 Hi, so today I'm going to talk about languages and language learning again. And this is because I am, well first of all because I'm planning on going to Korea soon. My wife and I are going to be going to Korea for a week and we're also moving as you can see with all the boxes in the background. It's a lot going on at the same time. But we're planning on traveling there and so I'm trying to bring my Korean back up to par. And I've mentioned this before in past videos. Since I've studied quite a few languages, I can never, I'm not one of those people who can juggle different languages at the same time. I know there's certain people who can switch from language to language to language. I cannot do that at all. So what I'll do is when I know I'm going to use a language, if I'm going to travel somewhere or if I know I'm going to be in some other situation where I'm going to use a language, then I have some certain regiment that I follow depending on the language and how much time I need. When it comes to English or Italian, I usually don't need anything and I can switch into it right away. But for any of my other languages, I need some runway before I get there to try to get the language back. And Korean is one of these languages. I studied Korean a long time ago, 15 years ago or more, something like that. And I studied it to a certain level. It was never all that good. It should have been better. But obviously since then, I've gone elsewhere, done other things, studied other things. And so I haven't really kept my Korean up to par. So now whenever I do go back to Korea, I try to dust off my Korean books. If you can kind of see it down there, I have my Korean vocab, my index cards, my flash cards and I try to get it back. I also have podcasts and stuff like that. And so this is what I wanted to talk about now. I wanted to talk about some methods that I use for language learning that I don't hear much about anywhere else. And for me, they're very useful to me. So I wanted to mention them and hopefully they can help you out with your language learning. I also bring this up because I did another video recently about language learning, which seemed to be quite popular. So it seems like it's something that you guys are interested in, which makes sense. I mean, if you're freelance translators, then if you're translators, you're into languages. And so presumably learning languages is something that you're into. So anyway, let's get into it. So the first method that I use that whenever I'm studying a language is talking to myself. And this happens when you're in a situation where you're studying a certain language, but it's not that convenient to find people who speak that language to talk to. And I know you can always find meetups. You can try to find places, your local from a restaurant to a meetup to a group or whatever people who speak that language or else there are many websites for language exchange. You can just go over Skype and talk to people in different languages and that can help. However, you still kind of need to plan those out. You need to set a certain time and it can be sort of an effort. And you can do stuff that takes no effort, such as talking to yourself. And so I would do this a lot, especially since I was learning Chinese and I was not in Taiwan and I didn't have anyone to practice with regularly. I found myself just talking to myself in Chinese and it would just be something during the day. Like if I'm working, if I'm done working and I'm trying to think about what to do next or what I should be doing, I'll be like, you know, ah, 工作昨晚了,可是現在現在要做什麼,我不知道啊,要買東西我還沒買東西. And you know, then I think about the next things I need to do during the day. So a couple of things. First of all, I like this because it's very easy to do and you can do it at any point in time. You don't need someone else to talk to even you can just start talking yourself. Now right away you might think, okay, that's great. Start speaking in whatever language you're learning, but no one's going to correct you. What if you make some mistakes? What if you say something incorrectly? And that's true. But the fact is if you're chatting with someone, especially if it's a friend or someone you know or anyone around there and you make a mistake, chances are they're not going to correct you. If they understood you, if they get the gist of what you're saying, they probably won't correct you just because they're trying to get on with the conversation. And so you'll find a lot of the same issues. In fact, when I'm speaking by myself, I find that I'm much more in tune with what I should be saying and wondering, I question myself a lot more. Well, if I'm talking to someone else, I don't do it because I figure if they understand me, it should be okay. And so anyway, I don't think that's too much of a problem as compared to talking to someone who's not a teacher, say when it's language exchange or just talking for fun because you kind of get a feel if you're saying the right thing, if you're saying the wrong thing or fear, there should be a better way to say it. And so you can also correct yourself if you're doing this. And regardless, I think the benefits outweigh the bad points because you're able to use it whenever you want. When you're thinking about what to do with your day, when you're just commenting on what's going on, you can do it, even do it inside your head. If you're in public, you don't have to say it out loud. So talking to yourself is the method that I think is very useful. And just going through your day, going through normal stuff, trying to say it in the language that you're learning, I think can be very useful. That's point number one. Point number two is something that I do now with something like Korean, which I have studied before, but I've forgotten so much of it. I haven't been using it much. What I'll do is I find all these podcasts that I can listen to or even stuff on YouTube and whatnot. And I might start with stuff that I know I've studied already and but I just need to review it. But what I'll do is I'll listen to it at 1.5 or double speed. So I listen to it at double speed and that forces me to really be quick with my understanding. Make sure I understand what they're saying, even when they're speaking double speed in the language I'm learning, which is Korean now. And usually in these podcasts, they'll say something and then you're supposed to say the translation or they give you some time to say stuff. And you have to understand what they're saying. And I have to do that as well in the limited amount of time, even though it's double speed, I have to keep up with it. And that, that way I get to review what I've already learned, but I do, I have to do it really quickly. And it's a crash course and doing it. And like with anything, when you listen to a podcast, like don't do it passively, actually follow along. And when they want you to repeat after them and do stuff, you should repeat after them, do these exercises. You have to be active when learning a language. Passive stuff never works as much as people like to tell you it does. It doesn't. You have to be very active when you do this. And so, but yeah, if you ever have studied a language before and maybe you're getting back into it now, or if you let it go for a while and you want to get back into it and you want to review something, I think it helps to review at a bit faster speed because I maybe start off normal speed, but then get a bit faster. If it's stuff you've already reviewed, just see what pace works for you. But if you do something like this, then it lets you, but let's you review, but with more of an expert ear, if you will. And it forces you to keep up as well. And I think at least for me, it helps me out. Because then I can cover a whole lot of material that I've already reviewed and I don't feel like I'm wasting time and also I have to stay on my toes and I have to keep up with it. So that's the second method. Try to review stuff I've already done, but at double the speed or 1.5 the speed or whatever it might be. YouTube as well, by the way, the videos, you can make them double the speed or faster as well. I'm sure, you know, they're in the settings. You can do that, at least on the computer. I always have issues when I try doing it on my phone, but fine. Anyway, those are the first two methods. Oh, and the third method is something I like to do. And that is, so I mentioned one of the issues I have when speaking a language, if someone comes out of the blue and wants to speak French or German with me right now, I won't be able to think in that language. And it's very hard. I do have friends who are able to switch very easily, but I can't. And so what I'll have an issue I have, and actually, I shouldn't say. I shouldn't say it's always in that case. I have this pretty much all the time, depending on the language, like with Chinese or something like that, is if people start talking or if I'm having a conversation with a lot of people who are native in that language, I can't really keep up. I always feel like I'm two steps behind, right? And they're speaking and they're speaking at the normal rate. And I can sort of follow kind of, but I'm always trying to process what they're saying. And by the time I think of a response or a comment or something to say based on what they've been talking about, they've already moved on. And this makes it really hard to join into conversations. And after a while, then I'll start just thinking about other things. My mind starts wandering. I can't keep up with the conversation and that doesn't mean no good. So especially when you're with a group of people and you're trying to keep up, you know, if they're not keeping the conversation slow and simple for you. So if it's not a teacher language exchange, but just with a group of people and they're having conversation at their own rhythm and you want to keep up, you want to be part of this conversation. A method that I've used and that I like is I memorize the conjunctions. So at the beginning, I would only memorize and that don't make sense in a second. In the beginning, I would only memorize things like however, but. But now I try to do other conjunctions like therefore or so something like that. And the reason for this is because if you're having a conversation and someone's talking, say someone's talking about cars and they're saying something, something about their car, blah, blah, blah. And you would like to comment, but you're still trying to process what they're saying, but you want to come up with a comment before the next person says something. Then what you can say right away is, yeah, but however, and then people will stop and look at you and wait for you to say something. At that point, you have to come up with something to say. But that's what I mean by a conjunction, but by something that kind of continues the conversation. At the beginning, I would always have something, but or however, something to contradict them, because then that forced me to contradict whatever they said. And so and it came to mind because now again, I'm studying Korean, so I have crotchiman there. But it could be like Curigo, Cureso, I don't know. There are all these weight conjunctions, let's say, in in Korean. And I try to keep them top of mind. So then if someone's talking about their car, say, say someone's you're talking to someone in Italian, this will make it easier. And you hear Macchina la mia macchina, this and that. You're like, oh, they're talking about their car or something. Then you can say and this will depend. The exact terminology will depend on the language, but you can think of a conjunction such as but or however, something like that. And you can say something like, si, pero. And then they'll stop and look at you. And then you need to come up with something. But at least it gives you those couple of seconds to come up with something. And you can say, si, pero. I'm not a coach, but I should be convenient or something like that. And, you know, going with a train is more convenient, it's quicker. And they'll be like, oh, no, I mean, I love driving to work or, you know, I just love sports cars or something like that. And it's understandable if you're learning the language that maybe you didn't even you didn't understand 100% correctly. That's fine. That doesn't matter at all. But just being able to get a word in edge wise is the reason you want to memorize these conjunctions. So if it's if it's in Italian, it would be something like si, pero. Or if you don't want to constantly disagree with them, it can be something like ad dunque per c'ho, you know, something like that. So therefore, and just memorize these words. So while you're in a conversation, you just have them top of mind already. And even if you can't really follow along, it gives you an excuse to interject. And you can say si, pero, and then they'll turn to you and then you'll be like, and they know you're learning the language. They'll give you a second or two, like it's fine. You know, don't worry too much about it. You just seem to come up with something to say. But at least it lets you it gives you that in and because otherwise they're going to continue talking at their own rate and it and it'll be really hard for you to interject. Anyway, that's it. Those are just three messages, three methods that I find quite useful and that I I don't see much. I haven't I didn't invent them and, you know, I've seen them around, but I hardly see them. I hardly see them at all and I find them quite useful. So I find it odd that you don't see them very often. So I hopefully you can find them useful as well when you're learning your various languages. And yeah, if you find if you know any other methods that you think might be useful and you would like to share them, please feel free to please let me know or please put them in the comments below because I always like to know other methods for learning languages. As you know, I really enjoy learning languages. And yeah, that's about it for now. I'll talk to you in the next video. OK, thanks. Bye.