Speaker A
A question I get asked all the time is, Luca, how can you memorize so many words across so many languages?
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And my simple answer is, I build a word spider web.
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And in this video, I'm going to give you the tools to create it, to maintain it, and to make it stronger.
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If I say the word game, what is the very first thing that comes to your mind?
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Probably something associated with playing, playing games.
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But the reality is that game has many other meanings, for example, you can say, I was hunting game, meaning I was hunting wild animals, or are you game, like, are you down, do you want to do something?
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So, this goes to show that many words have multiple meanings and functions according to their context.
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And what gives it meaning, context, that is, surrounding words.
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So, whenever you find a word that you don't know in a foreign language, always make sure that you either take the sentence in which that word is embedded and you copy it somewhere on your notebook, for example.
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Or you create your own sentence in which you embed that word.
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A very common mistake is, for example, to take all these words that you don't know from a text and simply put it on a list.
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But isolated words are not as strong as words in context, embedded in sentences.
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Always remember that as a first rule.
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A simple yet very effective way to memorize and learn new words is to listen while reading.
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Think about it for a second, you can, for example, read a text as a beginner material.
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Or you can have podcasts with scripts or movies with subtitles.
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The most important thing is you listen while reading or reading while listening.
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If you just listen to the language without subtitles or a script, you will not see the written words, you will probably not understand if you don't have a good level.
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On the other hand, if you just read a text, you will not see and hear how the language is spoken.
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So you will miss out on the spoken language.
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Easiest solution, read while listening as much as you can.
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When you read a text in a foreign language, there's a very high chance that you're going to stumble upon a lot of words that you don't know.
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A very common reaction is to try to strike and underline and look up every single word that appears on the text.
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I don't think that this is an efficient way to deal with it.
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A much more efficient way is to focus just on the words that are relevant for you.
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Let me give you an example, if you're an engineer, words such as tile or pillar will probably much more interesting and relevant to you.
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Then if you were a doctor, for example.
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And for a doctor, some other words might be more interesting.
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And anyway, the brain discards a lot of words that it deems as not important.
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So, just focus on one third of the unknown words that you find in a text because the brain will remember those words if they're relevant for you.
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Heart, elephant, and sand.
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If you think about it, these simple words have a constellation of elements around them.
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For example, you can say pink elephants, or the elephant in the room, to draw a line in the sand, at the heart of the matter, golden heart, and so on and so forth.
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This goes to show that the brain creates big networks of associated elements.
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And this is how you can use your brain in order to start learning new words, every new piece of information.
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You can link it to old pieces of information, so always make sure that you look at words from this perspective and thinking, how can I associate this new piece of information to the other pieces of information in the network that I have talked about, and this is the word spider web I was talking about at the beginning of the video.
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Some languages have notoriously long words.
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Let's take the German word Freundschaftsbeziehung.
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Which means display of friendship.
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But if you think about it, the first reaction is to get scared by the length of this word.
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But then, by looking closely, you will realize that this word is made of Freundschaft, friendship, and Beziehung, or Beziehungen, display, displays of.
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This makes the word easier to retain, easier to pronounce, and easier to remember.
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So, get into the habit of looking at words as made of smaller parts.
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If you learn how these smaller parts make longer words, things will get much easier in terms of everything.
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Romans used to say repetita juvant, which means repeating helps.
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And that's true, and that's what we do at college, at university, at school.
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We tend to repeat things over and over, but repeating things in the very same way in which we had been exposed to the very first time is not actually a very efficient way of dealing with texts.
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Let me give you a metaphor, imagine that you have to conquer a castle.
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That is conquering the language.
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If you always attack it through the main door, the defendants will realize your tactics and your strategy and it will be easier to defend the castle.
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If, instead, you attack the castle from multiple angles, you are more likely to win the battle.
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To give you a very concrete example, if you listen while reading the text the very first time that you get exposed to it.
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Three or four days down the line, do things differently.
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Maybe just listen to the text or just read it or listen to it in the target language while reading it in your own native language.
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Whatever is different is relevant.
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And it makes a big difference in the way our brain retains information because we're adding variety to it.
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Novelty and repetition is a fantastic combination to retain words, texts, and whatever you want.
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Verba volant, scripta manent, spoken words fly while written words stay.
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Another wise quote from the wise Romans.
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Why is this so relevant 2,000 years ago as it is now?
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It's because words that are spoken just fly around the air and you need a system in place to catch them.
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So, always make sure that you have a device, a note-taking device, be it your mobile phone or your notebook to catch these words and these sentences on the fly.
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You can do it everywhere, you can do it while you're sitting and you're trying to learn the language.
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And you can do it while you're talking to your friends in a bar, you can do it even while walking and you come up with a word that you want to know the meaning of in a foreign language.
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Whatever it is, just make sure that you have a notebook that you can fit in your pocket and you can carry it with you at all times.
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And another tip is, when you mark words or sentences, always make sure that you mark the place and the time where this happened.
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Because it's going to give you a very clear reference in time and space for your episodic memory.
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It makes a huge difference if you get into the habit of doing this every single day.
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This video contains a lot of information and I've condensed it for the sake of brevity and clarity.
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If you want to know more, you can click on the link in the description box below and you will be able to read a very extensive article about this very same topic.
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So here you have it, these are the seven tools to create and strengthen your word spider web.
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All you need to do now is to get out there and catch as many word flies as possible.
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