(Hallease speaks Spanish)
And that's about the extent of my Spanish.
Um.
I'm tryna learn Spanish, y'all.
(Atmospheric music plays)
Hey everyone.
I'm Hallease, endeavoring to persevere as always.
If you're new here, I make videos about my chaotic good life.
Subscribe, follow, social media, all of that fun stuff.
Something that has been on my bucket list, my to-do, if you will since like a smooth
2015 is to actually learn how to communicate in Spanish.
I'm saying "learn to communicate" versus just "learn" Spanish because I've actually already
learned Spanish.
I took three years of Spanish when I was in high school.
It was a requirement here in San Antonio with the high school I went to to graduate.
I am coming into this with some knowledge, but I wanna stress that having vocabulary
is not the same as communicating effectively.
I wanna try to explore that in this video.
I definitely, I can get myself out of trouble, you know.
(Speaks Spanish)
And other such things, 210 por vida.
So on and so forth, but I can't sit down and actually have a conversation with a native
Spanish speaker.
I can communicate my immediate needs, but I can't talk about what's happening in their
life or how they're doing or just day to day interactions in the same way that I would
communicate with y'all here in a video.
In this video, I want to try to explore that using the Nathaniel Drew method.
I'm calling it that even though he ain't the first person to learn a language, like come
on.
Over the last I wanna say year and a half, two years, he's put out a few videos highlighting
his method to learn a new language.
I wanna try to take some of his methodology around learning a language and see if I can
apply it to myself to try to learn Spanish.
I just feel like in my heart of hearts this is something I should have been done learn
how to do, but I'm late.
What're you gonna do?
Pareto said that 80% of your outcome comes from 20% of your output.
Basically, to put this into context of learning a language, really you only need to learn
about 20% of the words to actually be 80% fluent.
You just need to learn the first 1000, 2000-ish so common words and you'll be good.
You'll more or less know how to communicate effectively.
Even as I speak to you in English right now, it's not that I'm using absurdly difficult
words or anything like that to communicate effectively with you.
A prime example of that in English would for me to use the word "loquacious" to you which
is a fun word, not gonna lie, super fun to say.
But at the end of the day, I actually have not communicated with you effectively if you
don't know what loquacious means.
Which means that you just talk a lot.
It's better for me to just say to you, "Hey.
You're talking a lot.
Stop."
Than to say, "Your loquaciousness is befuddling me."
That helps no one.
No one's helped with that statement.
I started looking up other techniques and ideas around learning languages, including
one from Johnny Harris and Nathaniel Drew.
They put out a four hour class on how to learn languages giving guides on where to start
and how to overcome different hurdles you'll probably face throughout the journey.
This helped me put together a firmer methodology that would be sustainable for me.
If you're interested to check out the class, I'll link it down below in the description
box.
Something I've been trying to do is really hone in on my motivation for wanting to learn
Spanish.
I had already been trying to learn Spanish last year in 2020, and my motivation I realized
just was not strong enough at all.
My original motivation for learning Spanish was I wanted to be able to communicate with
my extended family.
Part of that is because of proximity.
They just don't live here in San Antonio where I'm at.
I don't actually get a lot of communication with them consistently and regularly.
Trying to communicate, wanting to communicate with them effectively while that is something
I actually wanna do, isn't a strong enough motivation to know that I'm gonna be putting
in this much time and this much effort into something that realistically, I see them about
two or three times a year.
So.
It's just not enough.
This is actually something else that I learned from Nathaniel Drew and Johnny is that your
motivation is everything.
It's what's gonna keep you going through all of this.
My motivation, I'm gonna share it with you now.
I definitely wrote it down in my Notability app which is what I use.
I love using Notability it's my favorite thing.
Here it is, all my notes for learning.
I wanna be able to express myself in another language.
I want to hear and tell stories that can reach beyond an English audience.
I want to experience other cultures outside of my own to better understand my place in
the world and also increase my cultural competency.
I know that speaking languages can increase my opportunities for travel.
The world is vast and this is the first step to existing, truly, in its vastness.
All of that obviously sounds super abstract.
You know, semi-hokey a little bit.
But, it's true.
The next thing I did was I put down my dream for learning Spanish, like.
What I would love to manifest out of learning the language.
To be able to exist in central south Texas and language is not my barrier anymore with
native descendants.
My dream is to live abroad in South America or slow travel through Mexico and be on tropical
beautiful spaces and understand everything completely.
Or to work with an organization like If Not Us Then Who? and lend my storytelling skills
to the indigenous populations because again the language is there.
Finally, going to Spain or France and slow traveling or living there with no mental fatigue
at all because I've worked hard to build this existence for myself.
I have future-proofed myself.
My big dream for learning Spanish is to be able to tell stories and communicate effectively
in this other language.
I got a taste of what this could potentially be like back in 2018.
I was working on a project with another YouTuber and while there, we got to speak to a lot
of indigenous people around climate change.
Working on that project, a lot of the indigenous peoples, yes they are speaking colonized languages
as well but a lot of them were speaking a lot of the romantic languages.
A lot of them spoke French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
And yes, they had translators there the whole time, but for me as a documentarian just really
feeling truly, truly feeling that language barrier and really being annoyed with it.
Really wanting to sit down and build conversation with these people so I could help to tell
their story as authentically as possible and true to them as possible and knowing that
I could never quite do that.
I always needed a translator with me to communicate effectively.
That really, really bothered me.
That is the strongest "why" for me.
Being able to communicate effectively and express myself in another language, that is
what's going to keep me going through this when I get bogged down into the details, into
the minutiae of trying to learn.
Now, I've established this sort of pie in the sky super abstract goal that I want to
reach.
Speak Spanish fluently, quote un quote.
This is something that I'm kind of learning to do not only with learning to speak another
language effectively, but also just for life in general.
I find it's best to have these sort of abstract goals of "I wanna learn to speak another language."
And then out of that big sort of goal pie in the sky thing you have, you begin to sort
of break down and define things for yourself.
This is something that I've done in my accountability group with Evelyn that I've been in for oh
my gosh four years, five years now.
Jesus.
We will establish goals big abstract goals for ourselves at the beginning of the year
or mid year and then from there each month it's "What are the tangible things I can do
to achieve this pie in the sky goal."
In my first attempt to learn Spanish last year I, for some reason, didn't do that, and
was just like "I'm gonna learn Spanish."
Had no plan of how to make it happen for myself.
I was just kind of bumbling through trying things.
Whatever.
I wanna show you this time around what I've done.
I've created what I'm calling a tactical goal of how to learn Spanish.
Part of this was doing some research on language learning, what are the different methodologies,
and how can I maybe incorporate them into things that I already know from going to school
or studying in college, things like that.
Things that I know help me with memorization, vocabulary, conjugations and things like that.
First thing I did was I figured out, when I say "speak another language" or "be fluent
in another language," the first thing I did for myself was define fluency.
Learning languages, this is nothing new.
A lot of people have learned them.
It's been studied how people learn them.
There's a ton of research out there.
I ended up coming across the CEFR which is the Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages.
On there, they have defined the different levels of language proficiency.
I figured out by looking at those definitions that I actually want to be, what I want to
do is called being B2.
B2 proficient in the CEFR rating.
The B2 proficiency, I'll kinda read it for you.
You can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics
including technical discussions in his or her field of specialization.
This would be relevant for me because my motivation is to be able to tell stories and film documentaries
et cetera in another language.
So, I would need to potentially communicate on ideas around cameras, lenses, et cetera.
Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction
with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.
That's the other thing.
I don't necessarily wanna feel like it's hard for me to think of the words to say to someone
or they're having trouble actually understanding what I'm saying because my Spanish is potentially
so broken.
After I actually defined what I mean when I say "be fluent in Spanish" by this B2 and
level 3 that I figured out.
Then I started doing research.
Okay, generally speaking, how long does it take someone to get to that level of proficiency.
I found that it takes anywhere from 500 to 600 hours total in study of a language to
get to that level of proficiency.
Obviously, it's going to depend on your level of comprehension.
Is this the first level you're learning.
I went ahead and calculated, okay maybe it'll take me a little bit on the lower end of 500
to 600 hours.
I geuss-timated it was about 500 hours to learn Spanish for me.
From there, now that I had realized, "Okay, it's gonna take me about 500 hours to get
to the level of proficiency that I want to be at, how do I break this up?"
Alright, I started doing more research again and looking into this idea of potential schedules
and how to fit this more into my life and on the one hand I saw people where all they
did was learn the language.
They were learning it for six to ten hours a day.
They were able to learn the language very fast.
Within 30 days, 40 days they actually had a really decent grasp of communicating and
expressing themselves well in a language.
I don't know the life that y'all live, but I don't have six hours a day to dedicate to
learning Spanish.
I do still have to make videos.
I still have to make a living.
I am a video producer.
But, I did think to myself, "Well, I think there are a few days a week when I could really
commit to maybe four hours for the day, or five hours for the day."
And do that maybe five days a week.
They don't all have to be during the week.
Some of it can be over the weekend.
After all, I am really committed to trying to learn this as fast as possible.
I calculated that if I did four hours a day for five days in a week, that would take me
about 25 weeks to get to the level of proficiency that I want.
I would be at the level of proficiency that I want by roughly July or August of 2021.
Not bad.
Obviously along the way, I am also getting more and more proficient.
Even if I don't hit the B2 by July or August, I know way more Spanish than I would've if
I had just kept going at the rate I was going which was like, I don't know, an hour here
or there.
No real schedule built in.
We'll see how this goes.
At the time of filming this video, we're about in the middle of January and I have just kind
of figured out breaking down this abstract idea of learning Spanish and putting it into
this sort of ...
"Okay, what does that look like?
How do I take the abstract and turn it into the day to day grind?
Here's how I do that and make it a tangible thing that happens."
I've just sort of figured that out.
Now, I'm in the process of implementing it.
Am I gonna stumble along the way?
Yes.
Will there definitely be weeks where I don't hit my four hours for the day five days of
the week?
Yes.
But, in the end will I have gotten by July or August ideally will I know more Spanish
than I do now?
Obviously.
Alright, so before we get too far into me speaking Spanish to you now, a word from our
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If you're interested, check them out at storyblocks.com/hallease.
I personally enjoy using them because they have this program called Re:Stock where they're
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can normalize the fact that we all exist and we do things and we should be in stock footage.
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They have different tiers to work with any budget.
(Hallease speaks Spanish)
... Tell me if
I'm bad (laughs).
And with that, I'm Hallease endeavoring to persevere
as always.
If you made it this far into the video, hi.
Consider subscribing.
I'd appreciate it and I will see you when I see you.
(Hallease speaks spanish)
(Laughs) Oh, that's funny.
I hope I don't get flagged for that.
Um (laughs) but it's a true statement.