Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "The Best Advice for Learning a New Language" video.

  1. So... I'm brazilian, my native language is portuguese, but when I'm on foreign countries I'll usually ask people if they understand english... because it's just that much more likely that they'll have studied english at some point instead of portuguese or even spanish. xD I dunno how it goes for most other countries, but at least in Brazil the vast majority of people who went through high school will at least have been taught some english clases. Far from enough to be fluent, but perhaps enough to understand the basics. First time I went to Japan 12 years ago I simply didn't know enough japanese to speak anything. So "english, ok?" everywhere. My relatives had to do all the talking because some of them knew at least a bit of japanese. Lots of people understood english to some degree... speaking it well was a bit more difficult. xD This time (I just returned from Japan last weekend) I could at least go "eigo daijobu desu ka?" xD Not much of an improvement, but at least I tried speaking and understanding a bit more. Oh well. It's even worse because I am japanese descendant so there's an even bigger expectation that I should know the language (you look japanese but you don't speak japanese, what the heck?), but I'm actually 3rd generation brazilian. So I never learned it as a kid, my parents had very little japanese (pre-WWII japanese to make things worse) at home when they were kids, so almost nothing. I do have the intention of one day staying in Japan for longer though, so I have to find a way to learn it better somehow. I'm on a very basic level right now... lose words I can catch at times, but building sentences becomes a problem. And I can't read anything - katakana, hiragana, kanji... I've tried multiple times since I was a kid learning it, but it just never worked. I need something to force me to practice. That's basically the way I practiced (and still practice) english - music, games, books, and eventually the Internets. And I do have japanese magazines, some manga, among other stuff to force it, but you know... as you get older, things gets more complicated. :P
    1