Yeah, we have a really nice group, yeah.
I'm lucky to have all of the supporters.
Yeah, we have a really nice group, yeah.
We have a really nice group, yeah.
Yeah, we have a really nice group, yeah.
Testing, one, two, three.
Testing.
You ready, Daniel?
Paul, you red-eye?
All right, cool.
You like it?
I'm glad I was able to broaden your mind a little bit.
Spicy, you mean?
Oh, okay.
Wasn't it like a buffet?
They didn't have a buffet.
Oh, they didn't?
So you just ordered whatever?
Sounds good.
Order.
All right, let's go ahead and get started.
I'm going to say a word of prayer and then we'll get started.
Dear Lord, thank you so much for this conference
and all the people that have come out
and all the great things that have already taken place.
We just pray that you'd bless our time now
and the rest of the day may it honor and glorify you
and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
So if you have your Bible,
turn to Luke chapter 14 really quickly.
So this is just a seminar on how to learn a foreign language
and I'm going to go through some of the things
that I've learned over the years learning foreign languages.
For the last 20 years,
learning foreign languages has been one of my biggest hobbies.
I mean, I've just kind of been obsessed
with learning foreign languages.
Ever since I was about 17 or 18 years old,
I didn't really get a very young start,
but around 17, 18,
I started studying a lot of foreign languages
and I've been able to go soul winning
in a whole bunch of different languages
and win people to Christ in other languages.
The first thing that I want to bring out,
let's just start with reading this scripture
and then I'm going to get into all the practical things
about learning a language.
It says in Luke 14, 28,
For which of you intending to build a tower
sitteth not down first and counteth the cost,
whether ye have sufficient to finish it?
Less happily, after he hath laid the foundation
and is not able to finish it,
all that behold it begin to mock him,
saying, This man began to build
and was not able to finish.
Or what king, going to make war against another king,
sitteth not down first and consulteth
whether he be able with 10,000
to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000?
Or else, while the other is yet a great way off,
he sendeth an ambassage and desireth conditions of peace.
So likewise, whosoever he be of you,
that forsaketh not all that he hath,
he cannot be my disciple.
And the first thing I want to bring up
about learning a foreign language
is that you count the cost of learning a foreign language.
I think one of the biggest reasons
why people think that maybe they don't have the aptitude
or that they don't have the ability
to learn a foreign language
is because they have an unrealistic view
about how hard it is to learn a foreign language.
They think it's easier than it is.
Let me just come right out and tell you,
and I'm not trying to discourage you,
but I just want to tell you
that learning a foreign language is a big job.
It requires a lot of work.
And so don't think that you're going to be able
to find some silver bullet or some formula
where this is going to be quick or painless or easy.
It's hard, and it's not for everybody
because it's going to take a major commitment.
Now, if you look at what it takes
to learn a foreign language,
the best way, I think, to break this down
is by how many hours it's going to take you
to learn a language.
And if you look up
what different educational institutions will say,
what the government says,
what different foreign language associations will say,
they all give different estimates
about how long it takes,
but pretty much they will range anywhere
from like 600 hours to 2,500 hours
to be able to at least speak in that language
at a pretty good conversational level,
just a basic level of fluency, 600 to 2,500 hours.
And let me just say right away,
I don't believe the 600 figure for one second.
I don't think that's realistic, okay?
So let's just go with a conservative figure.
Let's say 1,000 hours it's going to take you
to learn your foreign language
to where you can have conversations, go soloing.
I'm not saying you're going to be an expert,
but you'll be able to get by pretty well in the language.
Let's say 1,000 hours,
which if anything it's probably going to take a little more than that,
but let's just say 1,000 hours, okay?
Now a lot of people think like,
oh man, if you just spend 10 minutes a day,
you know, you're going to get this done.
All right, well let's do the math on that.
10 minutes a day is going to get the job done
in 16 and a half years, okay?
10 minutes a day, you're going to get to 1,000 hours in 16 and a half years,
and I'd venture to say by the time you get there,
you probably forgot the stuff you were learning 16 years ago.
So this is not realistic at all, okay?
20 minutes a day, that would break down to eight years,
and this is not to be an expert.
This is just to learn how to speak a foreign language.
Okay, 40 minutes a day, that would be like four years.
An hour a day, that sounds pretty committed, right?
I mean, I'm spending an hour a day learning my foreign language,
one hour every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
That still would take you almost three years,
just to get to the 1,000 hour mark, okay?
If you spent two hours a day, it would still take 16 months,
and if you spent three hours a day, it would still take almost a year.
So if you, realistically, if you want to be a foreign language speaker,
if you're just starting out right now,
and next January you wanted to be a foreign language speaker,
and you're going out and soul winning in Spanish,
you're talking to people in Spanish, having conversations,
you know, you should expect to spend three hours a day
to get there in that amount of time.
Now, these numbers would probably be surprising to most people.
They would probably think that it was easier than that,
it would take less time than that,
but I just want to start out by giving you a realistic expectation
of the amount of work involved,
because you might just decide,
you know what, that's not worth it to me,
or I'm not interested in investing a lot of time like that,
but at least know what you're getting into, okay?
Now, the second thing I want to bring up is which language should you learn?
You know, maybe you're not really sure which language to learn
and you haven't started yet.
Well, I think that the best language for you to learn
is the language that you love,
because you better love it if you're going to spend 1,000 hours learning it.
You're going to have to love it, or you're going to burn out.
You're going to get sick of it, you're not going to follow through.
Now, as far as which languages I think are the most strategic
or effective for serving the Lord,
for us especially in the United States,
I think a no-brainer is that obviously number one is going to be Spanish
is going to make the most sense for you to learn.
Spanish is one of the most important languages in the world,
and obviously I don't have to tell you all the reasons why
you should learn Spanish,
but Phoenix is filled with people who only speak Spanish,
California is the same way.
Even if you go to other parts of the United States,
even in the Midwest, there are huge pockets of Spanish speakers.
You've got most of South America that speak Spanish,
Central America, you've got some islands of the Caribbean.
So Spanish is kind of a no-brainer.
Number two I would say would probably be French,
and the reason that I say that is because it's not just France.
French is the official language in 29 countries.
So there are 29 countries that have French as an official language.
Obviously we've got the French portion of Canada.
Haiti, I think, would be a great place to do missions,
a great place to do solo winning.
It's close, it's a very poor country,
and the official language is French.
You have a few other islands in the Caribbean
and a lot of countries in Africa speak French.
Too many to even list.
Madagascar is a huge one,
but a whole bunch of other countries, French is big.
So I would say Spanish, French.
Number three, Portuguese, again for a similar reason
because you've got Brazil.
It's a massive, poor country that would probably be very receptive.
You've also got some islands in the Caribbean.
You've got places in Africa like Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde.
Because Spain, France, and Portugal have colonies all over the world,
those are going to be effective.
And then I'm just going to throw in a bonus language, Greek,
and the reason that I throw that in
is because you've got 13 million Greek speakers.
The young generation is pretty receptive to the gospel
as we showed in our film where we went to Cyprus.
So you've got Greece and Cyprus,
and obviously the bonus of being able to read the New Testament
in the original language.
And so if that's something that's interesting to you,
that could help keep you motivated as well.
And so those are some thoughts on languages.
But really at the end of the day, if you're going to succeed,
you've got to pick a language that you love
and you've got to pick a language where realistically
you're going to have a chance to use it
because if you don't use it, you'll lose it.
All right.
So any language that you love that you're going to be able to use
is a good language to learn.
All right.
So the next thing I want to bring up
is which language program should you use to get started.
Okay.
You're going to need some kind of a comprehensive
language learning program to get you started.
Now in the olden days you might grab a textbook or something,
but this is 2020 and a textbook is not the best way
to learn a foreign language.
Okay.
Languages are best learned through speaking and listening,
not just reading alone.
Okay.
You want to involve as many of your senses as possible
because learning a foreign language is all about memory.
Right.
It's about remembering things.
And our brains are designed to forget things.
Now we might think this is a curse.
You know, we just wish that we would just remember everything.
I just wish I had a photographic memory
and I could just read the phone book and recite it back.
But you know what?
Actually that would be a curse.
Our brains are designed to forget things
so that we don't go insane.
All right.
Think about all the bad things that happen in our life.
Think about all the bad experiences
that we go through in our life,
just angry feelings and just disappointments,
sadness, grief, sorrow, loss.
So our brains are designed to just constantly be forgetting things.
Also, you know, we would be overwhelmed with information
if we remembered everything.
It would just be too much information in our brains.
So our brain is constantly deciding what is important
and what is not important.
And our brain is just constantly throwing things in the trash
that it doesn't consider important.
Okay.
So in order to learn a foreign language,
we have to convince our brain that this stuff's important.
And we also have to make it memorable.
Right.
If you stopped and thought about the things
that you remember from your childhood,
you know, they were probably kind of extreme situations
that you remember, things that were very painful, sad,
very happy, tastes, smells, sounds.
You know, every time my wife cooks with garlic,
I'm transported to my grandparents' house
because they always just use so much garlic when they cook.
So any time I smell garlic, it's just boom.
Or you'll hear a song and boom,
you're transported to a certain experience you had or whatever.
So we have to convince our brains
that learning a language is important.
Don't throw away this information.
Keep this information.
And then number two, we have to make it memorable
by involving as many of our senses as we can.
And since language is primarily spoken and heard,
just reading is not even close to being enough.
You don't want just a visual input.
You got to have more senses involved, speaking, hearing.
I mean, did we learn how to read English first
or did we learn how to speak and listen to English first?
First we listened and spoke
long before we ever learned the alphabet.
Okay.
Well, it's the same way in a foreign language.
You've got to learn how to speak.
So here are some language programs.
I'm going to throw out the names of these
and I'm going to kind of give you
what I think are the pros and cons of some of these
and what they have to offer.
The ones I'm going to talk about are Duolingo, Pimsleur,
Rosetta Stone, and Language Transfer.
Okay.
Now, let's start off talking about Duolingo.
Here's the great thing about Duolingo.
It's free.
So there's no commitment.
You know, maybe you're not sure
if you want to learn a foreign language.
That's something that you can fool around with
play around, and you haven't lost anything.
If it doesn't work out, hey, nobody's going to care
if you lose your streak on Duolingo, right?
It's not a big deal.
I lost my streak a few weeks ago.
So it's not a big deal.
But I do have like over a quarter million XP.
And you get 10 XP per lesson.
I have 278,000 XP.
So you can see I've spent a lot of time on Duolingo.
All right.
I've spent just a sick amount of time.
It's a sickness with me.
So, you know, Duolingo, does it work?
My philosophy is whatever you do, if you're having fun
and it's making you think in that language
and it's making you work, it's effective, period.
Whatever is fun and you can stick with,
whatever you work is going to work if you do the work, okay?
Now, I personally, like I said,
I've done a ton of languages on Duolingo.
One of the languages that I did a lot on Duolingo is Spanish.
And I already knew how to speak Spanish
before I got on Duolingo.
But then I got on Duolingo
and I worked my way through Duolingo
and I noticed my Spanish got a lot better.
Like I noticed a real world value
when I spoke Spanish after doing Duolingo
that it really helped my Spanish.
So I do believe it has a real world potential,
that it works, okay?
So it's free.
You can do it on your phone.
You can do it on the computer.
But I like it a lot better on the computer
than on the phone, okay?
I like to sit at the keyboard and do it.
I just find that a lot better.
But when I'm out and about, the phone works as well.
Okay, Pimsleur.
This is my absolute favorite, though, is Pimsleur.
I think this is the best language learning program in existence.
Now, there are some downsides to Pimsleur, though.
Number one, it can be expensive.
Now, one workaround with that is that a lot of times
you can check out Pimsleur at the library for free.
You can get the CDs and things at the library.
But it can be a little bit expensive.
That's the downside.
But here's what I love about Pimsleur.
It's all audio.
No reading and writing.
It's 100% audio based.
So it really helps you dial in your pronunciation
in the early days.
Because you're not tainted by the letters
that you're seeing on the paper.
It's just all just sounds
and you're just focusing on the sounds.
And the way Pimsleur works is that you spend
a half hour a day, no more, no less.
You spend a half hour a day.
But I will say this.
You have to be really focused during that half hour.
You can't be zoning out.
It's an intense half hour.
But because it's an intense half hour,
it's a very productive half hour.
You really learn a lot.
I just think it's amazing.
Now, another downside of Pimsleur
is that it only takes you so far.
Some languages, it only has 30 lessons.
Some languages, it only has 60.
Greek, it only has 60.
Hebrew, it only has 90.
But languages like Spanish, French, and Portuguese
has like 150.
So you can go really far in those three languages.
Some languages, like, for example, Hungarian.
My wife is half Hungarian, half German.
And so I've been learning Hungarian off and on
for many, many years.
And it's one of the most difficult languages
in the world, okay?
It's very frustrating trying to learn Hungarian.
Well, I got on Pimsleur Hungarian,
and for the first time in my life,
I felt like, I can do this.
Like, wow, I think I'm going to speak Hungarian.
This is working.
And so it was just like a revelation
when I started doing it.
But then I got to lesson 30, and I'm just like, ah.
And there's just nothing left.
So everybody needs to contact Pimsleur
and ask them to do a second level in Hungarian.
But I'm just telling you,
even with a really hard language,
it's effective.
I like it.
But again, high cost.
And in certain languages, it only goes so far.
Then we got Rosetta Stone, okay?
Now, here's the thing about Rosetta Stone.
In the past, it's been really expensive.
But now what they offer is, like,
a monthly subscription to this.
You can get three months for 60 bucks.
And if you're actually pretty dedicated
and spending, like, 45 minutes to an hour a day on it,
you can crank through, like, two or three levels
of Rosetta Stone in that three months.
So you can just spend 60 bucks
and in certain languages crank through the whole program.
Again, languages like Spanish, Portuguese, French,
there's going to be more.
So maybe a six-month membership, you know.
That only works out to, like, $20 a month.
So it's not too bad.
The negative about Rosetta Stone
is that you're strapped to the computer, you know.
And you can also do it on your phone.
But Duolingo and Rosetta Stone,
you know, you got to have your phone or your computer going.
The thing I like about Pimsleur
is that I don't have to be looking at a screen.
I can be out doing stuff with my hands
and just using my brain for that.
And then there's another audio program,
and this one's pretty new to me, but I really like it.
It's called Language Transfer.
And it's available on soundcloud.com,
or you can just Google Language Transfer.
And what's cool about Language Transfer,
it's all audio,
so it's similar to Pimsleur in that regard,
but the difference is that the Pimsleur,
like I said, is a strenuous half hour.
Language Transfer's not as strenuous.
It's a little more laid back,
and each lesson's only, like, ten minutes long.
And it's really laid back, and it's basically this guy
who's just kind of casually talking to you,
and he's explaining to you how everything works.
So instead of just telling you,
say this, say that, or what's this, what's that,
he actually stops and explains everything to you
and breaks everything down in a really logical way,
and he tries to tie it in with words
you already know in English and stuff like that.
So it's really a different approach,
and I think it's a pretty cool way to start in a language,
but it's not going to take you very far.
It only teaches you the basics,
but it's a great start, and it's free.
So again, there's no commitment.
You jump into the Language Transfer lessons.
I know they have French, they have Italian,
they have Greek.
I don't think they have Spanish, but they have several languages.
Okay, and then another language program
that I want to give a shout-out to
is there's a software called Anki, A-N-K-I,
and it's a software for making flashcards.
I'm not going to talk too much about it right now
because about a month ago I uploaded a YouTube video
all about Anki cards, and in that video
I actually kind of do a walkthrough of my process
for how I make the cards,
where you go to download the software,
the tutorials to help you, and everything like that.
But I will say this.
In 20 years of studying languages,
Anki has been the most revolutionary thing that I've ever tried.
I've been doing it for like nine months now,
and it is the biggest game changer
as far as just learning vocabulary.
It's the best flashcard system.
It's just really amazing.
And so it's been a real game changer.
I highly, highly recommend it.
Now, in the beginning it's going to take you about an hour
to sit down and figure out how Anki works,
watch the tutorials, but spend that hour or two
to figure out Anki and follow the instructions
on the tutorials and everything,
and I'm telling you in the long run
it's going to pay great dividends.
All right, so those are just an overview of some programs
because I think any of these programs
are more effective than getting a textbook
or something like that.
These are more modern methods.
They're more scientific methods for your learning.
Okay, so number one, we said count the cost, right?
Number two, which language?
We talked about that.
Number three, some language programs to get you started.
Now, the fourth point I want to talk about
is that speaking a language is essential.
So it's not enough just to go through Rosetta Stone,
Duolingo, Pimsleur.
I don't care how many Anki cards you make.
You must actually speak the language.
Speaking is crucial.
This is what's wrong with Bible college Greek
and Bible college Hebrew.
They're not actually learning it as a spoken language,
and therefore it is virtually impossible
to learn the language without actually speaking.
You get so much more out of speaking than listening, okay?
Now, in the rest of your life,
you know, be slow to speak and quick to hear
and, you know, okay, this is the exception to that.
This is where you want to be a loudmouth, all right,
is when you're learning a foreign language
because you have to speak it to learn it.
That's how you learned English.
Now, when you learned English,
you didn't start out speaking in perfect grammar, did you?
When you're a little toddler and you're talking,
you're going to just use a little bit
of a Tarzan-type language.
And, you know, for example, my daughter right now,
she, just every pronoun that she uses is her, him, them.
She doesn't do he, she, and they.
Never.
So, like, she'll be singing Psalm 139,
and she sings,
for them speak against thee wickedly,
for them speak against, you know,
instead of for they speak against,
it's just always them, them, him did this, her did this,
me this.
That's how little kids learn to talk.
Now, I have no doubt that she will one day
be a fluent English speaker that uses I, we, he, she, it, they.
Okay, you're going to get there,
but you can't be afraid to speak wrong.
If you're waiting to be perfect to start speaking,
you're never going to do it.
What you have to do is just make a bunch of flashcards,
learn a bunch of vocabulary,
do a bunch of Duolingo or whatever.
You have to start using it right away, right?
And you start talking in that kind of Tarzan language
and just get your point across.
Don't worry about grammar.
See, a lot of schools and so forth,
they'll just start you right in with a bunch of heavy grammar.
And right away, what that's going to do is just discourage you.
And it just makes it feel impossible, it's overwhelming.
It's better to do grammar study much later.
First, learn how to speak the language.
Then once you can actually speak and get by and have conversations,
once you're finished with Rosetta Stone,
finished with Pimsleur, finished with Duolingo and that kind of stuff,
once you've done all that, then hit the grammar books.
So look, I have foreign language textbooks that I work through,
I have grammar books, but I save that for advanced level.
And then when you're at an advanced level,
as you're reading about the grammar, you're like,
oh yeah, I've seen that before.
Oh yeah, that looks familiar.
And you're kind of just filling in gaps.
But trying to learn grammar from scratch at the beginning
is just really overwhelming and a bad idea.
So you've got to speak.
So how are you going to get speaking the language right away?
Well, if you're surrounded by speakers of that language,
then this is going to be a piece of cake
because you just talk to people and nothing can be simpler, right?
So if you have people in your family,
like for example, my wife speaks German,
so that's just really easy for me to just practice German every day
because I just talk to my wife in German.
But not everybody has a built-in language partner
and most people don't.
But you could have people at your church,
but even if you have people at your church,
they may not have the patience to listen to you speak
Tarzan language for an hour to them.
And here's just the sad truth about it.
Most people that you try to talk to in your new language
aren't going to have the patience, period.
And even if their heart's in the right place,
you know what they'll do?
They'll constantly finish your sentences for you.
They'll constantly correct you.
And so it's hard to find somebody
that's actually going to be a good person
to practice with in real life sometimes.
So here's a workaround for that
because you've got to speak the language.
How do you do it?
Well, there's a great website called italki.com.
So this is I-T-A-L-K-I dot com.
So it's the letter I, talk, another I dot com.
And there are other websites like this.
This is just one of them.
And on this website, italki,
you basically get set up with other foreigners
to speak to over video Skype.
Okay, so you video Skype with people in other countries
for a half hour or an hour or something.
And you can do this one of two ways.
You can pay someone.
And here's the thing.
A lot of these countries have really bad economies.
So it's really cheap.
Sometimes it could be like $4 an hour or something,
$5 an hour, $7 an hour.
It doesn't have to be expensive.
And most of them offer a trial lesson for $1.
So the first half hour or the first hour, $1, okay?
So you can try out a bunch of different teachers
and then find the one that you like.
Now here's the benefit to paying someone.
You're the boss, right?
When you're paying somebody, you make the rules.
So you can tell them,
hey, here's what I want to talk about
and I don't want you to correct me too much.
Let's just communicate.
I'm not trying to be perfect.
Let's just talk.
And so you can kind of set the tone
and talk about what you want to talk about.
And so that's the great thing about paying.
But there's another thing you can do
if you don't want to spend the money.
You can use italki for free.
And I've done this many times as well.
You do a language exchange.
So people all over the world are learning English.
English is the most popular language in the world to study.
So what you'll do is, let's say you're learning Spanish,
you'll find somebody in South America
who wants to learn English.
You want to learn Spanish
and the way this works is you go back and forth.
So sometimes the way that I've done it is,
hey, we're going to spend the first half hour
talking in English and I'm going to help you
and then we're going to spend the second half hour
talking in Spanish and you're going to help me.
And then other times I've done it
where we just kind of go back and forth.
We'll just do 10 minutes in each language,
10 minutes in Greek, 10 minutes of English,
10 minutes of Greek, 10 minutes of English.
And then that way it's just kind of a win-win
and you don't spend any money.
And again, that can be effective, it's free.
The only downside of that is
you're only spending half the time
doing your target language.
But who cares?
You kind of need a break anyway sometimes, right?
So those are some options for you
with technology that we have now.
I mean, when I went to Cyprus last summer,
in the two weeks leading up to the Cyprus trip,
I spent one hour a day every single day on Video Skype
and it just did wonders because I'd studied a ton of Greek,
but as far as taking it from just studied theoretical knowledge
to getting it from my brain to my mouth
and actually using it, those 14 hours on Video Skype
just were amazing so that when I got to Cyprus,
I was ready to hit the ground running
because I'd already been getting a lot of speaking practice.
So I love that website.
There's two ways to use it.
You can either pay or you can do it for free.
Another big reason or another big thing
that I like to do when I'm studying a foreign language
is to read the Bible in that language, okay?
Reading the Bible in that language.
Now, how do you do this?
Don't look at the English.
Don't get a parallel Bible
where it's Spanish on one side and English on the other.
Why?
Remember what I explained earlier
how your brain is designed to forget things
so that we can all forget our painful past, okay?
Well, here's the thing.
When you're reading it with the English right there,
you know what your brain is subconsciously thinking?
Well, I don't need to know that.
I'll just look at the English
because our brains want to take the path of least resistance.
So if the English is there, you're going to use it.
And then your brain's thinking, well, this isn't important.
I don't need to learn Spanish
because I've just got the English right there.
So you have to get rid of the English
and you have to just read Spanish.
So just get a plain old Spanish Bible.
That's the way to read the Bible in another language, okay?
And the best way to do this
is pick the passages of the Bible
that you're already the most familiar with in English.
That way you already know what's going on.
And look, I'm telling you,
when I'm studying a foreign language,
if I pick up the New Testament in that language,
it's way easier to read
than if I just pick, like, a mystery novel in that language
and start reading it. Why?
Because in the mystery novel,
I have no clue what's going on until I read it.
Whereas, you know, in the New Testament,
you know, reading the book of Matthew,
I already know whatever chapter's about.
So when I'm reading it in that other language,
I already know the context.
I'm not going to lose track of the story.
So whatever passages in the Bible you know the best,
that's where you start reading.
That's where you start reading in your target language.
And always, narrative is going to be much easier
than poetry or prophecy.
So you're going to want to start in books like Genesis,
Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Those are going to be your best bet.
Acts can be a little tough,
but narrative is always going to be your best bet.
Now, the sixth thing I want to talk about
is how do you make time for this?
You know, I started out by talking about
just how this is going to take an incredible amount of time,
that people just totally underestimate
how long it's going to take to learn a language.
And like I said at the beginning,
if you think you're going to learn a language
in 10 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day,
it will never happen.
I don't care how smart you are, it will not happen.
Your baby and toddler and little child,
did they spend 10 minutes a day learning English?
They're learning English 12 hours a day every day.
Am I right?
That's how they learned it.
So you're not going to learn a foreign language
in 10 or 20 minutes a day.
Don't believe the gimmicks.
At some point, if you actually want to learn a foreign language,
you have to invest hours a day,
at least one or two hours a day.
So you say, well, how am I going to have the time?
And when I'm intensely learning a language,
I like to spend about five hours a day in that language.
Now you say, well, how in the world?
Ain't nobody got time for that.
How can anybody spend two hours a day or four hours a day?
You must multitask.
And it's the little bits of time throughout our day
that we're constantly wasting.
If you would redeem the time, you can learn a lot.
But I'm telling you, so many of us just waste so much time.
I mean, some of you probably spend four or five hours a day
on Facebook, but that's none of my business.
But anyway, you multitask.
Now, one of the best multitasks that I do
is that once you get to a high enough level
in your language, do your Bible reading in that language.
Because you're going to read your Bible anyway,
you might as well read your Bible in that language.
But obviously, that's at a higher level.
As a beginner, you're still going to need to do
your devotions in English.
Some people, they're so King James only
that they're scared to read the Bible in another language.
I mean, I'm constantly talking to people in our church
that are native speakers in other languages,
and it's like, I only read the King James.
And I'm trying to tell them, read the Bible in your language.
Because how are you going to reach your people?
How are you going to go soloing to the Spanish people,
the Portuguese people, the French people?
You need to read that Bible in that language
so that you can get all that spiritual terminology
and get all that.
And not only that, but I think that reading the Bible
in a foreign language helps you learn the Bible so well
because you will find things, things will jump out at you
that you've never seen before reading it in English.
I mean, I remember just reading through the Bible
cover to cover in Spanish,
and I would come to certain things,
and I would just be like, what?
I'd be like, I'd grab the King James.
Does it really say that?
And sure enough, it did say that.
It's just that in English sometimes
we just kind of read over things,
just kind of blow past things.
The good thing about reading the Bible in a foreign language
is it really forces you to slow down
and different things will jump out at you,
different things will grab your attention.
And obviously, I believe that the King James Bible
is the word of God without error,
and for me it's the standard
by which all foreign language Bibles are judged.
But you know what?
There are a lot of great foreign language Bibles
in other languages,
and so reading the Bible in Spanish,
reading it in German,
I've read the New Testament in Norwegian, Romanian.
I always learn a lot of cool new stuff,
and I think it's fun.
I enjoy reading the Bible.
I was going to read my Bible anyway,
so it's like a win-win,
killing two birds with one stone
by reading your Bible in a foreign language, okay?
And so I highly recommend that.
I think it's great.
And there's a lot of just funny things
when you're reading another language.
Like, I recently finished the New Testament in Norwegian,
and I thought this was the most hilarious thing,
because you know how words are like,
they kind of mean something a little different
in other languages?
Well, you know, we have the English word ransack, right?
So what does it mean to ransack?
It's like basically somebody goes into a house
and they just tear the place apart
looking for something, right?
So they're looking for jewelry.
They're looking for money, whatever.
So they just completely ransack the place,
and you come home
and just everything's strewn everywhere.
Well, it's funny.
I was reading the New Testament in Norwegian,
and it kept using this word
basically to just mean, like, to search
or to look, for example.
So it said, like, basically,
instead of, like, examine yourselves,
whether you're in the...
It's like, hey, ransack yourselves
whether you're in the...
You know, it's just like...
And it just kept...
I don't remember the rest of the times,
but it kept using it over and over again,
this word ransaka,
and I was just laughing at how it sounded, you know,
about how you're gonna ransack your own heart
and everything, you know.
Or Jesus Christ, he said,
I'm the one that searched the hearts.
He's like, I'm gonna ransack your...
And obviously it doesn't mean the same thing.
And another funny thing,
and this is a little bit inappropriate,
but when you're reading it in Norwegian,
you know, the English cuss word S-H-I whatever,
basically when you're...
In Norwegian, that's not a cuss word.
It just means, like, you know, dirt.
And even your grandma will say it to you
without even blushing, right?
So they'll say this word all day long.
That was the first thing a missionary told me
when I got to Norway.
He's like, hey, just don't get offended.
You're gonna hear us saying this a lot.
You know, we're gonna be dropping this word all the time.
It's not a bad word.
But, you know, it's kind of funny
when you're reading the New Testament
and it's talking about all this bleeping,
you know, this bleeping of the bleep of fornication
and you gotta cleanse yourself
from all this bleep of the flesh and everything.
That's pretty funny, you know,
just reading it in other languages.
There's some fun things.
To me, it's one of the most enjoyable things that I do.
And just reading it in the original Greek,
there are a lot of little kind of funny little plays on words.
Things kind of rhyme a little bit sometimes
and just, you know, but really,
it doesn't matter if you're reading in Greek, Spanish, German.
There are all kinds of little fun things you'll come across.
It's interesting.
You'll learn things and so forth.
But multitasking, okay?
How do you have time to learn a foreign language?
You gotta multitask.
One of the big things I multitask with is exercise.
You know, I like to exercise.
I exercise for about an hour a day usually.
And I always combine that
with some kind of a foreign language learning.
If you're, you know, maybe you take walks,
you know, that's when I do my half-hour Pimsleur lesson
on a walk every day, right?
I go out in the garden and pull weeds.
If I'm pulling weeds, I'm working on Pimsleur.
I'm working on language transfer.
If I'm in the shower,
I turn on one of these language programs.
And even if you're just listening to something,
you could turn on an audio Bible in that language.
You could turn on, you know, audiobooks in that language.
Children's books are sometimes great, cartoons,
just, you know, because they're simple, they're easy.
Even if you could just listen to something,
you could listen to talk radio in that language.
You could just listen to anything and just every little bit.
Because remember, you're trying to get toward that 1,000 hours
or 2,000 hours of exposure to the language.
And so multitasking is everything.
Any time you're doing any kind of a menial task,
you're taking a shower, you're getting dressed,
you're doing chores, you're driving to work,
driving home from work.
I mean, there's all this time that we waste
when you could easily just whip out your phone.
I mean, like, I'll scan my boarding pass to get on an airplane,
whip out my phone, do a lesson of Duolingo
by the time I get through the jet bridge and get to my seat.
I've cranked out a lesson.
And those little things actually add up over time,
and so you've got to multitask.
Now, the last thing,
and I'm going to open it up for questions.
The last thing I want to say is just recommended reading.
I want to recommend you two books on learning foreign languages.
These are the two most transformative books
that I've read on learning a foreign language.
And not only do these books teach you
how to learn a foreign language,
I just find books like this motivating, okay?
So the first book I want to recommend is
Fluent Forever by Gabriel Weiner, okay?
Fluent Forever by Gabriel Weiner.
And the second book that I want to recommend
is Fluent in Three Months by Benny Lewis.
Now, don't believe him when he says
it's only going to take three months,
but it's a great book, though.
It's an amazing book.
It's actually my favorite book on learning a language.
Fluent in Three Months by Benny Lewis.
You can probably buy it on Amazon
for six or seven bucks or whatever.
But these two books are great,
and here's what I do with these two books, okay?
Because like I said,
I find these kind of books really motivating.
And what's the most important thing
about learning a foreign language?
Staying motivated, right?
So here's how I do it.
I don't just read through these books all in a row.
I'll basically read one chapter,
and then by the time I'm done with that chapter,
I'm usually so motivated
that I want to just learn my language for a while
and do that for a long time.
And then when I start feeling less motivated again,
then I grab it, read the next chapter,
and then I'm motivated again, you know?
So these books are motivational as well as educational.
So anyway, let me just open it up to questions now.
Does anybody have any questions
about learning a foreign language?
Yes.
You know what we should probably do?
Let's light up this microphone here.
I think, do I have a guy in the sound room?
I think so.
So testing one, two, three.
Let's hand out the microphone
so that whoever's asking a question,
we can get it for the internet crowd as well.
Yes.
About songs?
Songs in foreign languages?
I think songs are a great way to learn a foreign language.
So because, you know, obviously,
songs are something that we remember 20, 30 years later.
We can still remember every advertising jingle from the 80s,
or at least I can.
And so I've memorized tons of songs in other languages,
and I think that that's highly effective.
That's a great point.
Any other questions?
Who's got a question?
All right, let's pass the mic here.
Yes, can I get somebody to be the mic passer?
Or when you're done with a question,
you're the mic passer.
How's that?
What's your question?
How do you manage learning
or maintaining multiple languages at a time?
Because you said you like to spend
like five hours a day learning a language.
But obviously, I mean,
I don't think you're spending like 15, 20 hours a day.
No, no, no.
No, you really should focus on one language at a time.
One language at a time as your main language.
Now, I don't think it ever hurts
to fool around in some other language that's not important.
You know, everybody's done a few XP and Gaelic or whatever.
But here's the thing.
Just as long as it doesn't take away from your main language.
But don't be such a purist where you're like,
no, I can only learn Spanish.
Here's the thing.
Let's say my main language is Spanish, right?
And I'm studying Spanish for hours and hours and hours.
You know, if I'm feeling a little burned out
and I'm like, man, you know what?
I feel like doing a little bit of German or whatever,
then you know what?
Do a little German for like 10 or 20 minutes
and then you'll probably be ready to go back to Spanish.
And it's not going to hurt you.
And a lot of people say like,
oh, if you learn a bunch of languages,
you're going to get confused.
And that is true a little bit.
You get a little confused.
But the benefit you get from learning multiple languages
is greater than the confusion.
Every once in a while when I'm speaking Spanish,
I'll throw in a German word and people just look at me like, huh?
Or I'm speaking Greek and I'll just say something in Spanish.
And people are like, what?
Excuse me?
But guess what?
At least I learned both languages
and got people saved in both.
So yeah, you're going to get a little confused sometimes.
But in the end, it's a benefit to learn more languages.
But so long as it doesn't take you away from your main language
because you have to have your one like focus language, right?
So at any given time, I have one language that's my main language.
Like that's the main language.
That's the priority.
That's the do or die language.
And then sometimes I'll even like reward myself like,
hey, if I get through X amount of hours in this,
then I can do a little bit of that fun language
that has no point in real life.
Does that answer your question?
Yes.
Yeah, you got to focus on one because yeah.
So a lot of people will focus on reaching fluent.
They always want to say I'm fluent.
Yeah.
How important is it to be considered fluent
or what do you consider fluent?
Fluent is kind of a meaningless term
because what is fluent?
If you ask 10 different people what fluent means,
you're going to get 10 different answers.
So people are constantly asking me how many languages I speak.
And it's kind of a difficult question to answer
because of the fact that I speak a whole bunch of different languages
at different levels.
Well, which ones are you fluent in?
Well, it depends on what you mean by fluent.
Now, in my opinion, because everybody's got their own opinion
and it's going to be different for different people,
but for me, my goal in a language is to get to where
I can say anything that I want to say,
I can get my point across and communicate anything I want to say,
even if it's a little ugly
and maybe I go a little roundabout way,
but I can get everything across
and I can understand, you know, 90% of what's coming at me
and whatever I don't understand, I can ask for clarification.
So I feel like if I can get by
and have a meaningful conversation with people
and I can go soul winning in that language
and I can preach to them
and anything I need to say, I can find a way to say it,
even if, let's say, I have to use a little circumlocution.
So sometimes, for example,
you don't know the word for something,
like you don't know, let's say, the word for the Congress
or the Parliament or something.
Then you might just say, you know,
hey, it's a group of people that are making laws for the country.
Oh, and then boom, and you just got your point across.
So fluent is a totally meaningful...
You know what fluent is like?
Fluent is like when food is marked farm fresh or natural.
You know, the FDA has not defined those terms.
Any food could be labeled farm fresh, natural, right?
So there's not like a certified organic of fluency.
So it's kind of a meaningless term.
So I wouldn't get too hung up on that term.
Anyone else have a question?
I'd just like to know if you have any tips for teaching children.
Teaching children?
Well, you know, I haven't had a lot of success
teaching my children foreign languages.
You know, I haven't really been that motivated
to teach my children German
because I kind of like having that secret language with my wife
because when you live in a house with 13 people in 1500 square feet,
you know, you need a little privacy.
So my wife and I use German as a secret language
and two of them now are getting to where they understand a lot of it.
So now we have to really go deep cover with Hungarian sometimes
if we really want to go deep cover.
I don't really have a lot of great tips for teaching it to children.
I will say this.
If you want to raise your children bilingual,
this is one thing I know for sure, all right?
If you want to raise your children bilingual,
you have to speak 100% foreign language at home
and they would have to do English outside the home.
Yeah.
Because if you do like, if you're like, oh, we're going to do 50-50 at home,
they're only going to speak English
because of the fact that, again, like I said earlier,
our brains will only learn what they think is important or necessary.
So it has to be sink or swim at home.
So it has to be 100%.
So like if I wanted to raise my kids bilingual with German,
we would have had to just do 100% German in our house.
I do know that for a fact.
Some of my kids have taken an interest in foreign languages.
My son John right now is learning a ton of Greek,
and so he's been taking an interest in that.
My son Solomon has learned a lot of German,
but I don't really know.
I would just say all the same things.
I mean, with my son John, I'm just like, okay, here's Duolingo.
Here's language transfer.
Here's flashcards, you know.
So I'm not, you're going to have to ask somebody else that one.
Any other questions?
You want to meet me halfway?
Hey, if you have a language that you might have forgotten
and you're trying to refresh yourself on it,
do you got any advice to trying to get up to speed a little quicker?
Yeah, and here's the thing about it.
I've learned foreign languages and then went years without speaking them.
Getting it back is fast.
Like even though you'll forget fast, you also get it back fast.
And that's why we're saying, you know,
you kind of focus on one language at a time
because you can go back and refresh old languages pretty quick.
It's not that hard.
But what I would recommend if you are refreshing an old language,
you know, something like Duolingo works pretty well for that
because you can just test out of things on Duolingo
and you can just kind of crank through Duolingo really fast
if you already know the language.
Some of these audio programs that I'm recommending for beginners,
you know, those are probably going to be too slow for you
and you're going to be like, okay, I know this, I know this, you know.
But Duolingo you can kind of crank through.
And as far as just getting the language back,
I would probably just go, if you used to be pretty fluent in it,
then I would say just go straight to italki.com
because you're probably ready for that.
And just go straight to that because that's the most effective
is actually speaking.
So you might even bypass a lot of the study
if you used to be fluent and you're rusty,
jump on italki and just start speaking Tarzan language
and it'll come back.
That's probably what I would say is just go straight to the italki phase.
Any other questions?
You want to pass that back to him?
Have you practiced maybe gospel presentations
with people on italki and the response?
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
And here's the thing, especially if you're on italki,
especially when you're paying the bill,
you can talk about whatever you want.
So it's like, hey, I'm going to give you the gospel 20 times
and you're getting paid to listen to it.
And you could actually get people saved even
if you're talking to them
and giving them the gospel and everything.
And I've had somebody on there get saved
through preaching the gospel on there.
And so, yeah.
In fact, I already decided
because I'm going to be going back to Cyprus this June
for another missions trip
and I already decided that I really want to hone in
my Greek gospel presentation before I go there.
So I'm probably going to spend the last few weeks before that trip
just giving the gospel in Greek on italki
and hopefully I can even get some of those people saved.
So yeah, that's great.
And here's the thing.
You want to talk about multitasking, right,
for learning a language?
Go soloing in a Spanish neighborhood
once you get to that point.
Oh, and you know what?
I'm glad you remind me of this.
Here's a really important thing too, okay,
because who here is interested in learning Spanish?
Spanish is your language, okay?
That's the main thing, right?
Let me say this, okay?
I've won hundreds of people to the Lord in Spanish,
but long before I ever won anyone to the Lord in Spanish,
I won about 15 to 20 people to the Lord in Spanglish first.
15 to 20 at least in Spanglish
before I did one 100% in Spanish.
So here's how you build your confidence.
There are so many people in Phoenix
and in the United States who speak English,
but they're not that great at English.
But they kind of speak enough English to get by,
but not really enough to get saved though, right?
Because just because you know how to speak English
on the construction site or at the grocery store
doesn't mean you know things like salvation,
heaven, hell, sin, resurrection, things like that.
So what I used to do when I was first learning Spanish
and I wasn't good enough to get all the way through the gospel
is when I ran into those people who spoke broken English
is I would give them the gospel in a mix of English and Spanish.
So I would give them all the verses in Spanish
because it's easy just to read them a verse.
So I would do all the verses in Spanish
and then I would explain whatever I could in Spanish
and anything I didn't know how to say, I'll do it in English.
And then if the Spanish sentence pops into my head,
I'll do it in Spanish.
So I did about 15 or 20 of those spanglish soul winning encounters
before I got to a full blown Spanish salvation.
And you know, when we were in Cyprus,
most of that was a mix of English and Greek
where we would show them all the verses in Greek,
explain it partially in Greek, partially in English,
and then I did get one person saved 100% in Greek.
That's like a milestone that I work toward,
but before you get to that milestone of getting somebody saved 100% in Spanish,
get some spanglish salvations if you can.
I'm telling you, that's the way to do it.
Any other questions real quick?
We're just about out of time, but any other questions?
Anybody else have a question?
Get the mic over there.
When I was deciphering languages a long time ago,
first thing you start with is the alphabet of a language.
How important is that in your opinion?
Well, I think that if you're using a program like Pimsleur,
it completely bypasses the written language
and you start out just by speaking and hearing.
I think that's the best way to start,
just to nail down your pronunciation and not get too tainted by the alphabet.
But I do obviously believe that if you do get into the written language,
as soon as you get into the written language,
yeah, you've got to memorize the alphabet right away.
So that's important.
It's an easy step.
Did you have a question?
Charlotte?
Somebody want to get her the microphone?
So with learning Asian languages, their alphabets are in symbols.
They aren't with American letters.
So do you have any advice on how to learn those easier?
Yeah, I just say don't learn those.
That's one of the reasons why I personally have stayed away
from some of the Asian languages like Chinese,
just because it's just like, whoa.
The fact that they don't have a written language that's phonetic
is kind of a deal breaker for me.
But I will say this.
Korean, learning the alphabet in Korean, it's actually pretty phonetic.
So Korean is pretty good.
The one that you're really going to struggle with is Chinese
because of the fact that it's just pictographs,
and they do not have a phonetic alphabet.
As far as tips on that, I don't really have tips on it
because I haven't actually done it.
So my tip is choose Korean instead of Chinese.
I don't think the Chinese even know Chinese all the way.
What's that?
I don't think the Chinese even know Chinese all the way.
Yeah, even Chinese people, you know,
they only know like maybe 5,000 characters or 3,000 characters
or 10,000 characters or I don't know, depending on their level of education.
But even we in English, when we read a newspaper or something,
we're going to run into words that we don't understand.
They're going to run into words that they don't understand.
But Chinese people can read enough to figure it out.
Oh, and by the way, here's another point.
If you can understand 93 to 94% of the words on the page,
then you'll be able to figure out the rest from context.
So, you know, for example, the Greek New Testament
has about 6,000 words in it, 6,000 different vocabulary words,
so you'd have to learn like 93 to 94% of the text on a page
to be able to understand what's on that page.
And with Greek, that works out to be about 2,000 vocabulary words
because obviously some words are more common than others.
So if you learn like the first
or if you learn the most important 2,000 words in Greek or 2,500 words,
then you can usually pick out the rest from context.
So that's encouraging.
All right, well, I think we're about out of time.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
Let's close in a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for all the people
that are at this conference, Lord.
We just pray that a lot of great soul-winning
and missions trips would happen as a result of this conference, Lord,
and I pray that there would be some people
that would be dedicated to learning foreign languages
to bring the Gospel to other groups of people
besides just the English-speaking world,
bring the Gospel to the Spanish-speaking world,
the Portuguese-speaking world, the French-speaking world, et cetera.
And Lord, I just pray that you just bless everyone who's here
that has that vision and that goal.
Give them the ability, Lord, and just give them wisdom
and give them the endurance and diligence
it's going to take to get it done.
And in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.
All right, so there is some downtime now,
but there is a soul-winning time at 5.40,
but I'm sure that Brother Segura could probably send you out before that
if you wanted to get that done earlier.
But the official soul-winning time is at 5.40,
and then there is a screening of Deported at 5.40 and at 8 o'clock.
Is there anybody who needs a ride to the 5.40?
You need a ride to 5.40.
All right, I got one up here.
I got another one here.
So you couple of guys, I believe my wife is heading out
in about maybe 20 minutes here for Deported,
so you should be able to hitch a ride with her.
And then 8 o'clock showing Brother Corbin Ressel
is going to be bringing the church van at 8 o'clock,
so there will be a ride for you guys then.
.