“I Don’t Understand Anything” - Why you Can’t Understand Fast Speech
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Table of Contents
The Problem - Why can’t we understand?
(1) People speak differently when speaking fast
(2) Speed is not the main problem
The Solution - Tips on how to improve your listening skills
(1) Just throw yourself into it
(2) Listen with a transcript
(3) Expand your vocabulary
(4) Be okay with not understanding
(5) Let time do the work for you
(6) Choose what interests you, skip the rest
There are few things more frustrating than not being able to understand people. When we’re learning a new language we’re faced with this problem very quickly.
Native speakers speak so fast.
It feels like our brains and ears are being peppered by a machine gun. The words are throw at us and a rate where it’s difficult to keep up. To make any meaning out of the words. It can be quite an overwhelming feeling.
Have you ever felt like this?
If so, you’re in good company. It’s completely normal. It has happened with every language I’ve learned. People speak at break-neck speed. They make it sound so easy.
But for us, it’s not.
Understanding the words feels a bit like trying to grab a fly with chopsticks (à la Karate Kid).
In this post, we will talk about the reasons why you don’t understand fast speech. To help clear up some confusion and shed some light on what the real issue is. To offer you some practical tips so you can begin to improve your understanding already today, even when people speak fast.
The problem - why can’t we understand?
(1) People speak differently when speaking fast
When people speak fast they speak differently than when they speak slow. People tend to drop syllables and slur words together.
Let’s use English as an example:
Phrases like “It is going to be” becomes ”Iz gonnabe” in their spoken form.
Sets of words like ”Would you” will be pronounced more like: ”Wood-dew”
It could be that you actually know the words. You’re just not used to hearing them in their fast and spoken form (yet).
Natural speech is not like building lego with isolated words - putting one in front of the other to make sentences. It’s built up by a set of 2, 3, 4, 5, or even more words. Those sets are then connected with each other to form fluent speech.
These set are actually mostly pre-rehearsed, even for native speakers. We all have our favorite phrases we like to use in our native language. This is why people are even able to speak fast in the first place. The sentences are built up by sets of multiple words that are then strung together.
In order to be able to understand fast speech our ears (more specifically our brains) need to be able to pick up on these sets of words. Where when we hear them we instantly connect them with the meaning.
If you’re not understanding when people speak fast this is likely part of the problem.
(2) Speed is not the main problem
Even though speed might seem like it’s the main issue, it actually isn’t.
Once your brain is used to the sounds in a language and how words sound differently when spoken, the speed isn’t really the problem.
Vocabulary is.
The biggest barrier to understanding a foreign language is not knowing enough words. The more words we collect in our internal storage space, the easier it is to understand.
If you understand 9 out of 10 words per sentence, you can probably guess the meaning of that 10th word. Just from context alone.
But when there are too many words you don’t know, it becomes difficult to understand.
Have you ever found that your brain “shut off” when hearing native speech?
It might seem that it is the speed that makes our brains press the off button. Just out of the overwhelm from the intensity. The speed is part of it. But getting used to the speed is relatively quick compared to the mother of all tasks in learning a language - learning new words.
When there are too many words that are unknown to us it makes us feel lost. It makes what we’re hearing not comprehensible.
It feels like floating in space trying to hold onto something, but there’s nothing to grab onto.
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The Solution - how to improve your listening skills
(1) Just throw yourself into it
It doesn’t matter if you can’t make sense of it all. Forcing yourself to understand won’t help either.
Just jump into the pool. Let the words shower over you like water from a waterfall. Your brain will start making more and more sense of what you’re hearing as you continue. Your mind will begin harvesting and collecting new words and phrases.
Once you’ve picked up a particular multiword phrase (that people often use) - your brain no longer has to detect every single word.
Just by hearing that certain phrase your mind instantly connects it with meaning.
The more phrases you learn the easier this gets.
We can only process so much new information at once. Once one thing becomes easy and second nature, it opens up the door for the next thing to be learned.
By just throwing yourself in and spending the time you give your brain the opportunity to get used to fast speech.
(2) Listen with a transcript
This is helpful especially when you first start getting into speech. It will make understanding easier because you can match what you hear with what you see.
It’s a bit like reading a cheat sheet to a test. You’re confirming the answers (what your eyes see) to the questions (what your ears hear).
When I had been learning Cantonese for around 6 months I still had a really hard time understanding spoken speech.
What helped me was working through Olly Richard’s Conversations course (available in 7 languages). It had videos, transcripts, translations, and vocabulary lists to make the journey easier.
After working through it over a few months it really made a huge impact on my listening comprehension.
The app LingQ also has a huge database of audio where everything has a transcript.
TIPS
There are many ways to listen with a transcript. Here are two of my favorite ways:
Option #1 - Highlight the new words
Listen with pen and paper. Mark the words that you don’t know. Then look them up afterward and put them in a list. This can also be done in the programs Word or Pages document (marking all the new words in bold or red, for example.)Option #2 - Read the transcript with a reading app
Listen a few times first without the transcript. Then read through it (without listening) with an app like LingQ or Readlang. There you can instantly see the definitions of the words you don’t know.
(3) Expand your vocabulary
As we mentioned earlier speed isn’t the main issue. It’s mostly just an illusion.
If you don’t know the actual words, you wouldn’t be able to understand even if you heard the same sentence said slowly. This is why I believe focusing on activities that expand your vocabulary is the most important thing to focus on when learning a language.
The most efficient way to do this is through reading (learn more about reading in this and this post).
And to read a lot.
When reading we get exposure to a larger variety of words. Being exposed to words is how we learn them.
Once your vocabulary gets to a certain point it gets easier and easier to learn new words. Many things can be guessed from context.
The more the fog of unknown words starts to clear, the wider range of topics you will be able to talk about. You will be able to consume native-level TV shows and movies in the language.
It’s a very exciting stage to get to.
(4) Be okay with not understanding
This is one of the most challenging parts. To put up with not being able to understand everything. This is something called “tolerance for ambiguity” (a concept I learned from Matt from Matt vs Japan). The more you’re able to tolerate ambiguity, the better off you are. You’ll be able to listen so much more, instead of being frustrated. Which will most likely lead to you turning off the audio.
That’s what happened to me.
If there is one thing I wish I would have realized earlier in my language learning it’s this. I wanted to understand everything. When I didn’t I was not only frustrated, but I didn’t think it would benefit me. I thought it did me no good unless I understood every single word. Because of this, I had a long stretch where I didn’t listen to much Cantonese. It definitely slowed down my progress.
Then I just started listening more. Just for the sake of it. It started bothering me less and less when I didn’t understand.
My listening ability improved dramatically as a result.
We have to just realize that we’re not reading for everything right now. It’s better to just get the low-hanging fruit. Once we do, we’ll be ready to start understanding things that were previously unavailable for us to comprehend.
How this actually happens is a process that’s a bit of a mystery. But the good news is that we don’t have to figure it out. Our brains do it for us.
Which lead us to the next tip.
(5) Let time do the work for you
Growing your level of understanding is mostly a matter of putting in the time. Time spent immersed in the language will lead to you achieving the results. More than anything else. Especially spread out over time.
Time can feel overwhelming if we think about it in terms of months and years. The total amount of hours it takes to get to fluency.
Here’s my tip.
Stop thinking about the big goal altogether.
Instead, I recommend having a listening goal every day. Whether it is 15 mins, 30 mins, 1 hour, or 4 hours. It depends on how fast you want to go. It just needs to feel practical and doable with your schedule.
Having a daily goal will ensure that you get the time in every day no matter what. Some days you will feel easier, some days hard. But I can guarantee that your listening will improve as you just remain consistent over time.
(6) Choose what interests you, skip the rest
It’s been proven that we learn faster when we do what we’re interested in. If you’re interested in what you’re listening to or watching, you’re much more likely to pay attention. The more you pay attention the faster you learn.
Listen to what you’re interested in and skip the rest. You’ll learn better and you’ll have a better time.
The curiosity of wanting to actually hear the messages behind the sounds of the foreign language will boost your curiosity. This curiosity will make you focus better. Which in turn will make you learn better.
Some languages are easier than others when it comes to finding interesting content. Spanish for example has a lot of content ready for you to consume. At different levels. But even with languages that I have learned like Cantonese and Finnish (that have very few resources), I have always been able to find something that I’m interested in to use as learning material.
If you want to learn even more about listening and how to improve it effectively - check out some of these posts:
My Secret Weapon for Improving Listening Comprehension (The 3-1-1 Method)
Which one of these tips was the most helpful for you? Comment below.
