Kris Actual Fluency Podcast, episode 46 with Gabriel Winer, perfecting pronunciation and flash cards. All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Actual Fluency Podcast. I'm as always, Kris Broholm, and thank you so much for listening today.
Today I'm very excited to be talking to Gabriel Winer. Gabriel released his book, Fluent Forever last year, and it's been incredibly well received, and actually ever since I learned of the book, I've been trying to get Gabriel to come on the show. So it was fantastic to that the everything sort of worked out and he was able to stop by.
Before I get you to that interview, I just wanted to update you on a few things that's going on, and the possibly the most exciting thing for me right now is that I've launched the crowdfund for the second series or season for this podcast. And basically what it does is it enables you, the listener to support the show with anything you can spare basically, and it will all be used to produce an even better podcast for the next season. Or series as they usually say in England.
And the reason I chose this model is because I I'm not really a huge fan of making like a paid show. And the real reason why I had to do it was because the computer I was using to record with and record on totally died. It was just it gave up on life, blue screen and everything, and it couldn't get it back working. And now I'm sort of using an impromptu way of doing it with my school laptop, which is really, really awful, and actually it it it means that the editing and the audio quality is not as good as I really would like the show to be.
And so I asked around what I should do, and and a lot of people were saying, "Well, why don't you just do a crowdfund and people can support the show with whatever they think it's worth?" And for me that's a very pure relationship, because if you really enjoy the show, you really get a lot out of it, you can support the show with what with according to that. I mean, you don't have to support with a lot of money if you feel like it's not helping you much. But on the contrary, if you really like it and you use listen to it on a regular basis, and you feel like it's helping your language learning efforts, well then that's your opportunity to really help me out and keep the show going. And there's nothing I'd rather do than just keep going and produce awesome, awesome episodes, get better guests.
And so if you're interested in that, you can find it on I G G dot M E forward slash A T forward slash A F podcast. You can also find that link in the show notes of this episode, which is actualfluency.com/46. Or a third option, you can go to afpodcast.com and there's a link at the top.
And I just want to quickly say thank you to everyone who's donated already. It's super awesome. And one of the reasons I think that people were quick to jump on the donate button is that I've been talking to the memo the people over at Memrise and the people over at iTalki to help out the crowdfund. So basically if you donate 50 dollars to the podcast, and this is all going to the podcast after the Indiegogo fee has been paid, of course. But every every single contribution is going directly to the podcast.
And I've managed to secure 50 of what I call a polyglot package, and basically what you get for 50 dollars is you get a years worth of membership to Memrise Premium. This is 9 dollars a month, so that's a 100 dollar value. And there's also a free iTalki lesson in there for 10 dollars. And then I'm also giving you a lifetime membership to the Actual Fluency Podcast Supporter Club. And basically what that is is it's a kind of a behind the scenes membership area where it right now it's about 47 dollars a year, but actually it's not possible to sign up at the moment. So it's a very exclusive club.
And in that club you can find behind the scenes extra episodes even outtakes is something that I'm planning to bring in very soon and video interviews that have never been published, transcripts for episodes. Basically all the fun I can you know put in there. And there's also a Facebook group where we can kind of have a mastermind and motivate each other and just have fun with whatever topic. And also it allows you to ask questions for our upcoming guests and get, you know, inside scoops on on who's going to be on the show. So hopefully you'll really enjoy these uh this polyglot package and as I said it's 50 dollars, and everything goes to the show. And there's only about 47 of them left now. a few have been claimed. So hurry up and go to the um the fundraiser, the more the better.
I'm and I just want to say whatever you contribute with, even if it's just a social share, just throwing the link on our Twitter or Facebook, I really, really appreciate it and you know I'm doing this for you guys and I really appreciate the support. I would definitely not have made it to 46 or even five episodes if it wasn't for the amazing support I get from from you guys out there. I mean, even the I I get emails every day from people saying that they like the show, and it means so much to me. And it really keeps me motivated and pumped for the second season, which is just going to be so much more epic. I mean, I can't wait basically. So I hope you'll join me in that uh journey.
Uh and another little small admin note is that on the 30th of January 2015, there's going to be a book event, and it's me and Kirsten from Fluent Language coded UK. And we're basically gathering language authors, people have written language books, and Gabriel Winer is actually also coming. So what that does as for you as a sort of a reader is that you can get the books at high highly discounted, and also you'll be given the chance to interact with all the authors. So there'll be like time slots where each author has the floor so to speak and and he or she will answer any questions you might have. So to join that, just go to languagebookclub.com and all the information is going to be there and you can bookmark that for the day. We hope you join the event and uh we'll see you there. It's going to be quite cool. This is the first one and we're excited to see how it's going to go and hopefully have more in the future.
So with all that said and done, I hope you'll enjoy my interview with Gabriel Winer. We talk about pronunciation and also how he he does flash cards, and he also teaches me how to do the Russian rolled R. All right, on the show today, I'm joined by Gabriel Winer, who's an opera singer turned polyglot, and he's the author of Fluent Forever, which is a comprehensive guide on how to learn and never forget foreign languages. Gabriel, how are you doing today?
Gabriel Wyner I'm doing well, how about you?
Kris Fantastic. And thank you so much for coming on the show.
Gabriel Wyner My pleasure.
Kris All right, let's start with the beginning. How did you get into language learning, specifically foreign foreign language learning?
Gabriel Wyner Um, well, sort of through a long circuitous route. Uh, I began, I mean, my first encounter with language stuff as an uh was in elementary school and then in in high school I I took Hebrew in elementary school and Russian in high school and got nothing. Uh I mean, I really I I got the pronunciation of the languages down, which is interesting I guess, given our topic of the day, but um aside from that, I remember when I resumed Russian uh in 2012, uh I assumed that those those five years in high school would do something, that I would remember something, Uh and I ended up remembering like one and a half of the six cases. Uh, I remembered one case incorrectly that wasn't the nominative case. Um, and I had about 40 word vocabulary, and that was about it. Uh and it was very um I guess the process of learning languages earlier I mean in that in that period uh left me feeling like, okay, well this isn't really for me. Um, and then unfortunately I picked a career where I had to know a lot of languages.
Gabriel Wyner Uh and so I um, I I double majored actually. I was majoring in engineering but I I also majored in opera. Uh, it was sort of a hobby that I thought, oh, why not blow this up into a really big hobby. Um, and then I fell in love with it and decided I wanted to be an opera singer.
Gabriel Wyner And given my past failures with language, I decided, okay, well I I need something to get through these language requirements in college. I had to take German, French and Italian. Not much, just a semester of of uh one semester of each and then two semesters of one of them. Um, but I wanted to get something out of them. I didn't just want to have a wasted semester.
And so I had a friend of mine talk to me about the Middlebury, Vermont uh immersion programs. Where basically you show up to these programs, you sign a contract saying if I speak one word that's not German, for instance, uh I'm going to get kicked out and no refund. And then you learn the language very rapidly. It's it's not not just full immersion, but it's enforced immersion.
Gabriel Wyner Uh, and so I did that in 2004 and I and I got my German from nothing. I mean, I I came in there with nothing. I had a I sorry, I came in there with a 30 minute conversation with a friend where I was like, what do I need? And he's like, you need Entschuldigung. And I was like, okay. Uh, sorry. Uh and so I came in there with basically nothing and I left there with around B1 fluency in German.
Gabriel Wyner It's great. And this is like seven weeks. I'm like, wow, this is and and I I left there uh, it was a German for singers program. It was a subset of their German program and uh, that was actually the moment that I decided, okay, well I I'm actually going to do this. I'm going to be an opera singer instead of an engineer. Uh, because this actually the singing portion of the program was so good.
Gabriel Wyner Um and I didn't do anything with my German that year. Uh I reenrolled in Middlebury for the following year. Um so I did summer 2005 at that point. And uh I arrived there at B2, which I found fascinating. I didn't do any work on my German and my German got better over the course of that year, which a whole different baby pod conversation, but uh just what our brains are capable of when when there's just sort of processing all the information that came over that summer.
Um, but I arrived at B2, left at C1. Uh, and that's basically nothing to C1 in 14 weeks and it's it's it's shows you just how powerful the immersion experience can be. Um, which I think a lot of the polyglots out there will will advocate for. They're just, you know, only speak your language. Speak your language as much as you
