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Phil Crimmins:
Another thing that I've heard you talk about is bringing life into language. And that is a really fascinating
concept because I think there are two primary ways to bring life into language. And the one is kind of
obvious. If you see language surrounded by other language that helps give life to the language.

Gabriel Wyner:
For sure.

Phil Crimmins:
But it's putting the cart before the horse because, if it's particularly say Mandarin, you're looking at a
text of Chinese characters, good luck if you haven't done anything before. It's even harder than, I think
you put the Hungarian word for camera in your TED Talk and I thought, "Yeah." And then now imagine
that you can't even recognize any of the symbols and that's your situation with Chinese. Right?

Gabriel Wyner:
Yes.

Phil Crimmins:
And so, let's talk a little bit about ways to put life into language that isn't specifically from the language
itself. I mean, obviously, we all want to get to the golden comprehensible input of several walls of text
you can all understand, and extensive reading and that's great. But you need something else before you
get there. If somebody wants to learn, let's just say, starting at the word level and they want to learn a
new word. What advice would you give them to help them breathe life into, what was previously, a
random noise?

Gabriel Wyner:
I tend to look at all language learning from a memories to standpoint. And I like to use the levels of
processing framework, which is the best thing we know in terms of how we filter stuff, how we filter out
what's just noise and what's something I should actually recall? And so, levels of processing basically, it's
a bunch of how deeply can you think about something?
And so, I can think about dog as how many letters are in the word dog? And at that point, I'm
not thinking about a four-legged animal or anything like that. I'm just thinking, "One, two, three." I'm
thinking about some letters and all that. And so, that level of thinking about the symbols that represent
the word, that's the lowest level of processing.
And it's why, when you walk the through a grocery store and you see 700 brands of deodorant,
you don't leave the grocery store having memorized 700 brands of deodorant, because that is noise and
you don't want that in your head. And so, levels of processing kicks it out. And so it puts it on this
bottom level, filter it out.
Mandarin is below level one for someone new, because you can't even recognize the symbols.
And so, if you are not even at level one, you have no chance of remembering anything. Level one is
where you have the barest, smallest chance of remembering anything. And that is designed to be
filtered out. Your brain, it actively rejects stuff at level one. Level two is sound and sound is where you
say, "Kutya is the word for dog." Or you say whatever. Let's pick something with more American sounds

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in it because kutya already has some discomfort because you're like, "Oh, what did he actually say?
What are these pieces?"
And so, if you're like bog, dog, or whatever. [Meckneck 00:03:03] is the some random language's
word for dog, then you're like, "Okay. Meckneck, dog, whatever." You're still not thinking about a four-
legged animal. You're not thinking, "One, two, three letters." You're thinking, "Meckneck, dog." And so
you're trying to make this connection between the sound of the new word and the sound of the
translation in the target language. And you're just trying to go, "Meckneck dog, meckneck dog,
meckneck, dog." And you've still never thought about the four legs of this thing.
That sound level you'll remember twice as well as the structural level, as the spelling, if the
pronunciation is unfamiliar, you won't even hit there. And so, in terms of the barriers with Mandarin,
you're first barrier is you can't even recognize the symbols, so you're screwed there. And then, even if
you start getting into the actual sounds of the word, and you're like, "Okay, this one means that thing in
English," then, if you can't recognize the tones, then you're not even at level two. If you can't recognize
the constants and the vowels, you're still not even at level two.
And if you can't hear those things, which is where we all start out. We start out not being able to
actually differentiate between the sounds and the target language. Then you're struggling even to reach
level two. And level two still sucks. It's why, if you hear a podcast or something, you only remember two
facts from the podcast. You aren't remembering a verbatim transcript of the whole podcast. Because
again, noise, I don't want to remember every single word that I hear all day. I hear a lot of words all day.
My brain's designed to filter that out and it does, it does a good job of that filtering.
Level one, you double your recall rate level two, and still, that's really, really terrible. And that's
where you sit usually with translations. Level three is where you actually start having some life in the
word. And that's when you're like, "How many legs does a dog have?" And then you're like, "Oh, that's a
thing. It has four legs." You show a picture of a dog, you show a whole bunch of pictures of kutya and
they all look like dogs. And you're like, "Oh, kutya must be something relating to dog."
And then you're like, "Okay, kutya," and you see one dog. And then you're like "[foreign
language 00:05:09] kutya." And you're like, and you see two dogs. And you're like, "Wait. Oh, okay.
Okay. These things connect." And suddenly, you're starting to actually recognize, "What is this thing, this
kutya thing? And I guess it's the thing that has four legs, it has a tail." And that's where you start having
pieces to it.
Level three is where you deal with the concept. And the concept is where we actually live and
breathe and do things. What does a dog smell like? What does it sound like? What does it do? Anytime
you ask questions about the actual thing that you're learning, that's when it starts actually retaining
pieces that your brain was designed to hold on to, rather than forget.
And level three, if you look at these tests, it's recalled twice as well as level two or four times as
well as level one. And that's because of this filter working. There is a level four and the level four is, do
you like dogs? What's the name of your dog? What's your favorite dog? Tell me about your childhood
dog. It's can you link it to a memory that you already have or a feeling you already have? This is the
personal connection layer, and that's memorized twice as well as level three.
And so, what you're looking for in terms of breathing life into new words is how do I connect
this new concept? Kutya, for instance, Hungarian word for dog, with stuff that lives in levels three and
four. And so for me, I tend to do the learning process at the same time as I do the flashcard process.
That is my philosophy. It's not required.
It's just that if you're going to build a memory, you need to be able to recall the memory. And
for me, I'm like, "Well, screw it. Let's just do those at the same time," but they don't have to be done
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that way. The building, the memory part can be literally you going on Google Images and searching for
kutya and see what happens. That's you looking at what does kutya look like?
Alternatively, it can be you talking to a native speaker about kutya and say like, "Hey, can you
tell me what kutya sounds like?" And they're like, "It sounds like ruff, ruff, ruff." And you're like, "Oh,
that's interesting." Or I'm like, "Can you draw kutya?" And they'll start doing the drawing thing. You're
like, "Oh, is that the thing that goes ruff, ruff, ruff?" And they're like, "Yep, kutya." And you're like, "Yes.
Okay, cool. I got that."
That's an interaction where you're not just understanding what it means. Yeah, you figured out
kutya was dog. Good job. You played Pictionary and you got there. But in addition, you just put on a new
layer of, I had an interaction with a real human being. I had fun in terms of time to guess what the hell
they're drawing and that fun is now linked to kutya. And that experience of, "I thought it was a cat, but
then it was a dog," that was linked to kutya.
And so, that whole experience gets pulled into the word. And then, yeah, you could make a flash
card for it and remind yourself of that experience or not. But no matter what, you built a dense memory
that had all sorts of pieces to it. Long answer to a short question, but it's core to everything.

Phil Crimmins:
No. Well, I mean, I completely, I think it's a great answer. But I also want to expand on it a little bit. Let
me ask you this as an extension of this question. Does the experience, the personal connection have to
be real or can it be something that you're just making up on the spot? You're going, "Okay. I'm going to
make a little story [crosstalk 00:08:29]."

Gabriel Wyner:
It can absolutely be made up. Neural. But that's 100% totally fine. There was this, the example that
showed up in my TED Talk is this mock tour thing, where I talk about this drink and I give this whole
experience. There is thousands of people who have come to me and been like, "Oh yeah, I mock tour."
And I'm like, that's a made up word. You know that, right?" And they're like, "Oh, no."
They all memorized this word. They all shared an experience with me of talking about drinking
mock dog or whatever. And I just made up the word. And yet it's a real word for them because they
lived an imagined experience with me. And so you having the experience of saying, "Hey, I'm going to
build this crazy pneumonic for whatever, that is just as valuable and just as linky is and memory-full and
stuff like that, as you literally going out there and drinking the thing.
And I like pneumonics for that purpose. It's an ability, you can go on a little journey in your mind
and you can build a thing. I tend to use pneumonics a lot when it comes to memorizing gender and
things like that, grammatical gender for the languages that have it. And for any places that I can use it
really.
I've tried to use it for Japanese counters, things like that. Where that interaction of, "I'm going
to go take some random abstract object, some random abstract concept and I'm going to link it to this
new word that is not random and abstract, but it's something I really want." And that has every bit of as
much value as me going out and looking for the object and seeing it, or talking to a native speaker, all
that stuff. Yeah. If your brain does it, if you go through the effort, then it works. If you skip it, it doesn't.

Phil Crimmins:
Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. For example, the Chinese word for dog is gǒu, pretty simple word. And it kind
of sounds like go in English. I was once bitten by a dalmatian when I was a kid, which was just so
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traumatizing because I was like, "Dalmations, I thought you were friendly because of 101 Dalmations."
But Nope, they actually.

Gabriel Wyner:
Sure.

Phil Crimmins:
They're jerks. They're biting people all the time, but anyway. This Dalmatian bit me and so I thought
about it when I was learning gǒu. I went, "Okay, let me imagine that time with that dalmation. And then
I'll imagine that after it bit me, I was like, "Whaa," because I was a kid, I was a little kid. I'm like, I'm
crying. And then I'm like, "Gǒu." And then it turns, and then suddenly there are racing flags with the
green flag going there and a green light and then the dog runs through it.
And it's like, "Okay, well there, that's a little simple thing that I just came up with." It's
combining the actual memory with the associations that I already have with the word go, which sounds
like dog. And of course, and then there's little things, because of SRS, you can find out if a pneumonic
wasn't perfect later. You'll find out when the SRS flashcard comes through.
For example, let's say in that example, that I mistake it and think that that was actually the word
for go. Qù in Chinese is the word for go. And so maybe, I confuse that. Okay. Then just make the dog
more important in the scene. Make sure I really feel it biting me and make sure I really see, maybe
instead of the green lights being separate from the dog, I make its legs turn into traffic lights that are all
green. Or something like that, just whatever it is that you need to do. And that's something that I really
try to harp on with people is that you've got all your lived experience to glean from.

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