learning a new language is easy, actually

Learning a language is actually very easy. You  start off by watching this video right here, then you stare at this screen, then you pick  a language you have no business learning, do one lesson, forget about it, then  search up videos about how to learn that language in 6 weeks, made by a  youtuber who learned it in 6 years. But if you want to actually learn a language, you have to make sure you're not  doing it for the wrong reasons.

Sure, if you learned a hard  enough language it would probably, impress a lot of strangers and it  would probably get you a lot of views on Youtube. subscribers too. I think  some people even make money from it.

But if you’re a beginner, you should really be  picking a language that’s easy enough for you to actually enjoy learning it. You shouldn't pick  a language if you're gonna treat it like a chore. So to maximize your chances of success,  here’s a chart of some popular languages ranked by how much time it takes for  an English speaker to learn them.

If you're not sure what language you should  start learning, I would just pick either Spanish, French, or Portuguese. Not only are  they the easiest for English speakers, but many countries speak one of  these as an official language. I don’t know why.

but it’s  probably just a weird coincidence. However if you do want to go for  a harder language, it is possible. Just remember to ask yourself, do  I really have the right motivation?

For example. “wanting to understand anime” is not gonna motivate you to learn  Japanese for more than a day. However, “My friends speak Spanish and I want  to understand them” is a pretty good motivator, because that’s probably why they  made a group chat without you.

Some people have a take a language class for school. But that by itself is not a  great motivator because your finger might slip and you might accidentally  paste all your assignments into DeepL. However, The British invaded my country and  I need English to survive, is the perfect motivation to start learning English, and  so far it seems to have been a huge success.

So now that you’ve picked your language, it’s  time for the easy part, which is learning it. Usually, people on the internet will tell you  that the fastest method to learn any language is to get a language partner, or a tutor, or  a friend who’s willing to sit down with you, and talk to you like a baby, until you  start picking up words and sentences. And while this is probably the fastest way, it requires human interaction.

So instead here’s a method that you can do all by  yourself, at home, to become fluent in a language. The first step, is learning the basics.  This is actually a very easy step, but many people try to skip it by doing one or two Duolingo lessons .

Other people get stuck  on the language-learning side of youtube, watching 138 videos about how to Learn Korean,  none of which include a single word of Korean. But the whole time, all you really had to do was find a beginner textbook for that language  that has practice exercises for you to do. It might take you a month to finish the  whole thing, but the progress you’ll make is equal to about 2 years of Duolingo,  or about 12 years of school in America.

,and you can find these books for  free by just googling “beginner, then the language, textbook pdf. ” And there you go. You could also get them  from the library.

Or, as they say in France, Once you finish the beginner book, it’s time to practice listening. You don’t  even have to worry about speaking right now, because first you need to learn what the  language is actually supposed to sound like. The easiest way to do this, is by  watching youtube videos in that language.

The idea behind this, is that you’re  not gonna understand everything, but by looking at the video, and using  context clues from what you do understand, you can slowly pick up the  language without even realizing. This works especially well because every language only has a few thousand words that are  actually used in regular conversation. So overtime, you’ll start recognizing the same  few words and phrases in every video you watch.

And you can really pick anything to  watch, as long as it’s interesting, and you can understand at least 30% of it. If you put on a video and it sounds  like gibberish, it’s not your fault, they’re just talking too fast. this is probably because they’re trying to gatekeep their language.

Do  not let them do this. To fix it, just go to the Youtube search bar,  and add the magic word “easy”, and just like that, you get served up a  bunch of videos that you can understand. Automatic captions also help a lot, cause you  can rewind and look up the words you don't know.

There are even websites like reversocontext where you can look up a word or phrase and  actually see it used in a real sentence. But whatever you do, do not turn on english subtitles. IF YOU'RE READING  THIS.

. . I KNOW YOU HAVE THEM ON Many people who try to learn Japanese,  for example, watch anime.

This is not a bad way to learn Japanese. But people who turn on  English subtitles, will just read the subtitles, and even though they think they’re  learning Japanese, in 5 years, all they’ll have to show for it is this profile  picture and a discord nitro subscription. But luckily, you’ve been using subtitles in the  right language, and you can now understand at least 70% of everything you watch.

It’s time  to unleash step 3, which is speaking practice. to start speaking, just keep  watching youtube, except now, you pause after each important sentence, and  repeat it out loud. Or at least whisper it.

Try to pretend like you’re having  a real conversation with an actual person. And even think of different possible  situations where you could use the sentence. Whenever you find a sentence that sounds really  useful, write it down in a notebook.

You're probably never gonna look at that notebook ever  again, but it's nice to get some writing practice. Now, at any point in this entire process, once you  feel ready to start speaking, sit down and record yourself talking to a camera. And just talk about  your day, stuff you did, stuff you’re looking forward to, and even ask a couple questions  to the imaginary person on the other side.

If you ever forget how to say something,  fill it in with english and move on. Later, you can watch the recording back, and look up whatever you didn’t know how  to say using DeepL or reverso context. To an outsider, this might look like  a lonely way to learn a language, but if you’ve ever heard someone say they’re  self-taught, this is exactly what they were doing.

And that’s all there is to it, if you keep reading  about the language, watching youtube and talking to a camera for long enough you’ll become fluent  without ever having to talk to an actual person. Congratulations. But one day in the future,  you’ll probably have to travel, and you’ll eventually have  to talk to native speakers.

All you have to do is just learn the  culture and keep up with the politics. For example, if you ever visit France,  this is what you might expect to see, but what you’ll actually see is hundreds of French farmers driving their tractors  into the capital to form a blockade. If you stop a Frenchman on the street to ask  what happened, he’ll just tell you that this is just a normal day in France.

French people  use creative protest as a way to pass the time, and you clearly must’ve not read about  it using Ground News. #sponsored. Ground News is an app, and a website,  that feeds you news from multiple sources while also telling you straight-up if the  sources reporting on an article, are biased.

For example, When I'm reading that BBC article  about how French farmers are protesting getting absolutely shafted by the government, the  Ground News browser extension shows that this article is from the center, and the left and  the right seem to be covering it pretty equally. If you click on Full Coverage, you can see  that 306 sources are covering this story, and there’s a summary from  each political viewpoint. The Bias insights feature tells you  how the left, right, and center, are reporting on the story differently.

You can even see tabs showing bias distribution,  the factuality of the sources, and who owns them. But what I do most often,  is compare headlines. This article makes the protestors look like  angry manure-slinging traffic-blockers, while this article makes them look  like strong, revolutionary heroes.

I recommend browsing the International Edition so  you’ll never look confused in foreign countries. Just go to THE LINK YOU SEE ON THE  screen or click the link below, and you’ll get 30% off their  unlimited access Vantage plan today.