Simplified Speech #243 – How we learn our second languages

Hello everyone and welcome to Simplified Speech, the QLIP series which features clear, natural, and easy to understand conversations between native speakers, and joining me today to talk about language learning is my co-host Indiana. Hey there Indiana, how's it going? I am good, Andrew. It's uh quite late my time here.

I've had a long day, but I'm excited to talk about one of my favorite topics, language learning, with you, somebody I know also really appreciates this topic. So I can't wait to get started. Yeah, it's gonna be a fun one. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about. And for listeners out there who don't know, of course we are English teachers Indiana, but we are also passionate. language learners. So just like you guys, you guys are learning English.

Indiana and I are learning our own different second languages and we're gonna talk about what we do to study and to improve our language skills in this episode.

And maybe you guys can learn something, maybe a a new way to approach learning English, or maybe you can share your English learning tips with Indiana and with me on our Discord community as well, and we can sort of exchange knowledge with each other and yeah, hopefully at the end of the day we can all take home something that we can apply to our own language learning situations so that we can improve our skills faster and better than ever.

Now, Indiana, speaking of improving your skills faster and better than ever, Guys, we have a helpful study guide and an interactive transcript available for this episode. In the study guide, you will find detailed vocabulary explanations and examples. There's Example conversations that you can study with. There are speaking practice questions, writing practice questions, and even a quiz.

And if you would like to get that interactive transcript and study guide, you have to become a QLIPS member. But don't worry, you can sign up and become a QLIPS member for an affordable price on our website, which is qlips.com, or you can just follow the link in the description for this episode. And when you are a CULIPS member, you'll also get access to lots of other benefits and bonuses that we have designed to help you improve your English fluency.

Maybe the best one is our weekly speaking classes. We hold three speaking classes each and every week for members. One of them is taught by me, one of them is taught by Indiana, and one of them is taught by our other awesome English teacher here at Clips, Alina. And yeah, it's a great way to connect with other Clips listeners. who are highly motivated English learners just like you and to practice your speaking skills. So

Visit the website cube.com and sign up and become a member today. And of course, a huge thank you to all of the members out there for your support. Guys, we really, really do appreciate you.

Okay, and with that announcement out of the way, Indiana, let's get into our main topic for today, which is studying second languages and how we approach studying second languages. And I think listeners will be pretty familiar with my second language situation as a Korean learner. I've talked about it

many times on tulips before, but I don't think we've talked about your situation too much. So let's start with you. And could you give us just a brief background and explainer about your experience learning different languages? Absolutely. So, um, if we're going all the way back to school, um Uh most Americans have to take French or Spanish uh during middle school or high school and I took Spanish during that time and I think I've lost most of it now.

But I really loved learning it in school. I would soak up the words like a sponge. I was so into it. I really loved Spanish. And at that time I also got really interested In Japanese. Um, not even really for any good reason, but I just like fell in love with the way the language sounded and I was so fascinated by the kanji, the Chinese characters and that whole writing system.

So I got really into Japanese and I ended up um studying it at university. Uh my undergraduate degree is in Japanese studies and women's studies. you may recall from previous conversations. I studied abroad there during my time at university for four months in Osaka. Um yeah, I so I've been studying Japanese for a very long time. my speaking is not as good as it used to be uh when I was in the country. But um yeah, I use it a lot in my work. Um and in addition to

Japanese. Recently, the past couple years, I've been trying to learn some German. I guess like partially for heritage reasons, like my fa I have some family that lives in Germany. But I don't know, I'm just like somebody who gets sort of attracted to certain languages. Sometimes it's like a quick moment of inspiration that doesn't last very long. Like I learned how to read Hangul and Korean and very basic stuff and then I just kinda

It fizzled out, or I really like Brazilian music. So on one day I was like, Oh, I should learn Portuguese, but it did not go anywhere. So I realize that you should really probably just stick to one or two target languages, you know, so you can really focus on them. So right now, you know, maintaining and improving my Japanese is my goal. And I'm still at quite a beginner, you know, maybe A two level in German. So yeah, just trying to work on that most days and uh improve there.

Very good. Yeah, I have to totally say that I understand where you're coming from. Like the grass is always greener on the other side, right? Sometimes when you're in the trenches learning a language and you've been learning it and studying it for many years. it can get a little bit boring or a little bit tedious or a little bit frustrating. And so you look to another language. And I've felt this temptation before myself with French and well, I have studied French.

for a few years, so I got to probably an intermediate level in French. But also with Japanese. I think Korean and Japanese are similar enough that there's always the temptation to try and study the other one. So I I totally know where you're coming from that it's like, ah, it would be so fun just to start again and to learn a new language, but I'm right there with you where I have to keep my focus on Korean. It's I have to keep my foot on the gas pedal. I can't

stop and pause because I I'm worried that I'll lose my progress or I I just am not at the level that I would like to be at yet. So although it does seem very tempting to start a new language, I have to keep my focus on Korean.

So that's very good, Indiana. You you study Japanese and study German. Uh how do you go about studying your languages? Maybe you could tell us what your routine looks like, maybe about how much time you spend studying or or learning the languages, what you do, what your techniques are. I imagine there probably aren't too many native Japanese and native German speakers in your area. Uh I don't know. So how do you how do you practice the languages and improve them?

That's right. And and that's uh one of the reasons that the lack of native speakers or f or fluent speakers, advanced speakers in my area. Um is that's one of the reasons that uh my speaking skills are probably the worst compared to all of the other skills. we usually talk about with language, right? Reading, listening, writing, these kinds of things. Um

But yeah, so I do try to um get some speaking time in if I can, like hire a private tutor on something like iTalkie. There's also other services online. But something that I can do, because I'm not a like a super social person and it takes a lot of energy, honestly, to do the talking part. Like that's essential. It's something you absolutely must do for language learning. But it's it takes a lot of energy. I have to be turned like on on to do it. It takes a lot of brain computational power.

So like, you know, I have that designated time, maybe like once a week or something like that. But day to day I try to study a little bit every day when I can. And something I wanted to talk about today was I love to use Anki flashcards. So that's A-N-K-I. And this is an application that's free on desktop and Android. Might be paid for iPhone, but it's a really, really cool. app that you can use to review flashcards. You can make your own decks or download other people's decks.

And you can customize them with lots of example sentences or add audio files and image files. Something that sets this flashcard application apart from other ones is that it's a SRS system, which stands for spaced repetition system. So this basically means that when you rev review words

and you see a word, oh, I know that word right away. No problem. You mark it as easy so that it doesn't come up again for like a week or a month. You don't have to review it because that's a waste of time. You know this word. But if you mark a word as okay or hard or didn't get it right, it it uses those categories.

to decide how frequently this should be showing up in your review session. So you have to keep encountering the difficult words, which is really helpful and maybe a little bit better than regular. analog flashcards, like if you made them by hand, I guess you could put them in different piles, but that's just a really great feature for every day. You know, you do 15, 20 minutes of flashcards.

I love to do that and it's uh it's really great habit building and I find it effective for sure for learning vocabulary. Um, do you use Anki, Andrew?

Yeah, I have been an on and off user of Anki. throughout my language learning journey. I used it for a long time at the beginner stages, and I think it's really, really great when you're learning a lot of that high frequency vocabulary that those are the words that you will see often again and again. It's just really helpful as a beginner. And Indiana, like you said, you can download decks.

So what a deck is, it's just like a package of flashcards that some other person has spent time making, and you can just download it. So you don't have to spend time creating your own flashcards in Anki. It can be really helpful for saving time at the beginning stages. You can just download like a pack of the top 1,000 most frequent German words or something, right? And study with that.

So I definitely did that a lot when I started learning Korean and I did it for years and years and I think it was, yeah, super, super helpful for helping me build the the foundation of Korean vocabulary. Probably like Until I got to learning five thousand or six thousand words, I used it a lot. And then I took a break because I was like, you know what, I think I know enough words now to just start learning from context. Once you can understand like

I don't know, eighty or ninety percent of a TV show or of a novel or something, then it's easier to understand words in context. So I did that for a couple of years where I just sort of put Anki on the back burner. and instead I started spending more time just consuming Korean content and studying with novels and movies and T V shows and podcasts, anything

like that where I could get some natural Korean exposure. And my philosophy at that point was like, if a word is important enough to learn, I'm just gonna hear it or see it so many times that eventually I will get a dying curiosity about what it means?

And then I'll look in the dictionary and I'll know what the meaning is. And then it's gonna be frequent enough that I'll see it again and again and eventually I'll just learn it. And that was really cool because I noticed for the first time what would happen was when I would speak Korean with my wife these words and expressions that I didn't really actively study.

just started coming out. And some expressions that I was curious about, like I had noticed them in the past and I'd heard Korean people use them and say them, but I was always like, I don't understand what that really means. just suddenly, naturally started coming out of my mouth. And that was so cool to to notice, this like organic language growth.

And yeah, I that was a really big boost for my motivation and encouraging to me. And it's also I'm really lucky, guys, that I have a native speaking Korean wife that I can practice with because the stakes are so low for making mistakes, right? Like if I Swing and miss and that's like a baseball expression that we use, right? To swing at the baseball and to miss. It's like a strike, right? It's uh a swing and miss is

essentially making an error. So if I make an error with my wife, it's like not embarrassing or anything. It's totally fine. So I also had that perfect environment where I could be experimental with the language and I could try and say something and and if it was incorrect then it's not really a big deal and my wife could also say like, What? What are you talking about? That doesn't make sense. And I could learn that way as well.

So yeah, I went through that stage of just not really using Anki and trying to more naturally learn vocabulary. But now I'm back on Anki. And I think the reason why I'm back on Anki is because I think I've got probably I don't know. It's it's really hard to estimate, but probably I have a solid Korean vocabulary of somewhere between 10,000 to 12,000 words or something, maybe if I had to guess.

So that means like all of the most frequent vocabulary probably I know, but there are things like idioms that are still very difficult for me. There are these kind of idiomatic expressions that are based on four Chinese characters in Korean. Those kind of idioms are tough for me. Maybe those are present in Japanese as well. I'm not sure. They are.

What else? Just some like slang and infrequent vocabulary, especially. So now all the frequent words that come up again and again and again and again, I know those ones, but the words that are infinite. not so frequent that are like very rare and don't come up so often. Those are the words I don't know. And this is why Anki is so helpful is because it can show me those words when I think I'm gonna forget them.

And it's important to have a flashcard for them because I won't hear them in everyday speaking too often. Like maybe I'll only see it once in a while or in certain situations. words like think about during uh COVID Indiana. We s we heard words like quarantine really often, right? During COVID we talked about quarantine all the time. But in just regular situations, normal situations, that's a pretty infrequent word.

So maybe I would learn a word like quarantine during COVID, but then I'll never hear it or never see it again in my daily life, in my daily speaking, and just watching a regular TV show. And so I would add a word like that to Anki just so I could get a reminder of that very infrequent vocabulary. And so yeah, that's how I use Anki now. Those rare words that are harder for me to remember.

I think you make a good point with it that it can be so helpful at those beginner stages where you just need to learn those most frequent few thousand words and just get them in there. You have there's there's so much to learn. you know it's a mountain of words and it's really helpful to have those flashcard decks.

And then maybe you get that upper intermediate plateau. A plateau is when you're not making any progress really, or it doesn't feel like you're making progress. Like when you're a beginner in a language. everything is new and it you're you're just taking it in and you learn at such a rapid pace. But at a certain point it's it's kind of flat the the progress flattens out, like if you imagine a graph and it doesn't feel like you're learning that much new stuff or that you're progressing.

But once you get past that plateau and yeah, you're in that situation where you're such an advanced learner that, yeah, you just need these niche words. that only come up once in a while. It's such a great way to exca expose yourself to them because you're yeah, they're only gonna come up, you know, once a month, once a year in your actual life. Yeah. Really good um suggestions I think for Or listeners, you know, depending on what level you're at.

But even at that intermediate stage, Anki is helpful, but maybe it doesn't need to be such a priority, you know, focusing so much on vocab acquisition at that at that intermediate stage, yeah.

And guys one thing that I will say about Anki is be careful Don't be like me because I fell into the Anki trap for a little while where I was spending more time making flashcards and studying flashcards than I was just spending time with the language. So I went through this time where I, you know, maybe I'd have an hour or two hours each day

to study and spend time with Korean. I don't even really like using that word study because it's not like I was actively studying with a textbook or grammar book or anything like that. I was just spending time with the language. But I was spending time w more with Anki than with the language.

So I spent too much time making flashcards and just studying the flashcards. Really, it would have been more beneficial for me if I just spent time listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, watching TV shows. and doing more organic listening. So I think Anki is an awesome tool, but just be careful that you're spending most of your time listening to English, reading English, watching English content. Speaking in English, doing these things I think is better. Anki should be like ten percent

or fifteen percent of your time with the language. Don't make it like fifty percent like I was doing. Please learn from my mistakes. It's a great tool, of course, but you don't wanna make it your entire study routine. Yeah, that actually I would like to add to that. 100% agree. Like I think you're probably better off spending a little bit of time each day with it.

just to have the habit, like maybe 15 minutes. Um, and that would be great and fine. But you're right, like if you're just looking through a deck of single words, it's probably not the most efficient use of your study time. But I also have an alternative suggestion to improving that flashcard time. So one thing that I think could be helpful is instead of just reviewing your flashcards, okay, do I know this word? I flip it over. Yeah, okay, that's what it means.

When you look at the front card, okay, this is the word I'm being prompted. Do I know what it means? Yes. Okay, I think I do. Then can I conjugate it if it's a verb? Can I use it in a sentence or try to write an example sentence with this word? that could kind of take the study to another level where you're actually

producing some language. And of course it's more energy intensive. It's not something you can so easily do, you know, waiting for your bus in the morning, which is the perfect time to uh use ant onki. But if you have some more dedicated study time, write down an example sentence and then maybe check that later.

by searching it on Google or using like Chat GPT or talking to your tutor, you know, see if that, you know, works well for you um to create that um, yeah, more active use with the with the language. And then another thing I would add, So I don't just make Anki flash cards with the definition and the term. I love to include example sentences and some context for the word. So I also really focus on collocations.

Collocations is a word, I guess it's kind of a grammar term, but this means words that most frequently show up together. So for example, I guess in English. When you think of the word bath, like I don't know, uh a bathtub, like when you're gonna take a bath, that's one collocation. Take a bath. Or run a bath, right? When you fill up the tub, run the bath. Like that's a verb that very commonly goes with the noun bath.

Um, so to just learn one single word is great, but if you can learn it in a larger context. So like with common other words that go with it, that's even better. So I try to maybe look up a collocations dictionary to get some of these m more frequent usages for a term. especially if it's a synonym with another word. Like, okay, another digression here. The other day, one of my English students was asking me about the difference between complex. and complicated.

And my initial reaction is like, oh, it's like the same thing, you know, they're synonyms. But of course, the answer is not so easy as that. So if you look up like a collocations dictionary with each of these words. You begin to see situations where complex would be used, where complicated is not used. So like a complex system of transportation or highways or something like public transport, you more often see the word complex with something like that.

or in um nutrition or science, complex carbohydrate, we can't just replace the word complex with complicated there. Like it's a set expression. So if you if you're trying to figure out the difference between two synonyms, try to get some collocations online through a dictionary or do a little research for your flashcard, and then you can connect those words.

With the larger context or frequent examples that they would show up in. And I think that is so key, especially for English learners, because there's so many. synonyms in our language. And it's crazy making actually how many synonyms there are. Right, Andrew?

Yeah, so I would say two things. I think that's great advice and and great knowledge and if you know the collocations, those word friends I call them,'cause they're always hanging out together. If you can learn those collocations, that's awesome and and it's great advice. ChatGPT is so so good for this. You can use Chat GPT to to help you with this.

And I I think this is one of the really awesome features of these AI tools is how it can help us make example sentences and sometimes with studying for Korean. I ask it to give me a definition of a word that I don't know. And I have to say ChatGPT is now better than the Korean dictionaries out there. So it's it's so cool.

But you can also ask it sometimes. I ask GPT, don't give me a one-for-one definition, because sometimes when we translate a term in our target language into our native language, it doesn't really give us the full nuance of it. So you can ask it maybe to like give you more context and say, like, when would I use this? How is it different from this?

other expression and it can really be useful for showing the different nuance and shade of meaning. Sometimes I even ask it to generate an image. So if I don't really understand a concept Like there was this word that I learned in Korean recently that kind of roughly translates as surround, but I was like,

Okay, I know a different word that already means surround, but this one if I look in the dictionary, it also says surround. So how are these two terms different? So I just got GPT to create an image for me, and then it was kind of clear, like I I think that's really cool that we can use that. And then my second point, again, I'm gonna come back to spending time with the language because I think if you spend enough time listening to English or just immersing yourself in the language.

some of these differences between how different words are used are just going to come naturally. So I know sometimes we like to really focus in, oh, complicated, complex, what's the difference? And it can be hard for native speakers to explain this, but we can feel the difference. And that's just because we've learned through immersion. And I think as second language learners, we need to do this too. We need to spend so much time with the language.

that it just becomes clear to us and second nature to us. how these adjectives are different. And we can do that just with immersion and the immersion will help us to start thinking in our second language as well. It will build our skills of of thinking in the second language, which will eventually translate to speaking better as well. If we can think in the language, then we can speak in the language in a more fluent way. So

I know I'm kind of biased because we make this English podcast to help people with their immersion experience, right? To help you guys create an English lifestyle. And I'm not saying that some of these other study techniques aren't important. But I just really want to hammer home that I think spending time listening to the language is the best study technique. That's my personal bias. And all of these other things are super, super important as well.

Anki is important. Practicing speaking is important, but there are so many good benefits that come with listening and watching content in our second language as well that we just shouldn't ignore them. I've worked with thousands and thousands of English learners and especially here in Korea, the students who are by far

above and beyond the other students. They all have one thing in common and that's that they have been obsessed with some kind of TV show. Maybe they're were obsessed with Gossip Girl or obsessed with friends and they watched every episode like twenty times. And they know the series inside out.

and they can all speak really well, or they're obsessed with gaming and they spend a long time listening to to games in English or talking with their friends in English while playing the game. Those students are always so, so m so much more fluent. than students who have just studied by with a textbook or or something like that. So I think It is my bias, but I've also seen the effects of being obsessed with listening and with watching content. So yeah, I can't can't ignore that study technique.

Yeah. And I definitely listen to many, many podcasts in my target language, like if I'm at the gym or I'm walking the dog or I'm cleaning the dishes, you know, like filling in that gap time with as much exposure as I can get. It's really great. Um, and it it's essential for sure. I think that I'm also coming from a a biased perspective of being a very, very visual learner. And like I definitely you must when you learn a language hear the pronunciation, hear the the cadence.

So that's like the the rhythm or the intonation that in native speakers use. Just by hearing it, eventually I think you will be able to produce it and mimic it. And it's so important. But if it comes to something like vocab, for me personally, like I have to see it. Like I'm much more likely to see it written and remember it or write it myself rather than hear it.

And then there's many different kinds of learners out there. So yeah, the study techniques I have for with Anki, you know, that could work for some of you listeners out there. Not for others. you know, give it a try if you if you haven't heard of it and you you're feeling you're, you know, maybe could use a little more vocab under your belt. But yeah, there's so many different kinds of learners, it's very tough to, you know, ascribe a Oh, this is the best method.

But well rounded is important, I would say. I totally agree. You gotta have the listening. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with you. And what works for me might not work for you, right? What works for you, Indiana, might not work for our listeners. Like everybody has their different way of learning. and different lifestyle and I think the important thing at the end of the day

is consistency. So being consistent, trying to do something every day or at least five, six days a week like that is super, super important. And then putting yourself in the right conditions to succeed. So spending time with the language. And yeah, listening, doing Anki, these things, like no matter what study technique you choose, like doing it and doing it consistently, you're gonna see results eventually. So I I totally agree with you there.

Indiana, was there anything else that you wanted to mention? I mean I could go on and on and on about this topic. I I'm all fired up now. I could keep going, but Uh I wanted to focus more on yours your study techniques. Is there anything else you do? How do you practice speaking? What do you do for speaking practice?

Well, it's very hard you know what? No, I think that is a almost a cop out. If I wa had no shame, zero level of embarrassment, if I didn't feel some Apprehension, which is a a ha a difficult word for hesitation and not feeling sure if I should do something. then I could just talk to myself at home. I work from home. I could talk to myself about what I'm doing today, what my plans are, just speak out loud in German or Japanese. And some people do this and it's very helpful for them.

Like I I have this hesitation from do for you know about doing that. I don't know why. Uh but so I try to let's say, okay, I watch a YouTube video. I think that's somehow I have less hesitation about this. I watch something or I read an article. And I try to out loud summarize it to myself. And I'm probably gonna stumble and say a lot of wrong things and have to do it a bunch of times, but I find that summarizing something or trying to explain something is one of the more challenging but

really essential things in language learning. So I think you can do that by yourself and just try to force yourself to speak because Like I said, yeah, there's very few German or Japanese speakers in my area. But then of course get a tutor, right? Find an online tutor, a local tutor. It's worth it to shell out a tiny bit of money each week for that one-on-one time, that totally focused speaking time with feedback.

Uh that is really important. So I also definitely try to make time for one on one tutoring sessions in my target language. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking is a physical process, right? We have to retrain our tongue to move in a certain way. We need to retrain our mouth and our lips. and are breathing in a certain way, and so

Yeah, don't ignore speaking practice. Indiana, what I do, of course, our situations are totally different because I'm surrounded by native speakers and you're in an area where there aren't so many native speakers. So I'm kind of lucky in that regard that it's pretty easy for me to find speaking practice partners. But one thing that I would maybe give as a tip to you, because I know you're a dog owner and probably a lot of our listeners are as well, is just speak to your dog in your

Second language. I speak to our dog all the time in Korean. I never speak to my dog in English and Yeah, it's just like it it feels less weird to speak to something, right? Like if you're just speaking by yourself, I know it can feel embarrassing for whatever reason, like even if you're just home alone, it's like you kind of feel crazy talking to yourself. But if I talk to my dog, then it feels totally natural. So yeah, maybe you could try talking to your dog in Japanese and German.

Your dog will probably be pretty confused. Like what's going on? But good tip. Yeah, I'll try that. Yeah, and it's also, I mean, I don't know if your husband is studying any of the languages you are, but I noticed that once We adopted our dog.

Then I had to talk about the dog to my wife often. And so then I started using all of these different verb forms in Korean that I just never had exposure to before. Like you have to do something to the dog. You have to I don't know, put the jacket the rain jacket on the dog when you take him for a walk in the rain, for example.

Like, yeah, there's all these different verb forms, these passive verb forms and causative verb forms that I wasn't using until we got the dog. So that's my other tip. Get a dog. And it'll be great great for your language learning, for your English speaking as well.

Andrew, I have one I have one more question. I I know I don't want to go on for too long here. So your you and your wife, what what would you say is the percentage of English versus Korean at home? Or like do you try to switch it up and kind of take turns? Because I assume like she has some inter I actually don't know anything about uh her English level, but does she practice or speaks some English?

Yeah, she can speak some English. When we first met, I think she was pretty interested in improving her English. And now maybe her I don't know, she speaks it's it's kinda crazy and frustrating for me because it seems like her English just keeps getting better and better, but she doesn't really actively study or do anything. It just like gets better magically.

And that's very frustrating for me because I feel the opposite. I feel like my Korean is sort of stagnant, but I spend a lot of time and put a lot of effort into it. So I don't know. She's like just talented in that way where she can improve just magically. But I think It would be interesting to her hear her perspective,'cause she would probably say that we speak like ninety percent Korean and ten percent English, but

I think it would probably be more like seventy thirty, where we're speaking maybe thirty percent English. I I'm really like trying to focus on Korean because we live in this country and it it's just the best to to to focus on it. So Yeah, I'm I'm kind of selfish in that regard. I know she likes speaking English and practicing English as well. And sometimes we'll go through phases where I only speak to her in English so that she can get some language.

practice in as well. But since we're in the country and I'm an immigrant here, I think it's really important for me to get as good as I can at the language and that just makes everything better. for me in this country. So I would say we mostly speak in Korean at home. But this has pros and cons. And I think if there are any listeners out there who are married to a native speaker of of English, maybe you guys will have this situation as well.

Because of my line of work, because I'm an English teacher, most of my professional life is spent in English. So I'm speaking English throughout most of the day at work and at CULIPs and I'm thinking in English and then when I come home, then I switch to Korean. But, you know, I'm a busy forty one year old, so I don't have too many opportunities to go out and like socialize in Korean.

My hobby running is also kind of solitary. I mean, I could join a running crew and I've been thinking about doing that for a long time, but I just haven't found one that fits my schedule because yeah, this is an adult problem, right? We have these busy schedules and it's hard to find time to meet with a running crew and to be social talking about running in Korean.

So one of the things that I find is that I'll talk with my wife a lot and This is great because I get lots of speaking practice in, but there are some things that develop that are a little bit unnatural, like sometimes we'll create our own words or my wife will create her own words. I've learned that she's really creative with the language and she'll make her like her own slang and and funny jokes to me.

And I just think it's a regular Korean word. Like I didn't know that my wife was being like funny and joking around and saying some creative expression. I just thought that that was a regular Korean word. And we had this situation recently where two friends of ours, they came over for lunch one day and we were just hanging out around the dining room table and and speaking in Korean And I used one of these words that I've heard my wife use all the time.

And our friends kind of looked at each other and started laughing and they're like, What are you talking about? And then my wife started laughing and she's like, Oh, that's just like my word that I use. Nobody else this isn't standard Korean.

And so I was like, Oh, oh m okay, cool. Like I I thought that was awesome because I learned that my wife is this really creative, funny person, but then at the same time I realized like, oh, I have to be a little bit careful when my wife and I are joking around that maybe I'm learning these like words that are not standard in the language. Of course it's not.

Our friends understood what I was trying to say, but it was just a non standard way of saying that. And I think every relationship probably has this dynamic, right? Where you have your own like couple language to an extent. So Yeah, that's one of maybe the disadvantages to having a native speaking partner is that you can get some bad habits too.

Oh my gosh, I have a quick bonus story. You reminded me of this. Um so this is something that I think I've influenced a couple of students with unintentionally. So this can happen not even um with you know, married couples, but could be a a teacher or tutor to student situation. I sometimes I say cool, cool, cool. Like I say cool three times.

Uh, and it's just sort of something that I picked up on from a TV show that I used to watch in high school called Community. There was a character that like always said, Cool, cool, cool. And it was like a weird thing that he did. somehow I've like sort of absorbed that saying and I sometimes just say it too. Maybe I just really loved that character.

But I've noticed a few of my students have started saying that and there's nothing wrong with it. You know, you can say cool, cool, cool three times and it just sounds like you're being, you know, emphatic or emphasizing, but I noticed a couple of my English students were saying that and I was like, oh my gosh, they they probably think this is like what everybody says. So I mean not a disastrous influence.

But yeah, pretty funny. Yeah, everybody has their quirks when they speak, right? I know a lot of QLUP's listeners have picked up on different quirks of my speaking, like that. I say the word actually a lot. And so people say, Andrew, why do you say the word actually so often? I go, Well, do I really do that? I don't know. And yeah, actually I think I do say it often. So

Yeah, it's one of those things. But I think it's cool and it's fun that we all have different quirks and different ways of speaking and yeah, it's just good to be aware that Maybe if you're just learning from one person, it's not a good idea. You want to be exposed to a lot of different speakers and a lot of different

examples of the language so that you can notice when those expressions are nonstandard. And that's my takeaway. I was like, oh, maybe I'm only speaking with my wife too much. Maybe I need to speak with some other people.

so that I can hear their quirks and their ways of speaking as well. So I gotta do that more going forward. That's my my next step with the language.

Cool. Indiana, uh we should probably cut things off here. We're going a little bit long. I I love this topic. I'm very passionate about this topic, and I know our listeners are as well. Guys, if you have any tips or tricks about how you study English, about how you improve your fluency in English, then please share them with me and share them with Indiana over on our Discord community and you can share them with, yeah, all Cube's listeners as well. It's a great place to connect and

Yeah, to improve our English together. So you can do that for free. Just click the link that's in the description for this episode. I believe we have about eighty-five hundred people on our Discord server these days. So there's an awesome community of serious highly motivated English listeners and we're helping each other grow and get better on our server every day. So check that out and share your tips and tricks with us.

And Indiana, maybe we'll have to revisit this topic again in the near future and we can share some more info with everybody. Because like I said, it is one of my passions and I think yours as well. So that's really cool. For sure. Yeah, I love to talk about the nitty-gritty of learning languages. It's so super interesting.

Yeah, well speaking of that, Indiana, I think we should wrap up here. I'm gonna go spend some time listening to Korean because I've spent a lot of time speaking in English here now, so I gotta get going in my second language. But guys, we'll leave it at here for today. Thank you so much for listening and good job on getting some long English immersion in with Indiana and with me today. Please take care, everyone, and we'll talk to you in the next episode. Until then. 拜拜