Name: 【TEDx】How to learn any language easily | Matthew Youlden | TEDxClapham
Uploaded: 2017-10-09T11:51:56.000Z
Duration: 17 min 5 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

Learning a language can feel a bit like rocket science,

something out of this world and out of reach

This isn't a belief, however, just held by many English monolinguals on our island.

It's also shared by many of our linguistic cousins

further afield, say, in the United States or Australia.

when it comes to learning languages or speaking them,

we are the kind of people that likes to think

we're fluent in a multitude of diverse languages

such as Geordie, Kiwi, Cockney, or what about Canadian?

I'm very, very proud of my Mancunian heritage,

but I wouldn't suggest it's a separate language just yet.

when we are watching Coronation Street, now do we?

Although I can see you two saying, "I do."

Yet, despite this, if you were to cross the Channel,

or say, if you're feeling slightly more adventurous,

that speaking another language or being bilingual is simply a reality.

this is a long, challenging, somewhat painful,

I'd guess that at least 15 other languages are spoken besides English.

In fact, the last census of 2011 revealed that a staggering 22% of Londoners -

speak another language at home apart from English.

I myself, even as a Mancunian, speak approximately 20 languages,

and of those, around half I speak fluently.

And the question I get asked by people the most is, "Why?"

Well, the answer, for me at least, is rather simple.

learning languages, any language per Se, is actually easy.

As a linguist, a polyglot, and a lecturer,

I know what it entails to learn and study a language.

we're faced [with] when learning are myths.

And I genuinely believe that we have to debunk them.

In order to remember these more effectively,

I came up with the nice and friendly sounding acronym D.I.E.

which funnily enough, if you write it out not pronounce, if you write it out,

it's one of the words for 'the' in German.

Myth number one: learning a language is simply too difficult.

I will never be able to speak another language

Technically, you're not born with a language.

All of us here could have ended up, with say, Japanese as our first language.

We were simply surrounded or immersed in the language

There are people, however, out there - many of them, in fact -

who started to learn a language, the second or maybe even the third,

They're now completely fluent in this language or these other languages

even perhaps more so than in their so-called mother tongue.

by which you have to have learned another language.

Think about how many people you know who say,

"Ugh! My kids are doing French in school. I really want them to become fluent.

I should've simply paid more attention when I was at school."

that whilst children generally are much faster

at picking up a new language than people older than them,

it's actually us - you can just breathe as a sign of relief -

It's us, the adults, who are more effective at learning them.

Because we have the experience of learning.

Myth number two: languages are simply irrelevant.

I don't need to learn another language at all.

And as we hear, and unfortunately hear quite a lot -

I was going to do in a cockney accent, but I won't do it at all.

I'll spare myself the embarrassment of doing that -

languages ... everyone speaks English, anyway.

Well, besides the obvious benefits of speaking another language -

for example, financial benefits and mental benefits,

i.e., better pay, more job opportunities, keeping us mentally fit,

and actually helping to stave off neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's-

we can discover when we speak another language.

How about getting an upgrade on your hotel room,

as was recently the case with my uncle before going to Turkey on holiday?

a few phrases and greetings in the language

and bam!, he's given an upgrade on his hotel room straight away.

You might not always get an upgrade on your hotel room.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TEDx】How to learn any language easily | Matthew Youlden | TEDxClapham

literally

relevant

process

essentially