Transcription
What's up, grinders? Welcome back to the channel and welcome to the 1,50 hour Dreaming Spanish update. I'm not so uh excited today to talk because my throat's a little bit sore and I'm a bit exhausted because this has been an extremely exhausting 50 hours.
So, for those who don't know, I have a series of videos on this channel that are dating back over a year where I have been learning Spanish using the service called Dreaming Spanish, which implements a version of the ALG methodology to learn a language, the automatic language growth methodology. And this last 50 hours has been an absolute exhausting cluster [ __ ] Okay.
So, so why has it been that? Well, if you guys have been watching the series for long enough, you know that for the first year or more of this series, I've just been watching content, right? Every single day, two to three hours, I built up a habit. I had my times. I'd sit down, I'd do content. I knew how much content I'd have to have at certain times of the day in order to be on track. And I I kind of fell into a rhythm.
Then at 1,000 hours, I was excited for this, but at 1,000 hours, everything changes. Now I need to start speaking and I need to start reading. I had to suddenly break that habit that I've been doing for so long now. And it literally caused me to crash out for a week trying to like, you know, structure everything because I'm a very very busy guy as you know.
And if you have a look at the uh Dreaming Spanish website right here, you can see I'm 149 hours. Don't worry, by the time this video is out, that will be 150 hours cuz I literally have a lesson in a couple hours on Worlds Across. that's a tutoring service that is helping me by sponsoring um this series in a way. They've given me basically free access to their entire service and also they randomly emailed me and said, "Oh, by the way, we've got an affiliate program. You you can also like if someone joins from you, you can make some money." I was like, "Okay, didn't know about that, but cool." So, there's a link for my affiliate thing down in the description as well.
Anyway, as you can see right here, I crashed the hell out. I was barely able to maintain two hours a day because suddenly trying to speak just drained me. Like it sucked the life out of me. It's so much more exhausting than sitting there and watching content. Then reading on top also faking exhausting, especially when you don't know if you're reading right. So I did uh less reading, a lot more speaking to try and make up for it. And it it's just been a complete mess on my time this entire time. And I even changed my goal from 3 hours down to 2 hours to kind of adjust to this new reality. Maybe I'll be back up to 3 hours in the future, but it's hard when you're trying to organize all of these like tutoring sessions and stuff in order to actually do speaking.
Now, if we have a look at the hours I've spent, I've practically done nothing on the actual Dreaming Spanish website at this point. Like in the last 50 hours, like literally everything has been off platform. I've done either a bunch of tutoring um or a bunch of cross talk. In fact, a lot of cross talk or some reading and maybe like 30 minutes in total of actual dreaming Spanish. Like if you have a look here, okay, 47 hours of talking. This includes both cross talk and actual speaking practice. 6 hours of reading. I put reading under listening to podcast because they they literally don't have a reading tracking session section. Like why? But anyway, I put it under there. So, as you can see, I did 2 hours 80 minutes across talk, one hour of speaking on worlds across the tutoring service. I watched an hour of a gaming video. Uh 2 hours of cross talk again. Uh an hour gaming video, an hour speaking, an hour cross talk, an hour cross talk, an hour cross talks, 9 minutes of YouTube, you know, an hour watching gaming.
I would say the vast majority of my time has gone to cross talk, but it's not true cross talk. It's more like 80% English, 20% Spanish, and I'm trying to slowly move from speaking mainly English to mainly Spanish. But there's a big problem, okay? And we're going to talk about that now when we talk about Worlds Across because that's where I've been doing all of my tutoring practice.
If we have a look right here, I go show all my past lessons. As you can see, I've gone through a bunch of different teachers and I have been learning to speak using the ALG way of thinking. Basically, what you're meant to do is just sit down and speak. Just try speak. Try have a conversation. Yeah, it'll be clunky. It will be bad. you know, but like just the more you try, the more you'll suddenly be able to pull out and the more you'll be able to use and over time eventually you'll just be boom speaking fluent Spanish. Okay, that's the idea. There's no there's no grammar lessons in that. You're not meant to do grammar lessons. There's no word lookup still. You're still not meant to do any of that. You're just meant to speak.
I went on a massive rage in my discord like two days ago and then privately with a bunch of my contacts about how this is just not working because I will sit down in a 30 minute to an hourong lesson. This has got nothing to do with the teachers. This is the methodology. The teachers on Worlds Across are [ __ ] fantastic. They're they're they're completely on point. Okay, this is all to do with the methodology. So I sit down and they're like, "Oh, so how was your day?" I I don't know how to respond to that. Like how would I say it was good? And they'll be like and I'll be like oh and they'll be like good. So what do you do as a job? And I'll be like I don't know. I don't know how to say that. How do I say I work as a programmer? And they'll be like oh uh you know programmer. Like I still can't even remember. Okay. And I'll be like okay. And then I'll like repeat after them. And that's it. It's just that over and over and over again. Just completely scattered trying to have a conversation, trying to pull out words that literally just don't come out. It's like I have a brain for understanding Spanish and then absolutely no brain for speaking it.
So, how have I progressed? How have I am I even progress? Can I speak? Well, I have made some progression and you'll see this at the end of this video. If you stick around, you'll see me try to speak in Spanish. Okay? But basically, I feel like I literally do not know this language at all. And I am only 8 hours into learning this language when it comes to speaking because it's not like anything's naturally coming out. And my first couple of hours of doing this made me instantly understand why there's so many posts of people saying, "I've reached 1,000 hours, 1,500 hours. I tried speaking. I don't feel ready yet. I'm going to go back into a silent period for 500 hours. Obviously, I need more input because input is not transitioning into speaking ability. It that's there's nothing happening there. Okay.
Now, what I will say that input has helped with is recognizing when things sound right and wrong. Recognizing words when I see them written and when someone speaks to me. And that helps me that lowers the the mental load a little bit because I I don't have to learn to both recognize and speak a word at once. I just need to learn to speak it. So it it lowers the mental load a little bit. But the frustration from the fact that I am unable to say anything after a thousand hours just obliterates any of that like you know mental load reduction that I may have got from it. like I would my personal feeling is I would would have preferred to have just started speaking straight from the beginning because like I feel like this is exactly how I would have started anyway.
And on top of that due to the way ALG works it has messed with me in a lot of ways. A good example is I I was in a lesson okay and I wanted to say um you have now I was tripping up. I was like is it to is it Voss? I don't know like is is Voss like for like being formal? Is it is to for being formal? I don't know. Like I'll just throw one out there. And I said to And then I I threw out the word that I thought for um to have and I was like to tennis and they'll they corrected me or they said something along the lines of oh tuli and I was like oh yeah to tennis. It's not tennis. I thought it was tess. Like I swear to God I've heard that so many times. Whatever. Clearly I'm wrong. Okay. So I went with that and then I went with another teacher. Okay. And still I'd be like, is it to boss boss? I don't know. So I went boss tennis and they they were like no it's like boss tennis. And I was like what is going on here? Like I swear to God you guys are like is this and it I was like so what's the difference? Like I just couldn't handle him. What's the difference? Why why is it boss? Why is it tool and why are we swapping these? And he was like well you're you're trying to speak like an Argentinian, right? And I was like yeah. And he's like, "Well, they say tennis. Everyone else says tiennis cuz like you know second person everything." And I was like, "Oh, wait. Oh god. So this is a regional difference. Okay, now I understand." And I was kind of like cluing in on that because like I've watched so much Martin like Spanish Boost Gaming Martin's content that I knew it was tennis but everyone was saying tiennis with me until like I picked up on that one thing and then the teacher just like exposed it to me. Now is that ALG? No, he should never have said that. That's not his fault. I literally asked him. Okay. Therefore, I probably failed at the ALG challenge because now I know why rather than just going automatically with one option, just sticking to my guns and hoping for the best.
Uh, but like that that was one instance. Okay. There's been other instances where like um like I'll notice word differences like uh be versus um tommo, you know, both being drink. And then I noticed that one after that and then I was like like I figured out that Tommo must be Argentinian speakers. Like I don't know if that's true but like that's what I've always heard you know um Martin from Spanish Boost Gaming using. So it's like it has actually made things more difficult in a lot of ways just by not asking these grammatical questions.
Now what has saved me is the reading. Reading has been a lifesaver even though I've done a lot less of it. Like if you look here I've only done six hours you know versus what was it um 8.5 hours of speaking. It saved me early on because within the first 2 hours of reading, I was able to start to recognize, oh, now I see how the grammar of this language works. And I know I'm not meant to be doing this under ALG. You know, they don't you're not meant to do that. You're just meant to feel what feels right. But nothing feels right at this point. So, I'm just being honest. Okay.
So, I was looking at the written form of the language and I was like, "Oh, okay. I'm starting to see some structure here." Okay. So, obviously, this is a language that conjugates uh differently. Um, the infinitive stays the same for verbs. However, it conjugates differently if it's the first person, present tense, second person, present, third. Uh, you know, whether it's plural or singular. Like, I can't help that. This is not me sitting there actively trying to work this out. This is my brain just recognizing grammatical forms as it sees them written down. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I see. Obviously, there's some irreg irregularities here. Like, I can see that clear as day, but there's definitely some patterns. And I I've figured out pretty quick that there seems to be two maybe three different patterns that underpin pretty much every single verb. Okay. Now, I can recognize present tense verbs past tense less so except in like the first person. Uh, but that's literally only happened within like the last hour.
Now, this has made my life hell when trying to speak because every time I'd say a verb, the teacher would they'd repeat and they just like say the correct version. I would be like, "Why? Why is it like that? Why? Why? Okay, fine. I'll just repeat after you. So, after a while, I'll be like, "Oh, I'm starting to notice pattern." Then they'll say something different that breaks the pattern. I'm like, and like I just get frustrated, like extremely frustrated that I don't understand the grammar. Okay? And literally what's happening is I'm just inadvertently or accidentally being told the grammar. So, I'm purposely trying to avoid it doing the ALG method, but it's literally impossible to avoid if you understand basic grammatical concepts of languages. Okay? So, I'm probably not going to be a very good example of ALG moving forward because clearly I know about language. And funnily enough, I remember reading that um the person who founded ALG used this as a claim for why he failed at learning Chinese is because he can't help but pass the language as he sees and hears it because he is a linguist and therefore he's unable to learn Chinese via ALG. So basically, if you are a person who understands grammar, you're screwed. Don't use ALG because you will recognize it when it starts popping up. That's pretty much how it is.
So I've been doing that. I've been doing a [ __ ] ton of cross talk. Like, check out all these member series I've got going on down here, bro. So many good member series. I'm actually loving the cross talk. Cross talk's been the thing that saved me at this point. I' I'm having a ball of a time. And it's good to be able to just speak English and then when I do have a a a desire to speak some Spanish, I just kind of say things and it kind of comes out. And, you know, I can hear them say, I can repeat. And with gaming, there's lots of repetition. So you get that kind of inbuilt natural SRS as opposed to, you know, speaking with a tutor or a teacher who, you know, they're they're just trying to have a conversation with you. There's none of that like natural SRS happening there. So the the cross talk has saved me. The reading has saved me. The speaking lessons have been a heartache, but I'm slowly getting through it. I am slowly making progress.
And I promised you guys at the beginning of this video that we try to do some speaking. Most of the words and structures I know are not something I'm going to be you be able to utilize right now because they're they're related to gaming. Like they're literally bespoke individual words or structures in gaming. Okay. But I I'll try something. So um espanol. Um no m I don't know if that's correct or if that's Espano coming through. Um okay I'll I'll talk a little bit about my family I guess. Um, tango mu. Uh, mu is China. Uh, uh, unato s roa. Unato s naranga. Negro Ben and Espanolas muchas. much caused hugi conigos. Miss Amigos, Martin E. Chem. Um, Meusta Huggos, Miss Amigos, Miss Amigos, Shareo. Shareo. A O G S grande Mera. [laughter] Chisto. Chisto. Uh. No. No. Okay. Yeah, I don't know what else to say. Um, if it looks like I'm actually thinking at the moment and trying to put together grammar and stuff, I'm not. It's just the words are like they're like really far away and it's like trying to reach them. I like I have to really concentrate on it for a bit. So it's like um uh capab uh espiranto e uh el lina lina. I don't know. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't know, guys. That's um at least it's better than my last attempt. [laughter] Okay.
Uh that's pretty much it. I was going to do like, you know, me trying to translate some content, but I don't think it's really necessary at this point. I think at this point, we're we're more interested in my speaking progression. Maybe in the next video. If you if you guys want to constantly see me try to translate stuff, let me know down in the comments section below. or if there's anything interesting or you got specific questions you want to ask, uh the drop them down in the comment section below. And of course, if you support me and what I'm doing with this series, uh obviously sub to the channel and become a member, that also helps a ton because, well, then I can, you know, I have an excuse to do more time. I, you know, I' I've got a valid excuse because I've got some monies coming in. That's pretty much it. I'm actually exhausted. My throat's sore. I'm sorry if this is not the most energetic video in the world. I'll see you all next video. And if you're not there morar. Can you say that? two boss.