I was very, very shy to speak Korean and now I am really confident Korean and not shy to speak at all
That process those let's say five-four years that it took me to reach a confident speaking level in Korean
Took me about one and a half to two years in Japanese
Why would that be? Why did I learn Japanese so much faster than I did Korean?
Hi hi! welcome back to my channel, this is Lindie if you haven't met me before and I love the languages
Today we're talking about how long it takes you to get to
fluency to learn a language
I've been asked this question quite a lot recently
Hey, how long did it take you to learn Korean? or hey, how long did it take you to learn Japanese?
I don't think it's possible to learn a language to fluency in a certain amount of time
Nobody has the same language learning skills, techniques, background
there are some people online who claim to
be able to learn your language to fluency to become fluent in the language within three or four months
I think you may or may not know who I am talking about. I don't think that is possible
I wish it were I would be, like, way past fluency in Hungarian if it was just three months
No way. Not possible. Me saying I've learned Korean for ten years and someone else saying they've learned Korean for ten years
We might not be nearly at the same level because one of us may or may not have put in more time
One of us may or may not have lived in Korea
One of us may or may not
Listen to Korean music, watch Korean dramas, be immersed with a language and the other person could just, you know,
Learn from a book can go to classes and not have that- not hear that language all the time
So definitely immersion plays a big role here. You know, I think it takes so long to
You know, I think it takes so long to
really get down to native pronunciation in a language and pronunciation
Really helps you sound a lot more fluent than you may or may not be so just learning pronunciation in the tricky language
Takes a very long time
it took me about one and a half to two years to feel confident in my
Pronunciation of Korean and when I talk to people on the phone, some people eventually started saying oh my gosh
I thought you're Korean or oh
You sound completely Korean that took a number of years to "sound" native in Korean
And if I know all the grammar structures and all the vocab in Korean and my pronunciation is still terrible
I'm not going to sound or be fluent, right?
So there's a lot of factors at play. It is very very difficult to define what fluency is and what it's not
Alright, I'm not going to talk about English and Afrikaans because I grew up bilingual. So I will start with French
French is a very tricky one because I started learning French around great too when I lived in Pakistan
And then I took it in Dubai at school from like fourth until ninth grade
in South Africa from grade 9 into a grade 12
So in French was always a school language for me, but once I finished high school
I didn't have the time to take French at University and my French has just gotten very very weak
So I don't think you can measure how long someone's learned a language with fluency. Those are not
Correlating. So if you count like let's say I started with French in second grade and I took it up until 12th grade that is
10 years of French that does not mean I
Speak French like a 10 year old French native because I've not been immersed in the language. I don't live in front
I don't live in a Francophone country and I haven't been practiced since I left high school and
Some people who have learned French for two years are way past my level because they put time and effort into it
Okay, let's move on to Korean. So I've been learning Korean since 2009 that is almost ten years
so
The same as French but at different time periods in my life and I am way more fluent in Korean than I am in French
Because of emerge the time and effort I put into learning Korean. I'm always texting on the cut book in Korean
I read Korean books. I listen to Korean music every day
So just hearing the language and using it every day has made my korean go like this while my french kind of goes like that
So I guess i've learned them for the same amount of time, but I put way more effort into korean
Then the interesting thing is when we get to japanese. Alright, here's the funny thing
So I think I learned the same I got to the same level of fluency in japanese. Then I got to in. Korean
but in a wave
shorter time period so sometimes they'll discover that you've been learning a language for five years and someone's been learning it for two years and
They are way more fluent than you
It's because of immersion and how much exposure they have to the language
And of course if you learn a bunch of other languages on the side, you're not dedicating so much time to one language
whereas one person would be learning a single language to a level of fluency and you are
Dabbling in a lot of languages, which is not a bad thing
But the time it takes to reach a fluent
Whatever that means level in those languages is a bit slower than it does
If you're just learning what in any case that aside
So I think I got to a comfortable korean speaking level in about two to four years of learning. Korean
I was very very shy to speak. Korean
I was too scared to even say ano SEO to the shop owner at the Korean store
And now I am really confident in Korean and not try to speak at all that process those
Let's say five four years that it took me to reach a confident speaking level in Korean
Took me about one-and-a-half to two years some Japanese
Why would that be why did I learn Japanese so much faster than they did Korean?
so as you may or may not know my parents lived in Japan for four years and
Even though I couldn't go with them because I was studying in South Africa
I used to visit them for about two months at a time twice a year
So let's say that by I mean it was over December and the June July holiday
So that would be like one and a half months times two. It would be three months a year
Times four is twelve months. So I spent a
community meal a
cumulative
Amount of let's say one year over the span of four years in Japan because I was so motivated
To learn Japanese because my parents were there and I had this opportunity to be forced to use the language twice a year
I put so much effort into my Japanese
Korean was more of a fun journey something I did as a hobby and
That's why it took me a number of years to get to a confident level of fluency
Whereas with Japanese I seriously had this goal. I wanted to be fluent
I wanted to work in a Japanese company and it is quite hard to get by with only English in Japan
So I was forced to use Japanese and that pushed me to learn Japanese a lot harder
My dad used to bring home
newspapers I think it was the Japanese times to pad times from his work and they had a section in the in the middle for
Japanese learners and it would teach you kanji and grammar and basic phrases and stuff and he had always
Photocopy the paper for me and bring it home for me. So I always had this constant input of Japanese around me
so living in South Africa, which is a
Predominantly english-speaking country. I was not surrounded by
Korean as much which is why it took me a bit longer
to be fluent in Korean
It was also easier for me actually to learn Japanese because I have learned Korean first and the grammar structures and some
Vocabulary are very similar
So the time it took me in Korean to learn that the particles EAGA and then those like topic markers and subject markers
We don't have them in English or Afrikaans or French. It was very confusing for me
I was like why why do you have this but that time it took me to figure out that I
Didn't have that in Japanese because I was like, okay, it's just like Korean got it
Within one minute. I understood why you have particles and Japanese
Whereas it took me a few months in Korean to wrap my head around it
So the more languages you learn especially within the same language body those same language family the easier it gets
So I'm not going to go into detail about all my other languages like for example Hungarian
I started learning around November last year
it is almost November this year and I really haven't improved because I haven't been putting effort into it and
Japanese is more important for me now because I'm writing the jlpt
So it is so difficult to answer the question
How long did it take you to learn XYZ language? Because in summary, I'm still learning
Every language is different depending on your native language as well. So all in all sorry. I'm not able to answer your question
I don't know. It is very very different for each language
I don't know how long it takes me to learn a language because I am still learning. Well, that's it for today's video
Thank you so much for watching and I'd love to hear what your opinions are
Do you think you can get fluent in the language in a certain amount of time or is there a certain time frame that everyone?
Has to learn any language. I don't know leave your thoughts below
thank you for watching and see you guys in the next video, bye bye!