Name: How to Speak English Like a Native — Tips from Instagram’s Brazilian Co-Founder
Uploaded: 2026-03-11T16:59:29.000Z
Duration: 3 min 58 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...

Modal verbs - A2

Can we talk a little bit about your English?

Because I started my YouTube journey talking about English because I'm originally from Russia.

Past simple

I came with an accent, and then I learned how to speak like an American.

So, one was I was interested in music from a very early age, and

especially, like, American and British bands.

I loved Oasis, but, like, if you're singing that language, you know, you have to kind of hear.

You know, for it to even rhyme or sound good, you have to kind of hear yourself.

And so I think music was a big part of it as well.

Well, and then we moved around a bunch when I was a kid, and

the one constant were international schools.

And so, you know, starting from a fairly early age, I was.

I was bilingual, but only lived in the States when I turned 18.

And so there was some words that I had never really said out loud because I just read them and then internalized them over here.

I mean, we've had maybe had this experience too, where now I've been here for a while.

we'll never feel fully like I'm from here because I grew up in Brazil, but

when I go to Brazil, I don't feel fully there.

Now do you think language learning is going to be replaced by AI?

I really think about this because, you know, I.

I've been out of Brazil for long enough where all of the sort of, like, colloquialism or slang has moved on, and

I just haven't lived there in a long time.

Even though I flew it in Portuguese, I'll now use cloud and say, hey, I'm about to send this to somebody who's like, my age.

Like, do I sound old or do I sound, like, out of date?

And I'll be like, well, you might want to use this kind of language instead, or something, you know, kind of nuanced there.

The value of learning the nuances of languages is still important.

You know, we went to Korea with a lot of the Anthropic team in March, and

We heard from people on the ground that it's the best of the.

even so, they said it still sounds like a really cool Korean that, like, grew up in LA and then, like, moved back.

So how do we like, continue to push that as well?

But, you know, we're definite getting to the point where that sort of vision of like, you can be in a country and, you know, interact, you know, that with.

Yeah, AI is going to become natural at some point.

And then do you think there's going to be a wearable that we're wearing and it just interacts for you, listens for you?

Although there's also the value of having like technology free interactions.

And so there's, I think, always still going to be that the appeal of.

All right, I actually learned this language.

I'm going to go and be with somebody in full presence rather than feel like we're being intermediated by technology.

I wanted to ask for advice for all the immigrants who are watching.

Do you think if you want to build company in AI, do you think it makes sense to move to Silicon Valley?

Or again, with AI, does it matter where you are?

I think the barrier to creating products is really, really, you know, shortened.

Where now, you know, before in Brazil, especially when I was growing up there, there wasn't really a talent market of really good engineers.

I mean, now there is much more because there's been generations of companies that have been created.

But that might not be the case for every single kind of city or every single country.

There's also such a broader set of information and content around what to look for in a co founder.

How do you think about that initial idea?

And what I've been really excited about is whenever I talk to, for example, Brazilian entrepreneurs where I'm from, who are understanding uniquely Brazilian problems or uniquely Brazilian opportunities around our unique payment systems, you know, how Brazilian the economy works, like the public safety questions and then applying AI or applying technology to those problems.

I think there is a tremendous opportunity there.

And one of the things I get excited about is in the past, if you had some idea there, your only path would have been, well, I hope I can go fundraise from Silicon Valley VCs.

I think there's much more of an opportunity to build that locally and then try to fundraise.

Now you can at least get to that point where you've gotten something exciting.