How I Learned 9 Languages (You Can Too!) | Polyglot’s Secrets for Fast Fluency! | Evolve Podcast

0:00 How many languages do you actually speak? Spanish, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Croatian, Russian, German, and English. How did you actually become a polyglo? 10 hours a day doing Duallingingo, then talk to your AI friend. Never listen to the language. Guys, don't do that. Welcome back to Evolve. Today we are speaking with Will John, a polyglot and professional footballer. Will, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Of course. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Do you want to show off a little bit of those? Maybe introduce yourself uh if you've got enough time to go through. I mean I mean Yeah. And what uh I could start with the east.

0:52 Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. [Music]

1:38 Yeah, that's right. The dance, man. The dance. The Danes can understand the Swedes. Okay. Swedes cannot understand the Danes. Swedish is, you know, we can feel the passion there. I've clicked on this video. I want to be, you know, a polyglot. What are the steps that you would recommend to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps? Wow. So, there's a big difference between if you want to be a polyglot or if you just want to learn one other language because they are very separate. Now, starting off, if you just want to learn another language, what I recommend is to spend 10 hours a day doing Duallingingo, then talk to your AI friend for the next 20, 20 minutes. Never listen to the language. No, of course, guys, don't do that. Okay, apps are a new phenomenon on

2:23 Earth. Okay, people have been learning languages for a very, very long time. One of my favorite polyglotss is a is a woman named Kato Lom. She's a Hungarian. She was a translator, very, very outspoken woman. She wrote a book. It's called How I Learn Languages. She's one of my favorite for a lot of reasons. Um because she's kind of nonsense. She'll tell people, and I agree with this, if you don't have 12 hours a week to learn a language, it may not be the the right time for you to start. That's if you want to speak, you know, if if you want to dabble and play a little Duolingo and learn I am an apple that eats a dragon, go for it. That's fine. But understand that you're just playing a game, you know, that's what it is. Have fun with it. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong. Just don't confuse the two. And I think that's where the people have the problem. So if you want to if you want to learn a language, it's quite clear that most people understand comprehensible input. At least for the people who don't know what it is. I know

3:09 people fans of you guys, you know, channel and podcast probably understand, but it's an important key element. Uh the reason for this is not necessarily because it mimics how we learned as kids, but uh also because it gets you more exposure to a language. So I want to start with an overarching principle. The more exposure you have to a language in context, the easier it will be for you to learn on the long game. I know everyone if you've clicked on this video for the how to learn a language in 7 days I'm sorry or in 3 months I'm sorry that's while possible if you have nothing else to do in life I think that's possible you need to have as much exposure to the language as you can at the level that you're currently at right so big mistakes are I've already discussed the apps I won't go in on them I probably will still talk talk trash on them later but there's no need for you to to watch the news on day one of Spanish class all right let's leave that

3:56 leave that alone okay there are things that are made for you right and and Bring it back to Katalom. We have graded readers now, right? So reading, listening, and watching are some of the main the main aspects. Writing less so at the beginning in my opinion, you do need to do some of this, but you need to spend a a hell of a lot of time listening, watching preferably of people talking and doing things that you can understand. Awa. Okay. Awa. Like it's going to be hard for you not to understand. The problem is we live in a society where people want to be rushed. Everything wants to be rushed. And if you don't let this repeat because no one likes to repeat anything. The reason the apps and things are everyone if you're familiar with the book called the dopamine revolution we just want to go to the next thing. Well you need to repeat if I told you awa once maybe you know if I take the aua and I smash you

4:41 on the head every day you know but not even every day. I think the it's the emotion it's the emotional aspect of that your ability to tie emotion into your learning will allow you to do it. Right? If someone's beating you and punching you in the face and they keep saying this word that means stop, right, in a language, the chances of you ever forgetting that word are zero. You will remember as he's pummeling you in the face that that is the word for stop. All right? And so you have to elicit emotion and you have to have repetition. If you do those two things and you have to you have to be able to understand the context. That's the beginning, right? So that's someone wants to learn. If you want to be a polyglot, then you need to have patience because you need to focus on one language for a long enough period of time to reach I don't really like the standard things, but let's call it B1, B2. If you can reach this B1, B2, you have a less of a chance of forgetting

5:26 the language. You have more of a chance of just going rusty, right? And so when you pick it up, it'll come maybe one day, two days, a week. And so you have to lay out a structure for yourself. And that's that's what I do. I mean, I'm giving you guys both options just so people have an understanding of what I mean, if you want to go deeper into like what what I would do on day one to month one, etc. We can, but that's how you would kind of need to look at things as an overarching strategy. Do you think it's possible to become a polygot without moving to the country where they speak the language? I'm literally proof of that. Yes. There's no now in modern times, you know, Katalom, it's hilarious. In her book, she's going, "Make sure you find a good dictionary. We have every dictionary that's ever been made in all this. We have now in our in our phone. There's no excuse for you to do that. You don't need to be there. You have tutors. Excuse time is over. If you're trying to learn a new

6:13 language, you don't have an excuse. What is the exc what are you talking about? Like, oh, I don't Okay, if you don't have time, that's kind of on you. But that can be, you know, that can be managed. That's adaptable. But as far as needing to move to France, those days are done. Especially if we, you know, it's a blessing being in somewhere like the UK or the US. I mean, I got to fluency level in French before doing my year abroad in Reunion Island down to that obsession of every time I met a French person, you know, like we're going to speak we're going to speak in French. I tell people I don't speak English, you know, you're forced into that. I've never spent more than a couple weeks, I guess, in a Spanish-sp speakaking country, but if there's someone who's Spanish, you know, that's it. We're going to speak because that's

6:58 how you improve. Mhm. So that's that's the blessing again going back to living in a diverse country. You know the discipline aspect is tough for everyone. At the one end you can say that there are no excuses. At the other end I know that our brains are being attacked every single second. Every time we pick up our phone you're under attack. Something is calling for you to do something else. And isn't that amazing though? Like if you take a second and believe you might have picked up the phone to just check an email. You were watching crazy knockout videos by the you seen the soccer the guy went to a moon like this and you put the phone down and then you realize oh yeah I didn't pick up didn't even check the email what like what are we doing you know it's that's a that's a massive that's a massive problem so discipline is needed you know you do need to have

7:44 some discipline the drive the more you want it the easier it will it will be but we teach our students about eliminating if you can eliminate there's so much noise there's so much information so many things. If we can just reduce the chatter, all right, and just have okay, if I can just engage with this content here today, put it down and this is I have a plan for tomorrow, then you are making forward progress without having to second guess to concern yourself to try and get the next heart on the app to next do get the points and your original goal is to learn French. Why do you care about your 30-day streak? What do you that's not the point. The point is for you after 30 days to be better at speaking, you know, or reading or whatever your goal is to read this book, to watch this movie. So yeah, discipline plays a key role, but I think everyone should be aware of kind of eliminating the noise as much as they

8:29 can. I made some notes based on some of your your videos of key areas that I think stood out and discipline was one of those. I wanted to ask how did you build that discipline into your routine? I know we'll probably mention that in the video about your football career as well, but I mean for me discipline was instilled a lot with the West African and Asian values. Did that come into play at all as well with the kind of Nigerian upbringing? 100% 100%. I mean yes. Yeah, that discipline plays a huge role. You understand that the right thing to do would be to do your work first and enjoy later. How does that actually translate into a language learning routine? Oh, if you want a routine, then that's very simple. I mean, obviously, like I said with kalom, if you don't have 12 hours, then forget it. I think that that can be reduced now because of what we have with our tools to something like 8 to 10, right? That if you don't have 8 to 10 hours a week,

9:15 which is barely above an hour a day, all right? Then you shouldn't do it. In the morning is when I suggest to everyone that they should be at least starting to learn a language. You have you can check all the studies right some people can learn at night after they've done most people are expending energy throughout the day and then potentially trying to fit in language learning when they can after this unfocused. If you want to understand a proper routine you need to understand and this is what we do for people in our artificial immersion course. We make them understand the rules of deep work. Deep work by Cal Newport. It's a book. The phone has to go out of the room. You have to be uninterrupted. And this is a skill cuz what you're training with your phone is to be distracted. And what you're training without it is concentration. Yeah. 30 minutes to an hour in the morning, generally speaking, I like to make sure that that's your comprehensible input that you're you're taking something in. Later in the day, it's definitely fine in in the evening,

10:01 etc. to be watching something on Netflix that you don't care about or stuff like that. But the bulk of your learning has to happen for me before your energy has been expended. And so that's the problem. People are trying to fit language learning in rather than making it part of their lives. The routine is to change your life, not to make it a hobby. Make it part of your life. There's no other way to do it. You forced yourself to in these conversations. I only speak, okay? You know, but yeah, that's the point of the routine. It's got to change. You have to change. All right? You know, it's not a no wishy-washy stuff, you know. It'll just take it'll make you take long. You might get there. You'll get there, but who wants to learn a language over 15 years? But I really appreciate that even the for example, you what was the term you use for like the Netflix um when you're it's not the comprehensible input. It's just uh is that passive learning? What do you refer to that as? Yeah, pass. Yeah, it's passive learning. It's passive for me.

10:47 Like I was a a big gamer in the past. I replayed Pokémon in French and Spanish. But then that was part of the routine. So even though it sounds strange that Pokémon was a routine part of my language learning, if at every night you did whether it was like watched the news or did something routinely, you're going to see the gains. Whereas if it's like, oh, I watched the movie once in French, you're not going to get that. And for me it was actually the news. When I was doing uh French at university, we had a course called advanced oral competency. We had to listen to the news and then provide a summary of that. And at the start that was so difficult. So I gave myself the challenge of every day. You know, this wasn't just a once in a while thing. This every day when I got home, news goes on in French. Yeah. And then at the start it was really really difficult. But after I guess two

11:33 semesters of doing that, I could just understand 90%. Um but that was there was a discipline in that passive learning skills. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. And that's the thing is that people don't give that a chance, right? You said two semesters, that's roughly a year, right? And people to have the discipline to do that, it's almost effortless after you've done it, right? Yes. The initial charge of you having to sit and watch the news and you know your comprehension may be between 60, maybe it's 70%, maybe it's 80%, who knows? But as you do that, it's the repetition of also the same types of material. They're the news, they're going to say some of the same things. They're going to introduce themselves the same. you're going to be introduced to that those words, those key elements over and over again. And if you do that, you do eventually it does come out of you. That's one of the crazy things about using it. And we haven't touched on the big no grammar versus grammar debate,

12:18 you know, and at least where I stand is at the beginning, ease up on the grammar, obviously, if you want to have a superficial glance, which is what we teach students, by all means, you know, but don't do the thing that you would do with your phone and get on the the articles. Where is this specific? And then you're now you're just studying grammar. You're not learning the language. You're studying rules, right? And you would never do that if you was going to teach someone football. I'm not going to take 20 minutes to explain what offsides. And another controversial area is vocab. You know, studying vocab. This triggers a lot of people in my experience as an online tutor. Just a quick message before we get back to the video. So Clemente and I love mixing languages [Music] together. Language exchange.

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13:53 individually. There's no subscriptions, no commitments, and lessons are priced from only $5. You also get three trial lessons which are refundable if you aren't satisfied with the lesson. I decided to learn some Italian and started taking beginner classes with Anna. How can I say in Italian? The V is V like in French. and so you say that when you wish that people had like a nice rest of the evening.

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15:26 with a lot of Asians, there's I guess you got to respect the discipline of people for hours every day memorizing vocab. But where do you stand on this debate of V? I mean, I know I've seen you probably have an idea, but yeah, the thing is is that brute force works. It does work. You know, that's the thing. It It's true. the majority of people, especially the American culture specifically which we're teaching and I will keep referring to Katom, but she makes fun of Americans because they want things easy and and she goes they're lazy in this. She said not lazy as people like yes clearly they're hardworking American people but the way that things are promoted America can take some blame for the how to learn a language in 3 days, 5 days, etc. That's American marketing is almost second to none on earth, right? They push their ideas out to, you know, there's kids in

16:12 the middle of nowhere. they barely know anything. They're going to recognize some American star based on the marketing, based on the push. And so vocab for me, brute force works, but it's not the best way to go about it. If you want to go about language learning, you need flow. And the way we teach people is that we give them an understanding of, let's take reading, right? A lot of your gains on your vocab come from reading. Most people don't understand this. Particularly, the amount of exposure you have to words in a movie compared to what you have in a book is night and day. All right? It's night and day. If you can just count them, count them. Watch all the watch one minute of a of a movie. You'll see that the music plays and the person walked and all this stuff and right and then they might talk and then they have some silence and then you're not hitting all of the vocab that you could be. A lot of gains come from reading and this is even in your mother tongue. There have been studies as well to see that when kids let's say go to college that

16:58 reading that they have to do and all that stuff you have words that you've never taken a flash card and I go hard on flash cards because it's like yeah well you didn't do that in your mother tongue. It's really important I think that people don't count words at the beginning. However, that they have an understanding that there are highfrequency words if that makes sense. So like there are words that are more important that you should pay attention to. You should try to know but I don't want you to become obsessed with that. You don't use all the words in a language. You have a core and then you have a particular you like football, he likes basketball, he likes baseball, your vocab is better in in that and this and that and that and then you need to run down that and they're high frequency words for the things that you care about. And so the vocab thing is with extensive reading, what I wanted to say about that at least is extensive reading when you read just to read, it's great and you're just taking it in. Intensive reading, when you go to read something that's hard and then have to translate and go back and look is also very

17:44 useful. It's just you should spend more time doing the extensive reading. If you're a new language learner to build on what you said, it can be quite demotivating to know that I've just spent 10 hours this week studying a bunch of words and now suddenly I meet whatever person in front of me. I can't string a sentence or like a useful sentence together. rewarding have you eaten in English isn't as I guess common a question compared to the Asian languages whereas if you meet a Chinese person in Korean orang in Thai those are common questions you ask as soon as you meet someone and you're going to get a really positive reaction from them that would motivate a new learner I think in my opinion far

18:30 more than table, microphone, whatever, which you you will need at some point. But I feel like once you're in that practical situation, whereas if you're filming a podcast and we're speaking in French, again, eventually you're just going to learn that's Miko because you will hear it every day. Whereas if you work in, I don't know, as a footballer on your day-to-day thing, you're going to learn o before you learn Miko probably, you know. So the practicality, the context you're wanting to use that language in again is essential as well. you're you're touching on uh the key element of our the artificial immersion method, which is to tie it into you. Like, how is it not? That's my problem. I will continue to go in hard on these apps, but they don't know you. They don't they've never met you. They met a they met a composite of humans and they decided this should this would be all right. Do you really want that? Is that what you is that what you want? Or do you want it to be about you? Like you

19:16 just said, you're in the podcast. You understand? I think that if you take things like that and you touch on another thing is the fact that in the early days before I had a structural method phrases were important for me to learn but not any phrase phrases that I knew I would need immediately and so I still recommend for some people because it gives them that win like you talked about how many people have tried to learn a language and failed right you need a couple wins at least a few interactions that feel like oh my god I did something instead of you study table and then phone and microphone and bottle and then you just like have these words there. What is that conversation? Hey, how you doing? Bottle bottle phone. Do you need a call or like what is up, you know? And so it's like, yeah, dude, there's got to be it's got to be attached to real to the real world. I think that links I mean there's a funny side of this. But again, another key

20:02 point I saw you highlight in your other videos was about looking stupid and making mistakes. And I mean, for me, you can't master a language or anything in life without making mistakes and stumbling and and whatever, making a fool of yourself at some point as well. But to link it to what you said about emotion, you probably have memories of where you made a mistake in the language and said the wrong word, but now you're never going to forget that. That's like one of the best ways to solidify ah I said that that was offensive actually it should have been this word. So could you tell us about that? I can tell you what's even more interesting because yeah I constantly make I don't have a problem with that and I live a very my professional life let's say outside of football says I've a lot of professions it's very public. I'm speaking in front of people, right, in other languages that are not my mother tongue. Mistakes are going to happen no matter how much I've spent time there. Most of the time

20:48 they're small and so small that I'm never going to say, you know, uh, that this is a bottle, right? That's stuff like that doesn't happen. But the stakes are much higher for me than they would be for someone who's just learning a language. So, you don't have to worry about this. Like, I actually don't care because it just turns into something. But to give you an example, I was in Milan a couple years ago. This video is on online and I'm just talking to Italian people about Italian-Americans and the the most beautiful cities in Italy. Like those are the two questions basically. I was telling a couple people I think it's several times that it was I said I think I saidim and the word is for seventh and the word isimo. Okay. Okay. I said that in the video, right? Yeah. Yeah. Barrage of comments. What is

21:34 this? you don't know that it's this. Come on. Like, and then you have other people being like, "Dude, do you realize that this guy who's never he's saying that it's his seventh day in the country you guys are harping on him on this?" So, like, there's always going to be both sides. I've been a professional athlete since I was 19. You know, you miss a pass in front of like I've played in front of I don't even know how many like massive stadiums. It's like you miss some stuff, people are going to scream, "Get off the field. You suck. I hate you." Like, what? Like, you know, like all this stuff. So for me it's I understand but I do understand the other the other people like they don't want to make any mistakes but you just have to be okay with that and you know number one people forget it. They forget this and you will forget it too. And if you if once you make the mistake you remember I I know that and I even knew in that time but it's just you're moving

22:20 fast and stuff like that. So mistakes happen. It's crucial to it because even in Korea with Clem, I remember we went to a restaurant, the owner came up to us and asked how the food was and I said to him and like got to be formal, you know, just use the formal word because I've got that vivid memory of him telling me off. I can never forget that, you know. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you were about to get kicked out. But there is often a leniency, you know, to obviously you're not, you know, you tell them you're from America. One of the most frustrating things for me in uh French and Spanish is the learn like I remember the word I know that that's you know but is it is it if I have the paralysis to analysis of just

23:05 I'm not going to speak because I don't know if it's like it's yeah you're never going to get anywhere really. No one the themes on day one of our stuff seek to understand and seek to be understood. If you stay within this rule in communicating, I really don't care. Like if you have a problem with me and the fact that I missed that an article here or this that and the other, I don't what are we doing exactly? This is not I wanted to convey to you that I was thirsty and that I wanted the bottle. That's all. Right. And so the people that are the grammar police and the those that I understand and it can happen online. I have a tendency to believe that it might be some of them are kids more the comments. Yeah. I think most of the time adults are just like I understand. Oh, that's cool. That's great job. Yeah, when it comes to practice, as you said, nowadays you don't need to move to the country to

23:50 become a polygot, and you're proof of that. So, what what would be your advice when it comes to practicing for someone, let's let's say, who doesn't live in a city like London where you get to meet people from different countries? What do you think would be online? Tutors are the best thing ever. The first thing for you to do is to find quality, comprehensible input. Meaning that something that you can understand at the level that you're at. That's the very first thing you have to do. We already talked about having an understanding of high frequency words. You can use chatbt. You can use Google. Find them. And one of the things that we do within our course, we we show people how they can utilize AI in a way because AI sucks right now. It sucks. It's not good. It will be good and there are aspects of it that are helpful. But if I was leaving my language learning capabilities up to AI to be like, teach me how to do. It's a disaster. All right. You can take

24:37 those high frequency words, you can create stories, you can create your own comprehensible input. You said you like uh basketball, he likes soccer. Well, okay, great. Go in there and create that story on this utilizing your high frequency words. And that's one way for you to also create because now not only is it going to spit out a story for you and there's several different, you know, places you can do this, the voices are starting to sound better. It's not a robot voice that it it's not bad now. So now you have audio, you have audio within the stuff that you have. And so that's you can generate some of your comprehensive. That's what we do. And we also help people. It's ideal if you can see that all the elements are there. And it's even better if it's tactile like that. you can do it in person that you have someone a proper tutor is necessary if you're saying like how do I do this when I'm not you got to have a proper tutor but more comprehensible input than speaking at the beginning I would say you do have to speak at some point some

25:22 people are going to be different than others that's the thing like there's no one way there's no one you have to learn yourself and we preach this a lot because I can't hand you and you who've grown up in different places with different circumstances with different skills the way to do I can just give you guys a guide I can and help you understand you the more you understand yourself the better it will be, you know, and based on personality types as well is that I never had a problem speaking. Whereas, imagine for someone watching this who's more introverted and shy, they're going to see that and just feel like, well, we were just in different places. During my like teenage years, I got to the point where I could just say what I wanted in French and Spanish, but when they would reply, I couldn't understand them. And I'm sure there are a lot of people watching this who can actually understand because they've been watching Korean dramas or what do they call t nollas all the time. They can understand it, but then they don't know what to say.

26:16 approach. You have to kind of program the tutor, but that's the one way I'm thinking about AI. You got to instruct the tutor. Tell them your goals. For me, I actually want to improve my listening. So, I need to hear you as a tutor speaking a lot or I want to I want to speak more. So, then could you just ask me open-ended questions and encourage me? You know, there you go. That's it. You're not far off from saying programming because we like to, once again, like I said, we like things handed to us and we just kind of like to like me, you know, and it's easier. Thinking is hard. Thinking about yourself is even harder. Reflecting on yourself is very hard because we have blind spots and egos that try to trick us into thinking like you're fine. No, you're wrong. You're good until you get the real world shakes you up. And so, yeah, we have a whole day dedicated to tutors. Like that's all I have a whole day that's just there to tell you what you need to do, how you need to

27:02 structure this out because some people just go into the tutor thing and they think they'll teach me the language. I paid some money here like make it happen and they put the responsibility on them and we say no you have it goes responsibility stays on you forever in all things not just in language learning and uh we show you that you have to with the tutors especially some of them have their own ways their own egos their own ways and that's not going to fit for you so you got to change that and it's a lottery as well the chances are that you just find a tutor and they perfectly align with all of your goals that could happen but the chances are very very small so very could happen I know a big thing for you is the flow state. So, how does the flow state link into language learning? Most of the time, we're trying to get people to understand that the longer periods of uninterrupted study for your passive. I'm not talking about

27:48 when you're speaking to someone, but even then, you want it to be locked in. You don't want to be looking at something else. And if you do that, you will watch the flow state. First, it'll be subtle, and then it'll start happening to you where you'll notice times going by and you're just locked in, right? And we've forgotten so much about that. When I was growing up, you had flow state all the time. There was nothing to distract you from what you were doing, the present moment. And then at university having the routine of even speaking classes, I remember 11:00 a.m. we would sit in a room and there would be just three or four other students and the teacher and they would say right now uninterrupted debate. Half of the room agrees that whatever should be illegal. Half of the room believes that it should be legal fight debate. And in that moment there were no phones. You weren't really allowed to make notes because that was the speaking class. every um every week doing those classes forces you into flow because I think once you

28:34 distract your brain away from okay I'm speaking in French and you get to know I'm just passionate I want to win this debate you know like like same in in football as well you're like you're using those words in a sport of uh like I I did Muay Thai so then you're you're training with the trainer and he's saying to me like which means 20 punches whatever I'm not thinking oh I'm practicing tie right now I'm in the moment I'm in the flow state but then actually you're using those words and they start getting integrated into it and you actually forget you're studying because it's that's the fun element if you're speaking about something you're passionate about extra win extra double bonus you know totally yeah you turn off your brain though I mean because you had a goal which was to just either be in flow and just study or just do do the actions that you're doing right and so any words that it's just a conveying of a message once again seek to understand and seek to be understood someone's conveying a message to me this is what I

29:20 want to do I'm arguing about this debate I just want to tell them this thing sucks you know and your thing is wrong and I'm Right? And once it becomes about that, you turn off the analysis paralysis. You stop thinking about whether it's this article or that article. You try to get what you're saying to be understood. Try to convey a message. And that is the stage at the beginning. That's that it could be that first month to 3 months. It could be 6 months. It could be a year, right? Before you then have to then go, okay, they keep the, you know, in Croatian and Russian, they have these pad. They're these things at the the end. So things change the accusative case the genative K all these things endings change it's a nightmare trying to study it as like like if you were trying to stud no it has to be a later thing you have to first learn some general basis before they go okay by the way the ending

30:06 changes here you're being understood but like hey this is what changing and this is why so you can start to notice that and then you stick one thing I do definitely recommend for people that like to some people love to study grammar and they can it's just the turnaround is going to be different than somebody who's doing the comprehensible input way meaning that you may not speak don't expect to speak immediately but then when it does and I made that mistake when I was doing German I studied a lot of grammar because I heard that the grammar was hard in German which it it is difficult you know so I spent a lot of time there and less time speaking and engaging with the language but when I went back started doing it I can still remember you know some of these weird rules right and so it happens and people know crashen's work people I know that people bash him also for certain other other things but one thing he definitely got right is when you're writing you have the time to go

30:56 okay then I can okay that's that's that's this when you're speaking you do not have that time you cannot expect to have that same level but they're different approaches you just have to know when the right time for grammar is for you and you have to stay on one grammar point for a small period of time I'm not saying a year studying the dat case this week and this time in my attention is on this now next week I'll do the accusative but Now it's justice. I still remember those moments of like memorizing in Spanish there like if I were this it would be and subjective I think yeah there is going to be some use for it but if you only memorize those without the rest it's tough but I think another huge elephant in the room and I guess a thing

31:42 not always spoken about is that it doesn't matter how good to some people let's say the street interviews and those kind of like win moments we've had doesn't matter how good even your language anguage skills and competency, proficiency of the language are if your accent's not that good. I found that just from in Korean, I don't actually speak much of those languages. But the accent is what I feel like provides a lot of warmth to to people. You I've seen on the street interviews have that ability. Where did that come from? Because I feel like no matter how much we study those things, if you can't mirror that pronunciation and not not just pronunciation, if you can't mirror the accent and the intonation, you don't always get that same um kind of reinforcement. Yeah. The love is there. There is a there is a you're lucky. People tend to love the

32:29 French accent or where it leaves its traces on other languages. There are some languages that feel okay, but yes, it's really bad when you hear ablo espanol, soy americano, soy de Kansas city. It's like, oh god, it sounds like Honestly, for me, this doesn't sound good at all. I don't understand why we still though we think in England it's romantic, you know. He's French though. Romantic about it. Yeah. I I mean, it's You're right. You're right. There's some cool things that I've been I've actually really been kind of looking at how I've done that and what I what else I do cuz I don't like it when I am am hearing. I'm okay with it and I'm I'm I'm okay never having a 100% perfect accent in any

33:14 language, whatever. I don't care. But sometimes it's hard for you to see how that person is making that word because, you know, there's some interesting things that happen when we grow up learning a language. The studies show that we have the potential as babies to speak anything. You know, if I take you to France, you're going to, you know, you're going to pick that up. If I take you to whatever, you know, to Pakistan, we'll do, right? But what happens as we focus as we specialize in that we start to lose the ability to make the some people can't go some people cannot do you know I have friends they can't do it you know and so they can't roll their ars and so what will help you is also not just hearing where are you putting your tongue when you go you probably never thought about it if you can do it but if you want to learn sometimes sometimes you'll see that their tongue is here that their mouth is here you know

34:02 France Right? It's the mouth doesn't open as much. Right. It's funny. I have French friends as well and they said that in their American class they were like, "You need to open your mouth if you don't speak like an American." We blah cuz we're used to complaining. That's why we Yeah. So yeah, for the for the accent stuff like that, you have to mimic also. Mhm. Whatever. You can choose accents, places, this, that, and the other. you know, my Spanish if I'm with my friends in America, a lot of Mexican accents like this, watching Argentinian series. You watch that stuff, you mimic, you do this. There's another interesting guy, Alexander Arguas. You know, there's a big issue in the uh in the linguist, let's say, world. Cuz he studied, he got his PhD and all of his colleagues, he was like, "You guys all study languages? None of you speak. You guys are all

34:48 doing studies and writing papers about how people should do that. None of you speak." And so he got his PhD, you know, in order because it was important and you know that whole the whole thing he did it but like he couldn't wait till he was done so he could do the thing and not live in theory. That's a huge part of like so if you are trying to fix your your accent mimic right watch listen say it back see what they're doing. If you can't say it properly look at how they're ask them what is going on with your tongue. What's going watch I guarantee you with a little bit a few days of care for that you will change. It seems like you can't but you can. You just are not focusing on it. you have too much to worry about. The the article, the this, the that, what word is it? You can change your accent. It can be changed. There's really no reason. It might not be perfect, but it's possible. I think you got to just really take that critical approach to yourself in terms of feedback. And

35:34 that's what helped me really is having someone, as we say, savage your accent. And it took me a long time, even after studying French and Spanish, suddenly I was in Thailand. And they have tones. That took me I guess a year or two before I could actually start comfortably mimicking it. You know there was a lot of cup mai mai no mai mai mai mai. It's like I would get so frustrated. I'm saying the same thing you know but then again over and over again one day I could just do it for a long time. I couldn't I didn't like plan that day was the day I could do it. But it came after so much agony, let's say, of going through that constant correction process. And that's it. You can be an academic, but if you're not practicing, I I encourage people to sing in the language because you've got

36:21 intonation. And I often find that when I coach people who love karaoke or have a musical background, their ability to adapt their intonation is a lot better than the average person just because they're already conscious about it. So, you got to dedicate separate time if you do want to improve your accent. There's nothing wrong with having a different accent, of course. But if you do want to mimic an accent better, I often say make time for that as well because you don't ever get successful at something often by accident. It's got to be like, okay, in the shower in the street, I've got my headphones in. I'm going to sing this Spanish song. I might look like a fool walking down or Korean, whatever song it is. For me, it's been the only way of like constant obsession with the accent as well, not only just on the other aspects. That's another huge point though, the fact that you number one you you have the key of may look stupid but uh I would I still do this but less so

37:07 because I have headphones now but back in the day uh I would take a cell phone and I would talk another language to myself mainly because I'm an introvert and people assume that I'm extremely extroverted because they see me in several different places and in media but I love to read I want to study. I like to meditate I prefer to be alone but yeah you're not kidding like you can walk down the street or talk you know and repeat stuff to yourself. I mean nowadays people have earpods. Like if you see someone talking to themselves on the street 20 years ago they would be crazy. Now it's just you can't see their AirPods, right? And so it's like not that big of a deal. You have all these places like I said before, no excuses, you know? Like you should just be just like it's so crazy what you can do if you sit down and you're not so worried about the end goal. Like you said, dedicate a little time to it and just what happened and one day comes out of you and you're just like how did I do that? Well, you just moved towards it.

37:53 You know, that's it. People see it's like the what they call it the iceberg um analogy where like in that one moment it seemed instant but people don't see the hundreds if not thousands of hours before that I guess scoring a goal as well right same how does how long does it take to you kick the ball it's in the net like one second countless countless countless hours well all the training as well that's the other thing I mean now we have an obsession of seeing the journey which I'm kind of against obviously on our football channel where we're teaching kids you know what what it's like to actually be a pro you know what what you need to do how you need to train you've got kids nowadays wanting to start record their day one and I understand uh I'm not ignorant to the idea there record day one and they want to you know show their journey on that what ends up happening just like the phone analogy they get obsessed about the content and how it looks and they're at training trying to see what their angle is and you're all this and before

38:39 you know it you're making content instead of training you're more concerned about how that is and in my time there was no obviously there was no phones at training when I was 14 13 whatever there was just nothing that you go to training and that's it you're you're there if someone misses it I think the amount of goals and things. I don't know how many Instagram followers I would have had at 14 with some of the goals I scored on against kids who can't really play. You know, it just that's there's a big difference between that and that I think is translates over to language learning as well, which is just guys like you're going to the end goal is is a beautiful thing and it and it's and it's wonderful. Don't worry about this journey, this stuff. Enjoy. Just enjoy enjoy every single aspect of this journey part. you'll get to the part where you your words will come out as long as you're focusing on the correct things. You know, you can go off. I

39:24 don't want people to think that there aren't bad things and ways to waste time. I have a friend Stefan Syron who is he learned Swedish. He's an American guy. He spent four or five hours every day doing Duolingo before he moved to Sweden. When he got to Sweden, he was a teacher and he was like, "Oh my god, I don't speak Swedish." After all that time, he was like, "Oh my god." But it was great because he was with kids. they don't have as much of an interaction or they don't have high level vocab, right? And so it was there that he actually picked up a lot of his Swedish. We've done some cool videos together like where he speaks Swedish and I speak Danish or then my Swedish after I was there for a little bit of time and he was the same. Now he's a Swedish citizen, you know, and he just kind of enjoyed the journey. Poof. You know, it's just you have to you do have to have discipline. You do have to stay you have to show up every day. That's one thing I don't think we've touched on. You could spend an hour a day. That would be great. Even on those days that

40:10 you can't, don't just throw the whole thing away. M take the 15 minutes. It's not lost. It'd be like just you working out. Like really, like if you could do 100 push-ups in 5 minutes, should you still do it or should you be like, I can't go to the gym today, so I'm not going to do anything. Really, you know, you could you can do something. And so that's the same for language learning every day. The consistency is what matters. I mean, there's a key point you mentioned about sometimes the stronger you affirm yourself, the more you've got to defend. And I've told everyone, I'm going to do this. I'm going to be the best. You know, my French is going to be amazing. My Spanish is going to be amazing. Watch me. the time you spend speaking about it and that links to social media, right? If I told everyone, I'm going to build a podcast, watch this podcast, I'm going to be whatever, whatever it is, that energy itself is not really motivating as well because it it feels competitive. Whereas this is something beautiful that should be your

40:56 own personal journey. Yeah, you can share it and encourage people, but I find with social media, it's a double-edged sword because it can become a career. You can make money from it, but that takes a lot of time as well. building all of that time put the reason you probably became pro is that at 14 you weren't spending 20 hours a week on the point that's the point guys yeah I didn't do any of that after you've made it then you can share those gains with people so I think it's a great message yeah yeah yeah and the other thing with telling people about it it's good when you have some sort of social pressure I mean there's some great studies to understand that if you tell maybe one person who you trust and respect hey I'm going to learn Spanish that friend after two months and be like dude you haven't even bought a book like what are you that's great but the social media aspect of it is you're looking for that reward without having done something. That's what the kid is actually looking for. He's looking for you to cheer me on and

41:43 get all the respect of having done something without actually doing it. And that's the problem. So that's why I don't recommend be work in silence. We'll all cheer you on once you've done it. You know, it's going to be great. The whole social media, everyone's going to love how you can juggle the ball and speak the language when you do it. You know, if you don't need to tell everyone necessarily that because you're getting the reward. It's it's not good. It's really not good for your your ego. Yeah. I think much better to find a Spanish speaking friend and just get obsessed. There you go. With them, take those wins and they're going to be proud of you when you go out into the real world and do what you can do. So, yeah. Could we know some of the highlights of your language learning experiences? I mean, there's too many. I mean, some of the things that are cool is when you really need it. Now, what I do, I I run around,

42:28 I do interviews for, you know, some of these these major uh football and sports companies, Nike, Adidas, and etc. And so, we're interviewing stars, you know, for former legends like I just did uh Raul Gonzalez, you know, Raul. Yeah. I don't think that video is out. Probably it may be out soon here in a second. He feels more comfortable in Spanish, obviously. And there's several, you know, I did Sergio Ramos, just Sergio Ramos, he'd rather speak Spanish. And there's several times like that where the player feels more comfortable. And so normally what they'll do is have a translator. Well, that's that's a boring interview. Like imagine if you guys had to have someone I talk and then we wait for this guy over here to just tell you what I said. It's like come on. You know, those are boring subtitles or whatever. And so a lot of times they'll just say, "Okay, just do it. Just do it in that language." You know, the real challenge will be when I try and do it

43:13 in a language I don't really speak like Portuguese. Like I can we can get by, right? You know some Spanish, you know Italian, you can get by. But if they ask me to give an interview, I would do it just for the challenge, you know? But stuff like that's going to come up. I have no doubt. Portunol, is that what they call it? When you mix Spanish and Portuguese, I mean they're cousins. I always say Latin based languages, Italian, French, Spanish. If you say enough words over and over again, you're probably going to understand something. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Will, it's been an amazing opportunity to hear all of these different insights into why people should learn a language, how they can learn a language, and the passion behind that in your case. Do you have any final messages for anyone watching this video? Man, you know, I it's always funny when I get these at the end there's so much I

43:58 want to tell people, but at the end of the day, I want to bring it back to seek to understand and seek to be understood as a motto for how you go about your language learning. Because if you can do that, that has layers, right? It's not just in the language learning, but that's also people to people, right? If I try to understand you and your language and your culture and your stuff, like I told you, you're going to go on the street, you're going to see this guy's from Japan, you're going to say something to him. He's going to be like, "What is going on?" You have this general human connection and understanding. So, just enjoy every aspect of your language learning and forget forget all the rest. It's not important. Your inner goal matters. Your inner world, your inner state, that's what matters in your language learning ability and your journey. And that's it. So, that's all I would say. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

44:54 Wow, that's really [Music] cool. Okay. You have

45:42 So I lived on Reunion Island, right? So they're French. It's an overseas territory. But like how there's Jamaican PWA or pigeon English, you know, they're kind of Nigerian English, the Crayos, they they have their own language and identity. So maybe we can teach you a couple phrases. There you go. So to if you meet someone from Reunion Island, they will say to you instead of like they say okay. And so the response that's cool, oh instead of like it also means like how are you? They

46:27 say like wow. So it's what do you want to eat? You say so change a lot. Instead of like to say like V, they say that's cool. That's cool. Becomes okay. One of my favorites to end on is in Maician Crayo. It's an island right next to next to Reunion Island. Yeah. They have a word for maybe you can guess

47:13 the animal. Ka Ka. So what animal doesn't run? Oh, that's a good that's a good guess. That's a great guess. But exactly because it doesn't run. Okay. So, but um well, again, thank you so much. How in Croatian do you say FA. It's spelled H V A L A Yeah. Great. Great. Great. Graci Talk in both of the the Swedish

48:01 languages. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. No problem. No worries. So, make sure you check out Will on Gou Remy Languages. He's on YouTube and all other social platforms. Links are going to be in the description below. And if you've taken any value from this content, we'd really appreciate if you subscribe. And in the comments, let us know which languages do you speak and how did you learn them? Any tips or any things you disagree with as well. We want to know everything. But until next time, thank you very much and Abanto.