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You suck slightly more than this.
In the beginning, there is much suckage.
You make some Anki cards.
You watch a Korean drama. “Blahblah! Blahblahblahblahblahblahblah? Blahblahblah!”
You watch a Korean movie. “Hello! Blahblahblahblahblahblahblah? Blahblahblah!”
“I’m not getting anywhere! I suck!”
Time passes.
You make some Anki cards.
You go to a Korean restaurant and look at the menu: “Blahblahblah.”
You walk down a crowded Seoul street. You look at the neon signs: “BLAHBLAH” “BLAH!” “WIGGETYWIGGETYWACK BLAH!”
“I’m not getting anywhere! I suck!”
Time passes.
You learn how to read.
You watch a Korean variety show. “Hello! You blah go? I blahblah!”
You go into a Korean restaurant and look at the menu. “Blahblah RICE.”
“I’m not getting anywhere. I suck!”
Time passes.
You make some Anki cards.
You watch some Miyazaki movies dubbed into Korean. “Blahblah CAT BUS!”
You watch some Korean Starcraft matches. “Blahblah he wants to go blahblah… OH! Blah ATTTAAACCCKK!”
“I’m not getting anywhere. I suck!”
Time passes.
You make some Anki cards. Wow, you have a lot now.
You read a Korean menu: “Kimchi bulgogi cheese pizza [with corn]: 20,000 won.” Wow, you understood that one.
You watch a Korean movie:
“Where is the restaurant?”
“Why, are you hungry?”
“No, but in the morning…”
“Blahblahblah!”
It hits you like a ton of bricks. A maniacal grin crosses your face.
“I suck… but I’m getting somewhere.”
Latest posts by Matt (see all)
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26 Comments…
Persistent consistency.
You must be persistently consistent, this is the key to success, I’ve said it a million times already, I’ll say it again, and it doesn’t just apply to language-learning. You have to be like a pit bull that hasn’t eaten in a week and someone has dangled a raw steak in front of you: latch onto it and don’t let go, they could swing you around in circles by that steak, they could pull and drag you and hit you on the head with a stick, you’re still not letting go.
Everything is two steps forward, one step back, I swear to god. You’ll make some progress and you’ll have a setback, but you’re still further forward than you were before–two steps forward, one back, that’s how it works.
Cheers,
Andrew
I really liked your article about persistent consistency. I also like breaking into junkyards at night and fighting the guard dogs, and since your comment mentioned these two things I have no option but to like it. Consider your comment liked!
Thank you!
I’ll try to include similar analogies in my future writing
Cheers,
Andrew
Thanks for this, Matt.
This was exactly what I needed to hear today.
I’ve got your back, honeybee. Also, if you’re a lady, you should know that I’ve got lots of money, lean muscle, and a gigantic brain.
Very very true and an excellent post, quite tongue-in-cheek post to bring across the point. Wholeheartedly agree.
I love you too, man.
Haha, I love it! You’ve forgotten the bit that goes something like
You try to say something in Korean.
You: “annyunghaseyooo! you….not…yunfanying? khamsadani!”
Everyone else: “????”
Damn, this sucks.
I’ve got this thing about not saying words I don’t know how to pronounce. Basically, I do Anki reps until a card becomes mature (i.e. I’ve heard it a metric ass-ton of times); when I can mimic the sound in my huge brain without effort, only then do I add it to my arsenal of Things I Say In Korean[TM]. I find this allows me to more or less skip that awkward phase where you’re wielding a new word like a sword with a greased-up handle.
What is this for nonsense? i thought you didn’t use anki at all and only watched korean/french media.
With French, that’s more or less correct. I cut my teeth on thousands of hours of TV/movies/podcasts/games/comics before I made an Anki deck. With Korean, I’m doing Anki from the beginning, just to see what it’s like. Spoiler: it’s more fun just watching TV.
I especially like the Kris Kross reference.
I find that wearing my pants backwards really speeds up language acquisition.
I experienced that this week with Spanish. It suddenly sounds way slower. Like my brain just caught up.
Drinking cough syrup has the same effect!
How long have you been studying Spanish?
@ Kenneth
I have been learning Spanish for about 5 -6 months.
Honestly, the first two months I barely did anything. A little grammar memorization. A couple words.
Now I don’t study grammar except to look up a weird conjugation I’ve heard.
I just listen to a lot of Spanish.
Yeah that happens all the time but if you keep going no matter how long it takes it alright
just keep going and going those 5 words you know one week will be 50 the next and before you know it you know 500 then your like ” Wow ok I don’t suck that bad now do I” its just to keep it up and be consistent with everything you are trying to learn 
thanks I needed this today feeling not so motivated LOL 
Awesome
Began to notice this with Japanese recently. I was watching some Gamecenter CX raws yesterday and surmised a sentence based on a kanji I recognized along with some of the dialogue and contextual clues… it’s a small step but I’m learning to recognize their importance.
Isn’t that an awesome moment? I remember one of the first sentences I understood: “Is this your wallet?” I nearly peed myself.
Nice taste in TV by the way. GameCenter CX is awesome.
This is so true. I was in despair because I felt like nothing was clicking. Then I watched a porn video of a Korean woman and a Japanese man, and there was a translator who was mediating the initial negotiation. And I totally understood what was said in Korean!!! I was like, “Whoa! She just totally said that her name was Ji-yeon, that she was 21 years old, the she was in Japan working as a waitress and that she was on her way to meet her friends when this creepy bi-lingual pimp and this Japanese horndog picked her up!”
BTW, not to get defensive or anything, but I only watched the video for the language exchange. When the language turned to grunts, I turned it off, honest!
I like you.
BEGINNER TO INTERMEDIATE
As I move to intermediate Spanish, I suddenly had an insight that helps to motivate me to continue to study. As a beginner I was busy learning how to “translate” words and try to put them into sentences. I learned the English definition for the Spanish word, and looked at the sentence word for word.
Often I found myself saying “That doesn’t make sense” even when I made sure each word was correct. I suddenly realized that I had the mistaken idea that I was looking at it as if it were a secret code– transcribing strange words into English. My recent insight is that people actually talk Spanish, they communicate just as I do in English.
It was a mistake to try to understand the conversation in a spanish-to-english way, but to actually understand it. This can only happen when I have a good vocabulary of a couple thousand or more words. I now stop focusing on individual words but group them together to make it understandable, just as a native speaker would do so.
It is amazing how a native speaker can understand spanish when it is quickly spoken — but that is because they are not decoding individual words, but to phrases. I try to pick out individual words, and can only understand a few words, but the native speaker can hear a couple of words and the context of the conversation fills in the rest.
We say “hajaduin” and know that it means, how are you doing, It is spoken as “one” word, and that is how I need to learn. It is no longer a secret code method I used as a novice. I find it useful to listen to telenovelas, but spend time on the subtitles, trying to understand what the text tells me, looking at phrases and sentences. Looking at it idea by idea.
This way of studying really gives my morale a boost.
I believe this is called “chunking” – remembering groups/patterns of variables instead of focusing on them individually. I agree with you, it’s definitely the way to go. In fact, not only does it aid in keeping up with the flow of information, but it actually allows you to predict what’s coming. For instance, if a French person is getting irritated and starts to say “Je m’en…” I instinctively know that “fous” is probably coming next, possibly followed by “de” and then the word(s) for whatever is the problem.
Good stuff!
Here is where Anki comes in. I have now begun to enter one and two long sentences into anki which I got from a telenovela conversation, which represented a construction of ideas — pieces of dialog.
I know most/ all of the individual words but did not understand the sentence in its entirety. I tag it as “dialog”. Studying these cards puts me more into the intermediate stage. Also some vocabulary word meanings change depending on the context of the sentence — take an example in English “run”. I want to use sentences which show the different uses of those multi-meaning words.
Let me give an example of one of my cards (in English). “It is always scary to do difficult dives, but over time, I practice them and they become easier.”