How to learn a language for a trip abroad
Travel and language learning, the two are connected.
How do they work together?
How do we improve our travel experience by learning a language?
How does the travel experience improve our ability to learn?
I would like to talk about this because I think it's kind of key to the whole
experience of language learning, because when we learn a language, we either
are doing it, you know, away from where the language is spoken, or we're
doing it Where the language is spoken.
Most of us, of course, are in a situation where we are not
surrounded by the language.
The ideal scenario is to be surrounded by the language, but being in an environment
where the language is spoken is no guarantee that you'll learn the language.
I lived in Japan, most foreigners there didn't speak Japanese beyond
being able to say konnichiwa, subarashi desu ne, a few phrases.
Lots of immigrants in Canada or elsewhere live for 30 years
and hardly speak the language.
On the other hand, many people become quite fluent without going to the country.
However, ideal scenario.
You're surrounded by the language.
You can use it all the time.
And the reason I'm talking about this is that I'm learning Turkish because my wife
and I are going to Turkey in October.
So I am preparing myself and I'm going to talk about the things that
I'm doing to prepare for my trip.
Things that I have done in the past that didn't work and things that
have worked and things that I hope will work for me in going to Turkey.
All right.
So there are people who say, go to the country and you'll learn the language.
Get a phrase book.
Go there, start speaking to people.
And somehow if you're there for a few weeks, you'll pick up the language.
It doesn't work.
I have done it.
I have done it for Vietnamese.
I did it for Portuguese.
I did it for Croatian.
It doesn't work.
Most situations that they describe in the phrase book, you're in a grocery store,
you're at the doctor's office, heaven forbid, or you're at the train station.
You can't trot out the phrases.
You end up using English or nowadays you use Google Translate on your iPhone.
So the phrase book is not going to get you to a level where you
can function in the language.
And I did all of these for Vietnamese.
Vietnamese in 60 minutes.
I put a lot of effort into it.
Getting started in Vietnamese.
Vietnamese flashcards.
I did it all.
And And, you know, no matter how much you deliberately try to learn the
grammar, the vocabulary with flashcards or phrasebooks, it's not enough.
You'll still end up only having, you know, a very limited level
of communication with the locals.
So that's the first thing that I want to point out.
In order to optimize, maximize your experience when you're in the country
where the language is spoken, you have to work very hard before you go there.
And where I have been successful.
Russian, Czech, Ukrainian, Romanian, Greek, those are situations where I
put enough effort into the language in order to be able to actually
have meaningful conversations.
One of my benchmarks has been the number of words that I know on LingQ,
20, 000, 30, 000, quite a high number.
Has normally been my target.
So I looked at my numbers in LingQ and back in 2019, I spent three
months on Turkish, it ended up that I had about 9, 000 known words, the
way we count them on, on LingQ, and I said, I'm going to at least need.
20, 000 and I've got a hundred and some days now, a hundred
days, 120 days before I go.
So my first goal is to make sure that I stay with it, work with Turkish on LingQ
enough that I can generate at least a hundred words a day of new known words.
What I am finding is that in the case of Turkish, it's actually quite easy to
accumulate known words because so many of the words have so many different forms.
Because each word, depending on the ending, can be a different person, a
different tense, different intention.
Uh, in case of verbs, the possessive or the direction, all this stuff
changes with these endings.
And so very quickly, once you've gotten one or two words, or you've seen it in
a few places, and then you're familiar with what these endings do, you start
to accumulate words very, very quickly.
So the good news there is that I will no 000 words.
The bad news is that 20, 000 words may not be enough.
The word counted link, people complain, every form of the word
is counted as a separate word.
It's the only way we can do it because the system counts words
that you save and don't save.
If you don't save a word, the assumption the system makes
is that you know the word.
So it can be counted.
However, not a bad thing.
It's a different function in the sentence.
So, to that extent, I don't mind that I'm accumulating all of these known words.
It's motivating to see yourself accumulating a lot of known words.
Besides which, the known word total is just a measure of your level of activity.
So, if I'm able to maintain 150, 200 known words a day.
That indicates that I'm spending that much time reading and listening and
saving words and accumulating known words.
In a subsequent video, I will go into detail of how I add these words, the
different things that I do, both in my vocabulary section and when I am working
on the computer or working on my iPhone.
But they accumulate quite quickly.
But the point I want to make is that in order to be comfortable when you go to
Mexico or you go to China or wherever you go, Japan, you actually need a high level.
So deliberately trying to nail specific words, phrases, scenarios is not going
to do it because you need a very broad base, a deep base in the language in
order for these things to connect.
What I find is.
If I pick up a phrase book after I have already accumulated a fairly large
vocabulary in the language, then the phrases have a chance of sticking.
If I don't do that, as in the case of when I went to Vietnam, and I put a fair
amount of effort into it over a few weeks.
I don't know.
The only thing I could say in Vietnam was come on, which means thank you.
That's all because it's similar to come on in English.
Nothing else stuck.
The same in Croatia, even though I spoke other Slavic languages and I worked a
bit on my Croatian and I had a Croatian here, even a Serbian Croatian, it's more
or less the same phrase book and nothing.
No way.
Because.
It happens fast and you've got to be able to produce the language naturally.
And the phrase books don't do it.
So when we take a whole language approach, then it's a matter of not only of getting
into the language and acquiring words.
And I don't know what that minimum level might be for Turkish or for Spanish or
for other languages, but the thing is to get active, get into the culture.
For example, I'm using YouTube.
I've found a cooking channel at YouTube.
I've found a, you know, a comedian at YouTube whom I recognize in a Netflix
video, learning about the history.
So the greater my sort of general familiarity with the language, the
culture, the background, the food, all these things, it makes it easier for me.
And with all of this preparation, there will be fewer surprises.
I'll be at a higher level so that when I get there, I'm hoping.
Okay.
That I'll be able to function.
We will see.
Now, the final thing I want to point out, what I make is that
the trip to say Turkey, in my case, that's not the end goal.
It's simply a milestone in my journey towards a better understanding of Turkish.
Because if you go there and I've done this now for other languages and you function
to some extent, and you're able to enjoy your stay, because you have a sufficient
level in the language that you don't feel.
Sort of like a fish out of water, but then you come back and if you don't use
the language, don't do anything in the language, it'll start to go downhill.
However, the good news is that when you go back there or when you study it again,
it all comes back stronger than ever.
And that's been my experience.
So it's not the final step.
You're going to have to.
Go back there, but when you go back there, it'll be stronger than ever.
And in the case of my Turkish, my goal is not to go there and be able to
speak to the waiter in a restaurant.
My goal is to take advantage of my visit to Turkey to move my knowledge
of Turkish forward, a, because it's very concrete goal I'm preparing for my
visit to Turkey, that's motivating me.
And when I get there, I'll be using it for the 10 days or
15 days that we are in Turkey.
But I'm interested in Turkish history.
I'm interested in the sense of.
You know, the Turks in Central Asia and then the Ottoman Empire, and they were,
uh, they controlled the Balkans and powering of science a thousand years ago.
And the sort of interaction between Turks and Persians and Arabs and
the Arabic language and all of that is part of that history.
And so I will continue to explore those things using the different
resources that are out there.
And I think that the encouragement I hope that I get from my visit will
spur me on to continue with my Turkish.
As long as I'm not distracted by going after other languages
and there's so many languages to explore, there's never a dull moment.
Anyway, that's my advice.
If you are planning to, you know, work on your language with a goal of visiting
the country, don't think you can just arrive there with a phrase book and
somehow your language skills will improve.
That has not been my experience.
It may work for you.
Rather, put as much effort as you can.
Um, into the language before you go, and that'll make it more likely that
you will truly benefit from being there in order to, you know, further
develop your skills in that language.
And I will leave you a couple of videos I've talked on this subject before.
So thank you for listening.
Bye.
