The Polyglot Project YouTube Polyglots, Hyper-polyglots, Linguists, Language Learners and Language Lovers, in their Own Words as introduced and annotated by Claude Cartaginese (YouTube: syzygycc) The Polyglot Project What is the Polyglot Project? There are many language learning courses on the market today, some of them good, some not so good. All are designed to teach a specific language. It is extremely rare, however, to find a book which can give you the methodologies and techniques required to learn multiple languages. This is such a book. The authors contained herein are already either multilingual, or well on their way to becoming so. They are all passionate about languages, but most importantly, they are all willing to share their language-learning experiences with others. If you want to learn how to learn multiple languages, i.e., become a polyglot, then you've come to the right place. TABLE OF CONTENTS Author YouTube / Website Page Yuriy Nikshych (yurithebest) 1 Shana Tan (www.hangukdrama.wordpress.com) 4 Philip Price 7 Peter E. Browne (alkantre) 19 Moses McCormick (laoshu) 33 Amy Burr (pinkpumkinn) 37 Ivan Kupka (http://www.ivankupka.bloguje.cz/) 51 Dion Francavilla (paholainen100) 66 Oscar (OscarP282) 74 Nelson Mendez (nelsonmendez.com) 79 Luka Skrbic (www.youtube.com/LukaSkrbic) 86 Félix (loki2504) 89 Graeme (roedgroedudenfloede) 98 http://www.hvadsigerdu.me Paul Barbato (Paulbarbato) 114 Anthony Lauder (FluentCzech) 117 TABLE OF CONTENTS Author YouTube / Website Page Stephen Eustace 130 Skrik (shriekshriek) 138 Raashid Kola (sigendut1) 144 Anonymous 153 Christopher Sarda (www.wordcollector.wordpress.com) 156 Vera (LingQVera) 163 (http://lingqvera.posterous.com) Steve Kaufmann (lingosteve) 177 (www.LingQ.com Stuart Jay Raj (stujaystujay) 184 (http://stujay.com) Benny Lewis (irishpolyglot) (www.fluentin3months.com) 218 skyblueteapot ([email protected]) 225 Lorenzo R. Curtis (5Language) 231 (http://5languages.wordpress.com/) Dave Cius 237 Carlos Cajuste 240 Kristiaan 246 TABLE OF CONTENTS Author YouTube / Website Page SanneT 252 Jara 259 Aaron Posehn (aaronposehn) 272 (www.aaronposehn.net) mick 278 Albert Subirats (alsuvi) 290 Felipe Belizaire (newstylles) 299 John Fotheringham (www.LanguageMastery.com) 305 Fang (http://creativityjapanese.wordpress.com) 318 Cody Dudgeon (Codylanguagesblog) 321 Edward Chien (propugnatorfidei) 376 Bart Vervaart (Bartisation) 341 Kathleen Hearons (katrudy7) 350 Mike Campbell (Glossika) 361 David James (usenetposts) 418 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A special thanks to all who volunteered their time to make this book possible, especially John Perazzo and Robert N. at World Studies Books, for their skilful editing; Lorenzo Curtis for his tech support; Kathleen Hearons for proofreading certain passages; JolandaCaterina for her tireless work behind the scenes in promoting the book, Jane, Cassie and Nina for putting up with my long absences while occupied with the book's creation, and all of my “anonymous” friends for their helpful suggestions. INTRODUCTION I have always thought of myself as somewhat of an oddity regarding my interest in foreign languages. I like to study them, I like to read about them, and I especially enjoy accounts written by, and about, others who share this interest. The works of certain multilingual historical figures, such as Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Jean- François Champollion and Heinrich Schliemann, kept me enthralled. Any author who made any mention—even in passing—of how he or she was able to learn a language or two (or ten), excited me in the same way that others would get excited about a football game. For many years I quietly collected books and articles about foreign language acquisition, and during that time I never really came across anyone else who shared this same level of interest in the subject. And then, one day, I discovered YouTube. YouTube made me aware of others like me, who liked studying foreign languages for their own sake. Not only that, they were making videos about it! Soon, I was watching so many of those videos that I ran into a problem. Somebody would make a video, and give me an idea, but I often forgot who had said it. Or, I knew who had said it but I wasn't able to find that exact video again. That's when I had an idea. What if I invited my favorite YouTube language enthusiasts to contribute a piece for a book? Such a book would be a valuable resource for others. And yet, as excited as I was about the idea, I did nothing with it for a few months. Would it work? What if I made a plea for submissions, and nobody responded? Putting my ego aside, I made a video announcing the project. Within days, the submissions started coming in. The end result is now before you. If you want to learn how to learn foreign languages, read on to find out how it's done... Within hours after announcing this project, I had my first submission. Yurithebest, hailing from Ukraine, was the first to rise to the challenge with this interesting piece... The best way I can contribute is by revealing a tad about myself. I’m Yuriy Nikshych and I’m from Ukraine. To this day I’m fluent in Russian, Ukrainian and English, I used to be fluent in Greek but now I’m a bit rusty. At present I’m learning Japanese. My polyglot training began almost from birth – I was blessed with a polyglot father. His job at the time as a diplomat required that he travel abroad a lot, and once I was born he started taking the entire family – my first experience happened when I was 3 years old – to Greece. Once there, apart from my first language (Russian), he started giving me daily lessons in Greek. Since I was immersed in the environment, watched Greek cartoons, etc., I soon started speaking Greek, much to his delight. I attended Greek kindergarten, which solidified my knowledge. I was then lucky enough to get into an English language international school, where I became fluent in English – I am a deep supporter and an example of the theory that at a young age you can learn languages very easily. Luckily, Ukraine is an unofficially bilingual country, and upon my return to Ukraine by 5th grade I had to learn Ukrainian, which I did and achieved fluency within a year. Ukrainian and Russian are similar languages (maybe you can understand 50% of what’s said), and being immersed 1 in the environment really helped. The older I became, the more I lost faith in traditional language education, and the education system in general. I attended four years of French lessons in school. To this day, all I can remember is how to say a few token sentences in French. Total waste of time and effort. After enrolling in tech school, I stopped learning new languages. All of this changed, however, once I got an mp3 player to avoid boredom on the bus. This was the best 40$ I ever spent. At first I listened to an awesome audio program called ‘Verbal Advantage” – it was made in the 70’s and designed to help Americans improve their active vocabulary. It starts off easy but you soon learn to use words like intransigent, tergiversator, defenestration, defray, etc. After finishing that program I searched for something new, and decided on a whim that I’d study Japanese. The main reason is content. In my attempts to revive my knowledge of Greek I tried downloading Greek TV shows, but they were of a much lower production value than I was used to, and frankly, mostly boring and consisting mainly of soap operas. When faced with an alternative like House MD, 24 or the Big Bang Theory, guess who wins? While it’s possible to watch shows with Greek subtitles, the newer releases simply don’t have them yet. Japan, on the other hand, has a much larger array of content--be it anime, or regular shows. I used be in an “anime phase,” but that has past and now it mostly irritates me, due to the Japanese weirdness regarding sex (either total asexuality 2 or total perversion, no in-between) and the social awkwardness of the main characters. Still, perhaps what triggered my wanting to learn Japanese was when Clair’s dad in “Heroes” spoke Japanese – I simply thought to myself: “I wanna do that!”. I started learning Japanese by listening to the Pimsleur audio course – it was amazing and allowed me to have a rudimentary conversational knowledge of Japanese within months. Now I’m listening to JapanesePod101 and going through an awesome book to help remember the writing system, called " Heisig - Remembering The Kanji. " - Heisig splits the Kanji up and makes the parts of the symbols into separate different/weird stories,so when you look at them you instantly have this familiarity. I’m also watching a Japanese language video series called “Let’s Learn Japanese,” which is quite awesome also and follows the life of the main character Yan in his diurnal activities. One of my greatest inspirations though is Steve Kaufmann (if you haven’t heard of him look him up on YouTube). By now I think he knows 11 languages, and it’s always a pleasure listening to him ridicule the conventional language education system. He owns a language training site called LingQ.com, which is also worth checking out. 3 For me, one of the delightful aspects of this project is being the first to read these interesting submissions coming in from all over the world. Next up, Shanna Tan--a lover of all things Korean--artfully describes how her decision to embrace the Korean language and culture continues to alter her life... The Polyglot Project Shanna Tan, Singapore Learning Korean I used to think that foreign language learning is a ‘personal and lonely journey’ that you embark on.