How to Learn a New Language from Scratch: Indonesian

Hi. Today I want to talk about learning a language from scratch. Remember, if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe and you can click on the bell for notifications. And I am going to talk today about how I use LingQ to start a language from scratch. Now I have, this is kind of the fourth in this series of videos on studying effectively.

And one of the themes that you will have heard throughout each of these videos is the importance of listening and reading. So then people say, well, how can I listen and read, uh, with a language that I know nothing about, like from scratch, how do you start listening and reading? So I thought it would be useful to go off, to go over some of the basic principles, what I do when I'm starting from scratch.

Because very recently I have started from scratch. In Persian in Arabic, in Turkish, in Greek, uh, you know, I tend to remember all the languages that I've started from scratch. And the way I start from scratch is that I use the Mini Stories and I use the Mini Stories because there is so much repetition in each story.

So you have 60 stories where within each story, there is lots of repetition, the same vocabulary repeats five times within the story. One of the problems with more conventional learner books, starter books is that while it may, it pretends to be easier in fact, not a lot of the vocabulary repeats within the lesson, or even later on in the book and we do need vocabulary to repeat

if we're going to have a chance to remember it also. Uh, I will demonstrate I'll show you myself learning Indonesian from scratch. Now, I had some brief exposure to Indonesian and because my wife and I, uh, in 1975, we were in Bali. So I remember a few words like, um,..., "how much?" Or ... "thank you". And I remember being in an airplane and I heard ... which is ladies and gentlemen, but that's about it. Uh, so I will demonstrate how I start from scratch, uh, with the Mini Stories and one of the things that I'll point out in the Mini Stories is, while most people go from lesson one to lesson two to lesson three, the language is the language, the language isn't so much less than one lesson, two lesson three.

It's not obvious that less than five is more difficult than lesson one. The very high frequency words will appear in lesson one and lesson two and lesson three and lesson four and lesson five and 10 and 20 and 30. So with that, I'd like you to have a look at me, sort of dealing with Indonesian in LingQ.

We are, uh, I'm in Persian right now doing this very interesting podcast in Persian, but I want to sort of experience going to a language for the first time. So we're going to change the language and we're going to go to something that I haven't done, practically, haven't done anything on Indonesian.

Okay. I got two words in Indonesian and I think I spent some time just looking at it, just exploring it to see what's there. So in the library, I mean, let's see my lessons. I guess I, I looked at the Mini Stories and I looked at this other thing. I was curious, Buddha, but let's go to the Mini Stories because starting a language from scratch.

Uh, that's what I would do. So if we look at our statistics, 97% of the words in here are new to me. The reason it's 97, because I remember I did look at a lesson and looked up a few words. Uh, here is story one. So if we look up story one and I want to point out something that I think is quite important, and which I mentioned earlier is when you're starting in a language, you don't have to start at one.

You don't have to start necessarily at "how are you?" Uh, father, mother, sister, brother. Um, the present tense isn't necessarily easier than the past tense. There is no real order. So I think we're conditioned to want to go story one, story two, story three, but it doesn't really matter. Um, if I look at story one here, you will see that I did spend some time,

I don't know when looking at this, I looked at these words. I don't remember any of these words. I did this just as an experiment some time ago, but what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to go to the next lesson and let's assume that we start on lesson two. Some of the words that showed up in lesson one will be here in lesson two.

And so the whole thing about starting from scratch is you just want to discover the language. I could look up a grammar book and get some hints as to how the language works, uh, from, you know, subject, uh, subject verb, noun or whatever, but it doesn't matter. We're just going to explore. So this first word ... means following, next.

Okay. ... so the following is a story.... now this is a capital, so I'm assuming it's a person's name ... and okay. ... Okay. So you have to assume that this is "winter".

So I'm just going to discover the language. So the following is a story about Puji and Liburan and her holiday... in her winter holidays. Okay. Now I have an advantage in doing the Mini Stories in that I've done them in so many different languages. Okay. Puji... okay, she's obviously excited.

... so this obviously is another way of saying "winter" or "winter vacation"... so by looking these words up, I can actually follow the meaning here. So what I would normally do, and I should point out too, that in terms of dictionaries, I'm using Bob blah, I could look up, you know, again, it depends what, what your native language is.

You can choose from a variety of addiction areas, some languages will have more than others. Uh, what does this say? So this looks to be a dictionary entirely in Indonesian. May not be so meaningful for me. I don't think I'll use it again. Maybe at a later stage. So I close this. So I'm going to stay with, let's see, what did Babla give me?

Yeah here. So this gives me more information. I'm going to stay with Babla and Google translate. Okay. I can do one more sentence now. Of course, I can listen to this. In fact, what I would normally do, I should point out is that I would go and do this in sentence mode. That way I can look at it sentence by sentence.

Okay. So here I take this sentence and I might spend some time there or I go to the next sentence.

Uh, it says, uh, met my daily target. You can set your own target. I don't worry about those things, but some people like it.

Okay. So, I mean, I I'm going through these, these words will all be status one and I won't go through the whole thing. I mean, I can do the next sentence. Whoops. That wasn't what I wanted to do, uh, wherever here. Okay. So here again.

So I would normally, and I think that's enough here of, of going through the Mini Stories here. Uh, and, and let me explain a little bit, uh, how I would use these Mini Stories and how it eventually enables me to break into the language. All right. So it gives you a bit of a sense that, that I begin my contact with a new language by just discovering what's there.

Uh, some languages have the verb at the end, some languages have the verb in the middle. And some books will tell you this, but actually as you go through discovering the language, translating each word, if necessary, translating a phrase, you start to discover the language. So if typically what I would do is I would pick my way through one story.

Then I would listen to it. Uh, I can listen to it and by the way, I would do the story in sentence mode. Definitely it's much easier to do in sentence mode. And then you can listen to each sentence. And after having worked your way through and looked up words and what I didn't show in the demonstration was using the flashcards.

Typically I would, whenever I turn the page, I would do some flash carding while those words are still fresh in my mind. And having done all of that, if I then go away and listen to the story, I won't understand much. Okay. That's the reality. And so then I have to go back and I read it again and pretty... and after reading it again and looking up words again and going through flashcards again, uh, then I go and listen to it and I still don't understand much.

And, but then I will move on to the next lesson. And I typically will go in sequence, but you don't have to, uh, but it's better to go in sequence because then you remember what you've done. Uh, so normally I would start with lesson one and then lesson two and lesson three and so forth. And I'll understand 20% eventually, you know, I'll start to understand 10, 20, 30% I keep on doing this, but I also, and in fact, it's been proven based on, you know, research and cognitive processes in our brain,

don't spend your whole time trying to nail down lesson one as the efficiency declines very quickly. Uh, rather you should move on to the next lesson because even another lesson that you don't understand is still a new lesson. The brain likes novelty. So I typically will spend a fair amount of time on lesson one, understand after a while, understand, I understand more and more when reading it with the help of a dictionary.

Uh, listening without reading. Uh, I understand very little, but then I keep on moving forward. Lesson two, lesson three, lesson four, lesson five, then I'll go back to lesson one. And by the time you reach lesson 10, lesson one, which you've now listened to 15 times, it's starting to make sense. And that's basically the process combination of listening while reading in sentence mode.

Uh, looking at words, looking at words again and again. Uh, reviewing words and flashcards after each page. And then of course, a lot of listening away from it, not understanding an awful lot, but now you're more and more curious, like, what is that meaning that I can't seem to remember? And you go by and all of a sudden, as was the case for me with say Persian and Arabic, which have a much more difficult script.

I mean, Indonesian has the advantage that it's written in the Latin alphabet. But I did this for Persian and Arabic. Now I will also get myself a book, Teach Yourself, or, you know, Colloquial. Because it's, it's nice to cover the same material in different ways. So I'll read through it and they'll have some different monologues or dialogues per each lesson.

And they'll explain some things about the language, which might be useful to me. I won't fully be able to use those explanations, but it all, it's all part of my gradually discovering the language. I should say that Indonesian would be an attractive one to do. I'm not about to abandon Persian and Arabic, but Indonesian is spoken by,

I think if we add in Malaysia and Indonesia, 200 million people. Uh, I think that are common words with, uh, with... I'm not sure, uh, it's an important part of the world. It's an important language. Uh, it's meant to be easy. Uh, I don't know if that's true or not, but, uh, certainly the writing system is easy for us.

Uh, there are no tones to deal with. So it's one that I may very well go and learn later on, but I think it's, it's an easy one to use as a demonstration of how to start a language, uh, from scratch. And I can assure you, I use the same process in much more difficult languages like Persian and Arabic. The important thing is not to get worried about what you don't understand trust the fact that the brain will eventually start to form some patterns, will eventually start to understand it. It seems at first impossible, and it seemed as, particularly for me, uh, with the Persian, with the Arabic script, you know, impossible. Uh, but you just have to stay with it. You just have to stay with it and keep listening. And I end up listening to these stories 30, 40, 50 times, but not all at once, not listening to it over and over again, trying to force myself to understand it.

I go through it and, and, and continue, and then go back and and sometimes I'll listen to the, uh, you know, there is a function at LingQ "listen to the course audio". So that'll be set up on my iPhone. I can listen to it. I can shuffle it. And slowly, slowly, slowly, all of this starts to make sense. Once you have a base, as in say the Mini Stories you can then branch off into more difficult, um, you know, authentic content that you might run to import from somewhere, or you can find in our library.

Uh, but I think the Mini Stories, because there's so much repetition and, and remember, you don't need to ace the most frequent 500 words, they're going to show up anyway, they will show up. Don't worry about it. Uh, you have to recognize that there is going to be a long period where you have to acquire these, you know, relatively less frequent words, uh, and which are very important to the meaning of any context.

Uh, however, the, the, the Mini Stories is a place where I get a start in the language. I get a sense of the language. I get some basic vocabulary, some basic phrasing. Now I'm ready to start exploring beyond that, but that's how the sort of listening and reading starting from scratch when you know nothing about the language, that's how I do it.

So I hope that was helpful. And, uh, I, I'm going to offer you a couple of videos that kind of follow along in the same vein.