How I Learn Languages From Scratch

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here, and today I'm gonna talk about starting languages

from scratch and I'm gonna do a little experiment, uh, gonna play with some

languages, starting some languages from scratch, showing you how I do it.

On LingQ, of course.

And I'm also gonna show you here as I sit by my computer and what I

do and show you what it looks like.

So without further ado, you should be seeing my page here, where normally

I'm in Persian, but, uh, for the purpose of this exercise, uh, I'm

going to look at what other languages there are that I could be doing.

Uh, so I go down the list here.

You'll see that I don't have many known words in English 'cause

I don't learn English here.

I played around with it.

German has quite a bunch.

I didn't do Japanese here.

Russian 93,000.

But let's go to the zero ones.

Now, Dutch, I could play with Dutch.

The trouble is it's too easy because, uh, a lot of the words are similar to English

and the word order is not a problem.

I could go to Finnish.

So let's go and look at, there are others, there's Indonesian, there's

Tagalog, there's a bunch of languages.

And if you have languages, see the ones that have zero.

Malay has zero.

Indonesian has zero.

Gujarati has zero.

Uh, Armenian, Tagalog.

Hungarian has one word that I've...

so these are, you know, languages that I've played with.

But, but let's go in to Finnish.

Okay.

And we'll have a look.

So here we have Finnish, and I know it's the mini stories that I want.

So I click on the first mini story and I see this thing.

Okay.

So I can click on ... that's the name.

And I, by the way, I do this all in sentence mode.

Sentence mode, sentence review is the best way to get started in a language

because you get a sense of the language.

So ... is rises.

...is every

... morning ... clock, o'clock.

...six.

Okay, so this is Mika gets up every morning at six o'clock.

Okay?

Now, if I were doing this in sentence review, uh, by the way, I

get here by going from page view.

I'm now in sentence view.

If I wanna go back to page view, I click on page view, but I don't wanna do that.

I wanna stay in sentence view.

Now, the next thing I can do, Is, uh, show translation, hide

vocabulary, review sentence.

Okay, so now I gotta try to remember.

... rises.

Okay.

Now ... clock I think.

Yeah.

...which every, all right, I got that right.

Now I got another matching pairs here.

Six was six.

What was...

six was ... Mika is Mika.

... is morning.

One thing about these matching pairs is it's very easy to do.

Uh, you, I'll show you what happens if you get them wrong.

But anyway, now I've gotta reconstitute the sentence.

So, I am going to say Mika.

... but I forgot the ... so I gotta try to...

he doesn't belong there.

He belongs over here and I'm correct.

If I wanted to, I could try and read that....

If I start speaking, it'll...

so I got 34%.

That's okay.

I'm not sure how meaningful that is.

So then I would go to the next sentence, then I do the same.

... he she

... prepares

... and ...drinks

... I can also listen...

uh, I can show the vocabulary, uh, I can review the sentence again.

So, and, and what I would do, I don't need to go through this

necessarily, the whole way...

is drinks ... prepare.

This is...

and as you eliminate some, he then it's easy to figure out what remains.

Coffee's easy.

So that's ... and is ... breakfast is

... okay, now I've got to...

Okay, so what that does...

and I can listen.

So initially I start out with a language that is...

totally means nothing to me, and I can go through sentence by sentence and I'll

go and I'll do sentence by sentence.

And of course, in these mini stories, the sentence is in five parts.

So a lot of the vocabulary repeats.

So by the end of the even one mini story, there are a lot of yellow

LingQs that I've already looked up.

So just for the fun of it, let us go to, uh, to see...

BUlgarian I wouldn't do because it's so similar to the other Slavic

languages that it's too easy.

Um, it's not fair.

Whereas, I mean, uh, and some languages like Armenian here or Gujarati, uh, the

writing system is different, so it's extremely difficult for me to get into.

But Indonesian there, the writing system is the same as the Latin alphabet.

So I can open up the same lesson.

And one of the advantages of course, is that, uh, I know the stories 'cause

they're the same in every story.

So show translation.

Oh, so this is story...this is just the intro.

Let's skip that.

So here, because I moved to the next page, the sentence repeats.

Um, in fact it's as if they were ble, uh, blue.

... following

... this ... is ... story.

... the ... cook.

Okay.

We gotta work on the timestamping there, but ... okay.

I can show the vocabulary and then I can review the sentence.

So it's the same idea.

Uh, I remember that.

Then ... is story ...is.

So I'm starting to get a sense.

... I remember they started with ... following.

Uh, this is, uh, wait, it can't be ... 'cause ... is the person's names.

...this ... so, so the following is the story of Adi chef.

But there's a, obviously you got a capital B here, so this is

the first word in the sentence.

Um, so,

... now I'm stuck.

I know.

... I can't.

You know, I can't remember.

So sorry.

So put Adi in there.

... that's wrong.

I don't mind being wrong.

I submit.

... okay, so now I go to continue and see what the sentence was.

I can say start speaking: ... I got a hundred out of a hundred.

Okay.

No big deal.

Oops.

Now the, I, it used to be that the sentence would

show up again, not the case.

Let's go back.

I wanted to see that sentence again.

So, uh, ... is.

Okay.

... this is ...so then I might just ... The Cook ...so by going through these

with the matching pairs of simple stories by sentence, reconstituting the

sentence, I'm getting kind of a grasp, an the initial sense of the language.

I have three months ahead of me.

If I were to go into Finnish or uh, Indonesian where I would do these mini

stories, and then I, I can show you, if I were studying it, normally I would go

away and I'd be listening while doing the dishes, listening different places.

I would do the lesson in, in full page mode and then again in sentence, and

after a while by dint of listening to these stories over and over and over

again, all of a sudden, like right now, if I were to listen to this story without

the benefit of the text, without the benefit of the words that I've looked

up, I wouldn't understand much, but if I continue doing this in three months,

I will understand the 60 mini stories.

That's a lot of content.

I am then in the position to go for more intermediate content, content of more

of of greater interest, which if we look at the case of, uh, Indonesian, there's

a whole bunch of stuff there waiting for me, Nasi goreng, Indonesian food,

things that I can get into later on.

But first, I would begin with the mini stories.

And if I'm curious about grammar, I'll just go look it up on

Google or even Ask ChatGPT.

But mainly I just want to get the language in me, whether it be Indonesian or, or

Finnish or languages that are similar to languages that I know, which could

be Catalan, which could be Bulgarian, which would be quite easy for me 'casue

there's so much common vocabulary and the structure is, is not so much of a

mystery as it is the case, as is the case here with these two languages.

So I just thought I would do that to give you a sense of what it might

look like if I were to embark on learning languages from scratch.

And I look forward to your comments.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.