Meet the Person Who Knows How to Become "Fluent Forever": Interview With Gabriel Wyner

hello guys and welcome back to my YouTube channel  I know it's kind of strange that I'm holding this  

microphone with my hands but I just wanted to let  you know that today's video is going to be very  

very special today I'll be interviewing Gabrielle  Wier the author of The fluent Forever book I read  

this book a few months ago and I absolutely loved  it I had to ask him a few questions and luckily  

he agreed he said yes so here is our interview sit  back and enjoy hey Gabrielle thank you so much for  

agreeing to have this interview with me I'm super  excited because I read your book and I actually  

recommended your book to a lot of my followers  My subscribers students who are in my speaking  

club and a lot of people read it and they really  really liked it and uh yeah so thank you so much  

for being here thank you for having me this is  this this is always a pleasure and it's it's nice  

to finally like meet you I've seen some of your  stuff online before it's like oh cool yeah let's  

chat yeah yeah absolutely so um I actually wanted  to start this interview with asking you this uh  

one question um that I feel like most of my like  followers and people I actually talk to they  

were like oh you have to ask him this question  because in your book you kind of talk about like  

learning foreign languages as I guess learning  foreign languag is the way kids do and do you  

so basically could you explain to me and like to  everyone who's listening or watching us right now  

if adults should and actually can learn languages  the same way kids do so adults and kids kind of  

share the same way that we structure memories um  which is to say that when you talk about like dog  

uh dog has associations to you know cat and tail  and animal and pet and like all this stuff it's  

Associated for English speakers with um cultural  things like Lassie and you know a dog is a man's  

best friend and all this stuff okay and if I tell  you that you know kuto is the Hungarian word for  

dog I haven't told you any of that information  in Hungarian and so when when kids are learning a  

language they're they're never learning this kind  of extra bit of like translation or anything like  

that even when the kids are bilingual and there's  two languages spoken at home um what what they're  

given are like you know a parent holds a cookie  and offers it to the kid and like we just want  

a kex and the kid sees a cookie and so and they  they see this thing offered to them and they're  

hearing their parents say you know v k k you know  and they they have to make those associations it's  

it's it's just thrown in front of them and they  will make those associations because that's just  

how our brains work our brains work is you see  things they're happening at the same time and  

they associate um and that never goes away adult  adults learn in exactly the same way if if you  

as an adult someone hands you a cookie it's like  do I need kexa you're going to know just as well  

as that kid exactly what's going on um and so  all of those processes are still in place and  

they never they never go anywhere um even when  you look at how adults um how kids form grammar  

over time because like kids don't come out of the  womb speaking and they certainly don't come out  

at at 2 years old and start speaking perfectly  they're making all sorts of grammatical mistakes  

um but they make grammatical mistakes in like a  very specific order and that happens all the time  

like like there's no there's there's a pattern  to it it's just how the brain acquires language  

as opposed to how any particular kid acquires  language and adults make the same grammatical  

mistakes as they start becoming fluent in language  and so there's there's all this evidence sort of  

showing that adults and kids like we all just have  brains we just learn things in a really standard  

way um and the only reason why this this doesn't  feel true uh I mean there's two pieces one is that  

there's this kind of like I don't know optical  illusion where you look at kids who are five and  

they speak better French than you do when you've  been studying French for five years and you're  

like damn it this isn't fair um and that's an  illusion because that kid's put in 10,000 hours  

of French or 15,000 hours of French and you've put  in a few hundred and you're like okay well make  

Fair comparisons step one um and then I think  there's this other piece where adults tend to  

go about language learning in in different ways  than kids do just because of the ways our lives  

are structured it's it's we like to feel like  we understand everything and so going in front  

of a native speaker and having them yell about  kixa and flasha and all these things that that  

we don't understand feels bad and so we're just  like no what does that mean k what does that mean  

and they're like oh dog you're like okay cool  I know what that means now and so we we we we  

do these things that are not actually in our best  interest they're not effective learning techniques  

but we do them because they make us feel less  I uh whereas kids don't have that anxiety and  

they're just like I don't know whatever just  give me the damn cookie exact um I think those  

are some of the pieces that come to mind yeah like  the anxiety part that you mentioned I think it's  

something that I really had to not not struggle  with but like kind of understand when I move here  

to Mexico because I don't know like English is not  my native language but when I was learning English  

maybe because I started as a kid and I was like a  teenager and there were like a lot of moments in  

my life where I was just like you know what like I  don't really care if I make mistakes when I speak  

English when I'm learning English it's whatever  but right now being an adult and learning Spanish  

every time I can't say something I'm like oh my  God I feel so embarrassed and it's crazy we are  

are are told that we need to be good at things  in order to be valuable like that's that's we're  

brought up in that way of like no you should be  you should be competent all the time and language  

learning I feel like is is one of the most intense  uh I don't know attacks on competency because you  

show up and you're trying to speak Spanish and  you don't like and why should you you've only  

been working at it for you know a certain amount  of time whereas all these other people have been  

working at it for 30 years 40 years learning how  to speak Spanish because that's what they've been  

living and breeding their whole lives and and so  you feel not competent and that I think because  

we have such close ties between like I should be  competent and I'm worth something as a person uh  

it's easy to feel like man I'm I'm terrible like  I'm the worst because I don't know you know the  

word for gas cap yeah absolutely yeah that's  actually how um I mean I didn't feel like this  

when I was like learning English but yeah every  single time like I did know a very specific word  

or like something super Advanced I was like I have  to memorize it right now like I will need this  

word this is so important for me yeah there was  a um for a while in my like in the startup that  

I built we we started doing these master classes  that were all about Comfort um there was a a guy  

mate said Sak who in sedmak in uh was in Slovenia  and then it went to Japan and started teaching  

Japanese adults English um who uh started doing  these workshops and we like were compressed for a  

little while and we took them on as well where the  whole point was get someone in front of a group to  

speak for like 60 seconds or for two minutes or  for five minutes and just speak in their target  

language and screw it up just they're GNA screw  it up they're going to get stuck they're going to  

be like oh God I don't know what the word is and  they're just going to feel like man I don't know  

what I'm doing um and they doing it in front of a  group of 30 40 50 people so it's public speaking  

which is already really hard in a new language  already really hard for a nonfluent speaker  

for a non-re advanced speaker so they're going to  mess it up um and so they have this experience of  

failing in front of a group of people failing you  know they they don't say all the words exactly the  

way they want to say them and you you then talk  to them and you're like how did that feel and nine  

times out of 10 they're like that felt terrible  I felt like I was a failure I tried to do a thing  

and I was just so awful and people were staring  at me and I and and then you start asking like  

why do you think you should have been great why  should you be so competent how long have you been  

studying Spanish like ah one month and you're like  one month and you just spoke for for 60 seconds in  

Spanish like isn't that amazing if someone else  of a friend of yours did that wouldn't you be  

amazed by them wouldn't you be like wow that's so  impressive like Well yeah if a friend did it yeah  

I'd be impressed I'm like this is an opportunity  for you to learn some kindness to yourself y  

because everyone in this room we're all trying  to learn a language we all feel like we should be  

competent the struggle that you just went through  is the struggle all of us us are going through and  

if we could just take some time to look at it  and be like wait wait wait I don't need to feel  

stupid I could actually feel smart instead of like  look what I have done over one month of learning  

Spanish that I can speak for 60 seconds isn't  that good um there's an opportunity to reframe  

some of these feelings of incompetence towards  towards feelings of competence of feeling like  

you're actually good at a thing for for how little  you've done it um and I think language learning is  

a real real opportunity to to play with that in a  way that other parts of life are a little less um  

Regular like you're not always going to screw up  driving or screw up you know writing an article in  

your native language or something like that but  you are absolutely going to say the wrong word  

in in a new language yeah yeah yeah yeah it's  it's absolutely true I mean the thing that you  

mentioned that people basically are often like  uh super critical towards themselves and yeah  

when it comes to language learning especially  also because yeah I guess we just want like  

results super fast and uh I I feel like it's also  like your ego is suffering because like you can't  

really you think you you're gonna like you know  you study Spanish for a month and you're going  

to be super fluent and once you come to Mexico  like everyone is gonna understand you you're GNA  

have wonderful conversations um yeah but also so  I wanted to kind of ask you this question because  

you said oh like kids uh they have more exposure  like more hours so is it only like more hours that  

we need as adults or we we can make them like more  um better quality hours of language learning like  

how can we make those hours better quality you  know not just like oh yeah I need 10 thousand  

hours or I don't know so you're you're on exactly  the right topic which is that uh we usually don't  

have 10,000 hours exactly we just don't have  the time and so how do we make do with 500 or  

a thousand um I think one of the things that uh I  think one of the problems with this idea of like  

oh kids are great and adults are bad is that it  it masks the the truth which is that adults are  

actually more capable than kids kids have lots of  time and lots of time wins over everything if you  

throw 10,000 bad hours at at at a at something  you're still going to be pretty good at it um  

whereas adults if you only have 500 hours those  need to be really good hours you need to be really  

careful with how you spend every single minute  of that time and if you are as an adult you can  

learn way way way faster than any kid ever could  um and so the components of that are um I would  

say you you need to be building Memories the  way that memories are actually built this idea  

of this like dog is connected to cat and animal  and pet and all this stuff um you need to be very  

intentional about how you're building memories for  every word in every sentence and what I mean by  

that is that if I tell you I often bring up this  example from Hungarian where um like the word for  

camera is fuk and it's made of all these sounds  that are are not familiar to most people because  

almost no one learns Hungarian and so the moment  you say the word anyone who's not familiar with  

Hungarian forgets the word they're like I that  was a fenny what like yeah I don't know fenny Sun  

and so before you start to learn words you need to  focus on ear training you need to actually become  

comfortable with all the sounds in the language  so that you can have the the the structure the  

scaffolding to remember words and that doesn't  take a long time it takes two weeks of being like  

Hey we're going to do you know uh versus U you  know short and long u we're going to do like o  

versus a you know this short and long like a sound  um we're going to we're going to learn to hear all  

these sounds and we're going to spend a couple  weeks and that's it and suddenly now you have  

the scaffolding now you can remember words and now  words like fuk don't sound like garbage they sound  

like thing I know thing I know thing I know once  that's in place then instead of just memorizing  

translations now we need to bring in pictures  uh we need to look up you know what does fape  

asug Gap look like and you start looking on Google  Images and you see like these are the the cameras  

that that hung Ians buy which are different than  the ones that the Americans buy are different than  

the ones that the Spanish speakers buy um and  so you need to start understanding things as  

new Concepts because when someone offers you you  know here L DNE kexa in German it's actually not  

a chocolate chip cookie usually like different  flavors different they look different like kexa  

is not cookie yep and and we're all actually very  good at picking up new Concepts and attaching them  

to words anytime you go to a restaurant and you're  like like I want you know the Baka and you've  

never seen that before but you just see it on the  menu you're like I don't know let's try it then  

you if you have a good time and you eat it and you  like I like that then the next time you go to that  

restaurant you're like I want I want more Baka  and you don't like in your head you're not going  

like a slow roasted brazed beef like that's you're  just attached it to a food thing that I want in my  

mouth exactly and so if what you're doing with  your words are connecting them to food thing I  

want my mouth like just emotional and visual and  and and tactile things um then you are learning  

as the kid is learning um and then though as an  adult what you get to do are things like I've had  

this really cool memory I went to the restaurant  and I saw this thing and I saw on the menu and I  

wrote it down as as a as a word I want or I went  on Google Images and I saw a bunch of pictures  

of it and I thought that one looks really funny  I'm going to take that one you have this cool  

experience and then for the kid they just have to  wait for the next cool experience but you as an  

adult you can take that cool experience and say  Hey I want to remember this specific moment in  

my life and I want to remember it tomorrow and so  you can do things like get a cell phone app with  

flashcards or get physical flashcards and write  down like that restaurant super good tacos Baka  

or put that in your computerized flashcards and  now tomorrow you see this thing and it's like oh  

what was the name of that meat I had yesterday  that that thing was good and then in a week that  

thing comes back and you're like what was it  again barboa and like these these this usage of  

tools um is a way that you can actually be way  way way faster than kids um using things like  

tools like flashcards can increase your retention  by easily four times M and so when you're talking  

about the kid who spent 10,000 hours now you only  need 2,000 hours for the same amount of stuff mhm  

um you doing things like learning grammar rules  like a four-year-old doesn't know how to conjugate  

verbs they never saw a conjugation chart but you  as an adult um once you've learned a few sentences  

and you're like oh this is how I ask for the taco  whereas this is how I say you should have the taco  

let me look at this chart in this grammar book  and get the explanation there um that's going  

to increase your retention by by a decent amount  like not just like 10% but probably like 20 30%  

um and so now we're down to what like like 1,400  hours just by putting in some work into grammar  

rules stuff like that um and like there's there's  a there's a bunch of these moments where if you  

do a little bit of an efficiency tweak um you get  access to uh frequency lists you know why why am  

I learn why learn a whole list of every fruit  that's ever been made well I learn every piece  

of clothing this is a blouse this is a you know  shim like everything like you go through these  

chapters in language books uh where they're talk  talking about all these words that you're never  

going to use um whereas and as a kid you just you  hit whatever words you hit I mean it's just going  

to happen um but as an adult you can actually  say hey no wait let's stop I don't want to learn  

niece and cousin and Aunt I want to learn mother  father brother sister that's it and I'm just going  

to stop for a second and if I need to get to anunt  I'll be like Mother's sister and I'm going to just  

deal with the fact that I only know the really  core words and not the big words um learning words  

by frequency easily doubles your speed if not more  and now we're down to 600 hours and so like this  

is how you get down from the 10,000 hours is that  you do these adult efficiency tweaks over and over  

and over again and every one of them is going  to shave off a ton of hours every time M yeah  

I actually I really agree with you here because  I tried when I like read your book and there you  

talked about how for example like just now you  mentioned this Google Images how you're like  

you're looking for different images and you're  playing this like game of oh is it what I had in  

my head when I thought like cookie in German and  this is exactly like it's crazy because it was  

like while I was reading a book I was also I came  across this word in Spanish for like a seashell  

and also I didn't know that it also means this  little bun like Laona or laas and I just typed  

it on Google and I saw those buns and I was like  wait what like that's not what I was looking for  

like that's not what I had in my brain and that  helped me like memorize this word so fast because  

now every time I go to like the supermarket or  like the farmers market and I see all those buns  

I'm like oh my God I will never forget how to  say them in Spanish that that we're so good at  

learning new things and we're so bad at learning  copies of old things like the the idea of just oh  

koncha it's the word for seashell like that's so  boring and un it is yeah like how do you memorize  

it so so so brutal but exactly what you're saying  like the idea of wait seashell could be something  

that I can eat exactly what like magic yeah but I  also wanted to ask you because I got this question  

a few days ago uh one person asked me like what  if I need to memorize like more comp licated words  

like domestic they use the word domestic like  how do I memorize the word domestic when are  

you going to use the word domestic like you're  going to use it in really formal circumstances  

where you're talking about let's get the you know  domestic help or here's my domesticated animal or  

things like that and so first question is do you  even need this word um and if you don't like don't  

learn it I think it's really really important that  people filter out the stuff that they're never  

going to use um but that's not just like there's  there's a lot of abstract difficult words that you  

absolutely do need and so if this person wants to  speak at a formal level in English if they want to  

work you know business English something like that  then like they need that word domestic and they  

need a way to learn it and so then the question  is well like when would you really use this thing  

you know this is a tool for uh you know this is a  waste disposal unit for domesticated animals you  

know this is the sort of sentence that you'll find  it's like this is how we get rid of dog poop like  

like outside you know if I'm City Planning and we  have these like you know dog we you know things  

where you're like this is where the bags are and  this is where the trash goes and all that stuff  

like if I'm a city planner I'm not talking about  the dog poop station I'm talking about you know  

the waste removal unit for domesticated animals  like this kind of thing um and so you need a story  

that holds that you need a situation that you  would actually use it in ideally one that that you  

would imagine yourself saying or yourself reading  so if you have no interest in City Planning then  

like why are you learning the word domestic where  where is that going to show up is it about like  

the domestic service you know trades are you  someone who like deals with employment stuff  

like that like then you need the word domestic  and so you find one that's personal to your needs  

and as soon as you do that you double your your  retention you double how how well you'll remember  

that because it's personal and then you have that  that sentence um you know I I we hired into the  

domestic service trades this weekend you turn it  into a fill-in the blank sentence we hired into  

the blank service trades this weekend and then you  add a picture and that picture is about the story  

it's not about the specific word it can be if you  can find a way to tie the picture to the specific  

word you win like that's the best and so domestic  has the sense of home and so if you have a little  

house like that's great but if you're talking  about domestic service trades like what you're  

really talking about are like house cleaning  things like that you you you get this picture  

of a house you get this picture of people cleaning  houses you get this picture of whatever something  

about the domestic service trade just you at work  like typing buttons to find these people any of  

those pictures will work the goal with the picture  is not the picture the goal with the picture is  

to make you think about the story rather than a  bunch of strings of letters as long as what you  

see reminds you oh yeah yeah this is about I was  finding someone for this job then that's enough  

it's enough of a picture it's totally fine um but  you need that picture or else um your fill in- the  

blank sentence stops being about a story and it  really turns into um you know these five letters  

and then there's a blank and then these five  letters it turns into like a weird Scrabble game  

instead of you learning the language um but that's  that's the actual tactic like it's it's easy to  

think you know K picture of of kyak picture  of dogs like that one's easy to think about  

um but it's actually you remember more if what you  have is picture with a fill-in-the blank sentence  

and then the word on the other side that actually  works better than just C your dog yeah I like how  

you said uh like you should also kind of think  if you're actually going to be you like if you  

can imagine yourself consuming content and like  content is about this or you can imagine yourself  

talking about this because yeah I think a lot of  people are just like they worry too much about  

like oh I want to put more words into my active  vocabulary that's a lot of you know like one of  

those things that I hear a lot of people say like  oh I can like I read a book and I know so many  

words but want to actually speak but like do you  actually want to like speak like as if you're a  

book you know sound like you're like a very fancy  complicated book uh yeah it just like it really  

reminds me of how a few years ago when I was just  like just becoming vegan I was consuming a lot  

of literature like about like nutrition and being  vegan blah blah blah and because again I liked it  

there were a lot of words that I had to learn in  English because I couldn't really understand them  

but I couldn't see like your your question was  like can you imagine yourself consuming content  

in this and yes I could imagine myself you know  watching videos about like vegan is more nutrition  

or whatever and because of that I was more  interested in learning all of these words yeah  

because if um one day like I you know sit down and  I start like watching a video about physics there  

are going to be a lot of complicated words that  like why would I even need them it's not something  

I'm interested in and yeah I think you being  interested in a topic because it's such a big  

shift in how quickly you learn it and how long you  remember like it really is the difference between  

you learning about veganism and you learning about  physics like same comp same level of complexity in  

the words yeah the words are just as easy as each  other but the veganism words you're going to learn  

twice as fast and you're going to hold hold on to  them twice as long only because you're interested  

and so the more words you learn in a language  the easier it is to learn more words later on  

um that's going to be this kind of constant thing  so the question is how many words can you jam in  

the front how quickly can you get a lot of words  because as soon as you have a lot of words then  

all the rest of them become a lot easier um and  so why spend a second learning words that are not  

super interesting to you why learn physics words  for anytime at all when you could be focusing  

on things that are actually important to you um  and so I I I I think that's so so important for  

language Learners to really focus on you know  if you want comprehensive I know everything in  

this language okay like I'm not going to tell you  that's the wrong goal but if you want that the way  

you do that is by only focusing on things that you  really really care about that are Central to your  

life in the beginning so that later on all those  extra topics like physics can come easier yeah no  

that's that's absolutely true yeah and there also  one one question that I wanted to ask you about  

like learning multiple languages uh also something  that some people ask me like how do you maintain  

your multiple languages do you have to like  be especially careful about or like especially  

Strate strategic about it because sometimes when  I like I spend a day only speaking Spanish I come  

back home and I mean I still like I can still  speak English like I know English is not going  

to vanish because I still practice it regularly  but I guess some people start uh worrying like  

after maybe four languages like five languages  you know that's when you're like uh they're not  

wrong I mean the more languages you get the the  more time you have not speaking the ones you're  

not speaking um and so and you will gradually  forget things all the time every moment like  

right now you you are forgetting things in Spanish  because we're speaking in English right now like  

that's happening I'm forgetting things in a pile  of languages like every moment that's true that's  

just that's life as a human being your brain is  designed to just kind of lose things out the back  

um it's it's it's a leaky bucket um the thing I  found that has helped me feel a little bit less  

anxious about that is um I remember back in it  was 2013 I Was preparing like uh influencer stuff  

because I wanted to like put up my videos and be  like look I wrote a book like someone should pay  

attention to me um and if you're going to be a  polyglot online you need to have a video showing  

that you're a polyot you need to be like look I  speak this and I speak this and then you're you're  

doing your thing um and I pulled out I started  uh aiming to record that video and I realized  

I'd forgotten all my French and I was so scared oh  no it's gone um and I had hit like i' had almost  

gotten to C2 level French I I I I did the test and  I got like right under C2 I needed like three more  

points on on the do um so it was C1 French more  or less and then on that day I was nothing I just  

I didn't know any french and I was so so so scared  and it was my whole internet personality was going  

to need to like either go away I needed to give up  on the book like I don't know what I needed to do  

um and so I started watching TV uh in French and  I picked a a TV series in this case it was like  

24 with kefir Sutherland dubbed into French just a  bunch of people talking about atomic bombs all day  

um and I watched two seasons so I think each one  was an hour long it's 24 hours so like I watched  

48 Hours of French um over two weeks like it's a  very bingeable show it's it's fun to watch and so  

I just watched like a few hours a day um and after  two weeks I was dreaming in French again and I had  

no problem having the video and so to go from  nothing to wa I'm dreaming in French again like  

that's I didn't learn all of French in two weeks  I just had enough content thrown in my face that  

it brought back what I knew mhm and so yes you're  forgetting all the time yes it's hard to maintain  

these things yes it takes time to maintain these  things and if what I needed um was to have all  

of my languages that if anyone just came up to me  like hey let's speak French that I would have it  

then that's hard there was a time it looked like  we were I was going to go on Shark Tank for my  

company and I figured I actually did need to hit  that level in all my languages um and so I started  

having tutoring six times a week switch languages  every single time and like that was really scary  

but it worked and it was hard like I would go from  you know a Spanish tutoring session to an Italian  

tutoring session and I would be basically speaking  in Spanish for the Italian guy You' be like that's  

not Italian fix it um but after a few weeks of  that it started getting better and so you can you  

can train up your ability to switch you can train  up your ability to hold on to these languages um  

but you can't do it without putting in time and  so that's that's the trick is you really need to  

put in a lot of time yeah and be patient cuz I  feel like it's something that so like basically  

that's the problem that a lot of language Learners  have have yeah and me too like sometimes I just  

feel so impatient like I want results fast I want  to see progress fast I want to make sure that I  

never forget any of the languages I'm learning  like any of the words and it's just not you  

know true you're as you said you're going to be  forgetting you're going to be trying to kind of  

not relearning but you said remember remembering  all this information if you studied it like in  

the past you will remember it once you um start  consuming a lot of content in this language there  

are some polyglots out there who are so impressive  because they have languages like four or five  

languages at such a high level at all moments  but when you look at how they spend their days  

they're spending hours every day studying because  it's their passion and they're having fun doing it  

and if that's if if if anyone watching this is  one of those Learners who's just like language  

learning is my favorite thing in the world and  I want to spend hours a day doing it then those  

are the people who can maintain five six seven  languages at top you know C2 levels but I think  

there's going to be a lot of people who who don't  necessarily want that they want to put in a little  

bit of time every day and they want to have more  and more abilities and that's a reasonable goal  

too um and also those people will need to be  honest with themselves that like if someone just  

jumps on the subway and like hey I need think  like let's CH talk about you know philosophy  

in French they might not feel really competent in  that moment and they may stumble a little bit and  

and that stumbling as we've talked about already  like that's that's what it is to be a person it's  

it's okay to not know everything all the time yeah  yeah absolutely yeah and I like how you said it's  

important to be like you know just understanding  what you actually want because I feel like some  

people are like oh I like this language I want to  become like super fluent here and here and here  

but then like it's is it actually your passion  or you're just like you watch like one Korean  

drama and you're like oh I have to learn Korean  now I love Korean it's not passion yeah so um to  

finish up this interview I actually wanted to  it's kind of like a question but more like uh  

well I'm just gonna uh go for it so imagine that  you wake up tomorrow with the ability to speak  

and understand any five languages fluently yeah so  which languages would you choose it doesn't have  

to be the languages you can now speak but like  any five languages and why um so Japanese is at  

the top of my list because Japanese has been just  kicking my butt for so many years it is so brutal  

um so that one's to the top of my list I've I  mean I've been obsessed with Japanese culture  

and all sorts of things for a long time um so that  one wins that's at the top um man I I'm going to  

keep my German um German has been so important to  my upbringing and just like like my whole time in  

in Vienna my whole time as an opera singer that  that part of my life was stored in German I don't  

want to lose that thing so German um Italian  Italian at this point is my worst language uh  

because I never got to learn it at Middlebury  and I I really and it was at the beginning of  

the fluent forever method really before it really  even started and so I didn't get to have a lot of  

it except that every memory I have in Italy has is  just so magical because that country is so magical  

um and so that like I Italian is definitely there  um Spanish my my wife and her family are all like  

are from Mexico and I need to have Spanish or else  they will kill me at least my wife will kill me if  

I didn't have that so that's that one um and we  get one more that's tricky um man I just kind of  

want to hold on to that until I need it you know  I think I think actually what I would do yeah is  

is is uh I think we picked Swedish um my wife and  I have been talking about you know someday when  

she's done like she's currently trying to study  to be a doctor and so she has no time but um  

we've wanted to have a secret language oh yeah the  thing that the two of us know that no one around  

us knows um and we were looking at like what is  the language that is the closest related to the  

languages that we speak already but is basically  unintelligible to everyone around us and that  

almost no one learns um and I think we landed on  Swedish as like the easiest one that was available  

that doesn't just sound like everything else yeah  I've heard that Norwegian is also extremely like  

you know rare and also but I've heard that it's  hard I think it's harder to learn than Swedish  

so yeah yeah I think Swedish was a little bit  easier and also sounded a little bit weirder  

I think Norwegian has enough relationships to  German that you can kind of maybe like figure  

it out yeah yeah remember um I was reading this  book uh by a Swedish author it's a fiction book  

and uh basically then I decided to like watch a  movie that is based on this book and it was all  

in Swedish the movie was in Swedish obviously  I was using English subtitles to understand  

everything but yeah the language was like you  can as you said you can kind of you're like oh  

I think I know this word but then you're like  no I don't know this word like your brain is  

like playing tricks on you because you think you  know these words but you're like nah I definitely  

know I find that with Portuguese like when I hear  Portuguese I'm like oh that's that no that no it's  

just it's as if it's Spanish and French like they  just had this weird baby that just didn't doesn't  

make any sense I I that one feels really really  unintelligible in a beautiful way yeah yeah so I  

think that's going to be it that's basically all  I wanted to talk about again thank you so much for  

taking the time and explaining everything in such  detail it was really fun thank you just thank you  

for having me super super fun yeah thank you great  questions yeah thank you if you want you you can  

uh you know talk a little bit about like your book  where like people can find your book what it's  

called and everything yeah sure um fluent forever  came out in 2014 um and is available pretty much  

everywhere I mean Amazon Barnes & Noble any  any local bookstore um I think at this point  

we have 10 or 11 translations also wow and so it  should be available in most languages except for  

like the two I wanted like it's not available in  German and it's not available in Spanish um but  

almost every like many other languages it's  available in um so that um there's an audio  

book in English uh I think there might be some  audio books in some of the other translations  

as well um so that would be where I would start  with anything um you in addition over the last  

nine years I built a startup that eventually like  turned into a big VC founded like funded startup  

thing building apps around the book to try to  make the the content in the book easier and  

more accessible um you can just Google fluent  forever and you'll find our website there it's  

fluent forever.com um and yeah actually right  now I'm working I'm writing a second edition  

of the book like literally this morning is like  the spent morning working on that oh my God I'm  

definitely gonna read it it's there'll be some  fun new stuff about a lot about what what we  

talked about in terms of um this idea of comfort  and and being kind to yourself of of how how can  

you learn to to embrace the idea of not being good  at everything all the time um and like things like  

VR and chat GPT and like just an update it's it's  been 10 years it's time to write a second edition  

um so that will be coming out at the end of 2024  um for anyone listening I would not delay like the  

idea of being like ah I want to learn a language  but I'm going to wait a year and a half to find  

out some new stuff from the second edition like  no just just the 2014 book is a really good book  

frankly um and and is is still really topical I I  don't there's not a lot that I'm actually getting  

rid of from the old book I think we landed on  something really good right from then um so  

yeah that's that's my stuff yeah no thank you so  much I actually have your book right here I was  

like y i i want a copy I like I don't I'm in North  Carolina right now instead of my home in Chicago  

and I don't have a copy and I'm trying to write  like updates and I don't have the physical book  

in hand and it's driving me crazy so I just want  to reach to the computer and take yours yeah yeah  

thank you so much again for the conversation and  yeah talk to you soon sounds good thank you so  

much guys honestly interviewing Gabrielle was  so much fun I enjoyed asking him all of those  

different questions and his response was amazing  really do need to be easier in ourselves and be  

more patient I feel like it's something that so  many language Learners usually struggle with if  

you want to get Gabrielle's book you can click  the link in my description if you like this video  

make sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to  my channel and I'll see you guys in my next video