This book changed the way I think about language learning (A Linguist Reviews)

So he says this particular quote which I found to be really stunning. So he says, "Kids learn languages by listening and watching adults for thousands upon thousands of hours. Adults do this for free for their own kids, but those same adults will tend to charge you a lot of money.

And I think this is absolutely brilliant. [Music] Why? Welcome back to the channel.

I'm Juie and I'm a linguist and lifelong language learner. Today we're going to talk about this book, Fluent Forever by Gabriel Winer. And so I was actually just walking in the bookstore the other day and I was walking in the linguistics section and I saw this book and the title Fluent Forever, How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It.

I have to say I looked at that and I scoffed. Um, so those of you who are familiar with me, I have spent the last 13 or so years obsessively learning Korean. And I would say it took me at least a few years before I would say I was fluent in Korean.

And so seeing something like this like learn any language fast, it just makes me feel like it's either a scam or it's so great that I'm feeling a little embarrassed that I took so long to get fluent in Korean. I decided to, you know, look online and find some reviews and can you believe it? This is one of the bestselling books about language learning out there.

And there were so many five-star reviews that I was like, you know what? I'm going to bite the bullet. I'm gonna buy the book, read it for you guys, and let you know if it's legit or a scam.

Before we start the video, I just want to say this video is going to be worth your time. The video is going to be broken up into three sections. The first section is going to be an overview of the topics and ideas presented in the book.

I try to sum it up as good as I can while retaining, you know, the important things. And then number two, it's going to be about the highlights. Basically, if you don't read the book, even if you don't watch majority of this video, what I think you should take away from the book.

And lastly, my personal thoughts on the book. Basically, I'm going to answer three questions. The first is, do I recommend this book for language learners specifically?

Two, does this teach you how to learn any language fast? And the third one is, does it help you never forget that language? So these are the three things I'm going to be thinking about as I read this book.

So let's talk about the overview. So uh Gabriel Winer, he basically starts off the book in chapter 1 with three key principles of language learning. And what are they?

First, he thinks you should learn pronunciation first. The author Gabriel Winer, he actually has training as a former opera singer. So he learned the proper pronunciations of many words in different languages before he even learned those languages and he feels like that gave him a big boost in his language learning and I think it's you know not a bad idea.

So we'd like to hear more about that. Number two, don't translate. And this is also related to his experience.

So he's done a lot of immersion programs. He said he started an immersion program in French without knowing any French and then he came out of the program as an advanced French speaker. And so immersion programs are basically you spend a couple of weeks or maybe a few months in a program where everyone is forced to speak and communicate only in the target language.

And I totally agree with this myself. after living in Korea, my skills got exponentially better compared to if I just, you know, learn the language on my own at home. And his last point is to use a space repetition system or SRS.

And this is something that a lot of language learners swear by. I have never used it. Um, I mean, I'm fluent in Korea now and I've never used an SRS, so I think you don't need it, but maybe it's useful if you want to learn the language quickly and never forget it.

So, that's something we're going to be looking at when we read this book. So, his second chapter of this book is actually not about language learning. It's actually about memory.

So, chapter 2 is called upload, five principles to end forgetting. And he has these, you know, principles. He has for example, make memories more memorable, maximize laziness, don't review, recall, wait, wait, don't tell me, and rewrite the past.

It sounds all very floofy, but essentially what he does is he takes his own personal anecdotes as well as scientific research that delves into memory and learning and he actually makes a very good case for what he's about to introduce later. So I'm going to cover some of these essential principles um right here. One of the first things that he talks about is the fact that the brain is a filter.

So you know our brain we get input like thousands and hundreds of thousands of new information every day right but the brain has to decide what we remember and what we don't remember. So for the brain we have to decide okay is it important is it important information? If it is then we're going to try to remember it.

We're going to be putting that into the important side of our brain to memorize it. But if the brain renders something, okay, we think it's not important, it's irrelevant for our lives and in the future, we're not going to work hard to remember it. And so he argues that foreign words, words in foreign languages tend to be forgettable because of three things.

The first one is that they sound weird. So, you know how our brains tend to be kind of oriented towards our mother language, like we recognize all the sounds of the language and we can differentiate them easily. But if it's like a foreign language, a sound that we've never heard of, it's hard for our brains to kind of understand them.

So, we have a hard time remembering them. Number two, he says that foreign words aren't particularly meaningful. So if you just see a foreign word in a textbook that's like you can't really read it, you don't know what it sounds like, you it says okay this means giraffe but you know your brain is not connecting meaning to it.

And then the last one is you don't have any personal connection to it. So he talks about how you know if I say the word chocolate chip cookie most of you who uh grew up in North America will have these like amazing personal memories connected to it. you know, you baking cookies with your mom or your friends, you know, taking the cookies out of the oven, you know, the smells.

There are so many personal memories for your native language words that you don't have with a foreign word. And so he says the way to make foreign words memorable is by doing all of those things, right? To first of all learn the sound system of the new language so that the sounds in that language don't sound weird to you and that you're able to differentiate them.

Number two, he says you need to bind those new words, those new sounds to images, right? And he says lastly, bind those images and sounds to personal experiences. And so that's something that he's going to talk a bit more in the book.

And so the great thing about um this book is that the author, he takes kind of highlevel concepts and he uses very simple, relatable stories for you to kind of connect them to. So he says just imagine you have a new friend named Edward and you know let's say you have to meet a lot of new people at one time and this is just one of many people so it's going to be hard to remember this guy his name is Edward so unless he is like a super super handsome you know vampire um it's going to be kind of hard for you to remember his name uh among the other names in the world so the first level of committing something to memory is sound so just by saying his name out loud Edward Edward Edward just saying his name out loud, it is helping your brain to remember it. And the second level is to bind those sounds to images.

So if you've grown up in North America, you probably know the movie Edward Scissor Hands. And that movie, it just has a new unique image that it is hard to forget. So if this new friend, you imagine him having scissors for hands, now this image of Edward Scissor Hands is related to this new friend of yours.

Winer says that this is going to help you remember this person's name. And to take it a step further, bind those images and sounds to past experiences. So, let's say you've seen Edward Scissor Hands, right?

Can you remember how old you were, if you saw in theaters, you know, what was the situation around you? There's probably a lot of memories connected to this experience. So, if you can connect all of those memories to this new friend named Edward, it's actually going to help you remember it better.

Same thing if you had a brother named Edward, maybe there are some connections like physical similarities or personality similarities between your brother and this new friend Edward. Then it's easier for you to bind those things together. And lastly, do you have scissors for hands?

If so, it should be quite easy to remember this new friend named Edward. I think so far he has a great introduction to everything we've seen and I'm really excited to read the rest. So, he kind of covers learning languages in a specific order.

So, his order is sound play, which is basically talking about learning the sounds of a language, the word play and the symphony of a word. basically how do you learn words in a language and three sentence play which is basically grammar. So he starts off with sound play for a specific reason.

Basically he believes that if you don't learn the sounds of a language it's going to be much harder for you to learn the other things of the language. So he recommends you to learn the sounds first and I totally agree. He actually gets quite scientific which I think is really good.

It shows that he knows he understands what he's talking about. So he talks about how there are about 600 phone names in the world and that most languages only use 40. So basically he talks about how by the time you're one years old you have kind of attuned your ears to understanding only the phone names in your language that it's a basically a more efficient way of your brain to work.

So the other sounds that you don't need in your life your brain kind of tunes them out. and he brings up the idea of you know Japanese. So Japanese has famously they have difficulty kind of differentiating the English L and R sounds.

And why is that? It's because in Japanese the L and R sounds basically appear in like the same kind of frequency. And they don't need to ever differentiate between L and R.

So their brains and their ears are not trained to see the difference right away like Americans. um or native English speakers might. But research has shown that if you put Japanese people in a room and incentivize them to see the difference, hear the difference, they actually learn the difference very quickly.

And so there's research that, you know, he brings up that shows us, hey, even if our native language is not one where you can see these differences or hear these differences, if you train yourself, if you just sit down and, you know, help yourself figure out the differences, it's definitely doable and it's not like you stuck with the ears that you have forever. And so his second thing that he thinks is really important is to develop a good accent in the target language early. And he says there are a few benefits that you get from speaking clearly in a good accent.

So he says the first one is that if you speak to a native speaker, let's say it's a French person and you speak in a horrible French accent, what tends to happen is that that native French speaker will think that you're not very good at French. So whether it's true or not, whether you've passed, you know, like the highest level of French, the fact that you cannot speak very clearly, your accent is not very good, they'll think that your French is not very good. So what happens is that they'll end up more likely to speak to you in English or whatever language that you're better at.

And if that's the case, then you're going to have fewer opportunities to practice French, right? So it's kind of like a win-win situation. you get better at speaking the language and you get more input from native speakers speaking to you in that language which I think brilliant.

And he says the way to help you learn the mouth positions of these sounds in these foreign languages is is a bit difficult but there are a lot of guides online and he provides some himself and he says when in doubt use the IPA which is the international phonetic alphabet. I think the IPA is wonderful when it's not confusing. So, even as a linguist myself, I get kind of like a headache looking at some of the symbols sometimes.

So, if it's helpful, I would say use it. If it's going to hurt you, don't use them. Okay.

So, the second part basically of learning a language is words. And he basically talks about words in a language being kind of like conducting a symphony when you think of a word. So I thought this was a really cool and interesting idea.

So basically what happens when you think of a word? Let's say I say the word dog to you. What kind of words do you think in your mind?

Do you think like bark? Do you think like golden retriever? Do you think play?

Do you think like yard or you know fetch? Right? So every word in different languages will kind of have a symphony that plays when it's selected.

And this is a great thing because words don't exist in a vacuum and your memories are connected to all these things. So this hearkens back to what he said about memories being kind of connected. So I think this is wonderful.

And he basically talks about how if you go to a language school or you do a textbook and you and one of the first things you're going to see is like let's learn family members. Here's the word for mother. Here's the word for niece.

And let's just learn all the family members together. But the truth of the matter is you're not going to be using the word niece nearly as much as you're using the word mother. So he recommends to learn mother first and don't bother with niece until much later.

Which I think is for lack of better word brilliant. It's totally true. I am a huge uh proponent for frequency lists.

Basically it's going to be a list of how frequent different words pop up in different languages. And I think you should learn those first before you learn like the word for niece because I don't know how often you're going to hear the word niece or use the word niece in any language. So he actually has um a list of 625 words that you can translate into any language because these are words that exist in pretty much every language at a very high frequency.

and you kind of go o you kind of skip over the words that may be difficult for you to understand you know when you're first learning for example like you know in English we have words like the uh of in through right these are what we call function words that um are useful for sentence building but difficult to understand so I actually do recommend this list of 625 words that he provides in the book um if you don't read the book for any other reason this list is a great reason to get the book and so lastly we finally talk about grammar. And so the thing about grammar is that it seems like grammar is always the hardest thing to learn about any language. Like you will always hear that someone is not a native speaker when they misjugate something, when they use the wrong, you know, gender of some word.

And I totally understand. But the author, he actually has a completely different approach to this. So he starts this chapter by talking about how adults actually learn grammar the same way that kids learn grammar.

Everyone learning English will learn the sentence I eat. Before they learn the sentence I ate, before the sentence I was eating. And that is just a universal across the board.

Every person learning English grammar will acquire it in this way. And I mean I I totally agree. I think it's very very true.

The way you build up your grammar machine is through something called comprehensible input. So comprehensible input is a linguistic term. But it's very simple to understand.

It's basically input or kind of like things that we hear or things that we read right in the target language that we can understand that is not too difficult for us and we can use these sentences to help build up our grammar machines. So this grammar machine there's a lot of debate among linguists whether you know humans have an innate grammar machine that you know animals don't have and I don't really have a particular belief on whether we or we're unique or not but I think the fact of the matter is we are good at picking up grammar and we'll develop our grammar machine in any language that we have constant kind of input from and so I think that this is something that we should really kind of hone in on is that as long as we have comprehensible input consistently in our target language, we're going to continue to build up our grammar machines whether or not we drill grammar or not. Winer he really suggests grammar books for adults because you know we are living our adult lives and we don't have like constant streams of input that is at our right level that for it to be comprehensible.

So, it's good to buy grammar books that have, you know, sentences of varying levels. You know, grammar books for every language. They, you know, come in beginner, intermediate, advanced, right?

So, obviously start with beginner if you're just starting to learn a language. And that way, you can build your grammar machine better. Don't jump to Shakespeare when you're 5 years old because that will not make any sense to you and it will not help you build your grammar machine.

And so now we're going to talk about number two, the highlights of the book. So I thought that there were really great points of the book. For example, one of my favorite things was the fact that he mentioned from the very beginning that memory is a web of connections.

When disperate neurons fire together, they wire together. And obviously we know this from psychology class, from science class, we know this, but how do we use it for a language? And so he has developed a system where you create kind of like memories connected to each new word you're trying to learn and then he recommends flashcards.

So whether or not you approve of, you know, flash cards, that's up to you. But I think it's, you know, a really great idea, a scientific idea that he put into practice. Next, so he says this particular quote, which I found to be really stunning.

So he says, "Kids learn languages by listening and watching adults for thousands upon thousands of hours. Adults do this for free for their own kids, but those same adults will tend to charge you a lot of money. " And I think this is absolutely brilliant.

Why? Because we tend to see that children have a crazy amount of ability to learn a new language whereas adults seem to take so long. and the progress is so inconsistent and very slow and so people tend to see that there is like probably a developmental difference in the brains and there it's just impossible to learn like a kid but I think what he's saying here is solely true like kids have basically a free language tutor around them 24 hours a day that feeds them comprehensible input whereas if you try to get that as an adult that's going to cost you a lot of money nobody's going to do that for someone who's not their children.

So, I thought that was a very very poignant quote. And lastly, he brings up this idea of what language learning is like. So, he says learning a new language is like island building.

So he says he's basically standing next to a big lake and he says when he learns a new word or new sentence he throws a new stone into the lake and then when the stones pile up and reach the surface of the water those are words and sentences that he has internalized that he can use you know freely in conversation. the way to get the stones to the surface quickly is to throw his stones at the same spot. And this is basically called island building.

And so what he does is he really recommends that if you're learning a new language as an adult to focus on um things that you're really passionate about. So for example, if you're really passionate about sushi and you're learning Japanese, well, learn all the words related to sushi like, you know, vinegar, um wasabi, ginger, all of those things. you're already passionate about it and when you basically put all the stones in the same place, you're going to be able to use the words related to that sentence related to that topic much more quickly.

And so finally getting to the last section, my personal thoughts about the book. So in the beginning I said I would answer three questions. The first one is would I recommend this book?

And if you've seen my tone of voice throughout this video, you would know that yes, I do recommend this book. Uh I was very skeptical in the very beginning because this author does not have a background in linguistics or psychology. He's a former opera singer.

Um, but I think that he actually he's he claims to be fluent in seven languages and it's clear that he's gone through the language learning process many many times and he's moved to many different countries and he's had the experience of learning these languages and they're not all in the same language family. So I think that he is uniquely qualified to talk about language learning in a way that maybe a linguist wouldn't be able to. Um, and I think the only thing is is that I'm not sure if every language learner reading this book would have the same um success as he does following his strategy.

So, it's very clear you can tell that uh Winer is very very passionate about languages and many different languages and cultures. And he says that his partner's native language is different than from his own. So he has kind of put himself into situations where he is kind of forced to learn different languages and quickly um and not everyone is going to be in that same situation.

So I think that you know it's good to take his success with a grain of salt. You're not going to have the same success as him unless you live in exactly his situation. But I think overall I think the book presents a lot of really great rational theories about how to improve your language fast and I think it's pretty great.

Does it help you learn languages quickly? So this is I think the most important question right and I think the answer is yes. Um although like I mentioned he doesn't have a linguistics background he has learned many different languages many different times on his own and he has done a lot of immersion programs and he has interacted with a lot of linguists and language teachers and so I think he's actually gotten to a point where he has figured out okay what are the kind of landmines to avoid when learning a new language what are some detours you can take some shortcuts you can take to get from zero to hero much more quickly than if you were just going at it by yourself.

And obviously, it's not going to work for everyone. Some people hate the spaced repetition system, and I still don't really like it. But I think that if you really just want to learn a language quickly, reach kind of conversational fluency in the shortest amount of time, I think that his system actually could be quite useful.

And lastly, does it help you never forget the language? And I think this is almost not a question, right? I don't think that there is any language learning system out there that can help you never forget a language.

Unless you never stop interacting with the language, right? If you stop interacting with a language, no matter how good you once were at it, you're going to forget the language. And I think his key thing is that he uses this space repetition system to tell you, oh, it's it's going to, you know, help you retain the words until you die because you'll never forget it based on this system.

But if your goal is to be a polygot that speaks seven or more languages, that will become your life. Like, you will not really be able to do anything else with your life. And I'm not sure if that's really healthy or an attainable goal.

So, I'm going to say maybe for this last question. And so, this is my first time reviewing a book. I did so because, as you guys know, I'm a linguist.

That is basically what I'm really passionate about. Of course, I'm very passionate about Chinese. Um, my PhD is in Chinese linguistics after all, but I also have a lot of interest in linguists and language learning, language acquisition in general.

So, if you found this video interesting or insightful, please leave me a comment and let me know what else you'd like to see from me. And see you next time.