How to REALLY learn English (with Dan Everett) | Canguro English

stop studying and start communicating learning a language is really really really hard if you want to succeed at learning a language you have to immerse yourself and you have to have patience and learning a language can change your life I have been saying the same things on my youtube channel for almost four years and I'm sure that you are all sick and tired of me repeating myself so today you are going to hear from somebody different but not just anybody one of the most important and influential people working in the field of language today author of multiple papers and books about language and culture mr. Daniel Everett hello Dan Everett thank you thank you very much for talking to me it's great to be you know people who do know you I think your most famous for your work with with the Peter Han language and all of that but but for people who don't know you could you sort of just introduce yourself sure my wanting to be a missionary in Brazil and went down to the Amazon to translate the Bible for a group of hunter-gatherers and along the way the reverse conversion went on where I became an atheist like they are and I got more interested in language and anthropology and so for the past 30 years or so I've been doing a range of research on the peterhall language and other languages about the nature of human language the nature of human cognition and culture and I've written several books on these topics yes yes and in fact I have a copy here of you of your new book which is called how language began which which is an incredible book I really I really enjoyed it what and I think I think for me the most maybe the most shocking thing is that you know I tell my students now that that language has existed for at least sixty five thousand years because that seemed to be the figure that always came up you know in in the agreed consensus but but your new book puts the date much further back in the evidence that you look for but the sixty five thousand to I mean you get people saying fifty thousand sixty-five thousand a hundred thousand some people have put it as far back as four hundred thousand years ago with Neanderthals but I do think that the evidence is strong and I try to present it in the book that in fact homo erectus more than a million years ago almost certainly had language when we look at the total array of accomplishments of that species and colleague of mine from the University of Liverpool Department of Archaeology and I are working on an article together looking more closely at homo erectus tools and arguing that those were symbolic and if they're symbolic than they had language my interest really is in is in language teaching and language learning and I'm just if you don't mind I wanted to read you a quote from from page five of your book I don't know if it's a strange for you to have somebody read your your words back to you okay but it says here um language did not fully begin when the first hominid uttered the first word or sentence it began in earnest only with the first conversation which is both the source and the goal of language indeed language changes lives it builds society expresses our highest aspirations our basest thoughts our emotions and our philosophies of life but all language is ultimately at the surface of human interaction other components of language things like grammar and stories are secondary to conversation and like for me reading that you know as a teacher and this is something I'm interested in your perspective you know as a teacher to me I think that that message is lost in the world of language in the world of language teaching and learning you know that the communication is is priority basically completely I think if you can't communicate if you can't carry on a conversation there's no sense of what you speak that language I mean we've all come up against really smart college students for example or high school students who who've learned a lot of English grammar or some other languages grammar and they can pronounce the words perfectly they just can't take part in a meaningful conversation in my experience because I teach English here in Spain a really common thing here that students have great-grandma you know you can give them a worksheet and I can do the worksheet in record time but you know the minute you you put them in any kind of conversation they just they have no experience in conversation what do you think about the state of language sort of learning today obviously used to be the center of Education I mean if you go back a hundred years especially to the UK and the so-called classical education learning a foreign language although they were ironically tended to be dead languages Latin and Greek but learning a foreign language was considered extremely important for teaching people about thinking I mean that's one of the most important things about language learning to me is that when you learn to converse with other people you learn about other ways of thinking other ways of looking at the world but it's really hard to do that which is extremely difficult I don't think there's any mystery to it people ignore the benefits of learning a language because it is so hard to learn it but if you break it down into percentages of your life it really does to take all that long you know let's say that you know I give these things called monolingual demonstrations where I show people how to start learning the language when there's no language in common and then I joke at the end of it which is actually not a joke just do this every day for a few years there's just no shortcut you see these methods learn such-and-such a 90 days there's no such shortcut that they don't exist the language learning takes a lot of your time a good part of your life and all I can say though is that it lasts for the rest of your life with very little maintenance required and it is the benefits are just incredible no one is ever I've never heard anyone say oh gee I'm sorry I speak Spanish it's terrible that I've learned to speak French I mean people who speak these languages take great pride in the fact that they can speak them and they can go there and identify with the people I just can't think of anything that gives me more pleasure than to be able to listen to Peter house speaking on a text I recorded and know what they're talking about or listen to music and Portuguese and really understand that read books and Portuguese these are things that have changed my life and and made it better I wished I spoke more languages but unfortunately hey you know it's before and that's about it okay because I know that's something that you've talked about in the past it's like why why is it important for people to learn languages because you know monolingual English speakers you know we're in a very lucky position in the world the onus is on everyone else to learn English right you know that's how it feels right what's our incentive to learn French or Peter Han or when you're in another country sure I can speak English in in Paris and I can speak English in Beijing but I'm just a number then I'm not somebody who stands out as respecting their culture and respecting their language and wanting to make an effort to oui we show them how much I respect them and so when you learn another language you develop a level of relationship with the speakers of that language that you simply cannot develop so if you're business person trying to sell a product in China if you've taken the time to learn Chinese Mandarin or Cantonese or whatever actual language you're learning that resonates well with the people especially if it goes along with the food you know I mean cultural acquisition is should be seamless the PETA hunt told me one time that one reason they saw me eating a salad because I brought in a salad by plane when they came in and missed the vegetables and they said that's why you still don't speak our language well because we don't eat leaves and learning the language is making a fool of yourself a lot and that's just the way it is you know my kids went to Brazil when I went to Brazil and they got into Brazilian schools and by the end of the first six months they all spoke perfect Portuguese and I was still struggling so I spoke at my daughter's school my oldest daughters schools I think she was in fifth grade and on the way home she told me all the things I did wrong that's just what happens when you learn language you've got put yourself out there yeah I agree um and it's interesting what you were saying before about about learning languages is making a fool of yourself because I think that's another thing that that a lot of language classes don't don't deal with is the element of fear because it can really paralyze people you know people might have all this great knowledge in their head but they just can't you know they're too afraid to have a conversation or to you know like the word for coconut is cocoa and the word for feces is cocoa and asking for an ice cream of the wrong kind and my kids were just they loved every second of it they just we're laughing and they they just loved every bit of my mistakes because they didn't make them in fact they say to me now they're all fully grown and they say thanks so much for Portuguese I don't ever even remember learning it but now it's just as much a part of me as English's you mentioned earlier that that you know you say at the end of your monolingual demonstrations you say you sort of joke that you just repeat that every day and then you'll learn a language but I'm wondering you know maybe what what the science might might tell us about about really what is a really effective way to learn a language because you know is it just that simple to just sort of immerse yourself you know every day and without studying any grammar or you know what I mean no actually I use all the tools of my disposal if there's a grammar I read it and I study it if there are pronunciation guides I read them I study them I practice them if there aren't any I don't have access to those I make my own but I don't exclude things I use every bit of information I can get but there's another thing to learning a foreign language it really helps if you need to speak it and by that I don't mean just for business purposes I mean you put yourself in an environment where if you can't speak it you can't talk and I think that's a really important part of it so you have to create an environment in which speaking that language is part of everyday well-being not just survival but well-being you're not gonna have any friends if you don't speak the language you won't have anybody to tell your problems to so I use grammar I use monolingual method I use my my training in phonetics I mean I would recommend that everybody have some basic training in phonetics how human sounds are made and how to perceive different sounds because the surprising thing is of the 7,000 plus languages in the world they all use the same relatively small set of a couple of hundred sounds hmm and that's it what would be your message to anybody out there who is who is trying to learn a language and you know maybe it's not their first time you know maybe it's like the second attempt and they feel like they're not progressing and they're frustrated and like what would you sort of say to somebody who who really wants to learn a language but sort of doesn't doesn't know what to do you know first key you'll never regret it for as long as you live once you learn that language you'll never wish you hadn't learned second practice every day if you can be with speakers that's great listen to the music in that language try to read books in that language I mean I used to read brazilian news magazines when I understood very little and I would circle all the words that I didn't know which was most of them and I would work on those and I would listen to Brazilian TV and I didn't understand any of it and I would go outside and talk to Brazilians I mean I used to pay people to come by and just talk to me and so people would come and just sit with me for an hour and talk to me and I said but I'm not paying you if you don't correct me you have to correct me and then all kinds of methods one can come up with but stick with it and practice and put yourself in a place where you need to speak if it's at all possible it's so difficult for me not difficult for me frustrating it angers me so much to see so much of that what you were talking about before you know companies making promises about learning Liang Liang Guan I need A's and you know the easy way you know five minutes a day and all that stuff it it it's very frustrating it's just like trying to get your body in shape you can find machines that help but there's no machine that's gonna get your body in shape in 90 days well they're gonna get you in better shape in 90 days but if you want to really get in shape you gotta work at it every day and the funny thing is you got to practice you got to do it you know it's hard it's just hard to get in shape and stay in shape hmm but is it worth it well you add years to your life you feel a lot better yeah I think it's worth it to do that but it is not free no good I mean these things no pain no gain you're absolutely right I agree well so it has been an honor to talk to you today thanks it's been great to talk to you too so there you go the person who probably knows more about language than most people on the planet giving you the secret to learning a language free and the secret is that there is no secret it's just hard work and dedication and it's really important for you to know this because it is the truth and unless you really understand the truth you're not going to succeed at learning a language and I want you all to succeed because I want you to remember the other really important thing that Dan said learning a language will change your life and that's what I want for you I'm Christian this is kangaroo English I'll see you in class [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 62,081

Keywords: daniel everett piraha, learning english, learn english, english teacher, english grammar, learn english tips and tricks, how to really learn english, daniel everett, piraha, linguistics, noam chomsky, dan everett, canguro english, kangaroo english, canguru english, how to learn english, How to REALLY learn English, daniel everett piraha documentary, daniel everett chomsky, daniel everett monolingual fieldwork, daniel everett how language began, daniel everett language

Id: rrui31uAHy0

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 18 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/spacemark]

Great video, I really like the analogy of learning a language being like getting your body in shape - it doesn't happen overnight, it takes work, don't believe anyone who tells you it can happen in 90 days or 20 minutes or whatever, but keep at it, be persistent, and you'll never once regret it.

[u/MiaVisatan]

Here is a great video demonstrating how he learns a language without knowing what the language is, any words, etc. https://youtu.be/sYpWp7g7XWU?t=384