How to Use AI to Learn Languages 10x Faster

So before getting to the title of the video, I need to explain some language learning theory to begin with so you can understand why this approach is effective. Basically language is just a way of breaking down the world into a set of concepts. So we have the world over here in this big circle and we have language A, English for example in blue circles and we have language B, Japanese in red circles and these could be any other languages and basically in language A we have broken down the world into these like overlapping set of circles. Some of them overlap quite well, not as much, and they're quite discreet. And in language B, we've also done something quite similar in another segment of the circle. Now, the thing is when you're translating between languages, like you're usually losing some kind of nuance between the languages, words don't have a onetoone mapping between different languages, some of them can, for example, like scientific words such as hydrogen in English is equivalent to hydrogen in Japanese. But thousands of words don't have any direct translation between two languages. When you're watching a drama, for example, which is dubbed in a different language, they're not saying the translation of what they said in the previous language. They're saying like basically what a native speaker of the new language would have said in the same situation. So, if you're watching an anime, but it's in English, then they're basically saying what an English speaker would have said if they found themselves in the same situation rather than a direct translation because a direct translation loses a lot of nuance and it doesn't sound natural. So yeah, in this case over here we have two circles and this could be like a scientific term and they overlap or they almost have a onetoone meaning between two languages. We have another term which kind of mean the same thing. They overlap a tiny bit but they don't overlap completely. And we have another concept where in Japanese we might have a word that encapsulate one idea and then in English we might have five words for that same idea each which has its own nuance and meaning which is why in some cases you can't have a direct translation without explaining the nuance and meaning. So what this ultimately means is that when you're learning a language, whether that's English, Japanese, Chinese, or any other language, you want to be learning that language within the language itself. You don't want to be learning translations, you want to be learning the definition of words in the language itself. And as a brief aside, if you're interested in more of what I just said and you want to learn a more language learning theory to make sure you can get to a really high level in a language, I would recommend checking out Matt vs Japan's immersion dojo because he explains a lot of language learning theory with a big picture overview and the finer details about what you should be doing on a practical basis to get a high level in another language. There's a link down below to join it and I would highly recommend it because I personally got a lot of value out of it. And where AI comes into this is that Chad GPT and other LLMs are really good at explaining different concepts to you in a variety of different languages. So what I did is I made my own anki add-on which explains words of a language using simpler words within the same language. And ani is a really powerful software that helps you memorize a lot of information which can include thousands or tens of thousands of words of a different language. And I have a previous video about it which you can watch and it's linked somewhere above right now. And you can go to tools and you can see the add-on in you can download in the description down below and it's called GPT language explainer settings. So you can go over here and you can see it uses OpenAI. So uses OpenAI API key. I have a full video which breaks down how to use the add-on. But the main thing is I have a prompt which says please write a short explanation of the word in the context of the original sentence sentence. The definition is a definition. Write an explanation that helps a Japanese beginner understand the word and how it's used in the context as example. Explain it the same way a native would explain it to a child. Don't use any English. Only use simpler Japanese. And then it has some more settings for Japanese itself. And if you're using Japanese or uh then you want to be using the engine for text to speech engine as voice box and you need to have voice box installed and there's a good page where you can go to install it from and it's text to speech for Japanese in particular but if you're learning a different language you might want to use open AI's uh or 11 Labs text to speech instead. So, basically the way this works is I'm going to go and find a word that I don't know and I have a video over here which I'm watching and it explains uh it's like 50 to 80s give advice to the younger selves and there's a word that I want to learn or phrase over here and when I hover over it I have this extension that shows the definition of the word in Japanese and then it shows some English as well and you can see in Japanese it only has one definition but in English it has like six seven translations which is why you don't want to be learning translations you want to be learning definitions of the word in the language itself. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to press add over here and then it's going to add that to Anki and then I'm going to press this uh add a note button over here and open up Anki and then it shows the sentence that I just added. But this sentence is not particularly good. It's not particularly like complete um because it's cut off. So what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to go to uh a website called immersion kit. I'm going to search the uh phrase in particular and then I'm going to find a good sentence. And this sentence seems quite good. It's from my anime Re. And then I'm going to paste the sentence in the sentence area over here. And then press copy audio URL. Paste the sentence audio in here. And then and that was the audio for the sentence. And I'm just going to paste a picture in as well. And now the way to use this extension is you can go to edit

and then press batch generate GPT explanations. And since I'm using Japanese and I'm using voice box, I need to have voice box installed and running in the background. Um because that's well used for text to speech. So if I go to edit, press batch generate GP explanations. Do you want to override the explanations field? This is if you're using many different using this for many different cards. So you can do batch generate for hundreds or thousands of cards. Uh do you want to override it? Well, it's empty so it doesn't matter. Uh do you want to override the explanation field audio? H yes, because it's empty. And now it will generate the explanation using chbpt of this word in this particular sentence. And it will also use text speech to make it a audio card. So now it's done. I can deselect the flash card or the note. Select it again. And you can see there's a definition that it wrote or open AI wrote for us. And there's an explanation audio which I can just play. And I can also press preview card over here and it'll explain the word out the front. And then if I press backside only, it'll show the definition of the word. It'll show the sentence and it will also show the pitch and it'll also play the actual audio that we generated of the explanation. So what this means is that when you're learning a language and you're doing something like this or using this extension in particular, you're learning words in that language using simpler words. So you're making connections between different words and you're also not sub vocalizing as well. Because one of the worst things you can do when you're starting out learning a language, it's sub vocalizing because vocalizing will actually make your pronunciation in that language worse itself. So the reason I use text to speech is that if I were to read this myself and be vocalizing too early into language learning journey and then they have a really bad foreign accent within that language and that's what you want to avoid and that's why the text to speech is there because the reality is that people who learn a language mostly for your reading don't reach as high of a level as people who learn through listening instead. So what I did is I made mostly audio only cards where it plays the audio when it's at the front and it plays a audio at the back as well of the explanation of that word in that particular sentence. So since my flash cards are mostly audio only, it means that my listening skills are getting better and better and then it will lead to a better result in the long term. You only want to improve your reading skills after your listening skills at a really high level, just like infants do. And if you want to learn more language learning theory like that, then I would recommend checking out the community as well because Matt in the community explains it really well. And if you want to download the add-on, then I actually share the add-on on that community, too. So you can just download it and then place it in the add-ons folder. And there's a video that goes alongside that of how you can actually download it in the community. And when you download the add-on, you can see it's completely safe and it doesn't steal your OpenAI keys or anything like that. And actually, I made most of this add-on with AI. So about 90% of the code is written by AI and then I just made 10% of the changes myself. And if you want to learn how to build useful tools and things for yourself using AI, then I actually started my own community as well that you can join and it's basically teaches a lot of things about how you can build with AI. Right now I have like an 11-hour class within the community about how you can make mobile apps with AI and I'll be adding more and more things over time. And if you are learning Japanese in particular, then I would highly recommend reading my post getting from 0ero to one comprehensible Japanese which is a map versus Japan's immersion dojo community as well because it explains how I got from knowing almost zero Japanese to being able to understand explanations and concepts of new words that I encountered within the language itself using simpl language. But yeah, links to everything will be down in the description. So do check that out.