Why You Understand Me But NOT Other Native Speakers

Why You Understand Me But NOT Other Native Speakers .

 Have you ever felt confident listening to one English speaker — but completely confused when someone else starts talking?
You understand this voice clearly… but suddenly, another native speaker sounds too fast, too unclear, or even impossible to follow.
If this has ever happened to you, you are not alone — and more importantly, you are not failing.
In this deep and insightful episode of Mind Life In English, host Profe Lao breaks down one of the most common but misunderstood problems in English learning:
👉 Why learners can understand certain speakers easily but struggle with others.
This episode goes beyond simple explanations and dives into the real mechanics of listening comprehension, helping you understand what is actually happening inside your brain when you listen to English.
🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode
🔹 1. The “Comfort Speaker” Effect
Why you understand familiar voices (like teachers, slow speakers, or clear accents) — and why your brain gets comfortable with a specific speaking style.
🔹 2. The Reality of Native English Speech
Real native speakers don’t speak like textbooks.
You’ll explore:
Fast speech patterns
Connected speech (words blending together)
Reduced sounds and informal pronunciation
Natural rhythm and stress
🔹 3. Accent Diversity and Its Impact
English is not just one accent.
This episode explains:
American vs British vs other global accents
Why different accents feel “hard”
How your brain reacts to unfamiliar sound patterns
🔹 4. The Speed Barrier
It’s not just vocabulary — it’s speed.
You’ll learn:
Why fast English feels impossible
How your brain processes language in real time
Why translating in your head slows you down
🔹 5. Common Listening Mistakes
Many learners don’t realize they are making these mistakes:
• Trying to understand every single word
• Translating instead of listening naturally
• Focusing too much on grammar instead of meaning
• Panicking when they miss one part of a sentence
🔹 6. The Path to Real Listening Fluency
This is where everything changes.
You’ll discover practical strategies to:
Understand different speakers and accents
Train your ears for natural English
Improve listening without stress
Build confidence in real conversations
🎯 Who This Episode Is For
This episode is perfect for:
✔️ Intermediate and advanced English learners
✔️ Listeners struggling with real-life conversations
✔️ Students preparing for study abroad or international work
✔️ Anyone who feels “I understand my teacher… but not real people”
🧠 Deep Learning Insight
Understanding one speaker is not fluency — it’s just the beginning.
True English fluency means: 👉 Understanding different voices
👉 Adapting to different accents
👉 Following real, fast, natural conversations
And that’s exactly what this episode helps you start building.
🎧 Final Thought
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t understand every speaker.
Every difficult conversation is actually training your brain to grow stronger in English.
Keep listening. Keep learning. Keep improving.
🚀 Call to Action
If you found this episode helpful:
⭐ Follow Mind Life In English
⭐ Share this episode with other English learners
⭐ Keep practicing your listening every day
🔖 Suggested Tags (SEO Optimized)
English Listening Skills, Native Speaker English, English Accents, Learn English Podcast, English Fluency, Listening Practice, Mind Life In English, Profe Lao, Real English Conversations, Advanced English

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone. I am chilling on the couch. I'm sitting here. I'm relaxed. I'm liking the vibe. I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna try it like this. I'm filming in the living room. There's a big window right here and a lot of light is coming in, but I I don't know if it's enough. I don't know if my face is illuminated or if I'm kind of dark and fuzzy. So this is an experimental episode. This is an experimental video. We're gonna see how it goes. I just wanted to try it out here because in my bedroom there's so much echo, the sound quality is not very good. So I thought maybe it'd be better out here in the living room of the apartment. So we're gonna try it out. Um but I don't have like a table and chair here, I just have a couch. And I said, well, I could just sit back and have like a more relaxing style video and just hold the microphone like this, and uh, we'll see how it goes. Since I'm doing these long podcast styles, just talking, talking, talking videos, it's it's a more of like a relaxed vibe anyways, you know? So you get comfortable, you don't even need to watch, you can just listen, you know. But it's like a relaxed vibe, and that's the kind of vibe that I I want to establish here on this channel, if it's not already established, so eh, let's do it. Alright, today I'm super hot. It's hot. I'm in Sao Paulo Braz Brasil, Brazil. Today it's like 30 Celsius. I know it gets hotter, I know it the summer's coming, it's gonna get hotter than that, but it's hot because I'm like right by the window, so there's a lot of uh you can't see it, but it's a lot of heat coming in on this side of the apartment. So it's a bit it's a bit toasty, and sometimes my camera overheats when it gets hot for a while. So if the video gets cut off at some point and I'm too lazy to like film in uh a a conclusion again to film again, then the video might just randomly end, and then you you know what happened. So just warning you that if that happens, that's that's what happened. But honestly, I'll probably get all the information out in the first 20 minutes, so you're good. Um, so today we're gonna talk about something that anybody who's learning English or any language really should listen up. Like, pay attention because I have some information, some perspective, something that might kind of open your eyes to a way of thinking about it that you might not have before. So, as always, these videos are for you to practice your listening. You can even imitate me and practice your speaking, but also I I'm literally talking about learning English in this video, learning languages, my experience learning um Spanish and maybe even Portuguese, I might talk about. I don't know. I don't know what we're gonna get into, but I have I wrote down a couple things I want to talk about, so let's see where it takes us. All right. All right. So let me look at a screenshot that I took just a second. Well, I it's gonna be like cut out, so it's not even gonna be a second, but I don't know what I'm saying. Anyway, sorry. I haven't filmed for like two weeks. I feel awkward. Okay. It I it's because it took me forever to edit the last video. If you saw, if you watched the last video I made, um first of all, thank you if you really watched it, because that video was very special to me, and I put a lot of time and effort into it in the editing to try to make it like a little bit faster paced, like not so like a little bit easier to watch because it's a lot of information. Um so yeah, it's it's a bit of a controversial video, but I I had to make it. But but I'm back with my normal, kind of more relaxed, slower, natural style, less editing, um, just kind of podcast style videos. So yeah. Okay. So I took a screenshot of a comment that I got on one of my videos. And well, the comment is in Spanish, but let me try to translate it. So basically, they said, um, your English is very clean and easy to understand. Uh, talking with just normal people in the United States is hell. It seems like they don't know how to speak their language correctly. Okay, so this is not related to the United States. This is a worldwide phenomenon. This is humanity. This is humanity in a nutshell. So I could tell you from my experience of living in Spanish-speaking countries and speaking Spanish for years, seven years, I could tell I could tell you that some people they enunciate more or they speak slower, or they speak in a way that's easier to understand than other people. Period. Period. Some people just speak slower than other people. Some people enunciate and speak more clearly, period. It doesn't matter which country, whatever. But the way that people speak isn't necessarily due to a lack of like knowledge about the language or not knowing how to speak their language. It's not that they don't know how to speak their language. Of course, of course, native speakers know how to speak their language. Okay. If you're got if you got a stick up your butt and you think that you're that like everybody needs to speak like literature books and all like professional and weird all the time, then you might disagree with that. But I think that native speakers know how to speak their language. They might not know anything about like explaining teaching it or the grammar of it. They might not know they might not know why they say what they say, but they know how to speak the language. They're they're native speakers. So it's not so it's not that they don't know how to speak the language. If if you think that, wow, somebody really doesn't enunciate, someone really speaks in a way that's very difficult to understand when you're learning the language, that doesn't mean they don't know how to speak their language. That just means that that is the way that that person talks. And typically these people, they tend to they tend to have less experience talking to foreigners or talking to people who are learning the language. And they basically just have less less experience with kind of the concept of talking to people who are not native speakers or just um learning languages themselves sometimes. Sometimes people just are not really involved in this activity themselves, and so they're not really thinking about how if they just spoke a little bit more clearly, it would be easier for you. They're not really thinking like this. Yes, as somebody who is travels to many countries and learns other languages and teaches languages, I think that it's annoying. It is, it is annoying when people c are you're clearly talking to someone who doesn't speak the language, they're not a native speaker. So why would you talk to them in a very difficult way? Why would you talk to them in the same way that you talk to everybody else? Like super why would you talk to them like super mumbled, quiet, um, too like super fast, not enunciated? Believe me, I agree, it's super frustrating. But you can you find these people everywhere. It's not just the United States, it's not just, you know, and it's not because they don't know the language. It's just because they're not really realizing, they're not really thinking about how that they're not realizing that they should kind of alter the way they speak to make it a little bit less easy, a little bit easier for you, a little bit less annoying, you know. So I I agree it's annoying, but um we can't be like they don't even speak their own language because that's that's stupid. That's false. Okay. They speak it. You're just not a native speaker, and so it's harder for you to understand. That being said, even native speakers don't understand each other sometimes. I was talking to one of my students who lives in the United States and he is Mexican, and he works at um like a like a restaurant or like a fast food restaurant or something. And he says that the sometimes the person who's taking people's orders is a native speaker, a native English speaker in the United States. And even they don't understand sometimes people who order, like sometimes native speakers don't even understand what the other person says. That's very common. Even even when I listen to native speakers in um other languages, you know, they ask each other, like, what'd you say? Like, sometimes we don't hear each other, sometimes it wasn't clear, and we just we're like, what? Like, you know, this is this is normal. So remember that. Remember that um you're you're never gonna get to a point where you understand absolutely everything all the time, no matter what, because even native speakers don't. But obviously you can improve significantly. Yes, of course, of course. So when I saw this comment on YouTube, I yeah, I was just like, i it's not that they don't know how to speak the language, it's just um just different ways of talking. And then the person responded, I mean that they demote the language with excessive contractions and distorted words. I don't know what that means. What do you mean distorted words and excessive contractions? English is full of contractions. And native speakers are only gonna use contractions that other native speakers understand. Because native speakers need to be understood by other native speakers. So it's not like some native speakers are gonna use contractions that most of us don't use. No, they're using contractions that we all use, or a lot of us use. It's just that English is full of contractions. So if you're coming from a language like Spanish, like this person is, um, yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be hard because there's a lot of contractions in English, and like I've showed in multiple videos that I've made, you take the phrase, I am going to do that, and it can be I'm gonna do that, it can be I'm gonna do that. Like there's we shorten it in multiple ways. There's so many ways to contract uh words and phrases in sentences in English. Like English is just full of contractions, and that's something that makes it it hard. Like, yes, it's one of the things that is really hard about English. But I I really doubt that the people that you're encountering, you know, at the store or wherever, wherever you, you know, you're you're encountering people in the United States, I really doubt that they're using excessive contractions. Like I don't even know what that means. I don't even know what that's referring to. Like what contractions are they using that we do wouldn't all use? Like I sorry, hate to break it to you, but we all say, I'm gonna do that. Like we most of us say, Yeah, I'm gonna do that, instead of, yeah, I am going to do that. Or I'm gonna do that. You know, a lot of us most of us, like my parents, my grandparents, like this is the way I was raised. Like we say, yeah, I'm gonna do that. It's it's n it's normal. That's not an excessive contraction. Um, it's not necessary to say it. Like you could say, yeah, I'm gonna do that, or I am going to do that. Sounds weird. It sounds like too like by the book. Um, but yeah. So uh excessive contractions, I don't I don't know what that is really referring to. And distorted words, I don't know what that means. Of course, there's always like slang stuff, you know. There's always slang in every language. There's slang, there's regional words and new slang and things that you just simply might not know. But um, I don't know what you mean by distorted words. How can a word be distorted? Are you talking about uh like acronyms? Like texting, like LOL? Like what do you mean distorted? What is a distorted word? Because even slang is full of real words, they're not distorted. I don't I don't even know, I don't even understand what distorted means. So I don't know what this person is saying. Um, but also this this reminded me that I need to explain something about my videos because I I see so many comments all the time on all of my videos about how easy it is to understand me. And people always say, it's so easy to understand you. I don't know why it's so hard to understand other native speakers. You are the easiest to understand. I wish everybody talked like you, blah, blah, blah. So I need to I need to address this. I need to explain this. So, yes, I am a language teacher and student, world traveler. Yes, I am I have learned to enunciate and speak more clearly. Like, this is something, this is something that I do automatically without even trying. Like, I have just kind of learned to speak this way, I think. That being said, like right now, as I'm filming this video, I promise you, I'm not trying to speak more clearly. If I were talking to a native speaker, friend, or family member right now, sitting here on the couch, I would be talking to them in the same way that I'm talking right now. Okay. So maybe I naturally speak a little bit more clearly than some other people do, but this is the normal way that I talk now. For whatever reason, this is how this is the way that I talk, and this is the way that I talk with everybody. So I'm not like speaking in a different way in my videos. First of all, number one. Number two, like I explained, some people just naturally speak more clearly. Um, some people also in the United States in the United States um speak closer to what you could consider the standard American accent. Okay, the standard American English. Um, contrary to what some people believe, I believe that that absolutely there is a standard American English accent. And I my the way that I speak is basically that. I basically have a standard American English accent, but it's a range. And some people are farther away from the standard. Some people in in that range are a little bit farther away than I am, for example. So yeah, so I definitely speak uh and and standard American English is very easy to understand. Um standard, standard. So yeah, I I definitely speak pretty much like that. Um and also, like I said, it depends on the person. Uh some people just naturally speak more clearly and easier to understand than others, some people enunciate more than others, regardless of the country, the language. That's just um that just happens. I'm one of the people that speaks slower and more clearly, uh, typically, easier to understand. But also, this and this is very important. This is like one of the big points I want to make and teach and explain in this video, because this is super important. So pay attention. So you need to remember that in all of my videos, I'm using this like podcast microphone. But regardless of what type, I'm using a microphone. And then I also edit the audio. I always edit the audio. And then you need to remember that in YouTube videos, it is a monologue. It is just me talking to the camera. And I am typically teaching something, explaining something. I'm not having like an everyday life dialogue back and forth, quick conversation about some topic with a with a friend or whatever. I am typically like going on and on and explaining something to you. It's a lot easier to understand monologues than dialogues. And the audio quality is fantastic. You can literally increase the volume on your device to listen to me. So it's never like a problem of being too quiet, of course. And the the sounds are even clearer because of the microphone, the editing, blah, blah, blah. So just that all of that stuff alone makes it so that it's way easier to understand people talking in YouTube videos like this, like podcasts, like this kind of YouTube video, right? Just somebody talking into a mic to the camera. This is way easier to understand than real life interactions in the language. In real life, there are many other noises. The sound, the audio quality is not so good. Sometimes people speak quietly. There are a lot of reasons why it can be harder to understand in real life than in a YouTube video. Same thing in like movies or TV shows. There's often like other noises or um people speak really quietly. Like I there's also a lot of dialogue. It's usually it's usually almost never monologue in like TV shows and movies. It's always like dialogue. I made a whole video about why it's hard to understand TV shows and movies. So if you haven't seen that, you gotta check it out. It's one of my most viewed videos. You can find it. There are a lot of reasons. There's a script. Um, it's supposed to be like funny and creative and like not based on how people really talk. There's a there are a lot of reasons why it's harder to understand movies and TV shows, but that's not what I'm talking about in this video. What I'm talking about is just comparing like my style YouTube videos, this style, with real life. And now I want to explain something else. So I consider myself fluent in Spanish. All right. Doesn't mean it's perfect, doesn't mean I know everything, doesn't mean no, but I consider myself to be fluent. I feel comfortable and advanced in the language. I can watch any video on the internet, you know, I I could watch any like YouTube video of somebody talking to the camera like this in Spanish, and it's gonna be extremely easy to understand them. But that is totally different than in real life. When I go to the store, when I go to the airport, when I go here, when I go there, blah, blah, blah, wherever. And then randomly, out of the blue, somebody says something to me, typically quickly, about some topic that I'm not like prepared for, or I don't know what they're saying, like based on it's not obvious, basically, from the context. And, you know, I'm often traveling, so I'm in different Spanish-speaking countries, so they have different accents and and whatnot. And and um, it's always like strangers, you know, just random people that I don't know. And we're not having a conversation, we're just like living life, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's a waiter or there's somebody, and they just automatically ask something or say something to me. Um, you know, I was at the airport and and someone was just the the person checking my bags and stuff are the I was doing the like I was at the desk checking, checking my my suitcase, like the doing the check baggage. And normally, a lot of the times they don't ask me this question, so I wasn't prepared for it. But one time um I was in Colombia and the guy asked me like basically if if I was the one who packed my bags, if anybody was with me when I packed my bags, like you know, like the security stuff, security questions. But he said it like so fast and so randomly, and I wasn't expecting that question, and I yeah, it was just so fast, and I it's not like I was having a conversation with him, and then he just like said that as part of the conversation. No, it's like silence, quiet, and then all of a sudden, you know, it's like it's just out of nowhere, just a just a super fast like question or or something like that. And this is very hard to understand. If you're not a native speaker, this these kind of moments are hard are hard to understand. It's way easier, we've already established it's way easier to understand like a friggin' monologue YouTube video like this, like a podcast thing. But even it's way easier to understand a conversation. Like if you're having a one-on-one conversation with someone in the language, like if you actually talk to a native English speaker, one-on-one, normal, relaxed conversation, you will probably understand very easily. But when you're out in public and some random person starts talking to you, just like, you know, totally like out of the blue, kind of just one phrase, one sentence, you know, not like a whole conversation, just one sentence. So you don't even really get time to adjust to the way that that person sounds, because you know, every single person has a slightly different like way of sounding or whatever. Even people from the same region, they, you know, everybody has their own little unique sound. And so when there's just this random sentence that comes up that someone says to you, that is way harder to understand than if you're having a conversation with someone. And so this is what I want you guys to understand. I want you guys to not base your listening comprehension on these random moments where somebody says something to you in public and you didn't understand. Because if I did that, I would think my Spanish is like basic. I would think that I'm not fluent in Spanish. I would think my Spanish is is low, is is a low level still for based on how many times there are moments uh with like strangers, whoever in public where they say something and I'm like, what? Like I am always saying in Spanish, como, como, like all the time. And when I lived in Ecuador, I used to say mande, mande, because that's what they say there. Um, but yeah, I'm I'm saying this all the time. But I I'm fluent in Spanish. I can speak Spanish no problem, and I can have conversations with people, no problem. I I made I started this YouTube channel making videos in Spanish. Like you guys know I speak Spanish, but there are so many moments where I'm like, what? But it typically doesn't happen that much when I'm having conversations with friends, you know, when I'm watching videos like this on the internet and stuff like that. So that's what I base my listening comprehension on. I base my listening ability, my listening comprehension level in Spanish on these kinds of videos. And conversations with native speakers, typically with friends, that ha that like happen for longer than just a moment, you know, like actual conversations, not just moment momentary um things, but like real conversations. So this is why I highly recommend not just watching videos like mine, for example, like these kinds of videos, but also having real conversations with native speakers. And if you don't have any access to talking to native speakers in your in real life or having a conversation in you know real life, which most people don't, let's be honest. Um, especially people learning English, it's it's hard. It's hard to find a native English speaker who is willing to have a long conversation with you. Sometimes it's hard for a lot of people to find that. So this is where websites like iTalkie come in, for example. Um I always promote iTalkie on this channel because uh it's not the only one, but in my experience, it's it's one of the best um websites for finding native speakers to have conversations with. Yes, you have to pay for it, of course, because you're paying for people's time. And these are normal conversations, you can have normal conversations, um, but they're also like kind of like teachers, so they can help you with your mistakes and and whatnot. And if you pay for it, they're gonna be attentive and they're gonna help you if you need it and stuff like that. So you guys know I don't really do sponsors on my channel because I don't like that. I don't like watching stuff on the internet that's just constantly full of sponsorships and it's like they're promoting products and stuff that you don't even need. It's like they they do it for money. I understand why like everybody needs to make money, and I could make more money if I did that, but I I don't know. I just I just don't don't really do that. But the one thing that I do promote on this channel is iTalkie because you need like you absolutely need to have conversations with native speakers when you are trying to improve a language. It's essential. It doesn't have to be all the time, but you got to do it sometimes. So I'll put my iTalkie discount link in the comments, and it's also always on my profile, so you can always find it there if you go to my main page. Um, you get $10 off your second class. So you you book a class, and then when that is finished, when that's completed, you get $10 for your next class. Um so you could potentially get like a free trial or 30-minute class with that $10, or it depends on the prices, of course. Everybody has different prices, but or you could just get a significant amount off, so it's a lot cheaper. So use my discount link. You can make an account on iTalkie. If you already have an account, I think you could just make a new one, but you have to you have to use it with a new account. Obviously, you can't use the discount link if you already have an account. So yeah, so you need to make a new account, you need to use the discount link. Um, and it's great because you get $10 off, I get $10, so it's like it's a win-win, you know. Uh I help you, you help me. So if you want to talk to native speakers, because that is how I recommend that you evaluate your listening ability in English. And not just listening, but also speaking, but both, but especially the listening, because I'm constantly seeing comments on my videos about how, yeah, it's so easy to understand me and why can't I understand native speakers? But you guys are basing your listening ability off those momentary interactions that you have in public, which are very frustrating and very difficult and not really that important, like compared to like it's way more important to be able to have conversations with people. You know, who cares if you don't understand that guy at the airport or dad or that waitress or whatever? Like, it's okay. Like you'll never see them again. Like, you know, it's it doesn't matter. Um sometimes it's frustrating. It happens to me too. Um, it's happening to me a lot here in Brazil because I'm learning Portuguese and I'm my Portuguese is not as as advanced as my Spanish. And um, so it happens to me here, you know. I was just on the bus the other day and I was having this conversation with the the guy at the on the bus, the attendant um who takes like the money and stuff, and he was not explaining something well, and I was confused, and I thought he was telling me to get off the bus, but he was saying, no, you just have to leave from this door when you get off, and but not right now. And I was confused and I was stressed and I almost cried because because yeah, it's it's it's frustrating. And sometimes it's not even because you don't understand the words they're saying. Like I understood all the words he was saying, I understood everything he was saying. He just wasn't explaining it very well, he wasn't explaining the point very well, and so I was confused and he he wasn't really good at helping me. So it took me a while to understand like the the point of what he's saying, not the words, but the point. And because I'm a foreigner and I'm like not used to the way that the buses are here and stuff, it sometimes I'm sensitive and it's like makes me stressed, you know. But I know that um when I walk around on the street and when I have conversations with people in Portuguese, I understand a lot. Like I hear people's conversations, I understand a lot, I talk to people, I understand a lot. I I typically understand most of what I hear in Brazilian Portuguese. Like I understand like 95 or more percent. Um, so I can't base it off of like those moments where they're like, you know. Um I will say though, Spanish is harder to understand than Portuguese. As much as Brazilians disagree, um I maybe or maybe not, I don't know. But Spanish is spoken a lot faster in my experience. Um Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese has a more relaxed pace, and also the sounds of Portuguese are a lot stronger, uh more similar to English. Uh Spanish, I call Spanish a whisper in the wind, un susurro en el viento. It's like Spanish has less variety of sounds, and they're very soft sounds. Like the like very soft, you know, like Portuguese it's like guia is day. You know, in English we say day with a hard D. In Portuguese we say gu. In Spanish is like dia. It's like the tongue with the teeth, like the like you it's like so soft. It's like you barely even hear it, you know. So it took me a lot longer to train my Spanish ear than my Portuguese ear, just because it's such a soft and super fast language with less variety of sounds. Um Portuguese is a lot easier to understand. But anyways, back to back to English. So that that doesn't help as well. Um, this fact that it's harder. You know, English is hard because um even though we do have some stronger, stronger sounds, like like compared to Spanish, um it's hard because we have a lot of contractions. As I said, we have a lot of contractions, and also we know that the pronunciation of English makes no sense, you right? So you might know a word from how it looks, but when you hear it, it's it sounds totally different than what you expected it would sound like based on how it looks. So that's also hard, is like the pronunciation of English makes no sense, and so listening to it is can be chaotic as well for somebody who's learning the pronunciation. But generally, if you watch not just my videos, but other YouTube videos of people talking to the camera, or you watch like podcasts where they're not talking like too fast or something, if if you're watching content um YouTube videos, not like the short, fast videos like on Instagram, because those are so fast, it's also not realistic. But if you watch like these more relaxed, long form YouTube videos of native speakers and you understand most of it, no problem. And then you take a class on italky or or whatever, you have a conversation, like a real conversation with native speakers, and it goes well, you understand them, you're you know, great. Then and and not just any native speakers, but like if you're learning like American English, I'm talking about like um American English speaker, native speaker, you know, or if you're learning British English or whatever. So that's what I mean. I don't mean like any, of course, if you're just focused on English from the US and then you hear somebody from Australia or Ireland, Ireland, it's like what? So I mean like native speakers who speak in the way that you're learning English, um, the the dialect that you're learning. If you have a conversation with them, with someone, and you understand them and the conversation goes well and no problem, then you are doing great with your English listening. Your your English comprehension, your listening comprehension is fantastic, you're doing great. It's a lifelong process, you know. You you'll never get to a point where it's like perfect, whatever, but um you're doing fantastic. Keep going. It takes years, it takes years and years and years um to to improve, you know. I'm always improving all the time with my listening in all of the languages that I speak. So basically, my message to you guys is to base your listening comprehension on real conversations, like actual, real, real, real conversations, not brief moments that in public, you know, random brief moments, but real relaxed conversations with native speakers and YouTube videos like this. Base your listening ability on that stuff. Because that to me is the most realistic and important um stuff that you need to you need to know in English. You need to be able to understand. Trust me, it's frustrating sometimes um feeling so good in my Spanish and just constantly having to be like, what? when I'm out in public. But it's hard. It's hard sometimes, you know? People have different different ways of speaking and they catch you off guard and they just like so okay. I think that's everything that I wrote down that I wanted to talk about, uh, like directly related to learning learning English or learning any language uh in this video. I wrote down another thing that I want to talk about that might only be interesting for Spanish or Portuguese speakers, but um because I am I speak the two languages, I'm like comparing, I'm constantly comparing and talking to people about it, and it's it's an interesting, interesting topic because these two languages are very similar in a lot of ways, but also very different in a lot of ways. And there are a lot of things that people say that everybody seems to say, and I don't know how true it really is, or I I don't know if it's for the reason that people think. So let me explain. So Brazilians love to say that they have no problem understanding Spanish speakers, like it's very easy for them to understand Spanish speakers, but Spanish speakers don't understand them as easily. And this is strange to me because from my perspective, as the third-party gringa who speaks all three, for me, Spanish is harder than Portuguese for various reasons. But in this case, we're specifically talking about listening and understanding, you know, listening, comprehension, ability. Because I can make a whole video about why, as an English speaker, I think Portuguese is easier than Spanish. Of the three languages I speak, I think Portuguese is actually the easiest. And that's another thing. Brazilians love to say that Portuguese is hard. I disagree. I don't think Portuguese is hard. Um, like any language, obviously it takes time to learn. Um I'm not fluent simply because I literally just got to Brazil last month, and I've, you know, prior to coming here, I only studied Portuguese like for maybe a year, like eight years ago. So, you know, that's why I'm not fluent, but because I just I haven't really prioritized it. I prior I prioritize my Spanish. But I still think that it is the easiest of the three. Yeah, Portuguese is full of these these strong, strong, strong sounds. They open the mouth wider. They they the so the sounds are a lot stronger. So as an English speaker, as a especially as like an American English speaker, I don't have to change the position of my mouth, and I don't have to like make such weird sounds that are so different than English. Of course, there are new and different sounds, um, but in general, it feels like when I speak Portuguese, I'm not really changing my mouth that much. But when I speak Spanish, I feel like the position and the movements of my mouth are so different, and I really have to get into that. And so if I don't speak Spanish for a week, I will feel weird. Like my mouth feels like awkward because it's so it's such a particular thing that I do with my mouth to recreate these authentic, like native speaker Spanish sounds. So compared to English and Portuguese, Spanish has a a different mouth position and the sounds are a lot different. They're a lot softer. Everything is like on the tip of the tongue in the in the lips. I don't know. It's it's a very hard to explain, but this is the way that it feels like to me. This is the way that I perceive it. But yeah, like I said, Spanish to me is like a whisper in the wind. To me, it is the fastest, the fastest of the three languages. It's most commonly spoken faster in my experience. And there's only five vowel sounds, and a lot of the consonants are spoken extremely softly. They're pronounced very softly, the T's, the D's. There's just not a lot of super strong sounds in Spanish. Probably the strongest sound in Spanish is the double R, but it's not it's not really that strong. I I mean, yeah, but that's probably it, really. That's probably like the only strong sound. But other than that, Spanish to me is a very soft language. I think this is what makes Spanish so incredibly beautiful. Honestly, honestly, I love Portuguese and I I love English, my native language, but Spanish, I think, will always be like my my first love, my my most beautiful language. I something about Spanish is just so incredibly beautiful to me. And I and I think it's because it is such a soft, soft language. Um it's sound the sounds are just so um yeah, so soft. And there's just not so many, uh there's not so much variety of sounds. So an entire sentence, when said quickly, can sound like one word to the untrained Spanish ear. Um, so it's it's just harder in Spanish because of the lack of variety of sounds and the softness and the in the and the speed. It's hard to identify individual words in a whole sentence when you're learning Spanish, when you're, you know, a lower level. It took me a long time to really be able to identify words that I already knew, but I just couldn't, I couldn't hear in people's sentences because it was so like brrrr. Yeah, it was it took me a while in the beginning to really be able to distinguish individual words in Spanish. Compared to Portuguese, I just got to Brazil last month, and when I tell you when I walk down the street and I listen to people talk like in their conversations, I understand like most of what they say. Like I really understand so much so easily. Like most of the Portuguese I hear, I understand, and I just got here. I just got here. I got here last month, you know. When I just got to a Spanish-speaking country for the first time, and I was only there for a month, I my listening, my comprehension ability was way lower than my Portuguese comprehension ability now being here for less than two months. So yeah, Portuguese, especially Brazilian Portuguese, like it's so it's so easy. It's so easy to understand. This is my perception, this is my opinion. But yeah, I love it. I love this language, and I'm so happy, I'm so glad that it's easy because I don't think I have the energy to learn another language like Spanish again. Like, and yeah, obviously knowing Spanish as a base does help with my Portuguese, but sometimes it doesn't, like a lot of times it doesn't, because while words and things will be similar, they're not exactly the same, so you still need to know the word in sp Portuguese. You can't just say the word in Spanish and they'll understand. Like you ha you you do have to know what it is in Portuguese, and even though it's similar, it's it's not the same. It helps me with like general structural stuff sometimes, but it still doesn't help as much as you would you would think. Anyway, so back to what uh Brazilians say about um geez, I really got distracted. I really started talking about something else. But Brazilians say that they can understand um Spanish speakers easily, and Spanish speakers can't understand Brazilians. But based on my perception that Spanish is way uh harder to understand than than Portuguese, this doesn't make sense to me. So my my theory for this, this is my theory. My and I asked I told a Brazilian about this and he said it makes sense, so I don't know, we'll see what you think. You can tell me in the comments. But my theory is that the reason why is because Brazil is just one country in Latin America, and Brazil has a Brazilians typically have a lot more contact with Spanish their whole life. They often consume way more content in Spanish their whole life and it's normal. So from if you have contact with another language that's that's a little different than yours, but similar since you were a kid, you're probably gonna understand a good amount of it. But you're not gonna be able to speak it just because of that. I don't I don't believe most Brazilians who say that they speak Spanish. Like unless I hear it, I don't believe most of them because I I think they speak portunol. They just understand, but they don't actually speak it. Because speaking Spanish like authentically, that's that's a whole nother thing. But anyways, as I think Brazilians just have a lot more contact with Spanish. Whereas Spanish speakers, because there's so many Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, they typically tend to live in a bubble of Spanish. I think a lot of Spanish speakers just consume content in Spanish, or maybe Spanish and English, but you know, like somebody from Mexico, for example, is probably primarily gonna consume content from Mexico, but also so my camera died. Um, so and I it might uh die again soon because it's pretty hot. So I just wanted to finish what I was saying and then we can end the video. Um, but yeah, somebody from Mexico, they might listen to stuff from Colombia or Argentina or whatever. Spanish speakers don't really go outside of that bubble very much. I mean, personally, personally, I've never had any of my Spanish-speaking friends like show me anything they like to listen to or watch in Portuguese. Meanwhile, here in Brazil, like a lot of people like to listen to Spanish speaking music artists and stuff. So I think that um, yeah, it's just that Spanish speakers tend to stay in a Spanish-speaking bubble. But I think if they had contact with Portuguese from their childhood and they were into the music and into the whatever, if they were if they had more exposure and they were more interested in it, I think they would understand Portuguese no problem. I because Portuguese is not hard to understand. Um it's just that if you have no experience with it, you know, very little contact with it, it's gonna be weird and hard to understand at first. But I think if Spanish speakers just put a little bit of effort, they would understand Portuguese easily. So um so that's my theory. It's not that Portuguese is easier to uh or is harder to understand, absolutely not. It's just because Brazilians have more contact with Spanish. So um that being said, I do think Brazilians overestimate their ability to to like knowing Spanish. Like like here, you know, I use the dating apps and I see like almost every profile says that they know Spanish, but I d I know they don't. Like they don't really know Spanish. Like they don't know Spanish like I know Spanish, okay? So, anyways, um yeah, so we're gonna stop the video there because I think the camera's gonna cut out any moment. So, yes, thank you for listening until the end. Um, love you, love you guys, and thank you for supporting, thank you for commenting lovely things. Um, thank you to the members, people who um help me every month a little bit, uh, people who donate to me, uh people, everybody, literally everybody who supports me in any way, shape, or form. Um I am very grateful for you guys. And I hope you have an excellent day. I hope you learned something in this video and it wasn't a complete waste of time. I hope so. You know, that would be nice. That would that would be that would be good. Yeah, let me know in the comments what you got out of this video, and um and I'll see you in the next one.