2. Theoretical Introduction

 

1. Instruction of the course

Everything you learn will help you create your own 10-day schedule which is the base of the program.

 

This program is divided into five main sections.

1. The first section serves as a theoretical introduction for the student. It provides general knowledge of linguistics and facilitates the understanding of further lectures. It might not be very interesting at the start, but it is necessary! Results > Fun

2. The next section provides technical and practical knowledge - specific techniques necessary to accelerate the learning process, and it prepares you to create your own study schedule.

3. The third section shows an example of the schedule and puts all of the pieces together. This is where you will find out what to do and when. REMEMBER! The schedule should only be made at the very end of the program.

4. The fourth section covers foreign language learning in a wider spectrum and provides general advice concerning the topic.

5. The last section is a supplement to the program and gives a general overview of the different language families (patterns, characteristics, difficulties).

6. To check the results you can have with this program view lectures 25, 26.

 

 

 

2. Language Families

Let's talk about language families now.

If you take a look here, you can see that on the right side we have this very known language groups, the so-called families.

And you must have already heard about some of them, for example - Romance languages.

These are quite known, Italian, French, Spanish, these kind of languages, they are obviously all bound together in this group of Romance languages.

Why are we creating these kinds of groups? Well, there are many reasons for that, but the two, that are the most important for me are that first of all, it helps us learn and understand languages and their structures.

So we know that's important already, and the second reason, which is even more interesting for me, is that if you want to solve mysteries, you need to know languages, okay? Let me explain it this way: let's say you want to study the history of Poland before the baptism, I know that's not the most interesting thing for everybody, but I can relate to that, and that's why I’m bringing this example.

I need to know what happened in Poland, in this land that we now call "Poland" obviously, before the baptism, before we became Christians here, before we started writing in Latin.

And there is no congruent knowledge about those times, no resources.

There is this theory that we, in Poland, are actually the descendants of Vikings, that the Vikings came, they invaded the land that is now called Poland, they won, and now we are all deriving from the line of Vikings, and well, it seems interesting, right? It seems like a proper theory to some extent because we do have some resemblance between Slavic and Scandinavian people.

And now let me just completely debunk that, because if you take a look at languages, if you see how the old Polish looks like, and how the old Scandinavian languages look like, if you compare names for example - you will not see a lot of similarities.

There will be some but it's not like if you took and compared Norwegian to Swedish for, okay? So I wanted to start the drive for some of you here.

If you, for example, take Arabic language, and you know Arabic, you could actually read really old texts or poetry because this language hasn't changed a lot.

The reason for that is that they actually adapt their language to reading Quran, and they believe that they mustn't change the Quran, they mustn't translate it because if they did, it would then lose its holiness, its power.

And you know, it was actually the same with the bible, but as long as bible actually had to be translated, due to the fact that it was first written in Hebrew and then translated to other languages, people eventually lost that mindset along the way.

But with Quran it stayed the same all the time.

Up to this day people don't want to have the Quran translated, and that's why Arabic isn't changing that much.

Obviously they have new words in the language here and there, but you can still read these old texts without any bigger problems, and you could use these kinds of texts for example to solve mysteries in history, to study things that have not been yet studied.

I just want to point out that languages are not only about speaking with other people, okay? Or getting a good job.

There is so much more to that, and it can be absolutely fascinating.

Let’s talk about similarities now between these languages.

How these languages are actually resemblant to one another.

Well, is actually fairly simple, two biggest similarities.

First of all: the structure.

If you compare these languages, you will find out that these languages have very similar elements, very similar things that you need to create sentences.

Let’s say you're Italian, and you want to learn Spanish.

You already know how articles work, so you just need to know what form of these articles you have in Spanish, you need to know how to pronounce these articles in Spanish.

You don't have to dive into all the theory behind them, you don't have to know whether you should use definite or indefinite articles because you already know how it works.

That’s a game-changer for you.

You need to be aware of this fact that you can do calques, and you should do them whenever you can.

And the second similarity is when you have a very similar vocabulary.

So again, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, these are the most similar to one another.

French also has similar-looking vocabulary, just not as much as these three in between.

And actually, I’ll give you a story here connected to that.

I know Spanish a little bit, and a few months ago I was writing this academic paper about stocks, and actually how the coronavirus affected them, and so I had to find the very first article in Italian because it started in Italy, about the outburst of the coronavirus.

Because I needed to check how the stocks reacted to the very first article there, which announced the pandemic, right? And well, I found many articles and in order to choose the proper one, the one that was really concerning this information, I had to read them all, but I have never studied Italian and so, what did I do: since I knew Spanish a little bit, I was actually able to understand these texts and with the use of translator here and there, I was actually able to read in Italian.

That's how it works.

So these languages are that much similar.

French is not that similar as for example these three languages nowadays, but it's very resemblant (and if you) I mean it's very resemblant anyhow, and if you by any chance are a native speaker of any of these three languages, then you will be able to learn French very quickly nevertheless because you will be just able to understand the structure, and you will know how to use different parts of the sentence.

You will know how to use different elements.

I will maybe give you this metaphor - here, in this family you only have to change the color of puzzles, but they still have the same shape, whereas, for example, if you compare Spanish to Chinese you have to change puzzles sometimes there, okay? Be aware of that and use it as a leverage in your learning process.

If you take a look at a different group, for example, Germanic languages.

It’s a very similar situation, although here we actually distinguish two groups: Scandinavian languages and West Germanic Languages.

And again, these four languages are gonna be similar in terms of vocabulary.

If you actually take a look at how these languages are written, they will be very resemblant.

They are similar in terms of pronunciation I would say.

If you are Norwegian, then you are able to understand Swedish people talking, obviously not everything, but a lot.

However, if we take English and Norwegian, in these two languages you're not gonna have so much in common.

In terms of vocabulary.

You will have some similar words, but not that much.

You won't be able to understand one another, however the structure is similar to some extent.

For example, in English you don't have to conjugate verbs and in Scandinavian languages neither.

If you take German, you have three articles, that's also the case with Norwegian and well, how can we actually use that knowledge to our advantage? Well, we can help ourselves with that because we know when to do calques and, what to use from other languages that we are able to speak, right? Now let's talk about Slavic languages.

If you take a look here, we can see three different families: West Slavic languages, East Slavic languages and South Slavic languages, and these are all separate groups.

Why they are separate? Because the languages inside of these groups are more resemblant to one another inside of the group than, for example, if you compare them to other languages from different groups - that’s how it works.

Let's take, for example, Slovak and Russian, they are gonna be somewhat similar but not as much as for example Slovak and Polish when you put them together.

So that is the idea.

If you're Polish or Slovak, then you won't really understand people speaking Russian.

You will catch some words here and there, but you will not understand what they are really talking about.

If you're Russian on the other hand, you will be able to understand Ukrainian people speaking, but not as much Polish people.

Although again, you will catch some things here and there.

If you are a Serbian, then you will be able to understand Croatian people speaking, and vice versa.

By the way, this is an interesting thing to note here that these two countries, they actually share a very similar language due to the culture, Serbia and Croatia, and they actually used to be a single country before, but now, since they are separate, they also have two different writing systems.

In Serbia they stick to the Russian writing system, to the Russian alphabet, whereas in Croatia they decided to go more to the direction of Europe, and actually, they changed to the Roman alphabet.

So you know, you have two very similar sounding languages with a completely different writing system, okay? And there's a summary here.

West Slavic languages, East Slavic languages, and South Slavic languages are gonna be similar in terms of grammar, in terms of structure, whereas when it comes to the vocabulary, there will be some kinship, but you will not be able to understand one another.

For that you will need to go inside of these groups for the closest kinship, okay? And now, I will tell you something that might be quite surprising for some of you because you really hear people saying that these languages, that these language families, Slavic language family for example, the Romance language family is quite different, that if you, for example, speak French or Spanish, you will have a lot of hard time learning Slavic languages and well, to some extent that's gonna be true, but that depends on the point of view actually.

The thing is that I want you to realize, I want you to realize that these languages, if you actually analyze them, are more similar than different when you think about it because they derive from a single language.

And so they share a lot of similarities, in terms of structure especially.

Right now you might be like “what is this guy talking about?” Well, it's true, there was a language before that was called Indo-European, and these languages, they share a very similar grammar and structure because of that, because they derive from this language.

Obviously, there are some differences here and there.

You need to find them.

You need to be aware of them, but you need to use the rest as calks.

You need to use it to your advantage, okay? But how do we actually know that these languages derive from the Indo-European language.

Who actually came up with this idea? Well, there was this guy, his name was Sir William Jones, I don't know why sir, don't ask me why, and Sir William Jones, he studied languages, okay? And he actually noticed that if you compare Latin, Greek and Sanskrit (by the way Sanskrit is a very old Indian language) If you compare them, then you will see a lot of similarities.

And let's take a look at our example here.

We have Sanskrit and Latin, and by the way, this is actually based on a very interesting presentation I saw on YouTube.

If you are interested in the concept of language families, then I would recommend going and checking this link that you see below.

If you compare Sanskrit and Latin, you will see a lot of resemblances.

First of all the words sound similar.

If you take a look here, you can see that the word "fire" in Sanskrit, which is "agnis", is very similar to the word "ignis", which is also fire but in Latin, okay? You can see that it sounds very alike.

The other thing that's similar here is that these two languages, they share a very similar grammar.

On the left you can see that they both have the declension.

What’s a declension, what’s a case inflection? I could also phrase it this way, you can use both names.

Well, a declension is basically when you change mostly the endings of nouns, depending on the meaning they have in a sentence, to add a different meaning to the sentence, for example.

If you don't know what I’m talking about right now, then don't worry, we'll talk about that thoroughly later on, but for some of you that know what’s a declension, I will continue.

So here you can see that these two languages, they both have the declension, they both have very similar cases, and you can also notice that they have very similar endings, okay? "Agnis, ignis, agnim, ignem" Nasal consonants both.

"Agnibhyas, ignibus", they are very similar, right? And that's how we know that these languages must have had a different language, that they actually derive from.

If not for that, then they just wouldn't be so similar, okay? It's not like it's a random thing.

So these languages, they derive from the Indo-European language, and you can see the color of this language here.

So it's, I think, it's the most spoken language.

Maybe if we talk about numbers then it would be Sino-Tibetan with Chinese, I’m not sure about that, but it's definitely very popular as a language family group because we have languages like English, like French, like Spanish here, you know, Slavic languages, Germanic languages, romance languages, these are quite popular, and so it's a very good news, these are very good news for us, because as long as we stay in this language group, it's gonna be easier for us to learn the languages that are in the group, and right now, you are listening to me actually giving the lecture in English, so you understand English, so you already know how English works, and so it will be easier for you to learn languages from the Indo-European group.

If you go farther, if you go for Sino-Tibetan language family, then it's gonna be more difficult because for example of the word order.

You will have a lot of things happening there that you are not aware of their existence at this point, for example.

But you need to be aware of the fact that even inside of the Indo-European language group you will have some differences, and you need to be aware of them, okay? This is the main point, this is the main, actually, point that I wanted to to stress here, is that when learning languages, we need to look for the calks.

You need to make it as easy as it could be for you.

You need to use the knowledge that you have.

In other languages, as for example with the example with articles, that if you are Spanish, then you already know how articles work in Italian to some extent.

So we need to use that, but you also have to know what differences you will have to face, right? And one of these differences is for example the declension, right? That if you are English, then you have no idea how the declension works probably, and you will have to put more time to that to learn that concept, to understand that even.

And I will try to make you understand that, I will try to help you with that, but more than that, the declension also brings other differences to the table as for example a different word order.

In English you can say “I ate a cake”, “the cake was eaten”, whereas for example in Polish you can do pretty much whatever you want with the word order, and it will not be incorrect.

It will actually put a different stress on the part of the sentence that you want to underline, but other than that it's going to be completely normal to do that.

You don't have that in English for example, or Spanish, or French, so it's going to be a new thing for you.

So that is the kind of the difference that you can have in the Indo-European language group.

The other things are for example the alphabet, right? For example if you want to learn Russian, then you will have a different alphabet, that's gonna be a problem for you to some extent, or for example articles.

If you are a Slavic language speaker, then you don't know how articles work, and so that's going to be more difficult for you.

If you are let's say French, then you know how articles work.

You know whether the word is feminine or masculine.

But it's gonna be more difficult for you to say, to tell whether you use that, or that, or that in German, where you have three articles and it's more complex in there.

And also that's the case with Scandinavian languages.

And so these are the differences that you will have to overcome.

And the goal is to actually know them, to know what kind of things are gonna be difficult because once you know what you will have to face, it's gonna be easier for you to overcome that because you will be like “I know that I need to overcome this, this, this and this.

You will take a book, and you will know what you have to learn, and it will be just easier for you to grasp it this way, once you have it all listed down.

I’m really telling you that.

It brings a lot of difference if you do it this way.

If you take a look at our map here of our language, and if you take a look at our proto-language map here, you can see that there are also different proto languages.

I have already mentioned the Sino-Tibetan language family.

Obviously you have more than that, and languages in in these proto-language families will have the differences that will be more complex than just a difference of articles, or declension, okay? It’s going to be more difficult.

Sometimes it's going to be very difficult to even comprehend and also articulate.

For example, if you think about Japanese, the Japanese people are not used to pronouncing words with a lot of consonants, right? They tend to have: consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, in their language, and so when they speak English, they like to add consonants where they don't exist, to just make it easier for them to articulate in English.

And that's also a one of these obstacles that you will have to face, the articulation.

If you want to learn for example African languages, then you might face things like clicks, okay? These are going to be very difficult to actually recreate if you are not born, if you are not learning that from the start, right, as a child.

For example tones.

If you want to learn Chinese - that is going to be very difficult for you to recreate, that is going to be just a huge huge huge pain in the arc, I would say.

So I’m not saying that you can't learn languages like Chinese, but you can learn languages like those languages with clicks, African languages with clicks, it's gonna be possible for you.

It’s just that you need to be aware of the fact that you will have to put that much effort, that you will have to take a book, a grammar book about the language that you want to learn and you will just have to go through all the concepts to understand them, to understand how it all works, and what things are just going to be very strange for you, and then you have to try to actually guess how it all works.

And there are a lot of videos on the internet, so you'll be fine, but be aware of that - it's gonna be a little bit more troublesome, and as long as you stay in the Indo-European language family, then it's gonna be that much easier, okay? So that is pretty much what I wanted to cover here.

And at the end I wanted to record a little disclaimer because I think that some of you might start to wonder about that, if you do, then it's great.

Why do we actually say that languages like Russian, with the declension, or Polish, that are deriving from the same proto language, are in the same proto-language family, as for example languages like Spanish, French, Italian, that have no declension whatsoever? Why do we say that? I mean this a big change to the language, right? It’s a big deal if you have the declension or not, it could actually indicate a completely different proto-language.

However, if you actually go deeper in history, you will actually find out that French used to have the declension, the old French.

That the old Spanish also had the declension, Italian also had a declension, even English, that is not a Romance language, also had a declension.

All these languages, they had that.

But the romance languages, for example, they began to lose those grammatical cases with time.

And why was that? Well, it has to do with the vulgar Latin*, okay? So the vulgar Latin* was basically the spoken Latin, and it was composed of: people that were actually Roman, and that we're just not educated, so they wanted to simplify their language, they, I mean they did it without being conscious, they just simplified their language, they simplified cases or they would, for example, mistake them, and it was also composed, and The Roman Empire was also composed, of people that were actually coming from different tribes because The Roman Empire conquered a lot of lands, a lot of territories.

And so people from those tribes, they wanted to adapt, and they actually had to adapt to new conditions and they had to learn Latin.

And as you can already guess, it was difficult for them to learn that.

They had no textbooks at the time, and so for that they actually simplified the spoken Latin.

Again it was not conscious, it wasn't like if they said "okay - We are going to simplify Latin, right now". No, it's just that it was difficult for them to use different grammatical cases and all, and so they just didn't use them.

For example they maybe tried to use one or two of them.

Maybe they tried to use like three of them, but with time they just kept ignoring them.

And so the language changed.

So that's actually what I want you to understand that if not for the fact that we had The Roman Empire, that conquered a lot of lands, if not for the fact that the society in Rome was very unfair, that there was a lot of poverty, and there were only like few educated people there, if not for those two things, then maybe French, Spanish and Italian, they would either not have existed, or they would have declension nowadays, which is not the case, but that is what I want you to to see, that is not about these languages being different, it's about the changes that make them different with time, but from the start they're the same, and the structure stays the same.

It’s just that you need to adapt to those changes a little bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. FSI Research

 

So the FSI research.

This is basically a research, which tells us how many hours   we would hypothetically need to learn certain languages.

   And we have them all grouped here,  we have them all sorted out from the least   time-consuming, to the most time-consuming.

First of all, we have to say that this research   is made from the perspective of an English  native speaker, okay? And so it will be the most   accurate if you were an English native speaker  obviously, but I actually find it very accurate   as well for other languages.

So it's not only  for English native speakers.

For example,  I’m Polish, and I can really relate to these  time frames as requirements, and if I, if I compare these languages to one another, I do agree with that.

So the first group is actually   the group which requires the least amount of  time.

And we have languages like Afrikaans,   Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian,  Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish.

   That should already ring a bell for you when you see these languages here.

What is the language family here? Well, these are  obviously Romance and Germanic languages.

And why they are in the first group?  Well, there are two reasons for that.

   First of all there is a lot of kinship in between  English and these languages, and as I said, it's made from the perspective of English native  speakers, and so it's easier for them,   for English native speakers, to learn  these languages because they are similar to English.

   But the second for why these languages are here is that they are just simple,   and there is no point in denying that, they are just simple.

They are very simplified.

  As I told you before.

For example, Slavic  languages, they still have the declension.

   They didn't simplify over time, whereas  these languages, they don't have that anymore.

   So they really go into the direction of  simplifying themselves, and that's a thing to accept.

That's actually a great thing because you can learn these languages   quickly, and speak them properly, rather  correctly, whereas in Slavic  languages, for example, you will always do mistakes.

Actually a lot of mistakes.

That's just how it is.

   So the first group requires 600 hours to  become fluent.

And we are talking about   writing, reading and other things like  that.

It's not only speaking, okay?   So we are going to do that way, way, way faster,  but we will exclude writing from that and maybe   reading to some extent because you won't be  really able to read books after those 10 days.

   You will be able to read easier, maybe easier  books but not, you know, those regular ones.

   The second group.

It is actually quite funny,  because they made a different,   separate group for the German language.

And  well, I have to say that I agree with that.

   Why is German more difficult than these other  languages from the first group? It's because   if you take a look at the grammar in German,  from one side it's gonna seem very simple.

   For example, the conjugation is simple, past tense  is simple, you don't have a lot of irregularities  - but you do have grammatical cases.

You have the case inflection.

For that reason, it's gonna take more time to learn it.

And also the word order in German  is very annoying - it's very hard to actually   learn that, at start especially.

So  I think that to speak German properly you   really have to put a lot of time.

You need to get  a muscle memory, especially for the declension and for the word order.

And with muscle memory, you will be able to use that.

But it's not   like you can learn, for example, the declension or  the word order in two or three days.

No, you will need a lot of time.

You really need to get used to it.

You can't really think about it.

It has to   come out of your mouth naturally, and that's the  way it works.

And also, a little disclaimer here,   that there are very little interpreters who work in pair with German,    that translate orally from English to German  because it's just very, very difficult to do that.

I mean it's actually difficult to do  it the other way around, if you actually translate   from German to English because if you translate  orally from German to English, then you always,   maybe not always, but often you have to wait till the speaker finishes the sentence,   so that he puts the verb at the end because they  tend to put verbs at the end, which can sometimes   change the whole meaning of the sentence.

  And you can't really translate that, and if   you have to do that simultaneously, if you have to  translate simultaneously then, well, that's where   all the problems come from.

It's a very  difficult language to translate simultaneously,   I would say.

Think about those poor  interpreters that have to actually deal with that.

   And now the third group.

I will talk maybe talk about the Swahili a little bit in our group here.

   So the FSI Research says that we would need hypothetically to have 900 hours, well, I think that it's a proper proposition Swahili is an interesting language to talk about because   it is actually deriving from a different proto-language family, and so you can expect a lot of differences   in terms of how this language works, how  sentences are created in the language.

   You can find things that you  have never heard of before,   some new concepts, some new linguistic concepts,  I would say.

For that I wanted to talk about   that a little bit here, for example, this is a  language, Swahili is a language that is very   affix orientated, okay? What does it actually mean, affix orientated?    Well, in the more popular languages we have  separate elements for different parts   of the sentence, okay? So we have  a separate word for the pronoun,   a separate word for the article, and so on and so forth.

Sometimes we pronounce them separately,   sometimes like in Spanish or in French we blend  them, but nevertheless, these are separate words.

   In Swahili this is not the case.

Here you actually  have a lot of affixes, that you would usually see   as separate words in different languages.

And here  they can actually be clamped into a single word.

   So that's a completely new situation.

Okay, I’ve  never studied Swahili, but I can imagine that   it would take time for me to get used to that  because you might have long sentences here with   without almost any spaces, like single words  that in reality are sentences, to some extent.

   It would be difficult for me to get used to that,   and it would require more time.

But it's not that much of a big deal,   it's just that it would be one of those  problems that I would have to overcome.

   The other problem is, for example, that you have  noun classes here and I won't talk about that,   but this is one of the differences that you can  expect if you go outside of the Indo-European   language group, okay? Noun-classes,  verb classes, and these sort of things, okay? These are the things that are more complicated.

  I don't want  to talk about that, I have never studied these languages, so I’m not that experienced in that   matter, and I also think that you are less  likely to actually learn these languages.

   However, if you do want to learn, for example  Swahili, then as I mentioned in the description of   this program, you have to get yourself a book that  explains the grammar, and it will explain actually   how it all works.

So don't worry, you are not left  alone here.

I won't be explaining every single   concept here.

More, I actually want you to have a  direction, I want you to know what steps to take,   but you have to use other resources as well.

I think it's completely understandable.

Now let's talk about the group number four.

So if you actually take a look here, you can see languages   like Russian, Polish, Slovenian and so on, and these languages are here because... ?  - Exactly! Because they require more time to learn them.

They are just more difficult.

But why are   they more difficult? Why do they require more time?  Because they have a difficult grammar.

In this   case here, they have the declension, for example, so  it's difficult as we already can tell, it's gonna be very difficult to be correct when speaking these languages.

You will always do mistakes.

   And listen, I actually know academic people  that are actually teaching languages for life,   that know how to study languages,  and they have lived in Poland for almost 20 years, and they still do mistakes with  the declension in Polish, because they actually   learned Polish as a foreign language.

I know that  there are some individual figures that manage to   actually learn the case  inflection thoroughly in Polish.

   And they don't do mistakes.

I know  someone from Japan, which is actually,   it's actually amazing that someone from a  different proto-language family is able to learn   a language with declension, and that he's not doing mistakes.

   But overall it's just gonna be very time  consuming, and you can already tell that you   are not gonna be able to do it in 10 days,  but there are ways to overcome that, so don't worry.

   Overall, you should also know that if you learn,  if you decide to learn Polish, Russian or Ukrainian, then you don't really have  to be thinking that “Well, why should I learn   these languages if I’m gonna do mistakes anyway?”  It doesn't work this way, it's actually   perfectly acceptable if you do mistakes in these  languages because there are just no foreigners   that speak these languages correctly, and so if  you do mistakes, it's it's just a natural way of   the language, of how it sounds if you see it's  spoken by a foreigner.

Nobody actually cares, nobody minds if you do mistakes.

It's  not like with English, where everybody now   speaks English, and even small mistakes are the  mistakes that really are pissing people off.

   With Polish, you can do 10 times worse, and no one will even notice that.

So there is that.

   There are just some difficult concepts that you  will not be able to overcome quickly, like the   declension, like the tones in Chinese.

And you  just have to be born    to really perfect that, with some exceptions,  that with some people that are actually   managing to do that, but over all you just  should accept that you can’t be perfect,   and that it’s not that important.

We can  perfectly understand what you want to say   if you fail with a declension, okay? You  can see that they also placed Finnish here,   and it's a nightmare I would say.

It has 15  cases of the declension, if I’m not wrong.

   actually heard about a very, very small tribe that   had 21 subjunctive moods, I think, and that actually  shows that even those underdeveloped tribes,   that are poor in Africa, that are actually not  connected to the society, that they are not using   only languages that are simple.

Some of them  are using languages that are simple, that have   very little sounds, very little  phonemes.

But you also have languages   that are very, very complex like the one with  have 15 cases of the declension.

It's actually  hard to imagine how they are able to use that.

   So, that would be troublesome if you wanted to learn that.

And actually the most interesting group, the group number five.

So here we have languages like Arabic, Chinese,   Japanese, Korean, and that's actually  quite tricky to talk about, well, actually in China you  have different dialects,   and we should call this Mandarin and not  Chinese, but people in China they decide that   that the Mandarin Chinese is their  main language.

It's them who actually   decided that they are gonna take Mandarin  as their main language (roughly speaking), but for example,   from the perspective of scientists, also from the  perspective of linguistics, different dialects in   China, for example, the one in Shanghai, are just  very different from the Mandarin Chinese.

And so   from the linguistic point of view, you would say  that these are completely different languages.

   And I wanted you to know that, but here I’m  going to be referring to Mandarin as Chinese.

   And so languages again, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese,   Korean, these languages are difficult and there are many reasons for that.

One of the reasons   is the writing system, and there is a  way to actually overcome the problem   with the writing system.

So, if you want to learn  languages in 10 days, if you want to overcome   those difficult characters that you  have to write with in Japanese, Chinese or Korean.

   If you just want to speak in 10 days, then you  can obviously do that, and I will explain you how to do that  later on.

So don't worry, you can  still learn Chinese if you want.

   It's just that you have to be aware of the fact  that if you want to write in these languages,   then it's going to take a lot of time  because well, you have a lot of characters   in these languages, and depending on the  alphabet, that you want to use.

   In Japanese you have different alphabets.

You  will need more or less time to learn that.

   You will need more or less time to learn  a given alphabet, but for example in kanji   you have 50 000 different characters, and  so you can imagine that it's gonna take   a substantial amount of time.

There are also  different alphabets that will take less time   as I said, but to really master the language you  have to learn Kanji nevertheless, in my opinion,   to really master it, but I’m talking about  the mastery.

If you just want to communicate,   and be able to, for example, make  friends abroad, make friends in China,   in Japan, then you will be able to learn these  languages in a way which I will explain later,   and that will help overcome the whole problem  with learning alphabets like Kanji.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Memory

Okay, let's talk about the memory.

So the  first thing that I want you to understand   is that if you want to learn quickly, and  you want to memorize new words in no time,   you will need to feel the need of learning.

You  know? And I know it may sound obvious, but it does have a deeper meaning to that actually, because if you are skeptical, and you have a bad attitude,   you know, you just keep on saying that you don't  have the talent.

If you insist on those things,   then you are going to fail, because it  will just cause your memory to work bad.

   And of course there are some people with better  predispositions, that are more talented and that   will just memorize things faster, but it doesn't  disqualify the others.

For example, my memory   when I was at school, was rather average,   I would say, and my performance was rather poor,   although I did try to spend time with books.

  It's not like I didn't care, but people that were   more talented than me, who devoted the same,   or less, amount of time to studying,  had actually much better results than   I did, and I was like “what the heck is going  on, I’m studying more and I get worse grades?”   And you know, even now I actually have some  problems with memorizing for example dates,   things like that, but I can prepare myself  for theoretical exams rather quickly,   and the only reason for that, that it has changed,  is that I actually know how to study now.

   The memory and our results, they depend mostly  on our hard work and our cleverness.

I’ve been   recently able to learn words very quickly, and any  third person would probably say that I am natural,   that I have a talent, or some sort of things like  that, that people just tend to believe they exist,   but I’d rather stay more romantical.

  I think that these are just the things that we   came up with, like talent and so on.

And so it  all depends on the work and cleverness.

  I remember my beginnings, when I started to learn  languages, I’m not really talking about English,   because English is what I actually got with games,  but for example when I started to study Spanish,   it was like four years ago, and I knew  absolutely nothing about languages back then.

   And you know, I actually struggled a lot, I had  problems memorizing like two or three words.

   Even like two or three words would give me  hard time back then, and it was because   I didn't know how to learn languages.

I didn't  know how to memorize vocabulary, I didn't know   how to actually learn languages.

I was just  trying to go over the vocabulary, over the words,   read them and maybe say them out loud and do  other things, but I didn't know how to actually   use my memory properly.

I didn't know how to  memorize that quickly and that came with time,   so please just don't divide yourself into  talented and not talented, because you know,   such navigations are pointless.

They don't change  anything for you.

Just get ready for working hard,   hustle, and that doesn't necessarily  have to be something bad actually.

   Maybe I will mention something from the  philosophy, because if you actually read   Aristotle, you know that self-development  is actually one of the pillars of happiness.

   I don't want this program to become  like this ‘motivation coaching program’,   but it is crucial to have a proper attitude.

  That's why I’m bringing this here, because   if you have a attitude “I want to acquire  knowledge, I want to become a better person,   I want to be an erudite”, this kind of approach,  then you will have just better results.

I know   it sounds trivial, but only with this kind of  mindset you will use your full brain potential,   and your memory will just serve you well.

  So you need to have the faith in yourself.

   That will really help you and just make  your learning process way more effective,   okay? Let's talk about the next thing.

So you will  need to find a motivation as well, some kind of drive.

   For me these are for example books “from  zero to hero” type, so you know, these are the   ones where the protagonist is starting at a very  weak point in life, and then he studies and gets   better, or you know, gets more money and so on.

  It's actually a very typical from zero to hero   type of books.

And for example there is this book  from Patrick Rothfuss “Kingkiller Chronicles”,   this is actually a series of books where the  protagonist is very poor at start, and then he   he gets accepted to a magic university, and that's  where he is able to actually sort some things out.

   And he studies things and he gets better overall  in life, in the game of life.

And that's actually   what gives me a lot of motivation, these kind  of things.

After reading these kind of books   I just find that I have more motivation  to do things that require that motivation,   and learning languages is gonna require a lot  of motivation, because it's a long process,   so if I feel like I struggle with that, if I  feel like I have less motivation, then I just   choose a book that would be like this genre,  and I read it.

I read it and then I feel   motivated for like three four months, or sometimes  even more.

It's just important that you have to   find those things that will keep the drive in  you, and you have to try to manipulate yourself   from time to time, because it's important that  you work effectively, that you stay effective,   and if you don't have that motivation, if  you do it just for the sake of doing it,   then you will just lose that, then  it will be just less effective,   okay? You will just memorize less, and  that's actually a substantial difference.

   So you really need to want to study  language to actually learn things quickly,   And now let's talk about the next thing,  so the revisions.

These are very important,    maybe even they’re key and that's why we are going to  actually put the most of our time in this program   to revisions, like 70 or 80 percent of our time  will be actually for revisions, and that's how   important these are.

And you can see the scheme  of forgetting curve, and this is actually not only   related to languages, but other stuff in life  as well.

So it might be useful for other things,   for you.

How does it work? Well, the newly learned  things, things that we just, you know, learn,   are recorded usually by our short-term memory.

  You should know that already by now, and usually   they go to our long-term memory when  we do revisions regularly, right?   It's not always like that, because sometimes a  certain word, or some piece of information, if   actually met with a very meaningful context, can  be immediately recorded to the long-term memory,   transferred to the long-term memory,  but if you learn all the things at once,   like here we're gonna learn a lot of things at  once, then it's gonna be less likely.

So the key   to efficient learning in this program is to do  revisions regularly, especially here, because we   want to have very quick results in those 10 days.

  And for other cases, for example if you just study   languages in a regular manner, then the levels  from A1 to B1 are the levels that you will need   to do revisions the most.

So that might be also  useful for you.

Once you're more advanced,    you obviously do these revisions while speaking,  so you don't have to, you know, put your time,   invest your time into that, and you don't  have to review your notes and so on, because   you will just do these revisions automatically  when speaking.

But for now, before that B2, maybe   B1 level, you just have to put more time into  revisions.

You can, you really have to, actually,   revise everything that you learn, and you have  to do it everywhere, on the bus for example,   instead of playing some games on your phone.

  While walking instead of listening to music.

   Do revisions whenever you can, that's the  key to learning languages.

So please remember,   for the last time, if you want to have quick  results, then do revisions, a lot of revisions,   Up to this moment we know that we have to  do revisions, we know that we have to actually   choose the most important words and don't go for  numbers, that we need to study actively.

But the   question is “How to actually learn things  by heart, how to memorize the vocabulary?”,   well, it's actually a curious thing, when you  think about it, because we talk about learning a   lot nowadays, in the internet and at school.

It's  a, it's a very popular topic, the society likes   to learn, I would say, likes to learn things, so  we talk about that a lot.

And you have a lot of   videos on the internet about that, but normally,  like at school, we don't really talk about   how to memorize, but we  talk about what to memorize,   Okay? We talk about what to memorize, but not how  to memorize.

So, what I want you to do, to actually   memorize vocabulary faster, I will give you a  good technique.

I want you to take a notebook.

   Just keep in mind that it can’t be too big.

I  need you to be able to fit it in your pocket,   so that you can take it everywhere with you,  and then you divide the pages into two parts,   Okay? On the left side you will be writing  down the words in your native language,   and on the right side you  will be writing the words   in the language that you want to learn.

And from  now this is your new phone, you take it everywhere   with you, and instead of playing games you do  revisions.

And you do it this way: you just cover   the right side, you can see the words in your  native language, and you try to quiz yourself.

   So you can see that in the picture here, okay,  left side with words in the native language.

   You cover the right side, and you try to quiz  yourself and guess what these words are in the   language you want to learn.

And that's actually  what stimulates your memory very well.

It's   gonna make you memorize things faster.

It's the  best actually when it's done by another person,   for example if your mom is actually quizzing you  or, I don’t know, your girlfriend, your boyfriend,   whatever person, but it's really good if  it's actually done by someone else, because   I believe that in such situations you  actually try to impress other people,   that you want to show them, you want to  show them that you can memorize things fast,   and that's actually what boosts your memory  even more because you really want to memorize   these words ASAP.

That gives you the extra  motivation for that.

And so the most efficient   way of actually memorizing vocabulary is to ask  somebody to actually quiz you.

And so for example,   if you have a friend that also wants to  learn languages, and you want to do both   this challenge and try to learn a language in  and actually quiz yourselves in two, and that  would really, really, really boost your results.

   And you know, I actually think that nowadays the  query based learning is is kind of underestimated,   not only in languages, but in the other  things as well.

So apply it really in life,   it's gonna really help you memorize things faster,  no matter what the topic is.

It can be languages,   it can be history, it can be English, it can  be, you know, chemistry.

Use it to learn things.

   Use it to prepare yourself for tests  and so on and so forth.

And obviously you will   be able to learn new words, you know, just  by writing them down.

That's also possible,   if you just write something down, and  you, for example, repeat it out loud.

   But you will just be way more effective if  you quiz yourself, okay? You get the idea.

  The other thing that you can do is for example  you can write essays with the vocabulary that   you're trying to learn, or some texts, it's very  good because first you have to search for those   words in your head, in your brain, and that's  the first revision.

You're quizzing yourself.

   And the second, you actually put the vocabulary  into context, so you have the support of the   situation.

That helps you stimulate your  memory a little bit better.

So writing things   is also very good if you want  to learn vocabulary, okay?   So, as you can already know by now, memory  is a vast topic, and there is for example   this distinction between visual and audio  learners.

So basically people that are just   learning faster by listening, or people who are  just learning faster by reading and writing.

  I believe that when you're studying languages,  you shouldn't really stick to one style.

   So this is for the people that were wondering if  they should maybe use different techniques here,   depending on the way they actually tend to  learn.

To some extent yes, you should put more   time into the things that you just find more  effective for you, but with languages I think   that you shouldn't really stick to one style,  for example doing listenings, watching movies,   listening to podcasts, and so on.

This will  help you improve your comprehensional skills.

   On the other hand, for example exercises  that are more for the visuals, like   reading, this will really help you improve your  reading and writing skills, and you will also,   you know, clarify your knowledge.

You will put  it in the order.

But the more impulses your brain   faces during the study processm the more you  stimulate it from different sides, the more you   will memorize.

And that's why you shouldn't  limit yourself to one of these techniques.

   You should do different things.

Personally,  I’m for example audio, and I prefer to learn   things by listening, and I prefer to,  for example, speak and not write things,   but I still do write from time to time  because I know that it's very good for my   memory.

It helps me memorize more, it helps me  stay fresh, so I don't get bored, and so on.

   Okay, and now let's talk about the words that we  cannot memorize.

What to do if we cannot memorize   a certain word that is difficult, that is long?  Well, what I do is I basically I take that word,   and I divide it into two smaller ones, like  two smaller words, and these words they   tend to have meaning themselves, if I do it.

  It doesn't have to be in English, for example,   or in Polish.

It can be any other language that  I know.

And it doesn't have to be necessarily the   language that I’m learning.

So what I basically  do is I divide it into two English mini-words.

   Goal and pear (pardon my pronounciation), So here I use English, and  then I just imagine the pear that I would receive   if I accomplished my goal, and my goal was  to hit someone important for example, or to   strike a goal, or other things, but the point  is that we are mixing those elements together,   okay? That's how we memorize these words, we make  connections between the word "goal" and the word   "pear", which is pronounced golpear in Spanish.

  And we also connect that to the word "hit",   to the verb "to hit" because we imagine striking,  for example, that goal or hitting somebody,   and with those three words connected to one  another we will memorize this word correctly,   because you will just picture this, you know,  this.

You'll be able to picture this meaningful   pear and the whole situation about it, how you  are striking the goal, or hitting somebody, and   the striking situation helps us memorize the  meaning of the word “to hit”, whereas the   goal and the pear helps us memorize the word  in Spanish.

Golpear.

And that's a very good way   to actually memorize things.

So try to use it,  especially for the more difficult words that you   can't memorize.

Be aware that you don't always  have to find like the exact words, that will   cover the word that you want to learn.

You can for  example find something for the half of the word,   and that's also going to help you memorize  that word.

That will help you at start  because if you know the the beginning of the word,  then you're likely to also remember the rest.

   And now the memory palace.

I won't go into  details here.

If you're really interested in that,   then you can read about it on the internet.

I  will just explain briefly why we are not going   to use that here, even though it's a very popular  thing in terms of languages, and people tend to   actually talk about that a lot.

Well, what's  the memory palace? In like three short words:   it's basically that you try to imagine a space  that you know, for example that can be your house,   that can be your home, and you put the pieces  of information, the vocabulary that you want to   memorize, or other things, in different parts  of that place.

And by storing these things   this way, you memorize things better, you  memorize things faster by storing them like that.

   It's easier to actually locate these words in  your brain, but for speaking, and speaking is our   main goal here, it's gonna be useless because,  you know, you won't be able to actually go over   your memory palace in your imagination.

You won't  be able to go over those places and think about   what is where.

It's not going to be effective  for speaking.

You don't have time to actually   do that.

So for tests you can use it because you can for example invest   time a little bit to actually search for the  vocabulary there, but not for speaking, okay?   So that is why we are not going to use that.

  If you were wondering why we will not use the   memory palace, even though it is getting a lot  of love on the internet, it does, but you have   to be smart about it.

You can use it.

It's very  effective, just not for speaking in my opinion   Okay, so there is that.

Thank you for listening,  and we will hear each other in the next part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Acceptance

Now let's go to the acceptance part.

So this is  where I will talk about the goals, that we are   striving to achieve in this program, and also  the ramifications that we need to be aware of,   due to the fact that we have a short study time.

So first of all,   you need to be aware of the fact that you will  stutter.

There is no way around that actually,   trust me, If you want to learn languages in 10  days, or for example in a month, or in two months,   then you will stutter.

The reason for that is that  if you want to speak fluently, without pauses,   then you will need to use a lot of muscle memory,  and that requires a lot of time, a lot of effort,   a lot of speaking and so on.

You need to get used  to speaking a lot on everyday basis.

Only then you   will be able to speak fluently, using your muscle  memory.

For now you will have to think about what   you want to say.

You will have to think about the  words that you don't remember.

The memory will   not be on your side all the time.

That is why it's  going to take more time for you to build sentences   in this case because you will just have to  think about all these things that you don't have   in the muscle memory for the moment.

   And stuttering is not that bad, it's actually a  very natural thing.

First, you have to build the   base.

You have to build the core.

You have to be  able to talk with other people and communicate,   and then, once you for example go abroad,  or you find yourself language partners,   then you are able to get better and eventually, you're able to fix   the mistakes that you make.

You're be able  to actually create sentences faster, and you   start speaking fluently, without pauses.

You stop  stuttering with time.

There is no way around that.

   There is no magical pill for it.

It's not like  you can just quickly learn something and then speak fluently.

  You will have to repeat that over and  over again to then be able to speak fluently.

   So there is that.

Now let's go to the  second point.

So once we actually start,   once we actually start learning, we'll only look  for the most important words in this program.

   So for those 10 days you are supposed  to look only for the most important words.

   We will not go and take some lists of  words.

Again, like those, for example, 1000   most frequently used words.

We  will use that to some extent,   but we are not going to support ourselves,  we are not going to base ourselves on that.

   And we again, as I said, we have to look for the  most important words.

These words are gonna be   important to some extent, but we can't afford  learning 1000 words in those 10 days because   the thing is that, even though there are people  that, there are some people in the world that   claim that they can, for example, learn 100 words  a day, actually I am able to do that as well.

The   problem is that if you learn 100 words a day, then  these words, they will only stay in the short term   memory, so you will remember them for a while, but  then you will lose them.

We don't want that.

   We are striving for perfection here.

We need to find  the best balance between numbers and memory here   because if you try to memorize too much  vocabulary, if you go for too many words,   you won't be able to use them.

You won't be able  to use them actively.

So there is no use in that.

  Maybe you will be able to  understand a little bit more,   for example, if you read a text.

But these words  will just not come up when speaking.

You will not   be able to use them actively, and that is our goal,  to speak actively.

We need to learn how to speak,   so we need to find the best solution here.

And  the best solution is that we go somewhere in   between 300, 400 words.

That is already a  lot, if you think about it because it's   going to be difficult to actually memorize 30  or 40 words a day actively.

That's possible,   especially if the language, that you're  learning, has a similar-sounding vocabulary   to the languages you already know.

  It will take time, it will take effort,   but you should be able to memorize 30 words a  day, in an active manner, if you study a lot.

   And with those words, those words that you will  try to learn actively, those 30, 40 words (if you   won't be able to do that maybe 20 words a day),  With those words we will be creating sentences.

   So we are striving for perfection here, we want  not to forget any vocabulary that we learn,   and so for that reason, we have to choose the most  important vocabulary.

We can't afford to learn   things that we won't use.

If we don't  use that, then we won't have the so needed repetition,   to some extent.

If we don't repeat the vocabulary,  if we don't find the necessity to use that,   then we will lose these words.

So we really have  to find the most useful words for us, words that   we ourselves want to use.

And remember, it's  actually better to learn less, but thoroughly,   then learn a lot, but not being precise.

For speaking you really have to put that time for   every single word, you have to respect words,  okay? Respect every single word that you learn,   treat it like if it was your baby.

Spend time  with it.

That's the best thing you can do.

   Let's say, you look for new words here and  there, and you haven't yet spent enough time   with the word that you have previously learned.

  That word is gonna be there for a while,   but then you will lose it, you will forget it.

  You need to put a lot of time to every single word   that you have learned, okay? It's very, very crucial.

  So there is that.

And now the next part.

So we're   gonna talk about the level that you can  reach.

You can reach a level that allows   to communicate and make friends abroad.

I know  that this might sound quite trivial, I mean   this part with friends abroad, but it's a  very, very good explanation of that.

   We are building the base here, and the base is  to be able to communicate with other people.

  So the goal is to hold a good conversation  about many subjects and at the same to be able   to make friends in the language that you're, in  that particular language, that you're learning.

   And with those people, that you  actually meet abroad,  or that you meet online, the language partners,  with those people, this is where you actually  improve and learn the language.

That is where  you actually get fluent.

That's where you get   the fluency.

When you speak every single day, when  you're exposed to real-life situations, when you   have to speak no matter what time of day or night  it is.

Only in these situations you will really   become, only by being exposed to these situations,  you will become fluent.

So it's important to have   language partners.

I don't like to use  that word, I actually use it a lot,   but you need to have somebody that you can speak  with.

It might sound superficial to some extent,   but it's very important in languages that you  have someone to speak with, a language partner   or a friend that speaks the language.

That is if you really want to have high results.

   The best it would be if you actually went  abroad and had friends abroad because   abroad you would really be exposed to the language all the time doing groceries, I don't  know, buying food, going to cinema in   all those situations you would need to use the  language you're learning, and that is actually   very good for improving the language.

If you  can't go abroad, again, you can use the internet.

   There are tools for that as well.

So we are  building the base here, the base that will let   us communicate.

The most important thing that we  try to do ASAP, and then we will build upon it.

   And I will also talk about getting  advanced, getting to those C1, C2 levels  later on.

Now let's talk about the next point.

  It's actually my favorite one.

You will reach   the same level at the end of this program,  you will reach the same level of speaking   as an average philology student would reach  after a semester of intensive studying.

   Studying supervised by professionals of course.

So, how do I know that? Well, I am a philology student   myself, and so I know what I am talking about  here.

These are not some kind of fairy tales   that I'm bringing here, and I will explain you  why is it so.

If you are a philology student,   then you do study a lot, and it's also  very intensive, like here in our program,   and not only that, you also have teachers,  great teachers that are helping you,   and they're professionals, so they can give  you good advice, they can fix your mistakes,   but at the same time we are able to do that  in 10 days, with some help of other people,   which we will also talk about later because we  need to find somebody to correct our mistakes.

But   why we are able to actually reach the same  results that these students, with all those tools,   reach after a semester of studying, after like  three-four months of studying? Well, there are   a few reasons for that.

First of all, if you are  for example studying a language at the university,   you're learning grammar in a very theoretical way,  okay? That is the problem.

So you don't really   know how to create sentences yet, but you  already know how to use subjunctive, for example.

   That was the case with me.

When I was learning  Spanish, after three months of learning French   I believe I already knew how to use subjunctive  as well, but I could never use it practically   in French, and it was just because my  knowledge was not enough at that moment.

   I knew how the subjunctive works, I knew its  structure, I knew when to use it, but I could   never really use it in a sentence because I  wasn't comfortable enough with the language.

   I didn't know enough vocabulary, okay? It was just  too complicated for me to add on the subjunctive   to sentences, with which I already struggled,  and well, with that I wasn't able to use,   to apply the subjunctive.

And with time I  would just forget how the subjunctive works  because I couldn't use it, I couldn't use it  practically, and therefore I had no repetitions   with subjunctive.

I had no revisions.

I  didn't revise subjunctive enough and so,   and so I forgot how it works.

  There's just too much information.

If   you're studying at the university you learn  many different things, many different notions,   a lot of vocabulary at the same time, a lot  of grammar, but you don't put enough time   into repetitions because your teacher is  already starting to talk about a new topic,   with the new vocabulary that you will  have to learn and so on and so forth.

   You are not able to do these revisions  enough, and then you forget things.

   Eventually, you only remember like 10 percent of  the things that you have learned, and you actually   develop your active language from those 10  percents.

I am really not kidding you here,   that is how it works.

So from 10 words  you will only remember a single word,   and that is the word that you will be able to  really use when speaking.

So it sounds bad,   right? And that's the way it is.

So we, instead  of learning ten words and memorizing one,    will learn, let's say three words,  but we will memorize all of them.

   I think you can get how it  works.

I think you get the idea.

   And so for that you can already guess  that we will do a lot of repetitions  because the more things you learn, the  less likely you will be able to remember   them.

We can't go for a lot of vocabulary.

  Instead we will do a lot of revisions,   and we will master the vocabulary that we have  acquired.

We will learn actively, not passively.

   There is no point in learning difficult  grammar, if you can't add it to the sentence.

   There is no point in learning some fancy  expressions, if you can't say what's your name   in the language that you're learning.

So you  really have to adjust that difficulty to your   possibilities, and then, with time you can expand  and learn difficult words.

So don't learn the subjective if you are  not able to create sentences, okay? That is   that's the idea.

Don't learn the past tense if  you don't know the present tense, don't learn   irregularities if you don't know regularities,  okay? I remember when I was studying Spanish   also, at start they would really teach  us very precise things about articles,   okay? So I didn't know at that moment how actually  articles work at all, and why we should actually   use them, but they would already talk about  different isles that actually are irregular   with different articles.

They would talk about  different situations that are very irregular, that   you don't really have tendency to hear, but it was  all about learning that grammar, going through the   book and just learning all those exceptions and  perfecting that and being very, very precise.

   And you think I remember something from  that? Hell no, I mean I did manage to   learn articles later on and how to use them in  particular situations.

Obviously I do still some   mistakes here and there, but I was really able  to learn that, but that was due to the practice  because I was creating sentences, I was  listening to people, how they do that.

   I did have to actually read about a little bit,  but not about those exceptions, okay?    I don't really care if you are able to say, to use the proper article,    with a certain island, right? I don't  really care.

It's not important.

   I would rather have you know ten  more words or two more expressions.

   And you should have that kind of mindset that we  don't really have to be perfect in every single   part of the language, we don't have to be perfect  about every single concept that the language has,   we don't have to learn every single irregularity because we will forget it nevertheless.

   Once you speak the language, with time,  after like three, four, five years,   you will learn those irregularities anyhow.

So  please remember you can't learn grammar on paper   you can't just take a book and do exercises,  and that's all, If you can't apply the grammar,   that you learned to sentences, if you  can't use it when speaking, then you will   forget it for the last time.

So  adjust the grammar to your sentences,   adjust the grammar to what you  want to say, adjust the difficulty,   And the next thing that I have to  tell you is that you will have to study   from 6 hours to 14 hours a day, okay? I really left those 14 hours as a little joke here,   but it really might be the case that you will  have to study from the morning to the night.

Well,   it's possible.

You wake up, you study, you  do little breaks every like 25, 30 minutes,   and you're able to do that.

It works.

For example  when I was in Belgium, I had this very difficult,   this very difficult class.

It was linguistics and   I actually did it for a whole month.

I would  study for the whole day.

It was like for a month   because it was a very difficult exam, and I  also enjoyed that.

So that's the other thing.

   They even actually closed me in the  library once, so you can imagine that   I really took it to the extreme.

But you really  have to take breaks every like 25, every 30   minutes because if you don't, then you will just  be very, very, you will be very low effective.

   And while doing these breaks don't check  the Facebook, don't speak with your friends,   don't play games, don't watch videos  on YouTube because if you do that,   then you will get distracted.

Stare at the wall,  listen to the music, maybe meditate a little bit.

   You really need to enter  this state of mind that you   not really need to do other  things, that you don't need others,   and that you only want to study, okay? That  you only need to study in life to be happy.

   And again, I know that it might be  not so simple for some people, but   this is for those that really want to have the  highest results with the more difficult languages,   but it's gonna be possible, you really have to  just enter the state of just constant studying   and not thinking about other things  in life.

Not thinking about needs,   about human needs, human nature.

But obviously the  more you study, the less effective you will be    the less things you will be able to  memorize, so that's the problem here.

   But for example with German I only knew  that I had to study seven hours a day,   and that would be enough.

And it was enough.

  In other languages it might vary, and you might   be less effective.

For me seven  hours was the sweet spot, I would say.

   So at the end of the day, this time frame,  those 6 to 14 hours, this will vary.

   You have to adjust that to your possibilities  and your needs, okay? And actually if you   have never studied languages before, you have  absolutely no experience with languages, then   maybe for the first time you will even fail  when doing this challenge.

You might fail   because you will have to get some exposure to  that, you will have to get some experience,   but the second time you will do it, you will need  less time a day, and you will have better results.

   You will get used to how the process works, you  will know how different concepts work, and you   will be able to understand everything.

You will  be able to really just grasp the conjugation very   quickly, and so on and so forth.

And also to  finish things here, I will just tell you that,   for example, if you can't afford to study seven,  eight hours a day, then you can still use this   program.

It's just that you have to change your  time frame, okay? So from 10 days you can actually   expand your limit to 30 days, and that's going  to work perfectly fine.

It's actually going to   be better because you will have more time  for the revisions, and so you will actually   memorize things better.

So you can actually have  better results studying the same amount of hours,   just in a longer range, in a longer time frame.

  So don't worry if you have other things in life,   and don't worry if you can't afford to study  those 7-8 hours a day.

Don't worry about that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Phonetics (Problems)

Okay, now let's take a look at the problems part.

This is gonna be a little bit longer.

We have three different sections here actually.

We have phonetics, we have alphabet and characters, and we have the declension.

And first of all we need to ask ourselves two questions: do you want to speak or write? And how do you want to sound? And first of all, we are going to focus more on the second question, how do you want to sound in the language that you're learning? This is an important matter because I don't want to be criticizing anybody.

Don’t get me wrong, but there are a lot of people, for example on YouTube, that are polyglots.

And they indeed speak many languages, but the pronunciation they have in those languages is very incorrect.

And again, I’m perfect here neither, I do struggle with pronunciation as well, in English, in French, in Spanish.

It’s mostly due to the fact that I actually know the pronunciation, I know what and how to pronounce, but I’m just not used to that type of articulation, like my tongue is not used to this kind of placement.

My mouth is not used to that, but you should be at least able to express yourself in a clear manner.

If you are into accents, then you can obviously try and perfect that knowledge.

You will have to study how to articulate everything properly and precisely, one by one, but even though if that's not the case, if you're not like an excellent guy at least know what sounds you have in the language that you're learning and differentiate them.

When I was in Belgium, before I actually started with my academic year, I had this day when we had to commend, write an exam which would tell us what level of French we had, so we could get accepted to different groups of French, different level of French because they had French for foreigners.

It doesn't matter.

And so I went there, and I wrote a test, nothing really exceptional.

And then it turned out that I was in a group with a guy who was actually from Italy, and he managed to really have an advanced level in French, after studying it for like four months.

So he was really able to speak without problems about many difficult topics, and he was really at ease, but his pronunciation on the other hand was very poor.

And why was that the case? Well, he actually managed to reach this very high level in like four or five months.

Later I realized that he was able to speak indeed about many things and in a very, you know, at ease way.

It's just that it was very hard to understand him because he didn't put enough time to learning pronunciation in French, and so he mispronounced a lot of things.

So yes, he was able to reach that advanced level in four months if you think about it, but it was so damn hard to actually talk with him and understand what he was saying.

It was not only me, but also some of my friends, that were actually Belgian, who struggled with his accent.

We just couldn't understand what he was saying.

And so it's really important to invest enough time at start into learning the pronunciation properly because there is no use of the language that you master if you are speaking in a way that is incomprehensible for other people.

So this guy for example he didn't differentiate the e from the e sound in French and other things like that.

And you know, that might seem like not a big thing, but it's actually very hard to understand people speaking like that, if you mispronounce every single letter, one by one.

If you do a little mistake here and there, it's not gonna be a big deal, but once you actually start mispronouncing every single letter, then you are creating a new language or a dialect of some sort.

I’m telling you, nobody is gonna talk with you if it's gonna be very difficult to understand what you're saying.

So it's actually better to know maybe even less vocabulary, less expressions, but to pronounce them correctly.

It’s better to speak an easy language but correctly.

By correctly I mean by pronouncing things correctly because it's actually easier to get what you want to say if you do a grammatical mistake, but the pronunciation, it gets more complicated actually.

So pronunciation in that matter is more important than the grammar.

And so with this Italian guy, I really struggled to understand what he was saying, and for like five minutes I could do that, but after like 15-20 minutes I would start to actually pretend that I understand him.

And so over time I would actually start avoiding him.

It was very funny.

It was just that difficult to understand what he meant.

So please remember this story.

Every time where you will want to neglect phonetics think about that friend of mine that I started to avoid.

You can speak perfectly, but if you are not pronouncing things correctly, then there is no point in speaking at all.

You can speak about anything: physics, science, mathematics and so on, but if you keep on mispronouncing things, then there is no point in speaking because it's all about the communication.

Also another thing that is very important.

If you actually don't learn phonetics correctly at start, then later on it's gonna be very difficult for you to actually fix the mistakes in your pronunciation, that you've developed from the start because you will get used to them, and so that will be a very bad thing.

So if you choose a language with a difficult articulation, and you really want to have an impressive level in the language, and you want to be able to really speak well and communicate with people, live abroad, have friends, and so on and so forth, then put more than just has a difficult pronunciation and phonetics.

Because if you start with mistakes, if you actually do it all in rush, if you don't put enough time into pronunciation, and you will develop mistakes, then later on it will be very hard for you to actually reach that goal.

So that depends.

If you don't really care about being advanced, if you just want to have like simple conversations, then maybe you can neglect that to some extent, but if you want to reach those C1, C2 levels, if you really want to be fluent and so on, then invest enough time into pronunciation.

Practice every single rule, every single letter, every single articulation, every single tongue placement, okay? The better you do it at start, the easier it will be to then actually implement that into your spoken language.

And with time you will be able to improve that more, and more, and more.

So what I mean by that is that if you were for example studying French, you would have to know what's the difference between e and e.

If you were for example to study Spanish, you would have to know that in Spanish there is no such a sound as [z]. You only have [s], okay? So maybe in your native language you have that sound, and you would like to actually bring it Spanish, but it's not how it works there.

So these are the things that you will have to keep an eye on when learning phonetics, learning the pronunciation, and this is what we will actually do at start of our challenge.

We will talk about that in the stage room, so don't worry.

This is more to give you a background for that.

So for the last time, if you're choosing a language with a difficult pronunciation, like French for example, and you really want to be advanced eventually, then put more than 10 times into this challenge because you really have to put enough time into learning phonetics, and then go learn vocabulary, learn grammar and so on.

If you just want to communicate and have simple conversations, then you might maybe neglect that a little bit.

Remember you have to make that choice or you can just choose languages that are easy to articulate, like for example German.

For me, it took me like an hour to actually learn how to pronounce things in German.

So that's also an option for you.

So you have to make choices here, as simple as that.

Okay, so let's take a look here, and let's see what can we actually expect in terms of phonetics in different languages.

So usually that's not always going to be the case, but usually the more phonemes languages have, the more complex, and so the more difficult they are.

So this is our starting sentence.

And now we'll actually elaborate on that.

So what are phonemes? Listen, I don't really want this presentation to be very academic, but sometimes you will have to understand different things, like for example phonemes or allophones, and I just want you to actually know what are these because it will just help you to understand languages better.

And you know, if you want to learn languages of a different pronunciation, then you might need to know how it works because you will have to Google some things on your own.

And you know, maybe people will use these kind of names, but I will try to explain it in a nice clear way.

Phoneme is what we call actually a unit of sound in a specified language that can distinguish one word from another, okay? So that might not be the simplest explanation, but basically what it is.

If you for example have let's say word speak, okay? Speak in English.

Let's actually count: one, two, three, four, five letters.

We have five letters, but we pronounce them with like four letters, or like four sounds.

sounds.

Speak, S, P, E, A, K So the letter e and a.

They both form a sound [e], they both form the sound [e]. These are actually two separate letters, but when they are combined together they form a single phoneme.

So phonemes are basically sounds that you can hear, separate single sounds.

Here we have four sounds [s], [p], [i] and [k], and now if you take a look here, you can see that languages like Lithuanian, Danish, Welsh, and so on, are rather more complicated in terms of sounds, and so you can already guess that you would need more time to actually get used to the articulation of all those different separated sounds, all those phonemes that will take time, that will be time consuming, whereas for example Spanish or Italian, they don't have so many phonemes, so it's going to be easier to actually learn the phonetics in that language.

By learning phonetics I mean learning the pronunciation, learning articulation, all the things in that area.

And so with Spanish, since it only has sounds, and it will be easier for you to get used to actually the sounds that you have to create in Spanish.

Most of those phonemes that Spanish have, you already know because you already have them in your native language.

But for example in Lithuanian you will actually experience new sounds that you have not experienced before in that regard.

But if you are an English native speaker, who has never studied any other languages, then even those two languages like Spanish and Italian might give you problems.

Why? Well, it's because you might not be used to these sounds.

In Spanish, if you take a look at the word golpear, that we had before, if you take a look at the word golpear, so to pronounce it correctly in Spanish you just read every letter normally.

And by reading every letter normally I mean that you read it the way that you would read it in most languages because usually if you see the letter e you pronounce it as [e] But it's always the direction of that sound In English it's gonna vary sometimes.

It’s gonna be a sometimes.

it's going to be [e]. And you know, these kind of differences that you have in English, if you have never studied other languages, might actually make it difficult for you to learn even the languages that are seen as simple in terms of pronunciation.

But I don't think that you have had a chance to actually not study in any other language, because you have that at school, right? You must have had that at school.

For me, from the perspective of a Polish native speaker, it's actually very easy to read in Spanish, because it's almost the same like in Polish.

If I would actually read Spanish texts in Polish they would sound very similar.

There are like two or three different letters, but overall the pronunciation is very similar.

And they've chosen the same letter for the same sounds and mark my words here, they've chosen the same letters for the same sounds, because you have to remember that first was the spoken language, and then people actually, they adjusted letters and writing systems to sounds.

And actually that is why sometimes if you want to write down a given sound, you have to use completely different symbols, in different languages.

The sounds are the same, letters are different.

And it's actually good to think about it from this perspective because if you are English, and you're learning French, then yes, you will actually have to learn some new sounds you don't have in English, but most of the sounds you can really easily recreate.

It’s just that you need to get used to the way they’re written on paper.

It gets easier from that perspective I think.

So again, the more sounds you have, the more complex languages are.

And languages are maybe not that much complicated in terms of phonetics.

Obviously you have some like less popular languages that could have like a lot of phonemes like, I’m not really sure, about like 200 phonemes, and that would require a lot of time and a lot of actually practice.

I think that with this example it's even easier to understand that.

The more sounds you have, the more difficult it's going to be because just imagine having those 200 different separate sounds that you have to differentiate, that you have to distinguish.

But there is also other distinction that is very important.

Distinction between phonemes and allophones.

And this will be important for you as well.

Phonemes are sounds, are different sounds that actually bring the difference in meaning, okay? So by mistaking phonemes you will sometimes change words.

So for example in French we have the word “pas”. It’s a negation and it's made using three letters p, a and s.

And we also have the word “bas” that means something like low, and it's made with the same letters with the exception of the first letter, which is not p but b here in this case.

And so p and b are two different phonemes because if you change them, they will give you a different meaning.

They will create a separate word.

And that is a different word.

You can see that here, it's like you're able to actually pronounce the word bas with the letter p and think about the word bas if you say je ne pense bas.

It’s going to be ridiculous.

So I hope that you can understand that phonemes, they bring a different meaning to the word.

Maybe another actually example from English, let's take the words book and cook.

So except for the first letter in those two examples the rest of the words is similar, only the first letters are different, and they change the meaning here.

The same thing as with pas and bas.

So if that happens it tells you that this letter is a different phoneme.

And why do we care about that? Why do we want to know that different sounds are phonemes? What does it tell us? Well, it's because we also have things that are called allophones, and these are pretty much the same things as phonemes with the exception that they don't change the meaning of the word, okay? Allophones are also like different sounds, but they don't change the meaning of the word.

So these are actually variations of phonemes if you think about it.

So for example the letter t in English has different allophones, different ways to pronounce the phoneme t.

And even though you actually pronounce the letter t using an incorrect allophone, in a given context people will still understand what you mean.

So maybe an example in English, you have the word tea and you obviously pronounce it with the t, but if you didn't, and you said something like t, t that is aspirated, then people will be able to understand that without any problems.

But if you actually mistake allophones a lot, then you will start to sound bad.

So this is actually what you have to work on if you really care about the very correct, precise, and nicely sounding pronunciation.

If you don't want to sound bad, then not only care about phonemes, but also allophones, okay? So I hope that you understand what's a phoneme, what’s an allophone and why actually that distinction is worth knowing.

And when do you have allophones? Well, they might for example appear in a particular place of the word, for example depending on the position the letter has in that word.

In Spanish for example you roll the letter r at the beginning of the word.

That creates the allophone [r]. As a rolled r as in for example rodear, okay? So if you don't roll that r you will still understand that word, but it's gonna sound worse.

That's the point here, that's the key point.

So for the last time, allophones are important if you want to master the pronunciation, if you want to speak very correctly, if you want to be precise, if you want to have a nice, nice accent, you will have to care about allophones as well.

If you don't really strive to be perfect, but you want to be understandable, if you want to be comprehensible, then you don't really have to focus that much on allophones, but you have to focus on phonemes at least, okay? And just bear in mind that you might be thinking that it's a subtle difference if you for example mistake a phoneme or allophone.

One mistake will not do a lot of harm, but if you actually do more mistakes, if you do three or four mistakes in a sentence Then that is where it will start to be difficult to understand that.

So it's about avoiding these kind of situations because even if you learn all the rules you will still do mistakes here and there.

But it's about actually you know, reducing that possibility and even with German, for example, that is simple in terms of pronunciation, as I said before, you still have those allophones, and you still have to care about these kind of things.

So we'll have to put time to that extra.

It's not like it's going to be that simple, but it's going to take definitely less time than in French because you don't have that many phonemes, you don't have that many allophones in German, okay? Let's continue.

I want you to be aware of the different things that can happen in terms of phonetics.

So you already understand the distinction between the phonemes and allophones, but what are different things, for example diphthongs? You might actually see that somewhere in future.

So these are basically two vowels, and if they were separate, they would actually have their own proper sound, their proper pronunciation, whereas if you put them together, like it is here, they will start to have a new sound.

These two different phonemes, when they are put together, they create a new phoneme.

These two phonemes, or maybe rather these two letters, if you think about it.

So example in Spanish you don't say bu eno.

You don't pronounce every single letter here separately, you don't say that you, say bueno, bueno, okay? So [ue] changes to [w], changes to bueno.

So these are diphthongs.

And you have a lot of that in different languages for example in French, moi, [mwa] So for example you write moi with the letter o and the letter I, and that also creates a different sound.

Also you can have for example assimilation, and by the way, you don't need to know every single notion here by heart, I just want you to understand the concept, I want you to know how it works, and that these things exist, and how they look like pretty much.

You don't have to memorize everything here.

I just don't want you to get lost in all those rules or pronunciation, where you will just see things that will just seem without reason for you.

My goal here is to actually protect you from situations where you will ask yourself “Why is this sound here? What is the reason for that? It makes no sense… Why is this happening?” I actually want to protect you from that because once that happens, then you will get really confused and we can't afford that because we have to learn a lot of things at the same time.

We have to learn a lot of vocabulary, a lot of grammar, and so we really can't afford to get confused.

Everything has to be clear, okay? Languages, usually they are actually regular in terms of phonetics, but these small irregularities, that you could think that they’re irregularities, these are not actually irregularities after all, but these small strange things that can happen are usually caused by these processes like for example assimilation, that we'll talk about in a second.

So just be aware that things like that exist, and that they might also change the pronunciation from time to time, okay? But let's talk about the assimilation.

In Spanish you have a very popular expression, you might have already heard that somewhere.

Un poco, which means a little bit.

And I don't know if you've noticed, but I said um poco, even though we have the letter n here.

And this letter n is always pronounced n in Spanish.

It doesn't have a crazy pronunciation, don't worry, this is a phoneme.

This is a fact even though we have that letter here, we actually pronounce it differently.

In this case here we don't pronounce it [n] but we pronounce it [m]. For example if you say night in Spanish you use the sound n, noche, not m.

You don't say moche, you say noche.

That is when it's regular, but here it's different.

Why is it different? Well, you could say that's an exception here, and you just have to memorize that, but I would rather say that we have a simulation here.

We pronounce this letter here differently, as a different phoneme, due to the fact that we have assimilation.

So because of the phoneme [p] that we have here because we have the sound [p] in this place it's easier for our mouth to create the [m] sound, the phoneme m, okay? It’s just easier for us to articulate that, it's actually easier for our mouth to go from the letter p, from the phoneme p to the phoneme m, than for the phoneme n.

That’s why we do that assimilation.

It's just to actually make it easier for us to pronounce that.

So the most accurate way to actually read that would be un poco, but we don't do that because it's all about simplifying the language, right? About making it easier to use.

And that is completely correct if you pronounce it um poco.

Actually it would be strange if you didn't, okay? So that's the assimilation.

We can also have triphtongs for example, these are basically the same as diphthongs.

You just have three vowels, and they work pretty much the same way.

We can have for example accentation.

Oh that's actually interesting.

In Russian for example you can have for example the word muka.

So actually pay attention, mucha, you put the stress on the first syllable, and if you put the stress on the first syllable it will mean flour, the one to eat, not the one that you stand on, whereas if you actually put the stress at the end and you say "muka", you still have the same letters and the same phonemes, you just change the stress.

If you say "muka" it will mean agony.

So that is the difference between "muka" and "muka". That is the accentation.

And you also have to be aware of that.

You also have that in English for example.

You can say contrast and contrast.

The difference of the noun and the verb.

So that is the accentation, okay? I hope that you get that we can have for example the elision.

If you want to say the school in French you say l’ecole.

Obviously that's a feminine word and you need to have an article if you say something like that, right? So you need a definite article in French.

And I don't know if you know that or not, but in French you have both feminine and masculine articles, and since school is feminine, you have to actually use the article that is feminine.

So la.

So why don't we just say la ecole? We say l’ecole.

Well French people didn't really like to put two vowels together, it would sound not smooth for them I’d say.

Listen, if you say a la ecole it sounds good, but I think it sounds better if you say a l’ecole.

So they prefer these kind of sounds, and to actually avoid that they use elisions.

So what you do is you actually cut the a letter, I would say.

So the a sound from the article.

You don't say a la ecole, but you say a l’ecole.

And that is the elision.

So these are basically different things that might bring some irregularity to your languages that you want to learn.

You need to be aware that they exist, why they are there, and so on and so forth.

There is that.

That is what I wanted to explain here.

So I think we've covered the basis.

If you want to know more about that, then feel free to read more about it on the internet, but you know, once you actually choose a certain language to learn, you will have to use I’d say mostly the movies on YouTube that will actually explain the pronunciation for you, and that will also give you examples of how to pronounce things.

That will give you examles, and so they will most likely also explain things like that.

So maybe it won't be very useful to actually read about all those things that can happen in phonetics, but at least be aware of existence of that.

So this is it for this part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Writing Systems (Problems)

And now, after phonetics, let’s go back to the first question: do you want to speak or write? It’s very important that you ask this question because if you choose a language with a difficult writing system, then obviously you will be able to learn how to speak that language in 10 days, but in terms of writing it’s probably not gonna be possible.

You won't be able to write in 10 days.

Let’s take a look here first.

We're gonna cover Japanese, it’s gonna give you a good example.

First I want you to understand the difference between a regular alphabet, for example a roman alphabet and a system based on characters like for example Kanji because there is a substantial difference here.

And that’s gonna be a big problem.

So as you can see Japanese has already a lot of things going on the screen, and like the most traditional writing system there, the most important one, the very first one is Kanji.

So here we have that, we have Kanji, and people tend to say that’s an alphabet.

If you actually Google it on the internet you will find out that it’s a Japanese alphabet.

I wouldn't really agree with that statement.

I have never really thought about that for any longer because it’s not that important for me, but I just think that when you think about alphabets, usually you imagine let’s say 20, 30, 40 letters that are always the same, okay? And you actually use the same letters over and over again to create different words.

That’s what’s an alphabet for me, when I try to actually analyze that.

Here is not the case, okay? It doesn't work like this.

Every single word has its own character.

I will repeat that, every single word has its own character, and that is the reason why we have more than So it’s not exactly like these are letters, these are separate words that are represented by a given symbol.

And that’s why we actually need for every each of them a different character, and that’s why we have so many characters because we need to distinguish these words.

They have to be written using a different symbol that will be easy for us to distinguish.

And  that’s a big problem if you think about it.

   I think that people in Japan, they study Kanji  until they finish like high school, or even more.

   Something like that.

I’m not sure, but  it’s definitely for a very long time.

   So you can see that it’s most likely a difficult  writing system if it’s taking so much time.

   So Kanji is actually based on the Chinese writing   system, and even though they did  make some changes here and there,   it’s still working in a very similar manner.

  So we'll have the same problem in Chinese.

   And so if you take a look here, you can see the  word fire, okay? The word that we have previously   talked about in Sanskrit.

The word fire, when it’s  written, it’s represented by a single character,   okay? So if you want to write fire in  Kanji you just do something like that,   and that’s the word fire, that you write on  paper.

So you only need that single character   to write the word fire.

You don't need anything  more here, but sometimes you actually have to put   more than a single character together, so it’s  like you're actually combining different words   together, and that is why.

We can see, if you  actually take a look at Japanese or Chinese, like   groups of characters that are  together, that are not separated   and not a single character, like  I’ve mentioned.

But it’s because   in Japanese you actually create words this  way.

So in order to say plane you actually have   to add three different words together: to fly,  to go and machine.

Obviously every single word   here has its own character.

To fly has its  own character, to go has its own character,   and machine has its own character.

But when you  combine them together, you actually have a plane.

   So basically it’s like if you would say “I’m  taking toflighttogomachine” I’m taking a plane.

   This is how it works and well, it’s quite  easy to deduce that they had to make it   this way they had to put words together to create  different words like here because obviously they   wouldn't be able to actually afford writing every  single existing word using a different character  because they wouldn't come up with enough  characters that you could distinguish.

   That’s how it is, okay? But we also have different  writing systems here in Japanese, simplified ones.

   This one for example, Hiragana.

Hiragana is  definitely way closer to a regular alphabet, that   we think of.

When you think about alphabets, what  you have here is you have 46 different characters.

   And here, on the contrary, these characters,  they don't represent any words like in Kanji.

   They represent syllables.

   So for example if we take a look here at this  character we know that it’s actually "ka", it’s   pronounced [ka]. If you take a look here, well,  this is so, so.

So you actually have different   characters representing different syllables,  different characters, representing different   sounds.

And this writing system Hiragana is  very good for people that are studying Japanese,   especially if you want to be eventually advanced,  okay? Especially if you want to be advanced.

   Why? Well, it’s because at start it would be  very difficult for you to actually use Kanji,   but on the other hand it’s good to actually start  studying from the writing system, so that you can   actually understand how the language works, so  that you can actually use books, you can use   textbooks, so that you can actually read about  on the internet.

It’s gonna be very helpful   for you to actually know Hiragana.

And that’s what  you started with.

You started with Hiragana.

So   you learn Hiragana.

It’s gonna take definitely  more than 10 days.

I can already tell you that.

   Bear in mind that it’s the case where you want  to really be advanced later on.

If not, then   you will have a different solution, but  wait for that.

If you want to be advanced,   then you start with Hiragana, you learn it,  you put a little time to that, you invest time,   and then you can start learning the language.

You  can obviously mix that.

It’s up to you and then,   after that, once you get used to Hiragana after  like six months or more, you can start to actually   learn Kanji.

But first you  should focus on Hiragana.

   Obviously there are some different writing systems  based on syllables in Japanese, but this is the   one that I just wanted to show you as an example  because there is also Katagana.

I think that there   are maybe some other things, but I’m not sure  right now.

But when you study Japanese Hiragana,   at start it’s going to be completely enough,  and then you might go for Kanji later on, but   start with Hiragana.

Start with something that is  going to be simple for you because you would need   a lot of time to actually learn Kanji.

You should  first actually start to learn language and not   go over every each Kanji character because  it’s not a natural way of learning languages.

   Those kids in Japan, they first learn how to speak  and then they learn how to write.

First is the   spoken language.

I have already told you that and  so you can't go in the opposite.

First you should   actually maybe try to learn Hiragana, maybe  not perfectly, but you should be able to read.

   And then you start speaking asap and maybe  after like five, six seven months, as I said,   you can maybe try to learn Kanji a little bit,  but you don't have to be perfect in that because   that’s not gonna give you a lot.

It’s gonna be  very good to actually know how the Kanji works to   understand language better.

It’s gonna be good if  you know Kanji, but it’s not like you need to know   every single character in that language.

It’s not  gonna be that important, okay? You will have to   actually learn the most important characters and  that’s gonna be enough.

And you will just stick to   Hiragana for other things.

And at the end you will  also understand why I will stick to Hiragana, it’s   only out of convenience.

There are also other  reasons for that, but I will actually leave you   with this actually small cliffhanger here.

  So even though Hiragana is simplified, it’s   a simplified version of writing in Japanese, it’s  still gonna be actually difficult.

I mean you have   thing to learn.

Even though it’s a simplified   writing system, it’s gonna take time.

It’s  gonna be difficult because it’s actually   quite detailed.

These characters, they actually  are very detailed.

You will have to really get   used to writing them and that’s also gonna have  all to do with muscle memory here.

Obviously if   you compare it to Kanji, it isn't that bad, but  it will still be difficult, and you will need   time to actually learn those writing patterns.

  And you get the idea.

If you want to reach C1,   C2 level, if you really want to know the language  from soup to nuts, then you should go and choose   this way.

So you learn the Hiragana, you learn the  language in a very old-fashioned way I would say.

   If you don't really want to master the language,  if you just want to be able to talk with other   people, maybe to actually watch movies, but  you won't really be advanced anywhere soon.

   Then there is actually a different  solution that you can actually choose.

   As I said, you can learn to speak Japanese in 10  days.

It’s just that you won't be able to write   in Japanese and you won't be able to read in  Japanese, but if you want to learn how to speak,   and you don't plan to again get advanced quickly,   then there is a different writing system  that you can use.

It’s called Romaji.

   So this is basically Japanese written with  Roman letters.

And yes, it is criticized a bit,   especially it was criticized in the past.

People,  they tend to say that it’s not possible to really   learn Japanese with Romaji, and it has to do  with the fact that you have less resources.

You   actually have very little resources, and you  just don't have a lot to support you with.

   Nowadays I actually don't really agree with  that statement.

The situation has changed over   the past few years.

On almost every website  you can actually check the pronunciation.

   Someone is reading different words for you.

  What I mean by that is that someone is reading   the word that you are searching out loud,  and you can actually hear how it sounds.

   More than that, for different languages  that have a complicated alphabet you have   phonetic transcriptions.

  For example Google translate   provides you with that.

So what you can do  is you can learn, in this case, Japanese   only by using Romaji, which is actually  that phonetic transcription to some extent.

   You don't have to learn characters actually, if  you want to speak.

Obviously there are advantages   and disadvantages to that, there are pros and  cons.

Let’s talk about maybe pros at start.

So   it’s gonna be quick.

Again, you won't  have to actually go and learn Hiragana.

   It would obviously take like two months  at least in my opinion.

You won't have to   actually invest time in that.

If you just want  to speak, then you don't care about writing, so   you don't want to invest time in that, so you  can ignore this part completely.

And just go for   the Romaji.

With Romaji you don't have to learn  anything because you already know how to use that   writing system right.

It’s actually based on Roman  letters.

In other words what Romaji does, it takes   Japanese sounds, and it prescribes them to  Roman letters.

That’s how simple it is.

   It prescribes them to Roman syllables and so  Romaji corresponds exactly to how the characters   sound in in Japanese.

You don't really have to  learn how to actually write that down in Kanji,   nor Hiragana.

The sounds are universal.

Again,  it’s just the writing system that changes here.

   They chose to actually write these sounds  down with characters, whereas for example   in English we use different characters, we use  different symbols to write down the same sounds.

   So that’s why you can actually go for  the sounds and ignore the writing part.

   This is why it works and it’s good because it’s  faster.

As I said it’s almost like if you just   write what you hear with your own language.

Isn't  that simple? And yes, here we are using Romaji  because Japanese has a specialized alphabet  for that, but for example if you were to study   languages that don't have that, that don't have  something like Romaji, or pinyin in Chinese,   if you don't have that, then you can just use your  native language and write what you actually hear   prescribe the sounds in a foreign language  to the letters that you're familiar with.

   So that lets you learn languages very quickly and  that’s how actually people like polyglots usually   learn Chinese and Japanese.

They don't  go over characters, no, they usually   just learn using Romaji.

So with Romaji you  can basically start to speak from the start.

   And it’s great if you can do that.

Every polyglot  will tell you that it’s very important to start   speaking asap because you're  giving yourself context this way.

   When it comes to advantages there’s also a  second thing because if you take a look here,   some of these characters that you see in  Kanji, in Hiragana they are quite confusing.

   They are very similar to one another,  and so you could get confused   with that.

But here if you use Romaji, it’s  not gonna be confusing.

It’s gonna be way   more simple for you.

So again you will be  able to focus more on the grammar.

We will be   able to focus more on the word order and other  difficult things.

And you won't have to invest   the energy into writing.

That’s  also very important because overall   you will just have better, I’d say,  work ethics.

It will just everything be,   it’s just gonna be more understandable.

It will  be clear for you.

It’s important that it’s clear,   but sadly there are also disadvantages  here, and I have to mention that.

   The first thing is that you won't be able to read.

   And when you think about it for the first time  you might be like “ah that’s not a big deal,   you can just go to Japan and read in  English, they also write things in English   if you go to restaurants and places like that  they will obviously have an English menu”.   It is true to some extent, but believe me or  not, it will start to be annoying over time.

   And also when you can't read then what you do is  you're actually taking away a very good method of   learning languages from you.

You remember I said  that you should actually use different things,   different techniques to actually learn languages  quickly, that you should be writing, that you   should be reading, that you should be speaking,  that you should be listening.

You are actually   supposed to mix all those things, and  here you won't really be able to read.

   Maybe you will be able to write if you think  about it because you can still write in Romaji.

   It’s going to be just for you, but it’s gonna  work.

So actually writing is gonna work here,   but reading not really, unless there are some  texts in Romaji which I believe they are because   it’s actually very popular.

You won't have a lot  of textbooks, that’s true.

And that’s actually the   second problem that I wanted to bring here.

You  won't have a lot of textbooks.

But I think that   with time you will have more and more resources.

  And I think that even today there are some things   that you can use to actually learn grammar using  Romaji.

There will be websites that will explain   grammar in Romaji.

There will be maybe some  books even, that will explain grammar in Romaji.

   If you won't find enough of that, then  what you have to do, if you want to learn   that quickly, if you want to learn to speak  Japanese quickly, what you do is you get yourself   a language partner that explains that actually  to you, that explains you how the language works.

   And he does that out loud, so we don't need a  book, okay? Here you will have to use Google   translate a lot.

Obviously you will have lists,  for example like 1000 words list with Romaji.

   You can also use that, but overall you will have  to use Google translate a lot and just look for   words that you want to find.

So it’s not how  it’s usually working because usually for example   you're reading text, and you're seeing a word  that you don't know.

You actually translate that   and here you go, you know the word  here.

It’s gonna be a little bit   different because you will have to think  about the words that you want to learn,   and then look for them later on for example.

  Once you speak with other people, then you   will hear the words that you don't know, and then  you will for example Google them because yes,   it works when you actually write a word in English,  and you translate it to Japanese there you can see   the word written in Japanese, but also the  Romaji, but if you do it the other way around,   if you actually write things with  Romaji, then you won't really have   the translation in English, then you won't really  receive the translation in English.

So that’s a   problem.

Maybe there are some translators  that work this way, but Google translate,   it doesn't work like that.

So that will be a  problem for you.

So what you will have to do   is you will have to check characters for the  words that you for example hear somewhere.

   But you can definitely tell that  it would be very inconvenient.

   So a much better thing to do is to actually  look for the words that you don't understand   using your microphone.

So instead of typing you  just record yourself on the Google translate   and what you receive is the word that you were  looking for with characters and with Romaji.

   And that’s how you solve this problem actually.

  But obviously to get better at start is going to   work perfectly fine.

Later on, once you get for  example B1, B2 level, then you will need actually   more than that.

And that’s why you will have  to have a language partner that will actually   help you with that or for example a tutor, okay?  So you have to reconsider all the problems that   are happening here but this is how polyglots  learn languages like Chinese, like Japanese   quickly.

So that is a choice.

Me personally for  example, I always wanted to go to Japan and I will   one day do that and before that I will for  example study Japanese for like two weeks   to be able to communicate with other people.

And I  won't definitely invest that much time to actually   learn how to write in it because I really  like the culture and I would love to do that,   but I have the other things going on  in my life and I can just, you know,   invest my life to learning the Kanji, but it would  be perfect enough for me to just, you know, be   able to speak with people there and try to like  have some conversations.

I don't have to read,   but if French and Spanish, if they weren't like  more important for me and if I were for example to   study only Japanese, then hell no, I would go for  the Hiragana at first, and I would do it properly.

   So that is what you have to decide.

However it  might be good to actually first start to speak,   use the Romaji, get used to the language, and  then maybe after like five, six months you can   introduce Hiragana.

You can also do it this way,  it’s gonna be good.

But be aware that if you want   to be advanced eventually you will have to use  characters.

You’ll have to use Hiragana and Kanji.

   And the farther you go, the more difficult it will  be to actually learn a language without them.

So   I think that you get the idea.

So as you can see  there are definitely pros and cons to that, but   definitely one thing that you can say is that  Romaji becomes more and more useful with time.

   And you have more and more resources, you have  apps that help you for example translate Romaji,   you have you have apps that give you the  pronunciation.

So it’s definitely going   to the direction of actually making people  able to learn languages with Roman alphabets.

   And also what’s actually contributing to that  is that for example if you want to play games,   and you're Japanese, then you actually have to use  something different.

You can’t use really Kanji to   communicate with other people because they won't  be able to understand English in Kanji.

Obviously   you have to write in Roman alphabets.

So it’s  obvious that you don't use Kanji to actually   write in English, you know that.

However  Japanese people, even if they actually write   between themselves, they don't use Kanji, they  don't use their main alphabet anymore actually,   especially on the computer.

So this is  actually what my friend sent me from   Japan and as you can see you won't  really be able to write in Kanji   on a computer or on a telephone because you  have 50 000 different characters.

You won't   be able to choose characters.

You would have  to have a really big keyboard, right? And you   know since computers are important, they had to  actually come up with something to make it work.

   And so since they can't put Kanji here, what  they do is they actually write with Romaji,   with the Roman alphabet.

It’s not only  about using Romaji when speaking English.

   When writing in English, they write with Romaji  to write in Japanese.

Can you imagine that   they write with the Roman alphabet, and  then the program changes characters.

  That’s just very interesting when you think about  it.

So they actually use the same alphabet that we   do, it’s just we use it to cheat that a little  bit.

And they use it to actually overcome the   problem with the keyboard.

So it’s not only  us that are going to use that, it’s also them.

   If you're using a smartphone for example,  then you don't have Kanji neither   there.

You're actually using Hiragana and that’s  also, I think it’s also quite inconvenient if you   think about it because you have like 46 different  characters, so you have to swap pages a lot,   but that’s actually what they do.

I asked my  friend, and he told me that on the phone they   usually use Hiragana, whereas on the computer  they use Romaji.

So still you're not using Kanji.

   So it is quite annoying if you think  about it, but they had to adapt to   the modern world and they did, and that’s a  good thing for us because it helps us also   learn languages with an alphabet based  on characters, characters like Japanese,   like Chinese, like Korean.

Just at the end please  be aware of the fact that if you want only to have   like a B1 level then it’s going to be great.

  The more you want the more difficult it will be   if you don't know how to write, okay? But I have  already, I think I have explained that clearly.

   I just, I’m repeating myself because I don't  want people to actually choose a wrong technique   at start and then, you know, have all the  problems with that.

So again, if you want   to be advanced learn Hiragana.

You can maybe start  to speak first, but don't neglect Hiragana.

If you   just want to be B1, if you want to be B1, B2,  if you want to communicate with other people,   then you can maybe neglect that if you want.

I  would maybe.

You will be able to actually learn   Japanese one day only with using Romaji, to an  advanced level, without having language partners,   without having tutors.

For now it’s not  going to be possible, you can still actually   be advancing speaking, and you can do it alone.

  It’s just that you won't be able to use textbooks,   so you'll have to invest money in tutors,  and you'll have to have language partners.

   Who knows maybe one day we'll have textbook  that will cover the whole grammar and so on.

   Or maybe there are some already, tell  me if you know something about that.

   Okay, now let’s talk about Chinese.

It’s a very  simple writing system and works the same way.

   Obviously you have different characters,  but they work in a very similar   fashion.

Again, you also have the Romanization  here, it’s gonna be called pinyin in Chinese.

   And that’s pretty much it.

You might  be actually wondering what are these because we obviously have syllables that work  the same way.

Like in Japanese you can see that,   but we have also these little things  here, and these are, yes, these are tones.

   If you actually knew that, then it’s good.

If not,  then it’s also good.

You don't have to know that   if you are not interested in languages like  Chinese, but the difference here, in Chinese,   is that actually if you want to learn Japanese,  then it’s a little bit easier because the   biggest problem in Japanese is writing, whereas  here you will actually also have to overcome   problems with speaking because  the tones are quite difficult.

   And it’s going to be quite impossible to learn  them properly in a very short amount of time.

   It’s going to be very difficult to actually  learn how to articulate words properly   in Chinese.

Obviously people will be able to  understand what you're saying from the context,   but it’s not gonna be that much of a problem, but  you will do mistakes a lot when speaking Chinese,   especially if you don't put enough  time into studying the language,   and 10 days are not going to be enough.

So we'll  do mistakes.

People will be able to understand   that from the context again, but it’s not going  to be perfect.

It’s going to be far from perfect.

   So what are tones actually? Well, these are  basically different ways of pronunciating   syllables, right? Let’s take a look here.

We  have our writing system that is called pinyin.

   So we have Roman letters, and we have tones.

  So these little things here on the top,   they actually show us how to  pronounce these syllables correctly.

   And now I will try to actually show you how  it sounds.

It’s gonna be far from perfect but   you'll get the idea.

So that is something  like that would be something like,   that would be, and you could also have something  like that, just facing the other way around,   it would be, okay? So you have tones here, and they  help you distinguish syllables, and depending on   the tone you'll have different meanings.

So it’s a  little bit like with phonemes.

And if you actually   mistake these tones, then you will mistake  words.

So that is a problem to some extent,   but as I said they can understand you from their  context.

They will be able to catch the meaning.

   Sometimes it’s gonna be funny, you will maybe come  up with some swear words or some funny words and   so on, but you will be able to communicate.

But  if you want to be advanced in Chinese, first learn   characters and maybe learn how to speak.

But also  implement characters from the start.

Don’t you go   for pinyin if you really want to master the  language.

You can use that to help yourself,   but don't base yourself on pinyin.

  So here we, we've talked about that,   we've talked about these two languages that are  based on characters, that are definitely difficult   and are obviously the most difficult to learn  in terms of writing, but you also have different   languages that are actually having a different  alphabet than the Roman alphabet for sure,   For example Russian.

Russian has Cyrillic and so  even though this is actually a different alphabet,   sometimes it’s going to be quite similar to the  Roman alphabet as well.

So these are good news   for you.

If you take a look at the phoneme “a” in  Russian is actually written by the letter that is   quite commonly used in the world, right?   This letter is very popular in  different languages.

A lot of languages   choose the same letter to actually show  that sound.

But for example the phoneme v   is written with a letter that is close to  something like b and so that is quite confusing,   right? Some of these letters here will be  similar, but some are going to be different.

   So learning these things will not  be maybe as difficult as for example   learning characters in Japanese or learning  completely new letters in Arabic for example,   or Georgian, but you will also have  to actually put a lot of time here and   learn how the alphabet interaction works.

And  also there is a difference in between the capital   writing and the handwriting in Russian.

So we also  have to for example put some time to learn how to   do the handwriting in Russian.

There’s also that.

  Obviously if you just want to read books, and you   don't want to write using your handwriting,  then you can maybe ignore that, but if you are   at school, or if you want to use textbooks with  exercises, then you have to actually learn that   as well to some extent.

You maybe don't have to  be perfect, but it all depends on what you want.

   So again, you have three options here.

First  of all you can learn the alphabet before the   challenge, for example before you start those  So first you learn how to write, you learn  the letters, you learn how it all works,   you actually, let’s say, you invest a week or  two for that, and then you start the challenge.

   You go for the grammar, the vocabulary and  so on.

That is going to be the best way.

You   will have the best results.

Everything will  be easy, you will take it easy, it’s great.

   And here it’s not going to be that time  consuming as in Japanese.

You can really   actually learn that writing in Russian  quickly because it’s way more similar   to the Roman alphabet.

In Japanese it won't be  enough to actually put like one or two weeks,   and you won't be able to do that in two weeks.

  In Russian it’s gonna be way more simple.

   So with those two weeks you can actually build a  really good base and then go for the challenge,   but there is also the second thing you can  do, what you do in Chinese and Japanese.

   So you could actually ignore the writing, and  you could use Google translate.

You also have   the Romanization there.

It will show you how to  actually pronounce given words.

Let’s keep in mind   that here is really not worth it.

It’s really not  worth the fuss, because this alphabet is actually   simple enough to learn that.

You could maybe try  to learn let’s say the alphabet for like three,   four days even, and understand how it works.

Maybe  without being perfect, without being very precise,   but you would know how it works.

You would be able  to read words.

So it’s really not worth to go for   that and use the phonetic transcription only.

Even  though actually there are people that do that,   there are people that actually go for that,  even if the Cyrillic is not that difficult.

   And I know a person that actually  does that, so the choice is yours.

   If you have 10 days, you don't have more time,  then you can think about writing phonetically   every single word and doing it like you would  in Chinese.

And that’s also going to work   fine.

It’s just later on, that if you  will want to get advanced you will have   difficult times, and you will need to catch up  on that you will have to invest time differently   actually, so you will not save time here.

But it’s  going to be possible.

As I said I know somebody   that actually managed to learn Russian to a very  nice level.

He actually, I would say he’s advanced   maybe, or maybe he’s like B2, and he doesn't know  how to write in Russian.

He only learned how to   speak, he actually wrote everything in Polish.

He  wrote the words that he was learning in Polish,   but he also had to have a tutor, so they would  meet every week, and the tutor would explain the   grammar and fix the mistakes that he was making.

  But it’s gonna be possible.

So that is definitely   the thing to consider, even with Russian, even  though in my opinion it’s not worth that because   as I said plenty times that Cyrillic is not that  difficult and it’s worth actually investing that   time and learning properly.

You could still  actually pull it off without writing, and it’s   still possible.

And the friend of mine is an  example of that.

It’s just that in my opinion,   it’s like going a little bit upstream because you  will have less resources.

You will have to look   for everything manually.

You will have to check  grammar, you will have to pay the tutor, or you   will have to beg language partners to explain  things.

So it’s like making it a little bit   harder for you.

I think it’s just better to learn  how to actually write, how to read and then use   different websites books and so on.

Well,  this depends.

It depends on what you want.

   Now let’s take a look at Georgian quickly.

  Here we actually have a completely different   alphabet, right? So this is also an alphabet.

  It’s very similar like the Roman alphabet.

It’s   just that it has different letters.

  You don't have Roman letters here.

   So in this case it will also take more  time for you to get used to that.

You're   not used to this kind of letters,  these are like drawings for you.

   At start in Russian it’s a little bit better because they seem similar, they seem like Roman   letters.

Here it’s a different thing.

You have  like random drawings.

That’s actually my first   photo when I think about these.

So it won't  be that simple to actually memorize that.

   It’s gonna be a little bit more difficult, right?  In Georgian, if you want to learn Georgian,   some of these are actually quite simple to  write or to draw, whatever you want to call it,   but it will definitely be time consuming.

Georgian  is overall a very difficult language to learn.

   I wouldn't maybe recommend that.

  It has a very difficult grammar,   it has a different alphabet, and  it has very like strange things   happening there.

You have a lot of cultural  clusters.

But the culture on the other hand   is very interesting, and it definitely seems  appealing from that perspective, at least for me.

   And maybe who knows one day I will  actually put some time into actually   getting to know Georgian a little bit more.

  Now let’s take a look at Arabic at the end.

   So here it’s like in Georgian to some extent.

  You have different letters, you have different   like drawings, and it’s also gonna be more  time consuming than for example Russian.

   Also what is worth mentioning is that  these can also vary a little bit,   depending on the position they have in the word.

  It’s a little bit like if you write in English.

   And depending on the handwriting, you have to  actually link different letters.

So here it’s   the same, but it’s not only for the handwriting.

  It’s also for the computer writing.

So this can   vary a little bit.

It’s not that difficult,  it seems intimidating, but it’s really not and   again, the whole problem here is that you will  have to get used to these like drawings these   to these characters, okay? These are not gonna be  that similar like for example in Russian.

So you   have to get used to those like completely new  letters.

That is gonna take time definitely, but   it’s not going to be as difficult as in Chinese.

  And overall this is a phonetical language, so you   just read what you see, and that’s also helpful  that you don't have strange things happening like   in English, that you pronounce different letters  differently in different situations in the word.

   If you want to learn Arabic in 10 days,  then obviously you just go for their own   writing.

You write things phonetically how you  hear them and then, if you want to be advanced,   then you can also put time into learning  the alphabet.

But here, as I said,   it’s worth also putting time into writing because  you can also read all texts.

As I said, that   the language hasn't changed a lot, and there is  a lot of beautiful poetry in Arabic, and it would   be really amazing to actually be able to read  that.

One of the things that I actually wish I   have also chosen, Arabic and maybe not Spanish,  even though I love Spanish, but Arabic is just   that more interesting from the perspective of  history I think.

But well, it doesn't matter,   okay? So at the end, if you want to  learn languages properly and be advanced,   maybe go for the regular methods.

You can  help yourself with phonetic writing.

That’s   also what I did with German.

It’s not like I wrote  everything properly in German.

When I was studying   that I would also use like the phonetic writing,  I would actually write the things the way I hear   them in Polish.

And that’s not going to be a big  problem.

But you have to be able to read and to   know the alphabets to read and be able to get  advanced.

Obviously you can do it without that,   as the person that I mentioned with Russian.

But  you have to pay the tutor, and you have to invest   more time later on.

You don't have access to books  and so on and so forth but you get how it works.

 

 

 

 

 

8. Declension (Problems)

Okay, so this is gonna be about the declension.

   And yes, you might not need that if you want  to learn languages that don't have that.

   It’s especially good to watch that for  people that want to learn for example   Slavic languages or maybe Turkish, you know, all  the languages that have the declension.

However   I still decided to actually record it, even though  I really want this to be fitting every language,   but I think that understanding declension,  even if you don't have that in the language   that you're learning, is actually very, very  helpful because you actually still have the   declension in languages to some extent, and you  will understand why, and it will just help you   choose proper things in grammar.

I will maybe  leave it like that, okay? And now let’s start.

   So first of all I wanted to introduce some  terms here at the beginning.

It’s going to   be a little bit complicated, but I actually  thought it through, and like for the first part   you might not understand everything, that’s going  to be perfectly fine, but with the second part,   once you actually listen to the second part of  this lecture, everything will become clear.

It has   to be this way because otherwise, it will lose its  point.

So as I said I want to introduce some basic   terms at start, so that you understand it and  these are going to be a little bit more academic   indeed, but still listen to them, try to  understand them.

If not then don't get   mad, you will get it later on.

So a few basic  terms: the inflection, okay? You hear me saying   the declension, you can say the inflection,  also case inflection.

And the inflection is   changing words, changing the form of words due to  the declension.

The declension can also be called   case inflection for that because you inflect  cases.

So the declension, the case inflection,   you inflect grammatical cases.

So sometimes  I will say declension, sometimes I will say   case inflection and just be aware of that.

  So inflecting the case, what would that mean?   By inflecting the case you change the grammatical  function of the word that you inflect.

   To put it differently, you change its relation to  the rest of the sentence.

You shift and change the   point of view towards that word, okay? Maybe  now I will give you some examples from Polish,   from the Polish declension, so that you know  what is this function that we are talking about,   what is this relationship that I mentioned.

And I  am not going to mention every single case here in   Polish.

I’ll just talk about these that are a  little bit easier to grasp because my goal is   not to make you like remember every single  case, and how it works, and so on and so forth,   but I want you to really understand this  concept, okay? I really want you to understand   how it works.

You don't have to memorize  that.

You have to understand that.

   So the first thing on our list the first  case that we see is the nominative case,   and how does nominative work? It works as if you  basically had no declension at all, as if you had   no case inflection at all.

So the nominative  case is like having the passive form of the word,   without any relation to other words.

It’s like  this word would be totally passive, death, blind,   and so on and so forth.

Like it would be  antisocial, right? Like it doesn't care   about the rest of the sentence.

It is there, but  it doesn't care about the rest of the sentence.

   And this is what you actually use when you speak  languages like English, like French, like Spanish,   Scandinavian languages, usually  most of the languages actually.

   That is what you use, you use the nominative case.

  And you might be wondering “What are you talking   about, I have never heard about something like  that” Well it’s because you don't have other cases   in your language anymore, and so you don't really  have to think whether it’s nominative form or   if it’s a different form because it’s gonna  change nothing in that case if you have no   other cases.

I have to be careful with the  word case here to not make it difficult,   but okay.

And so as long as you don't have other  cases to inflect, you only have nominative case   in languages like French or like Spanish.

  Then you don't have to analyze that  because that’s the only possibility that you  have, but this is actually the nominative form.

   For example if you take a look at  languages with the declension like Polish,   the nominative form is what exists in our  language, and we use it from time to time, but we   actually don't use it that much  as you could think.

It’s not like   it’s the most used case because well, it  has no relation to the sentence, it has no   function.

It’s like for example you can  that is actually, samochód is car in English.

  And that is the situation where you would use   nominative for example.

From your perspective, if  you are an English native speaker, these are just   regular words, that there is no declension,  again, nothing strange happens, but it is   actually one of the cases.

It’s just one of  the cases that survived in your language.

   So the other examples of the nominative case  for example in English are: book, school,   teacher, words like that.

When you think  about these kind of words in nominative,   well, you would just say that these are rather  just regular words.

“What is the fuss about here?   There’s no declension here.” That’s probably what  you're thinking.

Well, on the contrary that is   the declension.

It still exists in English up  to this day.

It is just the nominative case.

   But what do I mean that English used to have  other cases, and that the normative is the only   one that is left? Well, if you take a look at  the old English, that was spoken long time ago,   it had the declension, it’s very clear.

And  so the nominative form, the nominative case   is the only case that survived up to this day, and  it’s because of the changes to Latin, the vulgate,   and I’ve already talked about that,  so you understand how it works.

   So after years of simplifying the language  the nominative case became this one   and only form of words in English that  is universal.

French was the same.

   The old French had the declension.

Latin  obviously had the declension and then, with time,   they got rid of all the cases, and now they just  speak using the nominative form, the passive form.

But it’s a very interesting thing if you think  about it because there are actually languages   where I think that that genitive is the main  case, and that other cases build up on genitive,   not nominative because you know, usually you  think that the nominative is the starting case that you cut the ending from the nominative, and  you add other endings to do case inflection.

  But there are languages where you actually  start with different cases, you build the cases  on the base of genitive for example.

I’m  not really sure what the language was that,  but I have read about that and,  it was actually shocking for me.

  And if you don't understand what I mean by building up on genitive, it’s a little bit like with that conjugation.

I will give you this example, if you for example conjugate the verbs,   you take the infinitive, and you add for example  some endings, okay? So for example if you want   to conjugate the verb tomar in Spanish  you actually cut the ending "ar" and  what you're left with is tom, and then you add  different endings.

Yo tomo, I take.

Tu tomas,   you take.

So you change these endings, at the  end you change "o, as, a, amos", and so on and so   forth.

And that is the conjugation.

So here it’s  a little bit like that, although you don't change   the verbs, but nouns.

And the starting point is  not the infinitive but the nominative, or in the   case of the languages that I’ve mentioned the  genitive.

And that is quite surprising because   it shows us that maybe nominative was not meant to  be the building case, the starting case you know,   but maybe just the case for these languages.

It  would be a good topic for an essay or something.

   So I think that it all helps you understand  how much languages have evolved over time.

   How changed they are and actually,  how unnatural they actually are now   because if you think about the declension, it’s  a very old thing.

You have already had that in   Sanskrit, in Latin, in Greek.

If you had that  in Sanskrit, then you must have had that before   Sanskrit.

It’s not like they came up  with that.

So they had that before,   so it’s a very old thing.

It’s actually, when you  think about, it’s actually a very natural thing   for languages to have the declension.

That is  basically how they all started to some extent.

   I won't go into different theories  on how people started to speak,   but I do know in fact that people started with a  declension.

They were just, well, at that point it   was just a difference in intonation, that they  would change single words, in quotation marks,   using the different intonation to actually  give a different meaning, okay? So that was the   starting point of the declension, and that was a  very natural thing for the human language to have.

   And so now languages, they lose cases.

You don't  have that and that’s a very, very strange thing   for languages in my opinion.

Also that would  be a very interesting thing to write about,   okay? Now let’s go to the next part.

The next  case that you have here is the accusative,   okay? So this case indicates a submissive relation  of the inflected word towards the subject.

   I take him with me.

“Him” is submissive here  because it’s like it can't react, obviously   it can't, but it’s just the  way that we see that word.

   I took her with me.

In this case her is submissive  here, in a way, in a linguistic way obviously.

   I take him with me, I take her with me, that  person can’t, react that word can’t react neither.

   So that is roughly speaking how it works.

Now  we have the genitive.

So this case tells us   that the inflected word is in a possession  of something, okay? For example father’s car,   mother’s house, boy’s toy.

These are the kind of  situations that would trigger the use of genitive.

   Dative, the inflected word, the word that  you inflect is a recipient of an action.

   For example it would be “I gave it to Judy”   So Judy here in this case is our recipient.

And  so in English we don't change the word Judy,   but for example in Russian if they had the  name Judy, they would definitely change the   ending here because they would have to use  the proper case, which is again dative here.

   The word Judy would require the case  inflection for example in Russian or in Polish,   or in Finnish.

And that is because Judy  receives an action, roughly speaking she   receives something, okay? She is not passive.

As  you can see it’s very hard to actually understand   that from this perspective.

The point is not to  learn these explanations by heart.

As I said,   it’s more to show you what kind of relations  we are talking about, but it’s really hard   to actually describe it by words.

And it’s not  like we, for example Polish speakers, we learn   these kind of things.

No, it’s actually what  you feel when you're speaking.

You never think   about that.

You never analyze that from this  perspective, but I think that it will be easy   for you to understand that if you actually know  it from this like description perspective, even   though it doesn't make a lot of sense, but still,  still I think it’s worth listening to that.

Let’s   continue.

So the next thing that we have is the  instrumental case.

And so here the inflected word,   again the word that will change the form move,  is an instrument, not the one that we play on,   but it is kind of that direction, this is  an instrument using which we complete an   action.

The inflected word is an instrument  using which you or we complete an action.

   An example: “I killed him with a sword,   I was driving by car”, and so the sword and  the car, if English still had the declension,   they would have a different ending because they  would have to follow the instrumental case rules.

   I know that might be difficult for some people  that have for example never studied Latin   because if you don't have that in your language,  then you look at the words differently.

   I think that if you have declension  in your language, then it’s   a completely different way of looking at  words.

I mean it’s not like we imagine   words in a different way, but I think  that there’s this small proclivity,   there’s this like tendency that people,  that are like natively speaking languages   based on the declension, that they have a  more multi-dimensional image of words to   some extent.

It’s not like we conceptualize them  differently, but we see them in a more modified,   maybe precise, way.

It’s a very subtle thing, but  I think it exists.

It’s also an interesting thing   to talk about, okay? And if you  still don't understand how it works,   then it’s completely fine.

Now I’m gonna give  you the main example, the main explanation,   that should really clarify that.

So as I said  before, we used to have the declension in French.

   We also used to have declension in  English, and so on and so forth,   and we will actually take a  look at the old English now.

   So here you see different cases that the old  English had.

And you remember that I said that   now we have only the nominative case.

Well I lied,  I actually lied.

And now you have the surprise   that you still have other cases than nominative  in English.

You still have the genitive.

   Up to this day you still have, even  though you don't call it this way,   even though you don't know about  that, you still have the genitive case   in English.

Men’s house, Peter’s house,  father’s car, mother’s money.

That s at the end   evolved from this ending that you see in the old  English.

When you take a look at the genitive in   Old English you had the letter "e" and the letter  "s", you had the ending "s", and that actually evolved   to what you have now.

Mother’s car, father’s  car.

This is the genitive case.

As I said before   genetive indicates the relation of possession,  okay? And we have that here.

Peter’s car,   that is the possession.

So that is the only case,  apart from nominative, that survived in English.

   But we also still have a very, very, very subtle  traces of the declension in other things,   for example in pronouns.

So if you  take a look here at the pronoun I,   there is actually no additional relation added to  this word.

It’s like it’s in nominative form, but   if you actually change this word, if you inflect  it like you would for example in the accusative,   or dative, then you would actually receive me.

   And that’s what you have here, okay?   So again, dative and accusative, these are  actually two possibilities here that you have.

   If you for example said “he talks to me”  then you would have accusative, “he took me”   will be the dative, okay? So think about this way,  this word “I” and the word “me”, and also the word   “my”. This actually, this is actually the same  single word, it’s just that it’s inflected,   it has different functions so to speak.

So I hope  that this will actually help you understand that   a little bit that these are the kind of functions  that we talk about in a sense, when we talk about   the declension.

This is the function, this  is what, this is what I was talking about.

   Sometimes you kill somebody with something,  sometimes you tell something to somebody,   sometimes you talk about somebody for example.

  And so all those situations, they will have   different endings.

Like you have for example in  the example of father’s car.

This is how it works.

   And so now let’s take a look at the last example  that we have here to actually finish things off,   and to show you how it works from the   I’d say practice side.

So we have a sentence  “give me this map”, and the word map is obviously   very passive in English.

You don't have to inflict  anything.

We know that already, but in Polish you   would have to inflect that.

So if you take a  look at the Polish translation of this sentence, you have actually “daj” which is give in  imperative, you have “mi”, which is me give me,   it’s also inflected here.

It’s a pronoun that  is inflected, and at the end we have the word map   “map?”, okay? So we have the ending “?”. So  first of all we think about the word, and how   it looks like in its passive form, and that’s  actually mapa, Okay? So the nominative form   for the word map in Polish is mapa.

And then  we take this letter here, we take the letter "a",   and we change it to this letter here because  that’s what you do if you take a look here.

   Accusative requires this letter at the end.

  Obviously we have different possibilities   here.

You have feminine possibility, you have  masculine possibility, you can go for plural,   you can go for singular.

You have a lot of  things.

As you can see it’s quite complicated.

   Here the word mapa is feminine, and how do  you know that? Well, the ending “a” usually   is feminine in Polish.

So these are also the kind  of things that you will have to actually learn if   you want to study language with the declension.

  You will have to think about the sex of the word   Later on, maybe not at start, but later on  it will be important, if you don't want to   make too many mistakes.

And so we take a look  at that.

We see that this word is feminine.

   So we take that, we cut the ending from the  word mapa.

So we're left with map, and we add   the ending “ę” because it’s accusative.

And how  do we know that it’s actually accusative that we   actually should choose here? How do we know  that? How do we know that’s the proper case?   Let’s take a look here.

So this is this  relation of submission here, right? As I said   before, “I took him into the car”. It, in this  case, is submissive.

“Give me this map”, the map   is also submissive here.

It works the same way,  because I can do whatever I want with this map.

   And also it is submissive in this linguistic way,  whereas for example if I talked with the map,   say that the map is alive, and that’s a person that  is just called map, and I’ve talked to the map, it wouldn't be submissive in that case.

  So in that case we would use the dative.

   So here we know that we are taking  something that is going to be passive,   and so we are going to use the accusative.

  And as I mentioned before, that is not how   we actually learn the declension.

That is to make  you understand that, but it’s not how you do that.

   It’s not like you can learn  that by heart this way.

   Sometimes it’s gonna be regular, sometimes it’s  gonna be just too difficult.

You will not be able   to differentiate different situations.

It will be  just too confusing.

It’s gonna differ too much.

   You have to do it differently.

So  the way you actually learn declension   is you learn the prepositions, and what kind of  cases they trigger, what kind of endings different   prepositions trigger for example.

Or you can also  learn sentences, which kind of sentences trigger   which cases.

So we actually learned by heart  that if you want to say give me something,   that thing “give me” is always going to indicate  the use of accusative.

And so for example if you   are learning Polish, then every time you would  want to say “give me something, give me a car,   give me a, give me money, give me a house”, and  so on and so forth, you would know that always   after “give me” in Polish you have to add  the accusative.

So this is what I mean,   by memorizing sentences you memorize that “give  me” requires accusative.

You memorize that   “I’m going to tell him something” or telling  somebody is going to require a different case, and   so on and so forth.

That is what you can do.

Just  memorizing different sentences and doing calks.

   Maybe one more example with a sentence that  you can memorize.

“I’m walking with my friend”,   you will know that doing something with  somebody is gonna require a different case,   and so we know that it’s gonna require, we know  I know that it’s gonna require instrumental.

   I’m walking with my friend, ja spaceruję z moim  przyjacielem, em at the end is our instrumental,   and so that word "przyjaciel" is masculine.

  You know that because you know that the   ending el is gonna indicate that the word is  masculine.

If you actually want to study Polish,   you choose the proper ending from the  instrumental case, and you know that it’s   going to be instrumental because you for example  know different sentences that work this way,   or maybe you have learned that every time you have  the preposition “with” in Polish you will have   the instrumental, and so thanks to that you know  what ending you should have.

That is how you   should actually learn the declension.

That is  how you should actually learn the basis of the   declension because after all you will also have  to actually get used to how it sounds.

Again, the   muscle memory is going to be very important here.

  So that you will be able to learn that perfectly,   but you will have to try.

And once you get on a  level where you are able to do like, let’s say,   like half of the case inflection properly, then  the second half is where you will get better,   more or less automatically I would say,  just by getting used to the language.

   And so you'll know that this case is going  to be here, in that case it’s going to be   there, and so on and so forth.

As you can  see the declension is rather difficult.

   At this point you realize that you will not be  able to learn that in 10 days.

What you can do is   you can speak with the nominative.

Really, you  can just speak with the nominative case actually.

   So you just use words passively, like you would  in English, like you would in French.

You don't   inflect cases, okay? And believe me or  not, but I’m Polish, I’m telling you that   from my perspective everyone will be  able to understand what you're saying.

   You can speak passively at start.

  We also have prepositions in Polish   like in the other languages.

So that will  help you actually express what you mean.

   If you want to learn only 10 days or if you  just start to learn language with the classroom,   then speak passively.

And then if you want  to get better, if you want to get advanced,   if you really want to get those C1, C2  levels, then you learn that with time.

   At start actually get used to the language.

  Get used to other things.

Learn vocabulary.

   And then with time add cases, one by  one I would say, that would be the best   because if you actually mix them all at  once, then it’s also gonna be very, very bad.

   So that is what you do with language with  declension.

At start use the nominative case,   and then, after like a month of studying  the language, you can start to introduce   different cases.

And so for example if you  only want to study Russian for 10 days,   then ignore other cases.

Only use the nominative  case because you would do too many mistakes,   and it wouldn't change anything.

It’s actually,  it will actually be more understandable if you   only use the nominative case, than when you  use different cases incorrectly in my opinion.

   So using nominative is gonna be fine.

It’s gonna  be funny to some extent, but it’s gonna be fine.