Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor, and you're listening to episode 207 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great.
I hope your English learning is going really well.
I'm happy to be recording again.
It's been a while since I've recorded an episode.
Of course you have no idea when I'm recording these, because I record them way in advance, but I haven't recorded any episodes in the last few weeks, so I have to get accustomed to this rhythm again, and I'm happy to do so.
In today's episode, we're going to talk about how learning one language helps you learn more languages.
I think this is a really cool topic to talk about.
You're all learning English, so you're in the language learning world.
I don't know how many of you have tried learning English language besides English, but I'm sure some of you have.
Maybe some of you are learning other languages besides English, and so I think this is a relevant topic to talk about, and I think that it's interesting in general and regardless, this will be good practice for your listening, as always and, And before we start, remember that you can access my advanced podcast episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
So if you want to practice with me speaking at normal speed, not slowly like I do in these episodes, then make sure to sign up for those.
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And also check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast, Thank you.
Thank you.
If you want that, the link is also down below.
And lastly, as always, please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can.
That really helps me out.
I appreciate that.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about how learning one language helps you learn other languages, more languages afterwards or at the same time.
So there is a lot of talk about this in the world of polyglots and language learning, and People will often talk about how language learning gets easier over time.
Once you've learned one language, two languages, three languages, it seems to get easier over time.
And so I want to talk about this and my thoughts about this and some reasons why this is.
And I'm not saying that when you learn a second language after English, it's definitely going to be an easier language compared to English, because languages are of different difficulties depending on language your native language.
And so that's not really what we're talking about when we say that learning a language helps you learn future languages more easily.
We're not saying that those future languages will be easier than like the first language.
It just means that the process of language learning becomes easier.
You will learn that language probably more easily than someone who is studying that language and it's their first time ever learning another language.
You and that other person have the same level of motivation, the same reason for learning it.
You're doing similar activities, spending a similar amount of time studying it.
If all those things are similar or the same, but you have learned another foreign language language earlier, before this one, then it's very likely that it will be easier for you than the other person.
So let's talk about this.
The first reason why learning one language helps you learn more languages is that it helps you develop a type of database.
I'll call it.
Like you have information about different systems and patterns and different linguistic elements and phenomena together in your brain once you start learning languages.
So what happens is, let's say, you have learned English and now you're learning Spanish or something like that, and your native language is French or whatever.
When you start to learn Spanish and you see different concepts in this language appear, they might trigger your memory of these concepts in English, or maybe in your native language as well French in this example.
But what will happen is you will sometimes say oh, this element in Spanish is very similar to this in English.
It kind of helps you see similarities and helps you remember things that you've already learned in the other language or other languages that you've learned.
And those similarities help you remember these concepts better.
You can benefit a lot from this comparison thing.
So like, for example, in my case, I'm learning French right now and I've already learned Spanish to a pretty high level.
So when I'm learning French, some of the grammar in French is like English, okay?
For example, the sentence, it's raining, right?
In English and in French, we need a subject, it.
It's raining, right?
We can't just say raining.
However, in Spanish, you don't have a subject in that sentence.
You just say something like rains or is raining.
However, in some instances, French grammar is more similar to Spanish grammar.
So, for example, the subjunctive, if you don't know what that is, don't worry.
In English, we have this, but it's not as prevalent, meaning...
It doesn't appear as much.
It appears all the time in Spanish and less in French, but it appears quite often in French, too.
So when I learn about the subjunctive in French, it's not that hard, because I already have that experience with Spanish.
However, if I were only a monolingual English speaker, then that element of the subjunctive in French would probably be a lot harder for me.
But because I have this sort of database in my brain of different concepts, like in Spanish as well as in English.
This helps me when I come across certain elements in French that are similar to those elements, or the same as those elements, in Spanish.
So it just gives me a wider range of elements and patterns and concepts in my head that I can use to my advantage to understand certain elements in French better.
And so, in summary, my knowledge of Spanish, because I've learned that as a second language that has helped me understand certain grammatical concepts in French, which would be harder for me to understand if French were the first language that I learned.
But it's not.
So I have this advantage of having these concepts in my brain because I've learned Spanish.
So that database of elements and linguistic phenomena.
This really helps you when you learn languages.
So that's one thing.
Another reason why it gets quote unquote easier to learn languages once you've already learned one is that because you've already learned one language, you kind of already know which words and phrases are gonna be important to learn.
I've noticed this in my French study.
There are many times when I think of a phrase and I realize that I don't know how to say it in French, and I have this dilemma Should I use my brainpower and energy and effort to try to memorize this phrase or no?
And many people.
If this were their first language that they're learning, they would probably just try to learn every phrase that they don't know.
And that's fine.
That's not a problem, of course.
However, since I've already learned Spanish and I've lived in a Spanish-speaking country for years, I've acquired most of the necessary words for most conversations.
That's just a reality of having spoken Spanish for so long and having lived in Mexico for so long.
I've been able to acquire the necessary vocabulary to have a life in this language, so to say, because when I needed to say something and I couldn't say it, I learned it.
And then that just kept happening over the years, right?
So now, when I come across a phrase in French that I don't know if it's going to be important for my own speech or not, I usually think do I know this phrase in Spanish?
Can I say this exact phrase in Spanish?
And oftentimes, I can't.
I don't know how to say it in Spanish.
And that's not necessarily a problem because I think, well, how would I say this then?
And then I realize that I have two or three other phrases that I know that mean basically the same thing.
It's just that there are different ways of saying this thing.
And then sometimes I think and I realize oh, I also know how to say these other phrases in French too that basically communicate the same thing.
And I often decide Thank you so much for watching.
If I haven't really needed to use that phrase, then I can probably just save my mental energy for other words and other phrases, for right now at least.
And maybe in the future, I'll learn that phrase.
Right now, I just want to focus on being able to communicate well and, And so I don't necessarily need to learn every synonym phrase for every other phrase.
So being able to draw from my experience as someone who has learned Spanish and being able to ask myself do I know how to say this in Spanish?
If not, then it's probably not super useful for me.
I probably would have said it by now if it were really useful.
OK, that's kind of the logic here.
So that's another reason why having learned one language helps you when you're learning another language, because you can see what is important to learn and what is not less important.
So that's pretty cool.
Another reason, a pretty obvious one, why learning one language helps you learn other languages is simply the fact that a lot of languages are somewhat related or very related.
And A lot of the languages that people like to learn are related to each other, such as Spanish and French and Italian.
These are some of the most widely learned languages And they're all closely related.
So the fact that they're in the same language family they are romance languages, as we call them means that they're going to share a ton of vocabulary and grammar and other things.
But even if they're more distant languages, Even if the two languages are not very similar, or maybe they're not even in the same family, they might still share some features that are like exactly the same, or they might share certain vocabulary words.
So, for example, Greek and Spanish are not in the same family. language family.
Greek is not a romance language.
However, there are words that are the same in Greek and in Spanish.
It's pretty cool when you discover them, and you wouldn't necessarily expect this because they're in different families, but they share some vocabulary.
So even if they're not in the same exact family of languages, you might still find that they have similarities that are useful for you.
And if you decide to learn languages that are in the same family, if you decide to learn Spanish and Italian, you're going to have a big advantage.
Of course there are also downsides to this, because if they're very closely related to you might start to confuse some of the different words or grammatical concepts in the languages.
So that's also a problem.
But overall, it's a big help.
So that's not the case if you're learning two languages that are extremely different from each other, of course.
But, like I said, oftentimes people learn languages that are in the same family, namely the Romance languages.
When I say namely like that, I'm about to give you the specific example that I was referring to in my head.
So people that learn multiple languages are Often learn like two romance languages or three romance languages.
So that comes into play a lot.
And one other thing that I wanted to mention, another reason why.
Learning one language helps you learn more languages is the kind of psychological benefit that you get from having learned one language.
Once you've done it one time, then you know it's possible.
Okay, you know it's not impossible.
You know it's not just a matter of talent or having a specific type of brain.
Someone can learn languages because they have the brain for it, and another person just can't do it because of some biological reason.
You know that that's not the case if you've already learned one.
So just the fact that you know that something is possible, that makes it way easier psychologically to do it again.
And once you've done it once, you know the process too.
You don't just know that it's possible again, you actually have an idea of how the process goes right.
You remember the things that you did at the beginning, the struggles you had and how you were able to make progress, and you probably know the plateaus well.
A plateau is a period in the process in which you are not seeing yourself improve.
You don't see yourself improve or increase in some way.
You feel like you've hit a plateau, as we say.
So you probably know about the plateaus that are part of the language learning process.
So all of this knowledge and this experience helps you do it again.
You know it's possible.
You know that there are different stages in this process.
You probably have an idea about this how language learning works now, since you've already done it once and you know that you can apply what you've already done.
You can apply this to another language and do it again. with another language.
The process might not be exactly the same.
You might do things differently, of course, but you know the overall elements and the overall principles when it comes to language learning, versus someone who's never done it before.
It's like they're starting something that they have no clue about.
When you have no clue about something, it means you have no idea about it.
So that's not you if you've already learned a language, right?
You do kind of know things and things. know how language learning works.
And so, even though the process might not be exactly the same for the second language that you learn, you're not approaching it with no experience and with no clue.
That's not the case, right?
And when you hit the plateaus that you will surely hit, as language learners always do, you'll probably be a little less discouraged, because you'll remember that there were plateaus when you learned your first foreign language.
And so you will probably be able to handle these periods better and not get too discouraged and think that you're never going to reach the level that you want to reach.
You'll know that plateaus are a big part of language learning and they're normal, and you've probably already learned, been through some of them.
A lot of people hit a plateau when they're in the intermediate phase of language learning.
And this is just something people experience in the language learning process.
And so the first time you hit one of these plateaus, It can be more discouraging and you might want to give up because you think that you're never going to improve and get past this.
But if you've already experienced this with one language, then you have this knowledge, you have this experience, you know that this happens.
And just overall, if you've learned one language before, your brain has already been trained to learn a language.
It's already been exercised in this way.
It's not a brand new muscle that you're just discovering.
You're a language learning muscle, right?
Your brain... has already done this before.
It knows this process somewhat.
It's not new to language learning.
So the fact that your brain has already been trained to learn a language before is probably going to help you when you go to learn your second foreign language or your third foreign language.
All right, I think that that's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed this topic and I hope that it motivates you to do more language learning and maybe try another language besides English at some point.
And remember that you can sign up for my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast by becoming a listening time family member.
That link is down below.
And you can also sign up for my US conversations podcast to hear me talk to different native speakers from around the country about a lot of different topics.
It's a lot of fun and it's great practice for your listening.
That link is down below as well.
And please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review.
All right, thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
