Speaker 1: Today we're going to be speaking with Steve Coffman,
who's a former Canadian diplomat and business executive who's spent the last 16 years learning
languages and encouraging others to do so with his YouTube channel Lingo Steve and links to E-Com,
an app that he co-founded. It's really great to talk to you. I appreciate you being on.
Speaker 5: Glad to be here. Speaker 1: So, okay. I mean,
let's orient the audience a little bit. You speak about 20 languages, is that correct?
Speaker 5: Right. Let's say a dozen or so that I could easily get into a conversation and hold
up my end and another, you know, eight or so that I'm in various stages of having forgotten
or learning but have put a lot of effort into. Speaker 1: So there are all of these kind
of conventional wisdom about language learning, including after a certain age,
the ability to learn a language in a way that would be close to close to native becomes
dramatically diminished. Oftentimes people talk about age ten, 11 or 12 or something like that.
The another idea about the best way to learn languages, whether it's by immersion or with
certain types of programs or whatever the case may be. What can we definitively say about learning
language learning abilities in humans? Speaker 5: Well, you know, I'm not an expert
on that, but I think the goal of learning to speak like a native, in other words,
to be indistinguishable from a native is very difficult past the age of, say, ten, 11.
We've all experienced. I mean, if you have an immigrant in the U.S. or Canada that came before
the age of 12, very likely they'll end up speaking like a native. If they arrive after the age of 20,
they'll speak very, very well. They may have a large vocabulary. They may express themselves
better than natives, but you will always detect a little something there that gives them away. So
the goal isn't to speak like a native in my case. Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah. And in fact, many people
don't know that I am not a native English speaker. I actually learned English. I mean,
I kind of am. I learned English at age six when I moved to the United States from Argentina. Right.
Can you talk a little bit about that in terms of the techniques you found effective
for learning new languages? What are they? Speaker 5: Right. So the language has to
come from outside. So you can't begin speaking. You have to listen a lot. We listen as children
as a six. I came from Sweden at the age of five. You hear other people speaking,
you pick up on it. Eventually you start imitating it, you start speaking with mistakes,
and eventually you make fewer mistakes. So to me, input is the key. Lots of listening and reading,
and at some point the brain has gotten used to the language now and wants to output,
wants to say things and we'll say them wrong, but eventually we'll start saying them right. And it's
not because other people correct them. We start to hear it better and better. We become aware of our
own shortcomings or gaps and resolve, correct? Sure. You can correct. It has some input. So to
that extent, traditional language instruction which focuses on getting you to speak early and
speak correctly early has it backwards. You have to begin by exposing yourself to a lot of the
language in situations that are meaningful to you. And gradually you will get better and you'll speak
more. And as you speak more, you'll speak better. But you know, it's not that instruction is bad or
grammar instruction, but it's not necessary. Speaker 1: There are the I don't want to call
them gimmicks, but there are lots of programs that are predicated on the idea of if you can first
learn to some to hear and and learn and practice saying sort of like 20 relatively
common words and phrases and then expand that to like 100. And that will kind of really place you
not only in terms of vocabulary in some of the most commonly used words, but the syntax
of the grammar of a language that that's one of the best ways to start by taking those specific
phrases and words and looking at that first in whatever language you're trying to learn. Does
that sound like a reasonable technique to you? Speaker 5: Not at all. Hmm. But I saw where
I can't remember his name, but he had the 4 hours workweek or something, and he was saying he
was. You deconstruct the language. You understand how it works. I don't believe that because
first of all, anything you learn in the language, you're going to forget. So if you learn them over
a certain 20 phrases, you're going to keep on forgetting them anyway.
Those are very common words and phrases are going to come up.
If you are listening and reading and allowing your brain to get used to the language,
the very common words and phrases are going to come up. You can't sort of isolate them
and learn them. You have to learn them as part of allowing your brain to get used to the language.
Some of those sort of structural aspects. Okay, the verb comes at the end. That's going to become
pretty obvious to you. You're going to get used to it. And the idea of learning a few phrases, I
mean, I've tried it when I say I went to a country where I didn't speak the language like Vietnam.
I got a phrasebook. I tried to learn the phrases hopeless. You just can't. It's a
gradual process of of absorbing. It's kind of like a snowball getting larger and larger
as it rolls down the hill. You can just isolate a few things and learn them. I don't believe that.
Speaker 1: It would seem intuitive and obvious that languages that are more similar to those that
we speak are the easiest to learn. I mean, for example, I my French is pretty okay. And I could
tell when I was in French class in high school that I had a much easier time because I spoke
Spanish. So much of French is similar to Spanish. When I go to Italy or Portugal, I can just speak
Spanish to a lot of people and they speak their language to me. We understand each other because
the languages are similar. On the other hand, I've tried to learn Hebrew and it's extraordinarily
difficult. It's a different alphabet. It's written from right to left. The syntax of the
grammar is completely different. Is that always the case? Just that the closer the language
is to what you speak, the easier it is. Speaker 5: Always the case.
The biggest issue in learning languages is words, vocabulary. So if you're going from Spanish to
Portuguese, you got 95% of the vocabulary. With French, you got 90% or whatever the number is.
Yeah, English to Spanish, you got 50% of the vocabulary because of the common Latin origin
of so much vocabulary. So common vocabulary is the biggest because language learning is about
learning words. If we have a lot of words, we the brains start to figure out how the language works.
But it's the words that we need to have. The other thing is writing system. Obviously,
if it's written in the Latin alphabet, I mean, I've learned, you know, Chinese,
Japanese, Arabic, Persian, now Hebrew. I try to I mean, we're in Korea where the language, where
the writing system is different. It's a lot more difficult because everything is habit. And we're
so used to reading in our own alphabet. And even if we understand how the symbols work in Hebrew,
until our brain really gets used to reading in that language, it takes me you got to read
millions of words. So, yes, familiar similarity of of vocabulary. And obviously the same writing
system is going to make it a lot easier. Speaker 1: Are there objectively
more difficult languages to learn regardless from what language you're coming from? In other words,
I think like one question would be if you speak English, what are the easiest languages
to learn? That's one question. But but a more another question would be, are there
just objectively more difficult languages? Speaker 5: Well, I'll give you a good example
for an English speaker. As I am, I find Slavic languages complicated in grammar, but if you are
a speaker of a if you're a Polish speaker and you want to learn Ukrainian, it's not difficult
because you're already used to that. So the issue is how different are the patterns and the words
of that language compared to languages you already know? To me, that's to try to say, okay, I mean,
right now I'm learning Persian and Arabic. Arabic is Mark. And so they're both foreign to me. Arabic
is more complicated. Arabic is more difficult. It's objectively more difficult than Persian. But
it might be because Persian is an Indo European language, which Arabic is not. They both use the
same writing system. Is it on language? Sorry. Speaker 1: No, no. I was going to say, when you
when you start with a different writing system like those,
do you go directly to the written language? Or do you not even worry about that initially and just
start with listening to it and trying to speak? Speaker 5: Well, I always start listening. And
when I listen, I can't understand. Obviously it's just noise. So then I start reading,
but I read small amounts. In the case of Arabic and Persian, I go straight into the writing system
with Chinese where the writing system is not phonetic. Then I did spend sort of one month
listening and reading in a phonetic opinion, or the sort of romanization of the Chinese. So that
when I went to start learning the characters, at least I had some sense of the language and
the words. But that's the only case where I've done that. Otherwise I go straight in if it's a
phonetic script. You know, Korea and Japanese to some extent, and certainly Arabic and Persian.
I know upfront that it's going to take me a long time to get used to it. So I look at very short,
like on length. We have the ability to look at sentence by sentence. So I listen to the sentence,
I look at it, I read it. I don't remember what that symbol is. I woke up the symbol. I read
it again. Everything about language learning is what seems initially impossible. You'll never get
there. You'll never understand if you just keep on putting in the time you eventually get there.
So, you know, Persian and Arabic at first is just noise and a bunch of squiggles.
But if you just stay with it, the brain, it's you got to trust your brain. You got to trust
your brain. Your brain will get used to it. Speaker 1: I don't know how much you know
about how language is taught in the United States in general, in middle school and high
school. But one of the things I've observed is that many of the people who take a few years of
a second language in the United States don't really come out speaking very much at all.
And some of the things I observed in my high school, for example, with the Spanish teachers,
was many of them were not only non-native speakers, they weren't even really fluent. They
spoke with very poor accents. And grammatically it was like 90% of the way there. So that seems to me
like a recipe for disaster. If the person teaching doesn't speak that well, it's going to be hard to
learn. But can you comment a little bit about how language is taught to middle and high schoolers
and whether it's being done the right way or not? Speaker 5: Well, an even worse example is the
English school system in Canada, where kids have English for excuse me, have French for,
let's say, ten years and can't speak. And the thing is that, first of all, the motivation and
the attitude of the learner is so important. So the most important thing for the teacher is to
be able to motivate the learner. We don't need the teacher to become the model of the language,
particularly today. There's so much stuff out there. There's some. There's Netflix and YouTube
and podcasts and radio and TV. We don't need the teacher to be the model of the language,
but the teacher has to motivate the learner. You don't even really need a teacher to teach the
grammar. You can look it up. If I want to know the conjugation of a verb in Spanish, I can look it up
if I'm curious if I'm motivated. So the key thing is motivation, and that's where the way languages
are taught typically is quite demotivating because you're taught some rules of grammar,
you're tested on it, you get it wrong. Getting things wrong is not very motivating. If you can
spend the time listening to things of interest to you reading, get an English language in you.
More more students will learn to speak some. Some students don't want to learn,
but it's the whole idea. Can you increase the number of people who are motivated enough to
learn that they will actually go out and learn? Speaker 1: Last thing I want to ask you about
very anecdotally, I'm curious whether there is a linguistic or societal explanation for why
some folks seem to be almost like predisposed to better learn some languages like English. And I'll
give you an example. I've this is very anecdotal, and I'm going to use that for you to tell me
it's only anecdotal or there's something to it. I've met a number of folks from the Philippines
when I was in France, when I was in the UK who spoke English as though they were
Native American individuals. And they told me, I've never even been to the United States. I
learned English merely by watching American films and television shows and kind of teaching
myself. And to me they sounded like Native American English speakers. Is there something,
for example, about the Filipino language or the people that might predispose them to be better
at learning English? Is there something to that? Speaker 5: I don't think so. I mean, we have a lot
of Filipino immigrants here in Vancouver and a lot of them speak with a noticeable accent,
which they never get rid of. Hmm. It's rather the the access to American TV programs.
If you go to Sweden, everyone speaks English. It's not because they teach
English better in their schools. It's because all television programs are in the original version.
So they watch lots of American and British television. It's kind of natural to them.
That's part of almost part of their culture they grow up with. So again, it goes back to input.
You know, if you're a if you're an English speaking Canadian in Vancouver, you never watch
anything in French unless you're going to the French immersion program. The school system is not
going to do much for you. They're going to teach you a bunch of rules. You won't have anything at
the end of it. So it all comes back to input. I mean, and people do learn who aren't, you know, in
in the country when they're on television watching these. I'm amazed at these Ukranians,
you know, that are on TV a lot and they're being interviewed and they're English is unbelievable.
Yeah. And they haven't been living in the States. So if a person is motivated,
if a person spends time listening to the language, reading in the language much, that's much more
important than any classroom activity. Speaker 1: We've been speaking with Steve
Kaufman. You can find his YouTube channel at Lingo, Steve, and also the language learning
app that he co-founded at Lincoln. That's L.A. and GQ dot com. Steve, such a pleasure
having you on today. I really appreciate it. Speaker 5: I could talk forever online. We just.