My name is Maciej. I am from Poland. I love your site (both this one as well as your material on YouTube. It’s really great. Thank you very much for your language learning tips. I have a very important question for you. I am currently trying to figure out what other foreign language I should start to learn (apart from English).
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I was almost certain it should be French, but recently I got the idea of learning Mandarin or Arabic. The former is more advantageous because of China’s growing economic power and overall influence/clout, but Arabic seems equally appealing plus its script seems much much much easier to learn. What do you think? Which of these languages should I learn in your opinion.
My main criterion is usefulness in the future and not just learning it for fun and sake of it. I would appreciate your answer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bye from Poland, Maciej. All languages are worth learning, but if your criterion is usefulness, I’d say that Mandarin is surely an investment for your future. Arabic is an important language, and yet Modern Standard Arabic is not as spoken as you might think. It is the language of the media (newspapers, Al Jazeer etc) but you if you go to, say, Egypt, you’ll have to learn the local dialect if you want the conversation to be both ways (to be understand as well as understand your interlocutor).
The same goes for all the other Arabic countries. Your a great inspiration! I`m from Norway, and when I was young i didn`t believe that i was even gonna learn English. And people always told me that i didn`t have a talent for languages, because I was very good at math.
They told me that I was good at math and they where good at languages. Also I was told that you had to live in a country to learn their language. But after a while I realized that I actually spoke better English than most people in Norway because I had see so much of it on TV without subs.
I also realized that I had gained a lot of culture and knowledge trough English. So I got inspired to learn some new languages. I actually just started a little over a year ago and I already have learned a lot! My German is getting better, and I am also starting to understand a lot of Italian, Spanish and Dutch.
Also I have learned a lot of Bulgarian. I also try to find out good methods to learn faster. And all you said is just so true. It is exactly the same way of learning that I am using now. I also experienced that a good way of learning is to learn away to others. When I do that I`m learning very fast, but the people I try to learn it to usually don`t learn anything.
They usually say something like: “I`m gonna learn some Spanish one day, but not now. Don`t teach me anything now, please, I don`t want to think about it now. But one day I`m gonna sit down and really learn it.”. So in my opinion it`s all about attitude. I was just in Italy actually and I had been learning Italian for some four weeks.
I met a guy there who could speak Italian ans Danish (which I understand) and he said that I had learned more Italian in those four weeks than every single person he taught Italian when he was teaching it in Denmark. Also people where very friendly when I only spoke Italian when I was buying something. Right now I`m trying to learn with the Michel Thomas-method. It may be the best method I`ve tried so far. I hope that I one day can learn as much as you 😉 Thanks for good advise! I’ve been studying french, in school, for 10 years (gr.1 – 10) I’m currently in an enhanced french class and I feel like I know less than I should by this point. I still struggle a bit with sentence structure, conjugation, and I don’t have that big of a vocabulary.
Any tips for increasing my knowledge? Also, regarding the last post, are there any resources you are currently using that you recommend for learning Japanese.
My current plan of action is to buy a book of kanji and read japanese books and I’m looking for any second opinions. Being able to “hear” your mistakes or your intonation is not easy at the beginning, especially if you are not an experienced language learner. It is always a good thing to have a foreigners correcting your pronunciation/intonation. You can always find lots of people on the Internet willing to give you a hand (and getting some feedback on, say, Russian in exchange). If you have no Italian around you, one great way to tackle this problem is to record yourself.
Get hold of an italian text with audio. Record your voice and then compare both versions: this way will help you figure out where your problems are, in terms of both intonation and pronunciation. I really need an advice from you. I’m not Italian, but I came in Italy 4 months ago so I could study here. Right now I’m frequenting the ‘liceo linguistico’ and I’m studying French and German. Languages are my passion, I hope one day I could speak as many languages as you can, lol.
But I’m having lots of difficulties. The hugest part of the pie is Italian. I find it very hard. Every day I try hard to learn up to 50 words a day, but I end up remembering nothing. I read lots of magazines and books in Italian, no result. I’ve heard that Italian is better learned when spoken, but it’s harder for me because my friends won’t correct me.
I’ve been studying English for 5 years and I guess I’m good at it, and I think I can do more to learn Italian, but every method I try, it’s not worth it. I’ve never studied English basing to the grammatical rules of it, I’ve learnt it like a baby learns a language, no rules, no grammar Italian grammar is hard. Way too hard. So I want to spend less time in learning the grammar, (which confuses me, it doesn’t help me) and more in learning italian in a more natural way, and then, when I’ll feel comfortable, learn the grammar. I can perfectly understand Italian, the concept and everything, but I can’t form the sentences.
My biggest problem is mistaking. If I’m not sure about something, I don’t say it wrong, I skip it, so I end up saying nothing at all.
Can you suggest me a method for learning Italian better? Thanks a lot.
(I love your videos, really helpful). Dear Marvin, the first thing that you have to do is relax. One step at a time. The inability to form sentences is a very common issue. A lot of people understand a lot but can barely speak, and this is mainly due to the way we relate to human beings and the world around us. Attitude is also key.
You must know that mistakes are an incredible way of learning. The more numerous the mistakes, the better and faster your learnig process. Many polyglots (myself included) have made countlless mistakes before reaching real fluency.
Remember: mistakes are your best friends, don’t be afraid of them 🙂 Try to find a partner/tandem on Skype and pratice with him/her. Tell him to correct you whenever it is necessary and note down all your mistakes on a piece of paper. Also, try to get hold of a bilingual text and do the back-and-forth translation: it is very effective to improve the accuracy of expression in the target language. So, if you have a text in Italian, try to read it and listen to the audio as much as you can. Then, translate it into your own language (in written form, possibily on a Microsoft Word file). Then, some time later, retranslate it back into Italian. This passage (called synthesis) will allow you to check out your own mistakes, learn to form sentences in your mind and improve your general accuracy of expression.
To make a long story short, this full-circle method (that’s how I call it) helps you activate the language. You can find interesting stuff (and not only in Italian) on which to apply the aforementioned method on this website:.
Give it a try, it is worth it 🙂 Luca. Surfing through the internet today, I first came across one of Richard’s videos and then across the interview of you two and I just have to say, you guys are amazing. I can so much relate to your passion for learning languages, as I am more or less the same (even though I’m just up to 5 languages on quite advanced level, so rather less 😉 ). In school I just learned English and a bit of Spanish (apart from my mother tounge German). But once I’d finished school in Austria, I went abroad to go to school for another year and there’s where it started.
I would even call it a slight addiction to learning new languages, as I then realized how indescribably wonderful it was to be able to 100% dive into another culture, as you can communicate with the people there. My big dream then became to be fluent in 7 or (maybe 8 languages max.), as I really have to concentrate on my “working languages” (as I’m studying interpretation).
😉 People like you show me that it is possible to realize such a dream, as here in my surrounding I often get told, that my goal is just set unreachably high. I would really love to talk to you somewhen, as you really have reached (or actually surpassed =D ), what I want to achieve one day. Plus we could have a German or a Danish/Swedish conversation. 🙂 All the best to you!
Hi Luca, Where to begin? First, your American accent video was utterly astonishing. I detected only two or three instances of phonemes in the entire thing that didn’t sound 100% American. I am a native American. I speak Italian, or should say perhaps that I spoke it many years ago.
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I never had any trouble at all in speaking but often had great difficulty understanding when the speech was very fast. I studied veterinary medicine for a year in Pisa, but understood only one of my teachers.
His very clear enunciation was an exception. I’m sorry to say that I have the same problem when listening to your videos in Italian. This is not a criticism of you but a failing in me. I want to be able to understand Italian as most Italians speak it.
People learning another language usually have the opposite experience, don’t they? They understand but can’t speak. Other than the obvious, listening over and over again, do you have any advice for me with regard to Italian? That reminds me of another question. Do Italians listen to contemporary literature on audio books?
They’re wildly popular in the States, but I’ve so far found only one website that sells any in Italian. Unfortunately, they’re all classics from another time, such as Shakespeare in translation and Dante. I’m looking for a modern novel or non-fiction book. Would you know if this exists, and if so, where I might find it? Thank you, Luca.
I look forward to hearing, seeing and reading more of you online! Mi chiamo Isaiah.
Capisco un po l’italiano, ma voglio imparo piu. I don’t know a lot of Italian right now, but that’s my first stop.
My native language is english. I’m discovering my love of languages as well now.
I’ve experimented some with korean and arabic before now but never got too far. I’ve decided to go full on and learn a language to fluency. So I decided first to learn something I really wanted to learn in passion. I found that in Italian:D.
So far I love the language, and really, I enjoy it now more than I do english. And since Italian is your native language, I was hoping you could give a post about others wanting to learn Italian specifically. Or even just a reply would be nice^^. If I want to speak fluent Italian, what are the huge mistakes you notice?
One major problem I’ve seen in the material I’ve found so far is that it’s very formal. That’s been a bit annoying to me as I want to learn conversational, and be at home with native speakers. Great blog, maybe soon I can commune in Italian better. Sono in fino fine. Dear Luca, I don’t really know where to begin, except by firstly saying that I was absolutely bowled over when I discovered your youtube channel. I’m an English guy and to date I have studied Spanish at university (but still only speak it to maybe C1 level, with many holes in vocabulary and freedom of expression), and I currently live in Paris (your neck of the woods I believe!), where I am attempting to learn French. I studied bits and bobs of French before coming here, so I wasn’t a total beginner, plus, knowing Spanish to some extent helps.
The problems I’ve encountered are so numerous it’s difficult to know where to begin. Firstly, I think that anglophones are at a bit of a disadvantage, because everybody wants to speak English to us, whenever we make the slightest effort abroad.
The amount of people that respond in English whenever I speak to them in their languge!! It’s my pet hate. Even for the most enthusiastic of people, the temptation just to give up and switch to English whenever someone is pushing for it is so tantalising that it’s sometimes irresistable. IMO we have a harder time of it because people want to speak with natives, no matter what. Students that I teach here in France even tried to justify it by saying that “English for a French person is more valuable than French to an English person”, which I thought was very unfair. Second, the language education system in England is truly awful.
It’s not the teachers’ fault – I had some truly great language teachers – but the course content is so badly designed I almost think it’s intended to discourage you from learning a language and make you go backwards instead of forwards. After 5 years of going over the same phrases again and again (“where is the post office? I have a flat tyre. I think smoking is bad for business” etc etc) students STILL don’t really know what a verb, noun and adjective are, and certainly not the direct object etc. One thing I did want to know your viewpoint on is people’s learning styles. I always had a hard time of learning Spanish throughout school and university, and it was as though I was putting far too much effort in without really getting much out.
When I spent some time in Spain, however, all that changed because somehow the spoken language – rather than the written one – seemed to stimulate my brain a lot. I learned virtually all my Spanish in Spain, and though I have studied the grammar independently, to this date I have never read a Spanish novel from cover to cover (not that I haven’t tried – I’ve tried so many times but the information just doesn’t seem to stick!) I’ve been told that this is because I am an auditory rather than visual or kinesthetic learner out of interest, which one are you? (I get the impression you’re auditory but it’s just a guess!) Do you believe this theory that some people learn through different mediums than others? The biggest problem I have, though, and I wondered if this has happened to you or anyone else on here, is that I simply can’t understand what’s being said.
This is particularly true at the moment for French, which I am finding a lot harder than Spanish due to the variations and similarities between the vowel sounds. I can watch tv with subtitles and pretty much understand it, but take the subtitles away and I can’t understand a word! It seems that no matter how hard I try, however many hours I listen and try to decipher it, it just doesn’t get any easier and it’s frustrating. How did you get round this? How did you manage it so that you understand everything that’s being said? Does it just come with time?
Or is there a method? It’s so incredibly frustrating, because I can’t identity what’s being said, and it makes me feel that I’m just wasting my time listening to a jumble of sounds! I hope that wasn’t too-long a message! I live in Paris at the moment and it would be really great to meet up with you sometime and discuss languages 🙂 (if you have time/want to). I learned quite a bit of spanish in high school, but it is really the bare minimum when it comes to fluency. I have the opportunity to go to costa rica for 6 months and for 4 months out of the six i could have an actual class to specifically learn spanish.
My goal is to become conversationally fluent and be able to think in spanish. Would you say this is enough time? What if i could only go for 3 months? And i dont know if youve ever been immersed in any of the other languages you speak, but im just curious as to how much you have to actively study and how much you can simply absorb naturally, in an immersion situation? Love from the US! I have a couple of questions: I was wondering where you find material for self-teaching. I’m currently learning Japanese in school, and I’ve taken some Italian, but I don’t have access to any speakers or classes for the latter at my school.
Do you know any sites or books which would be beneficial? Also, how do you learn to get rid of the thinking style of your native language and go into your L2? With Japanese, as it’s so different from English, I have a very hard time doing this, so any tips would be appreciated. Tải game warriors orochi 2 pc. Hi Alessandro As far as finding material is concerned, I suggest: Introduction to Intermediate Japanese – Mizutani. You can download it from the internet (www.uz-translations.uz) or buy it via Amazon Another great sites is:, you can download podcasts and audio from there As for the second question, it is normal to have problems with Japanese. When you try to express yourself in L2, you don’t have to think in words, but in ideas, concepts or images.
Otherwise you wil be constantly translating L1 into L2 in your mind. This translation obviously impairs and slows your capacity of expressing yourself fluently. I know it is a bit vague, but I will expand on this idea on a new post.I a writing quite a few things for 2012 so.stay tuned Luca. Hello Luca, I spoke to you on youtube and you suggested that I repost my message here.
Also, thank you for all your help and willingness to readily help out others, it is always great to meet kind people. I think I’ll actually just post something new because my last message wasn’t really as clear as it should have been on some points. Okay, here it goes. Recently you gave me advice concerning my intention to learn Spanish and recommended the Assimil Spanish with ease course, and it seems quite good, but I live and the United States and read that there are some differences between the Spanish of Spain and the Spanish of Latin-America that warrant further consideration. For instance, I read that in Spain the c and z when preceding e and i are often pronounced as th but in Latin-American Spanish these instances are typically pronounced like s instead.
Another note of phonetic difference is that of the ll which I read is often pronounced like english y in Latin-America but in Spain more like the first consonant in the word genre a sort of french j or something. So then should I use a course focused on Latin-American Spanish, which I realize is made of of many dialects itself, or should I use Assimil and simply pronounce the ll and c e/i and z e/i instances like s? I have read and understand some of your techniques such as the translating back and forth and I think they are very useful, but was wondering about your specific methods for memorizing vocabulary. Should I learn words in isolation or take phrases and sentences from dialogue and make notes on their usage in that particular context? Also considering the answer to the previous question do you find word-list or phrase-list or even list of entire sentences useful for memorization?
One last thing that bothers me is the issue of verb conjugation in Spanish which I am not accustomed to in English, so then should I actually memorize the conjugations in isolation which seems very imitating to me or instead just learn them as I go from analyzing their usage from dialogues? And further more aren’t there forms that are more frequently used than others? I mean I couldn’t learn all the conjugations by rote memorization that is just too much for me. I was thinking it might make sense to learn at first only the two or three most frequent forms. Or just deduce them from usage in dialogues? Please keep in mind that I am 25 years old and an absolute novice when it comes to learning foreign languages and also when learning systematic in general.
I really would like to work around two hours a day- ( in 30 minute chunks perhaps )-and hopefully achieve an advanced conversational level in approximately one years time, Do you think it’s possible for an adult learning a second language to achieve b1 or even b2 level in one year. Of course, English is my native language although my grammar doesn’t reflect this fact, so Spanish will be my first exposure to foreign language learning. Anyway, I really appreciate all the help and think you are a great person for readily helping people like you do. Sincerely, Nicholas. Me llamo Vivian, y soy de Puerto Rico. I just came across one of your videos by looking up different dialects to listen to; I gotta say, you may just have become the kick I needed to realize dedicating my life to languages is what I want. I’ve been struggling in regards of my career path (being in the middle of a biology major), and my question to you concerns that.
I know this is personal, and you might not find suitable to answer, but Is this your career? What do you do (in terms where you work, if you teach, etc.)? Did you study foreign languages at a college (is it your major?), if so where?
Any recommendations? I always tend to ask these sort of questions in search of guidance and examples of how people work through the process.
It’s hard to find someone relatable, who can help, in Puerto Rico. Please excuse me if these questions have been answered before (if so, please indicate me!); I just found you twenty minutes ago!