 What's up, guys? EvilDee here, your God! And tonight I'm going to cover two questions, which I receive from one of my viewers. Now, I've already individually responded to him, but I figured the questions were interesting and why not share them with everyone? Perhaps this will help someone who's learning Esperanto. Now, this video is in English because it's really only suitable for people who are learning Esperanto. For the Esperanus that watch my channel, please just wait until tomorrow. So what are the questions? First up, what flashcard program do you use and how should I use mine? And two, when will I be fluent and how do I reach fluency? So first up, my flashcard program. So I'm just going to show you two here. As you can see, I use a very basic flashcard program, but really you can just use any. This is called MemoSync or MemoSign, or I don't know how to pronounce it, whatever. Someone will figure it out. I don't care. So yeah, it's a simple download, you can put it on any computer, it doesn't make any registry changes. It's nice and simple. So what I'm going to say about flashcard programs, okay, is they're awesome when you're first learning the language. They help you to embed words that you're learning in maths, okay? Now what I'm going to say though is a lot of people kind of with flashcard programs stick individual words in there. Now although that's kind of good in a sense, try and focus on putting words in context, so in sentences themselves. Now there's several reasons for this. When you learn a word by itself, it's very hard to associate it with a concept, it's easy to associate it with an English word, but with an actual concept and how it's used. So for instance, verbs are all used in certain ways. They're either transitive, intransitive, they attach to certain adverbs and stuff like that, you know, they use certain pronouns or post-propositions, stuff like that. They're all used in certain ways in every language, even in Esperanto, okay? So the best way to learn any word is actually in context. So if you're going to use a flashcard program, put it in context. Now a second benefit of this is that you actually learn a whole heap of words at one time with one card because they're all in context and it has to be more than one word. Now there's a third bonus to this is that there's going to be a lot of crossing between the different cards and this forces you to learn all the different words from all the different angles the word could be used, okay, in all the different, like, nuanced environments. So if you're going to use a flashcard program, which I recommend when you first start with Esperanto or any language, put sentences in. Don't put individual words in unless you have to and you can't figure out how would it exist in the sentence, but it's best to put it in a sentence and if you can't figure out a sentence well, then probably don't put it in there in the first place. Now another thing I'm going to say is as soon as you can, get rid of the flashcard program. The flashcard program is for a long time. Now the reason behind this is because flashcard programs are good for getting a massive amount of vocabulary in, but they're not good for really adapting yourself to the language and this will lead into the second thing, fluency. For instance, you're going to, there's going to be a lot of sentences and I used to do this. I'd put tons of sentences in there. Very handy for getting yourself off the ground, however, there's a limitation. You cannot cover everything. You cannot cover every concept, every nuance to a word. You got to look up a word in the dictionary. I guarantee you there's ways that word is used within the language, even in Esperanto, which aren't in that dictionary. Words evolve with the language. For instance, a word might be used in a certain context in everyday life, but in science it has a different meaning. In religion, it has a different meaning yet again or at least a different nuance to the meaning and a different way it's used. So what I'm going to say is get rid of the flashcard program as soon as you can and start reading, listening to music, speaking and writing, okay? Because that is the only way you're going to start learning the language completely and with every type of nuance and how it's actually put together, okay? And that's where it will lead into fluency as well. Now, so basically, flashcard programs are good, use sentences, dump it as soon as you can. Now I'm going to move into the second point which was why am I not yet fluent and how do I reach it? So this question came from someone who'd almost completed their doorling or tree and they felt that they weren't fluent yet. And I'm just going to say right up, you're already fluent to a degree. Now fluency is a very ambiguous word or idea, okay? So what is it generally? What do people mean by fluency? They mean that you're able to express yourself in the language and understand obviously other things in the language without pretty much any interruption, okay? Now you can be fluent about everyday concepts, but that doesn't mean you're fluent about religious concepts. That doesn't mean you're fluent about, you know, concepts that only doctors would care about or programs would care about. In all honesty, there's a lot of things I'm not fluent about even in English. I can't discuss, you know, doctors jargon in English and you might say, well that's not really fluency. That's just specialized language, but technically it's part of fluency, isn't it? See fluency is so ambiguous, there's no end to it. Literally, I reckon if I grab an English dictionary, there'd probably be a good 30% of the words in there. I just don't know. So what is fluency? I would say that fluency is being competent, able to speak without too many problems and understand without too many problems, everyday topics, okay? And things that interest you, or at least interest the general population. So are you fluent yet at the end of the Duolingo tree? No. I'd say you're about middle level, okay? There's a lot of things that you will still be translating in your head and you don't have fully embedded yet, but you're already becoming fluent in certain things. So let me explain what I mean by this. So imagine that you've got a piece of paper, okay? It's a very large piece of paper. And on it is written every single word and concept of the entire language, the entire language of Esperanto. I know that's impossible. Just imagine, okay? And right in the middle is the first words that you learn, soluton, which means hello. Kielbi farotas, you know, how you do it and tell the thing. And from there, stretches out to conversational topics and then stretches out further into like science, religion, politics and stretches out even further into just like random topics like programming or, you know, or, you know, wiki-based language and stuff like that. So when you first learn a language, you've got this piece of paper, okay? And imagine that you're holding it above a bucket of water and the bucket of water is your full understanding, full fluency. And you dip the water literally on the word hello and what happens from there? It starts growing out. It soaks outwards, okay? That's what happens with fluency. You start with one concept and you fully understand that concept. If I say soluton to you now and you're even a couple of lines into the doorlingual tree, you know what that word means off the top of your head. You don't have to translate it in your head in English. So that literally means you're fluent in that one word and concept, okay? Fluency is just that on a massive scale. So as you progress through the doorlingual tree, you'll become fluent at more and more concepts. Not fluent in the entire language, but you're beginning to become better and better at different concepts. But there's a certain stages to fluency. First, there is recognition of the word, okay? But you still need to translate it to fully understand it. Next comes the point where you know what it means, but you might not know how to use it in, say, every context. And then from there becomes complete matter of freedom of using the word, okay? And knowing what it means on site without any form of translation. Sometimes you might not even know the English equivalent, which is what's gonna happen when you get further and desperate, there's a lot of words you just can't back translate into English. And means you're gonna have to jump over that barrier. So with that piece of paper again, you've dipped it in water, you've learned hollow, you're fluent in that. It spreads out, you now learn all the everyday concepts about the weather, about talking to people, about meetings and stuff like that. And then from there what's gonna happen is that it's gonna spread in all sorts of random directions and you're gonna become fluent in different topics based on your interests. If you're really interested in, say, gardening, and you read a lot about gardening, and you start reading a lot about gardening in Esperanto and talking about gardening with your friends who like to garden in Esperanto, you're gonna become really fluent at gardening conversation. But that doesn't mean you're gonna be fluent at religion and stuff like that. So fluency is not just something where you just boom, wake up one day and go, my God, I can speak everything, I'm awesome. It doesn't work like that. It's a gradual process of where you slowly spread through the language. And even myself, I am not fluent in everything in Esperanto. There's a lot of concepts I cannot discuss, and that's why I do, for instance, my science videos. I like to go read about these science topics in Esperanto so that I will learn these words and concepts. Now this links back into the flashcard program. Once you start focusing on using the language, reading in it, listening to it, speaking in it, you're gonna start embedding all these concepts in how they're meant to be used in everyday conversation. And you won't need flashcard programs anymore. But this is where a little bit of people get hit with withdrawal. They'll have these massive flashcard lists and they'll be like, my God, I can't dump my flashcard program. There's so many words in it. What happens if I start forgetting them? Which is gonna happen because I'm not repeating every single word. Well, you're gonna forget words, that just happens, okay? But it's like with English. I learned tons of concepts when I was back in school, which I guarantee you right now, I don't know the words for. Certain things about mathematics, certain things about science because I just don't discuss those concepts anymore. What will happen is you will start to learn and embed words that you actually need and use. And eventually, even those really rarely used words because you'll start to encounter them say once every couple of months in a book, we'll start to embed as well. So it's basically a gradual process. So the entire idea behind this video is use flashcard programs. They're good at the beginning. Stick with sentences. Sentences help in context. Dump that bloody flashcard program as soon as possible. Start reading, listening to music and watching videos. There's plenty of videos in Esperanto, not just my own. There's speeches here on YouTube, there's children shows. Children shows, watch them. They are awesome for very basic everyday vocab. Finally enough, a lot of Esperanto courses will teach you international politics before they teach you how to go down the shop and order a pie. So yeah, just interesting little side thing there. So that's it. If you've liked this video, give it a like. Share it around with your friends. Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. And I'll see you all in the next video. And if you're not there, I will create a flashcard program and I'll list your entire family members in there and I'll memorize that basis so that I can find them in the street. No. And as always, I'd like to thank my Patreon supporters because honestly without them, this channel couldn't exist. And you too can help if you want. There's a link down in the description to Patreon. Dollar a month is all I need. So, my Patreon supporters are Andri Temp, Von Kodakom and Santo, Chris Padu, Craig Robinson, Gibi Ante, Jacob Haibadep, James Harle, Jayza Nakuzel, Disto, Lupe, Margarita, Kilpac, Robert Nielsen, Robert Port, Sarah Essie, Shane Power, Tommy Lindsley, Andy Montinez, and you know who.