Did Loïs Talagrand REALLY Learn Spanish in 3 Months?

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]What's up, grinders? Welcome back to the channel. So, we're going to do a react to this video. I learned Spanish in 3 months. Here's how. Now, I already did a react to this. I just forgot to turn on the camera. So, we're going to be watching it again. Man, the [ __ ] I do for you guys. Let's begin. But obviously, this is not going to be a fresh react, but a bunch of you guys always complain that I should watch videos before I react to them, but I don't like doing that. Kind of kills it.

[00:00:25]But let's begin. All right. So for the past 3 months I have been learning Spanish going from practically zero to this.

[00:00:37]>> Now I will let him talk but I do want to say that practically zero there is not practically zero at all. Okay we'll get into that in a moment. Let's let's listen to his Spanish.

[00:01:12]in this video. Okay, so I do want to talk a little bit about that clip. First up, his pronunciation is [ __ ] phenomenal from what I can tell, especially for three months. Okay, now that clip is actually part of a greater uh video, this one right here, where he speaks for 24 minutes with her. And I won't get into the details of it too much, but I do want to point out one thing. When he's talking, you'll see lots of cuts when she's talking. There's there's never any cuts unless it's directly before she starts speaking.

[00:01:40]Now, this could be for a number of reasons, but I personally don't like it because the whole point of this video is to give you guys an idea of what is capable after 3 months. And if you're cutting stuff, well, then that means you're either you're removing stuff you don't want us to see, which shows a decrease in your level, or you're cutting, you know, like points where you feel are just uncomfortable. It's just like you're just sitting there going, you know, like making no noise or something. If you're trying to prove something or show something, which is what the whole point of this video is, why would you cut anything? Leave it exactly as it is. you know, for my uh Lingo Pie series, I did a video as a baseline to show what my Chinese is before I went into this. And I did no cuts. And I even said that in the video because I wanted to provide an actual insight. So, this video is practically useless because it's just constant cuts with him. You know, it's so much easier to make someone look better if you can cut out all the crap in between. It's why YouTubers do it. Okay, let's get into the actual video. Now I want to explain how I did this, why I did this and you know all the specifics about you know all this. So first of all this was a 3mon uh challenge for me. I set out you know from the start I'm going to uh I said okay I want to learn a language you know not up to a native level or anything but you know have at least you know conversations in the language. Now, the reason why I chose Spanish and I chose to, you know, after 3 months, the goal was, hey, I'm going to hop on a call with a native speaker, you know, a teacher from italki. That's what I chose to do. And I chose Spanish specifically because like a lot of you guys, if you're from the US, I actually took Spanish in school. So, I studied, you know, Spanish. Okay. Okay, so we're going to get back to this in a moment, the whole I took Spanish in school because he mentions in a moment that, you know, he did it for multiple years >> for multiple years in school. Like a lot of you guys, I didn't have a lot of motivation for Spanish. And so I was one of the worst students in Spanish, almost failed Spanish. And so at the end of high school, I could not have conversations in Spanish. Even the basics, I just didn't know. And now I, you know, I graduated high school. It's been what 13 or 12 years.

[00:03:51]>> Okay. Now, I want to pick in on this, not because I'm trying to pick on the guy. Okay. This is a common trope I see.

[00:03:58]I've seen it in videos like this one, and then I've seen it in people within the ALG space talking about their amazing progress compared to someone who's uh, you know, doing the purest route and they're not getting amazing progress. Okay. So here he said he did Spanish for multiple years in school but we can negate all that because well he couldn't speak the language at all. Uh he was the worst in the class etc. I did Japanese in high school for multiple years. I was definitely the worst in the class. I was the only boy in the class and the only reason I was even in Japanese is because it was the only class where I was the only boy. So it gave me an opportunity to talk with the girls. I know. Young evil deer.

[00:04:41]Testosterone pumping. He wasn't thinking about languages. He was thinking about other things. Okay. So, I was in that class for nothing to do with Japanese.

[00:04:49]Okay. I am now 39 years old, married to a Chinese woman.

[00:04:54]I just find that random that I studied Japanese at school, now end up needing to learn uh Chinese. But a long, long time has passed, a lot longer than he has passed with Spanish. Okay. So, this got me thinking, why don't I just go do a little test of my Japanese uh you know, hiragana, katakana, all this type of stuff? Because, you know, the assumption is I'm 39 years old. You know, I left I stopped doing Japanese when I was what, [ __ ] 14 or 15. You know, I should have forgotten everything, right? Okay, let's have a look. So, this first one I'm thinking is car. No. Okay, we've got What is this? No. Or I don't know. Ah, no. Or what is this one?

[00:05:38]Yes. Okay.

[00:05:43]Me or ni? Yes. D. Yes. S. Yes. Okay. So, this is like Oh, what would this be?

[00:05:53]Because that's key, but it's got the two little things on it. What did that turn it into?

[00:05:59]And then you got Z. Is it? No, I don't remember.

[00:06:06]Wait, that's not okay.

[00:06:10]Uh B.

[00:06:15]Um, is that B? No. What is it?

[00:06:22]I swear that that that thing's like ha with a thing on it and it changed it in some way. I can't remember. You know what's actually kind of crazy is I'm looking at these and I'm remembering the pneummonics better than I am the actual um the actual freaking sounds that went with them. Oh man, I got I'm getting tripped up by whatever this one is again. Okay, I don't know what that one is, but that's N. That's B. Is that B? Oh yes.

[00:06:47]Uh G S. No, no, no, no. That I don't think that's saw. I think. No, that's it's like s No, I don't remember. M [laughter] I got that right. Um yeah, man. I just wanted to do this the entire thing now. But the reason I'm doing this, okay, is because I haven't touched Japanese since high school. I think the only time I've ever touched Japanese since then was for literally 5 minutes during a live stream on this channel where someone asked me to go do a hiragana test. Okay. and I had similar results to this. That's the only time.

[00:07:27]So, it's not like, you know, you leave school, you forget everything. It's all gone. Okay? It's all there. It just needs to be revived and then actually utilized. And the reason I'm pointing that out is because there'll be people who, like, for example, in Dreaming Spanish, they say they're doing the purest route, and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I did Spanish for four years in school. Don't remember anything worse than the class." Um, but why am I at 600 hours able to speak and do all this good [ __ ] while evil deer at 900 hours is not? cuz your brain didn't forget everything. It built on top of all of that. You revived it quite quickly. I'm pretty sure if I took up Japanese, that four years of Japanese I did at school, a lot of stuff is going to come back.

[00:08:06]Now, that's like obviously it's not a massive amount of hours cuz I was doing one hour a week type of thing. But still, that's like, you know, let's just on the the safe end, 40 hours a year, you know, I did that for four years, you know, that's [ __ ] that's that's over a 100red hours. 4 8 12 16. Yeah.

[00:08:22][laughter] like [ __ ] mass not my strong point right now. Okay, let's get back to the video.

[00:08:27]>> So, I'm pretty much back to zero. I mean, not that I was really >> That's all I wanted to focus on is you're not back to zero. Okay, zero is you never touched. You have a dormant language that you studied in the back of your brain. It's not even just a language thing as well. It's like any skill. Have you ever learned a skill and then not used it for so long you think you forgot everything? But once you pick up a book and you just quickly read through it, it's like suddenly it all just comes like rushing back. It's it's all there. It's just kind of like being put aside. It's like, "Yeah, I'll use it when I need it type of thing."

[00:08:59]>> Really way above zero. Well, at least that was 3 months ago. And then I decided, okay, I'm going to uh continue with Spanish because, you know, even though I learned multiple languages um successfully, I feel like my failure to learn Spanish, even though it was somewhat intentional because, you know, I was focusing on college admissions, there are classes that matter a lot more for college admissions, like, you know, math, the sciences, etc. I feel like it still left me with a bit of a bitter aftertaste, you know, Spanish. And so that's why I decided to to do it. And I set myself a challenge of doing it in 3 months. And you know, at the end of the 3 months, there was going to be a video call with a native speaker. Now, I want to talk exactly about the program that I uh did. But before this, I want to give you a disclaimer because I think a lot of you guys already know this, you know, based on my name, but I'm a native French speaker. So, Spanish is easier for me than it would be for, you know, a native speaker.

[00:10:00]>> Okay. Okay, so so far we've got the fact that he studied it for multiple years in school. He's a native French speaker, which obviously he speaks a language of the same family. Literally, they're next door to each other. And then there was one other thing in there that I kind of miss. Oh, he also speaks multiple other languages. So, he's an accomplished language learner. With that being said, the FSI, which is the Foreign Service Institute in the United States, actually classifies Spanish as being one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn.

[00:10:29]>> Yeah. But if you go have a look at this, for a native French speaker, learning Spanish is significantly faster than for an English speaker due to shared Latin roots, similar vocab, and corresponding grammatical structures. So basic conversation B1 level, which is what he uh claims to have most likely achieved in this video is 3 to 400 hours. Okay, so assuming 3 to 400 hours, so let's go 400 divided by 90 because it's 3 months.

[00:10:53]That's 4.4 hours per day. assuming no background in you know studying Spanish what at all which obviously is not true because he has studied Spanish uh back in school but the reason I bring out that 4.4 four hours a day is because it becomes important a little bit later >> learn and so it is going to be an easy task for most English speakers given that you you know follow a program that makes sense with that being said what I achieved in 3 months you're probably you know it's probably going to take you about 6 months to achieve this this is okay now I do want to stress also that I'm glad he's putting all these disclaimers here and all this information here because it does help us go Okay, so realistically this is not achievable for me in 3 months unless I have the same type of background as him.

[00:11:41]So he is being upfront about that and that's a good thing. So the he gets a point for honesty there. It's just obviously the title I learned Spanish in 3 months is only really relevant to him and I guess it makes sense because it's I learned Spanish in 3 months. It's not anyone can learn Spanish in 3 months >> taking into account the fact that I am a French speaker and also you know I've been learning languages for you know a few years now. I should add that, you know, I had a constraint. The main constraint for this challenge is sort of to replicate what a working person goes through, which is to say that I'm not going to spend hours a day studying Spanish. In this challenge, I'm going to limit myself to 30 minutes to about 45 minutes a day maximum of active study.

[00:12:27]>> Okay, this part kind of blew my mind because if you take a look at this, okay, so he's saying he's done 35 to 45.

[00:12:32]So let's say 45 * 90, okay, divided by 60. That means he's done 67 hours, which even if you just look at that based on the AI, okay, the AI said what, 200 to 400 hours, I can't remember, 300 to 400 hours to get to uh B1 level while he's spent 67 hours of actual study. So based on the clip we saw earlier where he was speaking Spanish, there's something off about that that type of time frame. Now he does mention in a moment that he also did, you know, listening practice. So like he watched TV and stuff and he didn't count that.

[00:13:12]>> If I'm going to watch something on Netflix and Spanish, for example, I'm not going to count this, but also I'm not going to do too much of it. If I watch stuff on Netflix in Spanish, that is going to be limited to 1 hour a day.

[00:13:25]Okay? And therefore, we're going to add one hour a day. I'm going to assume that he did it every single day. You know, one hour. Okay. So, you basically got plus 90 straight on there. Uh, for how many hours? 157 hours. 300 to 400 hours for a B1 level. He's an accomplished learner. He knows how to optimize things. Still, even with the optimization techniques that he gets into, and he gets into some good optimization techniques. Okay. Uh, this one here I do want to talk a little bit about because I do have a question for you guys. Now the second activity is something that is a lot more standard.

[00:13:56]Of course I needed some sort of you know introduction to the the language because I forgot everything from school and to be honest I don't think >> actually no the part I wanted to show was back here but I do kind of want to continue with this part cuz he's saying you know I forgot everything and then he talks about using asimal. The reason I kind of want to talk about that is because it's kind of more you'd be picking it up reading it and things would start coming back quite quickly as opposed to someone who's actually needing to digest that. But let's get back to this part right here. Rehearse speeches. This is actually some good advice from him >> are, you know, five things like a stack of five tools that I use. And the first one, which is not necessarily the most fundamental tool, but I feel like I need to talk about it first because this is not something that a lot of people do.

[00:14:40]The first tool or it's more like the first technique. This is something that anyone can do and this has been hugely helpful. This is an activity that um Professor Paul Nation that I interviewed on this channel calls rehearsed speeches or maybe it's remembered speeches. I don't know. But the point is that you take speeches and you just, you know, memorize them. That's it. As simple as that. I just want to clarify here because I did uh memorize speeches, but I also did memorized sentences. So, I took individual sentences. So it sounds like he did, you know, basically chunking, maybe some, you know, islands, you know, sentence islands and stuff like that, but then also the speeches.

[00:15:22]Now, I do want to talk about that because that is actually a great method for like really building up a solid foundation around certain topics. Like for example, in Chinese, if I want to talk about, you know, my my in-laws and why I learned Chinese, I've kind of practiced that enough times in almost a speech-like manner that I have a way of just kind of getting that all out there in quite comprehensible, you know, clean sounding Mandarin Chinese because I practice that as a speech. Now, you might be thinking, "Yeah, that sounds like kind of a cheating method because you're just you're not really learning the language. You're just learning a bunch of speeches." Yeah, but it's one of those things where if you do enough of these, you kind of train your brain that this type of thing can be kind of taken from and used in certain specific uh conversations. And it just you we all do this. We all have those same types of conversations over and over and over again. So, why not just get good at talking about those things? And then you can use everything else you know about the language to kind of join these different topics together. It's something I'm thinking about whether I should do as part of my Lingo Pie series, but at the same time, I'm not sure if that would be a good representation of using Lingo Pie because they don't tell you that you should do that, but then again, they don't tell you not to do that. And practicing speaking is actually part of their service. Like, they've literally got a tutoring section and everything for it. So, it's like I'm I'm wondering if I should do this as part of that because I actually do think this is a great method. Anyway, I wanted to cover off on that. The video will be down in the description for you guys to watch.

[00:16:52]It's actually a pretty good video, but I do want to just, you know, stress that he kind of negates his past while also revealing it because, well, actually, I don't know why he does that because realistically, it does make a big imp um impact on what you're able to achieve in such a short time frame. Like, he speaks a related language. He studied that language for years in school. And realistically, the math that he gave us for the like the number of hours spent, 157 hours, even with the tools that he talks about in here, it doesn't seem to math for me. So, I think he's really underestimating how much that Spanish and school helped him to get to where he was. Cuz like this is 200 hours short of a B1. And if you go watch the video, this one right over here, he goes for 23 minutes, okay?

[00:17:42]And the conclusion is somewhere around the end. I can't remember or maybe it was in the previous video that you know he must be around a B1 level. Now I do want to point out that in this video it's not actually a very good representation of you know what you can achieve in 3 months even if you are him because every time he seems to make a mistake he kind of just cuts that out.

[00:18:00]So like with him there's lots of cuts.

[00:18:02]With her there's no cuts. So I don't know what really the purpose of this video is. It's kind of useless as a baseline test. You know what I mean?

[00:18:09]like as a a video for us to watch and go, okay, let's see uh the speeches, how well they work with this, the monologuing, uh the chunking. Uh I can see he's fallen apart in these two different points here. So maybe everything he spoke about didn't help here because we never see him falling apart. It's because those parts are cut out. So it's like one, he does provide good recommendations and tools and methods, but two, he kind of downplays his background. And then three, when we do finally get this uh this long test here, it's not of much use to us because he cuts out all the failure points.

[00:18:44]Maybe he can claim that, you know, he's just cutting out the dead air when I'm not talking. You know, it just it felt uncomfortable just have some space there. And I get that. That could be the case. But unfortunately, for a test video, a final test where you're trying to show what you're actually capable of, it makes no sense to cut that out. Like if you look at my baseline test video for my Lingo Pi series, there is no cuts. I don't make any cuts because I wanted you guys to actually understand what I am capable of. Both mistakes and, you know, more fluid speech, everything overall. So, I'm not sure what this video is trying to achieve. It's strange. It's a strange video. Like, it's a personal challenge. I get it. But it's also trying to teach us tools to use, but then it kind of obuscates various aspects of both your past and then your final results. Realistically, if you included this without the cuts, that would have helped so much better to give us an idea of what's what's possible. Okay. Anyway, if you guys have liked this video, let me know down in the comment section. And I'll see you all in the next video. Oh, and by the way, should I do those types of prepared speeches as part of my Lingo Pie series?

[00:19:44]Let me know. Of course, if I do decide to do that, I will make it very, very clear in every 50-hour update what types of prepared speeches I practiced as part of the series. Anyway, see you all next video. If you're not there, I will find you.