Name: Learning English is Not Like Learning Other Languages
Uploaded: 2025-02-24T08:01:22.000Z
Duration: 32 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

Learning English is not like learning any other language.

Adverbs of frequency

That's what I want to talk about in this video, and I think this is a really important topic because when we talk about language learning, when I talk about language learning in my videos, in my podcast, or when you hear other people talk about language learning, none of us usually makes the distinction between learning English and learning other languages, but there are some major differences, and I think that because of these differences, it's almost like a separate category, like English learning versus learning other languages.

Of course, English is a language, so learning English is learning a language, obviously.

But as I go through my points in this video, I think you'll kind of get what I'm talking about here.

How learning English is not exactly comparable to learning Spanish, learning French, learning Greek, whatever.

So I think you're going to enjoy this one.

I think that you will be able to sympathize with or identify with the points that I'm going to give here today.

Before we continue, remember to hit that little notification bell so you get notified when I release new videos, and please go down and check out those links that I have down below for my membership for my U.S.

Conversations podcast, in which I talk to different native speakers from around the country at normal speed, and I provide the transcript with definitions of key words and phrases.

It's great practice for your listening, so go down and check that out after the video, and I'll remind you about it at the end.

English is not like other languages when we talk about it in the context of language learning.

So first of all, let me talk about the obligation that many people have to learn English.

Many people around the world are supposed to learn English.

This is the language that is assigned to you in school.

It's important for you to learn it for different reasons.

Maybe you need a certain level of English in order to graduate or get into a university or whatever it may be.

But there is this sense of obligation, like English is just something that you have to learn.

I'm sure many of you can identify with that feeling.

Maybe you don't even like learning English, and I'm sorry if that's you, because really you're just doing it because you have to do it.

Maybe if it were up to you, you would choose a different language, but you can't because you need English.

So English has this element of obligation packaged into it, and this is something that many people around the world can identify with.

Not everyone, but many people feel this obligation, and that's very different from learning a language because it's your choice to learn a language.

So that's something that I can't identify with because I'm a native English speaker, and here in the U.S., we have to take foreign language classes, obviously.

When I was in school, I took Spanish classes, but I don't think any of us really have that feeling when we take these classes that this language is going to be really useful for us.

Like, we're really going to need this language that we're learning.

I would say, at least in my experience, the majority of people in their Spanish class, or their French class, or whatever, they don't really think that this is going to be a super useful language for them in the future.

Some people do think like that, but they're probably in the minority.

So yes, we have to learn a foreign language in high school, or I don't know how it is nowadays, but for me, when I was in high school, I had to do this.

So yes, you were forced to learn English, probably.

I was forced to do another language, but the difference is the obligation I had was just, okay, I just got to pass these classes, and then I'm done.

I don't ever have to think about that again.

In your case, it's probably not like that.

You probably didn't just think, okay, as soon as I pass my English class, I'm done.

I don't need to do any more English study or whatever.

That's probably not what you had in mind, because the obligation in other countries for speakers of other languages is much greater in terms of their English learning.

Everyone around the world learns English.

They feel like they have to learn English.

We, on the other hand, in the US or in other English-speaking countries, we don't really have to learn other languages, and that kind of sounds arrogant, and I'm not trying to say it like that.

I'm a language guy, so I don't have that mindset that, oh, I'm good with English.

I want to learn other people's languages.

I want to talk to people in their language.

I love that, but for many English speakers, native speakers, the feeling is, well, everyone else learns English.

Not everyone, but many people can help me out in English when I'm traveling, when I'm abroad.

There are many English speakers, so they don't really feel this need to learn another language since everyone else is learning English.

So that's a big, big difference, and learning something when you're forced to do it because you need it, you have to do it, that's different from learning something because you have a desire to do it, and you might be less motivated to learn English than I am to learn French or whatever even though you have a greater need for English than I have for French simply because you're forced to do it, and it's not something you would choose to do.

Maybe because of that, you have trouble concentrating on it, you're not excited to do your English learning.

I hope my channel and my podcast make you a little more excited.

Leave a comment down below, and let me know if my content is more interesting for you than your typical English study materials.

But yeah, for someone that's not really, or someone who didn't choose to learn English and they just have to do it, that can be something that hinders their progress.

It doesn't let them progress the same way that someone else might progress if they're learning because they're really interested in English.

They really want to learn English, right?

They just have to do it, and that's unfortunate, but that's the world that we live in, right?

So let me talk about the status of English now.

So obviously, this is not even debatable.

English is the most important language for business, for the internet, right?

Just using the internet and finding information, different resources.

Obviously, English is the most important language for that.

For technology, the tech industry, right?

For travel, I'm sure some of you have traveled to other countries where you don't speak that language, but you speak some English, and so you use English to communicate in that other country, even though they don't speak English in that country.

So even for traveling in other countries that aren't English-speaking countries, English is really important, right?

Obviously, just the communication that people have between different countries, among different countries, between governments, individuals, whoever, right?

And just communication in general with the world.

If you want to talk to a lot of people, people from different countries, probably the most efficient way to do that is to learn English because you'll have access to all those other people that are learning English or have learned English or who speak English natively.

So English is really, really important for all of those different things.

I'm not only referring to just English's status in the world and its importance.

I want to also focus on just the fact that speaking English in these other countries, like if you live in Mexico, if you live in Brazil or wherever, and you speak English, that can be a status symbol for you, right?

Like if you speak English and you speak it pretty well, society might view that as a status symbol.

Like maybe it means that your family put you in a private school where they had an English program there.

It was a bilingual school with native-speaking English teachers or whatever.

I've known people in Mexico that went to English schools and so they spoke English pretty well and it's kind of like a status symbol.

Like you know, oh, okay, they studied at a private school.

That's an indicator of status in many places, right?

Or maybe it means you studied with a private tutor or you had an opportunity to do an exchange program or whatever.

And all of that kind of raises your status a little bit in these different countries.

And people just look at you as being more educated, more cultured.

If you don't speak English, I don't think that you're less educated.

I think that probably most of the most brilliant people I know only speak one language, right?

Whether that's English or whether that's Spanish or whatever.

So speaking more than one language is not an indicator of education.

But people have that idea like, oh, wow, he speaks English.

Wow, he has a pretty good English or accent in English.

Whoa, you know, people view that in other countries as a status symbol.

Like if I go out and speak Spanish in the streets, nobody is looking at me like, oh, wow, this guy is, you know, of high status, right?

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Learning English is Not Like Learning Other Languages

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