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Complete Podcast Transcript

Note:  This is an unedited (AI) machine transcription that is bound to have a lot of boo boos.  I provide this as a courtesy for those that prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast but as a team of ‘one’, I am not able to go back to correct the transcript.  Thus, please accept my apologies in advance for any errors.  I appreciate you!  Kit

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always struggled with trying to learn a new language and with as much as I travel, I do always try to learn the key polite phrases for any country that I go to. But I do struggle with it. I have been in and out of somewhat butchered conversational Spanish for most of my life and I’ll lose it. I just, I just can’t tend to keep it in my brain. So I thought I probably not the only one with this struggle. And so I reached out to an expert that I brought on the show today to show us some ways that will make it a little bit easier for us to communicate in a foreign language and to learn a foreign language. So let’s get started.

Well actually before we get started, I’d like to make sure that you have hit the subscribe button on this, the adventure trial show podcast and also the companion podcast, active travel adventures were we go to destinations where as this one teaches you the how tos of adventure travel after travel adventures teaches you all about some really cool destinations around the world. So be sure you subscribe to both of them. They are free on any podcast app and it helps boost my presence as well as making sure that you never miss out on an episode. Thanks. So now let’s get going on how to learn languages.

So we have with us today, Kirsten cable with the fluent language company. She is an expert in teaching and coaching foreign languages. She does immersive retreats to her native Germany of a, she now lives in England. She’s an author and all around expert in getting us a feel of what we should be doing and learning as far as foreign languages when we travel and just in general. So welcome to the show Kirsten. Hi kit. Thank you so much for having me on your show. Yeah. Delight. Yeah. We met at podcast movement Orlando last summer, so it’s nice that we were able to reconnect

on a very cold January day, at least for me.

Yes, yes. So you are now living in the UK. Tell us a little bit about your, your backstory and where,

where are you coming from? I have been living in the UK since 2003 actually I moved from Germany to the UK and before I moved, I think it was my dream to move to the UK, which is, is a weird thing to think back on now. But I grew up and I was a bit of an Anglophile really. I’m a German native. Yeah. I’m in folio, German national, then moved to the UK. I went to university or in the UK, met a guy [inaudible] together and that kind of thing. So I’m pretty sure settled here. But I’ve always loved travel and I’ve always, always loved languages, so that never really left me. And now I work helping people learn languages and people from all kinds of backgrounds, especially my heart is with adult learners who just want to learn, you know, rather than need to desperately learn for work. I think that’s most of English native speakers in the world and the challenges are a little bit different to kids in full fulltime education. I find it incredibly interesting. You can really work with a lot of psychology there.

Oh, very cool. Now you speak around seven or eight, maybe even nine languages.

[inaudible]

you also started to learn a little bit of the Russian and Mandarin and is this something, I mean you just seem to be a polyglot that can pick them up. What about somebody like me that’s always struggled with foreign languages? Is it something that there’s hope for us? Absolutely. There’s hope.

It’s a lot of work. Let’s not tell a lie here, right? If you really want to get to a point in a language where you’re very, very comfortable and you’re having those conversations, the the trick has to, or I would say one of the first steps to really consider is to know how long it takes. Because I’ve been learning Chinese for, I’m coming into my second year now and I still can’t really say much more than like my dad likes to eat rice or something like that because there is just a lot to learn and I don’t do seven hours a week or something like that. You know, most weeks I have other things to do. I’ve got a business to run. So you kind of have to fit it into your life. I speak four languages, I would say fairly fluently, certainly at a level that most people find absolutely functional and good. And I would say with the exception of Welch, which I madly fell in love with, those are the languages I have been doing the longest. I think people underestimate time and overestimate talent when it comes to language learning.

Gotcha, gotcha. So why should we in the first place even bother to learn some of the local languages before we travel?

Hm. That’s an interesting question and I almost want to put that question back at you because you’ve traveled so, so much. So do you feel you want to

I did. Well, I always try to learn at least like 10 phrases, all the polite language I like to know. And then I also want to know how to find the toilet and whenever the local language is cause that can be urgent depending on the time. Um, but I like it because you can interact with locals more and it gives you more of an immersive experience when you do travel.

That’s it. It’s, it’s that immersive experience is that raising a smile and just going beyond, you know, somebody who listens for this type of podcast is not necessarily somebody who’s just happy to, well, I don’t know, go to the American diner on a Spanish Island. You know, you want to experience the real place. You want to experience the world for what it really is. And for most people that means it’s just not enough to just kind of come in and not know any of the language and then everybody makes an effort, speaks English for you. You never quite feel the same part and you’re not welcomed in the same way. It’s also a token of respect to the locals who are opening their, you know, in a way their home, even if it’s their country and not their literal house. It’s a token of respect to them to show, I am interested and I want to know more about you.

Yeah, and I think too, if you don’t participate at all in the culture, it’s like you’re looking inside of a fishbowl and that and that people in the culture are the, the water and the goldfish. Whereas when have a connection, even if it’s a bumbling conversation, those are usually my favorite memories anyway, and you laugh, you have a connection with the people versus being this outsider with this wall, be it glass or whatever. I’m just kind of looking in and observing a culture. You actually become part of the culture in that little teeny way.

Oh, absolutely. One of my favorite, favorite memories in, um, of my, when I used to travel to Kazakhstan, which was one of my business travel destinations, one of my favorite memories is flagging down a taxi in the street and by taxi in, in [inaudible], you basically mean just a car and you just stand at the side of the road. Someone’s going to stop, you haggle a price, and then they take you somewhere. And I just jumped in his car. I was like, right, I’ve got to get to my hotel, got things to be done. And turns out he didn’t speak a word of any of the languages I knew and I didn’t speak a word of any of the languages he knew. And basically my Russian wasn’t particularly significant at the time. So all we managed to really do is I managed to say 300 which is, which was the number I could say in Russian.

So that was what I paid him, no matter how far we went. And then we just managed to kind of laugh our way through navigating to her hotel, which turns out he didn’t know where it was. So I’m just shouting the street name at him and going into the street and just pointing, um, and just sort of go neck, front suit front. Shefsky German, do you know Jim? And he and him saying, well it’s fake Oh spec. And I think he’s trying to say I speak Uzbek and it’s just, he had such a good humor about it. I was in, you know, I was in the right mood for it. It turned out this, the whole taxi ride was just a massive giggle and so, so much fun. And that is the kind of thing, you know, those bundling conversations, they’re the best memories and we forget in situations like that, that he’s probably going back home and telling the story too. Maybe have the crazy lady in his car.

Yeah. But cause he got a laugh out of it too. It’s a memory for him as well. So it’s not just your side of the memories situation. And I did, I just, you’re, you were part of his life that day.

That’s a wonderful thought. That’s very, very true. And if you just come and you know, you’ve come with [inaudible], I don’t want to say the arrogance because for many people it’s more the shyness, but when you’re not ready to kind of get involved, you miss out. That is at the heart of travel, right? That’s, that’s what makes travel better. So in a way learning a bit of the language is kind of learning a bit of the life.

Right. And I was going to ask you a little bit about this later, but since it kind of ties into what you just said, I think a lot of people are so afraid to make a mistake and Bumble and that inhibits them in language learning. Whereas if you just get out massacre and butcher it, that’s how you’re going to learn. So what are some of the traits of people that actually

do grasp a new language? Mm, that’s a really interesting one. And I’m thinking back to every immersion retreats that I have led and the differences between my speakers of different languages. And I think you are right that the people who I find most successful in communicating in the language are not the ones that give me the grammatically best sentences. They’re not the ones that ask me about every single rule, but they’re the ones who have had a lot of input because one of the, from a linguistic and a learning science point of view, you learn best when you are exposed to input that you can just about understand. It’s called comprehensible input. So the more you can kind of get, okay, comes in at your level, the better. And the way that you can get that when you’re in a country is essentially by presenting yourself with all your imperfections because everybody else will accommodate and we’ll simplify what they’re saying.

So those people also then come and ask me as the two to the cleverest questions, and it all begins with being willing to interact and put yourself out there. And you can do this no matter whether you’re traveling or not because there are ways now online and I can kind of talk through them if you want of getting exactly that kind of exposure in a foreign language and the interaction in a foreign language, even when your language learning level is very, very low. But you have to have good humor about it. You have to essentially do a way you kind of clean your mind off the bad experiences that you may have had in school and have any kind of achievement thinking that is related to whether you are correct or not in languages. It doesn’t matter if you correct because what starts is to communication and it’s your mistakes and your corrections that you then get back. That will actually teach you a lot more because that is when you’re open to them.

Yeah, so basically we’re saying it’s better to speak poorly than did not speak at all and that’s how we learn. And in fact, believe it or not, I have my certification to teach English as a second language and they call it the plus one. We’d always try to just stretch a little bit beyond what they know to stretch their boundaries, to get them to grow that next step.

That is exactly it. It’s called the zone of proximal development. If I’m remembering that correctly,

I get the impression or I hear, I’d actually didn’t experience this for myself when I was in France, that some countries don’t like you butchering their language. France has that reputation of that. Is that something like some languages or some countries are more apt to embrace you trying their language or are there personalities of that way or does that make any sense at all to you? There are two

issues that may contribute to people thinking. This one where I really feel there might be some truth to it and one where I really think the impression leads to a misunderstanding. So I’ll start with the misunderstanding cause that’s probably more common. And I think maybe the French get his reputation because France and in particular Paris is, as far as I’m aware, one of the most visited cities in the world. Americans love Paris, Brits love France. Everybody goes there. Um, at the same time people want to have to kind of tourist level interaction most of the time and at the same time people have done a bit of French so it’s kind of the one where people have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. Then they go to fronts and then commonly the mistake language learners make when the in country is to expect the first person they run into to kind of become their exchange or study buddy partner, right?

That person becomes the litmus test for all your language learning so far. And that person usually is somebody who’s just trying to get a job done and they kind of don’t care, right? They’re not here to help you with your language. They’re just here to perhaps help you with your luggage, check you in or or even like drive your bus or something like that. And then what, what often happens, and this happens in Germany too, in Germany it’s less interpreted as, Oh, the Germans don’t like it. The I butchered the German and it’s more interpreted as, Oh they all want to speak English because their English levels are so high. And there is a grain of truth in both of them, but my feeling for this really is that it’s just a case of mismatched expectations from the learner to the first person that they run into in the country.

Interesting. I would never thought it in that way. So let’s say, all right, so let’s say we’re preparing for a trip. All right, I’ve got one coming up. I’m going to Portugal. I don’t speak any Portuguese. I do speak some Spanish. How much time do you think it’ll take me to get, I’m not gonna say conversational, but, but get to the bumbly conversant stage reckon and kind of communicate a little bit and what kind of thought processes are or what recommendations would you have for me? I recently spoke to my friend Shannon, who is a fellow sort of obsessive language learner a little bit, and she went on a trip to Iceland, had a flight from I think LA to Reykjavik, which is what, a 11 hour flight. Yeah. And on that flight she did nothing else but study as much as the languages she could.

And what you just described she achieved in that time. So that amount of focused time is actually more than enough to kind of get you there really to learn the basics in the language. Will, you know, to, to be able to exchange a few phrases, perhaps introduce yourself, et cetera. I wouldn’t really think in, in a language like Portuguese, if you’re already Spanish speaker, that should take you more than a day, you know, uh, uh, a working day perhaps. Or you can just kind of spread it out over time. What might be interesting is also to think, well either what else can you do? Do you want to have any other kind of conversation? Is there anywhere that you want to visit? And you want to note a vole cup full. And the other aspect is don’t forget, and people do, I think people think they have to be like ready in the language when the plane lands.

Whereas actually don’t forget that those are just the stepping stones to then learn much, much more in country. So you kind of want to get yourself just to the stage. I call it the waffle stage. Quite often when I talk about travel and I’m thinking, you know pancakes and waffles, right, and you’ve, if you pour syrup on them, whatever you put on your pancakes, we have a pancake. It kind of just runs off the side so there isn’t really that much stick in, but we have a waffle and you’ve got all those nice holes where everything can kind of stick and you want to get yourself to a stage where you’re essentially the language learning waffle so that whatever input you want to have and you’ve got coming at you is going to just kind of have somewhere to stay. I absolutely love that. That is perfect.

I want to be a language learning waffle. I was going to ask you this later too, but I’m going to ask this now since that we’re talking about it. I bought a book that says it’s going to teach me that four romance languages, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French. The grammar simultaneously. Do you think that’s even possible? Yes. For those languages? Yeah, they are all Latin based. You could even, if you want to really challenge yourself, you could probably throw Catalan Romanian in there and you still wouldn’t be straying too far. They are fairly similar languages. Well that’s really encouraging because I’ve always had interest in learning. All four of those languages are some languages easier to learn than others? Some languages are more similar to the language you already know English and those you might perceive as easier to learn. What makes that difference is for example, something called cognitive.

So Spanish tends to be quite straightforward for English learners because it has more words that look really familiar. Think of the word [inaudible] for example. You just need to look at that once and you’d know it’s related to important. German does not quite have Cognits that are as obvious, so it might be perceived a little bit more difficult and it’s got a more complex grammar. So there’s different hurdles at different stages. The easiest language in the world is kind of the one that you really excited about. You want to learn in that moment. So don’t underestimate the power of your personal motivation. Interest and desire to learn that language. Yeah, and that’s probably true of anything if you want to get, you tend to, what advice can you give us? If we’re bumbling around and we’re trying to speak in this new language when we’re in country and they keep reverting to English, what advice could they give us there? Consider which kind of social situation you’re in. So is there somebody, you’ll say maybe you’re going to the pub with people, you’re going for a drink.

Sure.

It depends on your language level. If you feel like you wouldn’t completely be in their way, it’s absolutely okay to say, Hey, I really want to practice my, let’s say German. I really want to practice. I will stay in German no matter what you do. And that is something that you have control over because ultimately you have no control over whether they switch to English. But if you then just kind of Hey kid and run with it and reply in English, then you’re training them. That works. So especially with friends that you see more than once. One really easy way of kind of getting around that. If your relationship can handle it is to just stay in their language and you know, kind of get them to do that with you. But it really depends on your level because you kind of, you don’t want to like dumb everything down. But even with my husband who speaks very basic German, we’ve managed to speak only German for a week and we got by.

Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, so what kind of advice can you give us if we inadvertently offend somebody or do something rude just by inserting the wrong word usually is what it is. And you only gauge just by the locals reaction that you’ve done something really wrong. Any advice there?

I personally have never experienced this. I would imagine that most of the time, I mean it would have to be something significantly major where they wouldn’t even give you any leeway, you know, for learning the language. So most of them just start laughing, right? If you don’t know what is wrong and you get the feeling something’s wrong, I think it’s okay to say, what did I just say? You know, did I, did I say that wrong? Tell me again how it sounds and make it into a teaching moment. But otherwise if they’re laughing, I think it’s fine to just laugh.

Okay. And I do remember one time, I can’t, I think it was in Costa Rica and in the morning I was tired and I, I think I asked for, I was trying to order orange juice at breakfast, which you think would be kind of intuitive, but I asked for a, a glass of play cause who go on and wiggle sound kind of similar in my brain at the time. She could not understand what I was doing. And even though to us it sounds like, well I sound kind of the same, but to her play was play, you know, it could not translate into juice, but it just, that was funny. We finally did figure that out, but it wasn’t offensive. It was just, I just totally used an inappropriate word that just did not compute it all in her brain whatsoever. Yeah. Often it’s not offensive, it’s just kind of mortifying. Yeah. And I don’t mind being embarrassed about stuff like that because I’m trying, I’m doing the best I can and, and yeah, a lot of people don’t even bother trying so well, like I said, most of my favorite experiences are those bumbling mumbly moments with the locals, particularly if they have a sense of humor about it too.

[inaudible]

so what did travelers

need to know about the realities of language and travel? Any other major things that we need to be thinking about? The key kind of tip I would give people is really to embrace the idea of learning in country. And when you are there, just be curious and stay curious about the language. Don’t make it into a thing where you feel like you now have to perform everything you’ve learnt. You can come and still be a learner. You can come and still be open to everything that’s coming to you and, and just really take it in that way. Because most of the time locals want to show the guest more than just, you know, a beautiful site. If they can teach you a word and you’re repeating the word back at them so often you know people start beaming and they’re excited about it. It’s the same as people wanting to share good local food in the same way. It can be good local words and if you can find a way to get excited about that, then you get this kind of extra boost out of your travel and do not worry about your grammar anywhere near as much as you are doing.

And I’ve found that too. In fact, when I can’t remember the grammar in Spanish, I’ll just say the verb and then I’ll say in the present, in the future, in the past, my goal is to communicate, not to be fluent necessarily. I just wanted to get whatever the, the idea I’m trying to get across and usually it works. However, I have to go around the Mulberry Bush to get there. All right, so how, if we want to arrange an immersion experience, any suggestions or advice on how we might put ourselves in the a really perfect immersive experience?

Yes, absolutely. I think a great resource that I have found for this is if you, if you might have already booked with Airbnb for a local stay, the Airbnb experiences are absolutely fantastic and try really, this is where the language kind of comes into its own. The immersive experience is where you get just the deeper cultural context as well, so use it as a motivator to get your language to a certain level. If you can book something like a language retreat, a language immersion trip, you know Google that with your, with your target language attached, have a look at, if you’re a German learner, have a look at what I’m offering. They’re special. Then not really mainstreamed and not like a language trip. We sit in a classroom and you just kind of, they’re really, they are very, very different and an a, over the last five, six years I’ve started seeing more language teachers offer these even really cool stuff like learning French in Bali for example. That’s all coming more and more and more. So have a look at, you know, language immersion trips and don’t feel that you have to be perfect [inaudible] at all. Just talk to the organizer and see if you get a good feel for them.

So, so what is the difference between um, a language study? Immersive STEM, you know, w we’re a school where you’re going intensively to school versus an immersion trip.

The group size is a significant difference. The immersion trips tend to be a lot smaller. Some of them have classroom time included, others don’t even include any classroom time. They, they are just activities. And that is, that is down to your preference as a learner. You know, do you want to learn and speak as much as possible? Do you want also a little bit of time where you can ask questions and say, why do I keep making this mistake? And then somebody actually helps you. It tend to be run by private tutors rather than sort of big companies. Because again, the economies of scale kind of tip towards the big company there. But I personally, as a language learner, I’m, I have had good classroom experiences, but my most memorable experiences are never those. And with a language immersion trip, the real boost, the real benefit that I find is that essentially you have a tutor on hand with you 10 to 12 hours a day.

They really are kind of with you. And that doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re going to correct your all the time, but it does mean that you have got that incentive and you’ve got that person that you could speak your language at your level and they’re not going to switch to English. And over time, every time I run a trip on about day three or four, I know those particular students weaknesses, I notice particular students pitfalls. So I can just give them the most important corrections. It is just that much more efficient to teach in that way for me. And it’s just that much more fun because, you know, I, I almost organized the activities on request. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, and then also, how has the internet changed how we are learning languages? Oh, it’s completely turned it around. It’s made [inaudible] no, this is, this is not the most relevant perhaps to every single person.

But if, especially people you know who are global travelers, it’s made all languages so much more accessible. So I could not necessarily have learned the Welsh language outside Wales anywhere near as easily as I have. And then when I go to Wales, that people ask and I say, well, I just, you know, I live in England where nobody speaks Welsh, but I learned on the internet and the, the reactions that you get have wonderful. So the incident has, has brought language learning to the solo learner in a way that we’ve never, ever had before. You are now free from whatever Rosetta stone thinks you should be doing. And from what I’ve heard, that has, you know, for the people who really get results, that has absolutely transformed things. You can take online lessons, you can take online courses that are much more specific, that are kind of created with you in mind. You can join communities, you can connect with people who love languages everywhere. You just have absolutely no limitations where before you really did

right. Right now let’s also talk about flashcards. What are your, are they good, are they bad or, I know one way that works for me that I’d like to hear your thoughts on the whole flashcard thing with vocabulary.

Oh that’s a, it’s a timely question cause I’ve just over the Christmas break I made a vocab course, like a new kind of system on how to organize vocab and I’ve been getting a lot of flashcard questions as a part of what I’m teaching in this course. So I think flashcards, digital flashcards or physical flashcards, all great as a system you need some kind of system. Personally I came up never using them and I learned 90% of all the language I’ve learned is probably not been through digital flashcards. However, they can be super, super useful because you’ve got your phone right, so you might as well use it in that way. The best way to use flashcards is to bear in mind that they are a review tool, but then not a memorization tool necessarily. And to try and use the language in lots and lots of other ways. Because otherwise what you learn is, is perhaps a list of words that kind of stick somewhere in your brain. So it’s good for growing your, you know, growing your vocabulary in general. But it doesn’t really give you the tools for handling the language.

One little trick, this Bay only worked for me, but it does work for me with the flashcards. Instead of writing a, I’m going to say Apple. Um, well I’ll use an example and I had to uh, teach in Swahili even though I didn’t know Swahili in my ESL class because I was teaching people that didn’t speak the language. And for me to learn enough Swahili to teach the class in Swahili, I had to come up with the system. And what I did was, the word for chicken was cuckoo. So on my flashcard, I said, right, and chicken on one side and cuckoo on the other. I drew a picture of a chicken coming out of a cuckoo clock. So that’s what I would see instead of the word. So it’s not a direct translation, it’s an image. So remember, I need to pull that out of my brain. I don’t really forget the cuckoo clock with the chicken, whereas I might forget Kuku as a, as just a word that I can’t anchor to anything.

That is exactly it. That is, that is magical. You’ve just described sort of that memorization step so perfectly. And it’s, it really is about making words as sticky as you possibly can before you, you know, you put them in a flashcard and it sounds like you’re creating your flashcards old school. So you’re working with paper flashcards.

Oh yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m almost as old school as you can get about everything. Yeah. When we were talking flashcards, digital’s like, Oh yeah, I forgot they have that. That’s, that’s why most people come.

So what, what people do very often is download an app and then just work with whatever set that app gives them. But I have a set of woods and that’s is it, I mean it’s fine. Eventually you will kind of run these into your memory if you, if you reviewed them often enough, but it’s not as effective as creating your own flashcard deck, which is what you’re doing. So work with what’s that actually you encountered, you needed and that kind of came in context with you and then have a good way of memorizing the ones that don’t mistake and you’ve, you’ve just had, that’s cool. Well at the sounds like way of memorizing and that is, it’s, it’s one of my favorites. It’s one of my absolute favorites. One of the examples I teach in my course is the, the Welsh word [inaudible] no means to complain. And that took me ages to remember until I saw a picture of the actual queen, you know, the queen of England. And I thought, Oh, the queen says no to complainer’s. So cool. We know she says no to complainer’s. And now when I’ve got the picture of the queen associated with that, I don’t forget it anymore. And often it’s just telling ourselves that little story. That’s enough to make things memorable.

Probably been five years on the cuckoo at least. And yet that’s probably in my brain forever. And I don’t remember too driver of Johnny yellow car was his name and in Beijing was self taught English. But every time he would hear even us talking a new word, he would scrub it in his notebook and study it that night. So who’s picking up nil five to 10 words a day. But over the course of days, months and years, he became an excellent English speaker just by those rewards he needed that day. And so he could then [inaudible] finding use to ha ha, how could I use that and learn to put those in sentences. So it’s not just a random word, just out floating in a cloud.

So one of the least effective ways that I have found for myself and also with my students is when somebody might just Google a list of the 500 most frequent words or something like that in a language. And then the idea being, I’m going to study these words and then I will know 90% of the most frequently used words in that language and that makes statistical sense, but to sit there and crumb a list into your brain, it’s very demanding for your brain and in fact you can learn those without trying. If you just pick up, for example, a story like a graded reader, a story based course, and you follow something that is designed for beginners that will work with the same words because those words really are that frequency. It goes back to this idea of the comprehensible input. If you find yourself something that you can understand, those words are going to go in. So my view is that flashcards and frequency lists, et cetera, they are a great tool, but they’re like step three, don’t make them step one in your routine.

Interesting. And what about the fact that we all learn differently? I’m a visual learner. Other people like audio. Some people are tactile, they’ve got to actually do it or whatever. How does that come into play when it comes to language learning? [inaudible] a good study

routine in in a language works on four core skills which are listening, reading, speaking and writing. So that is one part and that usually covers most of the what’s called VOC, you know, like the visual audio, um, tactile, no kinesthetic, it’s cold. Um, and then there’s one other one. So people who really want to experience something. So ideally you want to actually hit all of those.

Do you have a preference on if we have to emphasize grammar or vocabulary? You alluded a little bit to your answer on that or how important is grammar in this whole scheme of things?

I have to actually take myself out of this answer a little bit because personally I really enjoy grammar. I liked the way it puts the world in order, but most people don’t enjoy kind of sitting there with a rule. You know, I really like personally seeing the whole system, but what I’m doing there is I’m following what I like and if that’s not what you like, if that’s not what you enjoy, don’t do it. You will find even if you never ever study any grammar, the questions that relate to grammar are gonna come up in your mind. The questions are going to be why is the sentence in this order, how do I say this and this and this? How do I put these words together? And then the most efficient or the most fun way really to think about grammar is to think of it as pattern spotting and realize that if you can say, Oh, I went to the party, then you can also say, I went to the event and you can say, I went to the bowl and you can say I went to the airport and that I went to the is one part of the sentence.

And then there’s something that you can change around. So this pattern spotting is something that we do even as kids learning our native languages. And that is really what grammar is. And what it shouldn’t be is you just sit in there with like a rule book and literally run through all of the rules and go, okay now I’ve got to do this and now I must never make that mistake again. The fun way to learn grammar if there is one is to use it to answer your questions and then that means you wait until the questions come.

Got it. And that’s, that’s a good way to look at it too cause it doesn’t sound like drudgery. It’s, it’s you and I like the pattern spotting cause there’s patterns in life, not just languages and our brains are kind of geared to look out and seek patterns sometimes even when they’re not even there. All right. I read somewhere that it takes around 500 hours of consistent study to learn one of the easier languages and that you’re still better off doing some kind of a full immersion versus okay I think I’m going to study for one hour a day. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because sometimes we don’t have the ability to just go away for two or three months to be an immersive environment.

That 500 hour number may have come from the Fs I foreign service Institute. They’re the ones who, for example have to teach your languages. If you are military service personnel and you go into a specific country and that also means they half certain levels of functionality that they want you to reach. And the 500 hour number for example, is very specific to you. Okay. In order to, for you to reach these levels. The functionality, I don’t know if we want to embed you as a spy and in Cambodia, these are the language requirements that we have for you. So it’s always to be taken with a grain of salt. Any kind of number like that. With language learning, it’s not really about somebody else’s goal. If you’re learning for travel for example, it’s about your goal. So the question is what do I want to be able to do in that language? And previously we talked about, you know, the kind of level of say Portuguese that you might want for your next trip. You’re not going to need 500 hours for that. No way. You can do that in 20 hours and 20 hours a much, much easier to fit in. So the trick is to set the goals small enough that you don’t have to look at something that you know, fuels unachievable.

So would I be better off saying, okay, instead of doing the one hour a day saying, okay, I’m going to take one day a week and just that’s all I want to do is just do Portuguese that one day. So it’s just the whole day is Portuguese versus breaking it up or

no, to standard recommendation is little and often. And that is the way to build longterm memory. Yeah, I mean you can, you can do an immersion, but you will find that if you did that at the start of that weekday, you’d be spending an hour just trying to remember what you did in the last weekday. Do you know what I mean?

Right, right. And then also I’ve read that an hour of bumbled conversation where you’re somebody who’s kind of helping you, whether it’s a tutor or doing more of the internet exchange, kind of a things you grow as much in that one hour as you might in 10 hours of classroom. Do you agree with that?

It depends obviously on how big your cluster room and you know, how much interaction there is. Um, but yes, that seems reasonable to me because it’s tailored. The trick is that the thing you’ve got to bear in mind as well is after you’ve done that, let’s say language exchange, you know, they always give you some words. They might write out what they’re saying, et cetera. That is gold. And that goes on a flashcard and that’s got to be reviewed really so that it sticks and then you absolutely I, I’m 100% on board with that.

And then once you master, let’s use you using you as an example. Once you started picking up English at age 10 once you got that one or the next one’s easier to learn, does your brain kind of learn how to learn languages or is it starting back at square one again? And can you talk about that a little bit?

We’ve already talked about pattern spotting, so I think patents spotting helps and obviously once you get a sense of how language works in general, then it is easier to learn foreign languages cause you sort of know, okay this is this bit, this is this bit I’ve already seen. And what learning any kind of foreign language does is it teaches you about your own language and you’re then comparing to and you go, okay every language needs to express things that happened in the past. Somehow every language needs to have a way of saying, Oh him over there. Every language needs to express, you know, things in the future. Things that are close to me, things that are far away. So even now that I’m learning Chinese, I still feel like I’ve got an overall kind of sense of how big a deal, every little thing is to I’m learning.

So in that sense it helps. And the other way to it helps. I wrote a blog article about this ages ago because somebody asked me does it ever get easier? And I thought about it and I realized the, the main thing that gets easier is your attitude. Because after I’m on board my 10th language, I no longer think I can’t do this. I know I can learn languages. So even when it becomes very difficult and I struggle or I feel like my progress is really slow and I stop wondering if it’s worth it, I don’t doubt my own ability to do it. And that is something I think when your first working, I see a lot of people really struggling in that way. So you just build this kind of mindset. But absolutely [inaudible] does not get so easy that it’s effortless. It’s never effortless. It’s always hard work.

Well shoot Christian here. I was hoping for the easy answer

one and then the rest of them are a piece of cake. Come on. What’s going on?

[inaudible]

Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s magic. It’s, you know, it’s still, it’s still so difficult

but it’s, it’s really rewarding when it works. It will be no fun otherwise.

Well, okay. I know when I tell people to go on these great adventures that they should push themselves and make it hard and all that kind of stuff. So I guess it’s the same thing with language learning I guess. No pain, no gain, no satisfaction. Language learning as well. I do have one odd thing. I have been semi flute in Spanish a couple of times in my life, but then I lose it when I don’t use it. And when I’m immersed in a Spanish culture after a week or so, all of a sudden I dream in really good Spanish much better than I can speak when I’m actually at using the language. Do you have any thoughts on that?

You know, what you do in dreams is you, you process, you know, you process everything that kind of is happening around you and you’re putting those things together. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been rock climbing, but this has happened to me with never with languages, but with rock climbing it’s happened to me that I’m climbing a lot of walls in my dreams and obviously I’m doing really, really well. But it’s the same thing as [inaudible] in rock climbing essentially your, you’re hanging on a wall and you’re just forever look into the next solution and your brain is trying to calculate, can I hang on to this? Can I hang on to this? So there’s a lot of focus on solving a problem. And I think when you’re immersed in a language, you are in that same state, you know, all the time where you are challenged and your brain is just problem solving, problem solving, problem solving.

I think it does that in your sleep as well. And that’s why your brain kind of really engages with that language in a more immersive environment where you just challenged all the time. All right, so are there any what, what resources can you direct us to or where do we go from here to say, okay, we’re, I’m gung ho, I want to learn Portuguese, or this person wants to learn Mandarin. What do we do next? How do we start [inaudible] if you want to just dip your toe in it, I’d recommend getting yourself a phrase book. And if you are the kind of person who downloads language learning apps, if you’re the kind of person it downloads, do you own lingo, I challenge you to download two or three apps because you’re so much more likely to actually use them. I usually find people drop off with duo lingo and then they’ve just got nothing to fall back on.

Other great recommendations are, there’s one called lingo, deer, L, I, N, G, O, D, w, E, R, and there’s one called Memrise, M, E, M, R, I, S, E, and finally drops. And those four together are gonna. They’re gonna build you a little system, so get you kind of, you know, get your phone properly set up to do this. If you’re the kind of person who wants to learn a language with your phone and don’t make it your own new resource if you’re traveling, get a phrasebook phrase. Books are an underestimated resource. Absolutely. And yes, I’ve got a few courses as well in my online school, so you’ve very welcome to have a look around. Some of them are more designed to help you learn how to learn. So to really set you up as, okay, I know a pro learner and that is for you.

If you are ambitious and you really want to get fluent in those languages, then come to me and I’ll sort you out. And finally I do host a podcast and hopefully if you’re listening to language learning podcasts and you, you think, well maybe there’s something in there. Maybe language learning is not dull and you just want to hear something that isn’t dull, then uh, do come and join us on the floor and show and have a listen and see. See if you like what you’re hearing and which episode. We want people to start to get a feel for the podcast itself. What episode would you suggest we start with? I would recommend, I’ve got an episode that I can send you a link kit to put maybe in your show. Oh no. Yes. Great. I’ll put a link in the show notes. I called lessons from 10 lessons from traveling or something like that and it’s, I recorded it together with my cohost Lindsey who recently did around the world trip with her husband. I sort of had a, they just went for one year honeymoon, did most of Latin and South America and then also visited East Asia and lots and lots of lovely stories from that. So she kind of has these oldies tips and lessons. We just talked about her travels and this little debrief and that is a, that is a fun episode that I would recommend to anybody who loves traveling. Great. You can find those at a vendor, travel show, podcast.com/language.

Okay. I’ll be sure to put that and all links to all your social media, your website, a link to your book. Yeah. In the show notes. So be sure to look for that. Uh, just scroll down. You’ll find those in the show notes and a link to that. And of course we sure appreciate you coming on the show. Any final

thoughts? Just to encourage

everybody. If they, if they want to learn language, just do it. Don’t you know, criticize yourselves too much. Just kind of give it a go and try and see the fun side in languages. I really, I genuinely believe this is, maybe this is my off the wall perhaps that if all of us, we’re more open to other people’s languages, we become more open to other people’s worldviews and it is going to save the world. Believe you me.

Very nice. Well thanks again for coming on the show. I really appreciate it, Kristen.

That was lots of fun. Yeah. Thank you very much. I don’t know about you, but I sure learned a lot from Kirsten today and I also liked how she made me feel really chill about learning a language because I was, I’m an intense person anyway as you may or may not have realized by now and I, I tried to go full steam ahead and all that, but I think that the way that she tries to get us to learn languages is probably the right way to do it and that’s why I struggle so much. So I’m really excited about learning more about Portuguese in particular for my upcoming trip, but also just trying to take some of the tips and techniques that she told us today to expand my language horizons on that. And I want to tell you one thing too, I’m not very good at Twitter.

I’ve got to say that. But when I was taking notes on this episode after I’m doing the editing right now as I speak, this is the first time and I’ve now done between the two podcasts, a hundred different podcasts that I kept snipping out and saving little bites that I’ll actually going to put on Twitter. So she dropped as generally Dumas calls, value bombs throughout this episode. And I just think that was a really, really informative episode. I hope you’ll agree as well. And I hope that you will share this episode because I think she does give us the courage and the confidence to go out there and tackle a new language. It doesn’t have to be intimidating. And like she said, it’s not about the grammar. We’ll get the grandma, we’re going to see the patterns. I love that because we are pattern spotters. So I just, I, I just feel a lot less tense tackling the Portuguese that I’m about to tackle. And so I’m very excited about that. I’ll let you know how all that goes. When I do my El Camino episode on the actor travel adventures podcast, that companion podcast to this. So anyway, I hope you got a lot of bio out of today’s show. I know, I sure did, and I really do appreciate you listening. Until next time, this is kit parks at venture on [inaudible].