[00:00:00] Michael: This maybe goes back more to what you were saying about the embarrassment stuff. No one's ever died of embarrassment, no one's ever died from frustration. And I think it is very frustrating. Um, but I don't know. It was somewhere around then when I started just fully thinking in, in Spanish. When I'm in the Spanish speaking world, I'm, I'm thinking in Spanish and, and I did get to kind of jump that with Portuguese because again, they're so similar.

[00:00:31] CODY: Welcome to the Mind Hack podcast. I'm your host Cody McLean, and today we're exploring the fascinating journey of language learning and cultural connection. I'm with Michael Sullivan, a language teacher who went from a boring middle school Spanish class in St. Louis to going on an epic quest across the Americas.

[00:00:49] CODY: While most of us are struggling with Don Biblioteca, Michael has been laying the groundwork for what would become a masterful command of multiple languages. He's a pioneering [00:01:00] language educator who's cracked the code on making, learning a language actually fun in an era where everyone's relying on Google Translate.

[00:01:07] CODY: Michael's proven that real human connection through language is what separates the tourists from the true cultural ambassadors. Michael, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:18] Michael: Hi, Cody. Thanks for having me. Those are, uh, very kind words, in that introduction there.

[00:01:23] CODY: Yeah, and I, I, we, we know each other as, as I take a weekly Spanish lesson with you, and I think you're just amazing in how you're able to break down so many components of learning a language.

[00:01:36] CODY: And I know when I started out, I've been doing Duolingo for just a very long time, well over a year. I mean, I've completed the entire course on on Duolingo for Spanish, and I still feel like I can't hold an actual conversation with somebody in Spanish. Why do you think so many people struggle with learning a language and why do these platforms [00:02:00] not seem to work?

[00:02:01] Michael: I think people struggle with learning second, uh, second or third language or, or whatever, uh, because it's hard. Um, it's definitely something that we're all capable of doing, but it's a lot of work. Um, I think what often happens is that we need a lot of study time and we need a lot of exposure. And if we don't, you know, a lot of us have full-time lives and we don't live, maybe, maybe we don't have that, uh, ready exposure of being able to speak and to be able to, to listen and to speak just all the time.

[00:02:31] Michael: And that, that's how we learned our first language, you know, just absolute immersion. Um, the reason why I think that apps like Duolingo don't work is just 'cause they're, they're, they're not meant to work on their own. Um, you know, they're a tool and learning language is, is a very multifaceted, um, experience.

[00:02:48] Michael: I'm not a big fan of Duolingo. I definitely have used it before. Um, and I think that, you know, some study, some exposure is better than, than doing nothing. Um, but on its own, it's just not [00:03:00] specifically with Duolingo is that it's just not gonna teach you the grammar that you need. And, you know, there's linguistics, linguistics, linguists, excuse me, that, um, you know, we'll, we'll say that.

[00:03:10] Michael: Oh, like with just immersion, with no learning of grammar, you can learn a language. 'cause that's how we learn as babies. Um, and there's a lot of others that disagree with that. Our brains change. We don't have as much neuro elasticity after, uh, well as we continue to age, but there's, there seems to be a cutoff point around eight years old.

[00:03:28] Michael: And, um, yeah. Babies, obviously, no one teaches babies grammar. They just, they just soak it all up. For the rest of us, for most of us, we do need to do some studying of grammar while we expose ourselves as well to the language.

[00:03:42] CODY: What apps, I mean, so, so we have Duolingo, are you aware of any other apps that you think are good in terms of trying to learn a language?

[00:03:49] CODY: Or do we simply need to have a Spanish teacher? We need to be immersed in, say, the culture in order to learn a language. Can we even learn a language properly [00:04:00] through an online app or software

[00:04:03] Michael: with just an app? I would say no. And maybe there's someone out there who can prove me wrong, but not even stone.

[00:04:08] Michael: I would say just using, no, I, I remember I had Rosetta Stone, um, and I, I used it as my intro to French. I, I messed around with Latin when I was, I dunno, around 20 years old. And yeah, of course you can learn some things. Um, I, I just don't think by itself anyone's learning a language with, just, with just that the, the best way to learn as an adult that I'm aware of is through classes and immersion.

[00:04:31] Michael: So if you have the time to move to a place where that's the language, everyone's gonna be speaking all day while you're, uh, taking classes with qualified teachers. That's the fastest way. Uh, now we all don't have that option, and maybe we do have an option to travel a little bit, uh, and we want to, but, you know, no one's gonna learn a language.

[00:04:49] Michael: And I shouldn't say no one, but most people aren't gonna learn a language in six weeks either. So let's say you had six weeks to go to a country and you wanna learn this language. Well, you wanna get there with a little bit of a headstart. There are things [00:05:00] we can do and we can make progress, and we can make a lot of progress without directly moving, especially now, you know, in the 21st century.

[00:05:06] Michael: 'cause we have so much access to media, online and access to other speakers, access to teachers, all of these type of things. Um, so I would say for the people who don't have the luxury of, you know, packing up, moving to the country that they speak, the, the target language, um, attending a, an institution or a school in that country, what I would recommend is finding a good teacher.

[00:05:30] Michael: Whether that's through a university or online or through private, private teachers, private tutors getting a good book if the teacher doesn't provide you with one. Um, and learning about the grammar. It's like a good grammar on whatever the language is. And then working on exposure, um, exposing yourself so we can talk about intensive and extensive exposure and, and intensive and extensive production.

[00:05:53] Michael: So what I mean by that is something like Duolingo or maybe putting on in the background, you know, a [00:06:00] telenovela if you're learning Spanish or sports or whatever it is that you're interested in and just kind of absorbing it, trying to pay attention, trying to follow along. That's, that's what we call extensive.

[00:06:08] Michael: 'cause you can do a lot of that Intensive would be, you know, let's say you were learning English. They would be read an article in the New York Times and under and looking up every word you don't know. Now I, I do think they're both important. Uh, one of 'em is a lot harder, but I think we would get a very burned out if we were only doing intensive learning all the time.

[00:06:26] Michael: And I find that like using those two things together, that, that, that's kind of what it is, is that there's no way of getting to learning a language with just using one tool and using something like Duolingo or something similar is gonna be one of those extensive things. You know, if, if you have some time to kill, you're in the elevator, this or that, you're in a waiting room and you don't wanna scroll through Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

[00:06:47] Michael: Yeah, by all means, get on there. You know, it's, you're still using the language. And if you are gonna use Duolingo, I really recommend reading out loud everything you do. Um, you know, even if, even if it's not the listening exercise, you know, seeing it, reading it [00:07:00] and then, you know, seeing if you get it right.

[00:07:02] Michael: And more than, or I think maybe to a accompany all of all of these different things, is that what's really important is finding out why you wanna learn the language. Um, finding a way to connect with the language is what's going to make it possible. So let's say, you know, if you're gonna travel to a place and you're really interested in that culture.

[00:07:25] Michael: That's, you know, that's something that can help motivate you. You can find the thing, so you say, I got my records and my books behind me. Maybe that, you know, um, so I speak Portuguese, I speak Spanish, and Brazil has incredible music. Plenty of countries in Latin America have incredible music. So you have this built-in thing where you don't have to, um, treat it like this intensive homework assignment to be exposing yourself.

[00:07:48] Michael: You can find music on, you know, anywhere, online, whatever you want, and start connecting to that. And then when you want to say like, you really like a song, like, I wanna know what this song is saying. Well, you know, take some time aside, we have the internet, we have, it's [00:08:00] easier than ever to sit down, look up those things.

[00:08:02] Michael: And then if you're taking, especially if you're taking personal classes and not like classes in a university setting, when you don't understand something, that's what you use your teacher for. You go in and say, Hey, I don't explain this. Why did they say, uh, instead of, you know, and it's just like, so then that teacher then can help you learn that concept.

[00:08:22] Michael: And, you know, putting all those things together is really what helps make, uh, improvement in, in advance in your language learning journey.

[00:08:29] CODY: And so perhaps there's a, a multi-tier approach that one needs to take in order to, to learn a language from reading and writing, speaking and listening. And it seems that it's not just about immersion, but it's also understanding the foundation.

[00:08:46] CODY: Can you talk about, say the difference in, say, what you might teach in a class with a student versus what somebody might learn if they go through the entire course on Duolingo? Like what are they missing out in, say, an online language platform [00:09:00] that they might get through an actual teacher

[00:09:02] Michael: a lot? Um, I mean there's the limitations of, of, just first off, even just the amount of words that you're going to come across and, and Duolingo.

[00:09:10] Michael: Um, you're not going to get things explained to you why things are said in this way. So I, I know they used to have a, uh, forum, forum function on there, and that was great. 'cause then people would answer each other's questions on there. Um, and that works more in more studied languages as well. Um, I mean, so that's the other thing.

[00:09:30] Michael: So, you know, you're, you're my Spanish student. Um, I, I've gotten on Duolingo for Irish. I, I wanna learn Irish, and I don't, that's not, it's not on my immediate, uh, to-do list, but it's a language that I would like to learn. And, uh, it's phonetic, but not in our way. So, like you, I don't know if you've ever seen, uh, anything written in Irish or Irish people's names and things like that.

[00:09:50] Michael: They just seem indecipherable. They didn't have an audio function. So, you know, some of these languages that are less developed, that have less users on there, they really are lacking a lot of the tools where it's just like, [00:10:00] okay, well if, you know, if you're learning a language, any, any of the Celtic language, you're learning Welsh, which is like famous for having just dozens of consonants in their words.

[00:10:08] Michael: And I just gave them all, you know, some 20 something letter word to you, you have no idea how to pronounce it. You know, obviously we need to hear it and we need that exposure. But even in the other languages like Spanish, French, the ones that have a lot of users and have a lot more, have a lot more resources.

[00:10:22] Michael: They don't explain the grammar, they don't explain why things are said in this way, and that's less of a problem in some languages. You know, if you already speak a romance language, especially a Western romance language, so French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, any of the other smaller ones that are spoken as well, the grammar's gonna be very similar.

[00:10:43] Michael: So, you know, you could probably get more out of a thing like that. Let's say you are a native Spanish speaker and you wanna learn Italian. Well, yeah, Duolingo is probably gonna help a lot because it's gonna help get you those basic words that are different than in Spanish. And you know, then maybe you could just kind of do a, a test by fire.

[00:10:57] Michael: Um, you know, again, [00:11:00] I'm speaking, I'm, I'm saying if you were a native Spanish speaker and you know, these are languages that are very similar, same Spanish, Portuguese, then those tools might be a little, give you a little more, but for the most part, yeah, we need, well, I mean, I can just give you my experience.

[00:11:12] Michael: So I learned, I started learning Spanish in middle school. I don't wanna say it was too boring. I had, I had some really good teachers, but it was your standard experience, you know, learning from the book, that kind of stuff. For me though, I, I have, I have Latin family, so I had people I could practice with.

[00:11:26] Michael: And my, my, not in my immediate house. My parents are in Spanish speakers, but I have aunts and uncles and cousins. And then when I went to university, moved to, to Texas, you know, I wanted to learn the language so I could practice, I could communicate with my neighbors. Um, I mean, you know, you live here in Texas, it's a very bilingual place.

[00:11:44] Michael: So then, you know, as, as I studied, I also had to prove a certain, I don't remember, of certain semester sufficiency to get my degree in college. Um, and I, I took another college course, which was just kind of a, a recap everything I learned in, in high school to satisfy that requirement. And then [00:12:00] I started making more progress through traveling, reading, traveling.

[00:12:04] Michael: When I would read, I would highlight words I didn't know and, and, you know, use vocab cards. That was before the apps. Now there's some great apps out there that, um, that help streamline that. I travel for about a year and a half. And that type of exposure is, yeah, it was just night and day. You know, when I first started traveling to, towards the end of that trip, it was, it was just definitely night and day.

[00:12:22] Michael: Even when I started, I could communicate everything was fine, but by the end, you know, having deep, fulfilling relationships with people who don't speak a word of English, it just wasn't a problem. Now, on that trip, and this is maybe to answer your question on, um, on things like different types of study, I thought I might end up going to Brazil and I happened, I didn't, uh, this, this thing called covid happened and , I, I, I paused my travels, uh, but later I visited Brazil.

[00:12:47] Michael: And in the meantime, you know, I, I bought a grammar, I bought a book written for English students, and the implication was that you probably already studied Spanish and it had some workshop or like, you know, exercises in there to practice stuff. It explained [00:13:00] the grammar, it explained the pronunciation. I did use Duolingo.

[00:13:03] Michael: Um, I used that. I started watching programs on, on Netflix. And, um, personally, I'm a fan of watching, um. Childhood cartoons and things like that. Things with simple, you know, again, people like telenovelas, people like sports, something you're familiar with. Uh, and watching it, you know, in your target language, if you wanna put subtitles on, put subtitles on in the target language.

[00:13:24] Michael: Then I went to Brazil and for the first week I was a little bit of a deer in the headlights. And after being there for a month, I made, you know, relationships, friendships with people who didn't speak any English. And again, those languages are very similar. Now, do I think that, I guess I would've had been in my thirties when I did that.

[00:13:42] Michael: Do I think if I would've not learned a second language and just in my thirties, bought a book and got on Duolingo and within, you know, less than a year, been able to go to Brazil and, and communicate fluently? No, I don't think so. I think we, we, we build on the skills that we, that we have. And especially when the languages are similar, you scaffold off of one [00:14:00] where it's like, okay, I already understand the grammar more or less.

[00:14:02] Michael: What's different? Oh, look at all these words that are in common. Okay, they pronounce this a little differently. And yeah, we don't have to work as hard. If we want to learn a language that's similar.

[00:14:13] CODY: I love that you mentioned the connection between languages and I wanna get into that. But, but first I want to, to talk about something that is kind of a universal experience when it comes to learning, especially if you're a little bit older as an adult and you start trying to learn a language.

[00:14:27] CODY: May maybe you have a partner now that is fluent in and outta the language. Uh, I know like Mark Zuckerberg learned how to speak Chinese and that seemed just like, wow, how did you do that? It shows like a certain level of dedication to your significant other in that respect. Or if you struggle by trying to speak Spanish because you end up working with a lot of Spanish speakers.

[00:14:47] CODY: And one of the things that I know I encountered is having my first few Spanish lessons, I kind of felt stupid. It, it felt almost degrading, like to have this experience where I'm being taught this thing and it's just [00:15:00] like going right by my head. And after it, it created this sense of anxiety that just made it so difficult to like book the next Spanish lesson.

[00:15:08] CODY: And I know there's probably a whole. Array of students who just, who just can't get over that anxiety because it just makes you feel like you're kind of dumb if you're trying to learn something at the very beginning. Have you ever encountered this, uh, do you, have you encountered this with students? What advice would you give?

[00:15:25] Michael: Oh, yeah. All the time. Um, and I don't think that, well, first off, the important thing is just to remind yourself that you're, you're not dumb. Uh, it's, it's a lot of work. Um, it's a lot of work trying to learn another language and you already have mastered one language and you're able to do this other one.

[00:15:43] Michael: But it, it's, it's a lot of work and it's gonna come easier for some people than, than others. But even the people that comes easier for, I promise you, they make mistake after mistake after mistake. And, and they might even make mistakes, you know, dumb mistakes. There are things that they consider dumb mistakes, silly mistakes, um, once [00:16:00] they've already become fluent.

[00:16:01] Michael: I, I know that. I do, I do all the time. I mean, the other day, I, you know, I said Liros instead of lires. That's books instead of pounds. Okay. I know what those two words mean. I mean, we do that in English and we don't think anything of it. If we're having this conversation in, in English, and I think earlier I, uh, I stuttered on the word, uh, linguist.

[00:16:19] Michael: You know, you're not gonna be like, oh, this moron. He doesn't know what a linguist is, and we're sitting here talking about, you know, um, linguistics. So I think we just have to really remind ourselves that, and yeah, it happens a lot. I first came across it teaching English and um, I had a, a coworker I, I was teaching in, in Chile and she had taught in China for a few years.

[00:16:39] Michael: And, uh, so I've heard this kind of commonly in, in East Asia that people who teach English over there that their education system values obedience in the children and it values them being quiet and not speaking out as much. And it also maybe punishes you for getting the wrong answer. So a lot of teachers I have met have trouble [00:17:00] eliciting from their students because that's such a huge part of learning how to speak and understand is making mistakes.

[00:17:07] Michael: The fake it till you make it mantra in, in learning a language. It's, it can't be understated if people are trying, if you're trying to communicate with people, you have to assume that what they're saying makes sense, even if you don't. And just try, try to understand it and, you know, laugh about the mistakes that you make.

[00:17:23] Michael: And if anyone is making fun of you, they're probably really insecure, person and probably not like that. You know, I can't promise you, no one will ever make fun of you. Uh, because there's people out there that, that will, the majority of 'em, the, the grand majority of people, um, you know, think it's understand how hard it is.

[00:17:41] Michael: And I, I maybe if that I, I have seen people who, you know, will make fun of you for Oh, if you make a mistake when you're learning a language, those people often don't speak another language. Mm-hmm. And uh, you know, we just kind of gotta ignore them. And there's other people who will be thrilled that you're trying to communicate to them in their language, um, and be very understanding.

[00:17:59] Michael: And we just gotta [00:18:00] focus on that. I think the other day we talked about in our last class, you, you were a little tired and you were beating yourself up. You're like, oh, you know, I'm not really understanding this, this and that. And you were getting, you were doing better in that class than, than normal. You were making less mistakes than normal.

[00:18:16] Michael: And I think it was because, I don't know, maybe it was 'cause you were tired and that was what I mentioned. Some people feel more confident. Uh, they, they feel like they can communicate better if they're tipsy. You know, if they, if they've had, had a few drinks. And I think it's because the, the inhibitions go down and they stop thinking about, oh, how do I sound and this and that.

[00:18:32] Michael: And they just try. And I noticed that with my students across the board. You know, I have students who have learned all the grammar there is to learn in Spanish, and they don't have much confidence. And they're very faltering in the way that they communicate. And I have a two students who I would feel comfortable dropping them off in the middle of Mexico or anywhere.

[00:18:51] Michael: And, you know, they're, they're gonna say some silly things, but it doesn't matter. You know, they're, that that's a part of the process of learning. They have the confidence to just try. And, [00:19:00] uh, it's, it's just so that, that, that is how we learn. And I, I, I don't know, there's probably other people who can maybe give better pep talks, um, but I can promise you that it's something that all language learners feel and something that we should really try to not judge ourselves about.

[00:19:15] Michael: Right?

[00:19:16] CODY: And, and learning language is like learning anything. And that really, uh, I've, I've heard this said before is that, uh, to, to learn something new is, it's the art of becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable, right? It's only when we're outside our comfort zone when we're trying to, to learn something.

[00:19:34] CODY: And so often we, we veer away from that because it's hard to, to feel this anxiousness, to, to feel that, that potential judgment if we're not actually doing it properly, but. There are ways of trying to ease that process. And I know one of those ways is to try to learn, uh, start with an easier language and to work off of that.

[00:19:59] CODY: And I [00:20:00] know it's, it's easier to learn Spanish, uh, and then Italian and then French. And so it seems like there's a lot of building blocks and a lot of connections between languages and, and from what I, I see here is that as well as 29% of the English vocabulary comes directly from French thanks to a Norman Conquest Conquest of 10 66.

[00:20:20] CODY: Uh, I'm wondering if you can look at and explain some, some of the unknown connections that exist between different languages.

[00:20:28] Michael: Sure. Um, first I, I just wanna add to that, that you're, you're absolutely right, some languages are easier to learn from others because languages are related. So a lot of people will be like, oh, you know, Russian is the hardest language.

[00:20:39] Michael: Japanese is the hardest language. English is the hardest language that, that, none of that's true. It's all relative, you know, learning. Um. A language that is very similar to another one, some language is gonna be easier. Um, and because they're more related or they use the same writing script. So that, that's, so that'll kind of get into what you were asking.

[00:20:57] Michael: Uh oh, and the other thing I wanted to add to that is that even though [00:21:00] that's true, some are easier than others, I think that the number one thing is find a language that you want to learn. There needs to be a reason. I honestly think that, I mean, some people just love learning languages and they probably won't have an issue with that, but most of us, I think, will give up if we don't find an external motivation because it's just, it's, it's, it's a long haul.

[00:21:19] Michael: But if you have reasons, you know, like you said, a significant other, um, let's say you're really into Persian literature, so you wanna learn Farsi. That makes sense. If you have no plan on ever going to Iran, you don't know any Persians, you don't care about literature, even if, uh, Farsi is not the easiest language to learn.

[00:21:36] Michael: But even if it, if it were it, I, I wouldn't recommend trying to learn it because even the easiest language is to learn. It's, it's quite a lot, you know, it's still, it's still a bit of work. Um, but then, yeah, getting onto your question about how languages are related. So linguists study that they study the evolution of language, they study how they're related to each other and they argue about it quite a lot.

[00:21:57] Michael: But in Indo-European [00:22:00] languages, of which English is a part, we have, well, in, in all language, we use a tree model, kinda like a family tree type thing. It doesn't work as well across all of the language families. Um, it works a lot better with Indo-European languages. And a big part of that is, is that languages cross and have contact with each other.

[00:22:18] Michael: So to get to your point about the, the Norman invasion, English is a dramatic language. Um, it's more closely related to, to German, to the Nordic languages than to the romance languages. The romance languages all came from Latin, French speaking Normans. They were Germans as well, but they, they spoke a, a, a version of French invaded England.

[00:22:37] Michael: That's kind of the difference between old English and middle English. He said, have all this French vocab come in. So that doesn't really fit the family tree model as well. Um, and so in languages like Arabic, for example, are really all the Semitic languages. You've had so much, they haven't been separated for long enough for that to necessarily work as well, that the tree model, um, to, [00:23:00] to be as, as as concrete as it is with the romance languages.

[00:23:03] Michael: Um, but it's still, it's a working model. It's still a good, good way of kinda understanding how close summary languages are to others. So yeah, when you're learning, you know, I've seen if you pull out a text, I'm looking, I'm looking just the text in. Uh, I don't have one in front of me since so much of our vocab comes from French, you're at an advantage when you're, if you were to learn French from English as opposed to learning, um, yeah.

[00:23:29] Michael: Japanese, which, um, you know, obviously there's, we live in a global world, so a, a, a great, a great example. There's pretty much only two words for tea in the whole world. It's either tea or some variation te in Spanish or it's sha. You know, people spell it differently or this or that, but that's because it was fairly later in human history when people started exporting t and it was only exported by us, by a group of pretty much Europeans bringing it to other places.

[00:23:56] Michael: And so they had their interpretation of how it was pronounced [00:24:00] from where they got it. And everyone pretty much pronounces it. The same coffee is very similar as well. So any new technological world word that spreads around the world, um, will come usually from, from where it is or from who brought it to you.

[00:24:14] Michael: And so we, we get, you know, English has lots of lone words because of that, but most of our lone, most of our core vocabulary has Germanic roots or French roots, and both of those are Indo-European. So it is going to, for the most part, be much easier to learn an Indo-European language than a non one. And the other things you have to keep in mind is what script are we using?

[00:24:35] Michael: So English, Spanish, French, they all use the Latinate script. What we, what we type in every day. Greeks use the Greek script. Russians use the, the acrylic script. And then there's, you know, Arabs use, Arabic uses the Aja and, and Arabic hijab, which is similar to an alphabet, but they don't write the vows.

[00:24:55] Michael: Hebrew does that as well. You know, there's syllabary, there's, there's, um, [00:25:00] more pictographic representations. If you, if that's something that's completely different to you, that's obviously it'd take a long time. The government ranks how easy it is to learn a language for their employees, and they put Japanese in the highest tier, for example.

[00:25:15] Michael: And as far as I'm aware, it's in the highest tier because it's writing system is so complicated for us. There's not, they don't have a particularly complicated grammar. They don't have sounds that we don't make. Um, but if you're gonna learn to write it, I mean, it's, you're starting from scratch. You're learning something completely alien to us as, um, as people in the US.

[00:25:36] Michael: So those are like all the things that kind of factor in at why language could be easier are, are harder to learn and, and you know, and how they're, how they're related to each other.

[00:25:43] CODY: Right. and from what I understand is that a native English speaker can learn Spanish in about 24 weeks or 600 total class hours, whereas it would, if you try to learn Chinese, it would take 88 weeks or 2200 class hours.

[00:25:57] CODY: W why it seems so, so [00:26:00] as I see it, is that Asian languages developed completely separately, whereas it seems a lot of our language in, in the and and the Americas, it kind of had a Greek or, or Latin roots,

[00:26:13] Michael: well, they didn't originally when, when the Europeans got here, you know, they, they brought their languages.

[00:26:20] Michael: Um, and yeah, for the most part that's gonna be true in, in Asia. Uh, Tagalog in the Philippines, um, has a lot of Spanish influence as well because they were a Spanish colony. Um. The, the timeline thing. And I, I wonder about that as well, because I, I, I know plenty of people who I, I don't speak any Chinese of any sort, and I know people who've learned Mandarin and what a lot of folks say is that it's not as hard as you think.

[00:26:42] Michael: Um, you know, they, they're a tonal language. For example, English is not a tonal language. Um, which means that there's, you know, meaning that's carried by the, the tone of your voice, you know, a certain syllable, whether it goes up or it goes down, um, means a completely different thing. Their grammar is, for lack of a better word, simpler [00:27:00] than, than English.

[00:27:01] Michael: Um, as far as I'm aware, they don't, they don't have, uh, tenses. They just have a, you know, they'll, they'll say, you know, instead of, um, you know, I ran, I run, it's, I run yesterday. I run today. And there's plenty of languages that do that as well. Um, again, with, with Chinese as well, it's the writing system. And I, I think if I'm, if I'm not mistaken, I think it takes on average like a, a Chinese child, like three years to learn how to write, and it does not take that long to learn how to write for an English speaking child.

[00:27:29] Michael: Um, so yeah, that, and that's why again, people say, and people all the time will tell me, oh, it's Spanish is so much harder to learn than English, or English is so much harder to learn than Spanish. And it's just such a subjective experience. And it's subjective to what language you're already speaking, um, you know, before you learn.

[00:27:45] Michael: For personally, my opinion with Spanish and English is that it's easier to, uh, the learning curve, it's sharper for English later and it's sharper for Spanish earlier, um, because English is harder to pronounce than Spanish [00:28:00] and we have kind of what seems like no rhyme or reason to a lot of the things that are irregular about our language.

[00:28:06] Michael: Whereas Spanish, you're gonna have to learn a lot more conjugations upfront to be able to, to make sense of what you're saying. But the rules are a little more regular and the pronunciation's a lot easier, so. Again, it's, it's, uh, it's always gonna be a subjective experience based on the individual, what languages you already know and what language you're trying to learn.

[00:28:25] CODY: and, uh, about the, the time to learn languages.

[00:28:27] CODY: So, so it, it takes, it's shorter to learn Spanish. It's interesting that people who know Spanish can learn Portuguese in about a third of the time, um, if they were trying to learn it from scratch. And there's other studies that seem to indicate that if you're trying to learn a third language, it's typically faster to learn a third language than it is to learn a second language.

[00:28:48] CODY: Uh, so you understand three languages now. Would you say that's true? In most sense,

[00:28:54] Michael: it's, it's been true in my experience for sure, but especially because Spanish and Portuguese are, are so similar. What I notice, [00:29:00] and I've noticed this and even to people who don't learn another language, I, I was in Puerto Rico once and I, I ran into a friend down there who was traveling separately and, uh, she had taken French in high school or maybe college and she did not speak French, but she, you know, had learned some words and things like that.

[00:29:15] Michael: And we were in Puerto Rico and, you know, go into the store and, and she would just start speaking French unintentionally. Like she was trying to piece some things together in Spanish and she was like, why is this coming out? Um, and that definitely happens and I think it continues to happen with your more.

[00:29:30] Michael: Um, the more languages you learn, and it can be frustrating, but I think it's, it's a double-edged sword. It's, you learn these other languages faster because you're building off of these understandings that you have, but then you might mix them up. So I went, I spent six weeks in Brazil, you know, and I'd already been speaking Spanish for 20 years.

[00:29:49] Michael: I lost my ability to speak Spanish for about two weeks. I was speaking ol, I was mixing the two of them together. And, and I flew back from Paraguay and people were like, oh, your [00:30:00] Spanish is so good. Like in this kind of like, not in a condescending way, but in like a good for you. And I was like, no, like I've like fluent in this language that I could not speak.

[00:30:09] Michael: Uh, but that same opposite side of it, that was why I was able to learn Portuguese so quickly. And, and I hear people say that a lot, like, oh, I don't want to like mess up my languages. And it seems for me to be temporary. And I think the more and more you differentiate and the more and more you use your target languages that you're trying to learn, that will happen less and less.

[00:30:27] Michael: Then also it just doesn't really matter, you know, unless you're taking an exam, if you, you know, say the wrong word for, for cup or something, you know, then you realize, wait, that's not right. Then you just correct yourself. And for the most part, no one's ever gonna really care. I dunno if that, if that answers your Yeah,

[00:30:40] CODY: the saddest thing I see is, uh, going to to Mexico with some friends and they have a really good de decent understanding of Spanish, but they choose to engage every person in English because they, they don't want to, to, uh, practice and they don't want to, uh, be in that situation where [00:31:00] there's like a misunderstanding.

[00:31:01] CODY: Um, and so I think that's, you know, it's always, it's, it's whether or not you choose to push the boundary because that's where you're gonna get any kind of growth. And in that process of say learning a language, uh, I'm wondering if you know of any memory tricks that have worked for you. I know that there's things like the memory palace where you envision like a place that you're familiar with and in a room and you might envision if, if you're trying to learn like a.

[00:31:24] CODY: List of going to the grocery store. You might imagine, uh, flinging coke everywhere in your living room. And then you walk to the kitchen and then you see a baker, uh, baking bread and you smell bread. And so it's, it's this, uh, memory trick of trying to, to string together various, uh, words or things that you're trying to, to remember.

[00:31:42] CODY: And so what kind of learning do you think works best? I know everybody's a little bit different, but you know, we have like rote memorization, uh, or creating mental images. Uh, what, what kind of memory tricks do you think work best?

[00:31:55] Michael: So, in my personal experience and from, and I've, from what I've gathered from other, other folks as well, is [00:32:00] that the memory palace for memorizing vocab just isn't that good of a technique.

[00:32:04] Michael: Uh, no, it's a great technique for like, memorizing numbers, facts, things like that. The main reason being is that it's not going to, we don't use words in the same way that we need to recall facts or, or numbers or things like that. When we're, we're communicating right now in English. Um, and I, I feel it's, it's safe to say we both probably think in English.

[00:32:25] Michael: English is the medium of our thoughts. And not, not everyone, you know, some people, you know, think in sounds and stuff like that. There's, the brain is crazy and very diverse, but for the most part, most people think in language. And so you're trying to learn another language. You're essentially trying to learn another way of thinking.

[00:32:42] Michael: If you're using the memory palace to memorize vocabulary, you're gonna have to go into that memory palace and ga and, and pull out those things. And it just doesn't really work in the same way. Um, I would say I don't like using, uh, flashcards, but I do. Um, and I've been recently been told about the, the space repetition system, [00:33:00] um, which Anky is a good app that's free for, for, for that.

[00:33:04] Michael: So basically it's, you know, you expose yourself to the cards and, and the, basically the, when you feel more and more comfortable with them, you expose yourself to 'em less, but they still keep coming back. So you still keep. They're still in your cycle of, of words that you're learning. But I think that whether you use that or whether you're just using, you know, handwritten, uh, flashcards, the issue is, is when when you get a new set of words, you try to learn them, you try to memorize them, you need to use them.

[00:33:31] Michael: And whether that's in writing a journal, whether that's in reading those help, the best way is speaking, uh, because we are, you know, we're, we're social animals. And I think that what happens often is maybe you learn a word and it's somewhere in, in your brain and you can't think of it, and you say, um, you know, you say how, how many times there's, there's so many things on the internet and memes and jokes of people with their, their friends to speak another language.

[00:33:53] Michael: And oh, they speak English perfectly, but they, you know, they, they couldn't remember the word for lid. So they, they called it the where's the pots hat, [00:34:00] you know, and something like that. And now, you know, obviously that would give you a laugh. That's a silly, that's a sim silly image. Well, I, I bet you that person, you know, when, when their friends like, laughed at them and not, not like in a mean way, but they were like, they're what?

[00:34:11] Michael: You know, and they made like a kind of thing about it. That person's probably gonna remember the word for lit and, and that, so that's why it's important that, you know, as we're going through whichever vocab system you want for memorizing these things, that we try to give ourselves opportunities to use them.

[00:34:24] Michael: Um, and yeah, you know, that's, that's where I went back to the extensive and intensive, you know, even just if you're learning vocab, you'd be surprised how many times those words will then come across, whether in your readings or in, you know, what you're watching. And that's why the amount of exposure, that's why the, the extensive exposure is, is important as well as the intensive, because the more time that you spend with it around, you're like, you know, I remember particularly with, with the music that I was saying earlier, I've, I've been a fan of Brazilian music since, well, before I could speak a word of Portuguese and, you know, the, the joy of one day understanding the lyrics to some song that I'd known for for years was just like, oh, that's really cool.

[00:34:59] Michael: And, [00:35:00] you know, I got those words by Yeah. Vocab lists and things like that and, and studying them. And then all of a sudden, you know, you start picking them up. And, um, and yeah, they start to cement, they start to cement in that way. And that, that's, that's what's been helpful for me.

[00:35:13] CODY: Yeah. And so you, you mentioned thinking in a language, and I imagine that most of us, even if we learn other languages, that we still will think in the language that we learned as, as a baby and, and a and a young kid.

[00:35:27] CODY: And I wonder, is there like a tipping point at which, uh, so, so actually let me go back and anytime I look at Spanish, I, if I'm trying to read a sentence, my, my mind has to translate everything that I'm reading into English for me to understand it. And then if I'm trying to, to convert that into Spanish, I have to think, what, what is it in English?

[00:35:49] CODY: And then I convert the individual words back into Spanish. Is there a tipping point at which you're able to just. Say or think and, uh, the, uh, different language [00:36:00] and you're not converting it, or in some ways are you still kind of, almost always converting it to some one form or another?

[00:36:06] Michael: No. You can get to that place where you're thinking in other languages, um, for sure.

[00:36:11] Michael: And that's the goal. So that's what you wanna be working towards. And, and again, we don't wanna beat ourselves up. We're not there yet. We're not there yet. And you know that, that, that's how we're gonna get there, is translating things and, and, and thinking of them. The tipping point for me for Spanish was, even though I felt like I had a pretty good, I remember, I, I thought like, oh, my Spanish is, is pretty decent.

[00:36:29] Michael: And I, I went to Puerto Rico for three months. I did some wooing down there, uh, which is like the working on organic farms and stuff. And, uh, Puerto Rico is pretty famous for having a, a hard to understand dialect of Spanish. Oh, I was lost. I mean, and I just, I just struggled through it and um, and I used that time to just to practice.

[00:36:49] Michael: And in my free time, you know, I was reading and trying to learn new vocab cards while I was there. But no, I think I still was, for the most part, thinking in English and Transl. That's kinda when I realized it. The tipping [00:37:00] point for me was when I started spending more time in Mexico, when I started traveling, when like living abroad is that I remember, and I've heard this happen to other people at night, even though like you, you speak very well in in your target language if you have to do it all day.

[00:37:17] Michael: Sometimes you just, you just feel exhausted at the end of the day, maybe 'cause you've had a long day. Um, and it just feels like you can't anymore. The good news is, is that you can, you might maybe start saying some wonky things 'cause you're tired. We do that in, in English as well. But you don't actually, and this maybe goes back more to what you're saying about the embarrassment stuff.

[00:37:35] Michael: No one's ever died of embarrassment. No one's ever died from frustration. And I think it is very frustrating. Um, but it, I don't know. It was somewhere around then when I started just fully thinking in, in Spanish. When I'm in the Spanish speaking world, I'm, I'm thinking in Spanish. I. And I did get to kind of jump that with Portuguese because again, they're so similar and I didn't mean it didn't happen until I went to Brazil.

[00:37:55] Michael: Um, and I would recommend again for people who can't, you know, just [00:38:00] move to a place or just go to a place, or at least at the time they can't, um, talking to yourself in your target language, I highly recommend that. Um, we can't always find the time or the place to, to be speaking with people in another language.

[00:38:15] Michael: But what we can do is while we're making our breakfast and say, we've been learning food words or this or that, just talk to yourself to say what you're doing out loud in your target language. And then that's where you're gonna start finding the holes. Hmm. I don't know how to say break an egg. You know?

[00:38:29] Michael: So then you go and look it up, or you go and ask your teacher. And the more and more you do that, the more and more, you know, those neurons in your brain, you're forming those pathways where they're, they're thinking of it as like, oh, this is, you know, this is the channel for thinking, this is not facts that I need to remember.

[00:38:44] Michael: You know, I need to remember every word on this list as opposed to. This is the way I need to think. And I don't know if, if, for me, it kind of happened first with music. I, I play the guitar, I play the harmonica, and I've never really gotten there, I don't [00:39:00] think in guitar, if that makes sense. But I think in harmonica, and I don't know how, maybe if, if you're a musician, you understand that, but it's like if you, if you gimme the instrument, I just, you know, I, I was in high school band and whatnot.

[00:39:13] Michael: I learned how to read music and, and all of that. I don't think about translating notes on a page to what I'm doing. And I think that people who, you know, can improvise or noodle, you know, they, they do that. They're, they're just like, they're thinking musically. They're not thinking about, oh, well what, what's the next chord in this progression?

[00:39:29] Michael: And what chord should I play if he plays this chord? And, but I think almost all those people start off with that, you know, that that's kind of, we, we gotta, we gotta have an intro, an entry point at, at. It, it somewhere and with language it's, yeah, it's translating to yourself until all of a sudden it's just happening automatically

[00:39:45] CODY: with language learning.

[00:39:46] CODY: It's changed recently with the, the advent of, of AI becoming, everything's AI now. Uh, I know that with, uh, Chat, GBT, they recently came out with a tasks feature. And so I can ask it to, [00:40:00] I can ask it to be a Spanish teacher and I want it to ask me a question every day at 9:00 AM in Spanish. And it, and I respond in Spanish and it tells me what I didn't do.

[00:40:11] CODY: Right. And so have you been able to incorporate AI with any of, of your learning? Uh, and where do you see kind of AI taking? Do you think it's gonna replace Spanish teachers as a whole, or, or I mean teacher in language teachers, uh, do you think somebody can learn a language just with talking with ai?

[00:40:29] Michael: I don't know where AI is going to go.

[00:40:31] Michael: You know, obviously that's, I'm not an expert in that. And even the experts don't really know. It seems, my understanding of AI is that we have these like huge breakthroughs and then like nothing happens for decades sometimes afterwards. Um, and so, and then this kinda is gonna go back to, um, the same issue with Duolingo is that languages that have a lot of material, Spanish, English, Chinese people, you know, languages that are written in all the time, those AI systems are gonna be a lot better with those and with, you know, less spoken, less written [00:41:00] languages.

[00:41:00] Michael: It's, you're definitely, like if you, you know, wanted to learn, um, an indigenous language that is, you know, is spoken by millions of people. There are about 20 or so Mayan languages, again, spoken by millions of people. How much of those are written, how much written material those is online? Is, is it enough for AI to, uh, be good?

[00:41:20] Michael: I don't know. Uh, but I can tell you it's not, it's not gonna be anywhere near as accurate as you know. Again, with these, with more mainstream languages, the way I incorporate, I don't incorporate too much. I would say that the biggest thing for me is that it speeds up the process for quick. Translations, which you would then have to go back and check anyways.

[00:41:40] Michael: Um, but let's say you're kind of confused, you know, it, it just, it doesn't do better than a dictionary. And now that we have online dictionaries, it doesn't really save that much time either. Now, I won't say that it doesn't help. I mean, it's great to get just like a general overview of, of, you know, you plug something into Google Translate or chat GPT or whatever, it, it can help in my lessons.

[00:41:58] Michael: Sometimes I'll use it to generate, [00:42:00] uh, you know, if I'm doing conversation classes and someone, I'll say maybe like, uh, let's give us some good talking points on this vocab list. And, you know, that's nice. It's, it's a time saver for sure. Will it replace teachers? Probably not. Um, it definitely won't replace, I, there's been a lot of talk, you know, I think more when like Google Translate first came out, not like with the, the recent waves of like chat GPT of people thinking that like translators and interpreters are gonna lose their jobs and things like that.

[00:42:27] Michael: Or it's, there's no need now to learn another language. And I, I think that, that very quickly. Prove to be false. Um, and again, for things for low stakes, translations between very common languages, it's, it's super useful. You know what I mean? Uh, but you can't, if it's sensitive at all, you can't just put it through the chat and have them give you the right answer.

[00:42:46] Michael: I'll give you a good example of that. There's a, there's a joke that, you know there, chat, GPT if you pronounce it in French, sounds like Kat, I farted. So people who have like [00:43:00] speak French, they'll, they'll be talking about Chachi PT on the news in French. And, and so I think it was, it went viral. I think that someone like noticed this and they, they, they put this online.

[00:43:08] Michael: I was like, I'm sitting here watching the news and like the news person just keeps saying, Kat, I farted cat, I farted. And I asked chat, GPT to explain to un if it understood that and it didn't. I tried wording in so many different ways. I said, why is this, why is chat GPT funny to a French speaker? It, it couldn't, it could not grasp it.

[00:43:28] Michael: And I tried, I explained the joke to it. It still couldn't. So, you know, what's gonna happen in the future, I have no idea. But, um, learning a language, you know, even Google translates never replaced our, our, our ability to connect with others, you know? Um, there's definitely, it's, it's a great tool. Um, it can, it can help speed up your, your learning process.

[00:43:49] Michael: But if you want to meet someone, if you want to learn, you know, have a, have an in-depth conversation if you wanna learn about things, um, you're not going to, you know, let's say you married someone who speaks another language. [00:44:00] I promise you guys aren't gonna have your phone out every single conversation for the rest of your life and, and put it through there.

[00:44:05] Michael: You know, you're gonna want to have intimate conversations. You're gonna want to, you know, be able to face to face and, and not have to reach for the dictionary every time. So. I don't think there's too much of a concern with it replacing humans.

[00:44:17] CODY: And so for somebody who's serious about learning a new language, what is the, the recommendation that you would give them?

[00:44:24] CODY: Like, do they have to, is it, is it a daily practice? Can you, can you learn just in, say, say a 20 minutes of focus work per day? Uh, is it, is it, how long is it gonna take to have, uh, a general, uh, understanding of language? And I, I think if I recall, is that most, uh, most words that you might use in a language is, is about a thousand words.

[00:44:44] CODY: So if you can understand a thousand words, then you might be able to, to have an 80% grasp of that, of that language.

[00:44:51] Michael: I, I hear a lot of those figures thrown around. Um, the way I look at, well, first off, the more time you put in, the more progress you're gonna make. Um, I would [00:45:00] recommend to answer, to answer your first part.

[00:45:02] Michael: It is better for consistent daily practice than big chunks of practice, uh, whether that's 20 minutes a day, whether that's an hour a day, whether you're doing an immersion class six hours a day. It's much better to study for 20 minutes every day than six hours one day a week and not do anything in between.

[00:45:19] Michael: The more frequency you're using, the more different techniques you're using. Um, it's gonna build, it's gonna build on top of each other. And if you forget things you remember faster than you learn. So you recall things. And I know people who spoke a, a language and then lost it, you know, at one or two years old maybe they, they moved, their family moved from another country.

[00:45:39] Michael: I, I have family members who have, that, have had that situation where Spanish was their first language and then they stopped speaking it and they couldn't speak it. And, but then some of 'em had gone back and studied and it just came back so much faster than someone who had never been exposed to it. So that would be my recommendations for, you know, building your study plan.

[00:45:57] Michael: The same things I recommended at the, the beginning of the, [00:46:00] of the interview here. And then for the, the second part, oh, I'm sorry. You'll have to remind me. Um, I'm trying to remember what you just said. .

[00:46:07] CODY: Yeah. My, my, uh, my memory is not as good as it used to be. Um. I, I do wanna just talk about, about research that I've seen and, and that if somebody doesn't have a huge amount,

[00:46:19] Michael: that was it.

[00:46:20] Michael: Pause. That was it. So you said the thing about like learning a thousand words or whatever, and for it being 80%, my experience with learning languages has been a lot like going up a staircase, you make, you make all this progress and it, and everything just seems easy and like, wow, you're communicating and then you just hit a vertical wall and it feels like you're never gonna move forward, but you do.

[00:46:40] Michael: And with the thousand words thing, I don't really know. And again, it's just gonna depend on what your definition of success in learning a language really is. Do you want to be able to ask for the bathroom and, um, order food, uh, then yeah, probably a basic understanding of the grammar and a thousand words is gonna be enough.

[00:46:56] Michael: But if you look at language as, you know, an opportunity to communicate and to [00:47:00] explore, you're ne you're never gonna get there. You know, in English we're, we're learning in English all the time, and it's gonna be the same thing in, in another language that you're learning. And so I, I don't like that like.

[00:47:11] Michael: That model of like, oh, if you learn a thousand words, you'll, you'll, 'cause what does it mean you'll be able to understand 80% of the language. Does that mean literally 80 out of a hundred words? You're gonna understand, um, you know, there's obviously, there's a lot of nuance, there's a lot of things that we don't understand, even if you understand a hundred out of a hundred words.

[00:47:28] Michael: So yeah, that, that was, that was the other point that I, I wanted to get to with that. But yeah, go, go ahead.

[00:47:32] CODY: Yeah, and, and so I, I think there's like an, an optimal, a window of learning that that ranges from 20 to 25 minutes before our attention span starts to drop. And so, so say if you only have 20 minutes of being able to learn, you might do five minutes of re of reviewing existing material, 10 minutes of new material, and then five minutes of practice on that material.

[00:47:54] CODY: And, and I think the key is they say, is that it's you, you want it to be long enough to make progress, [00:48:00] but short enough to fit into your schedule. So would you, would you kind of agree to, to that kind of like process of, of little bit of a review new material and then practice?

[00:48:11] Michael: Yes and no. Um, so like I got my, um, self to certificate through Cambridge and they, they talk about, you know, they have very specific techniques that they use for teaching.

[00:48:19] Michael: And I think that language, again, un it's, it's di it's, it's different than learning, um, you know, a set of facts or, you know, history or things like that. So I, I think we really need to vary if, if you have, because to, to counter that point, you know, we tend to not, like if we're doing an activity, I don't know, I've heard different time periods, but essentially it takes us time to warm up, you know, we get into the flow state, we get into working on something.

[00:48:44] Michael: And so if, if we're doing something for five minutes and then we do something else for 15 minutes and then something else for five minutes, we don't ever get into that like kind of flow state with the thing. And, and obviously again, everyone, everyone's learning experience is different. So what I would recommend, especially if you, you know, you struggle with fitting things into your schedule or [00:49:00] with attention.

[00:49:01] Michael: Is that prioritize, setting aside that intensive stuff. So that's the learning new things. And then in your downtime, that's when you do the more extensive stuff. So that's, oh, I got some spare time, so I'm gonna do Duolingo. Oh, I'm gonna review something. I already know. Oh, I'm gonna put on my favorite show, so I'm gonna put it on in the language.

[00:49:18] Michael: Um, 'cause if you take a class, you know, and again, there's different teaching techniques obviously, but if you take a class, you know, usually if I'm teaching an hour, I only wanna work on one grammar point and, uh, you know, maybe we'll go over the homework or something first. But it's like, okay, there's a new concept and here it is, we're gonna work on that.

[00:49:34] Michael: Now maybe, maybe we don't get to it in a whole hour, so the next class we gotta come back to it. Um, but as far as what, what I will agree with is what, what you said is that, yeah, finding time to do things daily is much more important than, you know, sitting down and getting a huge chunk. And again, this is a marathon learning, a language is a marathon, so there's no real shortcuts.

[00:49:56] Michael: There's no like, oh, if I just. Study all day today for [00:50:00] 24 hours straight, then, you know, I'm gonna make some real progress. You know, it, it is, you gotta feel it out. If, if you're completely exhausted, you're probably not taking things in. But back to the point when, when the other day in you in class, you felt you were really tired and you were frustrated, and yet you were making less mistakes.

[00:50:15] Michael: So the brain's a silly place.

[00:50:17] CODY: And so just to go into a little bit of a, of a rapid fire q and a, uh, I'd like to, to ask, so, so beyond the, the usual suspects of Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, I think I've heard another, uh, Ling linguist on YouTube mention, say, uh, a platform like Memorize is a, a good one that he might recommend.

[00:50:34] CODY: What are some other resources that you might recommend that people might not know about?

[00:50:38] Michael: I recommend, so, like I said, finding a good grammar book, finding a good teacher, finding material that you want, whether it's on Netflix or on on, on YouTube, and especially I got to YouTube, is that there's a lot of language teachers out there in your target language and a lot of them made some really good content about learning their particular languages on YouTube.

[00:50:56] Michael: And um, it's just, you just gotta search and I promise you'll find them. And if [00:51:00] it's in a common enough language, uh, and another good, uh, resource, we're finding a teacher, especially if you don't live in a place, um, uh, with access to, you know, you're not gonna be going to classes in person, or maybe it's even a rarer language is I talkie.

[00:51:14] Michael: Um, that's just a, a good place to find teachers who, um, in teachers or tutors in a, in a wide variety of languages. And you can contract them, uh, uh, personally on there. Or if you're learning Spanish, you can always go to speak better Spanish, which is where I'm, I'm teaching Spanish right now. We, we do a good job.

[00:51:31] Michael: I hope we do a good job. What do you, what do you think?

[00:51:32] CODY: Yeah, no, I think it's, uh, I think you do a great job and, uh, you, you make it in a way where even if I am feeling internally insecure about my, my progress is that, you know, I never feel judgment and it makes it easy to go to the next class and not have to deal with that anxiety because it's already one thing to feel like whether or not you're learning anything and you're actually making progress.

[00:51:55] CODY: But it's another thing to not feel embarrassment or judgment from somebody else. [00:52:00]

[00:52:00] Michael: Well, good. I'm, I'm glad. I'm glad. Um, I, I think that, uh, yeah, that kind of judgment and that kind of, uh, feeling down on yourself, it's just a real, it just gets in the way. I don't think there's really any place for that in, in learning languages or, or learning anything really.

[00:52:13] CODY: And would you say it's a, it's a misconception. I think it's a common misconception that you need to be young to learn a language.

[00:52:20] Michael: You don't need to be. Um, it does help. I, I can't, I can't deny it, you know? Um, things get, get harder as we get older. Um, we have. There's definitely some kind of, uh, milestones, like I said before, you're eight.

[00:52:34] Michael: Uh, I, I think there's another, I mean, I'm, I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm not a neurolinguistic, uh, linguistic linguist. Um, I did meet once a, um, I was, I was waiting for a bus in a bar in Chicago and I met someone. We started talking, and I wish I remembered their name. I wish I was still in contact with this person, but they were doing their doctorate in neurolinguistics.

[00:52:54] Michael: And, uh, their professor firmly believed that the neuro elasticity that children have can be regained. And they were [00:53:00] working on that kind of research, so good luck to them. I hope that they not just for learning languages. I'm sure that that would, that would cause a lot of breakthroughs and, and all sorts of fields.

[00:53:10] Michael: Um, but yeah, it's a different experience. I will say that it is different learning a language as a young child than it is learning as an adult. Um, it definitely still can be done. There is no, no neurological reason why all of a sudden we can't. If anything, it's. That self-judgment stuff we've talked about.

[00:53:28] Michael: And then also just time, you know, just being realistic. When we're older, we have not just the neuro elasticity issues. We, we have responsibilities. You know, a 3-year-old doesn't really have many responsibilities so they can focus all of their energy on, on learning another language. But I don't, I don't want it to people to think that, oh, it's impossible.

[00:53:44] Michael: I can't learn it 'cause I'm older. But I also don't want them to, you know, we also, it, it that goes hand in hand with going easy on ourselves. It'd be the same if you're, you know, exercising an 80-year-old can exercise. Probably shouldn't do the same. They're not gonna get the same gains as a 18-year-old.

[00:53:59] Michael: [00:54:00] And that's just, you know, we have biological bodies and,

[00:54:02] CODY: and what would you say is like the minimum amount of time that one needs to spend per week in order to, to learn a language, uh, in a way where they're not gonna lose motivation and then they're gonna get to a point where they can have conversational, uh, uh, conversations and a reasonable amount of time.

[00:54:17] Michael: I'd be, I'd be lying. I'd be making it up. It's just gonna be so different from person to person and from language to language. And like I said, if. We don't wanna get into this thing. It's just like, even if you, you found a good routine and then let's say life happens and, and you miss it for a few weeks, um, just get back on the horse.

[00:54:33] Michael: Um, and then again, the reason why that'd be so hard to, to answer is not just 'cause every language is different, every individual is different. Again, it comes under what is your goal? You know, what, what do you consider? Um, you know, I I, I still work on, on bettering my, my Spanish and, you know, still work on bettering my vocabulary and things like that.

[00:54:53] Michael: And I for how, how for how, you know, for how well I can speak. People know [00:55:00] I'm not a native speaker. Now people have told me that I was speaking for five minutes and they were like, then they realized I've made an error, or I've said something in a, in a accent that wasn't very native. They're like, oh, this guy clearly is not a native Spanish speaker.

[00:55:12] Michael: But, so, you know, it's, it is hard 'cause we don't, where there's no, there's not this line where it's just like, I have mastered another language. Um, it's always going to be this, this continuous thing. So I, I can't really give like an exact timeline, but . Um, that's why I like looking at it as, like I said, like that staircase and just, it's a staircase that doesn't have a, a top to it.

[00:55:30] Michael: Um, you're gonna make, you're gonna have moments where you feel like you're just breezing through things and you're gonna hit wall after wall after wall, where you're like, man, I just can't learn anymore. It's gonna be impossible for me to, you know, get rid of my accent. I'm never gonna always remember this case ending or whatever it is.

[00:55:45] Michael: Uh, but you can, you can keep making that progress if you, if you keep working at it.

[00:55:49] CODY: And where can people go if they want to book a, a session with you or, or learn or connect with you?

[00:55:55] Michael: Yeah, so I am on a platform, uh, speak better Spanish. It's, uh, right now it's Hannah and I who, [00:56:00] who teach. And, uh, you can find that online and if you, I'm sure you can, if you can put the, the u RL to that in, in the bio, they'll be able to find it there.

[00:56:09] Michael: Um, that would be the best way to, to reach out to me if you want to. So I teach Spanish, and I'm assuming anyone listening to this in, um, in English probably doesn't need an English teacher. Uh, but I have taught English before and, uh, if someone wants to. Is looking for an English lesson. I, I'm also available for that.

[00:56:25] CODY: Well, uh, that, that's it for today's show. Uh, thank you for joining us for the podcast. And if you're somebody who's listening that you're interested in learning more about languages, you can find all the resources mentioned in the, the notes on the show. And if you think there's somebody who needs to hear it, uh, please share it with somebody who might benefit from the episode.

[00:56:44] CODY: And otherwise, just thanks for listening to The Mind Act Podcast, or explore the routines, mindset, and experiences that lead to a successful life. Until next time.

Michael Sullivan

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