I speak 9 Languages - Here's How I learned Spanish

Why don't we speak in Spanish? This is super interesting. What are you doing here? I live here. Where does your family come from? Ecuador. I've never been to Ecuador, but I'd like to. Are you studying or working? I work. I'm a waitress. Where exactly? Wisconsin. Yes, we do have these available. This is why we are making this video. But it works. And that's the thing that matters most. I think most of you guys out here trying to learn Spanish, do that, are trying to figure out, do I need to continue with Duolingo? No, absolutely not, because Duolingo sucks. Duolingo sucks. So don't do that. That's going to waste your time. If you're learning Spanish right now, the very first thing you need to understand is what are these high-frequency words? What does he mean by this? There's a whole host of words that we know get used. Beber, comer, hacer. I almost said matar. That's not true. That's not a very common one. But I digress. The point is that there are these words that we know that we're going to be running into and that are going to help us describe ourselves and our world. It's these that you need to master first. We don't necessarily need to worry about grammar, and I'll talk about grammar here in a second, but we have to know that we have to be able to recognize. The first thing is that you need to be able to recognize, because any true learner understands that if you look at a giant Spanish paragraph, it just looks like nothing. It looks like nothing, and it sounds like nothing to you as a beginner learner. You cannot yet separate words. You just... You just hear that. So your first goal is to be recognizing. What's going to help you recognize are going to be the things that you know you're going to be seeing a whole lot of, which is why we break them down into 100 verbs and 100 words. The first thing you're going to have to learn with the verbs is to recognize the infinitive form. Like I already said, hacer, beber, comer. I don't know why I just die after those, and I say matar. Hey, listen, no judgment. Hitmen need to learn languages too. You have to understand how to conjugate these verbs in the present tense. It's going to be one of the very first things that you're going to do, and it's going to help you give you a win. The reason that we want to have simple confidence in conjugating the present tense is because it's going to be the most useful to you at the beginning. I eat, I drink, I know, I do, I run, I walk. These things are going to help you describe your world, and it means that you're going to see them more, and they have to do with you. Being self-centered and focused on what you do and what you know is going to help you a tremendous amount. That's the very first thing. Those 100 verbs and those 100 words. Now, how are you going to learn them? This is the key. Everybody seems to think that they know and understand. Well, that makes sense. I can figure that out. How are you going to stick them in your head so that when you're in a conversation, when you're in a real situation, when you need to communicate, you do it. That is the difference, and that is the key. That's what we've got. The link is down below if you guys want to get more into that. I'm going to explain right here so that you have at least an understanding. Duolingo is not preparing you for this. Our goal is to prepare you for this. To assimilate these words, you need to use stories, yourself, and you need to be able to describe what it is that you're seeing or doing. Stories are huge. You need to be using yourself, meaning I do this, I drink, I run, and your ability to convey what you are seeing around you. If you focus on these things and just let everything slide for just a couple weeks, three weeks, a month, ideally, you will come away with a proficiency with all of those things, which will mean that you can naturally describe your feelings, what's going on, and what's around you. That's a huge win because then you can actually ask someone, what is this? Who are you? How are you? That's the very first key structure and point that I want you guys to understand and to go. Now we've talked about verbs and how you're going to be assimilating them. Throughout a story, you're going to be able to see that I run, you run, she runs, he runs, etc. The story is going to be able to give that to you. When you're getting this list or seeing these conjugations, it's not about memorizing. It is not about memorizing. It is about recognizing. That is going to be the first step. Yes, it's important that you're going to be able to convey those, but recognition is going to be the first step. After you've done verbs, you can do words simultaneously. You just need to know. This is a hand. This is a cup. The bathroom. Food. Water. There are some things that are there, and the same thing has to go. There's another app called Memorize. Memorize, who wanted me to do something, I can't remember what this one was. Actually, they reached out and they kind of ghosted me a little. It's weird. The idea behind me is that I'm not a big fan of flashcards. Flashcards ******* suck, and I'm going to tell you why that is. The reason being is that I think that people tend to have and use rote memory when they're using flashcards. They write the word on one side, then the definition on the other, and they just try and memorize. That is what it is. The idea behind Memorize is that you have something else that represents the word, so you're not doing it. Most people don't utilize that. It's a good tool. It's good in theory. I think in practice, it doesn't actually work. I think it's way best to have a story or something living in your head. Watching, seeing, understanding, you thinking about it, running in the same way. If you ever binged a series, if you ever listened to a really long audio book, when you put that book down, when you shut the computer, when you stop watching TV, that story lives on in your head. You think about it. You hear the characters. You know exactly what's going on, and it's that that you need, and you will not get that from this. Flipping the card over. No. You need those words. You need to see them in different contexts. You need to understand that, okay, beber. He said it there, but I'm not 100% sure that that's the word for drink, and then boom, he said it again. Great. Now you know. Now you can recognize whenever you hear that or some form of that that they're talking about drinking. Once we've got that, that counts as our base. Now, would I go and get a tutor immediately? Yes. Yes, I would. I would have a tutor immediately. There's no reason for you to not do this, and we have another video that talks about tutors and what you should be doing with them. They are to be serving as a test. They are from you going from your proficiency, kind of being on your own, devouring all sorts of comprehensible input to you actually going to the tutor to test whether or not you can convey that. I know how to say I want some water. I need to drink and to talk about this and talk about yourself and to spend a lot of time in your target language. Not a lot of time. 99.9999% of this time has got to be spent in the target language. In this case, in Spanish. Now you have an understanding. Do not change your phone. I see this every once in a while. It's like some sort of AI advice. Change your phone and you'll do this. What are you talking about? You don't understand half of the technical terms in your own language. Imagine you click on settings and you go into some random thing. You have no idea what they're saying. Do not change your phone. It's too far. You're way away from the comprehensive input. I know immersion and immersion and they said immersion and all that stuff. If you can't understand anything, you're not going to make the type of progress that you need to be making in order to keep going. You're going to give up because it's going to be like you're in the dark. No need to do that. You have your tutor. You understand that you're doing this. You need to be committing at a very minimum 60 to 90 minutes a day. It doesn't matter if every time it's not perfect, if sometimes it hits 45, but if you skip days and you start to do it sporadically, your growth is going to be so trash. It is not going to look good. If you said, I have in these 30 days. No, you're not going to learn Spanish in 30 days. You're not going to learn it in 90 days. Many people aren't going to learn it in six months. Some people aren't going to learn it in a year, but the people who stay consistent with it and focus on the things that are actually making sure that they are around their target language, they've got a core confidence around the most high frequency words and that they're actually testing themselves in the real world are going to go way faster than everybody else. You're not going to come close to me with your Duolingo and your Memrise versus someone doing this. That's exactly how I would do it if I had to do it again. By the way, it's exactly what I do when I need to learn new stuff for new languages. That's exactly what I do because it works. That's all that I think you guys care about. If you're watching this video and you've watched it up until this point, all you care about is what works. I'm telling you right now is that if you take this and build a template based on this, don't have to buy anything. Of course, we do have an amazing program that hits you all the confidence points. It hits you all this stuff for Spanish. You can check that out yourself. If you just take this in and if you want to build it yourself, I'm telling you, I don't care if you buy it at all. Just don't do Duolingo. Save yourself some time. Years. Focus on this and you will actually speak. You will communicate. You might not be the best. We're not talking about accents. We're not talking about the upper level of all the other things that you need to know and do and hear. Forget all that for now. Doing this will get you to a place where you can communicate and feel comfortable. That's what matters.