Lukas van Vyve on learning languages

So, today I'm happy to be talking to my friend Lukas Van Vije, who's a Belgian polyglot who's been doing some really good work with language challenges lately, where he's been taking people through a 12-month uh sorry, not 12-month, 12-week program that's really been uh doing wonders for people's skills. He's using some of his own experiences over many years learning languages. Some of the I I guess you can call it like the non-obvious wisdom or something that's contrary to what we're all usually taught in in language school and he he talks about that and his own experiences learning languages.

And we get into a really nice practical episode, which for some reason I always like doing those. I I know that some people might be sick of hearing about how to learn languages or tips and tricks, but to me, that's like the the most fun thing to do. Of course, it's also nice and interesting to hear where people have come from, what they're doing, what they're using their languages for, but I just a good discussion on uh, you know, the methods and techniques for me is is really interesting.

Um, before I let loose on the recording with Lukas, uh you can find more about these language challenges and what Lukas is up to on actualfluency.com/lucas. I just put a a few information there. There's Lukas with a K, L U K A S. So, if you're more interested after listening to Lukas and his methods, go there and I'll be sure to add the information uh to that page.

Uh but just one second before we get started, I just wanted to thank Glosika for supporting and sponsoring this season of the show. Uh without them, I'm not entirely sure how many episodes I will be able to produce. And I really appreciate them not, I mean the the financial incentive is good as well, don't get me wrong. It it's nice to be podcasting and and getting a little bit of a of a return, a little bit of beer money here and there, but the real what feels really good is the support that they're actually showing. They're showing an interest in in what actual fluency stands for, and they also believe that I can provide them value in return and you guys can can come and try and check Glosika out and see what they're up to.

So, if you have you haven't seen Glosika before, I'd recommend you go to tryglosika.com to get a free tester, see what they're up to, and if you do want to join, they have about I think it's over 50 languages now that you can learn. And the cool thing is you can even learn in different combinations, so you can learn from different languages to different languages instead of just from English or whatever you're used to learning from.

Um, it's mainly audio courses where you focus on a core number of sentences that you can you sort of repeat on a space repetition system and then you have lots of tools and games almost to interact with this basic kind of uh syllabus. So, if you do want to give Glosika a try, go to tryglosika.com as I said, and otherwise, have a fantastic day and enjoy this interview with Lukas Van Vije.

Uh yeah, and um Over the past few years I've learned quite a lot of languages, not as many as some of the other guests on this uh podcast. Uh but I've learned English, German, French, Italian, some Spanish. Recently started dabbling into Chinese. These are the main languages I I'm working on right now.

Uh I work as a translator. I also have a website called The Polyglot Life, and I run some language courses on there for German, French, Spanish, and Italian.

I mean, is it a by-product of being Belgium? Uh, obviously, we're quite used to hearing about the natural polyglots of Belgium and Brussels. Was was that a big part of it?

I'm from Antwerp in the North. We never use French. We learn it. We learn it at the age of 10 at school, but if you go to Antwerp, I mean people can help you in French probably, but it's not really something that most people use on a regular basis. You can't even go like to a government agency and and get helped in French in Flanders.

And then when I went to high school, uh we had some, you know, like some French classes, English classes, a bit of German as well. Dabbed a little bit into Spanish, but I didn't do that much outside of of, I mean, I love languages but I didn't do that much outside of of high school, you know, of normal classes.

Uh but then afterwards I decided I wanted to still become an interpreter when I was 18. So I uh went to university, started studying applied linguistics, English, German, and Dutch. Went to Edinburgh, had an exchange year. Uh and that's really when the traveling bug caught me as well when I was in Edinburgh. Uh I felt like, okay, I want to live abroad. It's amazing that you can actually use your languages there, you know, because when when you're all learning them like at university, you're not really using them that often with native speakers. So that was really nice. Uh, got a Spanish girlfriend actually in Edinburgh, so I started learning some Spanish again.

Um, yeah, so that's what I did up to when I was 21 or 22, I think. Then I finished my bachelor's in applied linguistics, started a master's in interpretation, so I was getting really close to my goal of becoming an interpreter. Uh, finished that masters, but then I all of a sudden I didn't feel like becoming an interpreter anymore.

So I moved abroad again. Uh started studying another master's in International politics. And I was actually quite interesting because it was a trilingual master's. It was in the South of France and in Berlin.

Uh, and all our classes and all our lectures were in German, French, or English. So it would depend on the topic. So we would for example have uh International relations in English, then economics would be in French, something like federalism or public policy would be in also in French, history in German.

Uh that was great. And then after I graduated there, I still didn't feel like coming back to Belgium, I didn't want to start a 9 to 5 job. Uh so I decided to move to Italy, become a freelancer, work as an interpreter, uh translator, sorry, not an interpreter.

And that's also when I started, you know, my my language company because after all these experience living abroad and and and learning uh languages, both at university and high school, but also by myself, I really had quite a lot of frustrations about like the traditional ways of language learning. Found that there were much better ways learning a language, much easier. As many of the the the polyglots on your uh podcast uh have told your audience probably already.

Uh so I decided to to write some guest posts as well on on language learning. Uh started teaching some language strategy workshops on like my own method more or less of language learning. Uh and yeah, recently I also started with language courses for German, French, Spanish, and Italian. I follow my own methodology, what I call the effortless conversations method for language learning. So that's basically my whole story up to today with language learning.

Do you do you remember what was it just a like it seems kind of strange to go from like 12 years of I want to do something and then you you get there and you're like, no, I can't be asked anyway.

So I didn't want to, I really wanted to work at European Parliament for example, or the United Nations, although that's not possible with if you're not going to be Dutch. Anyway, I wanted to work at these institutions. But to do that, you have to do a master's in interpretation and then you have to do another post-graduate. So it was another year that I had to study.

And actually my goal was to my idea, my my initial idea was to go abroad for one year, do this extra master's in International relations, which would also help me with my conference interpretation career afterwards.

Uh but yeah, then after being abroad for a year, there was like, I really want to go back to university in Antwerp, back to my hometown. Study there for another year and then maybe work as a conference interpreter, because most people that I know that actually did that post-graduate, they didn't even get in in European institutions, because it's really, really difficult.

Uh and I decided to go for that and give that a go and see um, yeah, if I could help other people with learning languages, while traveling, while having a lot of freedom, while working, you know, online.

So Dutch is not an official language at the UN.

I feel like most people are also quite keen travelers. Uh some maybe there's a correlation there that if you have a desire to broaden your mind in terms of languages, then maybe you're also interested in exploring the world a little bit.

When I go to a country, maybe like earlier on in my life with my parents, I would and we would go on holiday somewhere. Uh and I would be there like in Portugal or in Spain or whatever. And I and if I don't understand these people and I can't read anything, I get super frustrated. So I want to learn that. But it also helps, you know, when you're abroad and you know the language and just makes you feel good that you can speak with these people. They you can connect with them more easily.

Whereas if you go somewhere like abroad and you can really speak with these people and you see how they live, especially if you, because I don't like like doing city trips that much, like very short trips, I prefer staying somewhere for a longer period of time, couple of weeks or months, because then you really see how these people live and you get to understand the culture and and and then I mean, it's really interesting, just eye-opening, you know, how how different people's outlook on life are as well. So.

Uh that I did for a long time. So I stayed in Nice for almost a year. I was in Berlin for a couple of months. Uh I lived in Turin, so in when I was in Italy for a year and a half in the same place.

But it is difficult, you know, when I when I come back here and and and now I'm back here actually after living abroad for a couple of years, of course it's difficult to fit in and and to stay and and yeah, that's not always easy. I mean you I think you have that experience too, you went to Budapest.

Uh I've I've thought about going to Brussels because, I mean, then I could practice my French first of all. And it would be a little bit, I mean, it would still be in Belgium, but it would be um, a totally different city.

I I genuinely thought that everyone in in Belgium uh spoke like three languages on average.

If you're in Antwerp, not so much. People would speak a little bit of French, but most people don't like it at all. It's like one of the most hated subjects in school, right?

So there is languages, language frontier actually, like a language border a bit south of Brussels.

But uh North of this line or this border you would, I mean, Flemish or Dutch is the official language. South, French is the official language. You never a small part in the in the East where uh German is official language. And then Brussels is officially bilingual.

Uh you know, like I would imagine like Wales and and England or Canada maybe. You know where very bilingual status in in many places.

Can you give us some examples of of some of these things that you found were just hopeless in in you know, uh classic wisdom and and that you improved on?

And I feel that most language schools and even at university, they're not really preparing you for actual speaking. So what most schools do and also university where to do all the time is they give you a lot of word lists to learn, a lot of isolated words. And you memorize all these words. Yeah. For example, memorize all 2000 most frequent words or 5000 or whatever. And then you have to learn a lot of grammar rules.

And then the thinking is, or at least that's how it feels to most people is, okay, so I learned the words, I learned the grammar rules, and then I have all the ingredients, and then I try to string, you know, together sentences with these words and these grammar rules. Yeah. Uh which is super difficult, it's super slow, whenever you try to speak and you have to think of the grammar rules, you're never fast enough. People get all frustrated and tongue-tied and it just doesn't work well, you know, And everyone has that knows that feeling of being super clumsy and being too slow and not knowing how to say stuff.

And that's something that frustrated me so much also at university, because we still had to do it there and I remember the way they do exercises like for German linguistics class where we had to translate a sentence from Dutch into German, it was something like the vicar fled the crime scene on his bike, fell over and ended like in a pond, or something like that. It would always be super weird sentences that you would never, ever hear in real life.

And we had to translate them and then of course we were all like just guessing, you know, because what do we know how to say that? We're just guessing, gambling. Let's throw together some words, let's try to follow grammar rules and then hopefully this is a sentence that sounds more or less natural to Germans.

And honestly, what do I know if my sentence is correct? If I make something like that. If you're a language learner, you almost, if you only rely on grammar rules and isolated words, you never know if your sentence is correct. You could ask a native speaker and then he will say, either he would say, okay, yeah, I would, that sounds natural to me, I would do that too. Or they would say something like, okay, I understand you, but I wouldn't really say it that way. Or sometimes they just say, well, this is complete nonsense, right? And you never.

And I remember when I was in um, doing my master's in interpretation, there was one interpreter actually, a professor I had back then, who did it a little bit differently, uh differently, and that's actually what triggered everything for me. So what he said was, well guys, you don't have to reinvent the language. You know, it's already out there. People are using it every single day. So just observe native speakers, just listen to dialogues, just read a lot and then see for yourself how native speakers say stuff.

So don't think about a language as a programming language, don't start from words and grammar rules. Start from the language as a as a living thing. And then, and don't worry too much about the grammar, just read, listen, then look for everything where you say or when you read something, you listen to something, and you say, ah, so this is how a native speaker would say it. This is how a native speaker would react in a specific situation.

So all these phrases, all these word combinations, all these expressions that you see in there, where you think, okay, I could have said this myself, but only in a clumsy way, and now I see like in front of me, or I hear right now how to actually say this. If you do it that way, then you're not guessing anymore, because you start from observing.

And, um, and that made a really big difference for me, because when you start doing that, you just see the language, you observe, you notice how they say things. You don't try to invent it, you don't try to rely on grammar rules, you actually notice, you see how they say things. If you try to memorize that, without thinking too much about the grammar, then it will start rolling off the tongue because you don't have to think about the grammar anymore.

Also, the same is true for I don't know, case systems for example, in in in German. I mean, you can learn all the rules of after this preposition, you have to use a dative or an accusative or something like that. But you will always struggle with using that rule until it becomes automatic, you know, until it becomes like a chunk somewhere in your head, like an automatic thing in your head, uh that that that just rolls off the tongue.

And it's this observer mindset, you know, like I call this the power of observation instead of invention of like constructing the language. Uh makes a huge difference in your uh conference and it's based on that idea that I developed my own method for language learning. I've already taught that to thousands of people already. I'm using it in my language courses as well. Works really well. Um to refine your language uh like your language skills, your speaking skills and to have words roll off the tongue.

And it's all actually based on on the idea of chunking. I don't know if there's many linguists among your audience. Uh, but it's based on the lexical approach, basically. So, and that actually means that, you know, in your mother tongue, you don't think about grammar rules all the time either, right? You just have word combinations ready in your brain. You have words, you know, they're often used together, collocations, phrases, prepositions that go with certain words. You've used them together so often in your mother tongue and you've heard them so often that you don't think about them as like a separate thing anymore. It's just like something that rolls off the tongue while speaking, like for example in English, call an election or I guess so. You would like a tag question, isn't it? You would say something like a golden opportunity or you would say like happy birthday, happy Christmas, Merry Christmas. All these things just roll off the tongue in a conversation.

The same is true in other languages like German, as I said before, even stuff like um, conjugations in French or Spanish or Italian. All these things native speakers don't actually think about them because it's become a chunk. They don't think about a conjugation table, they just speak. And it should become like be the same way for you if you want to speak effortlessly. Um, yeah, so that's basically the method.

But I guess the the problem is for for a lot of people, myself included is how do we go about doing that without a teacher that uses the same method. Because it's it's easy enough to know that oh, you need to do this and this. But sometimes I'm not sure how to actually put that into practice.

Um, do you have any tips on that?

First step of course, and the second step you try to identify these chunks. And this is actually because, I mean, the lexical approach, as I said before, uh and this chunking method is it's it's been around for almost 30 years, I think, or 25 years. But it's mainly used like to show teachers how to teach a language and not really it didn't really show like the mindset to language learners that much. That's what I think it it failed a little bit, because the real power of this comes exactly from having this mindset of of looking for chunks and reading and and listening all the time and and thinking all the time, could I say this myself in exactly the same way in like a natural way like that? Or do I have some sort of clumsy language hacker equivalent in my head? Or is it translated from my mother tongue? Or every time you think, ah, so so this is how you would say this in in my target language. This is how a native speaker would say it.

And I do this all the time. So when when I started learning a language, I just start with dialogues, with Assimil for example, or well, recently I started creating our own dialogues in my company. So we have um dialogues there as well, native speaker dialogues. And I just read through them, I read the translation maybe as well. And I try to find all these all these word combinations, all these phrases, all these things where I say, okay, I could never have said it myself that way, but I understand what's written here and I know that I want to be able to say this myself. Um, or or uh I'm thinking of a good example now.

Especially for for more the more complicated the language is, I feel like, or the more distant it is from your native language, the more the harder it is, I think, for a learner to actually create naturally sentences that mimic what a native speaker would say.

Um, anyway, so that's the second step that you need to to train this mindset of observation mindset, try to identify these chunks for yourself. And just by doing that and by looking out for them, you will notice already because you always have this, you know, I call it an aha moment. Like often when I read something, or I listen to something, it's really like, oh, okay, so this is how you should say it. And when you have that, and you'll know when you have it. When you start doing this, you'll start noticing these things.

That already helps in memorizing, of course, but what I normally do is afterwards, I would make a flash card out of that, you know, like many people use space repetition flash cards like Anki. I usually make a close card, so I would just type a full sentence, and then I would blank out the chunk. So not one word, but like the full chunk.

You just you need to memorize it in some way. There need to be some sort of memorization step involved, because otherwise, you will forget everything, you know.

And it really say that to me. And they also say, once you start training this mindset, then you start seeing chunks everywhere. So they really start, I mean, you start seeing them everywhere and it makes it it made such a big difference for me when I was learning Italian for example. I I used this method like to learn Italian from scratch a year and a half ago. Worked so well, I got really I got conversational really, really quickly.

And uh yeah, that's actually why I started teaching this to other people too and and and now it works great for them too. So I'm more and more confident that this is really the way to go if you want to be well to to learn a language, you know.

And with Russian, with the the most recent language I've been learning, I just get all these like say the same things all the time basically. But I think what I realized is that's what native speakers do as well.

I mean everyone has their words and like their expressions that they're all using all the time, right? And then sometimes they make fun of like your friends would make fun of you because you always say like a certain thing.

And you know, these chunks are also building blocks, you know, you can still make difficult sentences with that. But starting from a chunk level just makes everything so much easier when you try to speak.

And I don't try to be, I just want to be able to express myself. And if I find the way to express uh my opinion or whatever I want to say by using a chunk that I've just observed by someone else, which is probably better because they will understand you more easily because you're using something that's very natural for them to hear, you know. That just makes it easier for me and and for them too. So I just, yeah, I don't really feel guilty.

I know what you mean. That this is something I think that that many people feel like I said before. People try to invent a language. They try to create like a whole language because they feel oh, I have learned all these grammar rules and I've learned the words. Which is not how it works according to me, at least.

And today somebody was frustrated that they couldn't roll their R's after a year of learning Spanish. And as someone who still can't do it after, I mean, I haven't seriously learned any uh language for the roll the R. I don't think you can rush R's which I think they're quite forgiving if you don't do it, but some do obviously. Um, I've been taking like years, I still don't know how to do it. I feel like I can do it some of the time and you know, some a little bit inconsistently.

But um, it's just beating yourself up, isn't it? After a year. There are lots of native speakers who can't roll the R that don't do it. So why are we putting uh, you know, such a a pressure on ourselves?

I mean, that's more of a philosophical question really. Um, not necessarily uh specific to to the chunks.

Whereas if you look at native speakers, they're making mistakes all the time.

But it's in all languages. French, if I mean if you if you chat with French native French speakers, I don't understand anything. My one of my French friends writes me something, it's full of mistakes.

But then there's so many mistakes in there still. And people are making mistakes all the time against all these basic things that you feel bad about as a as a language learner, you know.

You don't have to think like, okay, that's genitive and you visualize like a table and by the time you've got the right ending, people have walked off, you know.

Because we were trying to, you know, we we learned all these grammar rules and we're trying to do apply this case system. You can't do that. You can't speak German when you have to think of the rules. When you have to think of the case and the case ending. You can't do that.

And you can either learn the case system and then try to do it in your head all the time and struggle for years until you get so much exposure that you create, you know, your brain creates these chunks automatically after you, right?

I don't even hear which ending you're using. You can totally do that.

But when I was getting a little bit decent at Russian, like into the beginner level, of course, not anywhere near the high levels. If I was writing with a Russian person in Russian, I would type up my uh answer, whatever, then I would copy paste it into Google Translate. And if Google Translate didn't flag any of the words as like, did you mean, you know, I would be like, okay, that's good enough. Which is completely ridiculous on so many levels. Um,

And if people don't understand what you mean, they generally respond with what do you mean by that or question mark or sorry, I don't understand. Can you say it again in another way maybe? You know, it's not like the world ends because you send a sentence that people didn't understand.

And I really think that what held me back in the beginning from learning Russian was I was just terrified of making mistakes and I think it's the same concept here where if I'd focused on making chunks or learning parts of the language instead of just learning words and grammar rules, I wouldn't need to have that worry because it's just either you have the the chunk or you don't. Like you wouldn't have to worry about that. And so I think that is definitely something that I I stand behind 100%.

And either you know the chunk exactly or you don't know the chunk. And if you don't know the chunk, of course, you need to have coping mechanism, you need to be able to make yourself understood in some way. Which everyone can do. And you will of course you will still make mistakes because you will so so often that you that you I mean that you don't know the chunk or that you don't know the word even and you need to be able to work your your way around that.

Uh yeah, but I think it's also it it all depends on what you want when you learn a language. I know there's people who just learn a language because they're going on holiday, they want to say a couple of phrases, a couple of sentences. Even then it's still useful to learn chunks. But you don't have to.

If you really want to get to a high level, I think it's it's mandatory. Everyone needs to do it because I mean, at least if you want to get to a high level quickly. But if you just want to learn a little bit, if you're like more into language hacking, you just want to learn a little bit. Yeah, then you just need to get over your fear of speaking. Just make mistakes and and and and speak.

And then you think, okay, now I'm over it. It's my fifth language. Yeah. And then you speak like, oh, no, I I'm so scared. I want to speak.

Like it's it's almost like what's a good analogy here like maybe golf. Like if you if you start this going really well, but then halfway you kind of hesitate. It's going to be terrible. Uh because you don't you don't get the follow-through on it. But if you really whack it and just keep that club going after you've hit the ball, then it's just going to be so much better.

Um and I think for me that's a big problem. I don't know what it is actually. I don't know if it's like a like a general shyness or anxiety or some kind of, I don't know, mild autism or something, but it's just when when I speak to strangers and especially foreign languages, I'm like it's almost like I'm dying, you know, so scary.

Uh every every Skype call I'm dreading. And but afterwards it's amazing. So I don't know how that works. Uh not to turn into like language therapy or anything, but I I'm sure a lot of people have similar issues out there.

Just because I think there's many things that play here. First of all, if you're more introverted anyway, and you're you're usually like weigh your words and you think a lot about what you say, that makes it more difficult to speak another language. Uh whereas people who are super outgoing and just speak their mind all the time, they might have, I mean, some people still have difficulties, but many people just don't care that much anymore. It's one thing.

Another thing is definitely identity. Plays a big role in there, I think. You need to make all these weird sounds with your mouth that you're not used to. Uh and these muscles are not used to it. And then you feel super weird when you talk in that language.

And it's not only the words, but it's also like the expression and the things you say.

Which was really in the beginning very I remember when I was there and I don't usually like use a lot of gestures when I speak in any language. But in Italian, it's almost you have to.

When I was just making like a gesture, I wasn't thinking about a gesture and they would look at me like, Lukas, what are you doing? I'm like, yeah, just talking.

Uh yeah, so impersonating definitely. It's not, I mean, you can do that. I think it can actually help in the beginning. Uh if you're starting learning a language, especially with like pronunciation, because many people I know are very shy about it's like a big thing.

It's more of a, I mean, I've noticed a lot, it's more of a, you have to dare to speak that way because you sound pretentious, you know.

Like uh I don't think English speakers English native speakers appreciate just how how uh automated their accent is. Because I have to consciously, almost every word, decide what am I going to do about it? Am I going to speak in an American accent, which is for me the mouth is quite relaxed.

But having been part of a a UK society for a while, having watched a lot of UK culture, there are certain words that pop into my language which makes it hard for me to speak with an American accent. For instance, the word American, I feel like is quite, I say in quite a British way, I feel like. The same with the word for water, like I just can't get rid of that. There's can't there's now I'm hearing it all the time, so yeah.

Uh enough about that, but I think the idea that we need to is it because you need to exaggerate a bit in the beginning just to train those muscles to kind of uh home the pronunciation? Like it's better to overdo it to begin with and then scale it back, rather than underdo it and then try and scale it up.

So you would listen to a native speaker speak. Uh, you put like one uh headphone in your ear and then you just repeat what the what the native speaker says like one second later or immediately afterwards.

And you don't try to, you just try to mimic the sounds, you try to mimic the prosody, you know, like the the rhythm, everything, just to get used, you know, to to to making these sounds and and and and using like the intonation that native speakers use.

And also your memory. So you there you would wait five seconds and then you.

But also just getting used to the sounds and getting used to pronouncing and and and making these sounds um and also you get used to the the rhythm a little bit more. And it helps later on because then you're you have the rhythm already and you know what the sentence is supposed to sound like more or less.

I can't I feel a lot with identity. You have certain identity of how you speak um your intonation in your mother tongue, all these things are part of your identity.

And once you start speaking another language, you have to change your identity, or part of your identity, which is super difficult and it makes you feel pain, you know, and embarrassment. Plus, you what other people think of you, of course, plays a big role in there as well.

If there's like, you know, you're speaking a foreign language that somebody around you can't understand. And it really seems like you're just being pretentious.

But when I come back to Belgium, and then someone asks me, I mean, you probably notice that like, hey everyone, oh, you speak Italian. Speak some Italian to me. I can't do that. And I get like super like, oh, I get like super like, oh, and it's because you're not using that situation to take on the identity of an Italian speaker, you know.

And then all of a sudden you decide to switch to English. Yeah. Super weird, right? You can't do it because you have you have sort of a collection identity with that person in language. Yeah.

It's like speaking uh you know, Catalan, well, I don't know actually. I don't speak Catalan, so I don't know if that's a good analogy, but two very similar languages. Um, you know, Swiss, Swedish German and German. Yeah. Basically.

Um, or I guess do you have the same with Flemish and Dutch maybe? Is that very similar?

And then, you know, you might rejoin on at a table with uh an English speaker and suddenly you're speaking English to the people that you used to speak Danish with. And this happens to some of my Danish friends as well where if we are just playing games online or something, we speak in Danish and then our friend from Scotland joins. And suddenly we're speaking English to each other. And you know what? My accent is terrible in that scenario. And I don't know how or why that happens.

Because if I go out in the street, sometimes people have a hard time telling me if I'm from here or not. Like they they always they always end up saying after I've been speaking to them for about 15, 20 minutes, they're always like, oh, yeah, there's a bit of an accent there. I couldn't really place it, but there was a bit of an accent, which, you know, that's fine with me.

But if I speak with English with my Danish friends in the same group, it's like I'm just starting to learn English. I don't know what happens. I'd love to have some kind of a would you have like a a language psychologist or someone on the podcast?

Same time like I talked about before, you can use that to your advantage as well. Try to create some sort of alter ego in your head, maybe find some sort of symbol using some sort of trigger for yourself uh that says, okay, now I'm French or now I'm speaking Italian. You move completely into that persona when you try to speak language or when you're having talk session or you you're just trying to speak with someone. And when you make that conscious shift, that might actually make things easier because then you separate, you know, these identities a little bit.

Yeah, try to do that with German and Russian like my third and third and fifth language, but I feel like with English I'm well, I have a certificate that says I'm bilingual. So it must be true.

Um, but I feel like English is such a big part of me and my life and my culture and who I am, that I don't feel like it's I'm not putting on any show. I'm not doing like it's it's not different to me speaking Danish, which means it's kind of automated.

Whereas if I'm speaking Russian or German, I definitely do change like my identity, definitely changes a lot more. I I I would hope my identity also changes with English and Danish, but with Russian and German, I definitely put on a different persona.

And I think it definitely makes my language skills better. Um and I would highly recommend people do that as well, because that makes it easier to put on just like real accent instead of being sloppy with every word. Because if you're imagining you're like a native speaker or like you have an alter ego that you said, it's just so much easier to to have a good pronunciation, I think.

Um probably because that's kind of my that's what I am. So naturally my friends and network would naturally be in that uh kind of demographic as well.

But what happens sometimes uh I think the focus gets removed from the very good language learning advice that we've been talking about in the last hour or so, and it gets taken away because people discredit it to, well, he's, you know, 22 and free and could just travel anywhere, has his own company, and you know, lived in a country that has two or three languages and uh all these unfair advantages.

So, what I really wanted to just uh bring up again is this idea that it doesn't matter how old you are, where you live, or, you know, how big your family is or how demanding your job is, there's always time for language learning and and I'll let you take it from here, but I'll give you a leading question. You know, I don't suppose your language success has a lot to do with being 25 and uh, you know, 25-year-old guy from Belgium.

It makes it easier if you can travel, of course. But it's not a, I mean, you don't have to be able to travel to to to learn a language. There are so many ways with the internet to create like an immersive environment. You can find tutors on iTalkie for every language.

Uh, and you only have to, I mean, you only have to study maybe 20, 30 minutes a day, real studying, you know, like the chunking example, do some flash cards. If you can do that for like a prolonged period of time, it's actually one of the pillars of my, you know, my effortless conversation method is stick to it for at least three months and do something every single day and make, you know, progress inevitable and make the language part of your day in any way possible.

You can listen to podcasts in your target language, you can listen to music, you can try it, I mean, almost everywhere there are meetups for languages. Uh for learning languages. You already can practice your languages. You can do all that.

I and most of the languages I learned, I actually learned in Belgium. And I went with these countries once I already spoke them at like B2 level maybe. Only Italian I learned in the country. But all the other languages I learned in Belgium. While being in Antwerp, while not having much access to native speakers at all, actually. I didn't have access to native speakers. So it's possible.

Um, regards to age, most people in my language courses are actually 35 until even 75 or 80 years old. Um, what I've from what I've seen, they're super motivated. They're really putting in not like hours of studying a day, but they're doing something consistently in these courses. They're making great progress. They're they're telling me, oh, my comprehension is improved so much.

I'm giving them tools like flash cards like imagery. Uh Anthony Metivier's um magnetic memory method for example, is something that works really well, no matter how old you are, with imagery, mnemonics, memory palaces. Um many of my students have reported success with that too.

So yeah, I mean, you can you can learn a language wherever wherever you are, especially with the internet nowadays. It doesn't matter how old you are. There are always ways ways of of of of studying, of learning. Chunking helps a lot in doing that if you don't like studying grammar for example.

Uh, yeah, so so yeah, what can I say? Of course, I totally I totally agree that I'm in a good position to learn language because I have the freedom to to to go live abroad. But it's no, I mean, it's no prerequisite. It's no requirement at all.

And and I often find that the a lot of the success stories involve people who are 50 plus. Um, so I think there's something to be said about, I don't know if it's experience or you just you heard a lot of things in your life so you can kind of, you know, what's important or if it's some kind of patience you develop.

Like obviously, uh there are other hobbies available you could do instead of language learning. But maybe it's just um, it's just a good time, I guess.

At least what I see in like the people in my courses.

And I feel like, I mean, they're willing to implement this type of and be consistent about it. And that's the biggest difference. It doesn't matter how old you are, if you're going to do something every single day for three months or longer. And you're this habits. And you do that, no matter how old you are, you're going to make amazing progress. Every single one of them.

And it's difficult. I know it's difficult. I mean I've given up on on learning a couple of languages before. Uh but I know, I mean I know it's possible. That's like the advantage you have when you learn a couple of languages. I know that I can learn any language in the world as long as I stick to it. Yeah.

So I'm not worried about the method anymore. I know I can use this chunking method. I I know there's stuff like flash cards and the moment you know that and you start believing that, you know, it's only about staying consistent and and that's something that's not always easy, but if you can do that, anyone can learn a language.

You just you need to get that belief installed that you can learn a language and that you too can do it, you know, that it's not something that other people do because you have like a language gene or you're good with language.

It's something that you just need to do and need to stay consistent and get over your fear of speaking and get to a level that's I mean, you know, you like it's not magic, certainly, it's not magic.

Listen a lot, like get a lot of exposure, like have fun with the language. But studying, like with a textbook or with dialogues or whatever, flash cards, even an hour a day is is already a lot.

I think learning a language is is it's almost like getting a university degree in terms of like persistence, you know. Yeah. You might spend more time on it also. Yeah, it just it's just crazy how persistent you need to be to learn a language. It's not difficult like you say, it's not like physics or there's nobody who doesn't understand and especially if you learn chunks, there's nothing to understand. You just observe and you and you memorize. Humans are made for language like our brains are just hardwired for it. So it it it's you know, we've got the the uh the wiring is in place. So we got.

And that's yeah, that's why I have a lot of respect for everyone who learns a language or been doing it for tens of years.

So in the UK, you know, it's kind of like a in London especially there's so many cultures and languages. Um if you live in in London and I'm sure you have like uh you know, of course you're going to have maybe a there's a Polish uh that you know, what do they call? They have a deli. Uh you can go and get some good stuff there. And if you if you said hi in Polish, how are you for instance, they would just love you so much. And how long does it take to learn that? That's ten ten words, you know. Um it's just amazing.

And I I really think society would be better if we both had, if we had mutual interest in in cultures like that. Because the the future is very multicultural. You're already seeing that everywhere. Like in Brussels I assume it's the same. It's so multicultural. And there's sometimes it's kind of like a one-way street sometimes. But luckily, there's people like the people listening to this podcast who's interested in uh sending it the other way as well.

But anyway, it's been a it's been a a great pleasure to uh have you on and uh talk a little bit of shop, you know, talk a little bit about the uh uh you know, the nitty-gritty I guess of of language learning. It's been a while since we had a quite a such a practical episode. So, really uh really happy you could come on and and by the way, just one one more thing, uh what is it you do with the channels website? If people are interested, they can go to actualfluency.com/lucas, so that's with a K, as I've been consistently reminded lately. Uh you put that in there and I'll link to the courses and the blog and and everything that we've talked about on the show here. And uh you can get some more information if you want to maybe join a challenge in the future and looking forward to seeing how how that works out.