Last week, I did a video about how I recover languages that I've studied
before, have forgotten or have slipped in.
But today I want to talk about how do we get started in a brand new language?
And I'm going to talk about some theory, the principles of
starting afresh in a new language.
And I'm going to talk about my own experience.
And some of the things that have worked for me.
Now, the first thing about starting in a new language, we have to
understand what's involved.
So if we think that we're going to get into a new language by learning the
grammar rules and learning lists of words, and that somehow we're going
to end up speaking or understanding the language, I think that will
prove to be quite inefficient.
And I'm going to talk about inferential learning.
Learning, which relies on the function of the brain, the
ability of the brain to infer.
What's coming at it, what the sounds mean, what the words mean.
The important thing about being able to for anything is that we
have to have something to refer to.
The only way we can infer is if we have a vast database of experience
where almost without us realizing it.
We are able to make an inference, which in some cases is correct
and some cases is incorrect.
And when it's incorrect, that helps adjust our next inference.
So that sounds a little bit theoretical, but I'm going to
explain why that's important.
It's important because learning a language and particularly a new
language is not so much something we do deliberately methodically.
It's more a matter of exposing ourselves to the language, accumulating a background
of reference points so that we can.
Infer I came to this issue of how our brain infers things because I was
listening to Parsis podcast, I refer to it again, and he talked about inference
and the importance of inference in terms of different memes, in terms of
explaining why we ended up with so many different types of religions, for example,
or, uh, you know, ethical systems.
And sometimes these things are developed, not deliberately.
And he gave the example of what is sometimes called a spandrel, the space
between an arc. And a straight line ceiling, which is a design feature,
but it's a by product of the fact that you have an arc and a straight line.
Birds who have feathers and therefore they can fly, but they didn't
develop the feathers in order to fly.
They develop the feathers in order to stay warm.
And then I realized that this has application for language learning.
The things that you will do that will make you successful at starting in
a new language won't necessarily be the things that you do deliberately.
But they will be a by product of some of the other activities.
And what are those other activities?
Thanks.
Again, I will leave you references here in the description box, but
apparently when they do MRI resonance imaging of the brain, it turns out
the first thing we have to get used to in a new language is the sounds.
And I can vouch for that, because I have started from scratch
in languages like Mandarin, in Japanese, in Arabic, in Persian.
Those were languages that were quite different from
languages that I already knew.
And therefore, I was a It's totally starting from scratch.
So my advice is it's perhaps less crucial if you know the writing system, because
you can pronounce it more or less.
But especially if you don't know the writing system, I have found it
very useful to very, very quickly.
Focus very heavily on repeated listening, listening to a limited amount of content,
getting your brain used to the language, getting to where you can actually tell
where one word ends and the next word begins, because at first you just don't
know, it's just undifferentiated noise.
And it seems at first that you'll never get there and especially if the writing
system is strange, but you have to rely on the fact that the brain will eventually
start to infer based on the vast amount of data, of input, of sounds, and eventually
of the written language that it sees.
And it'll start to infer what the meaning is, it'll start to infer what
the next word will be, all of those good things, but it just takes a long time.
Time.
So the progression that I see in starting a new language is first
of all, lots of getting used to the sounds, getting used to the individual
sounds, getting used to where one word ends and the next word begins, getting
used to the intonation, the cadence, the rhythm, the music of a language.
And that means a lot of repetitive listening.
As I've said before, don't listen to the same thing five times in a row.
Because the brain craves novelty, but you can listen to one thing, one little
mini story, for example, two, three times, then move to the next and then
the next and the next, go back to the first, intersperse it with reading.
But you need to do an awful lot of listening.
And if you look at my statistics at LingQ, you'll see several situations.
If I can read, But it's a very different language.
I do a lot of listening at first.
If it's a language where the writing system is very difficult, then I tend to
still do a lot of listening, but I spend a lot more time trying to decipher the
writing system as an example, Turkish.
I can read it.
I don't know what it means.
I listen a lot because I can make out.
The writing system, Persian, you'll see that I delay intensive listening
a little bit, whereas in some other languages, I may delay the listening
a little bit later because actually I understand what they're saying.
And I will do a lot of listening later on once I have accumulated more vocabulary.
So you kind of need to develop a strategy that suits what you'd like to do and
the languages that you already know.
But the objective therefore is once you have gotten some familiarity The next
thing that you need to do, because the learning process is one of inferring, you
have to provide yourself with as vast a reserve of things that you can draw from,
so that you find something in there that worked, a word, a structure that worked
for you, and you'll use that again.
And so you'll gradually start retrieving from this vast reservoir of things
that you have listened to or read, or you're starting to notice certain
patterns, certain structures, you'll gradually improve your ability So
again, a lot of listening at first, then you mix that with a lot of reading.
The objective here is not that you should remember the grammar rules.
You can review the grammar rules if you enjoy doing that and that it can
help, but you have to give your brain so much exposure to the language that the
inferring by the brain becomes impossible.
More and more accurate.
And it's a constant process.
It's an iterative error correction process that eventually gives you a
better and better grasp subconscious.
Again, it's not a deliberate process.
It's like the bird that can fly because it has feathers.
Although it wasn't a deliberate thing to add feathers so that it
could fly if you get my meaning.
Now, another thing that I discovered in my reading was that when we start something
new, like a new language, we are.
Uh, inhibited by the fact that the brain likes stability as well as it has this
ability to, through neuroplasticity to learn new things, but it also
clings to things that it knows well.
And I've seen this in learners who are reluctant to let go of say
their native language, patterns in their native language, or moving
from say Spanish to Portuguese.
In my case, I found myself reluctant to let go of Spanish pronunciation.
And totally go into, you know, Portuguese pronunciation.
So there is this tug, push and pull between stability and our desire for
stability and therefore hanging on to things that we are comfortable with.
And yet at the same time, wanting to create new patterns, adopt, you know,
new ways of saying things, which is then putting our neuroplasticity to work.
And so you have to be aware that this is happening.
And I was aware of it.
For example, when I learned the Cyrillic alphabet, what looks to
someone familiar with the Latin alphabet, what looks to us as the
letter P is pronounced R in Russian.
And so even though you know that, but every time you see that, I still say P
because it takes so long to let go of things that are kind of comfortable,
apparently because of our desire to maintain some stability, some stable hold.
On things that we already know.
So the ability to sort of suppress things that don't belong, suppress things from
languages that you know, well, you know, it's one of the things that we develop
a greater and greater ability to do now.
In terms of specifics of learning strategy.
So learning Mandarin, for example, the first three months we used, uh,
romanized text, we listened to Mandarin.
Spoken that what I thought was that Uh, a very fast speed, which subsequently
I discovered wasn't all that fast, but at first everything seems fast.
And through that, I became familiar with the sounds of Chinese.
I did that for three months before we attempted to learn characters.
So I think that this exposure to the sound.
It gives you a bit of a run into the reading.
And I have done a video before where I talked about the importance of,
of listening as sort of the starting point, because it triggers your
interest in the subject matter.
It gives you some momentum to your reading.
And so I would definitely recommend, as I said earlier here as well, focus in
on listening, Get used to the sounds and then gradually do more and more reading.
Again, Mandarin for me was starting from scratch.
Arabic, obviously Persian, Korean, Greek.
Few cognates, different writing system.
But languages like Spanish to Portuguese, where at first, actually I thought I would
have an easier time understanding it.
The words are 95.
5 percent the same, 90 percent the same, couldn't understand it.
So you have to get used to the new language.
You can't assume you can ace it.
The same was true with say Ukrainian, where I thought I
should be able to understand it.
In fact, it's only 60 percent the same as Russian, but because it's
60 percent the same, there are those cognates just like Romanian has 70
percent words that are similar to Italian, it gives you a big head start.
So therefore, as you develop your strategy for this language, where maybe it's
the same alphabet or lots of cognates, then you may be, and depending on what
your preferences are, you may do more reading, you may do more listening.
Uh, in any case, you have to pursue that, uh, the input.
If you are not a French speaker, but you have Spanish, then I think a major
emphasis on listening is important because French has so much liaison
for, between the words, it sort of, one word slides into the next.
And I would focus in very much with French on trying to get a better
sense of where, you know, one word ends and the next word begins.
And also for all of these languages to get a sense of the cadence, where
you sss, there's a pause, the rhythm, the intonation, focus in on all
of these things related to sound.
But again, passively, because my belief is.
If you can get a really good base in the language in the first three
months, in terms of comprehension, then when you go to speak, you will have
a lot of words and phrases and sounds and phonemic awareness to draw on.
And at some point in my own experience, when I have three to 5, 000 words,
known words that link, that's when I start talking to people and not before.
So my strategy with a new language is very much to not put myself in
a situation where I have to speak.
I have to perform.
I don't want to talk to a tutor.
I don't want to expose myself to that.
I want to create that familiarity, that ability to infer a database
of, of experience with the language.
And then when I have a certain level where I think I can start
to defend myself in the language.
And then I start speaking, uh, with difficulty at first,
but eventually more and more.
So the thought I would leave you with is try to think of starting a
new language in terms of not that you're going to deliberately learn
lists of most frequent words, or you're going to deliberately read this
explanation using the international phonetic alphabet, which I never use.
You're just going to listen and get used to it.
And that's all you need to do.
You don't have to deliberately remember anything.
You just have to expose yourself to the language and remain motivated.
So.
To remain motivated, of course, you have to do things you like to do.
So if you like the International Phonetic Alphabet, by all means.
If you prefer reading, by all means.
If you prefer reading grammar rules, by all means.
Do all those things that are going to keep you motivated.
Make sure you know why you're learning the language.
Make sure you know the kinds of activities that will keep you motivated.
And as long as you remain Active in the language, you are going to accumulate
this sort of database of reference so that you can start inferring with more and
more accuracy when you hear the language and when you go to use the language
and that period of the sort of getting started in a language can be anywhere
from three to six or seven months.
Depending on how difficult the language is, how different the
writing system is, and what languages you already know, how much time
you put in, all these other things.
But recognize that it's not a deliberate action.
It's a bit like the bird with the feathers.
It almost happens incidentally if you put the time into those
kinds of learning activities.
At least that's been my experience.
Thanks for listening.
Bye for now.
