Real Conversation #16 - Learning Languages (Gabriel & Steve Kaufmann)

GABRIEL: I think that if... that is in a way natural, I think that if we learn, we forget, we struggle, it's a frustrating thing, it's not natural, it's just annoying. We want to have success, we want to progress and I think that as we witness this process and it's taking so long and I'm forgetting a lot of these words, it's something that can be frustrating. But we have to embrace the idea that it's part of the process.

STEVE: That we're going to forget is inevitable, but to be frustrating is not inevitable. You can control your level of frustration and soon you say I'm enjoying it. I'm doing the things that I enjoy, I keep on missing the same, I listen, I listen and every time the same part of that is. But then I say hey, I'm listening to Portuguese, I'm listening to Greek. Six months ago I wouldn't have understood anything and now I understand 50% of it. So it's very important, like I never get frustrated, I never get upset of my mistakes, but unfortunately a lot of inexperienced language learners are very quick to get frustrated. I've been studying for six months, for a year, and I can't do this, I can't do that.

GABRIEL: Those are excellent points.

STEVE: You can control your level of frustration; you can't control forgetting, you can't control getting it wrong, you can't control you can understand, those things are going to happen.

GABRIEL: One thing that you mentioned before in Portuguese that I find so important as well is that, many people say Steve is a genius, Gabriel is a genius. They speak some languages, they learn so quickly, it's not normal, these guys are just...But the thing is like, I think for Steve or for myself, it took me so long to learn my second and my third language, so long. Like I may have beaten records, but eventually it's that getting way faster.

STEVE: We measure at length, we measure how many words you read and we measure how much you listen. So I've been at Greek now for five months and so I'm listening to a podcasts about the ''Acropolis'' and stuff and I have to transcript. And I actually did an interview on my YouTube channel, I spoke Greek and people said wow, you know Steve. So then I said to myself, I said, in five months now I've read 150,000 words in Greek. My statistics at LingQ tell me that and I have listened to 100 hours, so you can tell Steve is a genius, but how many people and I think this is a challenge to people in Brazil. If you're at LingQ, measure how much do you read.

GABRIEL: How many new words have you learned?

STEVE: I do save a lot of LingQ, like I would have in Greek maybe 7000 new words that I've learned, but I have saved 20,000 lingQs, like I have deliberately saved words and phrases 20,000 in five months. So that's a lot, so people don't realize how much effort we actually put into language learning. And I think that's where you challenge yourselves, that's why I said create your own language world, things that are interesting to you such as your course for example and build yourself up and bury some of that maybe some podcasts on subjects that you're interested which might be history, or politics, or marketing, or music, or movie stars, or arts, or soccer, or business and stuffs like that and see how much. So when people say well I'm not making any progress, but if in fact you have listened to 50 hours and if you have read 100,000 words, you are making progress, your brain is getting used to the language. You may have trouble speaking, but if you found yourself in a situation like if you come to Canada and you have that many words that you have read and listened to, you will develop your speaking very quickly.

GABRIEL: A lot quicker that just sitting there and doing random exercises.

STEVE: Absolutely.

GABRIEL: There's just no comparison and you're going to have that exposure and of course at the beginning you will be making mistakes. And it will be challenging to understand people and express yourself in the language, but that's all part of the process. And that's the most important thing; you can't let that hold you back.

STEVE: I already said it, you know, you have to be willing to accept you know {incertitude ''feeling uncomfortable''}. If you want to be comfortable, stay in your own language.

GABRIEL: And that's the beauty of it too, because I've seen you say this and I think you've said it like in an interview that we had together as well. It's like being in a situation like you're making mistakes, it is fine and it's just like I think I've embarrassed myself so thoroughly so many times that I'm immune.

STEVE: The thing is too, and that's why I think why children very often do better because we are adults, so I'm sure that people that are watching are mostly adults.

GABRIEL: Mostly sure.

STEVE: And so they can express themselves quite well, they think they're quite intelligent, I'm an adult.

GABRIEL: I saw everything perfectly, I don't make any mistakes.

STEVE: No, but I have interesting things to say in my own language, but when I speak another language all of a sudden I'm not very intelligent. I'm like a child and people don't like that people don't like that, adults don't like that, but children don't care, children don't mind being children.

GABRIEL: They repeat the same thing a million times and they will joke around.

STEVE: They just talk and they communicate and stuff like that. But adults don't like to be put in a situation where they appear sort of less-intelligent. That's inevitable with language learning, you are never going to do as well in another language as you do in your own.

GABRIEL: That's true and that's still impressive. Often like for example; there are many languages which I speak just the very basic level and then I'll risk it. For example; there was this lady on a sea bus and I spoke some Serbian with her and she was so pleased. Although my vocabulary is quite limited which she was so happy. We sure have made a bunch of mistakes in pronunciations, she actually complimented on me and my pronunciation which I found a bit surprising, I thought it sucked. But basically it's just like you can't avoid that and it's just really part of the process and that's how being in those situation is going to enable you to progress more quickly.

STEVE: So I mean, I hope that this encourages people. Again you started the discussion by saying that in Brazil people have this obligation to learn. And obligation is not a very strong form of motivation, so we can motivate people, give them the confidence that they can do it, that it is a matter of...Like age is not an issue, like I'm 72 and I've learned more languages in the last 10 years than I learned in the previous 60 years. So age is not an issue, it's a matter of forcing the brain to expand, to become capable of hearing new sounds of getting used to new ways of expressing things and we can all do it. So, now many of you are only looking at English at this point presumably or maybe Spanish, but sometimes all, whatever. The fact that we speak you know however many languages, we are no different, it's the same process, we can all do it if we enjoy it. And I think people realize from listening to us that we enjoy it. The first thing is to make sure you find a way of enjoying the process.

GABRIEL: One really cool thing that I find is, in my opinion is that, thankfully though, in Brazil, this obligation is also married to a curiosity. So most Brazilian friends they have this curiosity and this appreciation for North American cultures, music, whatever it may be. Sometimes people are really interested in politics or just culture in general, so there's this fascination as well. I think that's something you really need to explore.

STEVE: That has to be there, like every language that I learned and even if you don't sense that curiosity at first, there's an expression in French [French Expression] So what I find is if I'm not very interested, let's say Greek. I don't know anything about Greece and stuff like that, but once I start studying Greek, I get more and more interested. [Russian Expression] in Russian, so the beginning, you've to force yourself sometimes even if you don't feel that strong and interested in North America. You don't like North Americans, whatever it might be. You have to force yourself, you don't have to like everything, like whether it be Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, I don't have to like everything in their culture. I just have to find those things that interest me in Chinese culture, Japanese culture, French culture, Brazilian culture and whatever. So people in Brazil have to find some things, it doesn't have to be North America, it can be Scottish, Australia and South Africa, any English speaking.

GABRIEL: I have a confession to make actually, that's initially for example when I started learning Chinese, I was between Chinese and Japanese, it was like which one I'm going to put more effort in first. And I do speak some basic Japanese, but I was like, I'm going to go for Chinese despite the fact that it initially I was more interested in Japanese. But then I started learning Chinese and after all these time learning Chinese I fell in love with it. I fell in love with their culture, at the beginning I didn't feel that way, I didn't know enough, but I started learning and I started seeing all these and I said wow, it's such a rich deep culture and that's going to happen and it happens to me every time I fall in love with a language.

STEVE: Absolutely, you haven't been to these Polyglot conferences? You should go sometime.

GABRIEL: I've only been to Polyglot meetings here in Vancouver, I really want to go.

STEVE: You should go. I went to the one in Bratislava and I've been to the one in Montreal two years in a roll, you should come. At any rate, I think the biggest difference between people like us and those 500/600 Polyglots in Montreal and Bratislava and the average person who is not into languages, is that we are able to fall in love with languages. Now, in normal life, if you keep on falling with different women, that's not very good, you could get into trouble and there could be some conflicts there. But with languages, you can just fall in love and you can still go back to your old love, that's the great thing. With women it's not so easy to do that.

GABRIEL: It's not very easy.

STEVE: But with languages, I go back to Portuguese now, in preparation to our discussion in the car I was listening to some Portuguese, I can go back to my Ukrainian, I can go back to anything. And so we, I think the polyglots have an ability to fall in love with different languages, really interesting, the sound of the languages have the same feeling, the culture behind it.

GABRIEL: That is really fascinating.

STEVE: That is the difference. Now, not everybody watching is going to become an enthusiastic polyglot like we are, but even to a small extent.