Hacking Language Learning: Benny Lewis at TEDxWarsaw

"Some people just don't have the language learning gene." To prove that this statement is patently untrue is Benny Lewis's life mission. A monoglot till after leaving university, Benny now runs the World's most popular language learning blog and is learning Egyptian Arabic which will be language number twelve, or maybe thirteen. But who's counting?

When I was 21 years old,
I could only speak English,

which is typical for those of us
from English-speaking countries,

and I had many reasons why

this is going to be the case for me
for the rest of my life.

And I was very confident of this,

because I had no natural talent,

I had a very bad memory,

I couldn't travel to the country yet,

I was too old, I felt too old

and I was sure

that I was going to frustrate
the native speakers

and embarrass myself.

And on top of this, in school,

I did really poorly with languages.

So, I did actually get the opportunity
to get into languages

after I graduated at university

with a degree in Electronic Engineering,

still only able to speak English,

I moved to Spain.

And I figured, this is it!

this is going to solve my problems,

living in the country.

No!

Six months later of living in Spain,

I couldn't speak any Spanish.

Now, a sensible person
would have given up at this stage

and gotten the point.

I'm not very sensible though.

So I figured

if I change my approach

and change my attitude,

maybe I can change my language skills.

And what happened to inspire me
to get into language learning

was I met a polyglot.

A polyglot is someone
who can speak many languages.

And the first time
you meet someone like that,

you can't help
but feel really impressed.

Like, for instance
there's Richard from the UK,

and there's one video online
where he speaks 16 languages.

Let me just show you a little clip here

and you can see him:

French,

Estonian,

Czech

and Catalan

which is pretty impressive.

We also have Luca from Italy,

and here you can hear him speak in:

German

and Portuguese.

And we also have Susana,

who goes through here:

Italian

Russian.

And a very impressive video I saw once

of this 16-year-old
from America called Tim,

goes through 20 languages in one video,

and in this part here
you can see him go through:

Wolof,

Yiddish,

Hebrew,

Arabic,
Turkish,

Swahili

and Hindi.

So wow!

I met someone like this
and I was so impressed.

I thought to myself,
"I want to be like that!"

But the reason I wanted to be like that

is because I wanted people
to think I'm smart,

to be impressed with me,

and I met this polyglot
at the start of my time in Spain

and with this very superficial motivation,

just because it will be cool
to learn a language,

I failed.

So, what I discovered
after those 6 months

is one of the biggest problems
we have in language learning

but we don't know it,

and that's motivation.

A lot of us start with the wrong
motivation to learn a language.

We are learning the language
just to pass an exam,

to improve our career prospects

or, in my case,

for superficial reasons
to impress people.

And what I've found

is that those polyglots
that I've just shown in the video,

the reason they're learning the language

is because they're passionate
about that language,

They're passionate about
the literature, and the movies

and being able to read in a language

and of course to use it with people.

And when I changed that priority
of use in the language of people,

I was able to learn
the languages myself.

But there are a lot of things
that people feel

will not allow them to learn a language.

So I want to go through...

I think there's five,
I asked a lot of people,

there's five major reasons
they'd never get into language learning.

So, let me go through some of these here.

The first is they've
no language gene or talent.

No language gene or talent, well,

what does that mean?

I mean, sometimes this is actually
just a self-fullfilling prophecy.

In my case,

when I had to learn
the language growing up,

or the six months
of failed learning Spanish,

it was just me telling myself,
"I don't have the language gene,

so there's no point
in doing any work in the language."

Because I didn't put the work in

I didn't learn the language,

it's just a vicious circle,

it's all in your head.

There's no language gene,

we all have it already.

But let's just imagine
some people who do better,

because we see it in school,

people advance faster
than the rest of the crowd.

So let's say there's some inborn trait

to give somebody 20% advantage
over the rest of the people.

Good for them!

But that doesn't mean that you can't,

it just means that you have
to work 20% harder.

And I've found that,
at least in my case,

when I work harder, I can catch up
with the naturally talented

and even overtake them.

So, not having talent
is not a good excuse.

The next reason

is that you are too old
to learn a second language.

I certainly felt this myself

because up to 21,
I didn't learn a language,

and lots of us feel that children...

their brains are hard wired
to learn languages better.

But is it really neurology at play here

or could it be the environment

in which the child
is learning the language?

Well, a study at the
University of Haifa in Israel

actually found that
under the right conditions,

adults are better language
learners than children.

It's sound incredible
but it's about your environment,

it's about your motivation,

it's about the enthusiasm
and encouragement

you get from other people.

And when you think of it,

adults tend to be studying
dusty old grammar books

and doing boring exercises,

while children are playing
in the language, having fun in it.

So I found that when I changed this
to live through the language,

not making it by studying the language,
but living the language,

then I was much more successful.

So you're not too old
to learn a language.

I've met people in their sixties
starting to learn a language

and being successful with that.

The next excuse people would have,

is that they can't travel
to the country right now.

Now, maybe 20 years ago
this would have been a valid excuse

but nowadays
the world is smaller than you think.

Thanks to the internet,

we can connect with native speakers
from across the planet

and you'll see that in a lot of cases,

they might want to learn your language,

and then money is not even an issue,

because you teach them a little
and they teach you a little.

But even forgetting the internet
for a moment,

a lot of us live in cities or towns

that are more international
than what we think,

and when I was travelling in America,

I made it to Columbus, Ohio,
of all places,

to meet this very interesting polyglot
called Moses,

and he does what he likes
to call "leveling up",

where he'll go to some public place

and just see if he can find
some foreigners

and practice the language with them.

And I joined him when
we went to a mall in Columbus,

and the two of us managed
to practice twelve languages,

and just here in this clip you can see
he goes through:

Cantonese,

and here's Cambodian,

and you can see that the guy
really appreciated him trying.

So, you can learn a language anywhere,

and I wanted to push this to the limit,

in my most recent project
I went to the middle of Brazil,

of all places,

to learn Egyptian Arabic.

And I succeeded,

because even though
there were no Egyptians around me,

I got on Skype

and I talked for one or two hours a day

and I managed
to go up towards conversation levels.

So no!

not being able to travel to the country
is not a good excuse.

The next one people might give

is that they've got bad memory
for learning all the vocabulary.

And this was certainly what I felt

because when I first
tried to learn Spanish,

I get a big list of words,

I tried to go through them

and I forget them very quickly.

But research on memory capacity

has found that

it's better when you revise these words
with the right frequency,

and there's this technique called

"Spaced repetition",

where you revise the word

just before you'll forget it.

And it looks something like
this forgetting curve,

the red line is what typically happens

when you first see a word

but to get it into your head
and stuck there permanently

then just review it to make sure it goes,

like review it one day later,
then a week later

and then a month later.

And there are apps in your Smartphone

and there's free programs
that you can download

that help you time all of this.

And that's great

but you can learn the words

faster and better if you combine this

with an image association technique.

So, for instance, let's say
I wanted to learn

that the Spanish word for
"to fit" is "caber".

Well, what if I imagine then

that's barely possible
to fit a bear in a cab?

"Cab-bear" it's "caber", it's "to fit".

So you do this for a lot of words

and it actually gets
very easy with time

and you can learn vocabulary instantly.

So no, having a bad memory
is not a good excuse.

Next,

and I think the most important one

that the people always say,

is that they're going
to frustrate native speakers.

And this is just so not true.

I've been to many places,
I've spoken to many people

and every time
I attempt to use their language,

they're overjoyed, they're so pleased

that I'm even trying!

And I just feel like, especially adults,

when we learn a language,
we are such perfectionists,

we want everything to be just right,

and perfectionism is a really
bad thing in language learning,

because a language
is a means of communication,

it's a way to get to know
new people and new cultures,

and when you embrace this,

it's okay to make mistakes!

And I actually have a goal
to make at least 200 mistakes a day

because then I know
I'm getting somewhere,

I'm using the language!

So embarrass yourself,

go out there, talk to people

it's okay.

When do you think
I was learning a language better:

here?

or here?

(Laughter)

So, anyone can indeed learn a language

when you use it with people,

and it's okay to use it early,

And this is so important,

that you don't have to wait

until you speak the language perfectly
and fluently and so on.

You can get into it
sooner than you'd expect

and it opens up so many doors
to these other cultures.

So for instance,

after I'd learned that Arabic in Brazil,

I made it to Egypt

and I made all the way deep
into the Sahara desert,

I sat down in the sand with an Egyptian

and we had some tea,

we had this nice little chat here:

(In Arabic)

(In Arabic)

and there I'm just saying that

Egypt is so much, so vast, so great,

it's so much more
that just Tahrir Square in Cairo.

And, now when I was speaking with him,

I used the wrong word here and there

and I conjugated the wrong verb
every now and again,

but that's okay,

because even with
this conversation level,

I had this fascinating
conversation with him.

And I've done this with
other cultures and other languages

and I even managed to learn
a little American sign language.

And here you can see
Juliana had asked me

why I didn't learn Irish sign language,

and I said, because when I'm in Ireland

I like to improve my Irish
and my Gaelic

which I can then speak here:

(In Irish)

so that was me on Irish radio

saying about my travels and whatever,

and I learned Irish
for ten years in school

and I wasn't able to say
the most basic phrases after that.

But as an adult,

I went back to Ireland

and I embraced using
the language as a beginner.

And that helped me to reach this stage.

And it's okay to be a beginner,

it's okay to be conversational,

but when you take this on,

you take it to the next level,

then you can reach very well.

I mean, I've got
a very good level in French,

Spanish and acouple of languages.

I've worked as a professional translator

like here I'm having a chat in French:

(In French)

and that's great,
that's what everybody thinks of

when they're getting
into language learning,

they think, "That's what I want to be,

I want to be at this
very high professional level,

have deep philosophical conversations."

and that's fantastic

and yeah, it's impressive
when you see people like that.

But rather than be impressive,

I think it's so much better

when you embrace the beginning stage
of language learning.

And one of the most
amazing experiences I've had,

was when I was in China, on the train,

at 2000 kilometers deep into China,

and I had a basic conversation
of "What's your name?"

and it turns out
I was given my Chinese name

there on the train,

and look, this is how it went:

(In Chinese)

"What's your name?"

"I'm Benny."

(In Chinese)

"I don't have a Chinese name."

and then (unclear),

says,
"I tell you your name is Pun Li."

because this sounds
like your normal name

and it means ability or skill.

And you know,

just, I can have that conversation,

even with a basic conversation
level of Chinese.

And I do have the ability,

I do have the skill to learn a language.

But I always did,

we all always do.

And the reason I have this skill

is not because I was born
with it and others weren't,

it's a decision I made.

And the problem a lot of us face

is that we feel that
we're better studying

and preparing for speaking
a language some day,

because if we do it too early

the world will end
from all this frustration

we cause people.

There are seven days in a week

and some day is not one of them.

I say, rather than see
if the world will end,

a whole new world will begin
if you try to learn a new language.

So I hope you'll give it a try.

Thank you.

(Applause)