The secrets of learning a new language

I love learning foreign languages.

In fact, I love it so much that I like
to learn a new language every two years,

currently working on my eighth one.

When people find that out about me,
they always ask me,

"How do you do that? What's your secret?"

And to be honest, for many years,
my answer would be,

"I don't know. I simply
love learning languages."

But people were never
happy with that answer.

They wanted to know why they are spending
years trying to learn even one language,

never achieving fluency,

and here I come learning
one language after another.

They wanted to know
the secret of polyglots,

people who speak a lot of languages.

And that made me wonder, too,

how do actually other polyglots do it?

What do we have in common?

And what is it that enables us

to learn languages so much
faster than other people?

I decided to meet other people
like me and find that out.

The best place to meet a lot of polyglots

is an event where hundreds
of language lovers

meet in one place
to practice their languages.

There are several such polyglot events
organized all around the world,

and so I decided to go there

and ask polyglots about
the methods that they use.

And so I met Benny from Ireland,

who told me that his method
is to start speaking from day one.

He learns a few phrases
from a travel phrasebook

and goes to meet native speakers
and starts having conversations

with them right away.

He doesn't mind making
even 200 mistakes a day,

because that's how he learns,
based on the feedback.

And the best thing is, he doesn't
even need to travel a lot today,

because you can easily have
conversations with native speakers

from the comfort of your living room

using websites.

I also met Lucas from Brazil

who had a really interesting
method to learn Russian.

He simply added a hundred random
Russian speakers on Skype as friends,

and then he opened
a chat window with one of them

and wrote "Hi" in Russian.

And the person replied, "Hi, how are you?"

Lucas copied this and put it
into a text window with another person,

and the person replied,
"I'm fine, thank you, and how are you?"

Lucas copied this
back to the first person,

and in this way, he had two strangers
have a conversation with each other

without knowing about it.

(Laughter)

And soon he would start typing himself,

because he had so many
of these conversations

that he figured out how
the Russian conversation usually starts.

What an ingenious method, right?

And then I met polyglots who always start
by imitating sounds of the language,

and others who always learn the 500
most frequent words of the language,

and yet others who always start
by reading about the grammar.

If I asked a hundred different polyglots,

I heard a hundred different
approaches to learning languages.

Everybody seems to have a unique way
how they learn a language,

and yet we all come to the same result
of speaking several languages fluently.

And as I was listening to these polyglots
telling me about their methods,

it suddenly dawned on me:

the one thing we all have in common

is that we simply found ways how to enjoy
the language-learning process.

All of these polyglots were talking
about language learning

as if it was great fun.

You should have seen their faces

when they were showing me
their colorful grammar charts

and their carefully handmade flash cards,

and their statistics about
learning vocabulary using apps,

or even how they love to cook
based on recipes in a foreign language.

All of them use different methods,
but they always make sure it's something

that they personally enjoy.

I realized that this is actually
how I learn languages myself.

When I was learning Spanish,

I was bored with the text in the textbook.

I mean, who wants to read about Jose

asking about the directions
to the train station. Right?

I wanted to read Harry Potter instead,

because that was
my favorite book as a child,

and I have read it many times.

So I got the Spanish translation
of Harry Potter and started reading,

and sure enough, I didn't understand
almost anything at the beginning,

but I kept on reading
because I loved the book,

and by the end of the book, I was able
to follow it almost without any problems.

And the same thing happened
when I was learning German.

I decided to watch "Friends,"
my favorite sitcom, in German,

and again, at the beginning
it was all just gibberish.

I didn't know where one word finished
and another one started,

but I kept on watching every day
because it's "Friends."

I can watch it in any language.
I love it so much.

And after the second or third season,

seriously, the dialogue
started to make sense.

I only realized this
after meeting other polyglots.

We are no geniuses,

and we have no shortcut
to learning languages.

We simply found ways
how to enjoy the process,

how to turn language learning
from a boring school subject

into a pleasant activity which
you don't mind doing every day.

If you don't like writing
words down on paper,

you can always type them in an app.

If you don't like listening
to boring textbook material,

find interesting content on YouTube
or in podcasts for any language.

If you're a more introverted person

and you can't imagine speaking
to native speakers right away,

you can apply the message of self-talk.

You can talk to yourself
in the comfort of your room,

describing your plans for the weekend,
how your day has been,

or even take a random
picture from your phone

and describe the picture
to your imaginary friend.

This is how polyglots learn languages,

and the best news is,
it's available to anyone

who is willing to take the learning
into their own hands.

So meeting other polyglots
helped me realize

that it is really crucial
to find enjoyment

in the process of learning languages,

but also that joy in itself is not enough.

If you want to achieve
fluency in a foreign language,

you'll also need to apply
three more principles.

First of all, you'll need
effective methods.

If you try to memorize a list of word
for a test tomorrow,

the words will be stored
in your short-term memory

and you'll forget them after a few days.