so let's do a quick recap of what we've
covered so far on our journey to learn a
foreign language like a badass right
step one was immersing yourself in as
much audio in your target language as
possible step two was mining sentences
which was studying and memorizing
hundreds or thousands of examples um
from native speakers step
three and step four profit you're a
badass seems like we're missing
something here
maybe a step three you need to speak in
your foreign language as much as
possible it is impossible to get good at
speaking a foreign language just by
listening to it now let me explain With
a Little Help from My Friends Bradley
Cooper and Michael Jay White so Bradley
Cooper Limitless seems like he speaks
Mandarin right even half listening to
any language I became fluent
but anyone who speaks Mandarin can tell
you that his Mandarin is actually
completely unintelligible um and it's
not really a surprise because the way he
learned Mandarin apparently was by
listening to podcasts while running
along the Brooklyn Bridge by way of
contrast I give you Black
Dynamite where are you oh L's dead who's
this
[Music]
for now that was some genuinely good
Mandarin how did he get so good well I
can tell you it wasn't just by listening
right he speaks Chinese all the time he
uses it in his day-to-day life to hell
off bad guys it's just what he does
right cuz he's black dynamite can't
stress it enough guys if you want to get
good at speaking a language you need to
speak it now I don't really have a
better way of putting this but um the
speaking muscle is actually a very
different thing from the listening
muscle and it's totally possible to have
really great listening abilities but you
know no speaking abilities whatsoever so
you need to get yourself to places where
there are people who speak your language
right if you're studying cantones or
Mandarin there's a really good chance
that your local Chinese restaurant has
people who language um yay go there all
the
time I don't care if you're embarrassing
yourself and actually that's kind of the
point right it's just like exercise if
you don't have pain while you're doing
it if it doesn't hurt to do it then
you're not doing anything you're not
learning anything right if you want to
build your language abilities you need
to embarrass yourself all the time over
and over
again okay so if there's really no one
around to talk with you in the language
you're studying uh what do you do well
assuming you have this really cool thing
called the internet um you need to get
on this website now um it's called I
talky um and essentially what it does is
it connects people trying to learn
languages um via video or audio call um
there's a ton of different people on the
site in all different languages um
including really minor ones um and they
all want to learn English with you uh in
exchange for learning their native
languages so you know you can either pay
for tutor or if you're you know a cheap
skate like me you can get a language
partner where for free you can speak
half an hour of your language and half
an hour of their language we can find
teachers teaching any any language you
really want right so Spanish French
Portuguese Japanese Korean uh basically
everything
Africans look at this look at all these
people here now again if you don't want
to pay any money um what you can do is
you can just go over here to this
community tab um and click on language
partners and um you know you can
basically exchange time with a you know
with a native speaker of Russian or
Arabic or Japanese or Hungarian or you
know whatever language you could think
of um you speak you know half an hour or
however long you know you want to speak
of your language and um they speak half
an hour uh of their language and this is
an awesome free way to speak your
language so one final question you want
to be a badass like Black Dynamite or
you want to be a noob like Bradley
Cooper choice voice is yours get out
there speak as much as you can and
embarrass the heck out of yourself also
subscribe and stay tuned for more stuff
about learning languages cantones
Mandarin Etc see you soon