We're talking in Spanish.
Welcome to Glossika's channel,
today, we are with Gyan and he's a polyglot.
I'm Gyan.
I'm from the French
speaking part of Switzerland
and I speak five languages,
three of which
I learned as an adult in my twenties.
We have this stereotype
thinking that
if you are not a kid anymore,
you just don't,
don't waste your time
in trying to learn a language
at least that's what
a lot of people think.
The whole idea of adults not being able
to learn a language
or not as fast as a child
is something I hear often.
And which I can say is completely wrong.
I believe adults and children,
when it comes to language learning
is a bit
like the fable about the hare
and the tortoise and children are
maybe like the hare.
They can run very fast,
but, they lose steam
very quickly, lose interest,
have trouble with discipline
and being consistent
and language learning like anything else,
consistency is key.
And I believe adults,
if they manage to find an immersive
and interesting
method of learning languages,
which tends to be the weakness of adults,
they can learn languages just as fast,
if not faster, than children.
So, you are from Switzerland
and you speak five languages.
And I'm really curious
how is the learning
language system
over in Switzerland in public school?
So, in Switzerland
we always have to learn one
other national language.
So, in my case, it was German.
German is already quite a daunting,
intimidating, serious language as it is,
but, the school made it worse by spoon
feeding us with endless
grammar drills,
vocabulary, you know,
reading really boring text
that nobody cared about.
It was really successful
at destroying my interest
in language learning
and especially German.
And it's only recently,
the past few months
that I've really started seriously
learning German by myself
that I've discovered,
Oh, German is great. That's my path.
And I think it's similar
for a lot of people here.
I have the same experience, like,
I guess European all work similar for me.
My second language was French.
I learned French for four years.
Once a week, every day for four years,
and I didn't learn any
because I have no interest at all.
Actually, when I really went to France
and I really
wanted to communicate
wanting to make friends,
then I was able to
learning much faster.
So, I think we are in the right moment.
As long as you have the passion,
you have the interested of thing,
it's never too late.
Exactly.
And that what's happened
with me
is my first reaction
when I left high school.
I can't learn languages.
I hate languages.
It was only in the course of my twenties
when I started learning foreign languages
and completely changed my approach
to languages
that I discovered, hey,
I can learn languages,
not only I can learn languages,
I enjoy learning languages
and now it's really part of my lifestyle.
Do you have any weird unorthodox method?
Something different.
Can you share with us?
Every language is different, right?
So, for every language, you sort of
have to tweak your own approach to it.
So, for instance,
my first two languages
I studied seriously
Japanese and Mandarin.
They use Chinese characters
to look up words.
I didn't know
I would use my smartphone
and I would learn to draw the characters.
I did not recognize on the smartphone
to the dictionary app.
German uses letters, right.
And each time, type in a word you don't know.
Especially, German words
can get super long, right?
I felt it was
I was wasting a lot of time,
so, I was like, how do I learn German?
First of all, my method of learning
German was
I got a collection of books, gave myself
a goal of every month
going through one of them.
I bought a headphone set with a speaker
and I connected it to my computer.
Then, I use google translate
and I speak directly as I read the text
and it captures my pronunciation,
which is good
because if you pronounce it wrong,
the program
won't understand what you're saying.
So, you sometimes have to repeat words,
you can sort of narrow down,
which sort of sounds
are problematic for you.
And then, I get the translation
immediately.
So, as I read
and if I don't understand
something in the paragraph,
I just look at the English translation
and it allows me to go quite fast
and to absorb a lot of vocabulary.
So, what do you think stops adults
from learning languages or like
make then whole bargains.
We tend
to approach
languages as adults and not as children.
When you're learning a language,
you're just in a bubble.
You're doing it
and you're not thinking about grammar rules
and not being too left brain
rationalistic about it.
If you're learning a language
and you find it's boring.
The problem is not with you, it's
not with the language.
Is with how you're learning the language
and your approach to the language
and how to make things
more interesting is
this is where it's very important
to understand yourself,
to understand
what turns you on,
like what makes you passionate,
what are your fields of interest?
Back then, I was a geek about Shanghai.
1930s, I thought I was super cool.
All these gangsters, these hats
and stuff, the small round glasses,
you know, machine guns.
I thought it was really cool.
So, just a few months
after learning Chinese,
I was in a library and I saw a thick book
called
midnight
by a famous Chinese writer
written in the 1930s.
No teacher would ever tell you
after three months of Chinese,
Oh, go read a Chinese
classic book,
you know, from a hundred years ago.
Nobody would do that.
And even if I had to
at the beginning, really,
every second character had to look up.
I stuck to it and I finished the book
and it helped me
improve my,
my whole understanding of Chinese
of course, a lot.
Yeah. That's how you want to approach
the first few months, use an app,
get the thinnest
possible grammar book
about that language,
get some basic grammar
idea of the language.
Then you proceed
to content that interests
you regardless of the difficulty.
It's really
you have to think about what
fascinates you, what turns you on.
When you are not in the country,
how do you practice the speaking?
Okay, if you really want to improve
your speaking,
you should spend
at least two thirds of your time
listening.
Watching content on youtube or netflix
in that language,
listening a lot with subtitles.
Then, it's a question of finding
opportunities to practice.
There are apps where you can
sort of meet other people
who are also language
exchanges, tandems,
or try to think
aloud in your target language.
It helps
you learn to think in that language.
Another tip is while you're talking,
try to
record yourself and listen over
and then you can really spot
the differences in your accent.
With a native accent.
I still think you have to have some
special ability to be a polyglot,
and I believe that every adult can do it
even better than kids.
But, I still think you have to be special.
So, I want to test you.
You have one minute to learn Spanish.
One minute.
No, listen to me.
What is your name and your answer?
Okay, so, we have two questions.
Okay, I'm from Sweden.
That means I am.
How do you say in Switzerland?
And you reply
which means what?
We're talking in Spanish.
He got it.
You got it fast.
I think I would have to see the words.
And once I see how it's written,
especially, since I speak French,
I can sort of make the connections
intuitively of what it means.
So, I have a lot of difficulty with
learning languages without seeing them.
Between adults,
there are differences.
So, some people are more visual.
Some are more
of the quality of memory,
so, it depends really
how your brain is tuned.
Find your own method which suits you.
So, thank you for watching.
Thank you Gyan for giving us your viewing
how to learn a new language as an adult.
It was really interesting.
for having me.
And I would really like to know
if you guys have any tip
or any other advice to learn or
what kind of learner are you?
Are you visual.
Are you more audio?
I would like to know that.
So, leave it in the comments.
And don't forget
Glossika has a new app for ios
that you can download the app source.
There will be a link down below.
You can download it and give it a try.
So, thank you for watching
and see you next time.
Bye bye.