English Script Request

Woman: His name is Benny Lewis and he can speak a lot of languages, so he is going to talk to us for a little ---

Benny: So, my name's Benny Lewis and I run fluentinthreemonths.com and for people who don't know, I speak 8 languages fluently. I can get by in about 2 others. And I have actually learned another 3 or 4. I used to be conversational in them, but they have not been maintained.

Do when you hear that, you would obviously think "This guy's just naturally talented.", you know? But that's not the story.

My mission, in the whatever, next 20 minutes is to convince all of you that there is no such thing as language talent. OK?

I want everybody here to appreciate that - the fact that they can definitely learn a language quickly.

And I know a lot of you, uh, a lot people go to countries and they may not learn a language.

So, my backround is that I actually had trouble with English. I had to go to speech therapy when I was growing up. I could not speak English properly and I had to learn a lot of things later in life.

And to this day my brother still *incomprehensible* that my favorite TV show was Star Trek *laughter*, I couldn't get that word.

And I um took German in school. I took it for 5 years. And I eventually made it to Germany and I couldn't even order a train ticket.

Um, so after I graduated I studied electronic engineering. After I graduated, I was 21 years old and I moved to Spain.

Now, you might be thinking that I had a happy ending, lived in Spain, and learned Spanish and everything was great.

In fact, I lived in Spain for 6 months without learning any Spanish.

Spoke English the whole time. I was with other ex-pats. I was with Spanish speakers who wanted to improve their English. Um, I didn't learn anything.

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And the reason I didn't learn was because of a list of excuses:

- I was too old to learn a language because apparently fourteen (14) was the cut off age.

- I was not naturally talented because I got a C in high school German and high school German in Ireland was not that complicated.

I lived in Spain I didn't have a good memory for remembering words and I'm not naturally talented. I had no time, I was an English teacher and speaking English most of the day. How am I going to learn another language?

Um, and I'll take about it. I mean, how do I just drop in to fluency. Do I just start speaking it? Well, I'd be making all these mistakes and therefore frustrated.

They won't want to listen to me, how will I express things? Like in a debate or whatever so what's the point in even trying? And of course, I was too shy. I don't know if any of you saw me last night, I was the one wearing the huge hand. And I was kind of going around and saying "Yeah McHoover won!" So I'm not too shy when I'm taking in front of you. But I was very shy initially.

I went to, I'm from a small town in Ireland, very you know... [Something I can't hear.] ...very introverted.

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And this was another excuse. I had all of these excuses for why I could not learn another language; I could not speak another language. Um, [starts speaking Spanish, you'll be a lot better at this part ffuentes ;)].

The first of April, 2003, I decided to stop speaking English entirely. Now, you might, and this leads to and a lot of changes in your life. [laughter] It reall does.

It's not that I decided to start speaking Spanish, it's that I decided to stop speaking English. And this is a huge problem. This is the only problem, as far as I am concerned. That the ex-pat communities all across the world have, and it stops them from learning the language.

And [incomprehensible] I had just come in from Amsterdam, OK? I spent two months in Amesterdam. My purpose there was to learn Dutch. But everyone said "You can't learn Dutch, everyone speaks English!"

For the whole two months, I didn't speak any English. At all. To any Dutch people.

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It was just at a couch surfing meeting I would speak english with dutch people
because other english speakers were present.

But I only spoke Dutch with them. So the way I did it was I just started.

The thing is, too many people are giving me all their reasons that
they can't do it; the reasons I listed before like you've got no time, you've got no time, you don't have the
language gene. I mean, come on. Are you guys geneticists or something? I hear this "language gene" crap all the time. It does not exist! If you speak English, your native language, you have a talent with languages. You can communicate; you can explain yourself.

And people saythat for a baby it takes maybe 6 years to learn a language, and you know, the best thing is to learn
like a baby, I look for a program like that. No way! A baby has so much work ahead of it that you do not have.
You do not have to get used to body language; you don't have to get used to pronouncing the letter 'M', all of these things.

You look at a language and you see why it's hard. You have a list of reasons why this language or that language is hard. And the thing I like to do at my blog is say why languages are easy. I wrote a post, "Why Hungarian is Easy." and Hungarian is apparantly one of the hardest languages in the world.

So, the way that I did things was
just throw myself in.

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Erm, so you can imagine how this would change your travels, so much, by speaking the local language.
I actually got stranded in Italy - this was during... when the earthquake was happening a few years
ago.

I got stranded in Italy - I couldn't leave, and er, I managed to get a last-minute invitation to the Easter dinner of a friend of mine and there was three generations there and I could, I could talk to all of them, I could have a conversation with the elderly grandmother that was very weak and I could ask her things, and I was part of the dinner table and they were mocking me 'cos I'm vegetarian, they were saying you idiot, you're missing all that, and that was great, I really loved to contribute to it.

I was talking to an old, Czech lady at a bus stop about her experience during world war two, and you can imagine all of these other small-talk things, the opportunities that you get - you cannot do this entirely through Engish.
English restricts you when you're travelling. It is a bridge, it helps you, especially if you are with the kind of people who would speak it, the university educated, people who work in the tourism board, or young people would generally speak it more, but it is restricitng you, you cannot have a
full experience.

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I'm not saying that I have a full experience, cause I said I'm a vegetarian, so...love of food. And, I don't drink either. I know I'm Irish, yes, but I don't drink...for me it's not about what I put down my throat, it's what comes out of my mouth. This is how I find my travels. I...All of my friends in the last seven years have been locals. I spoke almost no English in the last seven years. I'm in North America so I'm speaking English, but I generally do not speak English. And everything changes with that, so I know you're all kind of wondering that, you know, it can't all be that easy to turn off English.

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So I really want to try to give you practical tips to make this… possible for you. Ok, so the first thing you gotta do is announce it to everybody. So you might…as I said initially, I went on fluentinthreemonths.com… I’m living off the blog now. Actually, the reason they started the blog was because everyone kept asking me how to learn languages so I wanted to share with them my tips. But it wasn’t just that. It was because I was announcing to the world that I wanted to learn that language. So I was aiming initially for fluent Czech in 3 months… I was able to maintain my Czech… but the fact that I promised so many people around the world, “I wanna learn Czech”; It was that public promise that forced me. Because too many people say to themselves, or they made some resolution “I wanna learn Spanish”; And that’s not going to help. You’ve got to announce it to the world and you’ve got to tell everybody what you’re aiming for. Because, to speak Spanish is a ridiculous thing to aim for, because you can speak Spanish right now; if you just spit a few Spanish words out. You have to define it. So, I say “fluent” and I go on ahead and actually say what fluency means to me. It means I can do everything in that language. I can, I don’t know, give this talk in that language, or I can have a fun social life; I can have a girlfriend in that language. Whatever it is, everything I do would be in that language.

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And so, what to start with? For example, (I've just oome from Amsterdam) but on Thursday, I'm moving to Istanbul and I plan to speak only in Turkish for two months. Now there's a bit of a problem. I don't know how to say "hello" in Turkish. I don't know how to say "please". I don't know how to say "where's the bathroom?". Right now, I have zero Turkish. And yet, I plan to speak no English in Istanbul. So hopefully I can explain what I'm going to do about it.

I'm going to start with a Lonely Planet phrasebook. Ok? These cost... whatever, five dollars, eight dollars, I don't know. A Lonely Planet phrasebook, or whatever, Berlitz House will do them. Ehm, I'm a big fan of phrasebooks because phrases are things you can use immediately, and the phrasebooks are pretty well-designed to give you the essentials.

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But how do you learn all the phrases?

So I thought I had this pretty cool technique of just singing the phrases to myself. So let's say you're trying to learn Italian, and you've got the phr-- you want to learn "Where is the bathroom?" And it's written in the phrasebook: "Dove si trova il gabinetto?"

So you're looking at that -- how do I remember that? And for phrases, if you can put a little music into it, it'll be a chime that you'll remember. This is how you remember lyrics of songs better, and how you'd...I'd recommend you do it anyways, learning another language. I would take a chime of Big Ben, and I'd actually put it into that...for example, and I'd put it into that phrase. So I would rephrase that in my head, and I'd say: [sings] "Do-ve si tro-va...il ga-bi-netto!" And I repeat that a couple of times, and you'd be surprised how easy it is to remember that phrase after you've sung it to yourself.

So start with phrases, and that's all I'm going to need when I arrive in Istanbul. I'm going to have a list of things I need to say: I'm going to get in a taxi, I'm going to give him the address, I'm going to say "how are you"...I'm going to do these things. I'm going to learn all of those phrases on the flight over. I mean...I'll be visiting all you guys the next couple of days, so my Turkish starts the day before I fly to Istanbul. I'm going to learn all of those phrases. That's the first thing.

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The next thing you gotta realize is the reason I've been so successful in languages is counter-intuitive, something I'm proud about. I am an inperfectionist, and damn proud. Perfectionists are terrible language learners. If you are so focused on making sure you have exactly the right word, exactly the right grammar, you are not going to speak the language ever.

Because you can never speak the language at 100%. You'll always have some subtle words you don't know. You'll also have some grammar a little bit. So the reason I'm so successful is because I just start speaking. I speak wrong. I know I'm speaking wrong. I have a goal to make at least 500 mistakes per day. If I don't reach that goal there's something I'm doing wrong.

And too many people kinda feel that you have to jump, you have to start .. you're not allowed to speak to a native unless what you're saying is perfect. It doesn't work like that. Everywhere I've been in the world, the little I've tried - I'm sure all of you know - you learn a few phrases and you try that out. They love it. They think it's great that an English speaker is learning their language, with the exception of Paris. That's the only place that they were mean to me for trying. I love the French. I love the French. In south France they were very, very nice.

But everywhere else I've been, they were so, so helpful. They would patiently listen to you, help you, they give you feedback and they understand you.

So don't worry about making mistakes. Making mistakes is part of it. You cannot avoid making mistakes. So I really recommend that.

And otherwise for learning vocabulary I like to use image association. So like uh, let's say you're learning the Spanish word for beach, "playa". When I started out and saw the word for the first time, it kinda sounded to me like "player". Playa, player. And I just imagined this Johnny Bravo image. I don't know if any of you know Johnny Bravo. This cartoon character. This really cheesy guy that's like chatting up girls.

So I imagine Johnny Bravo walking on a beach, thinking he's the man and trying to pick up all these girls. And I have that image and I replay it in my mind and whenever I hear "playa" I think "player", and "player" is on the beach.

And when I want to say it. The thing is you have to make it two-way. When I want to say the word "beach". Who was on the beach? It was Johnny Bravo. He's a player, so it's "playa". And you only have to do this for the first two or three times. You do not, when you're speaking the language you don't have to constantly analyse in your head "oh no what was that word again?" If you do it twice, you use that image association technique twice, the word will be burned into your head and you will know that "playa" means beach forever. So try to do that with as many words as you can.

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*incomprehensible* = mocks me

it seems like it's a slow process because you need to imagine the story or whatever, but your imagination abilities you had when you were young, when you were a child, these come back to you. You start to create these interesting stories, you know, and you're able to reproduce them again in the future, so really really try with that.

Umm.. okay, now, so you've got your basic words, you've got some, uh, phrases, and then you're putting the words into the phrases, trying to structure your own things, which could be wrong. I mean, you could have the preposition in the wrong place and all that kind of stuff. You've got to think about what you're saying.

Now you might find in Northern European countries, people whose level of English might be better than yours might switch over to English. That's a big challenge people told me they've had in a lot of places. They will, you know, they'll just speak English to you, and I was told this would happen a lot in Amsterdam, and I actually found that in Amsterdam I was able to speak Dutch with everybody because I did it with confidence. The reason that they will speak English to you is because they're trying to help you.

If they kind of see that you're struggling, if you're like "Um.. where is the, uh, what is that word again" If you speak like that, they will speak English to you, it's helping you, they're trying to be nice. So I just (put it out there?), whatever you want to say, you know, full of confidence. One of my idols in language learning, is actually, he's not a linguist, he's not famous for languages, is Jack Sparrow.

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I love Jack Sparrow! And I speak foreign languages like Jack Sparrow would. So if I forget the word for supermarket, and I want to say in French "I want to go to the supermarket", I'll show you what I might do. I'd say; "Je veux aller au ... supermarche". [NOTE: Said in Jack Sparrow's voice, with the crazy drunk gestures.] And that's a dramatic pause! That pause is actually the time I'm thinking to myself 'What is the word here, it begins with an S...', you know.

But if I show outside I'm struggling, then the person will feel awkward. So really try and just throw it out there. And I love Jack Sparrow, I always try and do these dramatic things, and putting your personality into it makes it so much more interesting. You talk about something tedious like where's the whatever, but people are interested in helping you because they see that your personality is coming through. So this has been very effective for me.

And context helps a lot. Context is your biggest help in the world. When you start a language, you're under the impression that there's two million words - or whatever it is - that you don't know. That's just looking at it, as far as I'm concerned, academically, because *incomprehensible* you don't know, and context is so helpful.

So for example, when I was in Berlin, I'd just bought a SIM card and I realised I didn't have any data minutes on it, so I went back to the store and I was, you know, very bad German, I was "Er, the... er, internet... ich..." and I was struggling. And he understood, because I got my point across, but then he explained, he said "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, [something in German I didn't understand, sorry!] blah blah blah blah blah." So I understood one word, that [datennetz?], because it sounds like 'data network', but from that one word I understood everything else he said. Because of the context.

We were looking at my iPhone, and I remembered, because it was a cellular data network, that was a setting that was actually in my iPhone, so I knew to get to that I had to click Settings and this and that, and everything else he said were all of those words, and I was just extrapolating to find out how he got to that.

So context helps you so much. Read the body language of people, you can understand... I know there's examples of, oh, this is a curse or this is a curse [random hand gestures] in some countries, you can give me examples, but most of the time 99% of body language around the world is the same.

When I was in India I wasn't actually learning any of the local languages but I actually made dozens of friends on a train ride who didn't speak any English, because I was kind of communicating with body language. It's very very effective in what you can do.

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Another one people are always telling me is they're too shy, because you've got to go up to people. And this is like I was saying, you've got to use the language from Day One. The best time to start is now. If you're not travelling right now, one of my favourite things to use is CouchSurfing. Not CouchSurfing to sleep on the couches, but actually CouchSurfing is an excellent social network that you can search for a language. So if you search your city, search Vancouver, search Portland, whatever it is, for French speakers, you'll see a lot of them and you can just contact them and say "Hey, do you want to have a coffee? Let's meet up."

And so I love CouchSurfing. I've hosted over 2000 couch surfers in the last five years. Because I would move to a country, and I would live there, people always ask me 'How do you maintain your languages? I mean, you learn all these languages, you're going to forget them." But living in, I don't know, in Rio, in Brazil, I was working on my Portugese, but I hosted a lady from France, I hosted a couple from Italy, and I showed them around Rio. And I showed them around Rio in their language. In Amsterdam same thing, I was hosting as many people as I could. So CouchSurfing as a host, and as just looking through the network and going to the meet-ups, is great. Another one I like is MeetUp.com, they have specific language groups depending on the city, usually only in North America. But CouchSurfing is generally good for international things.

And then if you're in one of these situations, and you see somebody and an opportunity to speak the language, you might start thinking to yourself "What do I say? How do I say that the right way?" And I tell people that the most important thing to think about before you speak any language is: nothing. Nothing! You clear your head and you just charge in.

I was at a party in Berlin, I met a German girl, and she was kind of struggling with her English, she wanted to practice, and she saw some people over there. And I was practicing my German, she appreciated that. And she said "[something in German]," and I said "No, you're not shy, you're not boring, just go up and talk to them." But she was just struggling, so I said "I know, I'll show you a trick of mine, it's called the Glass Clinking Trick."

And she's like "[more German]," so I said "Check this out." She was holding her glass up here, I said "Come with me, come with me," I brought her over to the people she wanted to talk to, and I clinked her beer with theirs; and I ran away! [laughter] That's my Glass Clinking Trick. Copyright! And that worked. Because she stopped thinking. She wasn't thinking, "Oh, what do I say, my English isn't good enough...", she didn't have a chance. It was just thrown out. She was in front of a native speaker, she had to use the language. So I really reccommend you just stop thinking about it.

And this is why I'm so... this is the only thing that's been the source of why I do so well, it's not because I'm so smart that I have ten million things going on in my head, it's because I've got nothing going on in my head. [laughter] I just see an opportunity and I go for it, I don't give myself reasons why the person might not like me, because my level isn't good enough, I haven't studied the subjunctive future case, I stop thinking about that. Just throw yourself in and use the language. There are so many opportunities, before you travel and while you travel. You see people? Hey, I'm from this, I'm doing that, always try them with the language.

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And one thing I help.. I find that really, really helps to keep them speaking the language to there with you [unsure of "to there with you"], is your accent. The accent, I think, is way more important than grammar. With grammar I could... grammar it's, it's very important. Grammar is important for perfecting your language skills, so you're speaking properly. And because of that you should avoid grammar entirely, for your first stages of learning a language.

When I go to Istanbul, I'm not interested in grammar. I spend about one month perfecting getting into the flow, speaking not so great, and then I'll go back to the grammar book and it'll be interesting. I've read grammar books as if they were novels, with like, you know, "Wow! Is that what how, is that why they do that? Oh, that's amazing!"

It's like putting pieces of a puzzle [together]. So I really like grammar, but only when the language exists in my head. When I was studying German in school, all I was given was der die das tables, and it was boring!

It was just like a, um, you know, a mathematical equation. It wasn't [something in German]. But grammar brings your language together.

Um... What I'm talking about as I said, pronunciation, is another thing you gotta [slang, gotta => got to => have to] start with. So, the people that was telling me with uh, with a lot of the Latin languages and things like that, they can't roll their r's. They can't get that "r" thing.

I think the r is important, or "r" [ar [a like in father], he was pronouncing it "or", in his Irish accent, the second pronunciation is the American English accent] sorry, excuse me, you say r[ar], yeah, like a pirate, we say r[or] in Ireland. So the letter r, we um... to get that, a lot of people don't realize that they could approximate it very very well, without even trying.

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If you think about it.

If you want to say the Spanish word "but" - "pero" - you might say like pehro phero. It's actually easier than that. If you think of the word "butter". The word butter? spread? That sound that you've got in the "t" sound. It's not actually a "t" sound. It's actually something happening in the top of your mouth. If you use that sound as your rolled "r" you will actually pretty much extinguish the vast majority of what gives you an English accent.

And this is why a lot of people didn't speak English with me in Amsterdam, because they didn't know where I was from. They thought, they knew I was foreign but I could've been from Iceland or Italy. They didn't know. Because I didn't speak with the English "r" sound.

So think of "butter". I can get that "butter, butter" and then change to a "p". Putter, putter, petto, pero pero. It's very close. It's not exactly the same sound. It's very close, so really give that a whirl.

How do I not mix up the languages that I learn? A lot of them are very similar. The languages I speak would be English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese. Sort of these groups are very similar. And then I got German, Irish Gaelic, Esperanto, which is an invented language. A lot of people speak it. I spent six weeks of my life just speaking Esperanto.

I actually recommend Esperanto for anybody who really wants to get to learning a lan(guage). Like if you're focused on whatever, Thai. Esperanto is the easiest language in the world. So if you spend just two weeks on it. That's it. Not make a huge investment. Spend two weeks on Esperanto and you learn it so quickly that you can find a community of people. You can Skype and chat to on a site called lernu, L E R N U, dot net, and you can find people there and speak the language in the flow. And then, when you do go to Italian or whatever, maybe that will actually be your second foreign language. And you get to become multi-lingual. You know (incomprehensible). And it's great because a lot of people can use this easy language as a passageway to a harder language.

Kinda just want to list resources that I like. For flashcards I'm a big fan of an app on my Android or on iPhones called Anki, A N K I. You can also install it on your laptop or on your computer. And on your computer you can select pre-made decks for pretty much every language and you can download that then via the program onto your phone. So you get the flashcard app. It uses spaced repetition to give you the words when you need them, just before you forget them. So I like that.

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There's websites like LiveMocha, which has a terrible course. I hate the course; it's the worst course in the world. But if you go to LiveMocha, it also has one of these communities. It's umm, it's got a lot of people from all around the world, and you'll actually be able to connect with them, so for that I think LiveMocha is great, because it's this great community. And...you can try to find Skype partners -- this is if you can't travel. If you can travel, then stop with your excuses. Stop, just speak the language with these people.

Umm...so yeah, I still have a couple of minutes, I think, so I'd like to just take any questions. I'm sure there's many things I've left out. So...yes?

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just curious, when are you going to learn an oriental language, 'cause i understand they're supposed to be very difficult

yeah ok so i've already started Tagalog, which is from the Phillipines. I've found a lot of languages i've decided not to maintain. and uh, the oriental languages have their difficulties and things that are easier. so, i don't like to think about the difficulties.

[27:53]

Like I learned Hungarian which is apparently the "hardest language in the world". I actually found reasons why it's easy. So with Chinese, I don't know any Chinese yet. But I did learn some Thai. And in one weekend I actually learned enough Thai to make a 4-minute long video, it's on YouTube, of me haggling prices in a market, buying food. It's not conversation. I tailor-learned what I wanted to say.

But the thing is, as I said, I don't think about these things too much. I don't think about why Thai was hard. I just thought "ok, here's Thai. I'll learn these words. I'll say them." So yes you can give me a list of reasons why they're hard. I will next year I'll be taking on more oriental languages. Although Turkish is not a European language. It's very, very different. So that's pretty much similar challenges.

Lady: Ok, want to do two more questions?

Benny: Yep. Two more questions.

Q: I just want to hear some Esperanto.

Benny: (speaking Esperanto. I can't transcribe it)

Lady: Anyone else? Any questions? This is the last question. They can't hear you. This is the last question.

Benny: Just before the last question, something someone was asking before was about accents. Like how you really, really get your accent. When I was living in Brazil I found an excellent way to reduce my accent so much was to actually get singing lessons. So a music teacher is so much better than a language teacher to train on your musicality, your lip position.

(talking in some other language). So you gotta really get it. You're going up and down all the time.

And these are things I've seen other people do. I've got the blog so people kinda see it as unique, but I meet a lot of people who kick my ass in languages. They do it better than me, faster than me. But I'm hoping that I can help you guys. And you're welcome to ask me more questions. Follow my blog, fluentin3months.com to see how I deal with Turkish. I'll be sharing all about (it). Yes, last question.

Man: Yes. In my own attempt to learn Spanish I followed some of your advice and got to the point where I could say pretty much whatever I need to say. I guess my problem right now is understanding natives at their normal speed as far as understanding TV, radio, etc. Do you have any advice how to push through that and learn (these kinda things).

Benny: It's jumping in the deep end. For every language, I go straight to a bar or party. I am exposed to so many people who are shouting or you know it's a noisy environment and it's just constant exposure. I mean, I'm all about rapid language learning but real, everybody knows the more time you put into it the better you're going to get out of it.

So focus on what your issue is. If your issue is understanding when people speak then listen to a lot of stuff. Get podcasts. You can download podcasts very, very easily. You can listen to news and follow the subtitles. Because with Spanish in Spain for example, they speak very fast so I actually started watching The Simpsons because I have seen all the episodes of The Simpsons in English so I didn't need subtitles. And I had to try to follow what they say and I got from that like passively.

I'm all about speaking from Day 1 but that's because my priority is to speak well. My advice doesn't work so well if you want to pass an exam because an exam is like (unitelligible). You win, you lose. You fail, you pass. But just remember that's not the way it is in the real world.

So try to understand a lot and in context helps. Remember if you don't understand the whole sentence - remember what I said about the German thing - you understand one or two words and you extrapolate from that. And you'd be surprised how much you can extrapolate. And with time you start to understand more and more words and the pieces of the puzzle get bigger. But there's no transition from not speaking to speaking like a native or speaking fluently. You dive in, you sprinkle a few words and before you know it you're speaking with conversation level.

Lady: Thank you so much Benny. That was awesome. Aw, no hug. Alright. Ahh. That's the universal language.