00:00:00
It is a superpower of a language learning method.
00:00:03
Genius, right there. Genius.
00:00:04
I'm so bad. You're just so good.
00:00:06
A week ago, I stumbled across the
00:00:08
best description that I've ever heard
00:00:10
of how to learn a language
00:00:11
from zero to full fluency.
00:00:13
If you want those results, you
00:00:14
have to go to those extremes.
00:00:16
It came from a very unexpected place.
00:00:18
I don't know if this is good.
00:00:19
And the video says a lot of things
00:00:21
that you probably don't expect to hear.
00:00:23
I didn't understand anything anyway.
00:00:24
But why am I talking about someone else's video?
00:00:27
Wait, wait, wait. We need to hear that again.
00:00:29
Exactly. The answer to that is that the creator of
00:00:31
this video has very humbly titled it
00:00:34
"How I Learnt...", followed by the language.
00:00:36
Just good language learning advice
00:00:38
with none of the bells and whistles.
00:00:40
And considering how niche that language is, the
00:00:42
video has a good number of views.
00:00:44
But still, less than 2% of the people who should
00:00:46
watch this video have actually done so.
00:00:49
You should do this if...
00:00:51
Because it doesn't matter what
00:00:52
language we're talking about,
00:00:53
the insights shared here are invaluable.
00:00:55
Whether you're beginner,
00:00:56
intermediate, or SO advance
00:00:58
that the next step for you would be to start
00:01:00
sounding non-native in your first language.
00:01:02
And then I had, like, all these sentences.
00:01:04
So in addition to wanting to share my own
00:01:06
reflections on what Illis says in her video,
00:01:08
watch the s*** out of it,
00:01:10
I also don't want anyone to let the fact that the
00:01:12
video is called How I Learnt Norwegian
00:01:14
stop them from hearing these wise words.
00:01:17
Instruction number six, listen to...
00:01:19
Keep watching to hear why I think this might be the
00:01:21
best language learning video in the world.
00:01:27
Okay, let's calm down and start from the beginning.
00:01:30
Okay, I thought you could use these tips even if
00:01:34
you're learning another language.
00:01:36
Almost all the advice you've ever heard on how to
00:01:38
learn a language would apply to any language,
00:01:40
but most of the best videos are about someone
00:01:44
learning a specific language.
00:01:47
Oh, I almost forgot to say, "tjena chicos!"
00:01:49
So when people hear me speak Norwegian, ask me how
00:01:51
long I've been living here,
00:01:53
and I say that I've been
00:01:54
living here for three years,
00:01:55
they just tell me what, how is it possible?
00:01:57
People are asking her how
00:01:59
long she has lived in Norway,
00:02:01
and the answer is three years.
00:02:02
But she also said before that it was important to
00:02:04
her that she understood Norwegian
00:02:06
before she moved there.
00:02:08
And the reason that it's important
00:02:09
is that if you speak fluent English,
00:02:12
people are going to get used
00:02:13
to speaking to you in English.
00:02:15
She arrived in Norway
00:02:17
speaking some Norwegian already.
00:02:19
It's not how much Norwegian she spoke in that time.
00:02:22
It's the difference when she landed.
00:02:24
It's like hitting the ground running.
00:02:26
I just want to quickly clarify that I'm not saying
00:02:28
that Illes is trying to mask
00:02:30
how long she's been learning.
00:02:31
The point that I was trying to make
00:02:32
was that those three years in Norway
00:02:34
would have been made many times more effective by
00:02:36
the fact that she already had some ability
00:02:39
in Norwegian when she arrived.
00:02:40
If you are going to a country for
00:02:42
any length of time with the attitude
00:02:43
that you'll just learn when you
00:02:44
get there, I suggest you reconsider,
00:02:46
especially so if that country's
00:02:48
population speaks English well.
00:02:50
If you start learning before you go, your chances of
00:02:52
being successful skyrocket.
00:02:54
Also guys, literally as I was editing this video,
00:02:57
I got the news that I know some of you have been
00:02:59
waiting a very long time for.
00:03:00
StoryLearning has finally released their uncovered
00:03:02
courses in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.
00:03:05
They've been a long time coming.
00:03:07
I'm very excited to check them
00:03:08
out for myself, but it gets better
00:03:10
because I actually helped
00:03:12
them to find the Swedish teacher
00:03:13
that they eventually worked
00:03:14
with to develop the course.
00:03:16
They've given me or my
00:03:17
audience, you guys, a special deal,
00:03:19
which means if you buy any of the
00:03:21
courses, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian,
00:03:23
you get the other two languages thrown in for free.
00:03:26
So that could be perfect for
00:03:27
you if maybe you haven't decided
00:03:28
which Scandinavian language you'd like to learn yet,
00:03:31
or maybe you're traveling there and you want to get
00:03:32
a feel for all three of them.
00:03:34
Maybe you're just like me and one day you would even
00:03:36
like to understand Danish,
00:03:38
you know, pigs will fly and all that.
00:03:40
Yeah, whatever course you pick
00:03:42
up, you get the other two thrown in.
00:03:44
That's a pretty good deal, but it doesn't last long.
00:03:46
It's only about six days at
00:03:48
the release of this video.
00:03:49
So you don't have a ton of time anyway.
00:03:50
Hopefully you haven't missed out
00:03:52
already when you're watching this.
00:03:53
Link will be in the description, of course.
00:03:55
And now back to the video that I was editing
00:03:57
that was already about someone
00:03:58
else's video about Norwegian.
00:04:00
So it's like Inception if it were about Norwegian.
00:04:04
So it's like Insomnia.
00:04:05
A little Christopher Nolan joke for you.
00:04:07
Back to the video.
00:04:07
When I started learning Norwegian,
00:04:09
my goal was to speak
00:04:11
Norwegian like a native Norwegian.
00:04:13
I didn't want to just like
00:04:15
be able to understand people.
00:04:17
I didn't want to just be
00:04:18
able to make myself understood.
00:04:20
I do remember a time where I was like,
00:04:22
I want to speak Swedish to this level.
00:04:24
And then like watching
00:04:25
movies in Swedish and being like,
00:04:27
I literally have no idea what they're saying.
00:04:29
I am never even going to understand Swedish, let
00:04:32
alone speak it like a native.
00:04:34
Personally, I would not advise
00:04:35
most people to have that goal.
00:04:38
It's fine to have that goal like one day.
00:04:41
But the reality is going to be that
00:04:43
you suck for a very, very long time.
00:04:45
Motivation is a little bit
00:04:46
like the wind when sailing.
00:04:48
You need to work out when it's working for you
00:04:52
and when it's working
00:04:53
against you and adjust accordingly.
00:04:57
There we have it.
00:05:01
Number one, listen as much as possible.
00:05:03
Insert your language there.
00:05:06
Listen as much as possible to
00:05:08
whatever language you're learning.
00:05:10
Although this sounds like the most
00:05:12
basic advice you could ever hear,
00:05:14
I think what stops people in their tracks
00:05:17
is the discomfort of doing that at first.
00:05:20
So when you hit that wall of discomfort,
00:05:23
either just deal with it and keep going.
00:05:25
But if you really, really can't do that,
00:05:27
then find a way of making it
00:05:29
more comprehensible to you.
00:05:31
When you're a kid, what you do first, like for the
00:05:34
two first years of your life,
00:05:35
is listen.
00:05:37
You listen all the time to
00:05:38
people and you don't speak.
00:05:40
You're just like this and
00:05:41
you're listening all the time.
00:05:42
Kids are definitely trying to talk or at least my
00:05:44
kids were when they were one.
00:05:46
But because they are so limited in their capacity to
00:05:50
actually produce the language,
00:05:51
the linguistic gains that they are making for the
00:05:54
first five, six, seven years of their life
00:05:57
are 99% input.
00:06:00
Even if they start speaking
00:06:02
at two, three, four, five,
00:06:03
it's still the input that is actually making them
00:06:06
progress in the language.
00:06:07
So what I thought was,
00:06:08
okay, what I'm going to do first
00:06:10
is that I'm going to listen to
00:06:11
Norwegian as much as possible.
00:06:13
So what I did is...
00:06:14
Genius right there. Genius.
00:06:15
I wish I'd figured that out as early as she did.
00:06:18
I didn't understand anything anyway.
00:06:19
So I was just like listening to things.
00:06:21
I didn't care what the theme was.
00:06:23
And I was just listening all the time or not all the
00:06:26
time, but every time I could.
00:06:29
Ain't that all Norwegian all the time.
00:06:30
All French all the time would sound strange.
00:06:33
If you want to learn as fast as she did, you will
00:06:35
have to be that intense about it.
00:06:37
This is the same for everything, but I think in the
00:06:39
language learning sphere,
00:06:41
there's more often a cognitive dissonance between
00:06:45
the person who wants this result,
00:06:49
who won't do what is required.
00:06:51
It's just the most basic thing.
00:06:52
If you want those results, you
00:06:54
have to go to those extremes.
00:06:56
The end.
00:06:56
What I did was hearing, for
00:06:58
example, the same book over and over again.
00:07:02
And sometimes my mom, she
00:07:03
tells me like, when you were a kid,
00:07:04
you knew one book by heart.
00:07:05
You just like turned the pages.
00:07:07
You knew exactly when the pages had to be turned.
00:07:09
Exactly.
00:07:10
My eldest son's version of that was
00:07:12
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy,
00:07:15
which he used to read in a Scottish accent.
00:07:17
The times that he heard it the most was an audio
00:07:20
book that was just on repeat.
00:07:22
And the audio book was read by
00:07:23
David Tennant, the Scottish actor.
00:07:25
I think he wasn't even three.
00:07:26
He may have just turned three.
00:07:28
And one day we were in the car and
00:07:30
I could hear him turning the pages.
00:07:31
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy.
00:07:34
I knew he wasn't reading it, but I'm
00:07:35
driving so I couldn't actually see.
00:07:37
And he gets to his favorite bit.
00:07:39
And I said to my wife, he
00:07:40
loves that bit with the cat.
00:07:42
And she turns around and she's
00:07:43
like, he hasn't even got Harry Maclary.
00:07:46
It's where's Wally...
00:07:46
But he was turning the pages at the
00:07:48
correct time that you would need to
00:07:50
if you were reading the actual Harry Maclary book.
00:07:52
Kids do repetition like nothing else.
00:07:56
And if you can learn to tolerate it as an adult,
00:07:58
it is a superpower of the language learning method.
00:08:01
Everyone sees how kids behave, but very few people
00:08:05
seem to take the lesson away from that.
00:08:07
So if I was reading a lot of
00:08:08
times, for example, like five sentences,
00:08:11
and I was learning grammar,
00:08:12
vocabulary, conjugation, pronunciation,
00:08:16
I was learning all of this in one exercise.
00:08:20
Wait, wait, wait, wait. We need to hear that again.
00:08:22
This is that I was learning everything I need to
00:08:25
learn about the language in one text.
00:08:29
Thank you. Thank you.
00:08:30
You're not learning the
00:08:31
entire language in the one text,
00:08:33
but you're learning everything that
00:08:36
you need to know about the language
00:08:39
before you start getting input
00:08:40
from the language from that one thing.
00:08:43
I do not know all the Spanish that's out there,
00:08:46
but whenever I hear something in Spanish, I can
00:08:50
single out the bits that I didn't understand.
00:08:53
And I can do that because I've memorized certain
00:08:56
passages of Spanish where I know every single
00:08:59
thing. So then when I hear
00:09:00
something else, I'm like, okay,
00:09:03
these are the parts that I
00:09:04
don't know. I need to look them up.
00:09:06
See how much easier that makes it rather than trying
00:09:09
to learn everything about
00:09:11
this kind of nebulous idea that is the language.
00:09:14
Just learn this paragraph.
00:09:17
I was learning everything I need to
00:09:18
learn about the language in one text.
00:09:20
So if I was reading a lot of
00:09:22
times, for example, like five sentences,
00:09:24
and I was learning grammar,
00:09:26
vocabulary, conjugation, pronunciation,
00:09:29
I was learning all of this in one exercise. And then
00:09:33
I had like all these sentences with all the
00:09:36
sentences from the first time I watched this video,
00:09:39
there were certain times that I noticed
00:09:41
she sounds Norwegian while she speaks English, but I
00:09:44
couldn't remember exactly where it was.
00:09:45
That was definitely one. And
00:09:47
then I had like all these sentences.
00:09:49
And then it helps me remember vocabulary and be able
00:09:54
to use the vocabulary that I learned.
00:09:56
I got a lot of questions on Instagram about how to
00:09:59
remember vocabulary, how to learn new words,
00:10:02
how to like know how to use
00:10:03
the vocabulary that you learn.
00:10:05
The relationship between memory, like memorizing
00:10:08
things and learning a language
00:10:10
is more complex than people realise. And I think
00:10:13
it's too simplistic to say that like,
00:10:15
oh, Anki doesn't work because
00:10:17
it's just words and blah, blah, blah.
00:10:19
You misunderstand what Anki is for.
00:10:22
And it's also too simplistic to say,
00:10:24
you just need to memorise a whole,
00:10:26
you know, all the words of the language.
00:10:28
I don't think you really need to spend too long
00:10:30
thinking about where memory comes into play,
00:10:33
but you do need to understand that you're going to
00:10:36
need to hear the language a lot,
00:10:38
which she's already explained she was doing. So I
00:10:41
think that how did you manage to remember words?
00:10:44
Well, she didn't really need to
00:10:45
remember them. She heard Norwegian a lot.
00:10:48
After you hear Norwegian
00:10:49
enough, memory isn't really an issue.
00:10:51
Use Google Translate. I know that
00:10:54
like, at least for me at school,
00:10:56
we saw Google Translate like the devil. It was
00:10:59
always like, no, don't use Google Translate.
00:11:02
But Google Translate is actually good. I think that
00:11:04
people pick on Google Translate,
00:11:06
not because it's actually bad, but because they
00:11:08
think it makes them sound smart.
00:11:10
Like I felt so proud and I got so
00:11:12
much motivation because I was like,
00:11:15
this is a book that normal Norwegian people read and
00:11:19
I can already understand a bit of that.
00:11:22
I remember the first time I had that feeling in
00:11:25
Swedish, I had listened to the first 80 minutes
00:11:28
of this audio book like 50 times. One day I was
00:11:32
like, well, I've I know the beginning of this
00:11:34
book so well, as I started from just the 80th minute
00:11:37
and started listening from there.
00:11:39
Couldn't really understand very much, realised that
00:11:41
I needed to go back and listen lots of times,
00:11:43
probably listened to the next 80 minutes of it,
00:11:46
maybe 10, 15 times. And then one night I was out
00:11:50
running and I had the book in my ears and I remember
00:11:54
being like scared of what was happening
00:11:57
in the book and just suddenly realizing I no longer
00:12:00
hear Swedish as a foreign language.
00:12:04
I am now just interested in
00:12:05
what's happening in this book.
00:12:06
[Music]
00:12:08
Instruction number six, listen to audio books. She's
00:12:12
put the instruction as simply as it really
00:12:14
needs to be said. Another thing that I did really
00:12:16
often was to read a book and at the same time
00:12:19
listen to the audio book because when you read, even
00:12:22
if you read in your hand, I call this scuba diving...
00:12:24
do it. Watching for example an episode of a
00:12:27
series, watch it again and copy some sentences
00:12:31
that I thought were useful. I would change the
00:12:34
subtitles sometimes. The first time I would watch
00:12:36
it without subtitles to see what I understood. Then
00:12:39
the second time I would watch it with
00:12:41
Norwegian subtitles to see if I understood a bit
00:12:43
more. Third time I would watch it with English
00:12:46
subtitles and then I would re-watch it again, for
00:12:50
example with Norwegian subtitles. Now I'm speaking
00:12:52
of like a scene, not a whole episode or a whole
00:12:55
movie obviously, not a whole episode or a whole
00:12:58
movie obviously, but like I'm sure. That's actually,
00:13:01
that would be more effective, especially if it's
00:13:03
dialogue heavy. You find a really dialogue heavy
00:13:05
scene. Watch the s*** out of it. When there was a
00:13:08
sentence that I thought was useful that I just
00:13:11
copied it in my notebook and if I just wanted to
00:13:13
like have something to read. I wonder if all these
00:13:17
like anti-unkey keyboard warriors would be as
00:13:21
against copying something by hand into a notebook. I
00:13:24
feel like just because it's a more traditional
00:13:27
thing that people have been able to do for thousands
00:13:30
of years, they would be like oh yeah no,
00:13:32
it's great to copy things into notebooks. But the
00:13:34
second you get a spaced repetition
00:13:36
algorithm involved, they're like that doesn't work,
00:13:39
it's not real language learning. When I got my
00:13:41
story back, now you know what I did. I read it a lot
00:13:44
of times and I also got like a vocal. Then I
00:13:47
would listen to the vocal like a lot of times. Then
00:13:50
I would like read it until I knew it by heart. So
00:13:54
I would spend one to two weeks on it. Her way of
00:13:57
learning Norwegian was so much more efficient than
00:13:59
my way of learning Swedish. I think that we think of
00:14:02
learning things by heart as like a bad thing,
00:14:05
but honestly these stories, learning them by heart
00:14:09
and reading them a lot of times, what it helped me
00:14:12
with was remembering vocabulary, understanding
00:14:15
grammar, learning conjugation. That's exactly it.
00:14:19
When people think of learning by rote, they think of
00:14:22
a certain kind of content that people learn by
00:14:25
rote. For example all the conjugations like ich bin
00:14:28
du bist and they conclude that learning by rote
00:14:31
is bad. In a way we learn our native languages by
00:14:34
rote. Like if you think about how three-year-olds,
00:14:37
four-year-olds talk, they often just say exactly
00:14:40
what you said. To speak a language like a native
00:14:43
speaker, you have to learn what the native speaker
00:14:45
learned and that might involve learning some things
00:14:48
by heart. And something I forgot to mention because
00:14:50
I've been recording this video for like two hours
00:14:53
and there's parts of Illes's video and lots of
00:14:56
things in my video that will inevitably be cut out.
00:15:00
There will be an extended cut available for my
00:15:02
channel members. I call them the Tim Tam Cartel
00:15:04
and you can join that by clicking the thing that
00:15:06
says join just below this video. It's only three
00:15:09
Australian dollars a month. That's about two US
00:15:11
dollars a month, actually slightly less. So yeah,
00:15:14
join. And this is why I think that it's so nice to
00:15:17
learn sentences by heart is because when you
00:15:21
like try for example to speak to yourself or when
00:15:24
you try to speak to someone else,
00:15:26
it's really good. You have to do it. But problem
00:15:29
with it is that you're always looking for your
00:15:31
words. You're never like saying a whole sentence
00:15:34
without taking a break or this will take a long
00:15:37
time for you to do. And then you never learn, you
00:15:40
never teach your brain to pronounce words, to work
00:15:44
on the accent in a long sentence because you don't
00:15:47
know how to make a long sentence. You will get
00:15:50
better. And even if you don't see the progress right
00:15:52
now, even if you've been working for two
00:15:55
weeks and you feel like you're exactly at the same
00:15:58
point, first is not true. You're improving,
00:16:00
even if you don't see the result right now. And
00:16:03
second, maybe in a week you will see like suddenly,
00:16:06
oh now I can feel it that I've become better. So
00:16:09
knowing that you can't always see the results
00:16:12
right now, this is completely normal. But if you
00:16:15
keep doing what you do, if you keep trying to
00:16:18
find out what is the best method for you, you will
00:16:21
get better. Languages take longer to show
00:16:25
any improvement. Most other skills show immediate
00:16:27
improvement to a certain point. And then it takes
00:16:31
a long time to really, really step it up from there.
00:16:34
And languages sort of happen the other way
00:16:36
around. And one of the reasons for that is that an
00:16:39
unfair comparison to make is also the most
00:16:41
normal comparison to make. And that is of native
00:16:44
speakers. I hope that this video was helpful. I
00:16:46
hope that you learned something. Although this video
00:16:48
by Illist did get a disproportionate number
00:16:51
of views to the size of the channel, I still think
00:16:53
it needs more views. Probably not many people who
00:16:56
are not interested in learning Norwegian are going
00:16:58
to click on it. This video is entirely just good
00:17:02
language learning advice with none of the bells and
00:17:05
whistles. Because it's not from like one of the
00:17:07
big language learning channels, it will not get the
00:17:11
kind of attention that it maybe deserves. Go
00:17:13
and check out this video for yourself so that you
00:17:16
can see it in full and not my edit of it, etc.
00:17:18
It's getting crazy hot in this room in October with
00:17:22
all the lights on. Make sure you're subscribed
00:17:24
if you're not already. I have lots of videos coming
00:17:26
out in the next couple of weeks. Until next time,
00:17:29
lo quiero.
