Hello, everybody, this is Michael Campbell with Glossika
and I'm really excited to have here today,
the chance at the Polyglot Conference to meet with
the founder and CEO, of-
the founder of LingQ, and the CEO, his son Mark- Steve: Co-founders.
Steve: Co-founders Mike: Mark and Steve Kaufman, um,
who flown out from Vancouver, Canada
to meet everybody at the conference here
in Fukuoka, Japan, where we currently are
and so it's a pleasure to actually meet you in person for the first time
and you too
Tell us a little bit about-
for those of you who are watching,
obviously on our channel and know about the Glossika brand
and probably know about the LingQ brand as well.
But there's a lot of things that we do that can help language learners
and the whole idea behind crashing this n plus one
I think it's a it's a really good way of learning.
But what I really love
about LingQ is that you have the storylines,
Right.
I mean, I think I would like to learn more about
about Glossika, the Glossika model, but uh-
certainly we need to get the language in us.
Yes.
In some way.
Yeah.
Some people want to start speaking earlier, practicing whatever they have learned.
I tried to hang back a little bit longer. Yeah.
You shouldn't hang back too long. Yeah.
Because you're going to improve once you start speaking. Yeah.
but you do have to get the language in you
and that's what we do at LingQ
and I think that's what you do with Glossika.
and, you know, I think it's a really good idea that
once you you go outside,
and maybe you could be practicing at home,
in front of a mirror or just with your book,
trying to say the things out like when you go outside
and you see that that facial reaction from somebody,
When their face lights up, they understand,
but when it doesn't happen
you kind of get frustrated, like,
Oh, wait, let me try, what did I do wrong,
but
that kind of feedback loop actually helps you and
and those experiences too, even the
wrong things that you say actually stick with you
and you learn things really well
The wrong things help you learn in the when you
when you succeed when you-when you can
communicate face to face because in the end
that's why you're learning a language in the
you want to communicate and when you are communi-
are able to communicate successfully with a native speaker.
That's a pretty good feeling.
And that inspires you to maybe
do a little more work a little harder trying to
grow your language.
Yeah. And the exciting thing is that it open a world of
a new world to you have a whole bunch of
people that you can now talk to and start to understand.
I think the understanding part is just amazing, cuz now-
Absolutely comprehension is very important.
But I think Mark's point is also very important,
and this is one that you were ranting as well is that
when you get that positive reaction,
that's very motivating.
and when we do want - we need it.
We need that encouragement. Yeah
but the better you prepare yourself,
the more likely you are to have a positive reaction.
If you aren't sufficiently well prepared,
and you sort of strike out to talk to people
and you fall flat on your face,
you kind of have to pick yourself up again
I mean, we are gonna- we all have had those moments where we don't do so well.
But investing time in input and comprehension,
it means that you'll have a-
a greater likelihood of a positive experience
speaking.
So, one of the topics for this year is the year of the indigenous languages
and I remember you mentioning earlier, if you had the materials
for some of your indigenous languages in Canada,
you would definitely do them.
What are your summize-
and of course, my talk was also involved
with the indigenous languages of Taiwan.
So maybe there's something else we can-
we can talk about this.
Do you think it's important that um-
that we provide materials for indigenous languages?
Or do language companies have a responsibility,
first of all, or do you think that we should-
I don't see it, I don't know Mark's view,
I don't see it as a responsibility Okay, right,
I see it as an opportunity
Mhm
I think what's necessary if I look at Cree
is we need a lot of content.
We need- people talking natural conversations that we transcribe.
I don't think we need-
there probably are Cree grammars
I'm sure there are people who got funding
from the government to produce-
I don't know what it's like in Taiwan.
But you know what it's like
the government allocates $5 million for native languages and um
consultants are competing for the money and out comes a bunch of stuff that's not very useful.
What we need is people talking, transcribed.
If we had 100 hours of Cree, 200 hours of Cree with transcripts,
people can get started learning the language.
and there are already grammars for many of those languages, again,
I don't know the situation in Taiwan,
but I find what's needed is not more grammar,
but more live authentic content audio with transcripts.
Yeah, one of the problems that I think that because
with many of the languages in Taiwan they're ergative.
And so there's this,
this weird alignment with the verb and everything in the sentence
and grammatically, it's kind of hard for people to wrap their head- their heads around
and so when you take an approach where we're going to come into a classroom
or explain the grammar to you,
and we want you to take a test on this,
you get a lot of people that just feel like,
I don't know how I'm supposed to- to acquire this language
in a in a reasonable way in a meaningful way
although I feel connected to this culture,
I feel like there's still this this barrier this wall
in actually getting access to being
able to use this language in real life.
but it seems that governments kind of seem to impose these um-
this sort of a um-
like one of the only ways that they can measure your proficiency in the language like
we have to set up the system. Right
You think that there's a better way?
Fundamentally, you got these languages that are endangered that
people or government or that the native speakers
or whatever organization would like more people to learn
and then the first those- the
their customers first experience with that language is some complicated grammar explanation
which immediately turns off a large percentage of those people.
So right off the bat your customers - 80% of them have left
-And even when the language is similar, like-
-Or maybe you could just-
-like French.
Exactly. - you get the same feeling
-just play some of the language
let people see speak- people speaking in here,
people like get kind of get used to it,
as you said about grammar.
The explanations don't mean anything until you have had exposure.
You can listen, you can read, you can click around,
maybe look up some words,
get it get a bit of it so that now all of a sudden,
okay, I have a bit of a sense of this language
maybe I'm interested in learning it.
At that point, I might have a bit more tolerance for
some kind of explanation but to hit people right off the hop with um
Yeah, I take the hand off, for example from Arabic
and so I opened an Arabic book and it says there seven kinds of verbs and
they start explaining the different kinds of verbs.
I just flipped the page.
Like there's no way I can deal with that.
When I learned Chinese and Japanese-
see that's- that's the advantage you have- Right.
and a lot of language learners don't know
is that you can flip the page right and
and jump over that and ignore it. Absolutely.
A lot of people they feel like I have to memorize this I have to learn it-
Yeah, flip the page!
yeah "I have to flip from page one like in order
and then language has got to be taught in this order."
Was it you are Alexander who says he will like
read through a whole grammar and an afternoon-
was it you maybe it was Alexander
who would read through the whole grammar in an afternoon
but not just to- not to like,
not to memorize everything, but just to get a-
a big layout of how this whole thing works, right?
You know, there are seven categories of verbs in Arabic.
Okay, thank you very much.
[Laughter]
I have no idea what that means.
I now kind of vaguely know that.
There's probably seven in English too.
Yeah. So and in Japanese and Chinese I have no grammatical terms.
I learned Japanese, I learnt Chinese. Yeah.
Now look at textbooks that people produce for Japanese and Chinese.
They're full of all kinds of invented terms, grammar terms.
So I think let people hear the language,
let kids watch cartoons in Taiwanese Aboriginal language,
let kids do it on their own,
and they'll figure it out
and at some point you might introduce
the grammar, well after they've already absorbed the language naturally.
And then in terms of endangered languages,
you would think all the organizations that
are involved in preserving endangered languages
would be falling over themselves to share
and help and you know, like,
we're happy to add endangered languages- Yeah, yup.
-if people - if the content exists, like you talked about Cree.
I'm sure there are archives of audio and tech,
but whoever has those, they probably won't give them to us.
Because "No, we Cree had the grant we created these."
"and can we get another grant."
"We have them on our website where nobody goes" and
and like listen we have a website where people go.
I think it's one thing if everybody who speaks that language agrees and says:
"No, we don't want to share this with the world, right?"
That's fine.
No they don't say that.
Well, I'm just saying that as- as a scenario, right?
If everybody who speaks that language,
there's 10 people who speak that same language and say:
"No, I don't want to share this with the world" Right.
Okay, fair. I mean,
you, you're the only ones who have it. Right.
But if the language is actually dispersed well enough,
you got 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 speakers,- Right.
and you can't get everybody's consent
and every- and there are people who want to learn the language,
the why not, why-
why not make it publicly available?
Share the information out there,-
and whatever content we have,
use it.
And I would think also that in the context of Canada,
where the government puts this tremendous guilt trip on people,
you must learn French and very few learn French
like 10 years of schooling in French they can't speak French.
And by the big guilt trip.
It's an official language you must learn.
Well, if you cannot teach that way,
why not teach an Aboriginal language?
You have an obligation to learn Cree.
[Laughs]
Because Cree part of Canada's history
so you can have-
They may still not learn it,
but you can have an obligation to learn French
and you got an obligation to learn cree, and-
and do it like listen to it and stuff, and
and- but not in the sense that I'm gonna test you on- -And you've learnt
You've learned enough languages from all over the world that you that something -adding-
throwing Cree at you would not add any other
specific difficulty in your ability to pick up the language, I'm sure.
If kids at school had to learn Cree and French
they'd be better at Fren-French, because that
as it as it is right now they only do the one language they don't learn very well.
[Laughs]
If they had another one that they didn't learn about, well, -The balance.
it might stimulate their brain
a little bit, maybe they find out -There you go.
What would it take to actually create
like you said, I-
I like this idea of cartoons and more stuff in the in the native language.
I wonder what um-
how much more research?
I think governments they spend too much money- Ya, they spend too much money
-doing the wrong thing. "The first thing is we're gonna
we're gonna
I mean, we've seen this in Canada,
the government spends money to create a site
where you can find translations from French to English.
Google translates not good enough for you?
And they did that here in Tai -I'm sorry- over the are in Taiwan,
with the uh,
with their website for all the aborigine and
we got 16 recognized aborigine languages. Right
now there's a dictionary for each one and online
you can search from Chinese to the language.
And it's not that easy to use. It's got a-
That's the problem, right?
The government's going to build a dictionary
that's going to be inferior to Google translate,-
-I talked to the aborigines- that's going to be inferior to Google translate,-
inferior to most dictionaries out there,
interface is going to be clunky,
no one's ever going to find it.
But they feel good about- about making it
Yeah, that's that's kind of when the government's are involved.
That's more of a feel good thing.
They're not genuine in their desires to have an impact. -But the short answer to your question is,
is focus on comprehensible input.
Don't focus on creating yet another grammar
I agree. Yeah.
And I think starting with- with your basic sentences Right
Stringing words together, Absolutely, uh
Identifying the vocabulary, the storylines.
All of these are extremely helpful.
and I love the storyline method as well like they're like
like you have in LingQ because I-
I buy books, and languages I like to learn, yknow-
Well you kind of need both
you need the basic patterns
but then you need that- all the vocabulary
and seeing it all in context and
I mean it's
it's that's how you learn. That's how we think you learn anyway.