life becomes A LOT more difficult if you can't practice at work. I work in English exclusively because the company I work for was always supposed to target all of the EU from day one so a lot of early hires were because of their native language and potential to expand globally which then resulted in the office language being English which then resulted in a lot of the experts that we managed to hire being "expats". We speak English pretty much always except if we know that everybody in the call is German. HR person from Peru fluent in German? We speak English. Sales dude from Venezuela fluent in German? We speak English. It's just easier than trying to remember who of those 40 people actually speaks German. This means that most people in our company who don't already speak German are lost. They spend 8 hours a day basically practicing English (except for the 1 or so native speaker) and then come home and speak their native language with their spouse or their children or whatever. It turns your day into "desperately trying to find the time to learn this language" when it could be 8 hours of practice that you are forced to do anyway. Like, even just listening to a point that you can tell your colleagues to not speak English with you would be amazing.

Hairy Maclary was my favourite as a child too, I lit up when you mentioned that.

Just finished watching her vlog and it was so amazing 😍 I am now motivated again to study Thai and Korean 😅

A quick question ... do you think that the method by which you get a language to stick in your memory affects how you can recall and use it? For example, when I was spending time trying to learn Finnish, I did a lot of familiarisation work using songs by Indica and Haloo Helsinki; I got to the point that I could sing whole songs from start to finish (pun intended :D). What I found was that if I wanted to recall a specific phrase to mind then I had to sing it!

Great videos! Truly, both have given me so many ideas I can apply to my French studies 😊Inspired me so much I made a video about it 😁 Hope you have a chance to check it out, I think you’ll enjoy it. If not feel free to roast it lol

My mom immigrated to the US from Samoa and I spent much of my youth reading out my aunt's texts in Samoan to my mom while she was driving. I was never taught the language, but I heard my mom talk to her sisters in Samoan for hours every day. I'm now across the country and trying to learn the language on my own, and already knowing how to pronounce everything is definitely an advantage. Sometimes I'll read a common phrase and can hear my mom saying it in my head! Learning Samoan is mostly difficult because there aren't nearly as many resources out there, and most of the audio I hear now is from songs and MAYBE a Samoan radio station (I say maybe cus last time I tried listening, they were just playing American songs:( )

I've also watched this video! I'm learning Welsh and this is some very good advice it seems.

The sad part is I AM learning Norwegian and I STILL procrastinated on watching it 😅

I forgot to mention, I do have the ebook/ audio book by Olly Richards called, "Short Stories in Swedish". I started about 3 weeks ago and I'm 3 stories in. Do you happen to know of that book is part of the Swedish StoryLearn program? Also, Ilys' channel looks fabulous. I wish I knew of a Swedish channel that was like hers.

I listened to Turkish radio and music all the time when i was learning the language and I was always so happy when i recognized a word that i had learned in school out of all the other words i didn't know. I'm an ESL teachser now and I keep telling my students to just listen to English even if they don't understand and they don't know the value. I feel sad when they don't improve because an hour and a half of classes a day just isn't enough.

I am watching it now, will come back for comments later.. You rock guys! 🤩

Norwegian is the simplest and nicest Germanic language to learn. Reasonable phonology, sensible orthography, 10/10, most approachable Germanic language.

I learn English from video game😂