How Professional Spies Learn Languages FAST

I've spent the last 6 months shadowing former spies to uncover the truth behind their incredible language learning abilities I've been blown away to find 12 specific linguistic secrets that they use to learn foreign languages fast and we weren't even told what language it was going to be at first it was a sort of it was shrouded in mystery now after learning eight languages myself and teaching tens of thousands of students I've been mighty impressed by these techniques CIA MI6 KGB we've got them all in here so if you'd like to steal some of these pro

tricks to speed up your own language learning well you're in the right place you just weing out oh my God what if he now launches and realizes that there West is two westerners in the room as well you know who shouldn't be here as he found out and all this is going through de back your mind thinking oh Cy Wicked oh funny what the hell's going to happen here who do you think he might be talking about take a wild guess I will show you a little bit later on now as we all know spies

are incredibly good at foreign languages yeah had IR Auto Reser yeah Bond should have been dead a long time ago real spies have a lot more writing on their language skills though than just impressing the locals a toast to this moment and the moment yet to come and honestly if MI6 and CIA had to do things in a normal way I wouldn't have such a great story to tell you [Applause] love that show so why do you think spies bother learning languages can't they just hack your computer and spy on you sneakily no if you

are a spy you have to blend in gather intelligence impersonate people and as you'll see later a huge part of it is influencing people all without getting caught of course but if you can't speak someone's language how on Earth are you going to influence them words after all are weapons so that was pretty much just over a yearl language course and then you have about 6 to8 months then after that on of your applied training as they term it which is then learning your trade craft of um how to apply that language in the real

world and what's required of you which is the classified element and spies need to understand words like their lives depend on it that is their reason why for learning a language we all need a reason why to learn a language whether that's meeting people reading books watching TV understanding a culture finding your own reason why that's going to motivate you to keep learning is absolutely key there are 100,000 undercover covert operatives collecting Secrets you're going to be an agent for the CIA there are all sorts of crazy requirements like war zone deployment experience and learning

another language but get this real spies thrive in chaos hello Karina I have the package for your Society I am in the door no I am to the door on the door the doesn't actually care how advanced your vocab is they care if you have what it takes to learn a completely new language because it's hard and many people quit most people actually never finish their language courses that's what the statistics say but you know what the CIA says any language course trying to make you perfect is completely missing the point Perfection is a bit

off-putting and we're more endeared towards imperfection so the next time your mind criticizes you for all your imperfections take a deep breath release remind yourself imperfection is more relatable you getting this listen it doesn't matter how much time you spend going over new words and grammar if you never actually have any conversations in the language you're learning you'll have all of this knowledge in your head but you won't be any good at actually speaking why don't you go sit on your boat and I'll blow our fog horn when when we're g that good oh God

I forgot my life I like her she doesn't care when you try too hard to be perfect that's what the CIA calls the Perfection Paradox it's what happens when you get so focused on practicing a skill and trying to get it perfect that you never actually use the skill at all indeed in my own language learning I've always found that Perfection really is the enemy CU it's only by making mistakes you can figure out what you got wrong and then actually improve and that's why spies is trained to recognize this problem and actually fix it

be a Jennifer Lawrence just open your mouth and speak so if perfect grammar isn't the most important language skill a spy needs then what is fluency a foolproof accent cultural awareness something else entirely well we will see but first don't you want want to hear a spy trick that is literally the opposite of what guys like me always tell you I know you do it's very very hard to beat the bad guys very very hard the best thing you can do is learn to think like them so you can stay kind of one step ahead

so when you start to protect your front door you look for the bad guy to come in through the back door crazy spine knowledge here your brain learns faster in an unpredictable environment so you know how those other language teachers are always nagging you about sticking to a routine I think I might have said that from time to time as well spies say the opposite see in spy land being predictable is a one way ticket to getting caught plus being a creature of habit can actually put your brain to sleep your brain's like oh this

old grammar thing again and switches off so what is a spy secret weapon anti- routines number one is obviously just shifting the perspective of I need to do more things and I need to add more things to my routine when in fact you need to stop doing things that you're currently doing all that remains is the work to be done thing is learning is exactly the opposite of a brainless habit it's about shaking things up and anti- routines are designed to upset your habits and force your brain to think actively at all times that's why

spies deliberately sabotage their routines when learning a language so the six of us had three months to learn Pash to up to a really decent level so that's Reading Writing and actually obviously listening but speaking it as well to be able to converse to get the points across so we can find out pieces of the intelligence jigsaw again in Afghanistan and if you keep your brain on its toes you will learn a language faster want some ideas well how about instead of studying at your desk today take your story learning course and go and sit

in a park and when you go and get your takeaway coffee instead of just ordering it in English first think how might you ask for it in Spanish or French and then while you're at it just try practicing with the dogs I know this sounds crazy but it kind of works by the way have you ever wondered if sounding like a native speaker is actually a good thing it might not be but hey if you're enjoying this video so far I would love it if you would like the video and subscribe to the channel your

support really helps me keep going and make more of these videos listen you don't want to be too fluent if you a spy but wait why would I say that Sur that cannot be true no CIA officer wants to be fluent in a language you don't want to be fluent in a language because if you're fluent in a language you end up looking and sounding extremely suspicious why is this Ambiguously Brown guy rocking through Paris speaking perfect French with an accent that comes from South France it doesn't it's too suspicious makes perfect sense right you

definitely want to speak the language well enough to have a conversation about a B2 level at least but spies need to blend in and sounding too perfect can actually raise suspicion indeed During the period I've been here the 8 out possibility is enormously increased favorite thing about horam is that it's reasonably civilized it's not so rushed and so full that uh you know you feel that you're under pressure all the time you got to walk that tight rope very very carefully if I were a spy in I don't know Brazil or somewhere I could probably

fool them with a heavy disguise but you know no one looking at me is going to think I I'm Brazilian no one's buying that but speaking of blending in there is another thing that can break your cover yeah nobody is buying that he is Italian listen an accent is not a problem an accent is fine as long as you're a civilian it's no big deal but for a spy an accent can be their best friend or worst enemy see if you can figure out the problem here just a single mispronounced word can reveal that you

are a foreigner even if your grammar and vocab are perfect what kind of accent are we talking about you're speaking German but you sound American does that automatically blow your cover well not necessarily that only gives you away if you're pretending to be German or whatever it is you look American why do you speak perfect Arabic or the other way around what do you do for a living I'm really glad you asked that I'm a computer engineer uh you're a what I'm sorry I said um I'm a computer engineer the key is to match your

accent to your cover story ever heard of sleeper spies now this is where things get terrifying sleeper spies have to erase every trace of their native accent now this is real movie stuff speak Russian they have to sound like they were born there a single wrong word can be the end this this x KGB spine Jack bosy is he good enough can we teach him English so well that he can pretend to uh have been born in the United States he led a double life in the US for nearly a decade got a job as

a bicycle delivery guy and a perfect American accent no one knew he was Russian I worked with her and did a lot of uh phonetic exercises I worked like a maniac look out for a language tip from Jack coming up a bit later listen guys unless you're a sleeper spy in training don't get hung up on sounding exactly like a native speaker there's not always really the best strategy it's all about finding that sweet spot where you can communicate well whilst also sound authentic enough just embrace your unique voice we're all unique and that's what

makes us interesting you know I have a secret weapon of my own that you might love especially if you're getting a bit tired of language courses that never seem to pan out if you're learning Spanish this one is especially for you me and my team at story learning have come up with something very very interesting to FasTrack your Spanish it's called the 10day Spanish Challenge and it uses the story learning method which is a unique language method that uses stories and tens of thousands of people just like you have achieved their language learning dreams with

us that's why we say that story learning is what you do when you've tried everything else and you are finally ready to learn the 10day challenge is just 10 days you can probably guess that one it's only $10 and it will give you a completely new way of looking at learning Spanish best thing is it takes only 10 minutes a day to do so if you'd like to try the 10-day Challenge and learn Spanish with a method that you haven't used before check the link in the description below or you can scan the QR code

if you're watching on your TV and come join us only $10 now where were we he said so would you say you'd be intrigued to learn a language I thought yeah okay yeah I would he goes I'm going to send you away for an mlat test modern language aptitude test he said you go up to a place in Rutland I can't tell you much about this trade he said but you come out as a junior technician which is equivalent to a lance Jack Lance corporal in the Army he said and it's on a high Pay

Band he said but on completion of that you go to Berlin as your first tour says you be on decent money he said you get qualification from it and he said basically it's spying the Secret Service doesn't pull any punches with language training it's all or nothing and spies do language immersion like you've never seen it before try to imagine a language boot camp where you dropped in a foreign country for 6 months with no Escape for you eat sleep and breathe the language 24/7 living with locals and avoiding English speakers like the plague the

goal of course is total immersion and remember you are Incognito you're using your skills then but we got back on the helicopter we took off it failed again they were trying to the Chileans were trying to tell this Iraqi guy what they thought the problem was and everything else and it's with a pump and this that the other and I went mad and he went he went oh thanks you and I thought oh yeah I've given the game already yeah listen to this back in the Cold War the CIA pushed their agents to the limits

to learn Russian to an advanced level within a year which is pretty crazy but you know what well it worked meanwhile on my own turf here in the UK MI6 has its own secrets for language learning and they are into total immersion in hostile environments I'm a big blonde 6'4 Welshman yeah and people don't expect me to speak Arabic they believe in throwing their agents into the deep end forcing them to learn on the fight in real world situations my primary operational language in the military was Russian so that was pretty much just over a

year-long language course and then you have about 6 to eight months then after that of your applied training as they term it which is then learning your tradecraft of how to apply that language in the real world and what's required of you which is the classified element so it speaks basically a spy yeah very much not for the faint of heart but it gets results maybe I could try the Spy thing no so what can you do if you are stuck at home and you're not a spy in training living abroad well here is a

fun idea change everything in your home into the language that you're learning your phone your movies your Netflix your your music your people maybe slightly Bolder one I'll leave that one up to you but think of it as building your own mini spy school at home the more you surround yourself your daily activities with the language the faster you will learn right now it's pretty obvious a spy goal is language usefulness not Mastery but what languages to spies actually learn well let me check with my people at Langley give me a second CIA how may

I help you I know that I'm contributing to a mission greater than myself okay the next spy language trick is so amazing it kept me up for three whole nights and I had weird dreams about it you're going to be just the same you'll see I was taught Russian to be kind of passive cuz you're there you're listening in we weren't going to be on East Berlin talking to Russians and everything else so our passive and my passive skills for Russian are still very good my spoken skills yeah I can go in there put a

Russian accent on spies have killer memory tricks up their sleeve and one of the coolest is the Memory Palace technique this one goes all the way back to ancient Greece and here's how it works you visualize is a familiar place your home your route to work whatever this is your Palace your your location then you stick bits of information you need to remember in specific places on this mental map location that you've prepared and when you need to remember the info you just walk through your memory Palace you visualize yourself doing this and you pick

up the pieces along the way it's pretty cool they've even studied this and the Memory Palace technique helps people remember 38% more information so I guess it works I guess I know what I'm doing tonight now I promise you a tip from that xkg guy I started studying English so I started back from scratch you know I had went they paid for a tutor and I went from like English 101 that I went through that in a couple of months then and then I got another guy with whom I expanded this we had conversations rather

than working from a textbook and I worked like a maniac I threw myself into the study of English like you wouldn't believe um and and my inspiration came from Vladimir Lenin so I started reading newspapers and every word that I didn't know I wrote down on on an index card German English and I piled them up and so I really learned 100 new English words every day I know this because I counted them 100 new words every day that is some commitment that is what the KGB did but agencies closer to home have a slightly

different approach they like to prioritize learning the 1,000 most important words why is that well every language has what we call high frequency words the words that come up a lot and these words are obviously a lot more useful highfrequency use words are those words that you use the most or the words that target language uses the most and those 1,000 words make up 80% of all conversations that you have so if you want to be like a spy only you start with learning the 1,000 most used words first and now you've got something that

you can actually stick in your memory Palace and from now on we should sound like FR WS frch wter [Music] now listening is an art form for spies obviously and it's critical they're trained to pick up on every little tiny detail in your dialect your accent and the exact things that you say why because how someone speaks can reveal loads about them their background intentions even their next move if you've been watching my guess the acent videos you will know what I mean so you learn a language and then you get taught your tradecraft which

is ultimately being an EES dropper during World War II the British secret service e dropped on German prisoners of war in a genius way they set up an operation called the M room where they secretly recorded conversations of captured German soldiers the Germans began to spill their secrets and what did MI6 get well a gold mine of Intel that's what it saved thousands of lives but favorite part is they also learned loads of slang idioms and Military jargon that you wouldn't find in any textbook it's a famous story so there you go if you want

to sharpen your listening skills try EAS dropping on conversations in the language you're learning just be respectful of course you're not a real spy you're just trying to pick out new words and expressions if you're really good maybe you can even tell the exact area that they're from I tell you each dropping on conversations on the bus really is an underrated tactic English please imagine having to speak a foreign language while under extreme pressure I mean picture this you take an awesome Russian course then you go to Russia pretend to be Russian but you get

arrested and the police force you to take a polygraph test in Russia spies do this all the time whether they're in the middle of a covert operation or under interrogation and this guy looked at me I was like you can see his complete disdain for me and he went whales and I went yeah you went Wayne Wayne whales which is where whales I me Wales he goes Wales Wales I went Sweden and he went H stamp the passport you know when so how does a spy stay calm well they practice of course in hardcore situations

and when the day comes that the Spy faces bad guy well they won't be panicking listen to this all of a sudden in walk Saddam Hussein and Hell Fire literally their hairs on the back not just my neck but everybody you can see Goosebumps and everybody it just felt evil try talking to native speakers you just met even if it does make you nervous because the more you practice the more confident you'll get I had to do this in French when I was very very young and living in Paris and trust me you will survive

beef balls are overrated what you really need are some ah wagu beef man I wish I new English you guys in the US know all about Spanglish that's an example of what's called code switching now code switching is about flipping between languages or dialects very easily you get so used to doing it automatically no one even notices well when you're a spy you have to be able to do this quickly and without raising [Music] eyebrows the answer Ken be shown KGB agents were pros at this they would often switch between Russian and the local language

to blend in and avoid suspicion probably better than most it's the kind of language trick that you can have a lot of fun with maybe you have a friend you can try it with start of switching languages quickly around the house and then get out there and go all Deep Cover on them great way to get more fluent and adaptable if you want to be really really badass though you need to combine it with the next thing you're looking particularly beautiful tonight you're looking particularly beautiful tonight Johnny English is up to no good as usual

ever wish you could read mes I certainly have well language is not just about words it's about culture too and one thing that spies know is to never underestimate those little details local Customs what makes people laugh what can get people's guard down understanding these details can be as important as speaking the language itself in World War I there was this famous spy Mata Harry you've probably heard of her she wasn't just any spy she was a Dutch exotic dancer who became one of the most infamous double agents of the war crazy story she got

in with European High Society Charmed the socks off some Military Officers and walked out with their secrets I mean I'm not going to recommend you do this but you can learn something powerful here knowing the culture Inside Out can give you a huge Edge want some practice well pick a language and go find a slang phrase that they use video is good for this you need visuals now practice mimicking it until you nail the accent the intonation the body and angry the underlying emotion everything like that if it's Korean you must be Korean when it

comes out of your mouth small adjustments huge difference now next week I want to hear what you did to go all double agent deal come back and write it in the comments anyone guess the one skill that matters most undercover well it's the secret weapon that spies have known for centuries he came out of the shop he took the flowers and most Americans tend to hold the flowers by the stock so that the flowers are up this individual took them and grabbed the stock and then held the flowers so that they were facing down and

I said that's how they carry flowers in Eastern Europe their voice does not demonstrate the same confidence that their body demonstrates so you know that that person is lying the Ultimate Spy language is body language and I'm not just talking about hand gestures in Italian words can be a trap and that's why spies spend countless hours mastering the art of reading people's body language to try to see what little details they're hiding they're basically experts at it body language can give you so much so many little clues in situations where you might not catch every

word facial expressions gestures posture there's a lot of myths out there the ones that stand out is if you cross your arms that it's a blocking Behavior that's just nonsense even when you don't like the person that is in front of you this isn't to block them out it's actually to self soothe because in essence it's a self hug when you combine facial expressions with body movements body language non-verbal cues and you add on top of that effective elicitation techniques that you are in control of now you have a more robust platform to tell if

someone's lying to you best part is spies then turn this around and learn how to use the same body language to fool the bad guys and if you pay a lot of attention to native speakers body language you for sure going to understand the language like a pro want to have some fun go on a mission to learn the craziest accent you can find in English you won't believe your ears when you hear some of the options