How to learn any language for free
A practical guide to learn any language for free
Learning a language is easier than you think.
Many people think that learning a language is a very hard goal. They demotivate themself so early and never start learning. Don't lose hope; learning a new language is not rocket science! It's even much easier than any skill. I'm not exaggerating, but let's explain it like you are five: Imagine you have exactly five years. Which skill is the easiest for you? Math, coding, your mother language, or rocket science? It's unlikely that your answer would be math or coding; many children struggle with those subjects and need a long time to grasp STEM concepts. It's crazy if your answer is like, "I've found rocket science an easy skill to learn, and I'm going to launch my rocket the next year." The obvious answer is your native language. Whatever it is, English, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, or any language. It's an automatic skill that doesn't need motivation, willpower, effort, money, etc. Everyone in the world was a child and successfully learned his mother language and became a native without necessarily going to schools. So learning languages is the easiest skill ever.
How do people become fluent in their native language?
Learning your mother tongue as a child is easy. Understanding the learning mechanics is a challenge. Applying those mechanics to learn other languages is another challenge. Solving those challenges will allow you to learn any language for free. Can you remember the moment you learned that a cat is called a cat? It's too old to remember. But let's practice on an obvious example, like university. How did you learn this word unintentionally? Solving this mini puzzle helps you solve the whole puzzle. Let's figure it out from my perspective; it's hard to guess your perspective. I'm not a mind reader. In the past, I heard this word from many people. Not knowing a repetitive word forced me to discover its meaning. Asking people, looking up in dictionaries, and searching online are common ways to discover new words. But that was not enough until I became a university student. Where I saw it almost every day and heard it more often. At this point the word university was completely clear for me. So the learning mechanics behind knowing words automatically consist of the repetitive exposure to the word, hearing, seeing, and looking up for the meaning. And that's how all people in the world become fluent in their native language, which is called scientifically the immersion method. But this is only the first challenge. How can we apply those mechanics to learn any language?
The best source to apply the immersion method
The best single source to apply those mechanics is YouTube, but why not books or audiobooks? Why not AI chatbots? because YouTube is the only platform that mimics the natural learning experience. It combines all senses. You watch, you hear, and you can read subtitles. and it's completely free. Books are helpful to learn new words and grammar patterns, but you'll miss the pronunciation of the words and the whole sentences. This habit is really misleading, because you think you are productive, but you are just learning words without their pronunciation. This habit will accumulate over time. The consequences: you'll understand the written content only; you'll not understand the spoken content because your brain was trained on just text, not audio.
Ok, what's wrong with audiobooks? Audiobooks are helpful not only to learn new words and grammar patterns but also to hear the real pronunciation from native speakers. It combines text and audio. But do you think that it stimulates the real learning experience? No, because it lacks the visual sense. Relying on audiobooks to learn languages is a working method, but it's not perfect. I'm afraid to hurt anyone who is blind and reading my article. I said it's working because blind people can successfully learn languages just by hearing. They can even learn better than sighted people because their brains rely heavily on auditory sense. For this case the perfect method is audiobooks. But for people who can see, it's better to consume sources that are both auditory and visual.
What's wrong with AI chatbots? LLMs are great for getting instant feedback on your writing, looking up words, knowing the difference between words, and other helpful uses. The first problem of AI is it lacks real human pronunciation. You can use TTS (Text-to-Speech), but it doesn't mimic the real experience. Human speech is more complex than just pronouncing words correctly. As humans, we change tone depending on the context. We can say the same text differently in several situations like anger, happiness, sadness… So hearing real native speakers is far better than relying on TTS. The second problem of AI is the same as audiobooks: just text, nothing to see.
So, why is YouTube nearly perfect for learning languages? because it allows you to read subtitles, hear the speech, and watch what you learn. I said nearly perfect because YouTube itself can't completely simulate the real world. Can you smell a flower through YouTube? The perfect method to learn any language is by living for a long time in a country or city that speaks your target language. But this option is not accessible for everyone; not all people can or are ready to travel. But the YouTube method allows you to learn language in the comfort of your home without paying anything.
How to learn any language from YouTube
To learn any language from YouTube, you need only two easy-to-follow steps.
The first step:
- Open a YouTube video in your target language.
- Enable subtitles in the target language.
- Open a dictionary website in the other browser tab.
- Play the video, focus on subtitles and audio, and look up unknown words.
The second step:
- Replay the video from the beginning.
- Disable the subtitles.
- Focus on the video and the speech.
- Pause the video and try to mimic the speech.
- Optional: Write the video summary in your target language.
Let's clarify those steps:
When you watch a video in your target language, your overall language understanding varies from 0% to 100%. Because some words are unknown to you or you don't know their pronunciations. The first step helps you understand all unknown words with their pronunciations before watching the video in its normal state. Your goal is to understand videos without subtitles, which mimic the real world. When people talk, they don't show subtitles on their T-shirts. You just hear and watch without subtitles. So the first step is not the goal; it's just a helpful phase to clarify things. The second step is your goal, which is understanding the video without subtitles. In this step you may find the video easier to understand than before because you already filled all the gaps. I have tested this method to improve my English, and it worked great. But honestly, I haven't tested it on completely new languages. For my case, I already know the base of English; I just wanted to improve, so the English-English dictionary was perfect for me. But for learning a new language, I would not use a Spanish-Spanish dictionary for learning Spanish because it's completely new for me, so it's better to use a bilingual dictionary between your native language and your target language in this case. This method will help you also to learn or improve your speaking skills by mimicking the native speaker in the video. And helps you also learn and improve your writing skills if you do the optional step when you finish the video. I hope that learning languages is much easier now. Looking forward to hearing your feedback after trying this method. I'm planning to improve it more; I can't do that without hearing from you. Feel free to inbox me at [email protected].