I’m am just sat on my bed, watching English-language music videos on youtube and once again I found myself being so fascinated with the music and how I arrived at effortlessly understanding everything and talking fluently in English - and I realised that with English, I never had a care in the world if I would ever arrive at this level or not. I just thoroughly enjoyed every step of the way, never even really thinking about the next steps.
I didn’t care that I didn’t understand everything in a song. I just enjoyed listening and soaking up the language. I really believe it would be beneficial if I could somehow arrive at a similar level of “carelessness” (if that makes sense) with the other languages I’m learning. I really just want to be fascinated by them again instead of constantly worrying about all the grammar I have left to catch up on. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I will really try ro relax more into the process of learning and just enjoy being able to soak things up.
Does anybody else have similar (or different) thoughts or experiences? It would be interesting for me to hear about those.
I have to admit it seems a bit weird to me to post this now, but I think I really just realised this and I believe reminding myself of it might actually make a difference for me.
That resonates, and I think getting to that point is a sign of real proficiency in a language. As someone lucky enough to have that experience in other languages, I would say a couple of things. Firstly, to a large extent it is a state of mind. If you try to just enjoy the language, your experience may well change. Secondly, it is a matter of confidence - for me, realising that people can understand what I am saying, and will appreciate it and interact with me even if I don’t speak perfectly, is also really important. Finally, I think it is important to be nice to yourself while learning languages. It can take time, and it is not easy. However, it need not be as hard as many people are conditioned to believe that it is!
I started learning English pretty much the same way as you’re describing - except it wasn’t YouTube but records and cassettes and CDs back in the days!
Then the fun was quite a bit spoiled by about 10 years of studying it at school and having to pass a few exams in the process.
But because I loved listening to the songs, reading a lot of literature in English, movies and then traveling in English-speaking countries and meeting people from all over the world and staying in touch with them etc etc…I managed to keep on liking it anyway.
I also studied (or had to study) other languages at school and I ended up pretty much hating them.
But with Welsh, I started same was as English - because I liked a few songs and the sound of the language in them.
And thanks to the fact that now there’s SSiW and the web with a lot of opportunities to learn without dealing with traditional courses and exams and things like that…I’m learning faster than ever I’ve ever and having fun too. Couldn’t ask for more!
