Polyglot Explains How To Learn A Language Fast

Learning another language is impressive,  but imagine learning 20 languages.  

Well, this incredible feat has been achieved  by today's guest, Steve Kaufmann from YouTube  

channel, Steve Kaufmann, lingosteve. He's also  the CEO of lingQ, which I will link down below,  

which is a fantastic learning resource  for anyone learning another language. 

So, what can we learn from such an  incredible linguistic brain? Let's find out. 

Hello, Steve, it's lovely to meet you, I'd  like you to just spend a few moments telling  

my audience a little bit about who you are,  and what you do when it comes to languages.

I enjoy learning languages, I've learned  languages, you know, throughout my life  

for various reasons. And in particular, in  the last 15 or 16 years, I've been very much  

involved with learning languages online, I  have a YouTube channel called lingosteve,  

together with my son, I co-founded a platform  for learning languages called link lingq.com.  

I'm currently learning Arabic and  Persian. And, yeah, I like languages.

Okay, so how many languages do you actually know?

To some extent, I would say 20! I can easily communicate, like right away now  

10, or 12, and other 8 languages or so that  I did learn well enough to use when I was in  

the country or that I'm in the process  of learning? And it would, you know,  

I'd need a little bit of work to get them  up to a decent level, let's put it that way.

You said you had a method. So, tell me my students  are desperate to know, What is your secret?

I believe that the brain gradually gets used  to a language, you have to be exposed to a  

certain amount of the language for the brain  to start to get used to it. And so, I spend  

most of my time in sort of listening and reading  and then when I have the opportunity I speak,  

but my focus is on comprehension, accumulating  vocabulary through a lot of listening and  

reading. That's the sort of approach that we  have, you know, made, I think, more efficient  

in lingQ. But but the idea is that you have to  give the brain a chance to acquire the language.

Just in the same way, I guess that children  when they're learning to speak, do they are  

absorbing the language all around them,  aren't they before they even start to  

really try to communicate back with us.

Right! And we have a big advantage  over children. And we already have  

a large vocabulary in our own language, whatever  language that may be. So, we have concepts,  

words in our own language that the children aren't  even aware of in their own language. So, we do  

have a head start over the kids, although they  are more natural and less inhibited. Let's say.

I think that's one of the biggest things I  try and teach my students in particular is to  

try not to let your fear of mistakes hold  you back. I think it's important to try and  

just, just make mistakes and put  yourself out there and try to use  

the language as much as possible. I fully agree with that. Yeah.

You are a native English speaker, right?  So, what motivated you? What was the first  

language you learnt? What motivated  you to learn so many languages.

I was born in Sweden. So, for the first five years  of my life, I spoke Swedish. Now, I've been in  

Canada for 71 years. So, I mean, English is my  natural language. It's my native language. It's  

the one that I speak the best, most naturally. But I think the fact that I was exposed to  

another language when I was a small child probably  helped, you know, as a 1617 year old in Montreal,  

I got very interested in French because of a  professor that we had, and I ended up going to  

France spent three years there did my university  education in France. And then after that,  

I worked for the Canadian government, and they  were looking to train people in Mandarin Chinese. 

So, I was selected, and I was sent to Hong Kong  to learn Mandarin Chinese. And then thereafter, I  

learned I lived in Japan, my family, my wife, and  kids, we lived in Japan. And so, once you realize  

that, in fact, is not that difficult to learn  languages, then it's something I like to do. And  

I've continued doing. And particularly in the last  15, 16 years, since the age of 60, I decided to  

learn Russian and after Russian then Czech and you  know, I learned Ukrainian and Korean and Greek and  

so I put more effort into it the last 15, 16 years  than I than I did in the previous sort of period  

of my life where I was mostly working didn't  have so much time to spend on language learning.

How do you navigate switching  between the languages when you  

if you ever in a situation where  you do have to switch? How do you  

navigate that? And do you have any tips or  tricks for switching into a different language?

I mean, you just have to get going in the language  and the brain will take over. Like I trust my  

brain and and I'll make mistakes you know the  language is.. I'm obviously.. my Spanish is a  

lot stronger than my Portuguese so when I speak  Spanish, I will or at least Portuguese I'll mix  

in Spanish. If I'm with Portuguese people  more or Brazilian people more than there'll  

be less of a mixture. I never worry about  that the main objective is communicating.  

Communication. And, and of course, my  goal is comprehension. So as long as I  

have that level of comprehension, and I can  understand what the person is saying, I don't  

really worry too much about how you know elegantly  I express myself how many mistakes I make,  

it doesn't really bother me. I don't consciously  switch. It's not something that I deliberately do.

Ok. I know when my background previously was  in acting, and I would, I would learn different  

accents. And I had a trick, which was to or just  have a phrase that belonged to each accent that  

would give me the target sounds for that accent  that I would say that phrase, and that would  

help me to sit into it. But it's not I guess it's  not the same when you have different languages.

No, no, no, no, I think that's true.  Sometimes, if you're having trouble switching,  

you got to find a word or a phrase, in that new  language, I gotta find something that I can say  

in Russian now because I've been speaking  Chinese. And so, I'll say that and then  

stumble a bit and slowly I'll slide into the  Russian. So yeah, I think that's a good strategy.

You mentioned age, but you didn't say how old you  are. Do you mind me asking how old you are now?

Yeah. I'm 76.

Wow. 76! And what age were you when  you picked up your last language?

Well, you know, right now I'm working on I  say Persian and Arabic, the Arabic is tougher,  

because I'm doing a bit of Egyptian and a bit  of Levantine and a bit of Standard Arabic. And  

it's hard. The Arabic is difficult.  Persian. Those are the two languages  

that I'm working on right now. With the  Persian it's not that bad, actually. 

I understand a lot of podcasts, newscasts I  talk if I there's a lot of Iranian immigrants  

here in Vancouver, and I can chat with them.  And they're very encouraging when I do that.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle for  learning any language, just a blanket obstacle?

The important thing is to put in the time, put  in the time with the language however you do it,  

you can watch TV programs, you can read, you can  talk to people, just spend time with the language 

Don't worry about things you don't  understand, there's always going to be  

things you don't understand. And some people  will pronounce better, and some people will  

pronounce less well. And it really  doesn't matter. I think the main thing is  

to just stay with it and keep  going you will continue to improve.

Have you approached every language in the same way  

or like your method, your your resource that  you'd like to use? Has it all been a very similar  

strategy that you've used? Or have, you had to  adjust your strategy, depending on the language?

The strategy has been the same, you have to do a  lot of reading, reading and listening, reading and  

listening. That's what I did. Long before I had  ever heard of Stephen Krashen, who, of course, you  

know, is the great guru of input-based learning.  But it was obvious to me that that's what I had  

to do. And I let the speaking kind of look at,  you know, look after itself. It's not something  

I worry about. It'll develop gradually through,  you have to speak a lot to speak well, you can't,  

you know, I like some I remember speaking  to a group of immigrants here in Vancouver,  

who were from China. And they wanted  to learn enough English so that  

they could speak to their kids’ teacher, or if  ever a policeman stopped them on the highway,  

you can't just, you know, get enough English so  that in a particular situation, once a month,  

you can use it, it's not going to happen. If they really want to get good in English, they  

have to watch English television that they have  to get in, you know, spend a lot of time with the  

language. So, the only thing that I did a little  differently was when I was learning Mandarin  

Chinese. In order to learn the characters, I  used spaced repetition system for the first  

1000 characters. That was a system that I designed  by myself. But it was based on the principle that  

I had to keep on relearning, relearning, those  that I thought I learned, I put them aside, then  

I worked with the others and stuff. It was a form  of spaced repetition, I won't go into details.

And the other thing that's changed, of course,  is lingQ because all of those activities are now  

more efficient. They’re taking advantage of you  know, modern technology, mp3, online dictionaries,  

the ability to bring in content from YouTube,  from Netflix, you know, everything that  

the internet makes available to us now for  language learning. So that has changed.

You said that you're learning  two languages at the moment.  

In general, if someone has aspirations  to learn many languages, do you recommend  

learning more than one language at a time? Or  do you think that's.. No. ..quite tricky to do?

Not a good thing to do. I don't know why I did  it. I initially I also had Turkish in there,  

too. I said, I don't know much about the  Middle East. I'm going to try to learn Persian,  

Arabic and Turkish. So, I was sort of three  months on one. Three months on the other.  

I dropped Turkish because because it's written  in the Latin alphabet, essentially, it's going  

to be easier. On the other side. Sometimes  people get tired of learning one language  

they feel they aren't getting anywhere. You  can't keep on doing the same thing all the time.  

The brain likes variety. So, to that  extent, occasionally moving off into  

another language can be a good thing,  but it slows you it slows you down.

Do you do anything to maintain the  languages that you've previously  

learned? So, you're now working on new  languages, but do you continue to listen  

to different languages and just keep a  hand in to make sure you don't go rusty?

I mean, I would love to, but there's just not  enough time in the day. You know, I like to  

play golf with my wife, I have other activities  and have an hour and a half, two hours a day,  

maybe at most to spend on language. If I were to  spend that time on reviewing languages that I'm  

you know, would like to improve in or  whatever, maintain, I just don't have the time. 

That's one interesting thing. When you  relearn something that you've forgotten,  

you end up better. And so, everything that I  put into it is all there it's stored. I can't  

bring it up right away, but I can go back  to it, quickly bring it up to where it was,  

and just move on. So, I don't worry  about maintaining my languages, no.

You mentioned that you have a  YouTube channel as well as LingQ. 

Right. Yeah. What do you do on your YouTube channel? So,  

if my guys want to come over and see what  you do over there, what do you offer there?

What I try to do is encourage people. You know,  relax, you can learn. Put in the time. Enjoy it. 

That's the message. I mean, I and I cover it in  different ways, different aspects of how we can  

enjoy our language learning. Because enjoyment  is the key. If you enjoy it, you're gonna stay  

with it. If you stay with it, you'll improve. It's  that simple. I think a lot of language teachers,  

sometimes they overcomplicate things, there's  too much of an emphasis on trying to get people  

to master stuff, master the grammar. First of  all, you can't master anything, but you're not  

going to get very good at incorporating, you know,  different aspects of grammar or even vocabulary,  

if you haven't been exposing yourself enough  to the to the language. And that's the message. 

Most of my videos are in English. I try to speak  clearly. And I think many people who are learning  

English, listen to my videos. And of course, the  script, the transcript is available on LingQ,  

so they can actually study those as lessons in  LingQ. They listened to improve their English.  

Many say they find me easier  to understand that many,  

you know, average native speakers that they  run into, but I also speak another language.

Fantastic. Fantastic. So, Steve, if it's  alright with you, I'd like to do a very short,  

quick fire round of questions if that's  okay. Yeah, please. Yeah. Okay. So.

Favorite language to learn?

There is no favorite language,  the one I'm on is my favorite.

Easiest language to learn?

The one that has the most common vocabulary  with a language you already know.

Hardest? 

Well, I would say you know, right  now, Arabic but Chinese. I mean,  

wherever there is no common vocabulary and  a different script. It's more difficult.

Is a person ever too old to learn a new language?

I haven't reached that age  yet. So, I don't think so.

Fantastic. Grammar rules, love them or hate them?

Grammar rules are fun. If you have  enough experience with the language,  

once you're familiar with the language,  

it's fun to read grammar rules. And I would like  to see more grammar texts in the target language.

Will you be learning any more languages after  you finish learning the ones, you're on now?

Likely, maybe Indonesia, and maybe Swahili? I  don't know. Whatever, it's fun, I enjoy it. And  

every time you learn a language, you learn  about the people, the culture, the history.  

So, it's more than just  the language. It's a whole,  

you know, discovering different  parts of the world sort of thing.

Another question that’s just popped into my head,  and you've probably be one of the best people  

to answer the question is I always have  this debate with people about whether or not  

some people who advertise you can  be fluent in a language in 30 days,  

or you can be fluent in just two  weeks. Do you think that's true? 

Not at all. Is it possible?

Not possible. Well, I shouldn't say  

not possible. I don't. It's not possible for  me. Very hard. It's not possible for me. And I  

don't think there are many people who can learn so  quickly. One of the people I enjoy reading is this  

German neuro scientist, I guess he says the brain  will always learn the brain is always dealing with  

different experiences forming patterns. And  so, it learns, but the brain learns slowly,  

the brain learns slowly and I think everyone  learning a language should be patient. Even if the  

vocabulary is very similar, say French and Spanish  or Spanish and Portuguese, it's still going to  

take a long time to get used to it to develop new  habits to feel comfortable. No, no, one month,  

three months, no, it takes time and you're  never perfect. So, you can always get better.

Brilliant. So, the takeaway message for  people learning English because that's  

my audience's goal and mission. I know it's  not a language you learn but you're you know,  

very well versed in taking on languages. The  takeaway message is to not worry about grammar  

until later down the line. Lots of listening lots  of reading immersion and get speaking and make  

mistakes and don't worry did I miss anything else? No, no, that's it. Develop your.. You have to  

develop habits and you will. And there's all  these different tenses in English but and you'll  

get comfortable with certain tenses you mean,  and you'll hear other people using them and  

it's just a gradual process of acclimatizing  yourself and getting used to a language and  

don't overanalyze and try to enjoy it. The  more you enjoy it, the better you'll do.

That's a really great message. Well, Steve,  

it's been an absolute pleasure. I wish you  all the best of luck with the new language.

Thank you! And Same to you. Brilliant. Okay, then. Thank you! 

Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Did you enjoy that? I did. If you enjoy watching these  

interviews and have another person in mind that  you would like me to interview them, please  

do put their name down in the comments below and  tell me what you'd like me to talk to them about. 

I want to say a huge thank you to Steve, please  do go and check out his YouTube Channel and his  

website the LingQ, which I will link down below. And if you're new here, don't forget to subscribe  

before you leave so you don't  miss out on any future lessons. 

Until next time, take care. Bye