Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Today I speak to Idausanes. He's an expert on accent reduction, pronunciation, and improving people's listening comprehension through ear training. He's from the US. And spent some time in Mexico during high school to learn Spanish. There he realized that he can learn the language much quicker than his contemporaries. He went on to live in China and Brazil, and now speaks several foreign languages.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: US.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: And now lives in Portugal. He's the founder of the Mimic Method, which aims to help language learners speak with good pronunciation and with less of an accent. idausa, welcome. I'm so glad that we can make this happen.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for having me.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: I'd like to start with the beginning. When people start speaking a foreign language, you say that that's where the first errors occur with pronunciation, and it should work a little bit different. How should speaking begin in order to have a good pronunciation?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Sure.
Well, I guess another way to look at the question is why is it important to learn pronunciation? And usually when people learn foreign languages, they think of pronunciation as like a side bonus, an extra skill that you may or may not have to kind of focus on. Whereas in our philosophy, it's one of the most important things to learn. And if you learn it right at the beginning, you're saving yourself lots of problems in the future. And here's what I mean. So if you're speaking English and you're learning all these words, but you learn the word I, you have want, but I'm pronouncing it e yo wanked. And then I go to somebody, I say, hey, e waint yo.
Right. So the idea here is that what are we doing right now in language? All I'm doing is smacking my tongue and lips together to make a bunch of sounds, and then you're hearing these sounds in your ear and interpreting a message out of it. So in order for us to have a clear communication, we need to have some sort of overlap and agreement on the sounds we're making. And the closer you have that agreement, two things the better your pronunciation is, the faster you can learn the language. So that's why when I learn a new language, I try to get the pronunciation close to perfect at the very beginning, and then therefore, after that, when people speak to me, I can pick up words faster, and other people can pick up words faster as well. But secondly, when you really get the accent down and you speak to people, you have a different effect on them. If someone comes to you in English and they speak like, how are you? Do you want to come get a coffee with me? Even if their grammar and their vocab is perfect, unless the person asshole, they're going to be like, oh, yeah, sure they talk. But if you come and you say, hey, do you want to get a coffee with me? And you say it in perfect colloquial accent. Even if you get a grammar thing off or a word off and you're like, hey, you want to get the coffee with me? And I'm like, kind of weird, but it's kind of cute, I suppose.
But again, I understand you. And then it feels a bit more natural, so there's a lot more to it. But that's the basic gist, is that we're trying to get people to recognize that pronunciation is the core of language. Hearing is the core of language. Therefore you should focus on that at the beginning the same way you see babies do. You look at a child on the street and they're kind of the reason why they go Google Gaga is they're practicing their pronunciation. They're basically taking one of our courses.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: And how do you start with that? Where do you begin?
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Well, like I said before, all we're doing is moving things around in the mouth. So the insight for me when I first came up with the philosophy and the technique, I grew up playing music my whole life. And then I went to Brazil and started learning new musical instruments. And what's the process of learning a musical instrument? Like violin? I played violin, then I learned drums and like little guitar when I was in Brazil. What is the process of learning is simply hearing something. Music is a system of sound, so hearing the notes and then making connection between your ears, and in this case a violin, your fingers, right? It's my right hand, so I'm holding my phone the other, but technically my left hand should be doing the fingers, but whatever, bear with me. But yeah, I'm making a connection between my ear and my fingers. And when you first do it, it's super awkward. Have you ever tried to learn guitar? You make like a bar chord and you're just like, this is impossible, I'm never going to learn this. But if you do it over and over again and you place your fingers in the right position and you repeat, repeat, eventually it becomes second nature to you. And it's the same thing for pronunciation. If you come to a language like German, for example, and you have that sound from Ish and like Bischin, and first time I approached that sound, I'm like, I can't do this, this is super awkward. But then I visualized it on the different diagrams I saw where the sound was, I'm like, oh, that's the same position as the ya sound in you. All I need to do is raise my tongue a little bit. Yeah, okay, there it is. And then I can get it. But then it's really awkward when I want to say it with like BIS, hin and Ish. So then I practice it the same way I practice chords and a guitar over and over again next to each other. And then eventually it becomes second nature. So every sound has a finite set of what we call elemental sounds. So German has 56, for example. Spanish has 39. You just have to go through the list, find the ones that you struggle to make, learn how to make them do it over and over again. And then it becomes second nature. And you're basically just unblocking your ears, unblocking your mouth to speak the language and receive the language naturally. So the number one takeaway I want people to get from that is when you first learn a language, it sounds like gibberish to you. And then when you try to make the sounds, you're like, I'm never going to get this. And then people conclude that like, oh, well, I'm not good at accent, I'm not good at pronunciation, I'm not talented at those things. That's why. And if you think about it, that's absurd because if I went to you and was like, this is an Acrobatics class. And I said, okay, let's do a backflip, try a backflip. You do it and you land in your face and you're like, oh, I must have the backflip gene, I'm just not talented at it. No, you understand that it takes a bunch of tries and the right kind of practice. So that's all it is, just a matter of knowing what the movement is and then doing the right type of practice until you get it locked into your brain.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: And why doesn't it happen naturally? It happens naturally for a first language and the way you described it with an instrument, it's also natural, like you practice. So why is there a different approach here necessary for the second language?
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Sure, it has to do with blank slate. So what happens is children, they have nothing. They have no language, they have no system of sound in their head. So when they enter a world and they start developing a language ability, all sounds are created equal. So if I go to my four year old nephew, for example, and I start saying Bisin, at first I never heard that before, but then after a while he'll very quickly pick it up. Now that goes to a 30 year old and I say, Biskin, he'll be like, Bishin. And what happens is excuse the street noise. What happens is the way the brain works in all context is it enters a world with an infinite number of stimuli. You got sounds, you got like car noises in the background. You have all these different things. So your brain has to decide like, okay, which of these sounds is relevant to me in my life? And if the sound is not relevant to you in your life, then your brain starts to reinforce the sounds that are such as the sound. So if you're an American, you grow up is very important because if I say like, oh man, I need to sit, versus I need to, then there's a big difference in meaning it might affect whether or not you get that.
And whereas when you say the, that doesn't mean anything. So when you hear someone say hit, then you're just going to hear that.
But then you go into Germany, and then those are two different sounds.
And then you have to make that distinction. But what happens is now you have like a magnet. Now you have that sound. It's been reinforced millions, billions of times in your life as an adult. So when a new sound comes, it just kind of gets sucked into it like a magnet. And then our job is to help people separate those sounds in their brain, in their ear, and eventually in their mouth. So a good example I said before, but if you're a Spanish speaker and you only have five vowels, and then you come to America to learn English, english. And then people say seat versus sit. And for you, all vowels that are close to e just sound like e. And they've done studies on people's brains, and you can actually kind of hear what people hear. You can see it, like on the screen, and they actually don't hear the difference at all at first. But if you play those sounds next to each other, seat, sit, heat, hit, then very quickly the brain is kind of like, okay, I get it. This is relevant to me now. Fine, I'll expend some resources to separate this in the brain, and then all of a sudden it becomes natural. So you just have to remember that basic principle of the brain that is lazy, and it doesn't want to do extra work unless it has to. So you just have to force it to get off its lazy brain ass and kind of make things happen.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: So there's a language like German that has lots of sounds, and then there are other languages that have less sounds. What happens if this probably is the case? There's probably a language that has all the sounds of another language. So by this theory, you would be able to speak that other language right from the beginning without an accent almost.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: You'll be able to speak it way faster than someone else. So, for example, let's say a Dutch person learning German.
There's a lot of overlap. I don't know Dutch, but from what I if I can think about in my head right now, as far as I can tell, 95% of the sounds in German also exist in Dutch. So a Dutch person learning German will have way less of an uphill battle to fight than a Japanese person learning German. However, there's basically sound on three levels in language. First there's sound like the individual sounds. There's 56 individual sounds in German. But then these sounds don't exist on their own. They combine to make syllables. And there's only so many ways you can combine sounds in German. So, for example, that sound I told you before, you can have like this hin, and you can have it next to all the different vowels, but you wouldn't have followed by A-P-I wouldn't be like, that doesn't happen in German, my name is SPASA. And then even if German person says it, they might have the sound, you might have the p sound, but you don't have those two next to each other, so it will be awkward for you. So you have to learn them in combination and syllables. And then finally those syllables combine on the level of sentence.
You might not have these syllables in a row in a sentence, there's intonation and rhythm. So it's not just a question of learning the sounds. That's just the first step. But yeah, if you are in a language that already has lots of sounds, you already have all the sounds of your target language, then you've saved yourself lots of trouble in the first step.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: So what's the remaining bit? So why is a Dutch person not able to speak without an accent German for the 95% that exists? I still don't understand what's the disconnect here?
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So like I said, right now all I'm doing is making a bunch of sounds with my mouth. But you can split that up into different categories. Imagine it's a matrix and all these words are coming at you like bullets and you're like, stop. And then you can kind of look and observe them. And there's a couple of things going on. Once again, there's the individual sounds, but then there's those sounds coming in different combinations and those combinations might hurt you.
Then there's also so I don't know.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: The combinations, is that it?
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Well, combinations is one, but there's also intonation. So maybe a Dutch person, when they're speaking their accent with an accent, it's less of an accent than a Japanese person, but you can still hear it. Maybe what you're hearing is they're doing a Dutch intonation on German sentences.
That's basically it. There's the intonation and rhythm. And if you mess that up so for example, Portuguese people, they have a specific intonation pattern when they speak and they're like, anyways, I love hearing I walk down the street and I just hear all these people be like and then it translates to their English. So I'll be like so even if they have really good perfect pronunciation of the sounds, I'd be like, yes. So I'm doing an interview right now on Splatco and that's what their accent show. Because as an American, our intonation, we more kind of like and now I'm doing my interview. It's a different thing. So my whole methodology is all these things can be taken and separated and studied individual. And if you do it all at once, it's too much to take on in a new language. But if you separate the intonation, you can study intonation. We have programs for that. If you want to look at just the individual sounds, you can study the sounds, just the syllables. Just the syllables. And when you see them all in pieces, it's kind of like taking a radio and opening it up and putting it all on a table and like, okay, I can see all the parts. Then when you can put it all back together and then it all kind of flows.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: So in this case, once you know all the sounds, what was German? 45, 56. 56. If you know all the 56 sounds, the next step is to look at combinations of sounds.
Does a Dutch person hear them?
[00:14:37] Speaker B: It's a similar phenomenon. If there is a combination that they've never even heard or thought of before, they might mishear it and they might hear something that's similar. So maybe they have the sound same way German does, but they don't put it in the same places. So they'll be like, did he just say this one? Because that's what I would have said.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Right?
[00:14:57] Speaker B: And then for example, okay, a good example, english and Spanish.
This car is going to come by and be super loud. 1 second cool.
Okay, so you know the Spanish r sound?
Ara EDI, uru ede. We actually have a sound or a very similar sound in English when we speak, if I say agadalada, that's the same sound. However, we only do it in that situation. We never put it at the beginning of a word, we never put it after a consonant. So if I said the word broma, broma, that BR never happens in English. So even though those two individual sounds, b and R do happen in English together, they don't. So what my brain does is it's being like he just said broma, there's some kind of sound in between the B and the O, but in English and what I've seen so far, the only sound that can be is a r. So you must have said broma. You see what I'm saying?
So that's how it works. Once again, the language doesn't exist in those 56 individual sounds. Those sounds all happen together. So that's what you're actually used to hearing. So you just have to once again slow it down, listen to it, look at the patterns and it sounds like a lot. And it is a lot if you're doing it on your own, which is what I did. Like entering the jungle of German and starting to kind of take it all apart. But after a while you see the patterns and if someone can just show you what those patterns are, then the process goes much faster.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: And how did you do it in Mexico? How did you come up with that? How did you start hearing it yourself and improved on it?
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Sure, so I didn't really start to really refine this process until I went to Mexico when I was 1718. And that's when I learned my 1st 2nd language of Spanish. And then I went to China and university and then I went to Brazil once I graduated university and Brazil when I was doing music. That's where I came up with all the technique. When I was in Mexico, I was taking Spanish in school like everybody else. You don't want to be that guy in class. He was like, who wants to read? And you're like, Los tacos son mui importantes. And you just want to be like, yeah, los tacos sony importante, whatever, and just say like everybody else.
But then I got to like, tacos puerto and then get in my then you know, people are speaking and ah, like I sound stupid. Like in the context of America, I would sound stupid if I spoke with a really good Spanish accent. But now that I'm in Mexico, I sound stupid if I speak with American accent. So let me just try to sound like these guys. And I tried it and at first it was really hard. I'm like, I don't know what they're doing, but I just got obsessive with it and just really paying attention to what people were doing with their mouth and how they were doing things. And then I was able to get there, but not all the way. I was probably like 80%, 85%, which is enough to learn faster than everybody else. So I was paying attention to the right things. It wasn't until later that I started to teach myself phonetics and how the mouth works on the physical level that I went to Colombia and started bringing my Spanish back up. And then I learned even faster because I was even more refined and everything. So yeah, that's basically the process. I knew intuitively from that experience that the more I focus on pronunciation, the faster I would learn and the better kind of response I would get from native speakers. But I didn't quite know why other people were doing it. So I got to China and I'm like, man, why isn't anyone trying to get these tones right? And then I realized for a lot of people, it's harder to do that. It's harder for them to really hear the difference. People have different starting levels with their ear. Because I train music so much, I spend a lot of time listening to sound. So I had a bit of an advantage because of all those 10,000 hours I spent with sound. But once anyone else can do it, all they have to do is just pay attention to the right thing. So I was working with my friends in China and trying to figure out ways to help them hear tones better and that kind of stuff. And then they started to have results as well. So it was a long kind of process of testing things out. And then one day I realized, like, this is a core problem.
I can make a system to help people do that. But that wasn't until I was 22 in Brazil.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: So I got a few questions on that or statements the first one is and I also made that experience, which is if you're surrounded by other people that speak your native language and they learn the same language, then you hear their accent and you think it's normal, and you start to mirror their accent as well. And I also noticed that when I'm surrounded I lived in the US. For a couple of years, and now I'm mostly surrounded with non native English speakers, and I start to notice how my accents start shifting away from the standard American English more towards accentuated English. So I think that's really important to not surround yourself with non native speakers too much and hearing all their bad pronunciation.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's good to hear it, and then you'd be like, oh, I don't want to sound like that guy. It's a good reminder to go and check it out once in a while. But yeah, we're still essentially like children, and we naturally mirror, like you said, or mimic what other people do. And some of us are a lot more sensitive to the environment than others. And maybe, you know, people like I've had previous girlfriends who just they're just super sensitive to the environment. So you can just make your face like this, and they'll naturally make their face like that, too. And some people just blend in naturally. So if you're that person, for sure, you need to put yourself around the group of people you want to sound like, and it'll naturally start coming out of you.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And the second one is you mentioned music. That because you played a musical instrument and you listened to it really closely. And I noticed that musicians tend to have the better accent. And I also talked to Gabriel Weiner about this, and he's also a musician, and he's also pretty good with accents. And another thing I noticed is also people that grow up with more than one language, and I noticed it around people around that have more than one native language, they usually tend to have a better accent. And I guess that's because of the continuum that you were talking about, like, you have a bigger pool of sounds.
I noticed that with myself as well. I tend to have an easier time with accents, and I grew up bilingual as well. So is there any other things that make you more sensitive to those different sounds? Like being a musician, growing up with several languages, are there any others that you could think of?
[00:22:18] Speaker B: No, because it's all the core thing, which is exposure to sound.
Not just sound, sound systems. So music and language are the two systems of sound in our society, and they overlap. So, for example, the core of both music and language is rhythm.
When I'm speaking, there's this that kind of rhythmic cadence is more important in music, but it's also the foundation of speaking. So if you're a drummer or you train percussion, you go deep into rhythm, it's going to translate into your learning a second language. Or if you're training violin or guitar or voice or singing, and you're learning how to get a perfect note.
Unless you live in a musical, which I wish I did, you know, you're not going to need to know how to like, hello, this is a good and like, you're not gonna need those notes. However, when you come to, like I said, Portugal, and they're doing a different intonation, you've now trained yourself to listen to intonation a bit more. They actually saw an interesting research report on people hearing Chinese tones. Once again, they can actually kind of scan what they call your cochlea and see what you're hearing. And they found that people who were musically trained so people who've done musical training for ten years, they can hear Chinese tones a little better than people who are not musically trained. And they would have the tone mapped out. And they'd have three charts.
Chinese person, which is like, basically they could perfectly hear it because they're Chinese.
And then a musically trained American, and it was like rough, but it was kind of like the same shape. And then a non musically trained American. It was just like just like nothing. So you have a little bit of an advantage. And like you said, if you're around my mom is from Nigeria and she speaks several languages, so I'd hear her on the phone. I also used to kind of make fun of her accent all the time just because I thought it was really cool.
Now AI d I know, go do this dingo. And I would do that stuff as well. So that kind of practice with the sounds also benefited me coming in. But yeah, it's just a foundational.
Like I said, language is a complex thing, but there's just a couple of things put into it, intonation rhythm, phonemes, elemental sounds. And if you play with those a lot in any context, then the more hours you spend playing with it, the more advantage you have. But if you don't have parents from a different country and you've only spoken English, and you've never picked up a musical instrument, you've never sung before, it doesn't mean you don't have anything. It's just you need to start practicing. And if you wanted to learn pronunciation in French, for example, you're not going to go buy a piano and drum set and train that to master for ten years and then take your first French lesson. The more direct path is just to get those 39 French sounds and start to learn them. And then you're saving yourself lots of time. So it's not to say that you need these things, it's just they coincidentally kind of help people out.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: But would it help to also pick up an instrument at the same time while learning a.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Depends? I mean, for example, when I learned Portuguese, I went to Brazil specifically to learn Brazilian music because I love it. So I also bought Brazilian instruments and I was learning Brazilian songs. Part of our method is to learn songs because when you have a song, you can sing it over and over again and practice. So I would try to learn the songs with this little guitar called a kabakinu at the same time, but that was more just for fun for me. So it's a positive in that if that's something you're super interested in, then that level of interest and motivation is huge. We all know that motivation is the biggest thing in language learning because it's really hard. You need something to push you up that hill. But from a pure kind of practical point, if you wanted to learn once again, French and you try to learn guitar at the same time, I always tell people doing two things at the same time is never as fast as doing one thing and focusing on it and then doing the next thing. So I wouldn't recommend someone just for the sake of learning a language to go get an instrument and learn that at the same time. But if you really want to learn the instrument and it ties into your motivation, then sure, knock yourself out.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: And then that would help, that would actively help you with your accent.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Yeah, and another thing, for example, is I will recommend people ask me a lot. They're getting like our pronunciation programs of like, oh, I'm learning French, but I'm considering Portuguese as well. And I'll recommend both because ultimately you're using the same mouth to speak these languages. So, for example, if you're learning the nasal vowels in French, you're like Lanstone and you're learning these sounds and the concept is kind of strange to you. But then you go over to the Portuguese thing and you see what the Portuguese sounds are, and there's like the nasal vowels there and you're like, okay, these are different sounds. But it's a similar concept. Seeing the concept from different angles can help you understand the concept more, so it would apply for music as well. So if you're trying to learn the rhythm and intonation of French and you're starting to be like, okay, I can hear how all that kind of stuff. And then you're getting on your guitar and you're like and you're like, oh yeah, it's kind of similar to this. Seeing those kind of connections helps people make a thing.
But once again, I wouldn't specifically recommend that to people unless they're interested because it takes time. Ultimately, it's all about how you're going to use your time. And it takes a lot of time to learn a musical instrument and a lot of time to learn a language. So if you're a busy person and you choose the one that's most important to you and focus on that.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Okay. And you mentioned cadence, and I think I'm thinking about two Italians that I. Know, that worked in Gelateria, not far away from my home. And they were speaking perfect German, but you could hear that they're Italian from the first word because of their sing sang.
I can't even copy it, but because of the melody, it was so clear that they were Italians. And how do you get that away? Even if your pronunciation is good and you know how to pronounce the sounds, how do you deal with that thing? Because I think you mentioned that several times.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah, the intonation, it's a separate thing to practice.
I guess. The guys are like, hello.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Exactly like this.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: There's an intonation in Italian, and you can actually map it out. It's like dad and going up and down and up and down. Whereas in German, it's much more like an ice.
It's a different intonation. So the way you train it is just focusing on it. And that's it. It's just focusing on it. So we do a bunch of technical stuff to kind of separate the intonation out. So if I say a sentence, like if I was speaking like, super fake American accent, and I'm like, hey, I really like your shirt, and I can take that sentence and I can remove the elemental sounds, all the pronunciation parts, and only leave the intonation. So I'm like, hey, I really like your shirt.
And then if you get someone just to practice that, you say, okay, try to sound just like me.
And if you just kind of hum in and then you slow it down and you can hear, you're like, oh, yeah, it's like a do.
And it's kind of like learning something on a piano. And when you slow it down, focus on it, and then you mimic it and you get it perfect. Then you're like, okay, I got that sentence. But there's millions of sentences, right? But then you realize, like, oh, wait. And then you hear that fake American person at the store, and they're like the next thing they say is like, wow, Germany, that sounds really cool. And you're like, Wait a minute. That's the same intonation.
There's actually not that many different intonations in any language. So if you just kind of focus on them and you see the patterns, then eventually, like I said to you, I'm here in Portugal, and everywhere I go, people are like, that's their intonation. And yeah, it's just a question of listening to it closely and then mimicking it. What intonation is, is you have what's called your glottis, these two folds of mucusy membrane at the top of your windpipe that if you go like this and you hold your breath with your mouth open, those two things are closing. But when you speak your voicing, they kind of open up, and then they vibrate and they chop the air up into vibration that makes your voice. And when you have a higher pitch, they're vibrating faster, and a lower pitch, they're vibrating slower.
So that's why you're doing singing. That's all you're doing, speaking. You're just trying to match the vibration, match the pitch, the frequency. So we do a lot of this in our Chinese program because it's a lot more important in Chinese that you get the intonation right? Otherwise people won't understand you. And yeah, it's basically just another aspect like we mentioned earlier, in German or the in Spanish, these are just individual components that might be new to you. It's just that when people learn these things, they learn it all at once. They never take the time to focus on these things. So if you just separate the part if I go to your Italian friends and they already have the German words and the grammar, if I take that Italian intonation, show it to hey Marco, you're always doing but you want to be more like and then train him, eventually he'll get it.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Okay.
Obviously you have to deconstruct and you have to listen to sounds very closely. Do you have any other advice on how I can improve my pronunciation and my listening skills just in a normal day to day situation?
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I always tell people, always be mimicking, always be mimicking. And this is, I think, actually the main reason why I picked up languages faster when I was younger.
I had the musical advantage, sure, but it was also just because I really have always been fascinated by the way people sound when they talk. I would always make fun of my friends and the way they and so I just had a habit of always mimicking. So I'd be walking down the streets of Mexico, and I'd hear a conversation walking by, and I'm like, no.
And then I'd be like and I would just kind of, like, mimic it because it just sounded cool to me. And so when you're walking down the street, especially if you're in a neighborhood or the country that speaks that language, don't miss an opportunity to mimic. And mimicking doesn't mean getting it perfect. It just means trying to copy something. So, for example, if intonation is something you want to focus on, don't focus on the words. Don't focus on the elemental sounds or the phonemes. Focus on the intonations. Walk by and try to do what they do. And each time you do that, you're getting one more minute of practice, and you just need to get as many minutes as practice as possible. So if you make that a habit, people will think you're crazy. Sometimes you'll be on a train. It's like, I'm just kind of mimicking. I'm listening to the radio or music or whatever in the language. I'm like mimicking it. I'm like and just appreciating the musicality of language. And I think most people get so caught up in what's it mean? What's that mean? What's that grammar structure that they don't hear the musicality anymore. And I hear someone speak in a foreign language I don't know. I don't need to know what it means to appreciate it. I can just hear the sound of him, like, oh, that's a cool sound. And so when you start to focus your energy more on the sounds, you'll find that the language becomes way more interesting.
It starts to become more intuitive.
I think it's natural that we feel that because once again, when we were children, we're in the world, we didn't really know what was going on. Like, why is everyone making all these sounds? It's kind of annoying. Well, whatever. It's kind of cool. And you're like Gaga google.
You start to mimic it, and then one day you're like, oh, snap.
That's how you say cookie. If I want a cookie, I just say cookie. And then that's the natural progression for learning a language. So that's my main piece of advice. Always be mimicking and get in touch with the musicality of the language.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Okay, so we've been speaking for a while, and I know my accent is not perfect. Is there anything you could pick up from my accent, like, which sounds I mispronounce or any live feedback you have for me?
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Sure.
You just said the word feedback, right? And one of the features of German is anyone who's learning German, this is a pro tip for you as well.
No one speaks the language the way it's written, right? So, for example, in German, you would say the word to have it's written haben. Right.
But you would pronounce it faster. Haben habe. And what's going on is, remember that I told you about the voice box, the vocal folds? What Germans do is they close them and then instead of saying the B or if I say so for feedback. So instead of saying the D in feedback, you'll close that thing and say feedback, right? And we do that in English as well, but we do it differently. So say the word feedback again.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Feedback.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So you're doing feet closing it and then back. And you're not articulating the D. And you shouldn't say feed back, but when I say it with my American accent, I'm tapping my tongue very quickly at this part. I say feedback. Say feedback. That little there.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Feedback.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So that sounds a little bit better. So when you say feed to back, try one time.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Feedback. Feedback.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: Exactly. So now it's a little bit more English, not just one word. What you want to look for is anytime you have A-D-A letter D, a letter T, a letter B, or letter P, any hard consonant at the end of a syllable, you typically eat it and you'll say so. My ex girlfriend was German, so I always made fun of her for this. But for example, the word chicken american would pronounce the K say chicken, but she let, oh, I want to get some.
That's the same concept. You're closing the thing because that's how you would do it because, for example, in German, if I say like know, I don't say the K danken, but if I was an American, I'm like danken, then all of a sudden I sound, you know, American. So the things you do in your language are always the reason why you.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Do it in the foreign language.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: So if I was going to give you feedback, I'd say try to pay attention to consonants at the end of syllables and then don't swallow them. You don't have to say them clearly because then you sound weird. You're like, give me more feedback. Because we also do the feedback, but we do make the sounds more than Germans do.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Awesome. So now let's talk about your program mimic method. How does it work?
How does the course work?
[00:38:58] Speaker B: Sure. So we have basically two types of programs. We're launching a course soon that's just our entry level thing and it's called the Elemental Sounds Masterclass. So for example, we have the 39 elemental sounds of Spanish, 38 elemental sounds of French. On our site we have three resources where you can see all these sounds, but then the course takes you through each sound in detail. And it's basically video lectures of me going through each sound like this is how you pronounce the in Spanish or this is how you pronounce the in French, et cetera, et cetera. And I just go through each sound and compare them and give you lots of audio and video and stuff to help you get it. So that's step one, being able to hear and pronounce all the 38 sounds of French, all the 39 sounds of Spanish. Then like we said earlier, your next step is putting them into combination. And we have a couple of other resources included for that. But the main more premium service we give is a feedback service.
Feedback, yeah. There you go.
So we have a course like Flow Spanish where we take songs and we break them down syllable by syllable and then show you videos of the mouth making those syllables. So you see the combinations and then you practice in the kind of musical process, putting those sounds together. And the final product is you have people kind of singing and even rapping Spanish songs or French songs with a perfect accent.
So you do this process of building it up bit by bit. And what happens is now you can sing this song. You're like, okay, what's the point of that? Then you go off into the world of Spanish or French and all of a sudden you hear everything. So the most common thing we get from people is I've been studying the language for years, but I can't understand native speakers when they speak fast. I know the words on paper. I'm just not able to hear them in conversation. All of a sudden you learn like this song, this rap song, and you come back and also whoa, now I can hear all the words. What happened? You've now trained your ear to listen to things fast, to hear those elemental sounds fast in combination. Now that's that program, we're making other products as well to help you focus on the combination of sounds. But the key thing and why we charge a premium for it is we give you feedback. So you learn these things and you learn these sounds and you record yourself. You send a recording to us and we have a team of experts who listen to you saying the word feedback. And then they give you the feedback and they say, oh, you're swallowing the sound. Or we're a lot more specific about it. You learn these specific things in our master class and then we can give you more clear advice. But it will be very clear to be like, hey, you're saying seat instead of sit. You need to lower your tongue down a little bit the way we show you in this chart. Try saying these phrases seat, sit ten times and then come back and do it again. Okay? So it's very specific. Then you come back, you redo the recording, and now you get it. And we're like, good job. Then you move on. So through that process of having someone, an expert, give you feedback over and over again, you're kind of guided more quickly through that because it's really tricky when you're learning a language. You're like, Am I getting this right? Because if you can't hear it, you can't hear it. So it's kind of a catch 22. You don't know what you're doing, right? So you kind of need an external thing to help you.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
And deconstructing a song in general is a pretty good idea, right?
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I tell people in general, if you struggle with understanding comprehension, one of the best activities, the best ways to spend your practice time, it can be songs or it can be normal speech. Just songs are more fun. That's why we do that. But we can get like a YouTube video of the news, download the audio and then transcribe it. So you slow it down and then transcribe it into the elemental sounds. And you can do this. If you go to our site, you can get the free list of the elemental sounds of Spanish, for example, then go to YouTube, go to Easy Spanish and they're talking to people in the street. And then put it on 0.5 speed so it's very slow. And then say like, okay, what is each syllable they're making? And when you do that and you're like, oh, I'm pretty sure they're saying the words, but actually they're mixing it together to Kier Sablad. You start to see how the words blend together.
You'll see how oh, he's dropping. He's not saying ha, Ben. He's saying HAB. That's how I discovered that because I'm trying to speak German, I'm like, Man, I can't do this. Then when I started listening closely, I'm like, they're cheating. They're not saying those sounds. You never know until you listen closely. So that process of listening and transcribing either music or speech into the elemental sounds is one of the most effective ways to unblock your ear so that the sounds in the natural environment can come in more freely.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Awesome. So where can people find out more about Mimic Method and about you?
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, go to Mimickmethod.com mimicmethod.com. And that's our website. We got a blog you can check out and yeah, you can go on there and find the free resources. The main one we recommend people get is the elemental sound checklist, or it's a PDF that shows you all the sounds of the language with like ten example words or whatever per word. And just going through that for people who study the language for years is an eye opening. Like, oh my God, I never realized these are two different sounds. No one teaches this stuff in normal programs. You just kind of be like, hey, do I say that right? Yeah, good enough. Just getting those verbs and leave me alone. So that's why I recommend people do check out our site and send us an email if you have any questions.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: Awesome, thanks so much. Any final words? Anything we missed?
[00:45:26] Speaker B: Yeah, my final piece I'm very passionate about this is I always tell people I actually don't care about language. I don't care about language.
It's interesting.
I know a lot about language and the grammar and the rules and the history of that kind of stuff. It's intellectually interesting. But the reason why I speak German or Spanish or French and Portuguese and Chinese, all these languages is not about the language, it's about the people. And language is just a tool for connecting with people. I learned German two years ago because I met this German girl and we started hitting off and then I'm like, hey girl, I'm going to learn your language because I want to know you. I want to connect with you on a deeper level when I know that even though you speak very good English, I'm not going to truly understand you unless I learn your thing. And then it's a really cool transition when you go to any place in the world and they're speaking something, you have no idea what they're saying, and then over time, you can connect with them deeper because you know their language. I had that first time in Mexico and it changed my you know, I got to Mexico, I'm like, what are these guys saying? I hate them all. They're all a bunch of aliens, blah, blah. And then by the end of it, I'm like, oh wow, like, this guy actually was really funny and this guy's really cool. And now we're connected. So the reason why I'm emphasizing that is because I see language learners and they get so stuck in the language, and they're like, oh, what's the case in German? And do you know what the subjunctive tense is in Spanish? Well, I've been trying to get a subjunctive tense, right? And I'm like, do you have any friends? Speak Spanish? No. What's the point? Right? So the whole point is go out there and connect and focus on connection first, and then all the grammar, all the vocab, even all the pronunciation will start to follow. But focus on the people, and that's what matters most.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I can totally second that. That's like, my main motivation to learn the languages is to be able to connect to the people.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Idaosa.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. And yeah, take it easy.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: See ya.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Avidazin, avida.
All right.
