- Learning a language is
kind of like a video game. I mean kind of, not exactly the same, but let me explain. (tranquil piano music) I'm not a big gamer. I've played my fair share
of Super Smash Brothers, but that was like when I was a teenager. But lately, I'm getting back into it. We got a Nintendo Switch. I've been playing it with my boys. Zelda, this cool game called Cardo has to do with maps, good times. Another thing I've been
doing during quarantine is not traveling. Last fall when I started realizing that COVID wasn't going away, I would not be traveling anytime soon. I decided to get my travel buzz by learning a new language, Italian. The language that is spoken
in my favorite region on Earth right up here. Four months ago, I didn't
speak a word of Italian and today, (speaking foreign language). So I've been driving back from work and speaking to myself in Italian. I am feeling my head. There's like a physical
buzzing that happens. (speaking foreign language) For the past three months, I've been studying Italian in the morning and playing video games
with my kids at night. I recently started to realize
how some of the major lessons from video games can be applied
to learning a new language and to do so in a much more efficient way than was taught to us in school. By the end of this video, I
want to explain this concept of video games and language learning and I want to give you my best takeaways on teaching yourself a new language. So back to video games. My favorite video games
are ones with maps. You'd be surprised, he's a big map guy. He loves maps, I know,
I'm like a walking cliche. I just like maps. So if learning a language is
sort of like a video game, here's the map of the video game. This is the learning language journey. You start here knowing nothing
about your new language and your goal is to beat the final boss, this elusive idea of fluency. In other words, when you start your Link and you just woke up from 100 year nap and you have three hearts
and no weapons and no stamina and no skills and no powers and you don't speak the language, where you want to be is like this. Having lots of skills and tools
to navigate a conversation with precision and
skill and beat the game. In other words, to become fluent. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is a moment, this is a
thing I need to distinguish, a distinction we need to make. What is fluency? What does that even mean? I'll turn the question
on you gamers out there. What does it mean to beat a video game? One person will tell you
that beating a video game means just beating the main storyline, beating the main boss,
Ganon, Bowser, whatever. I can already feel some
of you shaking your heads because there are lots of you
out there that say no, no, no, beating a video game
means beating everything. All of the challenges,
all of the little things like beating the shrines and
getting all the Korok seeds and all the other things
that have nothing to do with the main storyline. You have to beat them all or
you haven't beaten the game. So here's where the connection
between language learning and the video game concept comes together. When you're learning a
language in language school or most formal programs,
the map looks like this. You start here knowing nothing and the journey to beat
the game to become fluent is a long windy path with lots of gates and trials and gatekeepers. There are soldiers who are standing guard, making sure that you beat them before you go on to the next step. You can't progress along this path until you've memorized how to conjugate the present imperative tense
including the irregular forms. So you study them, you study, study, study just to make it pass
this first gatekeeper. You don't even really know
what present imperative means but you look at the book, you memorize it and you do what you need to do to show up and pass the test so that you can move on to the next thing that
they're teaching you in this school formal environment. So then you move on and you
get to the next gatekeeper in the trial, which is you can't move on until you've memorized the
subjunctive conjugations. And you're like what
does subjunctive mean? And it's just like I don't know, but you need to go memorize it. Oh, and memorize this random list of 20 words that we think are important. It's the only way to fluency. If you want to be fluent, you
have to get through this gate. I'll memorize the subjunctive. You keep going on your journey,
passing the gatekeepers, memorizing the concepts
that are in the book that the teacher is telling you and the idea here is that if you beat all of these gatekeepers and
you memorize all these rules, you make it to the final level and you beat the final boss
and then you are fluent. The problem is this
isn't a fun video game. It's actually a grueling process of memorizing abstract ideas. So people don't actually beat
the video game very often. They usually give up around
here and they say F it and they throw in the towel and they feel like language
learning is just not for them. Meanwhile, some of us beat the game. Like I actually beat the game in college. I got a minor in French, like a minor. Like I studied French
through all of the levels in college to get a minor. I beat this game and I
finally beat the final boss and got here to the end of the map and I had all the conjugations,
the direct object pronouns, the past conditional and
auxiliary verbs and all of it. And then I go to Paris and
I go to order a baguette and I realized that I literally don't know how to order a baguette in Paris even though I have a minor in French. There is nothing more
disappointing than that, it's sad. Luckily, there's a happy
ending to this video, this story that I'm telling you, but right now, it's just sad
to think about getting a minor in French and then not actually
being able to speak it. I need a little bit of a change of pace, I'm gonna crack open a bottle of wine. Which begins the next segment which is thanking today's sponsor who sent me a giant box
full of literal wine. Look at this. Whoops, check this out. This box arrived at my door two days ago. Inside of the box, there
are some really cool things. So Bright Cellars who
sponsored today's video sent me this box. They had me take a quiz
before on things that I like, the type of food and the
types of personality traits I have like all this whole quiz. And then they used the
information from that quiz to send me this box of wine. What I like about this is
because when I go to buy wine at a store, I have no guidance, like there's no guidance for me. I'm not super well-versed in
all of the different variables that make good wine. I'd like to be, but
it's big and complicated and for someone to automate
that and to present it in a way that's fun and like sort of empowering
with information, that's actually my favorite
part about the whole thing is they will send me these
cards for each bottle of wine that has a little infographic on it. I like infographics, that's like my thing. There's maps and there is origins and there's a story about
like where this came from. There's flavor notes if you're
into the flavor notes game. For me, ritualistic things
like cheese and wine and all of it is way more enjoyable if there's a story associated with it. Bright Cellars is giving 50% off, which is half off for
anyone who clicked the link in my description for
your first six bottles. So you could sign up for this sweet thing, get six bottles for 50% off
and it's a really good deal. And again, the convenience,
the information, the experience of this is really cool. I'm excited, I'm excited to explore this and have some knowledge and
story associated with it. So thank you Bright Cellars
for sponsoring this video. Let's get back to the story of learning Italian
through a video game map. I beat the game. I got here and realized
that this version of fluency was one where I had a deep
understanding of French grammar. I even had an understanding
of its history, I could read literature in French, I could write properly, I knew where all the accents went, I even had a decent pronunciation but I couldn't speak the damn language. When I traveled to France,
wasn't that the whole point? For all you Zelda people out here, let's just say I had
gathered all the Korok seeds and beat all the shrines but still hadn't beat
a single divine beast. The thing that actually mattered to me, the thing I wanted to do, what if I decided that this isn't where I wanted to go at all? This version of fluency wasn't important. This isn't the game I want to play. What if we decided to
take a different approach, a different path, a much simpler goal. And what if that goal were as simple as I want to be able to
travel to a foreign country and be able to speak to the locals and have them understand me and be understood when they speak to me. Is that revolutionary like
no mastery of grammar, no perfect pronunciation, no ability to read and
write with any elegance, no literature or cultural
history of the language, just the ability to use
words to communicate and then to understand the response. Nothing else, no (squeaky
toy sound) Korok seeds. I can already hear the comments, but you're learning a language. You have to know the grammar
or you won't be fluent. Or in other words, if you don't gather all the Korok seeds, you didn't beat the game. Listen, if my definition
isn't fluency for you, I don't want your
fluency, I don't need it. I just want to be able to go on a trip and speak to the locals
and ask for directions and have a conversation with
a taxi driver and order food. That is all I want. I'm being a little snarky here because the language learning
community on the internet has some very strong
opinions and expectations about what real language
learning looks like. You may see them in
the comments telling me that my Italian actually isn't valid because I don't understand
the past conditional tense. Not sure how to respond to that, but I reject your objection. So a few months ago, I
set out to test this out to see what this destination looks like. Not this, but this. I learned a lot and ended up making an entire course about it with my friend Nathaniel Drew, but I want to summarize
the major things I learned and share them with you. (speaking foreign language) Before I dive in and give you
exactly the things I learned in this process, let
me do a few disclaimers that might be helpful to some of you who actually want to take away
some value from this video. Number one is that this is my experience. It's my experience, it applies to me and my unique situation. It worked well and it may work for you and it may not work for you, but don't see this as like
a plug and chug formula, that is not what this is. This is my perspective and my experience. Number two, I want it to be clear that I spoke literally zero Italian in like October of last year. I am fluent in Spanish,
which is a romance language, which is like a cousin to
Italian and I did study French in college as I've mentioned 57 times. So I had some advantage but the reality is I knew zero Italian. I could say things like
ciao and like that was it. (speaking foreign language) That's what matters,
that's what I care about. I rejected this and I
think there's a better way. That doesn't mean it's easy, it means that it's just more direct. There are still trials, they're just the most
efficient trials you need and here they are. Number one, not all
words are created equal. The first thing I did was to
assess what are the most common and useful 1,000 words in a language and solely focus on those, completely blocking out all others. This isn't a new concept. Scholarly research shows
that this is very useful and history does too. I last year was reading a lot about American imperialism
for obvious reasons and I stumbled upon this wild story. After World War II, the British and Americans who had just won the war wanted to spread the English language throughout the whole world. So they adopted a stripped down version that they called basic. They were carefully selected words. There were the most frequently used and most useful 850 words in the language. By the way, English has
like over 150,000 words. And this language created
by a linguist of English was only 850 words and they use this to go promulgate
English around the world. They're like anyone in the world can learn English very quickly if they just have to
learn these 850 words. The inventor of the
language once said quote it takes 400 words of
basic to run a battleship. And with 850 words,
you can run the planet. He literally said that like
this is an extreme version of what I'm talking about here. Some words are more important than others. And if you just memorize those words, those words that you
actually are gonna use, then you can like supercharge your language learning process. Now this is where my friend Nathaniel Drew comes into the story. Nathaniel is a guy who
loves languages like I do and he also believes in
this more direct path. So he's challenged
himself to learn as much of a new language as quickly
as he possibly can on his own. By the way, much to the
chagrin of language learning internet communities who love to say that people are learning
languages the wrong way because it doesn't fit their model. In doing so, Nathaniel
realized the same thing that British and American
governments realized in like the 40's that if you just prioritize
the most vital words, the ones that you actually use, you can rapidly acquire a language if you block out all of
the words and only focus on the most important. Nathaniel had made a list of what he deemed to be some
of the most important words for his life and for just
everyday communication. He gave me that list and I added to it. I did a bunch of research on the data of most frequently used words and I put it together
into a list of 1,000 words that I think are the startup kit, the most important words
you need to memorize. The ingredients, the
building blocks of language. This is the first step. Before you do anything else, memorize the most important
words of a language. How do you memorize all these words? I'm not gonna go into it right now. I have this box that I
use that has all my words and in the course that we made, I go into exactly how this thing works. It's based on all the psychology
that forces these words into your long-term memory. The point is memorize the most vital frequently used words first, and your life will be a lot easier in learning this language. I saw this just recently,
like I went from knowing zero words in Italian
to within the first week knowing 200 words of Italian. You can't speak super well with just 200 words and no grammar, but you can certainly
start to express yourself. (speaking foreign language) I kept memorizing and
soon I had like 500 words and you won't believe what 500 words can do for your ability to communicate. This gets to the second trial
on our video game adventure, which is start talking early. Language isn't math. In math, there are laws. If you break those laws,
your equation won't work. You literally get the wrong answer. There are wrong answers
and right answers in math. If my four year old son
says two plus two equals 22, I will say no, son, that's wrong. Two plus two equals four. But if my son says
yesterday, I eated a apple. I wouldn't say no son,
yesterday you ate an apple. Get it right next time. No, I wouldn't say that. The kid said words, I understood them and it worked, that's
language, it isn't math. It's an expressive part
of our human experience that is very intuitive and
very flexible and messy like human culture and relationships. It is not math. When we approach language like this, we make language feel like math. Like if we don't get the
conjugations correct, it'll be like we're saying
two plus two equals 22 and you'll be totally wrong
and no one will understand you. And all that does is make
you nervous and averse to actually speaking in real time. But watch this. I'm about to show you me speaking Italian a month and a half, six
weeks after studying it, going from zero words to a few 100 words and trying to speak it. Speaking with a native in Italy over Skype and spoiler alert for
those Italian speakers, my grammar is horrible. (speaking foreign language) But guess what, she understood me. I was communicating in a
different language with somebody. It's not pretty, it's not linguistically
correct, but it's communication. What I'm proposing is that
this is the alternative path, this is the goal, not getting
the mathematical equations of grammar and syntax correct. As you memorize loads of words, the next most important step
is to get yourself speaking as soon as possible. You'll have to do this eventually if you want to speak the language and it's awkward and painful. And so you should start
early right away on week one of learning the language
and you should get on one of these services and start communicating
with a native speaker. And now I'm about to say
something that actually pains me which is after two months of this, just memorizing tons of words and having weekly Skype
conversations with a native Italian, I was speaking better Italian more fluently than I was French. I eclipsed my French capabilities
from a verbal standpoint, not from a grammar standpoint, but from a verbal expressive standpoint after two months, compared
to four years of work. I'm not saying it was
fluent after two months, I'm just saying that my
experience after two months was stronger than my four
years of college French. That's like actually
sad for me in some ways because there's so much
time of me learning French and there's a better way. In the course that I mentioned, we go into a deep dive on
all the types of activities that I do in one of these sessions with a native speaker
that helps make it useful, but I'm not gonna go into that right now. Gate number three, you
got to make this fun. Another major thing missing
from this model is fun. Positive association is how it's called in behavioral psychology. The idea that your brain
wants to do something if last time they did
it, it was sort of fun. Language learning is hard, it requires many months and years. How do you keep it up? You make it interesting and fun. Grammar drills and
memorization are not fun so you have to find ways to
make it a positive experience. For me, that is reading
an Italian cookbook that has Italian language
that I can translate and think about Italian cuisine,
which is something I love. I also started listening
to Harry Potter in Italian which I didn't understand
a single word at first but then I got the Kindle version and I sort of followed along digitally and translated some words
while I was listening and now I can like
understand probably 80 to 90% of Harry Potter cause I love Harry Potter. Don't love JK Rowling
though, love Harry Potter. So make it fun. The last and final gate in
this more direct journey to be able to speak a language is the one that people who have
learned other languages have been waiting for me to say and they're angrily being like dude, you got to mention this and
I'm gonna say it, which is yes. Eventually, you have to learn the rules. You have to learn grammar. You have to learn pronunciation
and you have to refine it through drills and
through a lot of practice. Intentionally, I'm putting this last because I think you should too. The previous concepts
are way more important. Get your first 500 or
1,000 words memorized in your long-term memory. Start speaking every week
with a native speaker, make the journey fun, and then
start to think about grammar and start to think about all
of the rules and the irregulars and the syntax and the
direct object pronouns and the past participles. You can do that after
maybe two, three months of like being in the trenches. The best part about this
is that by that time, you'll be in a place where you
can communicate basic ideas so that when you do look at the grammar, it actually fits into the context that you've intuitively
developed of expression. It won't just be like in a vacuum of memorizing arbitrary rules, it'll actually apply to something. And that makes it way more
interesting to actually memorize. I didn't start really going into grammar until just recently, three months into the
process of learning Italian. And it makes a lot more sense. So that is what I've learned about learning another language,
it's like a video game. You don't need to gather
all the Korok seeds to beat the game. You don't, some people think you do. I'm not gonna listen to those people. For me, to beat the game, you just need to be able
to talk and be understood. This is my experience,
this is my version of it. And again, in the course, I go deeper into exactly
how this goes down. The course that me and Nathaniel did is like three and a half hours of like nitty gritty techniques
and all of this stuff, but the message is what
I've told you here, which is that there's a
better way to learn languages than the way we learned it in school. I will be studying Italian for years, but the beautiful thing is
next time I go to Italy, which who knows when that's gonna be, but at some point I'll go to
Italy, I'll show up to a cafe and I'll be able to speak. I'll be able to talk and be understood and that's what matters to me. So I hope that's what matters to you too. Thanks for watching. (speaking foreign language)
tl;dr: Instead of learning the language by reading about grammatical construct, 1) memorize the 1000 most common words (using a Spaced Repetition system of your choice) and 2) Get into conversation with native speakers ASAP. This way you will learn how to express yourself and be able to have a conversation when you travel to another country, even if your grammar will be atrocious.
The video is... not great. The whole map analogy is incredibly forced and doesn't really work.
Top comment tl;dr'd it quite nicely.
If I had to make up an analogy to explain the point he's trying to get across then I'd probable use this one:
The school curriculum approach to learning language is like following the instructions in a lego set, where you only have one correct result and one way to get there, as compared to throwing out the instructions and building whatever you want, where you might not get the perfect result, but you can have fun immediately.
Practical approach vs. theoretical approach. Nothing revolutionary. Video is probably 17 minutes longer than it needed to be.
Not really a great video; there are some good points about having the right mindset, but he's trying to generalize his very specific experience in a way that won't be applicable for most language learners.
He makes a great point that language is not like math--that is, rote drilling to perfection is unnecessary and that engaging with the language--speaking it imperfectly, but frequently--is better than trying to wait until you are "fluent" to converse. He also makes an apt analogy comparing grammar to content-gating and completionism/achievement-hunting, but then he sort of drops the whole video game analogy and just says essentially "if we redefine what the goal is, learning a language is much easier!"
He claims his system allowed him to become conversationally fluent in Italian in 4 months by learning the ~500 most common words used in daily life and then connecting with a native speaker. However, he already spoke fluent Spanish and majored in French. That's like saying you have a miracle system for becoming a Smash Bros legend in a week, while conveniently ignoring the 10 years you competed in Street Fighter and BlazBlu tournaments.
I'd challenge him to apply this method to something like Farsi or Japanese where the base grammar/word order is wildly different from English. Or agglutinating languages, or one with a lot of affixes; Hungarian, Finnish, Lakota, Welsh, Hawaiian.
Interesting thing mentioned in the video, however: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English
essentially a list of 850 English words that were taught internationally after WW2
This guy’s attitude totally sucks. He’s already on the defensive before the video is out. His points make sense but every other line is “and if you think I’m wrong, you suck because I can do whatever I want.”
The real conclusion I got from his journey was that once he was actually motivated to learn a language, he was able to. A dude who learned Spanish on his LDS mission and thought it would be fun to minor in French because it’s another Romance language you can breeze through is really common. Don’t say you didn’t learn French because traditional education is bad. You just didn’t take it seriously. Then once you wanted to sell a language learning app, it’s suddenly easier to motivate yourself to learn a language.
I don’t dislike his approach at all, but the attitude that everyone else is terrible and doesn’t know what they’re talking about is grating.
Terrible essayist. He spends ten minutes explaining the rhetorical device of the video game map instead of using it to explain his language-learning course, which this whole video is a lame commercial for by the way. A master of wasting time so his video can be long enough to be monetized.
What are you guys' opinions on DuoLingo? I feel like it sort of combines this guy's approach and the more classic method. I'm 300 days into Duolingo Spanish (although doing very little most days). I started from 0 and can now do some simple things like order food, explain my hobbies, and ask for directions. Still I feel like there should be a more effective way to learn now that I have the basics down, but my vocabulary is too small to do any real exposure training.
That was a pretty bad video tbf, I was waiting so long for him to get to the point.
The best advice I ever saw was from Bald And Bankrupt a few years ago. He said:
Learn as many words as you can - talk to the locals / native speakers - ask them how to say things.
The longer the video went on talking in circles trying to bait me in, there more I wanted to punch his smug face.