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00:00:10,780 --> 00:00:25,186
G'day, guys! What's going on? Welcome
to this episode of Aussie English!
Today to day. I have the pleasure of
interviewing Lindie Botes. Now Lindie
is a polyglot, I would be comfortable
calling her a polyglot, she speaks
several languages and is currently
learning Chinese, Korean and
Japanese.

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00:00:32,250 --> 00:00:58,420
So, she is a native English speaker
and also a native Afrikaans speaker.
She's from South Africa, but I've
been following her on YouTube for a
while now and she gives a lot of tips
on learning languages and I thought
that I would get her on the podcast,
pick her brains and ask what it's
like learning some of the most
difficult languages for an English
speaker to learn, including Korean,
Chinese and Japanese.

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00:00:58,440 --> 00:01:33,411
So, hopefully guys if you guys are
native Asian language speakers,
right? If you speak Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai
hopefully you'll be able to see what
things are like from the other side
of the glass. I guess, you know,
she's looking through one window from
English to your languages and I know
that you guys need to learn English
from those languages so, hopefully
there's some good content in here for
you guys that will help you give you
motivation and tips on learning a
foreign language when it is very,
very difficult. Anyway, thanks for
joining me today, guys, I give you
Lindie Botes.

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G'day, guys. Welcome to this episode
of Aussie English. Today I have
Lindie Botes on the podcast, I hope I
said that correctly.

5
00:01:47,641 --> 00:01:47,872
It's Botes.

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00:01:48,785 --> 00:02:17,340
Botes. Sorry, sorry. So, man, I've
followed you for a while on YouTube,
obviously secretly in the shadows
without really sort of reaching out
and I decided to finally bite the
bullet and I was like I like this
chick, I want to get her on the
podcast to talk about her experience
learning languages. Man can you tell
me your story, Lindie? How on Earth
did you end up now learning, I think,
at least as far as I'm aware,
Japanese, Korean and Chinese, right?
All simultaneously as well so can you
tell us your story?

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00:02:17,740 --> 00:04:07,251
Sure. So my dad is a diplomat so,
growing up I lived in a bunch of
different countries. Not any of those
languages you mentioned so, I haven't
even set foot in China and I haven't
lived in Korea, but grew up in... a
bit of time in Paris, Pakistan, Dubai
and some significant time in Japan.
So, I think growing up I was always
exposed to different languages and
cultures and I never really took
language learning seriously, for me
it was more just a subject at school
so, I did Arabic and French at
school, and then when we moved back
to South Africa after five years in
Dubai my mom saw an add in the
newspaper for free Korean lessons and
I had a few Korean friends in Dubai
and my mum said " do you want to try
this?" and I was like ok, why not? It
was like completely no reason, I
mean, I know a lot of people get into
Korean through K-POP and K-Dramas,
which is awesome, but back then it
was 2009 and, you know, the Korean
wave hadn't really hit so much in
South Africa. So, I just started it
for the fun, no real reason and the
more I started Korean, the more I
fell in love with the language and I
started seeing connections between
Korean and Japanese and a lot of
Korean singers often release music in
Japanese so, there were these
connections I kept seeing them and
maybe I should try Japanese so I
dabbled in that for a little bit, not
very seriously until my parents said
there moving to Japan in 2013 and I
was like well, now I better learn! My
dad is very cute and competitive and
he's like we should do a challenge
and see who can learn Japanese the
fastest. Nobody actually knows where
he's going to be posted to so, before
he knew it was Japan, he was like
whatever country it is, you and I
should both learn the language as a
challenge and I was like "challenge
accepted!".

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00:04:07,940 --> 00:04:09,423
Then we heard it is Japan and my
dad's like...oh, man...

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00:04:09,424 --> 00:04:18,201
Talk about going from like... from
like, you know, what easy to... this
is the hardest language probably for
an English speaker to learn!

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00:04:19,970 --> 00:04:40,290
So, I just... it just kind of flowed
naturally from there and then
Mandarin Chinese, I just got an
interest before I started learning
Japanese I actually just wanted to
double a new language and my Chinese
is actually the weakest of the three.
Now I'm based in Singapore and I hear
it on a daily basis so it's about
time I started brushing it up.

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So, how did the challenge go?

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Well, my dad failed miserably. I'm
only joking. He's...there's this
weird thing between my dad and my
mom, every country we've lived
in...one of them either does language
really well and the other one does it
really bad. So, my dad is great in
French and Urdu and my mom is awesome
in Arabic and Japanese.

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00:05:03,280 --> 00:05:29,540
It's probably the best way to be,
though, right? To sort of complement
each other as opposed to be banal at
all of them, right? So, what was that
like then moving? Was it sort of as
good as it was frustrating because at
the same time you're learning
languages in certain countries and
then all of a sudden you sort of get
uprooted and then plonked in a new
country and you kind of like... I've
just mastered this language, I've
just gotten to a good level now I
have to start again like, damn it!

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00:05:30,360 --> 00:06:19,161
Yeah. So, I actually don't live in
Japan, per se, I visit my parents
every university holidays so, over
the span of four years I lived in
Japan for one year, one and a half
years or so, I actually found it a
great opportunity not kind of
bothering my language learning of
other languages and I did my
internships there. So, it was really
great exposure to language and
interestingly enough and have been
learning Korean for about 12 years
now and Japanese only since 2013 and
the speed it took me to reach a
conversational natural level in
Korean was a lot longer than it took
me to reach natural level in Japanese
and that is totally because of the
exposure of the language two to three
times a year like really
concentrated, which I didn't have in
Korean.

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00:06:19,620 --> 00:06:40,310
Did you find the grammar too, I know
very little about either language,
but from what I am aware the two
languages have grammar that's similar
at least compared to English, did
that give you a bit of a boost as
well where you were like ok, my
Korean has got me in that headspace
of this is how the grammar works and
I just need to learn the words and
pronunciation a bit more in Japanese.

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Yes, yes. Korean and Japanese are
almost identical and I found it more
effective to learn Japanese using
Korean resources so, textbooks for
Korean people learning Japanese
because I was already in that
mindframe, if the sentence structure
is exactly the same, the time it
takes to process in my head is a lot
shorter than if I were learning
through an English...

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Got you! Got you! That's it. I have
very limited... basic fluency in
French and now much more advanced in
Portuguese and ironically it was the
opposite way a few years ago, but I
married a Brazilian and so we've been
speaking it like crazy for the last
year just it at home, always in
Portuguese, but I found that the
grammar that I had learned in French
really set me up to sort of dominate
in Portuguese, compared to someone
learning a language for the first
time and it being Portuguese because
it's so sort of similar.

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Oh, that's so interesting.

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00:07:35,540 --> 00:07:56,930
Yeah, at least in structure, French I
think the grammar is a little bit
more complicated I would say,
depending on which aspects you're
looking at, but yeah I really liked
Portuguese and it's interesting that
you say that you would prefer to use
a language that you sort of know less
proficiently than English, but if it
has a similar grammar it's going to
shortcut, you know, learning
patterns.

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00:07:57,350 --> 00:08:39,950
So, which other languages do you
speak as well? And could you tell us
a bit about each level in each
language, because I know that there
are a lot of polyglots out there, and
I don't know if you use this label or
not, but a lot of people who are self
professed polyglots and I feel at
least from my point of view from
learning a few languages to
conversational level, at first you
see these people and you're like holy
shit they speak 16 languages like
native speakers, like how the hell
would I ever do this? And then once
you start learning a language you
realize... wait a second, there's no
way that they speak these like a
native speaker and you kind of
demystified a bit. So, what has it
been like for you and to what level
have you got in each language and
what has that journey been like?

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Yeah. I mean fluency is so hard to
define and yeah, I've had
people...like if I'm in articles or
podcast people like Lindie is fluent
in whatever languages and I'm like
"no, no! I'm not!". When meeting new
people, oh my goodness, people always
introduce me, "is this the girl who
speaks eight languages!" like..no, I
really don't! I'm just learning
things, like still my home language,
my home language is Afrikaans. I'm
still learning things everyday, but
I'm sure you would as well as any
other person that, I mean, when can
you actually call yourself fluent,
that's really hard to answer.

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00:09:13,080 --> 00:09:43,120
And again, as you say, it so depends
on what you mean, like I use that, I
kind of defined it in two fluent as
in I can have a conversation with
someone who doesn't speak English and
we can communicate, right? And I can
pretty much talk about basic stuff,
you know, I'm going to make lots of
mistakes, but I'm not proficient in
the language meaning I would consider
that much more close to native level,
right? Where you are... I could give
a speech spontaneously in front of a
bunch of people or I can answer, you
know, do an interview in the language
comfortably. I feel like that is a
completely different story, right?

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00:09:45,500 --> 00:10:11,005
So, I guess my list would be, well,
I'm a native Afrikaans speaker, but
I've always gone to English schools
so, I consider myself pretty
bilingual and it's actually easier
for me to communicate in English if
I'm talking about technical things.
Interestingly enough, the language I
feel most like emotionally in touch
to is Korean. So, there is a video of
mine that went viral on YouTube where
I woke up from anesthesia speaking
Korean.

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I've heard of people doing that!

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00:10:14,310 --> 00:10:25,260
Yeah, and I don't know how explain
that because I got the operation in
South Africa, the doctors were
africans and then I wake up and the
first language I speak is Korean. So,
I think what that means to me is it's
my emotional language.

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That's crazy!

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00:10:27,570 --> 00:10:50,240
I find that with the grammar in
Korean you can express a lot of
emotions verbally more than you can
in English, in English we would use
intonation like "I'm so tired!"
whereas in Korean there might be a
grammatical structure to emphasize
that. So, especially when you're
typing there is no miscommunication
because your grammar can inflect how
you're feeling emotionally.

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00:10:50,640 --> 00:10:59,800
So, whereas we would have to
obviously use a lot more emoticons or
like emoji with lots of smiley faces
or frowny faces to show no, no, no
I'm joking or no, no I'm sad!

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00:11:00,823 --> 00:11:20,122
Right, right? And then after that I
would say Japanese is my most fluent
after Korean and then maybe Mandarin
Chinese and French. I have learned
French since second grade at school,
but it's gotten very, very rusty
because I don't use it and I spend so
much time on Asian languages.

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00:11:20,550 --> 00:11:48,478
And that's what I feel. I get
frustrated about too with some of the
polyglots that I see because they'll
say "I'm fluent in these languages, I
haven't spoken this one in six years
or whatever" and you're just like how
do you maintain the fluency, right?
As soon as I started giving all my
attention to Portuguese my French
plummeted with regards to speaking
abilities. I can hear and watch
things and it kind of I get it, but
to formulate a sentence, Portuguese
always inserts itself in there
wherever I can't find the words.

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00:11:51,090 --> 00:12:19,926
Ok, yeah, we're the same there. Yeah.
So, I would say I have, like,
semi-fluent understanding. I can
listen to a podcast or the news and
French, but when I need to speak, I
sort of stutter a little or I use
very basic sentences, but someone can
speak back to me and I'll understand
them. And yeah, for the rest it's
just languages I've been dabbling in.
So, a bit of Vietnamese, Hungarian,
Arabic, Urdu. I recently started
Tagalog, Filipino, and I want to say
Southeast Asian languages, kind of
just dabbling in them a little, but
it's not enough to have a
conversation.

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That's pretty interesting though,
right? Because I think most polyglots
or most people who are interested in,
most language learning enthusiasts,
I'll use that instead of polyglot,
most language learners tend to go for
languages that are closer to their
mother tongue, right? First. What
made you decide to get sort of
completely jump ship and just go off
into the horizon in a very, very far
off destination into Japanese, Korean
and Chinese? Because that must have
been so much harder and how did you
stay motivated when you were doing
that? Because it must have been so
much more difficult to get those
early gains, right?

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I think I didn't have any intrinsic
motivation to learn European or
African languages. So, I've always
been interested in Asian culture. So,
growing up surrounded by Korean
people at school or, I don't know,
Chinese supermakets around me, like
always fascinated by the characters
and especially in the learning
languages with a different script.
So, Chinese characters, Japanese,
Korean, Thai. So, those have always
fascinated me. I think that that
access answers the motivation because
there is a sense of fascination,
that's not that's not "oh, I have to
learn this school" or let me learn
this, like so many people have told
me "you should learn Dutch because
you speak Afrikaans, it would be so
easy!".

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00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:57,548
I freaking hate that. I was told so
many times as well, people would be
like "learn Chinese! It's the most
spoken language after English" you
know or has the most number of native
speakers and I'd be like I don't know
that many Chinese people, I don't
know that much about the culture.I
can't just sort of just just
complete... It's like saying you like
exercise, you know, do ballet! It's
like I'm not interested, maybe in the
future, but currently...

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00:14:00,630 --> 00:14:34,872
Totally, I mean, I've never had the
desire to learn Dutch not because I'm
not interested in Dutch culture, but
I've always had this fascination with
Asia and I can understand Dutch
totally fine, you can speak to me in
Dutch and I'll reply in Afrikaans and
we can have a conversation, for me
right now that is enoug, like I don't
feel... especially giving my living
circumstances, all my friends are
Asian, I live in an Asian country,
right now learning something like
Dutch would not benefit me as much as
a new language I've started Tagalog,
I hear Tagalog around me every single
day.

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00:14:35,130 --> 00:15:42,835
And that's the thing too, right?
Utility, if it's not useful to you in
the moment it's kind of like ok, I'll
watch all these YouTube videos about
how to run a marathon and but I can't
go outside. It's like when are you
actually going to be able to put it
into practice and go out there and do
that thing, like I started Portuguese
because I started doing Jiu Jitsu and
all of a sudden I went from being
surrounded by English speakers to
being surrounded by Brazilians, who
are always speaking Portuguese andI
was like I want to communicate with
you, guys and so, it is so funny how
it becomes like, at least for English
speakers who have sort of I guess you
can indulge your sort of language
learning interests as opposed to
foreign speakers who are like I have
to learn English because business,
because communication in foreign
countries. What do you do, if you
tomorrow if someone picked you up,
plonked you in Holland and said you
know, you're going to be living here
for five years, what would be your
plan for learning Dutch? How would
you conquer that language as fast as
possible? Because I'm sure a lot of
listeners here are sort of probably
plateauing, at a plateau level in
English where they've reached their
intermediate to advanced and they
don't know what to do now, what would
you do if you were having to learn a
language again?

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00:15:43,380 --> 00:16:40,130
Very interesting. I think the
question you framed like if somebody
plonks me there, obvious I'm going to
be an expat in Holland and I think a
lot of expats tend to move in their
own communities. So, living in an
expat area and going to an English
supermarket and going to expats.
Like, I would avoid that completely
because I want to get as much
immersion as possible with the local
people or the native people. Of
course for me studying languages the
most important thing is listening and
hearing because the more you hear
language, the easier it is to copy
the correct pronunciation and if your
pronunciation is correct, you sound
more fluent than you even are and
also boost your confidence you keep
going. As you know like how babies
learn a new language, they don't sit
with a textbook, right? They just
hear their parents and they repeat.

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00:16:40,210 --> 00:18:00,070
So, I always tune my ears to
something. Something I like doing is
listening to these subway
announcements in different language.
So, in Singapore it's in Mandarin,
English, Tamil and Malay. I'm just
trying to listen over and over and
and the number for the police here is
999. So, I'm saying that in different
languages, you'll hear one being
repeated three times and you're like
Ok, that must be the number for 9 and
that's how you learn, you just pick
up on these little things and keep
hearing and try and reproduce it.
Obviously you also need materials, so
I get myself a text book, I am a
solid believer and sure there are
great apps you know you can learn
from the internet, but me as a visual
learner as well, I like to have a
book, I need to track progress. I
like highlighting and writing as much
as I can and everything I do in a
language I want to... everything I do
normally, I mean, I want to try and
do it in my target language. So, if
I'm setting up a shopping list I
would write that in my target
language, especially if you're
shopping in a different country and
everything on the shelves are in that
language, might as well learn the
word for it, write it in your
shopping  you know well that's one of
those things that I find that a lot
of people ask me about they come to
Australia and then they end up in
their communities with people who
speak their language they end up
operating in their own language.

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00:18:00,100 --> 00:18:19,750
They move in with people they're
watching TV I've never seen a
podcast. They're doing everything in
their own language you know trying to
tell them constantly you need to
spend more time in English as much of
your day in English as possible even
if you aren't surrounded by English
speakers watching wish TV listen to
podcasts read books but you need to
shift yourself out of your own
language because those two are going
to be competing right.

40
00:18:20,520 --> 00:18:26,200
Yeah. And have you found that that
has helped you advance a lot faster
when you put those sort of practices
into place.

41
00:18:27,370 --> 00:19:01,950
Yeah, the more exposure you get, the
easier it is and it's so hard to
explain. So, I'm someone who likes
listening to a lot of music and I
memorize the lyrics, but sometimes I
won't know what the word is in the
language and then sort of casually be
studying language and I'll come back
to the song like a month or two later
and I'm like "oh my goodness! I
understand this" and a lot of it is
just passive learning, it's just... a
lot of us are also learning in
context, you don't need to look up
every single word, you'll eventually
figure out what it means just by
hearing it so much.

42
00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:33,670
Yeah, I had that recently, I've been
watching on Netflix a TV series
called The Mechanism, which is a
Brazilian TV series about corruption
and they keep having in brackets
like, it's obviously for deaf people,
so they keep putting up in brackets
like coughing or sneezing. And I kept
saying this one and I realized that
it was every time he cleared his
voice, cleared his throat, he was
doing... and they had the same, I
think it was ofegante, and it was the
same word kept coming up and I was
like finally I remember this goddamn
word after I've seen it probably 20
times.

43
00:19:34,470 --> 00:19:36,000
And you didn't need to look it up.

44
00:19:36,120 --> 00:19:37,120
Yeah, exactly.

45
00:19:38,070 --> 00:19:56,633
I love learning in that sense because
you get to see... you know, you have
the context, you hear what the guy's
doing, you can see what he's doing,
you can see the word. Do you think
that you should use subtitles when
watching that sort of stuff or do you
recommend not using subtitles too?
Because I know that's a contentious
issue, but I love using them.

46
00:19:58,949 --> 00:20:29,820
Look, I'm all for using subtitles. I
mean, if you're struggling to
understand something why remove the
comedians and the entertainment by
removing subtitles? Sometimes, you
know, at the end of a long day when
my brain is really tired I would
watch a Korean drama with subtitles
just those few words that I'm... that
I don't know, but I think turning off
subtitles does help your brain to get
into it a bit more and watch a lot
more actively. It depends on your
levels, I would say subtitles for
beginners to intermediate and then
upper intermediate to advanced, if
you feel like turning it off, by all
means.

47
00:20:30,270 --> 00:20:58,770
Yeah, exactly. And what do you find
it's like with memory because I get a
lot of people, and this happened to
me with French and Portuguese when I
started sort of taking it seriously,
I was always frustrated at how easily
I forgot things and every time you
see people who have learnt the
language and speak it really well
you're like oh, man, they just must
be really natural at this. They must
just get grammar, they must just have
a really good memory. I don't think
that's the case, but what do you
think? Is it a kind of thing where
it's just you pick it up over time or
you have to have a good memory?

48
00:21:01,720 --> 00:22:10,130
Very, very good question. I'm going
to not go down the...  saying that
memory is the key to learning
language. A lot of people say "oh,
you know over 25 years old, you know,
my brain doesn't tuned into learning"
no, it takes time and effort and
dedication and repetition! You're
going hear something, read something,
use something all the time, it
doesn't... if you have a good memory,
because it's going to stay in your
short term memory. So, Gosh, I'm sure
studies have been done on this, but
from my experience, learning
languages is not something that
happens overnight. I mean, I wouldn't
say I have a talent for learning
languages. Maybe I have a skill set
that teaches me how to learn a
language effectively, I wouldn't say
I have an inborn talent that all of a
sudden I'm amazing in all these
languages, no, it takes me hours and
practice and dedication. I would say
where the talent comes in is how you
learn a language, how smartly you
study, not how good your memory is.

49
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:23,412
So, what would be some of the things
you would say: people don't do this!
This is going to waste thousands of
hours of potential time you could
spend doing something useful. What
are the lessons you've learned going
through this About things you
shouldn't do?

50
00:22:24,220 --> 00:23:32,630
Don't memorize vocabulary lists. I
think people are super... like, at
the beginning of a language, when
you're very excited you'll look up
like "one hundred most common words
in this language" and you'll sit and
memorize them all. By all means,
great, but for me it's more
memorizing them in context. So, in
the context of the sentence and a lot
of those words list are alphabetical
and you'll get them starting with
like "Ah!" being interjections, like
the first words is "Ah!" Like, you'll
pick it up in your speaking, you
don't memorize that one. And then the
next word will be "apple" and the
next one is "avalanche". You don't
need to know that. So, maybe if you
do have a list of more common words,
sit and highlight the ones you think
you would use day-to-day life the
most, and then get a website or a
friend or an app where you can get
example sentences with that word and
then write down the sentence and then
what I like to do is replace the
words in the sentence with other
words. So, if I learned a new noun,
I'll take that noun out and replace
it with a ton of other nouns and then
I'll be learning new words and a
sentence structure at the same time.

51
00:23:33,200 --> 00:23:57,670
Yeah. So that's it! I mean that's one
of those things, I'm always just like
you just have to keep seeing the
thing again, again, again, again and
eventually you will remember it, if
it's important, right? Because the
brain is all about remembering what
you need to use and so remembering
words that are useless, isn't really
going to help you and I also say like
how often do you forget a word in
your own language, right? I forget
words in English all the time and
I've been speaking English for 32
years, you know?

52
00:23:59,300 --> 00:24:33,254
Yeah. It's because you don't use it
on a daily basis. Yeah, and this
thing you were saying about just
using it all the time I think a lot
of outdated ways of language learning
these days is going to a lesson or a
class one or two days a week and then
what people tend to do is after the
lesson is over and they'll go home
and they will forget about the
language until the night before when
they do their homework and then they
come back to the class. That is such
an effective way of learning because
you're only blocking out like two
hours a week for the language,
instead of trying to integrate it in
every way possible.

53
00:24:33,890 --> 00:24:43,806
And that's part of the problem,
though, right? Where people think
that teachers need to teach them a
language, whereas, teachers need to
be there to sort of inspire you to
teach yourself the language, right?

54
00:24:43,807 --> 00:24:43,975
Totally.

55
00:24:43,976 --> 00:24:59,240
So, what do you think of language
classes? Like if you were learning a
new language, say Dutch, would you
bother going and enrolling in a
school or do you think it is much
more effective to be your own teacher
and do it yourself?

56
00:24:59,990 --> 00:25:10,760
Well, I'm in two minds about this,
about this question. So, when I was
in middle school I took some lessons
in the Alliance Française for extra
French.

57
00:25:10,910 --> 00:25:11,819
I did that too.

58
00:25:11,820 --> 00:25:56,744
Or did you? Yeah, I found that was
extremely beneficial because the
teacher only spoke French. I did not
hear a word of English in her lessons
and while that was so great because
they're forced you to try to
understand it through context so, in
that case, like if your teacher is
only speaking that language by all
means, that's such a good way, but
something my dad really struggled
with when he was learning Japanese
was his teacher barely spoke Japanese
and they spend more of the lesson
discussing culture and or focusing on
one sentence and really trying to
break down the grammar when, I mean,
why do you learn a language? The
point is to be conversational, not to
understand the grammar in depth. So,
I'm all for having...

59
00:25:56,745 --> 00:25:57,228
Well, that's it, right?

60
00:25:57,378 --> 00:26:06,040
English lessons if your educator is
suited to your needs.

61
00:26:06,750 --> 00:26:45,950
Yeah, well... that was it I was
terrible at French in school, even
though it studied it out for six
years. I mean, for six years of
investment, you would imagine you
would get to a level that you could,
you know, survive on your own in the
country and I didn't feel like that
at all. And I think so much of it was
it was like you were not following a
direction that interested you, you
just had to go wherever the class
went, which tended to be random every
single week and so you had no
direction and then it was funny
because I fell in love with French
again 10 years later and got to a
really good level within a few months
of sort of reigniting that flame, but
following my own interests like
reading Harry Potter and watching TV
shows that I enjoyed.

62
00:26:46,270 --> 00:26:47,270
Yeah, yeah.

63
00:26:47,570 --> 00:27:39,490
So, what else was I going to ask? Did
you, what was it like learning some
of these languages when you compared
your idea of the language or the
culture before learning it too once
you had learnt it? Because I found
for Portuguese at least I remember
before I started learning the
language I thought, this language is
really ugly. It sounds really
strange. They make all these weird
noises like emphasize weird things
like I remember hearing the word
também, também and then being like
"oh, why do they do that?" , but then
after I'd gotten to basic fluency in
it I was like oh, my God I love this
language now, it's so emotive when
they speak and they put it's kind of
very singy, up and down and it was
just really funny once you started
understanding people are not hearing
the sounds, right? So, what was it
like with Korean, Chinese and
Japanese?

64
00:27:40,350 --> 00:28:17,170
So, for Korean I didn't actually
enter with any expectations or
preconceived notions. I had also, it
was completely new and apart from
Urdu and Arabic the first language I
learnt was a completely different
script. So, I think I struggle a bit
with some new sound so, that we don't
have in English or Afrikaans so,
Korean has both a... sound and
a...sound and they're romanized as...
and... respectively. So, that took me
about like two years to be able to
properly pronounce...

65
00:28:19,400 --> 00:29:02,290
So, that was tricky and I didn't
expect that, but I think Koreans set
the base for learning other Asian
cultures, so far there haven't been
any surprises. Hungarian was
extremely difficult in terms of
grammar, and I did it by... so many
good resources and I started by
learning from a friend on Skype and
he would just sort of saying random
sentences and I break them down, but
it was very hard to decipher the
grammar. So, I think maybe having
started on a different way like a lot
more basic approach would have been
better instead of just diving into
full sentences.

66
00:29:03,330 --> 00:29:08,846
Interesting and what about Basque?
Could you ever dive in and learn
that? I've heard that's one of the
most complicated ones with grammar.

67
00:29:10,811 --> 00:29:25,860
Really? I don't know much about
Basque. Well, personally, I'm not too
interested in languages from the
European region so, I'm going to have
to say no.

68
00:29:27,570 --> 00:29:46,608
Yeah. So, I guess that's about all I
wanted to harass about, but what
about pronunciation? Before we finish
up, how did you go about learning the
pronunciation of these different
languages? Was there a certain way in
which you practice them or when about
did you use the IPA? Did you do it
passively?

69
00:29:47,620 --> 00:30:33,610
Yeah, I actually didn't use the IPA
and I think that would have been
quite beneficial, but I was too lazy
to learn it. So, for me it was more
into listening and repeating. I've
always been good at copying accents
and you know for fun and in school
plays with my brothers, you know,
copying an Indian accent and and
Irish accent and a French accent, and
what really helps is if you're
learning Korean, for example, think
of how Korean people stereotypically
would speak English and not to make
fun of them, but then try and look at
the intonation that they place on
words, and when you're trying to
speak Korean, kind of put yourself in
the main frame of being that person.

70
00:30:33,860 --> 00:31:41,602
Another thing I like to do is to
visually, like, draw what the order
and sentence sounds like. So, for
example, Vietnamese has a different
intonation from English so.... means
"what do you need?" in Vietnamese,
whereas in English it would be like
"what you need?, whereas in
Vietnamese it goes up in the middle.
So, drawing like little graphs for
myself helps a lot. There is a
youtuber I like, his name is Bill, he
makes funny in Japanese video was
about language and one of his newest
videos he kind of makes a joke about
how people generally say Japanese is
a very flat language, but then when
you say the word flat in Japanese
that word itself is not flat at all,
and he kinda draws it out in this
video and this is like.... and people
are like.... No, no, no.... like your
voice goes up. Check out his videos,
it's pretty funny.

71
00:31:43,780 --> 00:31:45,166
I'll have to get a link from you and
chuck that in the transcript.

72
00:31:49,470 --> 00:32:01,800
For me it's more than copying, really
listening to the intonation and
saying it over and over. For me it's
a bit tedious to be watching a drama
or listening to talks and pausing it
and recording myself.

73
00:32:01,970 --> 00:32:02,609
Yeah.

74
00:32:02,610 --> 00:32:04,830
But that's also an option if you have
a lot of time.

75
00:32:05,890 --> 00:32:23,178
Also, last question. What advice
would you have for people who are
from Asia who have, you know, whether
they speak Vietnamese, Chinese,
Korean or Japanese now that you're
sort of into the culture and you
understand the languages, what would
you give them as a device for
learning English?

76
00:32:24,360 --> 00:33:08,001
I think there's a very big mental
block towards English speaking
specifically from Korean and Japanese
perspective. English is... There's so
much emphasis on trying to get fluent
in English and people are very easily
swayed by "learn English in 30 days"
or "5000 business English words" and
the English exams in Korea,
Japan..it's so difficult, It's this
ery complex piece of writing that you
need to try and fill in the missing
word or try and decipher what the
main point of that is. I think that's
such a bad approach to learning a
language, because you're never going
to speak like that.

77
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:31,620
So, my advice would be to to learn
from the people around you, like who
you interact with the most, not to
sit in front of your desk and try and
memorize like three months to a
language or 5,000 most common words.
I'd rather go out, have a drink with
some friends, and even if they're too
shy to speak, keep listening, because
the more you hear it, the easier it
will get.

78
00:33:32,130 --> 00:34:24,329
I think that's a good piece of
advice, because I think that's one of
those things that a lot of people end
up focusing too much on improving
areas of English they're not using,
right? Like if you learn all this
Business English, but you're not
actually using the words when you
speak English most of the time, which
might be an informal, casual
situations with your friends, what
the hell are you doing, right? You
need to be practicing that stuff and
I noticed that with Kel, my wife, and
Portuguese here at home because I'm
very, very, very, very, very fluent
at the stuff we talk about in the
house because we're always talking
about it and it's the most useful
stuff for me because we always talk
about it, but it's funny I noticed
that when she brings friends over, my
fluency dropped sometimes to
effectively zero depending on the
topics that they suddenly want to
talk about because it's not something
I have use for on a daily basis,
although it's it's fun to try and
navigate those conversations.

79
00:34:24,790 --> 00:34:29,789
Anyway. Lindie, thank you so much for
coming on the podcast! Where can
people find out more about you?

80
00:34:30,780 --> 00:34:45,200
Thanks a lot for having me! So, I
have a YouTube channel. You can just
type in Lindie Botes and you can also
find me on Instagram which is just
@lindiebotes or Twitter @lindiebee.

81
00:34:48,389 --> 00:35:08,340
No worries, I'll put all the links in
the transcript so, people can find
your stuff and I definitely recommend
checking out these videos if you want
some some motivation because I know
that learning those Southeast Asian
languages or the Asian languages is
very difficult for English speakers
which means, obviously, English is
very difficult for Japanese speakers.
Anyway, Lindie, thank you so much
again, I really appreciate your time.

82
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:10,240
Thank you for having me!