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  • (rich tango music)

  • (audience applause)

  • - So, I want to start off by telling the story

  • that got me started in all this.

  • Basically, I had just graduated and I moved to Spain.

  • I went to this dinner.

  • There was an international exchange group.

  • People from all around the world.

  • And I sit beside this guy from Brazil.

  • Very interesting guy.

  • He gave me the most impressive multilingual show

  • I'd even seen in my life.

  • Basically, another Brazilian came in.

  • He turned to him and he said something like,

  • (speaking in a foreign language)

  • And he turned immediately straight over

  • to this French girl who was chatting him up

  • because he was a good-looking guy.

  • He's like,

  • (speaking in a foreign language)

  • And then he turned directly to the organiser,

  • the Spaniard, and he's like,

  • (speaking in a foreign language)

  • And then he turned back to me and he says

  • with a very strong American accent--

  • Actually, I can't do American accents.

  • Sorry.

  • (audience laughs)

  • I asked him,

  • "How did you do this?

  • "How are you speaking all these languages?"

  • Because I was actually--

  • I could only speak English.

  • This is eight years ago.

  • I had grown up thinking I just don't have...

  • I just can't do it.

  • It's not possible because I took German

  • and Irish or Gaeilge in school.

  • I did very badly at them.

  • So I kind of figured I don't have the language talent,

  • the language gene, you know.

  • I figured I knew everything about genetics

  • even though I didn't study it.

  • I figured I was sure I don't have the language gene.

  • I had plenty of other excuses or reasons

  • that many people can relate to.

  • I didn't really have the time

  • or the resources.

  • And I was too old.

  • Even though I was 21, I figured that's it.

  • I'm too old because I'm past the age.

  • It's like I heard--

  • Somebody told me that 14 is this cutoff age

  • that you can't learn a language anymore.

  • I was sure of that.

  • I figured you have to learn it as a child.

  • That's it.

  • So these are reasons most people have.

  • I had an extra reason.

  • It was that I actually was sick when I was growing up

  • and I had to go to speech therapy.

  • I actually had trouble learning English

  • and I still kind of stumble

  • and pronounce things incorrectly at times.

  • Most of the things you're hearing me

  • pronouncing incorrectly now is actually

  • my Irish accent.

  • Don't worry about that.

  • I was sure.

  • I was a hundred percent sure.

  • It's not possible.

  • I asked this guy,

  • "How are you doing this?

  • "How are you speaking all these languages?"

  • And he just said,

  • "I don't know.

  • "I'm just trying to speak them.

  • "Going up to the person and using the language."

  • And I said,

  • "No, no. It can't be that simple."

  • I challenged myself.

  • I thought, "I'm going to do this.

  • "I want to learn Spanish."

  • You know?

  • Because I'd just moved to Spain and I decided

  • instead of just having a quick internship

  • where I just speak in English because

  • I'd just graduated as an electronic engineer.

  • So I was just all like right-left brain.

  • I was good at mathematics.

  • Bad at languages.

  • But I figured, no, I can figure this out.

  • I can find a way to learn this language.

  • So I dived into everything I could think of.

  • I went to a course that was very expensive.

  • There was just three or four other people

  • in the classroom.

  • Went to that for several weeks.

  • Didn't work.

  • I started studying a lot of books.

  • Didn't work.

  • I got some CD courses, some software.

  • It didn't work.

  • I tried to read a book.

  • My first choice was not particularly clever, I think.

  • It was "El Señor de los Anillos".

  • The Lord of the Rings.

  • I thought, "I'll read this. I'll read this in Spanish."

  • I had my dictionary which I would consult

  • every second word, basically.

  • I made it to two pages and then I thought,

  • "Okay. I'm not going to keep this up."

  • After six months living in Spain,

  • I couldn't speak Spanish.

  • So, if anything, this just convinced me even more

  • that I don't have this thing.

  • This magic language gene that people are just born with.

  • And then I had an epiphany.

  • This is what I want to share with people.

  • This is where I'm trying to convince the world

  • it's not actually about language talent.

  • I really feel language talent is irrelevant.

  • Some people might do it a bit better

  • but that doesn't matter for you.

  • What I did was I started to speak Spanish.

  • I don't know if that makes sense right now

  • but hopefully it will.

  • The problem was, for six whole months,

  • I had been studying Spanish.

  • I'd been studying it so much that

  • it was making it harder for myself.

  • I kept seeing all these subjunctives

  • and definite articles and things that

  • were just confusing me.

  • After all the studying,

  • I was nowhere further.

  • I didn't really know any words.

  • Six months and I was still at the stage

  • of just saying, "Hola. Gracias. Por Favour. Adios."

  • You know?

  • Just running off like that.

  • I just decided I'm going to start speaking the language.

  • I'm going to get all of these excuses

  • and ignore them.

  • That I'm not ready and I need to work more

  • or I'm not intelligent enough to learn a language.

  • I just started speaking it and everything changed.

  • Very soon after that, I was gaining momentum.

  • A couple of weeks later, I realised I'm actually

  • doing everything in Spanish.

  • I'm living my life through this language.

  • Eventually, I reach the stage where my level

  • was pretty good.

  • The thing is you will find people who kind of

  • would retort that, saying how it's not so possible

  • for them.

  • They always have many reasons why they can't

  • just start speaking.

  • Hopefully, I can go through a list of the most famous ones

  • and see if I can convince you that it's not quite...

  • I really feel anybody can learn a language.

  • One thing people might say is that they

  • just don't have the words.

  • You start learning a language,

  • you've got no words.

  • How can you have conversations with somebody?

  • But, actually, if you're learning a Latin language

  • like Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese,

  • what people don't realise is that they've got,

  • maybe, tens of thousands of words before they even start.

  • I think like in 1066, the French Normans got into England

  • and they hung around for a few centuries.

  • You had like two layers of society.

  • You had the poor peasants who would speak

  • the old Germanic English.

  • And you had the rich noblemen who would speak

  • something closer to French.

  • Eventually, these things merged.

  • So in English, we've got a lot of French vocabulary

  • which actually happens to be very similar or the same

  • in Spanish and Italian and French and Portuguese

  • and so on.

  • If you learn some of these words,

  • you get a headstart.

  • You can figure out without have to learn the language

  • how you might say these things.

  • So if you remember the different strata,

  • the different levels of formality.

  • Let's say I wanted to say the word "country"

  • in like Spanish and I forget what it is.

  • I forget or I don't even know.

  • I've never come across the word.

  • Well, how about I try to rephrase that in English.

  • Can I go back to English?

  • Instead of country, what's another way to say country?

  • I could say "nation".

  • It means almost the same thing.

  • It's not exactly the same thing.

  • It's close enough.

  • Nation is just "nación".

  • Or "nation or whatever is might be

  • in the corresponding language.

  • Or you might think if somebody's knocking on the door,

  • you can say, "Come in."

  • And that's fine.

  • Or you could also say, "Enter."

  • And "Enter" is from the old kind of French version.

  • You've got "entrar", "entrer" and so on.

  • So you've already got some words

  • but let's say you're going to something far away,

  • an Asian language.

  • Middle-Eastern language.

  • It's not possible nowadays to start a language from zero,

  • from scratch.

  • It's not possible because you always have something.

  • Human beings are interacting all the time.

  • You have maybe brand names or you've got technology

  • that uses the same words.

  • So it would be very hard to find a language

  • where at least one or all of Coca-Cola,

  • internet, Obama, where these words would

  • not be pretty much the same.

  • (audience laughs)

  • You know?

  • And this is pretty universal.

  • If you can thinks of this and kind of maybe...

  • I've used brand names to explain myself

  • and get a point across initially with people.

  • When you've got this vocabulary,

  • you can really start getting into learning

  • the words that obviously have nothing to do

  • with what's you've come across before.

  • You can try some memory techniques.

  • I've got a very bad memory.

  • I really feel that I've got censorship

  • in my brain whenever somebody tells me their name.

  • It's like, you know, "Nice to meet you. I'm beep."

  • (audience laughs)

  • I forget it immediately.

  • I don't have a good memory but, despite that,

  • I would learn words quickly because I'd try

  • to make it more fun.

  • I'd think to myself, when I was learning Spanish,

  • I took the word for "beach" and I saw it "playa".

  • I thought, okay.

  • Well, "playa" kind of looks a bit like

  • the English word, "player".

  • So I thought, well, imagine this.

  • When I think of a player, I think of this of like

  • a cheesy pickup artist.

  • And imagine this super over-confident guy

  • walking down a beach in Spain and trying

  • to pick up girls and getting a slap in the face.

  • You know, a very visual image.

  • From then, I remembered if I see the word, "playa",

  • that sounds like "player",

  • then the guy was on the beach.

  • And it works the reverse as well.

  • You think of beach, you associate the player

  • and you go backwards.

  • So you can learn words very quickly if you learn them

  • with an association.

  • It doesn't matter how bad your memory is.

  • And you can learn phrases.

  • I like to maybe introduce a bit of music

  • because I think it's a good place to start

  • with languages when you get some basic phrases of like,

  • "Where is the bathroom?", and so on,

  • things like this.

  • What I would do if I was learning Italian,

  • I took, "Where's the bathroom?"

  • (speaking in a foreign language)

  • And I thought, I don't know,

  • I'll take the Big Ben chime.

  • I sang to myself a couple of times.

  • (sings in a foreign language)

  • And I kept doing that and after a couple of times,

  • it stuck.

  • And this is despite the bad memory I have.

  • Words are not a problem.

  • You can learn a language if you have no words

  • in it yet.

  • You have to accept that, actually,

  • you do have a lot of words.

  • Thousands if not tens of thousands.

  • A problem always tell me is grammar.

  • Now when you learn a language in school

  • which many of us do,

  • most of it is grammar.

  • I have learned German in school and, for me,

  • German was just "Der/Die/Das" tables

  • of complicated structures and it

  • just totally intimidated me.

  • And this is not a language.

  • This is not a language.

  • This is a list of rules that are as good

  • as mathematics or something like that.

  • It doesn't work.

  • The thing about language is language

  • is a means of communication.

  • When you try to put it in a box of grammar,

  • then you're not allowing yourself the freedom

  • to communicate freely.

  • I actually like grammar.

  • I'm not anti-grammar.

  • I'm not going to say to burn all

  • the grammar books or whatever.

  • But what I've found is a lot more effective

  • is if you embrace speaking and speaking wrongly.

  • I encourage people to speak with

  • as many mistakes as possible.

  • I aim to make at least a hundred mistakes a day

  • if I'm learning a language.

  • Then I know I'm getting somewhere

  • because I'm using it with people.

  • And I know my grammar is bad at first

  • but something very interesting happens.

  • I hated grammar in school.

  • I took grammar in English,

  • grammar in Irish Gaeilge,

  • and grammar in German.

  • I hated it. It was so boring.

  • But now, I love grammar

  • because what happens is I put it aside.

  • I don't leave it away forever.

  • I put it aside.

  • I embrace the language.

  • I start learning some phrases.

  • I start meeting some people

  • and I start using it.

  • And then, after a couple of months of that,

  • when I feel the language is a part of me,

  • where I can communicate and use it with human beings,

  • I go back to grammar and it's actually very interesting.

  • It's like an explanation of the story.

  • It's like, "Ah, that's why they say it that way.

  • "It's really cool."

  • Grammar can be very nice if you treat it like that.

  • Another one is money.

  • People say I don't have the money.

  • I've got to go to buy this expensive software.

  • I have to go to this course I heard about.

  • I actually find all of these, what they have in common,

  • is more like the placebo effect.

  • That you've spent so much money that perhaps

  • you're going to put in more work because of that.

  • I think there are components of so many courses

  • that kind of, unless it's an immersion course,

  • they miss out a lot on what they really need to discuss.

  • People guess at what they want.

  • A few people do get success out of these courses

  • because they spend so much money.

  • They hold themselves kind of liable for that.

  • Something I find is a lot more effective

  • is if you're just public about it.

  • I think the reason I did learn Spanish

  • that first time is because I told everybody.

  • I didn't just promise myself.

  • I didn't like make a New Year's resolution:

  • Speak Spanish someday.

  • There's seven days in a week and someday

  • is not one of them.

  • You need to start now.

  • I started and I told everybody.

  • I told all my friends, my family, everybody.

  • Because I was liable.

  • I felt responsible.

  • I had to deliver, otherwise, I'd feel embarrassed.

  • That's way more powerful than,

  • "I spent the money so I feel I have to use it."

  • So money isn't the issue.

  • You can do all of this for free.

  • You can meet people for free without having

  • to travel to a foreign country.

  • There's such good connexions now.

  • A lot of social networking sites let you

  • search per language or,

  • if there's nobody in your town,

  • you can actually talk to them over Skype.

  • So you can learn any language this way.

  • And another thing I think is very--

  • I think the biggest thing for people

  • is that they feel they're going to frustrate

  • the person they're speaking to.

  • That's the biggest problem I hear.

  • You're going to talk to this person

  • and they're going to get angry.

  • "You're butchering my language.

  • "How dare you?"

  • It doesn't work like that.

  • I kind of feel this is ironic when I hear people

  • tell me this.

  • That they're going to annoy the person they're speaking to.

  • Well, actually, most people I've talked to

  • who are kind of considering learning a language,

  • I see a lot of frustration in their eyes

  • just from the fact that they don't speak it yet.

  • I've actually met people here who are

  • in San Antonio and they are surrounding by Spanish speakers

  • and they can never communicate with them.

  • They feel so frustrated by this.

  • And this is a lifelong amount of frustration

  • that I feel is so much bigger than any kind of a...

  • You know, talking to somebody,

  • that they might kind of roll their eyes or whatever.

  • But that doesn't happen.

  • It's actually, among non-English speakers,

  • I find all around the world,

  • when you try to speak the language with them,

  • they're so overjoyed.

  • They're like, "Wow. He's trying to learn my language.

  • "He's not expecting everyone in the world

  • "to speak English."

  • You actually get encouragement.

  • People keep telling you,

  • "You're doing a great job."

  • Even though you're aware your grammar is bad.

  • You're using the same ten words over and over again

  • for the first few days.

  • But that's fine because you're starting

  • to communicate with people.

  • This is the thing that's missing

  • is this idea of communication.

  • A language is not this kind of thing

  • that you test for and that you can either

  • be right or wrong.

  • It's not a black or white thing.

  • It's how human beings talk to one another

  • and there's no wrong way of doing that.

  • If your words are a little strange

  • or you forget to conjugate your verbs or whatever,

  • people will always understand you.

  • I'm sure you've heard people speaking English

  • to you that was a little broken.

  • You always understand it.

  • So I think the problem people have with the frustration

  • is they feel that the whole world will end

  • if they try to speak the language.

  • If they go up to this person and try to speak it,

  • the world will end.

  • I actually think the opposite.

  • I think a whole new world will begin

  • if you try and speak a new language with people.

  • I really hope that you'll give it a try.

  • Thank you very much.

  • (audience applauds)

(rich tango music)

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A2 初級

Benny Lewis:TEDx關於快速語言破解的演講 (Benny Lewis: TEDx talk on Rapid Language Hacking)

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