Today I have a special guest, Mike, Bijuu Mike, who is a fan of anime and
who's very much into learning Japanese, and we're gonna talk about this.
He's a YouTuber, a very popular YouTuber.
We're gonna talk about all of these subjects, and I think
it'll be quite interesting and different from my normal videos.
Hello, Mike, can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Yeah, my name is Mike and I've, well, I've been a huge fan of anime since
I was a little kid, pretty much.
And um, for a lot of people that is what gets people interested in learning
Japanese because mainly you just want to be able to read things like manga in
Japanese, or you wanna be able to watch anime without having to rely on subtitles.
I mean, it was probably more of an issue back in the day before, you know?
it was so widespread when it was harder to obtain like subtitles
and dubs and things like that.
But it's still something that really interests me and, um, just got me
into language learning in general.
Yeah.
As someone who knows practically nothing about anime, can you tell me a little
bit about anime and the kinds of things that you talk about, uh, on your YouTube
channel and of, of course, tell our listeners where they can find you.
Um, yeah, you can find me on YouTube, just, uh, search in, uh, Bijuu Mike,
or I don't know if you have a LingQ down in the description, but, uh,
yeah, I mean, it's such a unique name that even if you misspell
it, you'll probably still find me.
Uh, but, uh, yeah, when I started YouTube, I started, I would talk a lot about anime,
um, but now I pretty much just play games.
Um, sometimes I do like anime related games and I do make references to anime.
Like people, you know, because of my background, people know that I like anime.
So it's just kind of a part of who I am.
But, uh, I just do a lot of videos, mostly playing games online and
doing reactions to stuff, just giving my opinions on stuff like that.
So that's what I do.
Since I know nothing about anime, so anime, typically, my understanding is
like a story where you have these cartoon figures that follow a certain style that,
and how does that connect with games?
I, a lot of things come out of Japan, like, you know, games, uh, Japanese games,
anime and things like that, and it's just.
It has this certain aesthetic and style that is just a lot different
from like, you would say, something like Spider-Man or, you know, um,
if you were just compared to like a popular cartoon, it's completely a
different vibe, I guess you would say.
And it just, um, from a little kid, it got us, you know, got me really
interested and that's how I made.
Pretty much all of my friends, because we all grew up watching Dragon Ball together,
which Dragon Ball is super popular.
Yeah, I'm completely unaware of all of that stuff.
I'm surprised you haven't heard of Dragon Ball.
But, uh, it's certainly a major phenomenon and I think a lot of people
who become interested in learning Japanese and who become quite proficient
in Japanese, they, uh, attribute that to their interest in anime.
And so that was also your case.
And how do you migrate from anime to learning Japanese?
I wish I could say I had a great, great reason.
I don't.
Like, you know, there wasn't a need, like, it's not like I have to learn Japanese
to survive or anything like that, but I just found it really interesting.
Um, I pretty much just one day, it was probably around maybe 2018 or 2019,
I started learning like, Hiragana and, and Katakana and I picked up
one of the Genki books and I just thought it was really interesting.
Then I started doing some research about it and I just thought it would
be generally, uh cool to be able to watch anime without having to rely on
subtitles and also read in Japanese.
I just thought the idea was really cool and uh, it got me interested
and now I actually just love the process of language learning.
It feels like you're unlocking like a new part of the world.
I couldn't agree with you more.
And, and what's interesting is that many people think, you know, I wanna
learn this language because I'm gonna go to Japan, or 'cause I wanna
speak well or I wanna pass my exam.
And those motivations are not that long lasting really.
Whereas whether it be anime or in my case, I'm interested in history for example.
So you're driven by this interest in some content that you wanna
watch or listen to or read.
And it's through engaging with that content and acquiring words
and, and acquiring new habits in the brain that you start to get
better and better at that language.
Mm-hmm.
Not because you attend class.
So I'm just curious, you've been learning Japanese largely on your own,
or have you been also attending class?
Uh, so no, it, it's pretty much mostly on my own.
Um, recently I started taking some tutoring lessons, well, not tutoring
lessons, but I've been having it's like slash tutoring slash just talking with,
uh, you know, a Japanese, uh, teacher.
When I first started, I, I used the Genki textbook a little bit.
But then, um, I started finding like your videos and things like that and, um, I,
I mean, I, it's a, it's a long story.
I could get into it, but, um, on my own basically is to answer your question, as
I've been doing it mostly on my own self.
Yeah,
it, it's interesting.
Uh, I also use tutors primarily just to talk to.
And, uh, particularly after I've reached a certain level in the language where
we can actually have a conversation and, uh, any of the sort of grammatical
explanations, if you don't have enough of a sort of level of experience and
exposure to the language, it becomes an obstacle when you have the grammar trying
to figure out, understand and stuff.
Whereas if you have enough already of exposure to the language because
of your interest in something like anime or history, then later on these
explanations actually start to help you, but upfront, they're more of a,
of a hindrance than anything else.
Uh, and whether you're driven by anime or history, it, it really doesn't matter.
It's, it's that process.
Hmm.
But a lot of people will say, okay, so you like, you know, I
say I like listening and reading.
And people say, well, how can you listen and read when you don't understand?
And how can you read if it's written in a strange script?
And of course, Japanese has a big sort of obstacle in that it combines.
Chinese characters, which are difficult in themselves, and it has
two phonetic scripts, which are not really alphabets, but are celebrities.
So how did you deal with the, the obstacle of the Japanese writing system?
How do I deal with it?
Well, um, oh, how
did you deal with it initially?
Once you get over the hurdle, you're getting better and better all the time.
But
I wouldn't say I'm fluent by, I'm not close, you know?
But definitely how I dealt with it is.
Well, I just learned hiragana and Katakana first, and uh, really,
I just feel like most of it is just getting used to it, you know?
Right.
Because at first it's like you're so slow with reading and things like that.
I started with Anki.
I'm sure you're aware of Anki.
Yeah.
So like when it comes to learning Japanese, uh, Anki
is always talked about and.
You know, I came across people like Matt versus Japan, and so I kind
of went that method, but I also saw your videos at the same time.
And at first I didn't understand LingQ, you know, too much.
I, I started dabbling in it, like in around 2019.
And, um, you know, I always watched your videos saying that you just need a
lot of listening and a lot of reading.
So I did a KY for probably a few years.
I didn't do it for like maybe 30 minutes a day or something like that.
I thought for some reason I would get good if I did that.
Um, not very much time, but around 2023, I decided to go.
Full in on LingQ.
And that's when it started clicking for me.
Like lots of input, lots of reading and listening is like the key.
And, um, I was able to pick up words and that's, you know, I wanted to ask you
kind of the same question, how, how to get over like kanji and, and stuff like that.
Like what your opinion on that was.
So first of all, I follow the same path as you, you.
First have to get the audio in you and you have to use some form of phonetic
script, which could be say in the case of Chinese pinyin because they don't
really have a separate phonetic script.
In the case of Japanese, you do have the, the, the kana.
So I've never used romaji.
I think that's a distraction.
Oh yeah,
neither.
So you just have to fight through it and get used to the Kana,
which is a phonetic script.
Now, insofar as the characters, the kanji, I had a big advantage because I knew
the most of the characters from Chinese, and even if the form and the meaning is
sometimes different in Japanese having.
The Chinese kanji behind me was a major advantage if you are starting with
Japanese, so you don't have the kanji, you just have to grin and bear it.
It's a separate learning activity to my mind.
You devote a half an hour or whatever it is a day to going over those characters.
Either you just go through them and write them, and I find writing by
hand is very helpful, but I know that my son used, Heisig, I think it
is, or some system, so you can also.
We'll find some system to learn the characters, but you have to treat
the learning of the characters as a parallel stream, in my opinion.
And then you gradually blend that into your listing and reading.
And the more characters you have, the easier it is to use a system like LingQ.
We do have the romaji at LingQ.
Uh, we have the furigana LingQ.
Sometimes it's wrong.
It's fine.
Nothing's perfect in this world.
Mm-hmm.
And so as you continue reading and listening and using LingQ and continuing
your parallel stream with the kanji, you get the 500 to a thousand to 1500.
Gradually they sort of come together and you're able to read better and better.
But it's always a struggle.
It's always easier to read in your own alphabet, even if you understand, like
I'm finding now with Arabic and, and Persian, I understand the alphabet,
I know how it's supposed to work, but for the brain, actually, to get used to
that writing system takes a long time.
So it's gonna be a struggle.
It will remain a struggle, but at the same time, you're, you know, listening
comprehension continues to improve.
Yeah.
So when it comes to kanji, um.
I don't, I don't know if it's just, if I'm just weird or maybe I'm
doing this in a weird way, but, so when I originally started learning
Japanese, uh, I did get like an KY deck based off of, uh, remembering
the Kgi by Haig that you explained.
And, uh, so I was stead studying them, like individually.
I never wrote them, even though I know that would've helped me.
But I was just lazy and I was like, I don't think I'm gonna write.
So I just didn't, never did it.
So I kind of got a grasp on Kaji.
But, um, and I would do other things.
I would use other websites that had flashcards that
kind of taught you how to do.
I don't know if you've ever heard of Juani Connie, but it's
a website that teaches you kanji.
Right.
And things like that.
Like that helps me.
But when I started moving to LingQ, I kind of don't learn kanji anymore.
I learned them through words.
Like if I see a word enough, I'll just remember how to say it.
Like that's even with the kanji, right?
I, I don't know if a lot of people don't talk about that, but I learned
through basically vocabulary the kanji,
if that.
I think that's absolutely true.
Yeah.
And in my case, when I was doing Chinese, I very deliberately learned
the first thousand characters.
Mm-hmm.
I had a, you know, actual flashcards, real paper flashcards, but I got
up to three or 4,000 characters.
And so I didn't use those flashcards for the remaining two, 3000 characters because
in fact, you get used to the pattern.
There is a pattern in the characters, there's a pattern in everything.
There's even a pattern to English spelling.
Yes.
You know, everything has a pattern and, uh, after a while you get used to these
and so it becomes easier and easier to remember new characters that you meet
because there are familiar components.
And so I think you have to put an initial effort into learning
a thousand or so characters.
And then after a while, just through listening and or, and reading and.
Practice, your brain gets used to the pattern and it becomes easier
to remember, uh, the new characters.
That has been my case.
I just like, I was struggling to try to remember like the individual
characters and, and stuff like that, but eventually I just realized, you
know, if you're putting in three hours of reading a day or something like,
which I've done eventually, you're like, wait, I rem I know that word.
Like, I just know it because I've, I've looked it up and I've
seen it so many times that it's just become dis natural to you.
And I've, I realized that that's all you really need, at least for me.
See, I
think there's a, the, the fallacy of traditional language instruction is that
you can deliberately learn something, that there's a direct relationship with
your deliberate effort and what you end up being able to remember and use or recall.
It's not that way.
I have no idea of what's sticking and what isn't sticking what I remember
today, and will forget tomorrow.
It all happens naturally if I expose myself enough to the
language, either reading or listening and eventually using it.
Yeah, so to that extent.
Deliberately trying to remember it.
It leads to frustration because I deliberately, I, I studied this,
I did this list yesterday and now it's all, poof, it's gone.
Forget it.
It doesn't matter.
Just keep going.
So that's my approach.
Yeah.
I wanted to ask your, I wanted to ask this question to you, like, do
you think that, I don't know, do you think language is mostly an.
Time.
Like just how much time you devote to it, you know?
Because I feel like anything, if you devote, devote enough time
to it, you know, you just get used to it eventually, you know?
And I feel like that's been my experience is like the more time I put into it, like
you have no choice but to remember it
'cause you see something so many, you know, so much.
I think it's, there was this famous Hungarian polyglot who had sort
of a formula, and so you had time and attitude over any obstacle,
any inhibition, any frustration.
Hmm.
So time is obviously a big factor, but there's also whether you are uptight,
whether you enjoy what you're doing, whether you enjoy the language, whether
you're confident, you can learn it, whether you just relax and do it.
If you put in the time and you're very interested, for example, in anime and
you're relaxed about it, and you don't worry about what you forget or or what
you don't understand, then there's no resistance so that the positive energy
and the time is really working for you.
On the other hand, if you put in the time doing useless.
Quizzes and drills and trying to read grammar explanations and you're sort
of pushing on a rope, then you're reducing the efficiency of that time.
Mm-hmm.
So you've gotta grease the skids by being very positive, not questioning yourself,
being motivated, being interested.
And there is a sort of a sense of, uh, I did a video about, you
know, novelty and how new things.
In other words, if you're positive about something, there is this sort of dopamine.
Kick in anticipation of, and even while you're learning,
which increases your focus in, increases your ability to remember.
So all of these things as well as the time are important.
I totally agree.
Like, um, for me, what keeps me going is like just learning new words.
Just knowing something that I didn't know, you know, yesterday or being
able to hear Japanese and it's like, wait, no, I understood that and.
And especially with LingQ, being able to look back on a lesson and, and
see that like, you know, I remember looking at this lesson, I knew nothing.
It was like, you know, a hundred percent unknown words.
And to see that it's only like, you know, five or 10% now, like
that's very, very motivating for me.
Similar with me, like I'm looking at pages of Persian that are mostly white.
Yeah.
And very difficult content.
Whereas when I started, it was all blue, it was all unknown.
And that gives you a sense of achievement, which again, sort of just
further powers your, your motivation.
But let me ask you then, if you say, okay, I learned something, I
understand something, and the next day you hit a text where you forget
a stuff, bunch of stuff, yellow words that you have saved or yellow, but
now you don't know what they mean.
Or there's the same, same sections of a text, uh, even in sentence
mode that you don't understand.
When you hear it, does that frustrate you or does it demotivate you?
So
this entire time I've been watching your channel, so I've
been taking your advice of just.
Um, forgetting is natural.
Right, right.
And no, it's, it's very true, especially if you take a break like pretty soon.
I'm actually gonna take a two week trip to Japan, and I know that my
Japanese, even though I'm gonna be in Japan, is gonna get a little bit
worse because I'm not gonna be reading the words that I'm reading every day.
But no, it, it is a little frustrating, uh, but not nothing too bad.
I know that it's definitely natural to forget.
The other thing too is if you go to Japan.
You spend less time listening and reading and adding to your vocabulary
and stuff that shouldn't frustrate you because the fact of being in that genuine
Japanese cultural environment mm-hmm.
Is going to improve your motivation, attitude.
There's a lot of exposure that's happening, even though it's not
deliberate, and you'll come back and very quickly you'll be better than ever.
Yeah, so I used to use Anki write a lot, and um, I felt like at, when
I was doing that approach, like I felt like I was only doing Anki and
doing flashcards, which like that did help me and it gave me a base.
But when I got frustrated with the burnout of how many flashcards, like
when you have hundreds of flashcards to do every day, it just, like, I
felt like that's all I was doing.
And I was like, this ist fun.
You know?
That was, that was my, you know, my experience even though
like you're supposed to immerse
and do flashcards, but I feel like I was mostly doing, using the
little time I had to do flashcards.
So in 2023 when I switched to LingQ, it gave me that feeling that I am immersing
the entire time instead of just like relying on doing only flashcards.
Yeah.
And, and if you've, uh, watched the last couple of videos I've done,
there is research that shows that repetition is not as important as
seeing vocabulary items in meaningful context that the brain
has a better chance because you're not getting multiple inputs.
If you want into the word, uh, which words is used with that
word, you're developing habits.
You can't just deal with words in isolation, even in an deck,
not only is it boring, it's
doing the same thing over and over again, but according to the sort of
MRI imaging, it's, it's less effective than even if it's somehow optimized.
This is, not everyone agrees with me, but optimized according to some algorithm
that you're supposed to, you know, when you're about to forget it, you
see it again, and all this other stuff.
In reality, there's so many words there that are isolated
from any meaningful context.
Mm. It's a bit frustrating and boring.
And second of all, apparently not as effective.
So button people are gonna do what they like to do.
People who like to do Anki are gonna do Anki and they'll probably benefit from it.
So I think people have to choose the path that works best for them.
Yeah, no, I mean, I would say my mistake that I made with Anki, not that it,
it did help a little bit, but what I. My main problem is I was mostly
because like I'm a, you know, I'm a full-time YouTuber and that's what
I focus on and you know, again, like learning Japanese is not a necessity.
It's just something I really want to do, but it is not a necessity.
It doesn't help my YouTube channel at all or anything like that.
So I was using the little times that I had just to do Anki and uh, so it did.
It just felt kind of like isolating and it gave me the sense that I was learning,
but I wasn't doing, I wasn't like, you know, watching tons of Japanese TV and
stuff like that, like I was just making flashcards, but I wasn't doing that.
But for me in 2023 was the breakthrough.
You know, I've been watching your videos and I, at that point, I
kind of didn't believe in LingQ.
So what I did is I just.
Forced myself to read this.
Um, there's these things called visual novels, which they're basically just
stories, uh, but they're with pictures and it's, it's almost like a video game, but
it's mostly just reading, uh, like a book.
And then there's characters on it, like pictures of characters, basically.
It's a, it's a weird thing, but it has a lot of voice with a lot of the text too.
So what I did is I found a easy short visual novel, and I went through the
entire thing on LingQ, and by the time I was done with that, like it
changed my opinion completely on LingQ.
And then that's when I went full on that.
And every time I go back to Japan, I'm able to.
To read signs on the trains now and um, I wasn't able to do that before,
so it's like really cool to see that.
Absolutely.
You know, we're very similar.
My interests are different than yours, but you said something quite interesting.
You said very often we have the impression that we're learning,
but in fact we're not learning.
Yeah.
And we really don't know.
When we're learning, we think, okay, we studied this, uh, grammar
explanation, or we study this conjugation table in some other language.
We think we learned something.
In fact, maybe we didn't learn something and you went through your visual
novel because you're interested in it.
Not because you're deliberately learning, but in fact you're learning better.
So again, it's, it's only after a while, you know, say LingQ, using
LingQ for example, or reading it, you realize just how much you've
achieved, even though while you were doing it, you didn't have that
impression that I'm learning something.
And I think that gets back to my sort of zen effortless, you know, the, the best.
Craftsman is someone who effortlessly whatever he does, if he's a
carpenter or if he's a butcher, and you just gotta naturally do it.
And I think the results speak for themselves.
Listen, we're so much in tune with, uh, how we approach language learning.
We could go on forever.
I don't know if you have any other questions.
So you've been using LingQ since the beginning.
So what did you do before LingQ?
I know that you are technically a co-creator, I believe.
Uh, co-creator, not in any technical sense since, uh, I son Mark and his team
look after the technical side of things.
But before LingQ, I learned a bunch of languages, but
always on the same principles.
In other words, comprehension, vocabulary, accumulation through lots of listening
and reading, and then you start speaking.
And if you have more opportunity to speak, you'll do better.
Eventually, although you'll stumble at first, of course, I lived in France
for three years as a student and then had to learn Mandarin Chinese.
I was in Japan and constantly listening, get in my car in the summer.
It's uh, you know, 35 degrees Celsius, like getting into a furnace.
Yeah.
But I'd be listening to Japanese all the time.
So the, the principles of learning are the same, the motivation for LingQ.
'cause the idea that I had a bunch of books here, for example, with a whole
bunch of words underlined that I wanted them to learn and I'd look 'em up in
the dictionary and I'd forget them.
And, and I realized with the advent of the internet and, and MP three
files and online dictionaries and all of the functionality you can
build into something that there was a lot better way than trying to, uh,
you know, just read and say words.
Prior to that, I would rely too, in all of my languages, I would try
to rely on readers where you had a, a vocabulary behind each chapter.
And that's when I also realized that you want that vocabulary, that glossary as
close as possible to what you're reading.
Because any glossary that that's at the back of the book is useless.
It's too far removed from what you're reading.
Any review of vocabulary has to be as close as possible to what it is
you're, you're reading because the.
Purpose of the glossary is not that you're gonna memorize the glossary,
it's gonna help you get through the text because the learning takes place
because you're getting through the text.
So a lot of the principles of learning that are embodied in LingQ
basically reflect my experience as a language learner with, you
know, readers with glossaries, with struggling to remember vocabulary.
Uh, yeah.
At a time when audio was not so readily available, there was no YouTube.
They had these open, real, uh, tape recorders and whatnot.
Principles were the same, but the technology is so much better today.
Yeah.
I just realized that LingQ is what, 20 years old now.
Amazing.
So you, you've, you've used it since the beginning.
Um, but you know, I find that really interesting.
So when you learned your first language, did you, um, what was your first language?
French, I'm assuming.
That's how learn.
Yeah, I mean we grew up
much in Montreal in those days was very much, you know, a million English
speakers, 2 million French speakers, not too much connection between the two.
Today that's not the case.
Montreal is quite bilingual.
Uh, but the first language that I sort of determined I wanna learn this language
to a level of fluency was French.
And so I ended up.
Doing a lot of reading and listening, watching French
movies, much like you with anime.
Then I ended up going to France and studying there for three years.
Then the second one was Mandarin Chinese.
'cause I was working for the Canadian government.
They sent me to Hong Kong to learn Mandarin.
So, but I carried the same practices.
One big advantage of learning Japanese and Chinese is that to me, although
other people disagree, they are not grammar intensive languages like
Russian or the romance languages.
Or Arabic.
So you have to get used to the patterns.
And so if you get used to thinking in terms of patterns of the language
rather than grammar rules, which is the way I approach Chinese and
and Japanese, they say it this way.
I don't wanna see an ex verb, noun, subject, verb.
No, I don't wanna see any of.
Stuff.
I just wanna, this is what we say in English, this is
what they say in Japanese.
So I, I wanted to get used to the patterns of the language, and I
think that I carried that forward.
E and, and my initial motivation to learn Russian was that I felt
I could do the same thing with a Slavic language, which is very, you
know, grammatically complicated.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, which to my mind, Japanese and, and Chinese are not.
Yeah.
That's how I approach it.
Always.
A lot of input.
This is long before I ever heard of Stephen Crashing.
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
I, I noticed that like before when I would try to follow textbooks or, or
try to learn grammar on, on, on their own, you know, when I know nothing,
it's challenging, but like when I started reading a lot on LingQ and
stuff like that, when I actually go to look up grammar, I'm like, wait,
I've seen this like a million times.
And then all of a sudden it's easy to to remember.
Well, you know, I always, I liken it to, you know, I remember I was once in a
German town and I asked someone there how to get to somewhere at the post office.
And being German, of course you gave me a tremendously thorough
explanation of how to get there.
You know, I. As soon as I walked away from that person, I'd
completely forgotten what he said.
Of course not.
If, on the other hand, I knew that tree, the, you know, the
bank, the, this, the, that.
If I had some background, some, some point of reference, then all of those
instructions would start to make sense.
But if I don't have a point of reference.
Then all the grammar explanations actually don't do much for you.
So the first thing is, as difficult as it is, get the words in, you
get the patterns in, you get some familiarity with the language, and
then you can always go back later on.
Particularly if you're curious about why does it.
Go this way.
You can look up the explanation if it helps you, if you even remember
it, but at, at any rate, it has to start with exposure to the language.
Yeah.
That's why my conclusion that I've like come up with just like, I'm not close
to being fluent or anything, but I try to put as much time as I possibly can.
Uh, it's another question I wanted to ask you about, but basically,
yeah, I just feel like that's what a language learning is.
It's just mostly about getting used to it rather than just
trying to struggle to learn it.
It's just, you know, acquiring
and, you know.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And.
The more you do it, the more mistakes you make.
You have to make mistakes, and the more mistakes you make, the
the more you're gonna improve.
I also put out a, you know, we have a new prime minister in Canada, and
one of the knocks on him is that he doesn't speak French very well, which
I don't agree with, but of course, being politics, the opposition is
gonna criticize him for not speaking French as well as their leader, right?
So I said, no, no, no.
He communicates, he understands.
He communicates.
He communicates.
He has a nice cadence.
He is comfortable in the language.
He is pleasant to listen to.
He communicates, that's all you need.
It's not like Olympic diving.
We shouldn't be sort of giving in nine out of 10 or six out of 10.
So the whole emphasis in language output that that somehow you're gonna
be judged by how well you pronounce.
Yeah.
Or how accurate your grammar.
None of that matters.
And what matters is how well does that person communicate.
And I've done so much business with people from non-English speaking countries,
from Europe, from Asia, whatever.
And if they communicate well with mistakes, with patterns that come from
their own language with pronunciation that reflects their own language,
but they communicate well, use words to get their thoughts across.
We don't need to be perfect in the language.
But you said you had a few more questions on LingQ.
What is your most
studied language?
I think I saw, I think in one video I saw your Korean, if I remember
correctly, it was something in the 40,000 known words or something like that.
Well, I would think probably in terms of, it depends what we
look at, but words, read words.
You know, known words would be Russian.
Russian.
Oh.
Question check.
Uh, and then we have a bunch of them at 40,000, including Korean.
And, and, uh,
yeah.
Yeah.
No,
that blew me away.
'cause I'm, I'm barely at 20,000, you know, and of course, you know, we both
know that that's not, doesn't mean you actually know that many words, but I still
thought that was pretty mind blowing.
I was like, wow.
Like, that's crazy.
Yeah.
You gotta be careful because it is, it is often the same word in different forms.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
And, and this.
Multiplying effect is bigger in some languages than others.
So there it's not comparable, but nevertheless, it is encouraging.
Whenever I say I'm nowhere in Korean and then I look, oh, actually my
passive knowledge is not that bad 'cause I have 40,000 known words.
Yeah, no.
Like,
I'm trying to think what, what's a good number for like a language Like,
you know, if you were just to say in general, how many known words.
A person would have before they were like fluent when it comes to
using LingQ, I just wonder what that number would be in certain languages.
Like I was thinking maybe more around like 50,000, like for Japanese or something.
I don't know.
I think it's 50,000 is getting close to it.
It depends Yeah.
On what else you're doing.
Like you've still got do a lot.
You've got, you have to have earned those words to lots of this reading.
Yeah.
Uh, if you speak more, you'll be better.
So it's almost like your potential in the language, but it's also different with
like, I have 30,000 known words in Arabic and 16,000 in Persian, and I'm much better
in Persian than Arabic because, uh, of the way the language is, is structured.
