[Vinny]

I can speak four languages, three of which fluently and the fourth one (Spanish) is currently at the intermediate level. I am pretty sure that after my trip to SA this autumn I will be close to fluent.
I could say I am at beginners level in eight other languages, which means I can count to 10 or 100 say hello, thank you, how are you, where do you live etc. and can understand a little bit.
This result is nothing special. What is different is that I did not really work hard or sit down with books to achieve this.


*Why should you do this?

1. This is a DHV and helps with game.

I was once running "twilight game" with my brother at the Khao San road. We did not go inside of any bars, just going along the road and approaching chicks that were standing outside or walking towards us. We chatted up some Chilean, Dutch, Polish, German, Thai, Russian, Argentinian and French chicks that night. Some of the languages I could speak fluently but in all of those I could at least say 5 to 10 typical beginning of the conversation phrases which really impressed and flattered the girls. Especially with Languages that are not that common like Dutch.

We don't hang out with my bro that often outside of the home country so he straight out thought I am a fucking genius, and I can actually speak all these languages fluently. While that is not true, that is what most people are going to think. Especially when you learn the phrases the way I do (with emphasis on pronunciation)

2. When you are in dating stages and you are picking up words girls love it, they love teaching you, and they love seeing you progress.

3. It boosts your brain. Language learning improves your memory and keeps you sharp. I have read somewhere that each language is stored in a different part of your brain and this way it keeps your brain loaded. So no Alzheimer's for you in old age.


*So how do you do this?

* When you are serious.

Here is the trick. Learning languages is difficult. If something is difficult you will try to find a way not to do it. But there is a way you can actually make your laziness work for you.

Once you get serious with learning a language, and you are in beginner's phase, but feel no progress.

First step

Find a TV episodes or soap opera in the target language, download it or stream it(preferably with subtitles) and start watching. Make sure not to use dictionary at the first stages. Don't stop watching to translate or learn something. Just keep watching and get addicted to the episodes. Once you are addicted you will keep watching it even when you're lazy and few seasons in you will start to notice that you are looking less and less at subtitles and get the grasp of the language.

This is the way we learn language when we are kids. Your brain does all the work behind the scenes. I have a theory about this. I think once you hear a sentence of 5 words, and you only know 2 of them the brain will register the other 3 with some kind of probable meaning, it will also take in account the setting the tone of conversation and all non verbal that is going on at the screen. After the same word is repeated several times in different sentences it gets the meaning shaped up and voila. You know the word without ever translating it.

Next step.

Duolingo.

If you are really serious about the language then at the moments when you are not feeling lazy go to http://www.duolingo.com and learn there. This is also kind of fun way, and it does not take much time.

I did this with Spanish. After watching 3 seasons of Muneca Brava (Argentinian soap opera) with English subtitle on youtube and half year of Duolingo, I can actually speak Spanish. I think I suck, but people complement me.

Next step.

Spoof your Tinder to a country that speaks your target language. In my case I was spoofing to Bogota for Spanish. Start chatting with girls. Take their whatsapp. Even if you suck call them and chat. I am at this step right now, and I feel the progress. I complain to girls how much I suck, they say "no preocupes" and teach me Spanish.

Benefit, if the girl is cute and you are actually planning to visit a place, after hours of phone conversation you are probably going to make sweet love to her on the moment of your arrival.


* When you are not serious.

Develop a habit.

Wherever you go if you date girls or generally meet people ask them. Ask them how things are called. When you want to say thank you to the waiter ask him how do you say thank you in your language. Then repat it few times. Pay attention to the actual way he says it. Because the pronunciation is important. There is one 6 word phrase in German that I've learned few years ago. I don't even know how to write it correctly it goes something like this "ich wunshe inen einen angeneimen aufentat". It means I wish you good luck or something of that sort. Each time I meet a German I say it. They say I almost have no accent and it sounds really cool to people (girls) around you.

You see light sparkle in people eyes when they think you can speak their language. And even if you can't really, they already like you.

* When you are semi-serious

Download a language learning audiobook. Put it on your phone. Don't get too serious about it. Just once you're bored listen to it like you listen to the music. You might even like it. Gives you a great grasp on pronunciation. Trust me. Do it for few weeks. You will now have a lot of phrases you can randomly use. I don't know how it works and why the brains chooses some phrases over the others, but trust me some of them will stay with you forever. If you suddenly get serious about the language just follow the previously described steps.


*Other thoughts on this subject.

Some guys are troubled about not knowing what to say to a girl. Well if a girl speaks any other languages now you know one more subject.

Once you know 3 languages or more, it gets easier. Your brain develops ways to learn words efficiently. Three of the languages I speak fluently are from different branches of indo-european languages. For example English is a Germanic language with a lot of Latin influence. Learning English will make learning German and Spanish easier. Learning Russian will allow you to understand Ukrainian, and learning Polish will be easier.


*Summary.
Don't get too serious. Use your laziness to your advantage. Learn like children do. Use language learning as a tool to get connected to people (girls).


I hope some of you will find this useful.

[DrCotard]

Excellent datasheet. In this moment I'm learning brazilian portuguese from spanish (I'm a native spanish speaker), hearing brazilian music, using google translate and watching some live brazilian TV channels as SBT and Bandeirantes (Brazilian TV broadcasters).

With respect to the similarity between languages, portuguese and spanish are something similar, but there are words who have different meanings (For example, Oficina in portuguese means car repair shop and Oficina in spanish means office; Vaso in portuguese means toilet but Vaso in spanish means glass).

[Rocha]

(04-25-2016 09:14 PM)DrCotard Wrote:  

Excellent datasheet. In this moment I'm learning brazilian portuguese from spanish (I'm a native spanish speaker), hearing brazilian music, using google translate and watching some live brazilian TV channels as SBT and Bandeirantes (Brazilian TV broadcasters).

With respect to the similarity between languages, portuguese and spanish are something similar, but there are words who have different meanings. For example, Oficina in portuguese means car repair shop and Oficina in spanish means office; Vaso in portuguese means toilet but Vaso in spanish means glass).

I recommend reading a dictionary. In my school days while learning english, the Oxford's English-English dictionary was my favorite toilet reading.

Speaking about toilets, I can guarantee you that you will never hear anyone saying that vaso is a toilet, the most current use of the word is "any concave part that may contain solid or liquid." so quite similar to spanish meaning, among other meanings who in any way have anything to do with toilet.
As for the word oficina, it is simply a repair shop, not specific to cars.

[DrCotard]

˄˄ I forgot to say that those words' meanings are from brazilian portuguese. I don't know if those words' meanings are applicable to the portuguese spoken in Portugal. Regarding the vaso and oficina words, I was like "What? I can't believe those words mean that" . Thanks for your clarification.

[swuglyfe]

My current approach is to go down the list strategically and look at the fewest languages that will allow me to speak with as many people as possible.

English (native) world's lingua franca
Chinese (heritage) fuckload of people, and my ancestry so...
Russian -lingua franca for Central Asia as well, and good basis for Eastern Slavic languages, maybe a little for Western Slavic
Spanish -access to all of Lat Am, puts Brazil within a stone's throw

To Do:
Korean- why? for me personally (as an Asian American), hot girls are going apeshit over Korea's respectably strong culture soft power, my hat off to them, if only China could do the same instead of projecting military fear and pollution. That's why this is an exception to the population criteria.
Turkish- why? because Central Asia is a real interest of mine, beyond women and game. I'm genuinely fascinated with the dynamics of the region. Russian will take me far, but all of the peoples are Turkic, and so are their local languages. This linguistic basis, combined with the knowledge of Cyrillic will help immensely.

There may be some more limited use case languages for which I'll take Vinny's excellent approach. I'm thinking French, Portuguese, Dutch, and maybe Italian.

[GillesDeleuze]

I envy you guys who are English native speaker, I'm struggling a lot just to learn this language at fluent level and I'm doing it because without english you simply can't work out of your native country

If I only imagine that I have to go through a third language learning from scratch it seems a up-hill task to me

By the way excellent datasheet!

[RagnarLothbrok]

I envy the guys who are Spanish or Russian native speakers. My native language is german and it is pretty much useless outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

[Vinny]

(04-25-2016 11:37 PM)swuglyfe Wrote:  

My current approach is to go down the list strategically and look at the fewest languages that will allow me to speak with as many people as possible.

English (native) world's lingua franca
Chinese (heritage) fuckload of people, and my ancestry so...
Russian -lingua franca for Central Asia as well, and good basis for Eastern Slavic languages, maybe a little for Western Slavic
Spanish -access to all of Lat Am, puts Brazil within a stone's throw

To Do:
There may be some more limited use case languages for which I'll take Vinny's excellent approach. I'm thinking French, Portuguese, Dutch, and maybe Italian.

I agree with your general choice of Languages. When it comes to women and travel:
English, a must.
Russian and Spanish gives you access to 70% of sexiest women on earth.
I am not sure about Chinese. If you know it already, great. I is a cool language to know, and probably gives a lot of opportunities for business and work, but even if you are into Asian chicks you can get a lot easily, by only speaking English. I will keep it in my not so serious Language group.
Actually I went out cable skiing few days ago here in Batam and there was a group of Singaporean students. I gave one girl my phone and told her to make photos of me skiing. Which she did for an hour without any resistance. As a thanks I added her on FB
She was Chinese Singaporean, so of course I learned how to thank her in Chinese. It sounds like shi-shi, not sure how you actually spell it. Anyways the whole group of students just seemed to like me a bit more for trying to learn their language, and giggled each time as said it trying to sound as Chinese as possible.
Hopefully girl visits me here in Batam so I can get my Singaporean flag.
I am fluent in Russian and English, so once I am done with Spanish I am not really sure what to learn next...

[Mentavious]

I had a Thai girl make me watch Thai soaps so that I could learn Thai. Couldn't get past the second episode.

I use to listen to Spanish and German podcasts whenever I'm going for a run, walking around a store/mall, for a drive, basically anytime I'm free. Nothing beats hearing how a native speaker.

[Chevalier De Seingalt]

For guys learning Spanish it's worth noting that Netflix now has a decent amount of telenovelas available; I recently started watching La Reina Del Sur.

[jayko]

(04-26-2016 01:46 PM)Vinny Wrote:  

(04-25-2016 11:37 PM)swuglyfe Wrote:  

My current approach is to go down the list strategically and look at the fewest languages that will allow me to speak with as many people as possible.

English (native) world's lingua franca
Chinese (heritage) fuckload of people, and my ancestry so...
Russian -lingua franca for Central Asia as well, and good basis for Eastern Slavic languages, maybe a little for Western Slavic
Spanish -access to all of Lat Am, puts Brazil within a stone's throw

To Do:
There may be some more limited use case languages for which I'll take Vinny's excellent approach. I'm thinking French, Portuguese, Dutch, and maybe Italian.

I agree with your general choice of Languages. When it comes to women and travel:
English, a must.
Russian and Spanish gives you access to 70% of sexiest women on earth.
I am not sure about Chinese. If you know it already, great. I is a cool language to know, and probably gives a lot of opportunities for business and work, but even if you are into Asian chicks you can get a lot easily, by only speaking English. I will keep it in my not so serious Language group.
Actually I went out cable skiing few days ago here in Batam and there was a group of Singaporean students. I gave one girl my phone and told her to make photos of me skiing. Which she did for an hour without any resistance. As a thanks I added her on FB
She was Chinese Singaporean, so of course I learned how to thank her in Chinese. It sounds like shi-shi, not sure how you actually spell it. Anyways the whole group of students just seemed to like me a bit more for trying to learn their language, and giggled each time as said it trying to sound as Chinese as possible.
Hopefully girl visits me here in Batam so I can get my Singaporean flag.
I am fluent in Russian and English, so once I am done with Spanish I am not really sure what to learn next...

It is actually sound as Xie Xie. enjoy reading your learning foreign language tips and tricks. keep up the good work

[redbeard]

Great tips, Vinny.

Any suggestions as to which TV show to watch? Are telenovelas the go-to for Spanish?

I stumbled upon the show "Extra," it's pretty much "Friends" but in Spanish...but it was made for people learning Spanish. The plot is about a gringo showing up in Barcelona and hitting on girls with shitty Spanish. The script uses basic Spanish so it's good for beginners.

Episodes, vocabulary, etc. can be found here:

http://www.celebratelanguages.com/esextra.html

[ElFlaco]

(04-29-2016 07:24 AM)redbeard Wrote:  

Any suggestions as to which TV show to watch? Are telenovelas the go-to for Spanish?

Spanish, like other languages, varies by dialect. Pick a telenovela or TV series from the dialect you're interested in. If you watch a bit of something from everywhere, it will take you longer to notice common patterns and expressions.

Mexican TV series
For Mexican Spanish, here are some fairly recent, semi-sophisticated TV series:

• Soy Tu Fan: The recently-dumped heroine gets picked up by a beta in a coffee shop. Had a popular run, two seasons, produced by Once TV.
• Club de Cuervos: Badboy son and his rival sister as they try to run a baseball team. Popular right now.
• María de Todos los Ángeles: A comedy about a desperate post-wall lower-class Mexican woman and her almost-mother-in-law, both played by the same actress. Popular for its sympathetic caricature of the lower classes.
• XY: One of the first 'sophisticated' Mexican drama series. About running a magazine. Produced by Canal Once.
• Capadocia: Women's prison drama, corruption. A female 'Oz'.
  

You'll find these on Netflix and/or YouTube. Of these, Club de Cuervos probably has the best story line. For learning purposes I would recommend Soy Tu Fan more strongly, since the audio is better and the conversations are more typical. María de Todos los Ángeles is the one that depends most heavily on topical slang, cultural jokes and situations that outsiders might not follow completely. Still, it's a comedy and it doesn't really matter if you catch everything.

Telenovelas (soap operas)
If you have access, there are lots of telenovelas but it's hard to make a recommendation since they come and go so quickly, often lasting only a few months. Only a few of them make it into formats other than broadcast TV. An older one that you can find on DVD is Como en el Cine (three seasons), complete with boarding school girls, nightclub dancers and upper-class social climbers. Most other telenovelas on DVD are highly abridged and are not meant for people who didn't see the full version when it was originally broadcast. In any event, don't expect to be intellectually nourished by telenovelas, beyond the task of struggling with the language. The plots are formulaic and mildly entertaining at best. Find one that you can stand and stick with it.

Film
Movies, while they might engage your interest more, are not quite as helpful since they are shorter than a whole series, have less dialogue per hour and the language used is often not typical of real conversations. Some fairly recent films that show the grittier side of Mexico: Amores Perros (Mexico City underclass), Rudo y Cursi (soccer/football), El Infierno (drug crime). Not all Mexicans speak the way you'll hear in these films, but many do. Mexicans themselves are proud of their golden age of cinema and will recommend films from that era, but steer clear of them. They're too old (1940s, 1950s) and stylized to be useful for language learning.

YouTube
There are many young Mexican YouTubers. Find one or two and subscribe. Yuya is cute but has an annoying voice. Wevertumorro covers male/female relations via comedy sketches. There's lots of authentic language to be heard.

Songs
Despite popular belief, listening to music is not a great way to work on your language skills. Lyrics are written to fit the melody and to be poetic. They don't use the most natural or conversational type of language that learners should be focusing on. And pronunciation is not authentic either.

[Vinny]

(04-29-2016 07:24 AM)redbeard Wrote:  

Great tips, Vinny.

Any suggestions as to which TV show to watch? Are telenovelas the go-to for Spanish?

I stumbled upon the show "Extra," it's pretty much "Friends" but in Spanish...but it was made for people learning Spanish. The plot is about a gringo showing up in Barcelona and hitting on girls with shitty Spanish. The script uses basic Spanish so it's good for beginners.

Episodes, vocabulary, etc. can be found here:

http://www.celebratelanguages.com/esextra.html

I don't have any preferences. Any soap opera will do. Because they just say things normal people say every day. And they repeat it over and over again. There is always decent amount of flirting involved too. So you pick up that lingo too. After couple of months of watching this stuff you will get proficient in basic everyday small talk. (at least understanding it)
I don't have much free time at the moment, so I am not watching any episodes now. But soon I am planning to switch more to Movies and more serious episodes, maybe Game of thrones translated to Spanish if I can find it. But once you are addicted it is literally sit back and watch how you learn a new language.

I am giving "Extra" a try, thanks for sharing. Great website btw. With a breakdown of vocabulary!
Currently I am watching "Muneca Brava". I chose it because you can find it on youtube with English subtitles. And I watched it when I was a kid. Sounds lame but my family was watching it so I had no choice. I basically know the plot already, which allows me to look at subtitles much less.

About small talk and flirting. I called 2 girls in Bogota today. I spoke broken Spanish when trying to talk about work and hobbies, and then started flirted nearly fluently. Phrases like "estas en amorando con migo?", just flew out of nowhere

@ElFlaco: Thanks dude. Great breakdown. I think I am making a mistake watching Argentinian telenovela while planning a trip to Bogota. I will reconcider. Do Colombians make telenovelas? Any suggestions?

[DrCotard]

Vinny: Colombian TV broadcasters make novelas since the Colombian TV was a State Monopoly in Mid 50s.
Nowadays, the main Colombian novela producers are: Caracol, Radio Cadena Nacional (RCN), Fox Telecolombia (A subsidiary of News Corp) and Radio Televisión Interamericana (RTI). I leave this list if you wanna know about their telenovelas' portfolio.

I suggest 2 well known Colombian novelas: Café (Recorded in 1994) and Betty la Fea (Late 90s novela who has series as the main inspiration for a well known US spinoff named Ugly Betty) if you wanna learn Spanish with neutral accent.

Here's a sample:

I don't recommend watching Colombian novelas produced after 2006 because they have a heavy mexican influence thanks to Televisa.

[DrCotard]

Quote:

(Late 90s novela who has served..)

I was typing from my cellphone and I didn't see the mistake on my post.

[Vinny]

@DrCotard: I will give both of these telenovellas a try. Thanks a lot.
The thing I like about soap operas is how easily available they are. And free.

[semibaron]

I really like well produced movies and series. For example Club de Cuervos and Amores Perros and El Infierno.

Can you recommend some more well produced series like Club de Cuervos. It can be any serie as long at is original language is Spanish.
Tried watching Reina de Sur and El señor de los cielos, but they are produced with too budget to keep my interested.

[Vinny]

@semibaron: Well produced and sophisticated movies and series are very good for the later stages when you are already on advanced level. At the beginning soap operas are the best due to lots of small talk. You learn the daily conversation and can start speaking faster.
I hope I am at that more advanced stage soon, as soap operas are not as addicting as series.

[Chevalier De Seingalt]

(04-30-2016 03:31 AM)semibaron Wrote:  

Tried watching Reina de Sur and El señor de los cielos, but they are produced with too budget to keep my interested.

The worst part is that they play the same stupid theme music over and over and OVER again until it gets stuck in your head.

But I agree with Vinny that they are the best thing for picking up basic conversational stuff.
I watched the first episode of Club de Cuevos and it was good, plus it had some high quality Latina T and A in the first couple minutes.

[Strikeb4ck]

Any links to a German show/movie with English subtitles?

[sonoran_]

Do you think that you might be an anomally that without books you achieved this level of success with languages? Or could it be that youre a regular guy and this theory of using TV immersion actually works?

the other 2 languages you know besides english and spanish, how did you learn them?

[NFallin]

Tried only watching Spanish TV for about a month. Then went back to Mexico again and Spanish was so rusty. For me nothing beats FSI languages.

[Easy_C]

Heres a big one I've found.

If you have STEAM installed, check each games options and see if the language you want is listed. Most big budget games will. Select it and Steam will automatically download the necessaryb language pack.

Works best with open world type games.......they're more or less a simulated total immersion.

[Cr33pin]

Vinny is the real deal... I've been rolling with him in Ukraine for a month now and his English and Russia are fluent and without a accent. I also just discovered his Spanish is better then mine and he's never been to South America and I spent 8 or 9 months there