Learning French with Youtube videos and LingQ

I spent five years learning Spanish in traditional settings: classes and free apps like Duolingo and Memrise. In that time, I went from zero to advanced. Years later, I moved to Ecuador and then Chile. In two years in South America, I went from advanced to fluent.

Then I went back to the US and quickly started losing what I’d invested seven years developing. It was incredibly frustrating.

Learning a language is one of the hardest things I’ve done. It takes time, consistency, resilience, and enthusiasm. Now that I’m no longer in school, it also requires resourcefulness.

Duolingo and Memrise, at best, familiarized me with the language. Once I was an intermediate speaker of Spanish, they didn’t do me any good.

As I prepared to learn my third language, French, I picked up Duolingo. I went through the entire course, and afterwards, I spoke zero French. I knew some words, oui, but if I watched a Youtube video or listened to a song of a native speaker, I was lost. I couldn’t understand a word. Forget speaking any words!

I didn’t want my journey to French fluency to be as long and grueling as my journey to Spanish was.

Enter my solution

Then, in early 2020, I read a superb article by Yannick Hallas – the ultimate guide to learning Russian.

Through Hallas’s piece, I was introduced to LingQ, a revolutionary language-learning platform developed by the polyglot Steve Kaufmann.

LingQ is a game-changer for language-learning because it can actually take a user from zero to fluency, whereas the usual suspects familiarize you with a language at best. It does this by mimicking the way we learn our native tongue. We flood our brains with the language, it’s all noise at first, and eventually, the fog starts to clear.

As Hallas points out, the LingQ methodology is based around fun. That’s right — no demanding memorization lists, no forcing grammar rules down your throat. These strategies lack context, but the essence of language is 100% contextual. We don’t memorize what words mean, we understand what they signify through the contexts we learn them in.

How I learn French with Youtube videos

One of LingQ’s coolest features is the import extension. With it, you can import content from various websites, including articles, ebooks, Netflix (yes, entire episodes!), and Youtube videos.

Rather than focusing entirely on beginner-level content, I started browsing Spotify for French musicians. I discovered Angele (a French-speaking Belgian popstar), and I liked her sound, so I began following her. This led me to more, including her rapping brother, Romeo Elvis. Through this brother-sister duo, I discovered L’Or du Commun, a rap group with whom both — but mainly Elvis — collaborate.

Then I took to Youtube. I searched their music videos (which are usually hilarious in addition to being high-quality), and I began importing them to LingQ in two clicks.

Steps to reproduce:

Ensure the browser extension is downloaded.
Open the Youtube video on your browser of choice.
Turn on closed captioning.
Click the extension icon, choose your language, and click Import.
Immediately open the lesson in your browser.
(Optional) If the auto-generated closed captioning is inaccurate, find the correct lyrics elsewhere on the web with which to edit the imported lesson.*
- *Pro tip: For big stars like these, usually a fan has provided the full lyrics in a top Youtube comment. I tend to trust these over RapGenius because there’s a social pressure factor. Other commenters will immediately jump on it if he/she got anything incorrect, and the original commenter will update accordingly.

The magical LingQ Reader

The closed captioning turns into a transcript in the LingQ Reader, which is a magical tool. When you read on LingQ, it tracks which words you do and don’t know. Click on any unknown words (which are highlighted in blue), look up meanings at the right, and save one or more. There are also integrated dictionaries you can pop open if you don’t see a translation that fits.

Attaching a meaning to a word is called creating a LingQ. The blue word turns yellow, and it’s tracked in your statistics. You can practice these words in flashcard review later if you’d like to.

But the real fun happens while reading and listening to content. Not only does the Youtube video import embed the video directly in LingQ, but it also strips the audio and adds it to your Playlist, so you can easily listen from your mobile device on the go.

I like to read through the lyrics and turn all blue words to yellow or white (marking a word as “Known” turns it white). Then, I might go into Sentence Mode and follow along line-by-line as I listen to the audio or play the music video.

Eventually, I’ll start to teach myself the lyrics by singing along. This is especially challenging for me because French is about the accent. I might slow the audio down to .67 or .9 speed while I teach myself lyrics line by line. I can learn a whole verse in an hour this way.

Then, I turn the speed back up and record myself on my phone singing along! This way I can hear the artist and myself simultaneously and notice where my accent fails. Without recording ourselves and listening back, it’s hard to know how our accent truly sounds.

Songs have meaning

Learning language through song is a strategic move. Because songs have tunes and rhymes, they become easier to memorize. Be honest, do you remember the order of the alphabet without singing it?

As Adam Tank points out, it’s not as enjoyable to read a translated version of Shakespeare as it is to nail a rhyming song. We needn’t bore ourselves with the content we think we should be reading, but rather, jump straight to our heart’s desire.

I like these songs. They have pleasant melodies, and the humorous music videos make the experience even more enjoyable. When the song comes on, I can sing along. In turn, I memorize how to say various phrases in that language.

In my time in South America, I met several people who speak English wonderfully well. When I asked how they learned, I was surprised by how many told me they learned by listening to The Beatles. They liked their music and wanted to learn the lyrics so they could sing along. They were able to turn that practice into a real-life conversation with me, a native English-speaker.

One of my favorite investments

“Is it free?”

No! But why let that deter you?

I hear people complain that LingQ is “too expensive.” It begs the question, too expensive compared to what?

If you’re comparing LingQ to ubiquitous, free apps like Duolingo and Memrise, yes, it’s expensive! $7.99 – $12.99 a month is… $7.99 – $12.99 a month more than $0. But as Hallas calls out:

…if you think that $12.99 a month (at most!; they have cheaper payment plans) for learning another language is not worth it but spend just as much on a single cocktail, let me suggest that your priorities aren’t right.

Plus, the Premium membership unlocks access to learn unlimited languages for the same price. This is unmatched value compared to anything else on the internet. Most other sites upcharge you for each additional language you want to learn.

Take another testimonial from a LingQ user:

How about that? You could kick your daily soda habit and replace it with a LingQ membership. You’d feel better, look better, and learn as many languages as you want for this tradeoff.

So if you think LingQ is too expensive, ask yourself: compared to what?

In conclusion

Never before in my life has language-learning been so fun that I sneak it into my work day. And I’m not talking about the Duolingo fake fun that makes you feel like you’re progressing because you guessed the word right. No, I’m talking about entertaining, engaging content paired with real-life progress that you can feel and measure as you go.

LingQ is a powerful, “choose your own adventure” tool. There’s so much more you can do with it beyond importing Youtube videos and learning song lyrics. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

What do you want to learn about? Russian politics and history, like Yannick Hallas? Or what about Portuguese culture and swear words, like Adam Tank? Do you want to watch a show in Czech? Or read an article about Italian insults? You can do it all, and so much more.

Try it out for yourself. You won’t regret it.