How to Learn a Language From Scratch | The First Week of Learning a New Language

hi everybody my name is Shay welcome to or back to my channel today I have a very exciting video plan and I actually got the idea through all of you because a few of you have reached out to me on instagram d-ends or youtube comments just saying your tips are really helpful but I don't really know where to start when I'm learning a language for the very first time and I totally get that it can be super intimidating to know where to start so I decided to come up with this video and in this video I'm going to show you how I would approach learning a new language and show you what I would do in my first 5 days of learning a new language now a few disclaimers this video is not going to be one of those videos where it's like I learned this language in a week or in 7 days I'm not trying to learn the whole language I just want to show you all how I would approach learning a new language that I've never studied before and what I would do in those first really important few days to get familiar with the language and decide whether or not if it's something I still want to study and pursue and second I am NOT a teacher or I don't have any sort of formal training or anything these are purely just my suggestions and based off what I've learned from studying languages so yeah I'm not telling you that this is the way you have to learn a new language or this is the best way this is just how I would approach learning a new language and then you can use these tips or not whatever you decide last but not least I put a little poll on my YouTube and I asked what language you would want me to try but I didn't really specify the fact that it would be to show you how I would start learning the language and not fully pursue learning this language and I think some of you were confused by that so I just wanted to state from the beginning of this video that I am deciding to learn French but I won't be pursuing French right now because I am really invested in Italian and I want to continue only focusing on my Italian right now so this video doesn't mean that I will now be learning French as well so I'm sorry if that disappoints you but this video is just so I can teach people like I've mentioned how to start learning a new language when you've never studied it before I've never studied French in my life I think I know maybe four words in French and all of you actually voted for French to be the language that I try so now that we have all of that out of the way I have a schedule for the next five days of how I'm gonna introduce myself to French and I will walk you through it each day and show you what I'm doing and that way you can model your own like study routine after mine so I hope this is helpful for everyone out there who wants to learn a new language and doesn't know where to start hopefully after this video you will know exactly what to do so let's get started all right so day one of learning a new language I decided that day one I would spend it thinking about what I already know about that language for me it's like three words one jewel we is it a simple it is there probably butcher that's so bad and I am very sorry I forgot the other disclaimer of this video is that any French people watching this I am sorry that you will hear your beautiful language butchered and murdered right in front of you so I apologize in advance for that the French has always been very intimidating to me I don't know why but I think it's because of the pronunciation so that scares me a lot but anyways getting into day one so yeah I would think about what I already know about the language and then also I would want to figure out what my motivation is to learn a language because you know you could think a language is cool and think oh wouldn't it be cool if I could speak that yes but what's gonna make you continue to study on those days when you really don't feel like it or what's gonna make sure that you aren't going weeks without studying because you start to get bored it doesn't necessarily have to be a thing or a person you know a lot of people who are dating someone that speaks a certain language they'll try to learn the language or you want to travel somewhere those are all good options but it doesn't necessarily have to be that it could be that you just really feel a connection to language and you really truly deeply are interested in studying it and that's totally fine to just make sure it's something that will keep you motivated for a long time and then into the actual studying stuff so day 1 I would personally focus on listening to the language and starting to play around with pronunciation so today on the first day I would just be trying to listen to French music like maybe I will make a Spotify playlist with all French songs I'll start watching some French youtubers I will watch little TV shows with French subtitles and not so much with the intention of being able to understand it because I definitely won't my first time watching this stuff but more so with the intention of hearing it and hearing what it sounds like picking out sounds and words that I start to hear more frequently because then you know those are common phrases or those are common words and yeah so the first day really just like totally blasting yourself okay a bunch of the languages sounds through music videos etc so yeah I mean when you're cleaning your room or something in the morning play some French music when you are eating lunch on the first day I don't think I would worry about diving in right now to vocabulary and all that kind of stuff I want to hear it first because I honestly haven't really listened to a lot of French so first I would just spend the whole day listening just take it easy it's the first day you know there's no rush so and then I will also look up pronunciations of like letters I don't even know I don't even know what I've done like no prior research to this I mean with Italian I know that everything is pretty much pronounced the same you know certain letters together sound different but like in French I assume there's it's a little bit more complex which is scary so I will try to listen to pronunciation and mimic that and listen so that's day 1 [Music] okay now that I've had my fun little dance party or whatever that was I just looked on the good old YouTube to find a video about introduction to French an introduction to French pronunciation so I'm gonna watch it and do my best to mimic it and we'll see how it goes there are their origins with French words because of this French pronunciation is quite similar to English in fact okay I mean that's I'm gonna have to disagree okay I'm you and you oh sweet so so these unfamiliar sounds are the what okay no let's go son so Stefan chipton v Oh still no nasal vowels another unique French sound is the guttural R sound Oh God okay what is friend I'm not trying to laugh in this language I just like this is so interesting to me all silent letters mm-hmm we don't actually pronounce them in French listen to it again Judy Murray crystal in fact most of it there are of course exceptions to this rule let's look at the most common case when the next word starts with a vowel - two - tongue to tongue mmm I know me yes yes nerville nerville Schultz's you don't don't see awful yeah it's amazing about the Hornets hours but they will only get and more intuitive by the time you get used to pronouncing whole sentences in French okay let's wrap up okay so this is crazy because I honestly didn't know that there was this many different sounds and French so I'm very overwhelmed right now um so I just want to say that if you also run into this problem with whatever language that you're learning and it seems really scary at first I just urge you to not be intimidated because obviously it's all very very new and you shouldn't let that scare you off there's definitely gonna be times throughout your language learning and studying where you will run into something that your brain is immediately like I don't understand it I don't want to do it but you just have to push through that and you have to learn that you'll eventually understand it but at first it might seem really scary and intimidating and just also be patient like you have to remember that you didn't grow up speaking these sounds so they're gonna feel really unnatural to you whereas a native speaker is like totally fine so you're gonna have an accent no matter what I feel like especially with French which I feel like the little sounds are so hard to get perfect so with any language like don't don't feel like you have to sound perfect right away that's just not probably not possible so it's fine but yeah for the rest of the day I am going to listen to some more music and watch some I'm gonna find some vloggers there's some French ones that I've already seen like pop up on my youtube homepage so I'll start watching some of those again not trying to understand but more just like hearing it and yeah and then just have like a pretty relaxing day not forcing anything probably watch a few more videos about pronunciation and practice like talking along with someone but you know I wasn't going to film that because it's like there's only so long you can watch me sit here and watch videos so and then I will check in with you tomorrow because I think tomorrow I will continue to do this but then also start to bring in some very basic vocabulary that's my plan for now and we will see how the rest of day 1 goes [Music] it is day two of French studying and got my little coffee last night I watched a few more vlogs in French of course I didn't understand anything but I was still just getting used to hearing the sounds of French and I also watched a few more pronunciation videos it's it's easy to get frustrated because you feel like you're making this sound but then when it comes out you're like that doesn't sound right and you don't know what to do so it just takes practice for sure and like I've said before you're not going to be perfect on your first day so today I'm gonna do more of that so still listening listening to the music working on pronunciation and then today I'm also going to look up basic phrases and basic vocabulary words last night I was a little too excited so I did a little bit of that last night just looking up like basic phrases like how to introduce yourself stuff like that and then I'll probably start a Quizlet or a non-key like flashcard group and I will also probably look up the most common words verbs stuff like that but I'm not gonna look up I'm not gonna do conjugations just yet I don't want to like freak myself out because I don't even feel like I have the pronunciation down so I want to make sure I know more about the language before I'm trying to like conjugate verbs so that's for today [Music] it's day three and I am not in the best mood because I've had a ton of morning meetings for work because now it's Monday now I am just going to take a little bit of a break from all the work stuff and just go over some pronunciation so reviewing like some of the pronunciation that I was working on yesterday and then I am also going to look at just like the present tense conjugation and if it's too much for me right now I might just move that to tomorrow and keep working on pronunciation just so I can still get a better sense of how to pronounce the words and you know what it sounds like but throughout today because I do have work I think I'll probably just have like music French music playing in the background and you know maybe watch some French videos while I'm eating lunch or something like that you know so basically just like the same kind of thing making sure I'm listening and hearing the language as I'm just going about my day because you know it's hard like when you are working to figure out time to study but when you're studying it doesn't necessarily have to be reading through exercises or doing something it can really just be like listening so if I go on a walk later I'll probably also listen to a podcast or something right now I still really can't understand anything but you know it's just important to keep listening and yeah just hearing your language so I'm gonna do that and I will check in with you guys later [Music] okay so I was just doing some review of the conjugations for the present tense and at first I was just reading a resource that I found online but then I decided it would probably be better to watch a video because that way I can hear you know how it sounds instead of just writing it down I think for Italian I was able to just read you know the breakdown of the conjugations because I already knew you know how it would be pronounced but with French I realized as I was writing down the conjugations I needed someone to talk me through it so there's plenty of resources on YouTube that you just look up like French conjugation present tense or you know insert whatever language you're learning I think for me it is pretty confusing and I'm debating on whether or not to maybe just move this to tomorrow and not quite get into conjugations yet I think I was able to get into conjugations earlier in Italian because knowing some Spanish and just like studying Spanish in school they're similar enough that like I don't know I guess it makes more sense to me there's still the breakdown of the conjugations in french but for some reason the endings like they're not clicking with me and I don't I'm not really sure why but they're just more confusing to me and maybe it is because I don't have the pronunciation down yet I know I keep saying that it's tough and I don't want that to deter anyone from learning French like if you're interested in learning French and you're watching this video please don't think that like oh if Shay can't do it then I can't because you know like everyone that's different but also I don't know maybe some of you believe that I am like a polyglot or I'm like really skilled at learning languages and I think I think that's not the case like I actually think that I'm someone who's not naturally super super good at learning language like I don't know how to describe it you know some people you just feel like they pick it up really fast I don't know so I feel like I'm somewhere in between but obviously everyone has to work at it like no one's naturally gonna know how to speak a language they've never studied before but yeah I just wanted to let you guys know that even though I'm complaining about how hard French seems for me I don't want anyone to think like oh now I'm not gonna learn French I think maybe Italian is a little bit easier for me because I grew up studying Spanish like all throughout school so there are similarities that make it a little bit easier and like recognizable to me whereas French is just like completely something different I mean I know there are plenty of similarities like some people might say that they're very similar which they are it's not like I'm learning Russian or Korean like with a whole new alphabet but yeah I still you know I still find this difficult I think today I you know I wrote down the present tense conjugation in my notebook but I think I might just need to watch a few more videos and keep working on pronunciation because that's still the toughest part for me you can spend your first week just like listening to music or watching videos you don't really need to get into like the Nitty Gritty of learning grammar and stuff in your first week like if you want to spend your first week just hearing the language that's fine and that's probably helpful because it is really important to make sure you have a good grasp of the pronunciation before you move on because if you don't build that foundation early on then that will probably hurt you in the long run it's better to be able to recognize what letters make certain sounds and stuff like that and then you just have that with you instead of like trying to get into all the grammar and then realize like you can't even say the words or you can't speak so definitely don't fall in that trap of like you know you can read something but like have you ever said it like try speaking it make sure you have the pronunciation and just enjoy like mimicking the sounds or listening to audio of speakers and mimicking that I think I'm also a little tired because I had my Italian tutoring session this morning and that's like an hour so it's hard you know just like staying extremely focused in an Italian for an hour like even when I study Italian oh it's not like I'm listening to my tutor or talking for an hour straight so I think it's a little tough and I'm like getting burned out a little bit because I'm still trying to study Italian while I study French so it's a lot of foreign languages that I you know like bright your brain gets tired so yeah be patient and easy on yourself [Music] all right so does the morning of day four and I decided today that I wanted a little bit more structure because I just really enjoy being organized especially when it comes to language and I felt like I was a little bit off track with where I was going so I actually decided to look at the group that does my Italian books that I really like and I found that they do have French resources so I highly recommend if you are using a book for other languages to see if that group or company has books for the new language that you're trying to learn and chances are they probably do so I found one for a French that I really like and I'll show it to you in a second but I really like the way it's laid out and I feel like I have some sort of structure and like an explanation of grammar and stuff like that so while I feel like the first few days are totally fine to just like listen to the language and watch movies and stuff like that I think it is really important to find one or two books you know don't get too many like don't go crazy and buy ten or download ten or something like that just find one or two that you know you'll really like and take a look through that because I feel like it'll give me a really good foundation of like an explanation of grammar or if there are any things that differ from other languages that I've learned that I should know about in the very beginning of learning this language so I'm gonna read through that this morning I have about an hour before work and I'm going to look through that and you know if they have a breakdown of verb conjugations I'll take a look at that but if not it might just be some more vocabulary that I should learn first before I jump into trying to conjugate verbs I might be trying to do that a little bit too early so yeah we'll see okay so this is what it looks like when you first open up the book they have little introduction and you can see that chapter one we'll start off with pronunciation which is what I am starting off with too and it kind of compares the French alphabet to English so that way you can kind of see okay what sounds or you know letters do we already have in English and what's different and then it goes through pronunciation and like what sounds certain letter combinations make this is super important and I really like it I feel like I haven't seen as comprehensive of an explanation on just online resources so I really like how its laid out in this book but you know to actually hear how it's pronounced you should probably look up an actual video like how to pronounce these different things so that's my only recommendation is also getting the audio part of this and then you know more explanation goes into like masculine and feminine which is something we don't have in English which I feel like for me is always hard in any language whether it's Italian or Spanish or now French like I feel like it's very hard because in English we just don't have that so I feel like it's yet another thing we have to learn talks about different things like the final consonant and how that's pronounced when it's next to a different we're something like that I think one of the hardest things for me is that there are silent letters in French which is confusing to me and we'll definitely take me a little bit of time to recognize what's silent and what's not then of course it goes into numbers now I think it's important to know numbers but I don't think it's necessarily super important to know how to count to 80 in your first days of studying a language so and then it goes into time and date that kind of stuff which again I feel like you know it's important to kind of go over this but I don't think you need to like super dive in to know how to say like it's 115 or something I think this can definitely be helpful because you don't even realize how often you'll say like today tomorrow these different phrases when you're leaving when did you get here or even talking about times of day I mean you say that a lot you know when you're making plans or something so this I feel like it's important days of the week that's important and and you know I feel like with any Romance language like these right now look really similar to Italian to me and Spanish so I feel like I won't have too much trouble memorizing these which is nice and then then we jump into elements of a sentence which i think is really good because you know understanding grammar and word order and just getting a good explanation of that is really helpful before you dive into a language so I actually think this is really good I think the way this book is laid out is a really good road map to how to learn a language I'll definitely read through this and get a good sense of how sentences are constructed alright so I think I'm going to grab my notebook and start taking notes of all of this stuff [Music] oh it is the morning of day 5 and I realized yesterday that I didn't film after I said I was going to read through this chapter but I did take notes and I found the chapter to be super helpful it definitely gave me a really nice overview of everything I should be looking at and I think it was super helpful so I definitely recommend trying to find a good resource early on and you're learning so today I'm gonna start off by reviewing those notes from yesterday because review is always important then I'm gonna practice writing out some conjugations of present tense verbs just to get a better understanding of the different endings and how they conjugate I feel like now I have a better sense of pronunciation but you know it's still a work in progress so yeah it's just gonna be a basic mix of things but I think by day five if you just are getting a better understanding of pronunciation maybe you start to recognize some common vocabulary words you're definitely in the right spot you know you're not necessarily going to be writing out full sentences on day 5 so don't feel like you should be at any specific point and like I've said before even if you're still in the listening phase of just listening and getting used to the language that's also fine to everyone's language learning journey is different like everyone's on a different path and you shouldn't compare yours to someone else's yeah so these are just suggestions of how I personally would start learning a language and these are by no means like exactly the right formula again it's just my advice so you can take it or not or maybe just use certain parts of it but I realize maybe these days have felt a little scattered as far as what I'm doing so at the end of this video like right after this I'm just gonna go through and summarize everything that I recommend doing and I will also create a little calendar a little like schedule thing that you can print out I'll link it down below that just kind of says you know day 1 day 2 day 3 and some recommendations on what you can do for each day so that way you can have a visual of what I explained in this video so for now I'm gonna review my notes and then I will write out some conjugations and then also look at some simple sentences and see if I'm ready to start practicing saying them prac seeing just writing them you know copying them and we will take it from there [Music] and savoir said whoa Sam whoa whoa oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah wah wah wah then you ah that's like Italian then you see yah yah yah yah yah wah wah see wait what is she interesting I wanted to go over a recap of everything that we learned this week and like I mentioned I will put it all in a calendar that you can print out and kind of create your own first week study schedule so first off day one was solely for listening to the language you don't have to understand anything at this point it's just listening to music watching movies TV shows YouTube videos any sort of resources that you can find to help you understand the sounds of a language and again don't do this to try and understand what you're hearing just hear the language day two still for listening maybe listening to a song that was your favorite over and over again on a walk while you're cleaning your room or watching your favorite youtuber that you just found but also mimicking the sound so what I did was listen to a few videos about pronunciation so on YouTube you can just search French pronunciation Spanish Italian German whatever and then start listening to videos where someone is describing the different sounds of your language and then vocally say them out loud because chances are you might read a word and think in your head okay I know what that's supposed to sound like but when you have to make the sound it's probably going to be hard for you because your mouth and your tongue and everything won't be used to making that sound because it might not appear in your own language so you really have to start speaking because having a foundation of the pronunciation is really important from the very beginning another thing I did was found a really good flashcard set on Quizlet I just looked up common French words and wasn't necessarily studying them for understanding of what they meant but more just to practice how they sounded because there's an option to put on the audio when you see the flash card so that I was just going through and pronouncing the different words and that they had in the set also by day two this might go into day three start finding some resources that you can trust and that you enjoy so for me it was finding that book on Kindle unlimited that I was able to read so I would say choose one or two books because you don't want to have too many and get overwhelmed so kind of just like do some research you don't have to dive into the book yet just find one or two that you like and then day three you want to continue doing what you were doing on the first two days so that's listening mimicking sounds etc but then you also want to start reading that resource book that you found maybe the first two chapters just to get an overall understanding of the language maybe there's a few different things that differ from your native language that you should be aware of or will also help walk you through pronunciation grammar sentence structure stuff like that and for me it really helped get a better idea of the language as a whole because when I was just trying to approach it without a resource I was a little bit thrown off and a little confused and also a little discouraged because I wasn't understanding how to speak it how to say it seemed very just like all over the place so a book was really good to have like a solid foundation then day four is when you can really dive into vocabulary so that list that you found and we're practicing for pronunciation start reviewing those words to understand the meaning so start quizzing yourself as you're pronouncing the word when it comes up on the flashcard also start memorizing what it means so that way you can weave those in together you can also start learning some basic phrases you know how to introduce yourself hello my name is that kind of stuff if you feel like you're ready but definitely don't push it if you're not also if you are a little bit more of an advanced a language learner and you've done this before maybe you can start with the present tense conjugation on day four but again only if you're ready don't force yourself or feel like you have to be at this point but that could be a good starting place just to start setting yourself up to learn simple sentences and stuff like that but just make sure that you know in your vocabulary practice that you're also learning the most common verbs because you want to know what verbs you'll be conjugating so vocabulary would come before that and then day five if you did learn the present conjugation the day before start practicing that you know choose a few common verbs to practice conjugating and write those out a few times make sure you definitely review everything that you learned so go through back in your notebook and just kind of read through everything make sure you understand everything if there was something you're still kind of unsure about look through your resources and see if there's a better explanation and then at this point if you are serious about learning the language you can find a tutor or find a language partner so the apps hello talk and tandem which I've mentioned before and other videos are really helpful for finding native speakers that you can talk to just through an app or I personally use I talkie for a language tutor so if you feel like you want to go through this process with a teacher I highly recommend looking up a tutor on I talkie I also want to mention something that I discovered along the way you really have to have a solid reason and motivation for learning and language because for me while I enjoyed French it's not a language that I'm really really passionate about or that I really want to learn whereas Italian I feel this passion to study Italian almost every day because I really love it and I really want to go back and live in Italy I that's like a very big dream of mine so that is what really powers me through those days where I feel like I don't want to study but French is not the same French for me is okay it's kind of fun I mean it's a beautiful language I I wish I could speak French I'm not saying that I don't like the language I think I just don't have that same type of motivation that I do for Italian and so for now I definitely will just stick with Italian because I just want to focus on one loathe at a time once I feel like I'm better in Italian and can take on a new language but I honestly don't know how some people do it where they're learning like four or five languages at once that's crazy I feel like I wouldn't be able to do that but who knows once again I hope this video helped you I love being an inspiration to you guys and I really hope that for all the people who asked how to start a language from scratch this video gave you some good valuable tips let me know in the comments below what other videos you would like to see from me I do have a Q&A coming soon as well as some other video ideas for studying Italian but also some different videos about mindset and my online business that I want to share with you guys so let me know what you're interested in and once again thank you so much for watching my videos my name is Shea and if you haven't already like this video subscribe it helps me so much and I hope to see you all in my next video bye [Music] you

Channel: Shea Jordan

Views: 50,827

Rating: 4.967659 out of 5

Keywords: shea jordan italian, shea jordan, shea jordan spanish, how to learn a new language from scratch, learn a new language in a week, where to start learning a new language, language learning routines, language learning study plan, language learning study with me, learn a new language, language learning methods, learn french, learn french in 5 days, how i learned french, study with me, language learning notebook, how I learned italian, how I learned spanish, my study routine

Id: ttS5vl73YFU

Length: 36min 35sec (2195 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020