#135 How to Start to Learn a New Language

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve. How are you?

Steve: I'm fine. We had a pleasant weekend over on the island under the sun and now of course the clouds have formed a little bit but it's still not too bad. Jill: Yeah, it's a little cooler but it's okay. Steve: Just for the people who don't know, we had our combined company retreats for the KP Wood employees and their families and the Linguist employees and their families were all over on Vancouver Island and what sorts of things did you do? Jill: What did we do? Spent some time on the beach and I guess we all played golf and we all went caving and we ate a lot of food and relaxed, really.

Steve: Caving means we went into a case, a group of us. That was a team building experience as we made sure that nobody fell down the slimey, dark holes and cracks in the cave. We also played some beach volleyball and along the way we drank a little bit of wine.

Jill: And, martinis.

Steve: And, martinis. I'm not a big martini guy. I like wine and whiskey. I like it straight, either wine or whiskey. I don't drink beer, I don't drink martinis. Wine and whiskey and other hard liquor like vodka, aquavit, grappa, calvados, the pure liquor or wine, but no mixed. I don't like mixing them. Jill: Yeah, I can't do any of those. I only do the mixed fruity, girlie types of drinks.

Steve: Okay, to each his, or her own. What I'd like to talk a little bit about is you know, in language learning how do we get into a language? A lot of our podcasts here are spoken at a normal speed and they're normal conversation and so I think they're useful to people who are already intermediate and better learners. But, especially now with LingQ, that we're getting into other languages like Spanish and French and Russian; a lot of our learners will be beginners. So, do you remember when you were a beginner in learning any language?

Jill: Well, I started learning French when I was five so I don't really remember. I started learning Spanish when in high school so I remember a little more but that was a choice. French was not really a choice. Spanish was a choice. And, so I do remember learning Spanish, yes.

Steve: But, in both cases you were helped, you were guided, you had a teacher and you were not really under any pressure. You just showed up at class and did whatever you were told to do and closed the books and thought about something else and some of it stuck basically.

Jill: Right, yes.

Steve: Now, let's take the situation of someone who is you know, quite serious about learning and wants to learn on their own but they're starting at zero. Now, I've been in that situation quite a few times recently when I decided to learn Korean and Russian and I've done it for Portuguese. I've done it some years ago for Italian, for German and of course, typically I go out and buy whatever in those days, cassette and these days CD and book systems available. I typically ignore all the grammar explanations because I find them confusing until I have some of the language so I just do a lot of listening and reading following their chapter one, chapter two, chapter three.

Now, of course, we want to try to simulate that at LingQ and create a similar experience. And, partly that's what's behind the power of the Linguist. I guess what I'm curious to find out is how much help does a learner need? To what extent, you know, of course we have our tutors but how much help does a learner need? How much, how difficult is it to start a language entirely on your own? You know Jill; maybe you should start into Hungarian or something just to test this out.

Jill: I don't know. I think really it depends on the person's motivation, their motivation and their attitude. I think if people really want to learn a language there's not a person who can teach the language to them. They have to put in the work, they have to do the reading, they have to do the listening, they have to do the hard work rather than just showing up, sitting in a class passively not really participating, not maybe even wanting to be there. You're not going to learn that way. So, I think it really does depend on the person and their motivation.

Steve: Right. Now, there are some concepts in different languages that are difficult. I was on a forum HowtoLearnAnyLanguage.com and people who were trying to learn French said what they found very difficult was the object pronoun and I at first didn't know what they were talking about. But, what they mean is in French when you say “je te le done”, or “j'en ai”, you know, the “en” or “je te le”, “done le moi”, the “le” I guess, is the object pronoun. I never really thought … Jill:You're placing the thing, right the “it” that you're talking about. Steve: Of course, it replaces the “it” but is it “je le te done” or “je te le done”? I mean there are issues there of the order and “en” is not something that we have in English. I have some of it, “j'en ai un peu”, whatever, so we don't have that in English. But, I never thought of in terms of it being a specific problem or an object pronoun. I didn't even know what the term meant. Jill: You didn't know the term, yeah. You didn't know the term because you didn't learn that grammar rule, right? Steve: Right. So, I guess my question is if we have easy content where people are saying things like “je te le done” and it comes up often and people who at first find that structure difficult they can save that structure. I wonder if it's possible to absorb those kinds of things naturally without having to spend a lot of time learning a bunch of rules or doing specific drills. I found, I used a system called FSI which is the American Foreign Service Institute. I used it a bit for Portuguese and for Cantonese. I just found that I just couldn't keep doing the drills. My mind just turned off after a while where as if I discover, I heard it once in this content and then I saw it again in another content and pretty soon I had this sense of discovering it and it stuck with me. Now, that may just be me but I think what we want to do in these other languages now, I mean if there are people listening who are speakers of French of Japanese or Spanish we certainly welcome people to create content. They're all free to go to LingQ.com, the registration is free. They can get on there and study English and Spanish and French and whatever they want. Of course, we have limited languages right now and we would certainly encourage them to try and think up easy content that uses some of these. Those are not difficult words - “je te le done” - you know but it is a rather peculiar structure that's specific to certain Latin languages and it's a little different in Italian and in Spanish and so forth. So, we're looking for people to provide us with easy content. And, in a way that's what the power of the Linguist does. Have you read the power of the Linguist in Spanish?

Jill: I have read a few parts of it. I've read some of it in French but it's, I mean, it's too easy for me for French so I have read probably five parts in Spanish. I can't say that I'm motivated right now very much to improve my languages. Steve: That's okay. No, I'm just teasing you. But, the idea there is that I think the power of the Linguist is quite a good beginner text. I think it can be better but because it is connected so there are 25 or 26 episodes. So, when you finish one, yes, it's not much but after about two or three episodes you're just a little curious to read the next episode because it's a story. It's not just a few sentences. So, to that extent it motivates people to continue, we hope and it is quite easy and it gets progressively more and more difficult. Probably it gets too difficult too soon and I think if people were creating that kind of content for us for Spanish or French or German we should stay easier for a longer period of time.

But, if people do create content like that for us, of course they can even, they can choose, at LingQ they can put a price on it if they want, they can share it for free. Even if they share it for free that increases their storage capacity in LingQ so that there are benefits to doing that. So, we would really be interested, you know I think one day I'm going to have a contest. Alright? I don't know when. We're going to have a contest and we're going to try to pick the best beginner, easy and beginner content in the different languages and we'll translate them. So, if we get someone who gives us an excellent beginner content for Japanese or for Chinese or German we'll translate it into five or six languages and then we'll have the same beginner content in all languages so if I'm a Chinese speaker and I read and listen to it in Italian I can also read in Chinese so I know what the story is which is kind of helpful again when you're a beginner. So, those are, we want to explore. Obviously you can go pick up a book and do whatever they do in the book which is fine and I think many people will, even if they're using LingQ, may want to go and buy some kind of a beginner book. But, a lot of the dialogue in those beginner books, you know, that's the kind of dialogue I would like to see our members create for us in the different languages so we can have a tremendous quantity of beginner content. If we have a contest and of course we can see in LingQ how often people are using these items. And, if we can develop a lot of that content, translate it into other languages, I think that would give us a lot of beginner content which is, I think perhaps what we're lacking a bit right now in the other languages. Then Jill, when you are motivated to learn Spanish before your next trip down there there'll be all kinds of material there for you to use. Or, maybe you want to move on to another language.

Jill: You never know.

Steve: You never know. Okay, I think we've kind of covered that subject. You know, we are excited about LingQ.com. Membership is free right now, really with no restrictions to the use of content and we are hoping that our members will help us with content and many have started doing so. And we're starting to get some excellent content in French, in German, in Spanish and I haven't checked, perhaps in some of the other languages. Okay Jill. I guess I did most of the talking today but next time you get to talk more.

Jill: No problem.

Steve: Okay. Bye for now.