Holistic Language Learning - Richard Simcott | PG 2022

um I I have I have a small admission and that is that this is the first presentation I've actually been to at the Gathering the reason is is that I decided long ago that actually as much as I love the people who present and I have a lot of respect for them and I want to show my appreciation and my support and and from what I hear they've all done an amazing job I actually prefer to just sit out in the hallways and meet people um it's wild and languages it's my reason that it's exactly the biggest motivation for me to to connect with you to talk to you other people who love languages as well and people who speak the languages I learn and the languages I want to learn so I apologize to everyone who's presented a Navy thought where is he why isn't he coming does he not care I do care I just came off of the bits in between and I have to make a decision I can't clone myself and my wife definitely would not want me to clone myself before I start now that the room is a lot Fuller I hope you'll indulge me in a selfie so that I can remember this it's a big thing after two years of being at home so please indulge me you ready one two three thank you thank you very very much I appreciate it now let's talk about language okay so hopefully I won't make a mess of the slideshow but we'll see how it goes so my name's Richard for those of you who don't know me some of you may already have seen me on places like YouTube or other parts of the interwebs and I quite like languages I think they're quite cool um I I've been studying them for a long time since I was about five I was always fascinated by different accents and different dialects and different ways of using words and pronunciation and to say the same thing that's in your head sometimes in a slightly different way but to get a similar message across to somebody who only speaks that particular language or variation of a language and it's fascinated me for years and for me it was the most normal thing ever to imitate and to learn and to take from the people around me and to fit in and to try and belong and to try and learn and understand and that's also one of the reasons why I enjoy our conversations in between all of these sessions because I learn a lot from you now the reason we're here today is because of Technology we started a community online from a forum called how to learn any language and from that there were videos on YouTube and the ball started rolling and we got together and we had the polygon conference and the polygot Gathering and then more political conference has probably got Gatherings polyglottar we have a lang Fest in Canada we've had all sorts of events going on around the world to bring us together and I see this sometimes as a double-edged sword sometimes it can divide us and sometimes it can bring us together and the reason why I've always seen it as a bit of a double-edged sword is because of perception because of how we look at each other and how we look at ourselves in turn as a result of this and I see some nodding heads so I hope that you can identify with this how well do I speak a language do I speak a language do I not speak a language what's going on and when I came today actually I've had two years of reflection on this forced reflection at home there was a little pandemic going around the world I don't know if you heard of it and then and yeah so I was stuck in the Balkans for two years which is very unusual for me if any of you know how many how much I like to travel and meet up with friends and family around the globe so when I came I actually didn't want to put anything on my card and I just ask you if you want to see if I speak your language you can speak to me and you as individuals can all make the decision on your own terms whether or not I speak your language your languages to your satisfaction if I do wonderful if I don't it's fine maybe I'll learn more someday that's me that's my introduction and when people talk to me about languages and this is very often what happens especially now during the last two years I've been at home and I wanted to give back to the community as much as I possibly could so I've dedicated every Sunday evening at 6 PM Central European Time to doing a live on my YouTube channel and on my Instagram Channel and I take questions from anyone and everyone from all around the world who want to ask in whichever language they want and I can answer in and I've got a lot of experience from seeing that and doing that over the last two years most of the questions and when I tweeted and put on social media about the topic today about holistic language learning I wanted to see what people's interpretation of that actually was and it was quite interesting because many people wrote and said well learning all about the language all about the language whether it's speaking Reading Writing listening learning a bit about the culture many people said that to me and I think that's a fair enough answer there's not a right answer to this question it's uh it's just a very open-ended question I don't believe necessarily in complete right and complete wrongs to such questions I think that there are different opinions and we can agree we can agree to disagree and we can take on board whatever element we like so normally when people ask me about languages it's about how to learn a language and I you possibly may have seen if this will click through that I talk about trees and I talk about all sorts of weird things I like analogies this is this is kind of me this is the essence of who I am I like analogies because I think analogies and images sticking on Minds so when I think of a language I think of a tree I think of a sapling a seed that we put in the ground when we first start learning that language and you put water on it you take care of it it gets some sunshine you protect it from the cold you do all these things on a regular basis to allow that seedling to turn into a sapling to grow into what you then see as a tree and this tree as it grows bigger and bigger you might get some little branches and they would represent some basic chit chat conversation in some topics or areas that you want to discuss in the language but as the tree grows so do those branches develop and they develop into strong branches that then in turn have Twigs and leaves and those leaves represent the words and the different ways that we can use language when we get into the the Jog and the the slang into the very minutiae of of language and the trees when they get very solid and very strong it's a lot more difficult to cut them down and this becomes an issue sometimes with people in this community where you have some solid trees but then some little saplings will Sprout out to these roots in between and they could represent language that as languages that are related you may give them some attention but if you don't and if the shade gets too big from the other trees actually what might happen is they might also start to wither and fade and we all know that because we've studied languages very often that are related and then someone comes and said well didn't you study Slovak for that challenge in Bratislava and I say yeah and said well why don't you speak it was one of those saplings that came up and it works for a while I enjoyed a bit of the breeze but then unfortunately with it and went away and I was left with the the trees that were around it but trees are nice metaphors but also Islands I like to because when you grow lots of trees if you think of the trees as a language family and you grow lots of the trees from the different language families and you have them as these anchors on a base on a solid base and I always talk about you could then have islands of languages you can think of these as different language families if you will and sometimes they're more closely connected and geographically than others sometimes they may be a little sand bank that goes between the islands but sometimes the bridges that we have for those might be cultural they might be to do with neighboring countries shared history shared communication trade very often you'll see these kinds of words come up again and again at languages that are seemingly unrelated like Hungarian where you have Slavic words for the days of the week it's really interesting to see these these strange things come in and often the local community is not even aware that chittortak is related to chatsworthok or another word in the Slavic language for Thursday the fourth day foreign which is related to the middle day of the week so when people ask me about language learning I give them all of these very normal sort of analogies and talk about all of these things but is that it is that what you all want you just want the same thing from me from Luca from everyone else on how to improve your accent how to improve your grammar how to improve your vocabulary is that all you need is that everything is that all we are is that what languages represent two years of reflection shown me that that's not all we are that's not what we represent that's not what languages are to us language is much more and we are much more and so life kicks in you all learn the same way every single day every single month every single year or does life kick in does something happen that's beyond your control that you cannot do anything about and this is something unfortunately with social media and the divisive nature at times of how that works we show our best and we show our worst there's nothing in between none of the mundane none of the beige none of the vanilla none of that's there none of it's represented we see the good and we see the really bad we don't see the normal we don't see the it's it's it's so up there and so down there that we sometimes lose sight of actually what the reality is and so we our expectations are also skewed so for me the whole idea of holistic when I talk about it in this sense is about thinking about everything to do with our being our lives our souls why we're doing what we're doing sometimes we get ill we can't stop getting now allow me to tell you a story it wasn't a serious illness so I'm not going to sort of traumatize You by this although it traumatized me slightly cast your minds back to about not four or five weeks ago maybe a little bit longer when the organizers of this wonderful event said learn Ukrainian for the polyglot Gathering you know 50 days to learn Ukrainian and of course new sapling starts to appear immediately in my garden on my Island and I'm very happy Slavic Islands flourishing with a new settling I start learning Ukrainian day one publicize it on Tick Tock publicize it on social media learning it day two aren't you amazing you're doing so well with Ukrainian all these wonderful comments coming through and then some of the sort of voices from the side yeah you said that wrong okay day three day four then I take a drive in Albania and as I drive and choose the road the Middle Road never choose the Middle Road I chose the Middle Road to go back to the border to go home little did I know that the road wasn't completely finished they had these beautiful roads on the other sides but the Middle Road wasn't quite ready they were still doing making the tunnels they were still building everything and making it all very pretty and nice up to our lovely standards that we want to enjoy when we're driving and we'd have to think about things unfortunately it wasn't that case I got to a mountain in Albania it was it was bigger than this okay I'm not very good at showing the size of mountains and you'll have to forgive me but imagine it's very big okay it's very very big a big mountain and I start snaking up the mountain in the car my wife's car it's a very important point I'm snaking up the mountain and I get to a point where I'm driving carefully remember I'm I'm British and you can put the Brit in the Balkans but you can't take the British out of the Brit so sorry and the Balkan drivers are getting super frustrated with me because you know well YOLO so why not drive 70 000 miles an hour down the road on a sneaky rounding Road in Albania because hey that's fun and though and seeing that it looks basically like I'm on a plane it's that High I mean it's really really high just to give you an idea of what this was and then I decide okay I'm not going to get stressed or panicked because of the crazy drivers behind me so I pull over where it's safe and allow them to pass and I thought you know I'm going to get out the car I'm going to enjoy a bit of fresh air I'm going to stretch my legs I've been on a mountain doing this with my foot for the past hour and my foot's starting to hurt so I opened the car door I get out I start walking ahead of the car then I hear a beep then I look back my wife's car starts rolling down the mountain okay it's bad right you know that you know as well as I do going home wasn't an option if the car didn't come back with me I was jumping after the car okay so what did I do fortunately I'm British so I rolled the window down while I was driving very unbulken I could be put in prison for saying that out loud they have to have all the windows closed in case they catch a cold from the draft but I drive with the window open because I'm I'm a psycho that's just the way I roll so anyway I had the window open I couldn't open the car door so what did I do I dived through the window like Spider-Man Spiderman I ain't okay let's just put that out there I mean I know I looked the part but I'm not really I'm not I grab the handbrake the car stops we're safe I don't have to jump off the mountain after all it's good I breathe out and then realize that it hurts a little bit when I breathe bearing in mind I've just dived on top of a metal open window to grab a handbrake and I was fine but it did hurt just when I breathed so I had to try to stop breathing so much okay fast forward back to me being ill now and taking on the Ukrainian challenge well as you can imagine this slowed me down somewhat when we're sick when something like that happens it's out of our control the expectation often and sometimes the peer pressure when we've put something out on social media is how are you getting on with Ukrainian how did you do with your Ukrainian I saw that you're learning Ukrainian isn't that amazing and I have to then go yeah it didn't happen it didn't happen and I appreciate the questions I think it's very nice because you're showing concern the thing is is that sometimes for many many others that kind of question can make us feel that we put pressure on ourselves because we feel we have to perform we've put something out there on social media we have something to live up to and that's when I realized that actually people come to me quite often and say I'm just in a really bad place at the moment because some injuries are not physical some injuries are here we have to look after ourselves because we're not learning any language as well we're sick well we're not on form we're not doing very much and we can't expect to do active learning for sure not in the same way as when we're a hundred percent or even 80 percent and the only thing we can do is actually worship worsen our condition if we do that because it puts extra stress on our bodies we have to look after ourselves so I decided I'm just going to leave it I'm not going to make some Grand amounts when I stopped learning Ukrainian I'm just going to leave it and let people ask and I knew I was coming here so I thought I could share the story with you today and I hope you enjoyed my terrible story of almost jumping off a mountain in this in in Albania so there we go but we've got to we've got to do that we've got to look after ourselves but it's not just illness when we're looking from the outside from inside our perceptions are very often skewed because I might watch Luca doing amazing things with Hungarian in Greek and think oh I'm not doing that what should I do I should I should go and study as well because otherwise he's going to be better than me and I'm not going to be as good as him and you get into this whole crazy thing of competing against people stop stop stop stop it's just like seriously in my lifetime I always say no one's ever come and give me an orange for learning languages or any prize I did say that once in Australia and Benny if you're here he came and gave me an orange at the end of the end of the event so I now cannot say that thank you very much Benny um but I I you you don't the thing that you do this for is for yourself for your own well-being we can buy hundreds of books we can put stress on ourselves but the only thing that happens is when we internalize things and we make them our own we make them part of us and that's when it's real so actually looking out is fine to check on others to see what people are doing to get inspiration to get motivation we've got to as I say in Spain we've got to be careful that we don't go so far that it's actually detrimental to our own well-being you've got to look after ourselves sometimes we just do get sad we need to take a moment sometimes when people have said to me they can't learn a language or they're finding it hard my advice has been I want you to agree with yourself that you will take at least a week if not two if not a month off learning a language learning the language you're on don't do anything at the most of you have to you can listen to something passively the very most but don't do anything give yourself permission it's important that you give yourself permission you need to own it because when you don't own it that's when all the negative voices come in that's when you start saying to yourself I'm failing I'm not doing it I'm not getting there but when you give yourself permission and you agree with yourself in a very conscious way that's when you own a situation that's when you can move forward in a positive way with your learning with your life because you need to be there with your mind and with your body you need to be there to take it in to really internalize the language that you're seeing and studying so I've told people in the past take time off go for walks walks are great rides if you like bikes go to the gym whatever you whatever you like whatever whatever you do that you enjoy do you you don't need to emulate me or anyone else do you do what works for you if it's petting your cat pet your cat anyone who knows me I quite like cats now sometimes we're tired as well this though tired can be a thing where we say let's do it before we do something else there can be more practical steps to take if we're tired we don't necessarily have to take two weeks after we're tired but what we can do is say okay well I've got a lot on at the moment so maybe we minimize what we're doing maybe we do something else maybe we use different activities maybe we are more on the passive side of things but it's achievable we can do things sometimes even when we're tired but we've got to take other one I'm too tired that we just burn out maybe it's listening to something before we go to sleep if that works for you try it life and language learning and all of these techniques that people talk about with language learning the things that you should try but no one can write a book that's tailor-made to each and every single one of you in this room no one no one can do it because you're all different I know we like to have our groups in society that we say I belong to this group I'm part of this I've gone to this group I'm part of that and that's great but when it comes down to it the future is actually individuals because you could appear to be from a group and you could be perceived as one thing but you could be completely different inside and your mindset can be different so following someone else just because you are naturally identified with them because of the same color the same shape the same religion the same whatever doesn't necessarily fit sometimes we need to listen to everyone to take bits of what everyone has this is why I love hearing lots of different people let's not get tied up let's not get sort of you know really down and into just everything that everyone else is doing and obsessed with it let's get liberated from this kind of looking at what everyone's doing around us and being sucked in to these black holes of nothingness that just take us nowhere and we can stop reflecting in this way because what we do when we reflect on social media particularly and in our language learning and our journey is we'll reflect back what we think people want to see so all they see then is themselves back and they perpetuate the same cycle that goes round and round and round and round and round and the sky is only blue and it's only got a couple of clouds but that's not what it is that's not what the sky is that's not what the world is that's not who we are it's not what language learning is it's actually a rainbow because it's made up of Many Colors it's made up of many droplets it's made up of many things it's more than just one thing it's more than and it changes as well the rainbow sometimes Fades sometimes it's stronger sometimes it's a double rainbow but we need the rainbow we need the rainbow in our life it's a positive thing and when we come together particularly in a very difficult time like we've all just been through with the pandemic it's amazing the strengths you can get from different individuals within that rainbow so look for your droplets in the rain look at the colors look at the people around you that are from different backgrounds different beliefs different genders different whatever because you as an individual are what counts more than the whole of anything as an individual we need to take on board and that's why a diverse set of voices is really important and those diverse voices can come from places we could never imagine and this is one of the other reasons why I really appreciate your diverse voices when I'm walking around this area talking to you as individuals some comments I might not like sometimes comments I might love but all the comments build me as well they feed me to I can evaluate what works for me and what doesn't work for me what's true for me what isn't true for me I can evaluate that I own that that's me that's who I am as a learner and as a person and that's the thing that no one can give you in a course or a book but it's what you can get out of those courses and books that counts so I just like this picture there's no actual real reason why I've included this picture just because in Germany they call they call us Brits Island apes and I embraced that term I see myself as an island ape and I love it and in fact it's a hashtag I use on Facebook for some of my very silly quotes that I put on or things that I take pictures of so that's why I have that there and that's it thank you all so much for listening to me thank you just to say you're welcome to ask questions I also want to reiterate oh what happened there oh Deary me just ignore ignore the blue screen of death you're welcome to ask questions you're also welcome oh oh there oh wow okay I didn't see that that's amazing okay you're also welcome at the end to come up to me and talk to me if you haven't talked to me at all during the conference please do I would particularly like a photo because I like taking photos with people so that I remember I like the memories that come back year on year so that I remember where I was who was here I just really really love that so please do come up to me okay may I ask what you eat and drink to become such a genius in languages okay you're not gonna like the answer to this or maybe you will a lot of chocolate I'm joking I'm joking no um I don't you mentioned illness and how a son of or how some are more mental do you have any advice for coming back after a long pause from something like a bereavement very very good question very good question indeed and I've been through this myself through bereavement and it's important when we have a clear moment in that in that State of Shock in that state of sadness in that state of reflection after someone dies when we have those moments of clarity which often we do in amongst them we sometimes feel guilty for having them make a promise with yourself and just say to yourself actually I recognize where I am this is a moment I'm having this isn't going to be my new normal I'm going to possibly go back to the sadness and you can you can do that and talk to somebody who's professionally trained I'm not professionally trained in this but do make a promise to yourself that you're not going to put pressure on yourself in addition to what you're going through languages are a positive thing that we do in life they're positive they shouldn't be a stress they shouldn't be a burden they shouldn't be something that we we add to our already heavy load when we've we're going through something very difficult so at least make the promise yourself to take time and recognize that you are going through something wow um what's your daily routine in language learning um well how long have we got do we have an extra session for this um actually my my daily routine is probably quite boring um I made my life multilingual is this very short answer so when I started learning more and more languages I made my life very multilingual I live in the Balkans I speak five languages at home I work with and in and through different languages I travel to the neighboring countries as well and I now learn languages to for what I need them for so I will do language projects nowadays um and so yeah I mean I I use probably around I don't know I mean at home we use English French Macedonian Spanish and German and then outside the house we use Albanian Turkish and very often Serbian because we get a lot of Serbian TV and we send jokes very often to each other in Serbian operation or Bosnian and um actually Montenegro and I got one in the other day so yeah in all of those languages the walking languages and on Bulgarian we use the sun jokes in Bulgarian too and then I'll go to places like Greece but I'll go on holiday so I don't need to speak amazing Greek but to get by it's fine and it's recognizing what I need them for and what I can use them for because it's all well and good studying a gazillion languages and taking them all to C2 level as well every everyone wants right what we but the reality is very different because do you have a gazillion hours in your day to maintain the level of language that you need to keep them all at that level probably not I don't I need to sleep and go to the toilet sometimes and eat and God knows what else so I mean I I don't have that time I don't know if you do if anyone does please let me know what your secret is because I'll be amazed um what are your other Hobbies beside languages who said that out of the room right now there are no other Hobbies terrible how dare you heresy I say heresy my words what a rude question how do you cope with maintaining so many languages on a high level I don't I just do it I just talk if I forget a word it's not the end of the world if I make a mistake it's not the end of the world if I say something stupid it's often funny and I laugh more than the other person and then I embarrass myself and them more because I'm like laughing like an idiot but that's just me I mean I just carry on with it and do what I can um how often do you oh sorry what is the native tongue of your pentilingual pentilingual oh my word I don't think I've ever seen that written before my pen tolingual daughter what's her native tongue oh I don't even know how to answer that because I guess I mean what do we mean by native right I mean so her mother language is Macedonian and for me as a baby she learned French and English from day one and then German and Spanish from about 18 months or 16 months 16 months old she was and it's difficult to say she she's very strong in English obviously and and that's around she studies in English now and she's very strong in Macedonia because we we live in skopia where people speak that language and um and the other languages uh she uses but less so obviously we don't live in France we don't live in Germany we don't live in Spain so the contact with those languages and she's got to study her other subject she likes mathematics and and I T and that's what she likes I just gave her languages because if I give her money she'll only spend it on rubbish so I can give her languages and she can decide what she does with it but the linguistic knowledge sits somewhere in her head right and German and Spanish particularly are good for English speakers because they help us with English literature later on and to understand our English grammar works so I find them very very useful tools and for me they were extremely useful when I was then using English professionally so that's kind of where we are I know it's not really an answer to your question but I hope you'll forgive me um how do you stay connected to other polyglots like Luke and Benny and does it help to motivate yourself well Lucas Lucas beautiful I mean how can you not stare at photos of Luca all day on the internet I mean I mean seriously uh I mean he's like a mythical being if you were an animal he'd be a unicorn what can I say um and Benny Benny is a really beautiful lovely big Huggy Bear and so I I like them both and yes they I do find motivation from them I see their Journeys and I see what they're doing and every now and again we do connect it's it's got a bit crazier and over the last say 10 years because they've grown audiences they've they've gone down slightly different roads than me in terms of they've made it their business right to do all of this stuff so our opportunities for communication on a daily basis of of dwindled but that doesn't mean that the connections that we make when we meet up aren't equally as rewarding for me and enriching and yet I find motivation not just in them but actually in many people in this audience so um uh the fact that Raphael didn't have Raphael's here but he he's from Poland and he's on Tick Tock and I absolutely adore his videos and when I went up to him he was really surprised and I said I just love what you do I just love seeing you and hearing your voice and he's a great guy I'll try and share it in the group so you can follow him but he's great um what's the official number of languages which you can speak at Sea once it oh my word really they didn't exist I mean this is the problem right I I I I know it's kind of sounds like I'm trying to avoid the question and I kind of am kind of am the reason I'm avoiding the question is I've never started to C2 exam it what just wasn't a thing when I was growing up and when I was at University we didn't have a C1 or C2 exam in any language just wasn't wasn't there I've I've done an A1 and A2 and a B1 exam and I did those in Turkish and all I can say is many of my languages are higher than that level that I achieved in Turkish so I know that the higher than that and I know that I I went to the Czech Republic and I did a course that is now graded at C1 for check but I would not say that my check is C1 currently absolutely not when I went back to Czech Republic about maybe five five or seven no seven maybe even longer now all the all the years are skewed in my head after covert so maybe seven years ago I sat in on a on a B2 course again and finished that so but I I really don't know it's very difficult to say um that's why I leave this blank and say you decide honestly um have you ever had any feelings of pressure to succeed in all your language projects if yes how did you ever comment um no I I actually haven't I don't put myself under the stress um I I just put my hand up and say no I that didn't happen like I did now with Ukrainian it didn't happen um like I did Slovak and I got to a point where I competed in the assessment and was judged by a panel to be very good after a few weeks of study um it went back to like almost zero I mean I know a few basic words in Slovak now that's pretty much it does it bother me not really um it's normal and I think we need to normalize and not make that a natural thing that we see that we don't just do this once sometimes it's an ongoing process sometimes there are there are dips in our learning there are dips in our knowledge there are times when we're at Peaks and we're doing really well and this is a moving thing it's um it's a living thing language is living and if we're not speaking it or using it how do we retain it to the same level who inspires you do you have any heroes or Role Models can be in or outside of language learning uh okay here I know okay right well I I do have a lot of people I really look up to Heroes and Role Models it's very difficult that they're quite charged words I mean just at this event right now I mean I I Marvel at you'd admire I just don't know how she does everything she does and I tell her that constantly she must be sick of me by now um and yeah I mean do I have other I just have people moments of you know when I follow people I'm like really inspired by what people do and you know I'll meet somebody who's um the people overcome so many things in life and then you meet them and you talk to them and you get these moments of inspiration constantly and I don't want to name everyone I just name you'd it because I just I mean you just you did I mean she started the polyglot gathering in in Berlin so I think she deserves a mention for that reason alone um so yeah there are lots and lots of people too many to mention what do you think about Sr space repetition system uh like Anki quite interesting using okay for learning vocabulary there are lots of people that love it I am yes and no sometimes I go through Spates of using it and sometimes I feel it's working but sometimes what I find is I remember the predictability of the word set so the memory is a weird thing right the memory is very weird sometimes we have we remember the words that were included in the set but we then don't necessarily know how to take those out of the set and use them in real life so you may have experienced please nod your heads if you agree with this you may have experienced in time sometimes that you'll use Anki or something else you'll learn all these words you'll do really really well on key and then you'll go and you'll forget the weather you can't remember it please note if you if this yeah I'll put your hands up fantastic so thank you I'm not alone great thank you um and and and I think that's to do with we need some sort of trigger to trigger the memory and sometimes when it's an Anki set or something it's actually that that triggers the memory instead of the actual internal eye internalizing the actual word or the sentence and so this is why I'm kind of on the fence I I see that I see a useful in the Senate but at the same time I also see how it can be problematic sometimes but if it works when you enjoy it go for it how many days do you think it will take to develop a rhythm for studying a language every day to make it a habit hi from Brazil watching online hello hello from Brazil watching online thank you Angela to Dubai so um that's a complicated one so after during this pandemic I started actually coaching people with language learning issues it started very very innocently actually a friend of the family asked if I could help with their son to get him through his final exams in German at University and we worked through texts and we'd we'd look at how the German sentence structure in German words an etymology would work in German and how that would then be translated into Macedonian and we would see the comparisons and things like that so we worked on very structured things because it was for his exams and then he wanted to be able to speak it so that he could use it for his exams as well for use the language for work and so afterwards fortunately he also got a job so it was quite good for me I was I felt very proud it's a proud dad moment you know even though he's not my son I thought I was very very proud of him and he really got into a rhythm very quickly because he was highly motivated and he had a very specific goal in mind sometimes when we have a goal in mind some people like go some people don't sometimes though a long-term goal can be cool because we can then start separating off into into sizable bites that we can just go for and he did that and he started listening to things in the morning reading things practicing the language he'd go to groups online to practice he'd use he was using a zoom group sometimes but the you could gone Clubhouse or on another app and and practice the language you need to necessarily go anywhere else you could get an italki teacher in practice you can do whatever you want but the the key thing is you do something you do something often to actually keep it as a habit depends on you bear in mind that you can start something and do it for a month and say yeah I've got the Habit I've got the Habit I've got the Habit then one of those problems occurs right illness depression someone might die something bad might happen in life and all of a sudden you've gone from this yeah I've got I've got a what happens then have you failed is it fair to say you failed would you tell somebody else if you were to look at someone else who did that would you say to them ah you're a failure who would say that to somebody anyone know of course we wouldn't who would say to themselves honestly tell me honestly hands up if I don't see every hand I'm amazed um because many of us will have that voice the biggest hatred is in our heads so what we need to remember when we're talking about getting a pattern is what is that pattern over the longer period of time three months a year how do we then adapt to that pattern for when we are in our low points or we're sick or something else is going on we're busy at work some of the really important project on right we've got to adapt and we've got to understand that life is like this it's not like that how am I doing for time how can I get more questions um why are the most popular people probably got men are they are they are they still because I I would I would have hoped that that had changed with people like Lindy you did Lydia are these not people no that we can we can look up to as far as I know they don't and identify as male I I think there are a lot of Christine although not a lot of these people out there now that are not just men I mean I I appreciate it was an issue in the beginning but men are like that often men are a lot more prepared to go out there and just go look what I can do am I amazing and there's a lot there's a lot of things going on for why that happens right there's a lot going on and you can unpack that for yourselves I'm not gonna spoon feed you my reasons for why I think that happens but I think that we've got past the point now where we do have and I am inspired by people of different genders around the world who inspire me from different places different cultures different countries so I don't know if that's true just a short info about a time yeah so since there's only lunch after this talk I wouldn't stop this but I already closed the questions but you still can vote on them and I leave it just up to you how many of them you want to answer okay but you feel free to leave if you're if you're absolutely uncomfortable uh I'll stay for as long as you want me to stay okay I do this on my lives I often I do it for an hour and I stay for like an hour and a half so if you can put up with me feel free but if you if you need to go I completely understand we do need to pee and we do need to eat so that's fine um also I might be boring as hell I don't know I mean okay I've heard you speak of overlearning and it's necessity in language learning could you please describe your understanding of this concept and expenses really good question I love that question I'm not that I didn't like the others but I really like this question because yes language I see languages as a very different topic to almost anything else that we learn in life okay hear me out on this any doctors in the room okay good any lawyers in the room okay out of the lawyers and the doctors do you remember everything from your first degree in law and your first medical degree no you don't and why don't you because it's not relevant and you specialized right you specialize in that you might understand some Concepts from that because you had to get the the logic behind it but you now know where to go to to look that thing up or to recommend someone to go to somewhere else languages are different and they're different because you can't learn the present tense in Spanish and then get to talking about politics and forget the present tense you have to take the basics with you that means you have to internalize the language and that's the big difference between languages very often and other things we do get rusty in some topics but it's almost the opposite of your professions because we lose sometimes the the special areas we always have to retain the base and we have to really manage it well to retain that degree of fluency does that make sense to you does that okay good I imagine if they said no that'd look like a right idea wouldn't I okay what do you think about using efficient but boring tactics to learn a language the fact that you've used the word boring in there I think you can okay I want to hear it's boring good in language learning no no if you're bored you need to change it up you need to make it interesting for you this is where the individuality comes okay everything can be made different it can be tailored to your needs it can be tailored to what suits your personality what suits your motivation what suits things that make it interesting for you as soon as you describe something that's boring it's a matter of time before you just leave it to one side wish I were there great talk oh thank you oh it's been a long time since Fukuoka air has indeed too long uh you're an unusual Japanese friend thank you my unusual Japanese friend thank you where are you my unusual Japanese Son thank you very much online anonymous anonymous at least put your name okay with some of the motivation of you doing this talk due to what you've seen and heard in in these past two pandemic years among the languages absolutely everything everything is to do with this because this is something that's really come out online and it's really not not in what I see online with the the public conversations but with the private conversations with the groups I I run these um language learning therapy groups and I I love doing them I love it it's like my favorite thing because we talk in very honest terms in groups about what we're going through with language learning we suggest things to try we come back we share Eternal etymology stories and sometimes we share just things are just difficult actually I don't want to talk about that I want to talk about what's going on and how I can maybe navigate around it what I need to do sometimes they just come to listen to the others as well and how they talk about languages because that's what keeps their sort of their fire the flicker you're going and burning within them to go back to languages at some point when they can so people who haven't learned integrated languages or haven't integrated languages into their lives how many languages do you think is too many to learn at once how long's a piece of string is the sort of unfortunately um there's not one answer to that I hate to I I mean I I question Dodge when it's really necessary and unfortunately it's very difficult to say because it could be very specific to every individual on this planet depends on your community Which languages you hear depends on the type of media you you take in one thing I can say is this you can learn different languages at the same time it's possible I I did it and I'm still here um what I say is if you find it confusing after a few months leave one language to one side focus on the other one the other language isn't going anywhere it's going to be there when you come back it's not a race it's not a competition you're doing it for you you're doing it for positive reasons go back to it later if you feel you can remember also the more languages you're learning at one time the more languages you need to maintain the more time the more your time is divided because you can't clone yourself to have a german-speaking version of yourself a Spanish-speaking version of yourself a Chinese speaking version of yourself and then at night you magically come back and become one person again it's not how it works and I presume some of you work yeah or study do any of you do you all sleep as well was that just me okay okay yeah okay do you eat yeah as well hopefully after this I might I might keep you and I make you starve now after that key too long yeah we'll be and if you don't get off that stage you won't be eating yeah I can I can feel it now um but what's the method you use to study vocabulary very good question depends on the vocabulary it really depends on the vocabulary mostly through context and repetition forgetting things many many many many times and realizing what's important for me to remember and what's useful within the community I'm using the language with because if I don't use the vocabulary they use and I focus on vocabulary that's completely random well I'm not going to get the the repetition I need to internalize that vocabulary and that language because if I don't get that then I'm basically lost I mean I've got nothing going for me with the language and you're not likely to remember it and to be able to use it later but when you want to very learn very specific things say names of birds names of flowers names of trees names of weird fruits and vegetables that you like you may not get that in the wild ever so sometimes you may need to learn it use a Memory Palace use mononics systems so that you make a story out of the different words so that you can remember them and make them a lot come alive for you so sometimes it's a case of taking a word and splitting it up into sections so that you can make associations with the different parts and then you can start to put it together later and it sticks and I did this once years and years ago with a very odd word uh with Armenian I was learning Armenian for some reason because I just like languages as I said at the start and the Word was pineapple and does anybody know the word for pineapple in Armenian so okay I'm going to spoil the surprise and tell you so the word for pineapple and Armenian isor now it's one of the only words that I now remember in Armenian all the rest is gone apart from like hello how are you and it was the word that I could not remember and now I remember it because I made such a thing about it in my head that it's stuck and I use it in these kinds of situations to to give an example so I now end up repeating it constantly and so we have to keep repeating things to make the mistake but now I'm left with no Armenian except for which when I said to an Armenian to impress them they said actually we tend to say anonymous [Music] make your vocabulary irrelevant that's the lesson but an interesting story about the etymology is the that word literally means is the word for an apple and ARCA is the word for a king so it's the king of the apples it's got a crown on it I think it's quite cool isn't that pretty yeah it's pretty isn't it okay does the ability to learn a language is and memorize new words really get worse with age or can we train these abilities and they'll stay with us all life long can I get back to you on that when I'm about 80. um I mean I've seen people who learn languages later in life and they do so very well uh there was a a lady from the United Kingdom who learned Russian and think in her 60s or 70s then did a degree in Russian Masters and then did a doctorate in the language went to Russia started translating texts from Russian to English so that sounds pretty good yeah I think she's not she's not bad at Russian let's put it that way so she was she was a little bit older right um how long does it stay who knows again how long is a piece of string um how do you approach learning a second or third language from a oh from a did I go down Where'd I go oh third one am I going okay how do you approach learning oh have I missed one okay um were you from the start more interested in deepening your language you'll learn you're you're trolling me now I swear there's a troll in the room is it is it one of you wants to go for lunch and you're trying to stop me is this what you're trying to do to me now I'm gonna make you read them out so be careful I've got my I've got my own I've got my eye on you I can see what you're doing on the side so I've just explained the languages the questions jump with the voting but I now fix the the upmost ones is that what you're doing this you're all to blame you awful people okay please read the blue one oh the blue one the blue the blue blue one or the blue blue one the only blue one this is where we need another blue right blue the blue one how do you approach the learning a second or third language from a family where you already speak one and say oh hello uh say Slavic um very cautiously so I made a promise with myself when I started learning Slavic languages that I wouldn't learn certain Slavic languages just because it messed with my melon um it really did my brain was like just goo you start learning when I started learning Slovak and it was fine for for Bratislava for the challenge it was fine to use in the city but it turned very quickly back into polish and check and in fact just before I've been focusing so much on trying to speak Polish again while I've been here that I tried to speak to a Czech person and it was just I was fighting the Slovak this sorry the slave the Polish words in my head because it's so difficult and you're going so slowly and you almost feel like you're walking through treacle sometimes so slowly cautiously and forgive yourself when even if it's a language that you study to a high level it's fine if you haven't spoken for a while and you start mixing up with the language you speak less well or have had less experience of that happens to me all the time um does the ability to learn okay I am right now does the ability to learn languages and memorize new words really get worse though we've done that well right yeah am I going mad on stage no are you all going mad with me good good good good I'm glad we I think we can get a discount on our um on our yeah on the hospital when we go for our get our bills from the psychiatrist um okay were you from the start more interested in deepening your life your learning or have you been interested since the beginning broadening through different language families this is a really good question as well not that the rest weren't but it's a good question because often I see online people saying ah you know they're not real polygots because they're learning lots of different languages and they're not really deepening their knowledge actually I don't think this is a mutually exclusive thing um sometimes you'll learn a language like I'll take my case with Spanish I study Spanish University and honestly I got to the end of my degree and I never no I didn't get to the end of my degree I got to maybe a couple of years into my degree and it was Portuguese that introduced me to the word morar in Spanish as a verb I didn't know that in Spanish but it's a very normal word in Portuguese well not only so much in in Brazil I'm looking at my Brazilian friends there but it but in in the Portuguese Islands at University which was it was it was was very common for I live right but in Spanish it has this idea of to dwell it's used in poetry it's used in a more flowery way and so yes absolutely learning different language families can really enrich your your understanding of other languages you speak and it can sometimes also mess with your melon as I said but it I find it generally quite fun to do I learned lots of English words actually through other languages so I didn't know the words I learned the words in in Turkish um which means um like an Angelic type looking person very beautiful person and they Hui actually I couldn't find the word in English but then I looked in the dictionary it was horiya which meant nothing to me any English speakers know the word horia in English no any Arabic speakers recognize it it's taken from huria huria so it's kind of like a very a very a very pretty person apparently the Gates of Heaven or something um and anyway it's an English word as well that I had no idea about so sometimes I get enriched with these kinds of little nuggets of information you learn Greek and you learn all of the why words are said in a certain way what words mean amethyst does anybody know the reason why we say amethyst no okay yes so it's to do with methos which is drunk in Greek and therefore she was like literally you're not drunk the ah is the opposite right so the reason why we say amethyst is that in the churches in in Greece they used to use goblets or even just wear rings made of amethyst because they had to drink the rest of the communion wine that was left over and they said that if they drank it from amethyst and method that they would not get drunk so there we go and I love these little things this is basically this is what drives my engine all day I mean I've got thousands of these I love so yes learning lots of languages helps you to deepen your awareness and knowledge of other ones um and actually I see Gareth I'm getting in Welsh and getting in Welsh is Greek it's a Greek word in Welsh it's the same word I never knew who knew right Welsh and Greek and it bypassed English it's amazing I love I love it I love it okay Steve excuse me I think like we are a bit now uh late in the time I would say you answer two more questions because we have still eight to go and we'll be a bit much so how about we just pick two questions and then yeah pick two questions pick them for me because if I look it will probably go go Haywire I simply go by the votes I think there's one just uploaded so okay which one do you feel often like you're competing with the other polyglots who offer language courses no no I don't I don't I don't I don't feel well then how about the next do you ever go through entire days without speaking or thinking in your language of birth I don't think in any language so every day yes so my thoughts are not in a language my thoughts are just in feelings and in visual in fact I would challenge most people to say that really you you actually delude yourself in thinking that you think in a language I know it's controversial I know it's controversial I know I'm going there um the reason is is that I can't think I can't speak and use language quickly enough to keep up with my thoughts this is why we often go and you can't think of the word right or if you say something a feeling that you have imagine a time when you've had a feeling and you say a word and you go oh it's not quite that because you can't describe it and so I don't think we do I think that we we think very quickly afterwards with the words they come very quickly afterwards but I do think we don't necessarily think in vocabulary as we imagine we do it's not a monologue in in our in our heads is it some of you do some of you might do on purpose but I I think that when you have an instant reaction or instant feeling or you see something the word comes after thank you I think uh we can wrap it up and okay thank you can I just say congratulations to all of you who survived to the end of this talk the certificates will be out front so you can pick them up you've all graduated C2 Richard simcot

Channel: Polyglot Gathering

Views: 1,866

Keywords: Polyglot, Gathering

Id: gTpOJRidOmw

Length: 64min 28sec (3868 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023