Hey, Dowson S here from minicmethod.com where you learn foreign languages by focusing on the accent. And usually when I tell people that at dinner parties or whatnot, they're most common responses, oh okay, so this is something you do after you already know the language pretty well. And the idea there is that accent is like a bonus activity. It's not that important. It's kind of cool to have, it might be impressive, but it's not really fundamental to learning the language. So in this video, I want to talk about why that's so wrong, so fundamentally wrong in so many ways. And the reason why I'm making this is because I just finished up a walk and I was doing calls. I had a call with a student and she was telling me about her difficulties and challenges in learning Spanish. And she told me how when she was in school, her teacher had kicked her out of class because her accent in Spanish was, as she said, hurt the teacher's ears. First off, terrible teacher, that woman should be fired immediately if she still works. But she also said speaking to people and her friends, she would be having a strong, a lot of difficulty actually engaging conversation because people would laugh at her accent. And it really built up this huge mental block about speaking the language. And as she already knows herself, being able to speak the language or practicing is the only way to actually be able to do it. I'll tell you how I learned Spanish. That was the first language I learned. I went to Mexico when I was 17 and I was really struggling when I got there. I wasn't really able to understand anyone. I was living with a host family. I felt completely isolated because they didn't know who I was. I wasn't able to express myself and I wasn't able to connect to them because I couldn't quite follow along with what they're doing. And after a couple of weeks of this, I was going to class every day, studying, memorizing my vocabulary, learning my grammar rules, reading and writing, getting good grades, yet I was still struggling to connect with Mexicans in conversation. And then one day, for whatever reason, I don't really remember anymore. I just made a decision. And I said, you know what? Obviously, I suck at Spanish. I'm never going to be able to learn this. What I'll do is I'll just have fun with it. And if I can't understand what people are saying, I'm just going to make an attempt to sound as Mexican as I can when I speak. That way it's kind of fun. So instead of going to restaurants and being like, um, Poito Tenerma, Squacambole con mis tacos, por favor, I would be like, how would a Mexican say this? Let me get really into it, my belay. Poito Tenerre, mas guacamole con mis tacos, por favor. And I'll go full Antonio Banderas on them. And you know, like a Tenerina, really extreme. And it kind of made things more fun. But I started to pay attention to how Mexicans were speaking. Because I want to get better and better at that. And I'd say, oh, I didn't quite sound right. How is this guy's tongue positioned here? This is voice go up, where does it go down? What's the general feel, the spirit? And I spent like a few weeks just really fine-tuning my accent without focusing on my vocabulary, without focusing on my grammar. Now, funny thing happened. After doing this for a while, I remember one day, I'm speaking to somebody and are speaking to me. And I'm like, huh? I understand almost everything that this guy is saying to me. What's going on? I never really experienced before. And then it was my turn to speak. And I'm like, oh, here's the speaking time again, about to get nervous. And then all of a sudden, the words were just flowing out of me. And I'm like, whoa, what's going on? I remember, I almost kind of like stood next to myself. And I'm like, looking at my brain, I'm like, what's going on? You speak as fast, bro. You see it? It was crazy. It was kind of like a out-of-body experience. And I continued to progress. And I got to a point where eventually in my Mexican, I was able to communicate with my Mexican friends and my host family. I got buddies. I even got a Mexican girlfriend. I was speaking purely Spanish too. And it was great. I mean, that experienced my first time learning a foreign language. And it was my first time going from being a complete foreigner and an alien to a place and just being completely disconnected from the entire society to being part of the family, being welcomed in the inside group, laughing along with everyone. And being like, yeah, my Mexican buddies. And I was 17. My first time off my own and completely fundamentally changed my life and my worldview. And I was addicted to that experience. And I wanted to repeat it again. And after that, I learned Chinese. And then I learned Portuguese. And I learned French and all these different countries. And I kept going with it because it's such a great experience. But the key to entering into that world and unlocking that fluency that I found in these languages, I realized didn't come from me obsessing over writing and reading and vocabulary and grammar. It came from me getting the accent off the bat. And I understood that from Mexico. And I was able to learn Chinese much faster. And then Brazilian Portuguese much faster because I focused on the accent first. I didn't save it for the end. It wasn't an extra bonus cheering on top. It was fundamental. And there's many ways that is fundamental. But one of them, at very least, is the psychological one. I mentioned that student I had a call with. Because of the psychological mental barrier she has when she has the anticipation that people will laugh at her accent. That's huge. That means she has a huge, disincentive from doing the most important part of practice, which is practicing conversation. So at the very least, fine tuning your pronunciation, getting a good accent will give you the confidence you need to speak. You know the opposite of somebody laughing at you for how you speak is somebody complimenting you. And those of you who've had this experience, we get emails all the time from people who were like, whoa, I had someone compliment my accent, compliment my Spanish and my French, for the first time. And it feels fantastic. And it does. And you can actually feel that way on your first day in the country. When I learned German, I got the Germany day one. I didn't know any vocabulary really. I didn't know much grammar in German. I spent the three weeks prior mastering the German accent to the best of my ability. And I learned like a few like introductory phrases. So when I got there and I met somebody at like a beer house that I was at, started talking to me. I'm like, oh, so I come out all of America and I'm here, new for the weekend and the violin. I can't stop, blah, blah, blah. And then I got, I was like, wow, I'm going to say good, you're German so good. Well, blah, blah, blah. And boom, I'm already getting that positive feedback, positive reinforcement. I'm like, oh, thank you so much. And that feedback is, it just makes you super confident. You want to speak more. So if you follow my other videos, you know my program. You understand that even beyond the psychological element, mastering accent is actually fundamental. The reason why I had that breakthrough in Mexico is because that's how language works. Fundamentally, language is just a series of sound effects that you make by moving your mouth. So in order for you to truly get and tune into the language, you need to tune into that system of sound, to that flow, to that frequency. But you can watch other videos to understand that. I just want to really emphasize this psychological point here because that call I had really brought it back to mind. So if you're learning any language, whether you've been learning it for years or if you're just starting off, don't dis the accent. It's the most fundamental important part, even if it doesn't make sense to you. It affects everything, especially the psychological one. So if that's the kind of experience you want to have, then check out our programs at mimicmethod.com. If you enjoyed this video, like it. If you have experiences where people laugh at your accent, or they compliment you on your accent, if you've done our programs, share it in the comments, share your stories. I like to go into comments and reply back, especially if you're demoted, they're gonna be a good pep talk there in the comments. And then subscribe to this channel. If you want to get more videos like this, our goal is to get to 10,000 YouTube subscribers by the end of March. So if you can help us do that, share this video, really appreciate it. Thanks guys, and I'll catch you in the next video.