Hi Pablo
Hi Lindie, how are you
Good thanks and you?
Thanks, thanks for having me on your channel
No problem of course! Could you please introduce yourself?
I am Pablo Roman. I make videos to create content for people who are learning Spanish
For all levels?
Right now I have videos for beginners, for people who start at zero, and up to an advanced level.
And the idea is to create a big library of videos for people who want to improve their level of Spanish
And what are your videos about? The themes?
I intend to talk about any topic
And I also talk to other people and teachers about any interesting topic
A topic that people will think is interesting and that they can see and hear a lot of Spanish from. There are stories about things that have happened to me,
but there are also videos about history, like the history of Spain
or videos where I play Minecraft
And you, Pablo, where are you from?
I am from nearby Barcelona in Spain
And now you live in...?
Now I'm living in Bangkok
It's close to you, right?
Oh yeah, it's close to me! Same timezone I think
And do you speak Thai, too?
Yes, to some extent I speak it well
and now I'm working on improving it. It's a language that I am trying to work on right now
Could you tell me what kind of myth people may have about learning Spanish or other languages?
In terms of studying languages in general, I think the most important myths are
"studying grammar is necessary" or if you don't study grammar you aren't learning rules to speak properly
And after that, about the importance of practicing a language: that you need to speak it a lot. I think that you needs to talk a lot but my opinion is that you need to listen a lot.
Listening more than speaking?
That's right, and that's why I'm making these videos.
And why don't you think grammar is that important?
This is related to my experience when I was learning English
I realised I was using grammar and phrases that I never studied before
It's possible to just learn through reading or listening
And after that, when I learnt Japanese
and now that I'm learning Thai
I am learning them without learning grammar at all
And what are some of the most difficult things about Spanish?
for non-native Spanish speakers like myself?
Mistakes or...
I think the problems are more or less the same that you have when you're trying to learn any language
Pronunciation
and in the case of people who speak English or another European language,
it's confusion with grammar and false friends
words that sound similar
but aren't the same meaning
I also think that trying to force trying to do things is not the right way
To force yourself to write, to speak
You try to use grammar and words that you don't understand well yet
And I've found that you try to create your own language
you use grammar in a way that's like English
And some people mix vocabulary and use words from English and try and mix it with Spanish
Spanish and English gets mixed a lot, right?
For example, the word "castellano"
Ah, yeah. For me, I always thought it meant Spain Spanish only
Yeah, right? I've seen lots of people
in people who write "Castillian Spanish"
but it signifies that the language we use is not the same
the word "castellano" is used in Spain, in Chile, Argentina and other Latin American countries
and it means Spanish. It's the same Spanish.
So Castillian and Spanish is the same thing? (Yes)
We say Castillian to explain the langauge that we ourselves speak
So as such we have lots of false friends right?
People who speak English and learn Spanish or the other way around
Yeah, like the Spanish word pregunta which sounds like pregnant in English but doesn't mean the same thing at all
I don't think of those things
But there are things like embarasado or embarrassed
Yeah the 3 mean totally different things
And I believe you can speak Japanese right?
Yes of course
Why do you speak Japanese?
I was living in Japan when I decided to work in languages.
I originally studied computers, IT.
In Japan? - No I studied Informatics in Spain
and then I was in the US, in California
and I did my masters
and then I decided to change themes and do languages
and then after that thanks to being in Japan, I learn Japanese well.
So could we speak Japanese from now? - Yeah of course
So how long have you been learning Japanese now?
I started in 2009. - 2009, I see
Quite long, 10 years? - Yeah, it's long but I didn't just study Japanese the whole time. I did French and Thai during that time too.
I see
And before going to Japan in Spain for half a year I kind of studied... hmm well I read manga and books and watched anime
And then I went to Japan.When I was in Japan I studied hard.
When I arrived I bought a TV and a gaming console, a Nintendo, and I played games in Japanese and watched Japanese TV
In the beginning I tried to avoid foreigners as much as possible
I tried not to meet them or talk to them
So you pretty much just talked to Japanese people only?
Not really. At the beginning for half a year, my uni dorm had a Chinese friend and other international people. But in general I spent time with the Japanese person at my research room
and I tried to get into a share house as fast as possible and stay with Japanese people
That's a good method, spending a lot of time with Japanese people
Just doing Japanese daily
There are people who don't live in Japan.. uh
For example - It's hard right? - It is hard
Which one? Wanna talk Spanish or Japanese? - Let's speak in Japanese
What do I want to say
We just spoke a lot of Spanish until now
What I want to say is
For some foreigners, they can't go to Japan and can't meet Japanese people
how can people who don't live in Japan learn Japanese?
Well, the same way. As much as you can, have your whole day in Japanese
For example
Japanese games, well, you don't need to be in Japan to play that. You can order games from Japan
Well, well, it depends on the place yeah
For example in the wilderness of America
I mean places that aren't big cities
if you aren't able to meet Japanese people then well
there's Skype or language exchange apps
Sorry for this long pause. I made a mistake in my editing. Just bear with me for a few seconds and we'll be back!
Sorry for this long pause, I made a mistake in my editing. Please keep watching after a few seconds :D
In the beginning, when I started learning Kanji
I used Heizing - do you know it?
Ah yeah the Heizig method?
I used that and it was really like magic
It's a fantastic method
Have you used it?
I'm not using it right now but I've looked into it a lot
and I think it's great
But when I started learning Kanji I did not...
Not know?
I mean...the...
I didn't know anything about radicals in Kanji at that time
I just looked up Kanji when I found it in books
and I just kept practicing writing the same kanji
and if I knew about radicals back then it would have been a better method to study
It would have been easier to memorise
For me when reading novels, it was harder to understand hiragana
and Kanji was more helpful so that's why I said Kanji is my friend
That's awesome. Interesting
Do you have anything else you want to share about your channel?
Right now on my channel,
I think my channel has videos that are the easiest to understand Spanish with in the world
There's a list for super beginners
at the top there's super beginners
Oh that's me
and people can watch that from the start and learn words bit by bit
Apart from that there's animations
Like what I said earlier, Peppa Pig
Ah Peppa Pig in Spanish?
Yeah, Peppa Pig dubbed in Spanish
And Pocoyo, a Spanish anime
I don't know it
And then Crosstalk
Cross talk is about how to do language exchange
So sorry again. last time for this pause. I'm swamped with editing videos and sometimes I miss things like this. Sorry guys
When you're learning something you don't practice by talking but by listening
So for example if the other person wants to learn English you would talk in English
and if I, for example, want to learn Chinese
the other person would speak Chinese (as a Chinese person)
Usually normal language exchange is 50%, half of the time, in one language, and then
the rest of the time in another language
So for half of the time you're not practicing anything
and there's no benefit
But if you do cross talk you just get listening practice in the whole time
and learn new words and grammar
That's really a good method yeah
That's how children learn languages too right
The mother just speaks in her language the whole time
and after listening and listening, a baby learns to speak
That's right. Kids usually get spoken to about things that are around them
things that they can see
right right right
So cross talk is the same
For example
Using something like this
and drawing pictures to explain
So in English and Spanish on my channel, I have videos explaining how cross talk works in more detail
You can look it up, it's interesting
Got it, I will do so
Alors (French)
Right, thanks so much for your time today Pablo
Thanks to you, Lindie
And I will put your links in the video description below
Great, thanks a lot
Thanks and have a great day
You too, have a good weekend. Bye!