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TEDx Talks
Published: 2014-03-09
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNmf-G81Irs
I love the so waiting hobby people all around the world it is I spent more time in the media spotlight the focus of my story began to show so where is I've always been interested in talking about the why and how why was learning foreign languages how I did it instead it turned into a bit of a circus in which media %HESITATION shows wanted to sensationalize
my story so you don't know something like this hello I'm here today with seventeen year old Timothy donor who is fluent in twenty languages %HESITATION I'm sorry yeah actually can insult you in twenty five languages and is fluent in another ten Tim are how much you tell our audience good morning and thank you for watching in Moslem %HESITATION Arabic %HESITATION and even in which I assume
was shook windows even wish I had a great time I can get you to introduce yourself and say I I'm fluent in twenty three languages in German I it's that's not really true but you know just tell the audience hello it's been condolence been seats and ya don't come if they're bad guy was once Spartan if it isn't a question perfect how bout a yeah a
tongue twister in Chinese vannatter we could talk about Chinese you know a lot more Americans are learning Chinese these days and I think there's a lot of value in that you know just give us a tongue twister to report hall portal portal here food support although to put up here this guy I do have another tongue twister in Chinese I would prefer not to but %HESITATION
you know we could talk about China you know there's a lot you can gain by learning a language until I'm sorry that's all the time we have they wanted to tell our audience goodbye in Turkish and will be over here you know we can talk about anything substantive but Turkish please high above the limb the month of your negative %HESITATION choke to secure the room how
about that kid right wonderfully gets any girls now stay with us because up next skateboarding bulldog babies no that's funny about was it highlighted two pretty major problems in the way my story was covered on a personal level I feel that language learning was now becoming like a bit of a I task almost and felt it felt like something that was suddenly how to be rigidly
%HESITATION rigidly organize something had to be compartmentalized rationalize expressed in a concrete number I speak acts languages I know why languages as opposed to what I've always done which was just learning languages for the fun of it learning to communicate with people learning about foreign cultures and on a bigger level it cheapen what it meant to speak a language which no language now if I can
party with anything today it had Eckstine it's not knowing the language is a lot more than knowing a couple words out of a dictionary it's a lot more than being able to ask someone where the bathroom is for telling them the time of day but I'm getting ahead of myself so for those of you who aren't familiar with my story maybe a lot of you you're
done with the word polyglot is and it's pretty weird one I started here so this little taught is me circa two thousand one and this is the beginning of my language learning journey I actually was a child actor before and learn any languages and I always had a little bit of a gift for accents so I'm going to auditions for radio commercials are for TV commercials
and I do an Austin powers impression not gonna be one now yeah or maybe I would do all poo from The Simpsons %HESITATION in fact there's actually one time in addition which I was asked to leave because they told me to speak like a little kid with a list and I wanted to do Darth Vader in a French accent but that taught me the basics of
how to break down sound how to pick up a foreign accent or foreign speech patterns and really live with it now fast forward a little bit I know about third grade and I just are different for the first time but six months into it a year into it even two years later I can't converse with anybody French is just another subject in school and you know
I can tell you words for elbow Kneebone shoelace I couldn't really have a fluent conversation with anybody fast for little bit more in seventh grade I started Latin so Latin of course is a dead language and in learning Latin you really learn how to break down language to see language as a system with rules and as a bit of a puzzle so that was great but
I still didn't feel like language was for me so for a little bit more about thirteen and other interest in learning more about the Israeli Palestinian conflict I started studying Hebrew now I had no way of doing it I'd no idea what are supposed to be doing so I listen to a lot of rap music I memorize lyrics I spit them back out and I would
just try to chat with native speakers once a week once a month an appellate incrementally I started to understand a lot more now I can sound like a native speaker I couldn't speak very articulately I certainly do know the grammar but I don what I'd never managed even school which was to pick up the basics of a language all on my own for a little bit
more I started taking Arabic when I was fourteen in a summer program going into ninth grade this summer twenty ten after a month I found that I could read and write without a problem I learn the basics of the formal language and one of its major dialects and it turned me on to the fact that I really could pursue languages as a hobby so it finally
came to March twenty fourth twenty eleven so I pretty vicious insomnia and as I was studying more languages %HESITATION using grammar books or watching TV shows and let's say Arabic or Hebrew became one way focusing my time so on that night while I was away to some ungodly hour I recorded myself speaking Arabic into my computer screen subtitle lit and I uploaded to YouTube under the
title Tim speaks Arabic student government of a lot of media next I did the same thing team in the bill if it can speak Hebrew and the comments when they trickle in were fantastic I got things like well I've never seen American speak Arabic before you blame them %HESITATION in addition that I got things like well maybe you should you should fix your bowels here maybe
this word is pronounced this way so suddenly language learning and on from the solitary pages of a book on my computer screen into the wide world after that I was hooked I had it in a community of speakers to interact with an ice actually had a teacher or conversation partners for any language that he wanted to do so you put montage about that is to let
get us at the Lausanne out of the Yemen though how about a year muscle summa cum anyone I subdued way but did I get out owned by tiny little in love you share say your theater Callie equally still be obvious get get get gotten the news I get done all would you blame we'd like an engineer who genome back and you look when you did you
physically fat is seen as not a foolish thing a dare and then I'm gonna owe does double say that's what they plan on that became my wave reaching out to the world but as I was learning all these languages I faced a number of obstacles number one I had no idea how to teach myself fact I'm sure many of you if you were told you have
to learn posto by next month you would know what to do so I experimented there's one thing so my Latin class I read about something and at Cicero describe called method of Loki technically lukewarm but it's a technique in which you take mnemonic so let's say you want to learn ten vocab words on a list you take each of those words instead of memorizing them in
blocks you integrate them into your spatial memory so here's what I mean this spot right here is Union Square the place I go every day if I close my eyes I can imagine it very very vividly so I'm not sure myself walking down Union Square and it each spot in my mind that has residents I succeeded with vocab word also right now I'm walking down Park
Avenue in the Japanese to walk is it true I don't know but further turn right said on the stand so I can so water directly north of there is a statue of George Washington taste I think was a fountain so that's known it to drink right next items are trees that you continue caught you wanna go north to Barnes and noble you can younger to read
or if I'm hungry I wanna go to my favorite falafel placing a one block west of there so I can puppeteer to eat I missed one alright so eight out of ten not bad so I found that most the time by experimenting with methods like he's it made language learning much more interactive experience it made it something that I can remember much better and I have
a little fun with maybe it's not for you here's another one so what people often ask me if you're setting some language at the same time how do you not confuse them or how do you learn so many vocab words in Spanish I learn the word for table and the word for but because of the other ear what I do is embrace those so for example
take these three words an Indonesian Iraq's among the first fifty words I learned Papa come on come talk lexically they're unrelated to each other apologize ahead come what is news condor is office but they all sound similar K. a right so I would do is I would memorize vocab in batches of sounds that were similar so if I hear the word the Polynesian I automatically think
the words come out in Congo same in Arabic if this all is the plan support the three words are unrelated one is economy one is independent ones downfall but if I hear one if triggering triggers the rest saving in Hebrew because those old fails unless you know those are return remember into shine or in Farsi %HESITATION in which they are related to for me if I
hear the word pen that which means father I automatically think the words on that meadow that looked out mother brother dollar so again this is one method and I'm not saying this to make you fluent in the language but it has been one of my ways of overcoming those obstacles so you may be wondering what's the point in doing this why learn posto or Ojibwe when
you live in New York and there's a pointed out in fact I wouldn't your point higher life and I'm always blown away by the number of languages you can hear on a given day walking down the street I see billboards in Chinese are in Spanish I see Russian bookstores Indian restaurants Turkish bath houses if all that linguistic diversity mainstream American culture remains decidedly monolingual I don't
think that's true look at the reactions to coca Cola Superbowl video so as I started to play around Morris language learning I found that I had my own community of learners here New York and got out of the rose and for lack of better word embarrass myself I try to talk to people all day get their views on things and use my newfound language skills I
was ultimatum about you can find it let them see if you think much about it voice impair the other globally I'm just I think this could not give money we have because you keep up with the dress on putting the Vista take all movies with John is right another could not be sold was what was written on Hubble Nikon approved it bowed to his or her
life O. okay O. couldn't it how could you know you have a state would never yeah so maybe you have to use a lot of English maybe you're not really about particular interesting when you talk but the point is you're getting out there and you're getting exposure so I don't speak or do that well kind awkward conversation but just for not I have learned a new
word couldn't wished I'm not gonna forget it now so moving on you may wonder again what's the point of doing this and I try to explain to people lot what my various motivations are but I often feel that this quote from Nelson Mandela is the best expression that if you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head if you talk
to him in his language that goes to his heart so as I began to see there's an enormous connection between language and culture language and thought and quite honestly if you wanna learn Persian for example you pick up a dictionary say I know how to say thank you I know to say how much is this and an essay by always speak Persian probably not let's see
actually in fact if you want to buy something a Persian bookstore you might ask someone how much is this generally they'll tell you this quality now that I which means so in fact this is an ingrained cultural practice called taught off in which two people having a conversation both try to behave more humble than the other so if I go to buy a book it's rude
for that person to tell me it's five Bucks yes it's a it's worthless please you're so good looking you're so talented your whatever take it for free I'm so humble take it for free or you might find something like this phrase if you want to thank somebody if you want to show your gratitude towards number say nice to meet you I can say well I don't
say thank you and Farsi I speak Farsi maybe not though in fact I've often heard this phrase when I talk with the runnings or bonded that I'm which literally means so again it's politics you might call it melodramatic but this is something you really have to understand the culture to get alright I don't want it exalted size this because think about it we have this in
English all the time if you ask somebody how are you we expecting to hear I'm fine if you tell me anything else I'm not interested but we did anyway we say we say bless you even though that has no real religious connotation now when people sneeze right so it's interesting to think about the fact that most linguists believe language doesn't inherently affect the way you think
right there's no language that'll make you a math genius there's no language that'll make logic problems impossible to understand but there is a real time between language and culture so much language can tell you about one culture's mind set in fact on planet earth every two weeks another language dies no more people are speaking it because of war because a famine oftentimes just because of assimilation
maybe it's easier for me not to speak my village language but to speak Arabic let's say or maybe I am from a tribe the Amazon my habitat is cut down and it just makes more sense for me to learn Portuguese and leave my culture so think about that two months from today's April first when your baby be stressful because you have a paper due or the
rent is due but for two groups of people around the world for two cultures that means the death of their language the death of their mythology their history their folklore their understanding of the world no did you brushing up on your Spanish the going to Japanese class it's not going to stop language death what it does do is begin to open up your mind to the