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 reaons 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,was too old, I felt too old and I was sure that I was going to
frustrate the native speakers and embarrass myseld.And on top of this, in school,I did really po
orly with languages.So, i did actually get the opportunity to get into languges after I graduated
at university with a degree in Electronic English,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 changemy attitude,maybe I can change my language skills And what happened to inspire me to get
into language learing 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 Caatalan
whichispretty impressive.We also have Luca from Italy,and here you can hear him speak in:German
and Portuguese.Andwe also have Susana,who goes through here:Italian Russian.And a very impress
ive 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 homgo through:Wolof,Yiddish,Hebrew,Arabic,Turki
sh,Swahili and Hindi.So wow!I met someone like this and I was soimpressed.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 thin
k 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,
whatI discovered after those 6 months is one of the biggest problems we have in language learn
ing but we don't knowit, and that's motivation.A lot of us start with the wrong motivati
on to learn a language. We are learning the language just to pass an exam,to improve our car
er prospects or, in my case, for superficial reasons to impresspeople. And what I've fou
nd 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 li
teratureand the movies and being able to read in a language and od course to use it wi
th people.And when I changed that priority of use in the language or people, I was
able to learn the lauguages myself.But there are a lot of things that people feel wil
l 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're never get into language
learning.So,let me go through some of there here. The first is ther'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 thelangu
age growing up, or the six months of failed learning Spanish,it was just me telling myseld
,"I don't have the language gene,so there's no point in doing any work in the language."Because I di
dn't put the work in I didn'tlearn the language,it's just a vicious circle,it's all in you
r 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,peo
ple advance faster than
the rest of the crowd.So let's say there's some inborn trait to give somebody 20% advant
age over the rest of the
people.Good for them! But that doesn't mean that you can't,it just means that you h
ave to work 20% harder.And
i've found that, at least in my case,when i work harder, I can catch up with the nat
urally talented and even
overtake them.So not haveing talent is not a good excuse.The next reason is that you
are too old to learn a
second language.I cerrainly felt this myself because up tp 21, I didn't learn a la
nguage,and lots of us feel that
children... their brains are hard wired to learn languages better.But is it really neur
ology at play here or
could it be the environment in which the child is learning the language? Well, a study a
t the University of Haifa
in Israel,actually found that under the right conditions,adults are better language lear
nrs than children.it's
sound incredible but it's about your environment,it's about your motivation,it's about t
he enthusiasm and
encouragement you get from other people.And when you think of it, adults tend to be stud
yiing dusty old grammar
books and doing boring exercuses,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 peop
le in their sixties
starting to learn a language and being successful with that.The next excuse people wou
ld 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 thenm a little and they teach you a little. But even fo
rgetting the internet for a
monment,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 ver
y 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 then we went t
o a mall in Columbus,
and the two of us managed to practice twelve languages,and just here in this clip you can
he goes
through:Cantonese,and here's Cambodian,and you can see that the guy really appreciated him t
rying.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 Egytian 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 tow
ards conversation
levels.so no! not being able to travel to the country is not a good excuse. The next one pe
ople might give is
that they've got bad memory for learning all the vocabulary. is that they've got bad memor
y for learning all
the vocabulary. and this was certainly what i felt because when i first tried to learn Spa
nish,i get a big
list of words,i tried to go through them and i forget them very quickly. but reserch on me
mory capacity has found
that it's better when you revise these words with the right frequency, and there's this te
chnique called "Spaced
repetition",wehre you revise the word just before you'll forget it. and it looks something
like this forgetting
curve, the red line is what trpically happens then you first see a word but to get li into
your head and stuck the
re 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 ca
n download ,that help you
time all of this.and that's great but you can learn the words faster and better if you co
mbine this with an image
association technique.so,for instance,let's say i wanted to learn that the Spanish word fo
r "to fit"os "caber".w
ell, what if i imagine then that's barely possible to fit a bear in a cab?"cab-bear"it's"cabe
r",it's"to fit".so y
ou do this for a lot of words and it actually gets very easy with time and you can learn voca
bulary 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 man
y places,i've spoken
to many people and every time i attemot to use their language,thry're overjoyed, they're so
pleased that i'm eve
n trying!and i just feel like, especially adults,when we learn a language, we are such perfe
ct
ionists,we want eve
rything to be just right,and perfectionism is a really bad thing in lauguage learning,because
a laugua
ge is a mea
ns of communication,it's a way to to get to know new people and new cultures,and when
you embrace this
,it's okay t
o make mistakes!and i actually have a goal to make at least 200 mistakes a day becau
se then i know i'm
getting s
omewhere,i'm using the language!so embarrass yourself, go out there, talk to peo
le it's okay.when do
you think i
was learning a language better:here?or here?so,anyone can indeed learn a language
so, anyone can inde
ed learn a
language when you use it with people,and it's okay to use it early,And this is so
important,that you d
on't have t
o 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 t
he sand sand with
an Egyptian
and we had some tea,we had this nice little chat here:(In Arabic)and there i'm jus
t saying that Egypt
is so much,
so vast, so great,it's so much more that just Tahrir Square in Cairo. and, now w
hen I was speaking w
ith him,I us
ed the wrong word here and there and i conjugated the wrong verb every now and ag
ain,but that;s okay,
because even
with this conversation level,i had this fascinating conversation with hom.and i've done this with o
ther cultures
and other languages and ieven managed to learn a little american sigh language. and here you can se
e Juliana had
asked me and here you can see Juliana had asked me why i didn't learn Irish sign
language,and i sai
d, because wh
en i'm in Ireland i like to improve my Irish and my Gaelic i like to improve my Iris
h and my Gaelic w
hich i can t
hen speak here:(In Irush)so that was me on Irish radio saying about my travels and
whatever,and i lea
rned Irish fo
r ten years in school and i wasn't able to say the most basic phrases after that.but as an adult,i w
ent back to I
reland and i embraced using the language as a beginer. and that helped me to reach this stage.and it
's okay to be
beginner,it's okay to be conversational,but then you take this on,you take it to the next level,the
n you can rea
ch very well. i mean,i've got a very good level in French,Spanish and acouple of languages.i've work
ed as a prof
essional translator like here having a chat in French:(In French)and that's gerat, that's what eve
rybody thinks
of when they're getting into language learning,they think,"That's what i want to be,i want to be a
t this very hi
gh professional level,have deep philosophlcal conversations."and that's fantastic and yeah, it's i
mpressive when
you see people like that.but rather thna be impressive,i think it's so much better when you embrac
e the beginning
stage of language learning. and one of the most amazing experiences i've had,was when i was in Ch
ina, on the tra
in,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 in the train,and look, this is show it wnet:(In Chinese)"what's your
name?""I'm Benn
y."I don't have a Chinese name." and then(unclear),says,"I tell you your name is Pun Li."because
this sounds lik
e your normal name and it means ability or skill.and you know,just , i can have that conversation,
even with a bas
ic conversation level of Chinese.and i do have the ability,i do have the skill to learn a languag
e.but i always d
id,we all always do.and the reason i have this skill is not because i was born with it and other
s weren't,it's a d
ecision i made.and the problem a lot of us face it that we feel that we're better studying and p
reparing for spea
king a language some day,because if we do it too early the world will end from all this frustra
tion we cause peop
le. There are seven days in a week and some day is not one of them.i say, rether 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.(Applau
se)