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Hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler.
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Today I am honored to be here with Vaughn Smith who is a hyper polyglot and he lives in nearby Maryland. Vaughn, welcome. Thank you.
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How many different languages do you dream in? Dream, let's see.
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I think I've had dreams in about 10 languages or so. And what would those be?
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Uh recently I was dreaming in Czech.
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I think I had some Latvian words sprinkled in there.
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I dream in Nahuatl, Spanish, Russian, English of course, uh some others.
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I can't exactly remember.
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It might have been a long time ago.
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Um Slovak also Oh yeah, I did. I had a dream in Slovak.
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I was speaking somebody in Slovak in my dream of course.
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Uh and uh that's about all I can remember right now.
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And to varying degrees, how many languages would you think you have at least a beginner's grasp of?
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At least a beginner's grasp of?
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That would be about 36 or so. And fluent in?
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Uh fluent in about eight. About eight.
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What's your history with being a hyperpolyglot?
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Did you wake up one morning and you're 5 years old and you just start learning other languages or you realized in school you were good at this or how did this happen?
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Uh slowly realization, you know, I grew up bilingual when I was very young because my English and Spanish?
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English and Spanish, yeah.
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My mother would take us to Mexico and learn Spanish there, come back.
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So as far as I remember being bilingual and uh then I think when I was about let's say 11, I took an interest in learning French.
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And uh when I was about 13 uh in school started learning German just on my own.
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And this was not directed by the school. You just did it.
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No, uh it was not directed by the school.
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So it started with uh my mother having material in French.
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My mother's fascination herself with the French language.
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And did did did they make you take language classes in school?
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Was that a form of torture or you enjoyed it or I No, no one made me take any classes.
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I didn't take any classes.
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I simply just took out you know started out of my own interest.
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And was there this moment in your life where you think "Well, I'm going to do this as a thing."
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or did you kept on going and here you are, you know, dreaming in speaking however many languages?
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When I was about 15 uh leaving Alice Deal Junior High School going to Wilson, that's when I decided, "Okay, I want to do this.
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I want to learn more languages."
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And this is going to be my thing.
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This is going to be something that I'm good at.
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I can see that I can learn it pretty quickly.
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Uh my peers are telling me, "Wow, I've got good pronunciation."
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Um I can memorize the words, the vocabulary pretty fast.
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So that was the turning point.
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Which languages of those you know do you think are best for expressions of humor? Expressions of humor?
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Definitely Spanish, Russian. Mhm. To a degree Finnish. Uh I think those three.
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What makes Spanish and Russian good for humor?
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Uh Spanish, what we um are from particularly the Mexican Spanish variety that we speak which is from uh uh Orizaba, Veracruz state.
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It's a very vulgar and a very um colloquial Spanish.
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And every other sentence that anybody says in a on a regular daily basis is either some sort of insult or a pun on something, a metaphor, and uh it's it's a very rich language in that in that sense. And Russian?
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Uh Russian so as like the Russian friends that that I learned from are also very witty and uh they enjoy, you know, telling jokes all the time.
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Mucha, what makes Nahuatl such a beautiful language?
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Nahuatl is I I think it's just the the sound, the way it flows.
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It's a very quickly spoken language.
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Um and uh I like when I'm when I'm listening to it, when I speak it, it's cuz kind of puts me in the place.
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And the place where it's spoken is a very beautiful, lush, mountainous uh natural, bucolic place.
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And there's no I've never spoken Nahuatl that associates with uh with some with some place boring.
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There's nothing boring about it.
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Uh and the people are very uh friendly when they speak the Nahuatl language.
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And I think those things kind of like give me the picture of Nahuatl being beautiful.
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It also has this very rich civilization behind it which is not in every way still there today.
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But unlike a lot of languages spoken only by say 2 million people, it has It was language of an empire, right? Absolutely. Yep.
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Uh could you say something for us in Nahuatl?
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Quac nicocone tzingo ni wayala mesco wan uh nonantzin.
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Uh amoquitlapo in Nahuatl ahtol.
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Um Ampa yes yes eh yes empuali xiwitl.
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Um nitlatzico onitzi onitlatzico in Nahuatl ahtoli iwan senoyoliquit.
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Uh yechantzin eh awilisapan.
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Ipan say achitzin altepetl itoca San Rafael Delgado. Noso San Juan del Rio.
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And Nahuatl varies a lot from village to village.
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How do you decide which one to learn?
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Uh I learned the one that was the closest to me.
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You mean physically closest to you?
5:18
Uh well, I I when I talk about this, you know, I I I'm sorry.
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Let me back up a little bit.
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So I forgot to mention that uh for part of each year I live in Mexico in Orizaba.
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That's my um mother's hometown.
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And just south of the city about like a 10-15 minute bus ride is the village of Rafael Delgado.
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That's where everybody speaks it on the street.
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That's they speak mostly Nahuatl and then Spanish is secondary to them.
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So that would be uh that's the proximity that gives me that plus uh the fact that it's a distant cousin of mine who is a professor of the Nahuatl language who taught me.
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And do you try to study written Nahuatl?
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That's hard to do, right?
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There just isn't that much or you just speak it and that's it.
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And now when you say written Nahuatl, you're talking about the phonology that's the Latin characters.
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imposed on Nahuatl in varying forms.
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You know, after the conquest.
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not difficult for me at all, no.
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So you have you you could read something in Nahuatl if I could write it perfectly, yes. Yeah, okay. Great.
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As far as I as well as as far as the actual words that I know, if there's some new word I might have to uh find out.
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But usually I I go by pronunciation.
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Um then uh I can write pretty much anything.
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Do you think it's more fundamental to your learning the written form of the language or the spoken? Or is it Spoken. Spoken. Spoken.
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And then you move to figuring out how to read it. Yes.
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Do you feel you think different thoughts in different languages? Yes, I do.
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And how does that operate? I don't know.
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I think when I get angry um uh when I you know, somebody cuts me off or something, I'll curse out in Slovak.
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And I think that the reason for that is because when I lived uh with uh Dušan and Tanja Pavelkovi, they were uh the people from Slovakia that uh Východňare, that's what we call them.
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Eastern Slovaks are known for their aggressive demeanor, just just hot-blooded people, and they're always cursing and swearing and and uh when they get upset they always have something to say which is pretty nasty.
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And I picked up on this a lot because I spent every day working with these people.
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And it pretty much picked up as a habit.
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I'm driving, someone cuts me off, it's like I I don't want to say it because you know, it's bad things uh they would be bad words.
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Prisahám Bohu, like I swear to God, that sort of thing.
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And that's just like a a lighter version of what they say, but um Dobrí nero bi ani poslenioukiu.
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Yeah, and it's just like that's it stuck with me over the years.
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So that would be one of the examples uh yeah, uh feelings of uh you know, uh little fits of rage here and there.
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They come out in Slovak a lot.
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Even if I'm in Mexico, I'll say it. Yeah.
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Now, when I hear Russian and Russian is a language spoken in my home, though not by me, it often sounds to me like the people are angry.
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When you speak Russian, do you sound more like you're angry?
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When I speak Russian, you know, I I tell people this when I'm teaching them Russian or tutoring Russian.
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Russian is a loud language.
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Just uh taking into consideration the majority of the people that I've met that speak Russian, it's always loud. Всегда громко.
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Надо по-русски громко говорить. Это не хватит так тихо.
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Это американцы вот тихо говорят.
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It's like it's twice the energy output when someone's speaking Russian, even if you're just at a table at the house. Yeah.
8:48
Do you read much historical linguistics or you just focus on learning languages?
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I focus on learning languages and periodically I'll I'll I'll delve into uh uh uh the history of linguistics.
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Uh one of my favorite books is um a uh one that was sent to me by a Neola Skripkaite.
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She's a Lithuanian and she sent me a book called The History of the Lithuanian Language.
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And it's a very fascinating um read.
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That's I'll look at I haven't read the whole thing from front to back, but I'll read little chapters here and there when I have some free time and I look into it.
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And uh it goes into um the uh uh the older Baltic variants that were much closer to uh I guess what people would consider Sanskrit for example.
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Um some of the loan words from Old Norse and uh uh the other interesting little facts of how the words are put together.
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So something like Chomsky on structural linguistics.
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Do you have an opinion on that?
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I have not read the book. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
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I'm not familiar with it.
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Do you think the Romance languages are in fact better for romance? No.
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What's the best language for romance and why?
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I don't think about it that way.
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What's the best language for romance?
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I I guess any any language has a capacity of being romantic. Mhm.
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If you're thinking about the romantic feelings of, you know, couples getting in love, that sort of thing.
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No, I like even Finnish is more romantic to me than than say Portuguese. That's amazing.
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And what makes Finnish so romantic relative to Portuguese?
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I had a I had a girlfriend who taught me Finnish. Ah, that will do it. Yeah.
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Which kinds of languages are hardest for you to learn? What kinds of languages?
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Like would it be tonal, agglutinative, you know, click languages or I think you know, when when I study language, the grammar is super important to me.
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So, I think it's always like I don't have a problem with pronunciation.
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I can learn different writing scripts, that's fine.
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So, I think the two biggest challenges here for me would be something that's a very complicated grammar, for example, Estonian or Finnish, Hungarian, Lithuanian.
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I think to me are grammatically very challenging.
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And as far as um orthography and writing systems, certainly kanji or um Chinese symbols, Chinese characters, Mandarin characters would prove difficult because it's there's a lot more to memorize.
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What do you think has been for you the hardest language to learn?
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The hardest language for me to learn, I would say Hungarian.
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And what makes Hungarian so hard?
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The several noun cases and a very rich vocabulary, very large vocabulary.
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And a lot more words are in regular use to say specific things more so than say any of the Germanic languages.
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Um opposite of that would be, for example, Norwegian was super easy.
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You just have one little word, it doesn't change, it doesn't inflect.
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The uh the verb um uh let's see the verb the person of the verb is the same and no matter who is it that that does it.
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There's simply the infinitive form.
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There's the uh past participle and then there's the um the present which you simply put the letter r after the vowel in the of the infinitive.
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And that's, you know, grammatically just giving an example of how easy it is for me to learn Norwegian grammar.
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Everything is difficult about Hungarian as the cases, knowing what case, the the singular, the plural form, the uh the verb changes when the recipient of the verb, if if it's in the first person verb, it changes when the recipient is a is in second person singular.
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Szeretnélek instead of szeretnék, for example. Szeretnélek, I like you.
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Or szeretnék, I like um And these little nuances and all these exceptions to rules and irregularities that make the language grammar very difficult.
13:07
Do you ever learn languages through music? Yes, I can say that.
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By singing, by listening to songs or how do you do it?
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Translating lyrics, listening.
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Listening, I started with when I was back at Wilson High School, I met um Sergei Kuksenko and he loved music.
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And he gave me these tapes.
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Back this is the early 90s, everybody used cassette tapes.
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He gave me these cassette tapes with with a bands like Kino, Krematorij, Nautilus Pompilius, Russian bands.
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And from there I listen and uh already some of the words I could recognize, you know, little words here and there.
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But then I started putting it together.
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If I listened to the songs, if I knew about 50% of the vocabulary of a sentence, I could figure out the rest of it.
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And I could get some of the words or at least bracket um bracket down the possible meanings of certain words and later find out, oh, okay, it was this or it was that, it meant this.
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And certainly um a lot of other music that I would get from in Czech and Slovak, I'd decipher it the same way.
14:16
How do you think about your own memory?
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Do you feel you have a good memory for all things or just languages or the variants of your memory is higher or what what's your own model of that?
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I have a good memory for languages, certainly, but also for numbers, words, um directions, how to get places, good land navigation.
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Um As far as things that are difficult for me to remember, it's difficult for me to remember, I find it sometimes, schedule memory.
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For example, uh someone would say, "Hey, Vaughn, at 7:00 on Saturday, do this."
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And the the time would come around, I'm not thinking about it.
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It's simply that's an attention span thing.
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It's not like the recollection, uh but it's simply not memorized not catching something at the time when it was scheduled.
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Uh now, of course, I have a calendar, I put everything in the calendar, so it's not a problem.
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But that was difficult for that was a difficulty for me prior to that.
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I have a good memory for economic arguments, but I have a very poor episodic memory.
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That is, I don't remember episodes from my life very well.
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And it's hard for me to tell stories from them.
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Does that sound familiar to you at all? Not really, no.
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So, you have good episodic memory.
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I have good episodic memory. Yes, that's good.
15:32
The other hyperpolyglots, I mean, do you know them?
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You're like, what's up with them or just like you read about them once and that's it?
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I'll I'll see some here and there.
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I met Richard Simcott via Skype. So, I've met him. Spoken with him.
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That was um while the Washington Post article was being written. And are they fun?
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Like are those the people you hang out with or they're just another group of people?
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Uh well, Richard Simcott, I've never hung out with him in person, but I really enjoyed the conversation and I made plans to meet with him in Mexico in October for the polyglot conference that he is hosting.
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But other than that, I have not met polyglots that know more than say eight languages or so.
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Uh and the ones that I do that know some languages, um we have a meeting that we do every Sunday, the D District Language Exchange.
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And it happens at different places on typically on Sundays at about 5:00 p. m.
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We used to meet at Meridian Hill Park on 16th Street, Northwest DC.
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We'll meet at places such as Dacha Beer Garden.
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Uh and when So, I'll meet with someone and it's really fun to skip from language to language and we're just kind of like, yeah, we're we're practicing, we're impressing all these other people that are standing around us looking at us.
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And so, it's yeah, it's it's always fun to just play, okay, I know this one, too, and we'll jump from this to that.
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Uh yeah, it they're not people that I hang out with on a daily basis.
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I don't have a close friend that's a polyglot or I nor do I have a close friend that knows more than um I I don't know, regularly that would speak more than five languages.
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How many hyperpolyglots do you think there are? I don't I have no idea.
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But we know what, a few hundred, thousand at least.
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A thousand at least, that's that's what I would imagine.
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And is it your intuition that everyone who has that skill learns it and does it or if there's some expansive people out there who could do it, but somehow have never been attuned to it?
17:28
Uh I I agree with that second um possibility.
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There are people that are simply they have the capacity, but they just don't live in a place where they're exposed to the languages and they might not um uh they might not participate in active language learning to the degree that I have or that other hyperpolyglots have.
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They might use um uh superior memory capabilities for other things.
17:56
How does language retention differ from language acquisition? Or is it just the same?
18:02
Uh um it's Do you have to maintain languages or they just stick with you?
18:06
So, I'll give an example recently uh I think it was 2 weeks ago, I was in front of the Bulgarian Embassy and it was the Saturday that the European European Union Embassies are having their open house and we're going from Embassy to Embassy.
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Uh I went to the Latvian Embassy, had a pretty good conversation and I realized I had not spoken Latvian for more than 15 years.
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Uh but I was still able to converse. Yeah.
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Uh some of the words they they're there, but it might take me some time to think about the words like, okay, well, that word is saldējums or jautājums.
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Little simple words like that.
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Actually, those poor examples because those are words that I know too well.
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But if I uh izvērtēt um they would just come slowly.
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It's just a matter of um just putting myself in the place of the language and it's kind of like a a slow computer rebooting uh information, bring it to the forefront so that it's ready for use.
19:09
Uh Bulgarian was the same thing.
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I was in front of the Bulgarian Embassy and then someone comes up and I had not spoken Bulgarian for about 10 years or so.
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And here I am having a conversation in Bulgarian again, but it was a lot faster than, for example, Latvian conversation for the Latvian Embassy.
19:27
So, uh so in answer to that, I remembers I don't have a problem memorizing the words that I studied well.
19:37
But some of them if if like if I'm learning new words, then of course, I have to come back to it repetitively to actually uh commit them to long-term memory.
19:46
You mean some technique of spaced repetition. Yes.
19:50
Could you say something in Latvian for us?
19:52
Um for example um Um money cuz and well What's speed selling? What about I don't know.
20:12
Now you're an atypical case, but you have views on how we should teach languages to other people better.
20:18
How to teach languages to other people better?
20:19
Uh don't cram so much vocabulary into one little session.
20:25
Uh mix it up some writing, some reading, but a lot of listening.
20:28
People learn by listening.
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Humans l- grow up listening, doing nothing but listening, and that's how they acquire language.
20:35
And that should be reflected in teaching methods.
20:41
If you think of your own acquisitions, so for most individuals it's relatively easy to learn a new language without an accent also at a young age and it gets progressively harder.
20:52
Do you think that applies to you or not really?
20:54
I think that it got a little bit more difficult, but not by much. But not by much.
21:00
Are you willing to tell us how old you are? Yes, 46. 46.
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And you just think that will keep on going for some while still and you can just keep on learning. Yeah.
21:10
And do you have particular aspirations such as well I want to learn Otomí or you know whatever the next thing is or it just happens.
21:17
Otomí it's pretty interesting that you say that because that's one of the ones I would like to learn some more. Yeah. And why Otomí?
21:23
Otomí because that is spoken also in the state of Veracruz and um uh Yeah, I've had some contact with some Otomí speakers, but never really um sat down with them to to learn anything, but uh I have literature and music that is written in Otomí. It looks very beautiful.
21:43
Otomí probably is dying out or don't you think so?
21:47
Dying out as far as uh the state of indigenous languages in Mexico it's pretty it's pretty much the same.
21:53
It's like they're okay, well there's less fewer and fewer speakers every year because uh the the youngsters are not willing or they're just for some reason sticking to Spanish instead of their own indigenous language or they're learning English instead.
22:07
Uh As far as actual numbers, I'm not exactly certain, but I know that many indigenous communities are putting efforts into preserving their languages.
22:18
Do you worry much about language loss as an issue? Absolutely.
22:20
And is there anything we can do? Yes, absolutely.
22:24
There is uh Uh there are different um different methods that I see what one for example I'm in Oaxaca, Mexico.
22:34
Uh the professor that that I two of them there are two professors Armando Alonso Limón Miguel Torre Uh they're both related.
22:43
One is a uncle and one is nephew.
22:48
Uh the two pretty much the the fluent uh go-to people of the town.
22:52
They know all the vocabulary, the words for every plant and animal pretty much as as far as memory can go.
23:00
Uh and they are uh actively thinking of um ways efforts that they can continue to teach the language.
23:09
Uh they teach at bilingual schools.
23:12
So the kids go to the school they're learning Spanish, they're learning Nahuatl at the same time and he speaks to them in Nahuatl as much as he can.
23:21
Uh and so looking at these methods, you know, when I started to learn it uh the Nahuatl language about 25 years ago um I uh arrived at Armando's house with a pen and a book to start writing things down.
23:35
And then I realized when I went into his house that about six other kids had come also with pens and books to do the same thing.
23:41
I think that when the kids saw that an outsider, even though I'm half Mexican today I'm I'm an outsider. I look like an American.
23:48
Um I don't speak 100% uh native Spanish like a typical everyday Mexican there because I don't live there all the time.
23:57
So to for them to see an outsider, someone coming from the United States even though I spent my childhood in Mexico I'm looked at as a pretty much a gringo.
24:08
And here is this American coming and he wants to learn our language.
24:11
Well, wow, that's uh all of a sudden they realized okay, well people want to learn our language. Our language has value.
24:17
And I see that when I it's it's kind of like um I'll take interest in a language that's not spoken by very many people.
24:26
And when I do and I'll have sometimes my niece will be with me and she'll want to learn some words too and we we have this really friendly approach.
24:32
Hey, I'd like to learn some of these words. What does this mean?
24:35
And it it just really just kind of gives them a sort of reminder. It's an uplift.
24:39
These things that uh this this language that we know is spoken by very few people and this culture of ours is very valuable.
24:44
People see it and they appreciate it.
24:49
Linguistic issues aside, how do you feel rural Mexico is doing now? Rural Mexico.
24:53
Rural Mexico uh struggles um economically.
25:01
Uh absolutely that much there.
25:03
Um Oh, so many different ideas how to put it all together.
25:10
Um Their land is sort of being taken away and used for commercial reasons. They're being exploited.
25:20
Uh they're very they're they're laughed at when they come to the city and and they get a lot of discrimination especially from the young kids.
25:25
They'll go to the school and they'll be made fun of because they're indigenous.
25:30
Uh that would be like indigenous people from rural areas all over Mexico.
25:32
Uh Yeah, I think um what you know when I when I see the people they they seem very happy and they're smiling and they're going about their business, but I think there's there's an underlying sort of melancholy.
25:45
And this sort of like uh this feeling of being second class.
25:51
They don't say it directly, but I can sense it. Mhm.
25:55
And if you could change one thing in the parts of rural Mexico you're familiar with other than just more resources in every way, what would that be?
26:07
If I could change it, um Well, certain set up schools, uh prioritize the language and make it so that uh uh rural people see themselves the way city people or urbans see themselves and and they live.
26:24
Just in that same amount of pride, that that value, that self-worth needs to be brought up.
26:30
Um Of course, yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
26:33
Do you think more people should leave rural Mexico or fewer should leave? Leave your rural Mexico.
26:40
not for the US, but just move to Mexico City, move to Guadalajara, Veracruz, wherever.
26:44
That would be something that's that's really not for me to say.
26:49
That's people they they move for economic reasons or something they need to find a job here.
26:55
Uh or there or they just need work.
26:55
No, I think that um there's there's an importance to the rural way of life that's for every place even in the United States.
27:06
Uh a lot so in Mexico too.
27:06
Um and I think that it's just more resources.
27:10
Um a better like um a better economic stance.
27:16
Uh just an economic foundation for rural areas.
27:20
People need to stay where they are.
27:20
It's they move away from the rural areas and the rural areas are missing something already.
27:26
Um What's your favorite food in rural Mexico?
27:29
My favorite in rural Mexico would be the uh it would be barbacoa. Yeah.
27:35
It's amazing when they put it under the earth overnight. It's incredible.
27:39
It's the best barbecue in the world, I think. I've seen it done. Yeah. And mole of course.
27:46
But that means many things. I mean which mole?
27:47
Mole uh the one that that is made in Oaxaca is really the mixture of like the the the chocolate base and all the nuts and uh uh oil and the the various kinds of pepper and seeds.
27:58
Uh it's when they when they say mole, they they only mean that one thing.
28:03
It's that brown sauce and it's usually served with turkey.
28:07
Yeah, you put turkey in there and it's really good.
28:09
So I like and that's very rural.
28:12
Uh that and the barbacoa.
28:14
Uh as far as other things like they'll probably just like roasted chicken, but that's not typical that's not especially a rural thing that could be done anywhere, but I just happen to you know enjoy a rural barbecue here and there.
28:26
The part of Mexico I used to go to in Guerrero, mole would mean a sauce with pepitas and maybe white onion and herbs, but nothing like chocolate, nuts, not at all like Poblano Puebla or Oaxaca mole.
28:39
No, that's very different.
28:39
Okay, I'm not familiar with that with that variety of mole in that case.
28:44
And very very hot sometimes almost impossible for me to eat.
28:46
And Oaxaca mole is not really spicy. Yeah.
28:50
No, Oaxaca's but the thing is mole is actually the Nahuatl word for sauce. That's all it means. Yeah. Yeah.
28:57
It's striking to me there's a whole bunch of Nahuatl words in English. That's right. coyote, right? Coyote, chocolate. Yeah. Mhm.
29:06
Your abilities with language learning, what is it exactly that you think makes you special with those abilities?
29:11
Is it memory or dedication or some combination of qualities or I think a combination of those, memory, the dedication, and the love of language.
29:20
And the love of language.
29:22
So it's just super fun for you. It's very fun for me.
29:23
And it will just always be fun. It'll always be fun. Yeah.
29:29
It'll always be rewarding.
29:29
I just you know, up and down the street I'll be at the grocery store, people speaking they'll say something Lithuanian or like they're looking for something in Russian they don't know where to find it. I'll point it out.
29:37
They'll say oh okay, cool.
29:39
And so I just helped somebody.
29:41
You know, maybe there are some people that don't speak English very well, so I'm always there to lend a hand.
29:47
And that's always rewarding.
29:47
Do well lingo apps, are they good? Do you use them?
29:50
I use the Duolingo app to learn Welsh. Welsh?
29:53
Yes, it has been very useful to me.
29:55
Although it's very slow-paced for me. Welsh is hard? How is your Welsh?
29:59
Uh I can speak Welsh um I can have a basic conversation in Welsh. And what is Welsh?
30:08
Gwrin char tip in bach o gwm rag nawr. That sounds good.
30:11
What do you think of uh tutors, you know, online tutors on services such as iTalki?
30:17
I am not familiar with those at all.
30:17
But you can use you you know, use a Zoom call or Skype or and just talk to someone around the world.
30:23
You might have to pay them, but they'll talk to you for as long as you want in their language.
30:28
I I think that the tutoring, you know, for someone who cannot go to the country or cannot be immersed, I think that would be a very valuable tool. Certainly.
30:37
Thinking of your own life, if you were to go back to your like 12 or 16 year old self and tell that person something. Advice, whatever. What would it be? Keep at it.
30:47
Keep at it, but you did keep at it, right?
30:49
So that's not what you needed to hear.
30:50
Not necessarily because I wasted time in doing other stupid things.
30:57
So I think a better word would be stop doing the stupid stuff and focus on this. Yeah.
31:01
And you were a kind of roadie for a punk rock band. That's right.
31:04
Was that a smart thing or a stupid thing?
31:05
No, that to me that was not a stupid thing. No, that is fun. What was the band? Uh the Goons. The Goons, yes. I drove the van.
31:13
I was pretty much a designated driver for about a year.
31:18
It was I think it was 2000. Yeah. Yes.
31:19
And that was traveling in the US.
31:22
Uh they might have traveled somewhere in the US, but when I went pretty much took them from DC to New York.
31:28
Uh Hartford, Connecticut, and all those shows.
31:30
We'd stay with um uh Gabby of Molotov Cocktail in Manhattan or stay some places in Hartford, Connecticut.
31:41
We'd see Boiling Man and other shows and a lot of other bands would come and play together at the same shows.
31:47
And that's still what you like best in music is punk?
31:48
Uh that's my I think my it's in my formative years what I listened to the most, punk and hardcore.
31:56
So yeah, that's like my go-to music. Yeah, great. Yeah.
32:00
What's the story of how you ended up in your current job as carpet cleaner?
32:01
Uh it's my brother's business.
32:04
So you work for your brother. Yes.
32:08
Does being a carpet cleaner make it easier to learn languages because your mind is not full say in the way it would be if you were a lawyer that you have to worry about memorizing parts of the law and you're just free to focus on language or that doesn't matter?
32:21
No, there's nothing rewarding about carpet cleaning that has that's conducive to learn learning languages at all.
32:26
I think my most rewarding job was uh um just a caretaker at the grounds of the Central East European Art Foundation because that's where I was speaking language all the time every day.
32:35
It's where I learned to speak Czech fluently, where I learned to speak Slovak fluently.
32:39
It's where I brushed up on my Bulgarian uh and Romanian as Serbian as well.
32:45
I would speak those languages because I worked with people from those areas.
32:47
Um as far as carpet cleaning, maybe I'll have a customer or I've had a customer speaks Latvian, a customer speaks Finnish, a Norwegian customer I had uh uh a customer the same customer I think three times or so uh a woman from Ireland that speaks Irish Gaelic.
33:08
And she was very surprised, you know, that's Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah.
33:11
How good is your Irish Gaelic?
33:13
Um it's like as about as good as my Welsh, you know. Yeah. Mhm.
33:19
And how do they react when you just speak to them?
33:21
Uh well, they they get this like a this look of they're just taken aback. It's like, "What?" It's like, "Honey?" Yeah.
33:31
And what do you tell them? What do you tell them? Um What I tell them?
33:35
Uh the female full on gregarious generally knows I've been speaking you know, that at that time it was like I've been learning Irish for about like 10 years.
33:44
Um I'll say um No, but I told here's the story I guess I guess the carpet hey girl, you know, would you like to come down and have a look at the carpet, you know, stuff like that.
33:56
Uh little sentence here and there.
33:58
Not much of a like a standard conversation and getting into details, but um just some like simple sentences.
34:06
What's the hardest stain to get out of a carpet?
34:07
The hardest stain to get out of the carpet I would say wood stain. Um Kool-Aid dyes. Kool-Aid really? That's surprised. Yeah. It's all just dye.
34:20
I don't they might have changed the formula so it's not as permanent of a color, but uh like colors, color dyes, that sort of thing. Um nearly impossible.
34:30
The purpose of dye is to stain.
34:32
That's what it was designed for.
34:34
So if you stain the carpet the the stain the dye did its job and there's no reversing it because it's that good of a dye.
34:44
Would it make sense for you to work as a translator or do you think being interested in so many languages is in some way inconsistent with that?
34:52
I I would be interested in working as a translator, yes.
34:56
For the languages you know best.
34:57
I know best I would say, yeah.
34:57
Do you still put time into learning those even better or it's more like I want to do Otomi next?
35:04
I I'm always I'm always switching it out.
35:06
I'm always going from book to book.
35:07
So no, certainly there's much more to learn.
35:11
And even the languages that that I speak more or less fluently, I'm still learning specific words.
35:16
I don't know the words for makeup in a lot of those languages because it's never a subject that I spoke about.
35:21
Uh scientific terms um uh being able to speak about chemistry, physics, that's also kind of important.
35:31
It's something I want to learn to to do.
35:35
And areas that I can explore to improve languages that I know.
35:40
Are you keen to do an interlude where you just speak a few languages for us?
35:44
Yeah, I can Okay, shall we try Vietnamese?
35:46
Uh Vietnamese I know thing Vietnam just like a simple question like do you speak Vietnamese?
35:51
But my Vietnamese is just it's super elementary.
35:54
It's really not enough to say to have a conversation. How about Dutch? Dutch?
35:58
Um that yeah, Nederlands kan ik wel speken.
36:04
Ja, ik had een vriend um uit Groningen.
36:07
Hij is hij zat in Noord en hij heet Bram Staal.
36:14
En we vrienden worden naar uh twee jaar.
36:20
En um hij heeft te met ons in Silver Spring uh voor een hele zomer gewoond. Finnish?
36:29
Uh tottanin siloin kun um eräänä päivänä olin Meksikossa.
36:33
Olin kun heti yksi mies sanoi uh joka le um joku kysyi hänestä mistä päin sinä olet.
36:47
Uh hän sanoi että hän on suomalainen. Hän on Suomesta.
36:51
Uh ja yhtäkkiä mä sanoin joo, minäkin puhun suomea.
36:55
Hauska tutustua ja niin edelleen. Do you speak Sinhalese? Sinhalese?
36:58
Obe sinhala kathakaranna wada? Beloved kera?
37:05
Like simple again like Vietnamese, it's just very simple, very elementary, yeah. Portuguese?
37:10
Um oh Brasil I know that one. Today is Thursday.
37:13
Portuguese uh posso falar português porque os meus amigos da escola um eu falei com eles todos os dias um depois da escola saímos todos juntos um é só para desfrutar cidade.
37:30
Então é por isso que eu posso falar português.
37:34
And you know both Portugal Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. Portuguese.
37:39
I would not know how to specifically imitate the accent of Portugal Portuguese because I don't have enough exposure to it.
37:50
And even in English, can can you speak different ways?
37:52
So could you speak the way a Scottish person would speak or that just doesn't count?
37:57
I don't like a little Scottish person that though.
37:59
I suppose I was I met a someone who's talking about the color green.
38:03
She was talking about the color green the whole time.
38:07
I'm just kind of like mimicking her accent, but yeah, I really like the way the Scottish English sounds.
38:14
Um as far as other dialects uh I spent a lot of time on the bayou and the water come through the house.
38:21
That's all the people talk about is the water come through the house. And uh yeah.
38:29
How much do you travel in terms of going to these places?
38:30
Uh last time I was in New Orleans was in 2007. That was post-Katrina. 2006 and then 2007.
38:39
Uh and I think that was that was it for Louisiana, but I spent a good 2 weeks there with a with the with the Neal like family in uh uh just outside of Chalmette, Chalmette, Louisiana.
38:51
Uh and as far as other places uh my father used to have this pilgrimage where we would travel all across the US Yeah.
39:01
and go visit my grandparents who lived in Santa Rosa, California.
39:03
It's in Sonoma County, about an hour north of the Bay Area.
39:06
And on the way we'd stop at different places, explore um Lewis and Clark National Park for example in Montana, the Badlands in South Dakota, or we'd stop somewhere in Kentucky.
39:19
And the accents, they change from place to place.
39:21
Some of them they're a lot deeper than others.
39:22
Uh especially what especially stood out to me was the English spoken in um rural Kentucky, the southern tips of Indiana and Illinois, and then going into Missouri.
39:38
Just those rural areas it's uh it's just it's a very different.
39:42
There might be if it's super old style of speaking, a much deeper accent than what I would typically hear in the middle of West Virginia, for example.
39:53
But say do you want to go to the Netherlands so you can hear Dutch for 2 weeks? Oh, certainly, yeah.
39:59
So, but you don't have the chance to or like is it part of your program or you think you will, you hope you will or you have? I hope I will.
40:05
Just looking for other employment, you know.
40:07
It's um I post COVID work got pretty slow and I started doing like five different jobs.
40:16
I had five part-time jobs.
40:17
And slowly I've been doing away with those because work's getting a little bit busy, but I'm not in a financial um scenario where I could do that very easily now. Mhm.
40:30
And is there a country where you think, well, that's where I want to go if you had a number one choice? A number one choice?
40:35
To go and live for a month, 2 months. Finland. Finland? Yes.
40:37
And what interests you about Finland in addition to Finnish?
40:43
Uh yeah, in addition to Finnish, the the Lapland, just the the northern climate.
40:49
Um the the lakes and the nature and that people say it mimics Minnesota.
40:55
Of course, I'm familiar with Minnesota.
40:58
And the yeah, just like hundreds of lakes all over the place.
41:04
Uh the being able to go north and see the northern lights, the reindeer, uh the flora and fauna of the country and visiting friends.
41:15
It's one of the very best countries for architecture, I think. Yes.
41:17
And oddly for Russian food.
41:20
Russian food in Finland is much better than Russian food in Russia. Mhm.
41:23
Which is generally not that good.
41:27
Well, it's That's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
41:31
Well, ingredients are better.
41:31
It's it's more of a market economy.
41:33
This is all pre-sanctions, of course. Yes.
41:35
I've only been to Finland once, but I really quite liked it. I want to go back. I was only in Helsinki.
41:43
But I thought it was quite an underrated city.
41:47
Yeah, that's what I hear from other people as well.
41:48
It's a place I got to go and visit.
41:49
And there are just no hassles to being there.
41:51
I mean, not an issue for you, but you can just speak English to people if you want, right? of course.
41:57
Um What's your favorite movie?
42:03
Favorite movie, The Thing. The original The Thing. The original The Thing.
42:06
What do you think of the remake?
42:09
Uh I think the remake was they made a prequel to it.
42:13
It's not is it not exactly a remake?
42:15
Or the no, actually there is an there is an original The Thing that's prior to the Kurt Russell The James Arness and then there's what, the 1982 one?
42:22
The 1982 one is the one that that's my favorite. That's excellent.
42:25
I think that the earlier one is also good, though. Mhm.
42:29
It's scary only by say 1950 standards, but if you can get yourself into that mindset, it's quite a good movie. Yeah.
42:37
That's the key to enjoying a film from different areas getting yourself into the mindset. That's right.
42:41
I'm glad that you mentioned that, yeah.
42:42
And a lot of people can't do that.
42:42
It's not unrelated to linguistic issues.
42:46
It's like you have to crack the cultural code of some era.
42:48
Yes, that's that's very true.
42:50
And most remakes of movies are are much worse, but with The Thing, it wasn't worse.
42:55
They understood what was good about the original, but still improved on it. Yes, yeah.
43:00
Is it like the the horror element or the science fiction element that draws you more to The Thing?
43:04
I think it's a combination of both.
43:04
I do like science fiction as long as it's not too far-fetched as like, come on, this doesn't make sense.
43:10
But certainly um fathomable in what goes on in The Thing.
43:18
Uh and I really like the creepy aspect of it, not knowing that someone's infected before the person's infected.
43:27
Uh that mystery that it's kind of like a surprise that it's, oh, this person was one of them this whole time.
43:34
And that really that's really brings out the the that that scary element.
43:41
What are the open tabs on your browser right now?
43:44
Open tabs on my browser, I don't know.
43:46
Language learning, they're in different languages or just that's all up in your head?
43:50
That's just all up in my head.
43:52
Yeah, it's tabs on my browser.
43:56
Uh I would you I guess like the the phone browser, just things that I've been looking up, you know.
44:00
Like I have an open browser tab, the Washington Post article about you because that's what I'm working on, for instance.
44:07
No, I just don't keep open tabs like that.
44:08
Yeah, I have a lot of open tabs at the moment about other hyperpolyglots because I read up on them to talk with you. Yes, yeah.
44:14
That's a good analogy, but that's a good example, but I don't really keep open tabs in that manner.
44:22
I'm more of an old-fashioned person.
44:22
I carry books around with me. I read books. Yeah, that's great.
44:25
Paper books, they're in my car.
44:25
I have 10 or so books in there.
44:29
Uh but open tabs on my browser, I think maybe I'd see like the YouTube.
44:34
I'm trying to put more YouTube channels up.
44:37
So, it's something that I'm looking into.
44:39
So, you might reopen your YouTube channel?
44:41
Well, it's the YouTube channel is it's active, but I want to upload more videos.
44:47
So, I yes, I'm going to upload more videos on the YouTube channel.
44:49
How many videos are on it now? Probably only three.
44:53
There were more and I took some of them off because I simply didn't like the quality of them.
44:55
Some of those are open tabs on my browser until I finished listening to them last night.
45:01
Uh and what's your goal with the YouTube channel?
45:04
Uh promote language, more about language, give lessons in languages here and there, give some cultural advice along with it.
45:12
Uh have little snippets of conversations with other people and giving example, hey, this can be done.
45:23
This is something that's not impossible.
45:25
Um If you go this if you want to visit this country, here are some important words and phrases to know.
45:31
Uh things such as of this manner.
45:31
And also all I'd like to focus on indigenous languages as well.
45:36
Navajo and other languages that are found throughout the North American continent.
45:42
Being a hyperpolyglot, what do you think would be something other than the languages themselves, but something that you've learned that the rest of the world should know better than they do?
45:53
Uh language is a key to someone's culture, to someone's world.
45:55
Even if you happen even if even if you do not happen to be in that person's country at that time.
46:03
Uh it's very sacred and it's very private for some people.
46:08
Uh not everyone will be very open to immediately speaking to you in their own language, but the majority of the people that I that I approach or I will ask about they have this very pleasant sort of um uh reaction to it.
46:20
Uh And then when when you get into learning the language, you start to think in a in a different way.
46:28
You realize it's every language works differently.
46:30
It makes people think differently and uh there's there's the the nuances of how the words work when you put them together, but then when you learn the language, you realize there's there's more to it.
46:43
There's like there's a soul to the language.
46:45
It's like you're you're starting to become this new miniature other person version of yourself when you use that language.
46:53
And um it comes with it comes with the the native speaker's sense of home, sense of belonging, sense of identity.
47:05
Uh language is identity for many people.
47:08
And uh it's it's much more than just mimicking words, it's knowing what phrases to use, being sensitive to uh their to another language speaker's cultural needs and you find out that's like a it's like you're going into a different world.
47:30
Recent immigrants aside, as you know, most Americans speak only American English.
47:35
Do you foresee that changing in the future?
47:36
Do you think they will find persuasive what to me are quite significant reasons to learn other languages, but most people don't do it.
47:43
Don't even really try very hard.
47:47
No, I just when you say most people don't try really hard, are you In Europe can be different, other parts of the world different. Okay.
47:54
But if you're not connected to the language through your parents or where you were born, some people learn Spanish, fewer yet learn French, tiny number try Chinese, but not much happens here, right? No.
48:06
And is that going to change? Uh I don't yes or no.
48:10
I think that in places where it's a requirement to know a second language in order to, you know, get a job somewhere, of course, a lot of people are going to seek seek that out.
48:23
Uh I've noticed a difference in between the generations.
48:28
Me being in my early 20s, mid-20s, I met people from Louisville, Kentucky or from some other city in Indiana that are learning Russian.
48:39
And that really was not so much of the case in when my father was my was in his 20s.
48:45
People say, no, it's there was there was an immigration people Italians would come to the house.
48:51
They they'd get a place, they'd just speak English.
48:53
It's like, no, it's American, it's time to be American.
48:54
We need to forget Italian.
48:56
It's just English, English, English.
48:57
And I see this sentiment repeated when I meet others like I'll go to New York and I'll see Italians.
49:02
And they're like a generation older than myself and they'll say, no, when when my parents came from Italy, they spoke only English because they wanted us us to learn only English.
49:14
There is already a big difference between the 1950s, 1940s, 1950s and that time would be at I'd say the 1990s where it's like, no, there's um you know, the globalization is happening, there's more business, there's more incentive to learn another language.
49:29
They're teaching foreign language in high school.
49:31
They're starting to come up with emergent emergent schools where the kids are grow are raised they're taught bilingually starting with even kindergarten or first grade. And so I see that trend.
49:42
That's already a very big difference there. So it will it continue?
49:48
Yes, I think it will continue more as you have a more immigration, you have a much more trade, open markets between nations and certainly there is the there is a potential for the increase of interest in in language learning especially in the a rural in the urban areas or like people who a people looking for a like I IT lawyers jobs such as these this kind of employment or it's all white collar work.
50:27
Then then yeah, but as far as there's there's still always going to be that that population that is not exposed to it they'll just simply continue with English only.
50:38
And that will continue as it is.
50:41
What do you think of media coverage of hyperpolyglots?
50:43
Is it accurate, off base, fair, balanced or I really haven't seen enough media coverage of hyperpolyglots.
50:50
about you probably you read it, right? Yes.
50:52
Did it capture the essence of you or I think it's a it was a very well put together story.
50:58
It was a little bit different from what I expected because it was like a I thought that the story was going to concentrate on just me being a polyglot and languages and such but no it was more just like an overall sort of like the the way the story was told was very it was like a a very pleasant surprise I would say.
51:17
A very beautifully written piece.
51:17
It was just a lot larger than I thought it would be and just kind of like a a very nicely put together story but I don't have I haven't seen other articles on other hyperpolyglots or polyglots that that would give me any sort of comparison.
51:36
How do people in Mexico respond differently to you being a hyperpolyglot than people in America?
51:41
Are they more shocked or they just take it in stride or I think it's a it's a toss-up. It's it's all of them.
51:48
I just see people that are very shocked.
51:51
There's some people that just take it in stride.
51:53
If I'm in Mexico City, I think that's where I get the the most surprise a or if I am in a any of the touristy areas where there are hostels.
52:05
You know, I could go to Orizaba.
52:05
I could go to the south to the to the village and say, "Oh, I know all these languages."
52:10
Those Oh, it's like they it's like kind of like they they get this wide-eyed sort of look on their face and they would think, "Oh, wow, that's that's pretty impressive."
52:17
But then that's that's the end of it.
52:19
If I in contrast to that I'll be in the city of Oaxaca where you have visitors from all over the world come through and I'm at the hostel and I'm speaking Irish Gaelic.
52:30
Funny enough the the most instances where I speak Irish Gaelic are in Oaxaca.
52:35
Because you get a lot of people from Ireland they'll go to Mexico instead of going to the US and a lot of them speak Gaelic.
52:41
And so they'll hear me speak that language. I'll speak Russian.
52:45
I'll turn around and speak Czech to someone.
52:48
I've met people from Poland from Serbia, from Croatia.
52:51
And then when I'm switching from language to language then the Mexicans themselves they really see it happening. It's a it's a live show.
53:00
And number one and number two the Mexicans in Oaxaca they're in a place where they're surrounded by languages and it's like in their face.
53:08
It's like, "Okay, there are these many languages."
53:10
It's not just there there isn't just only French, German, Spanish.
53:17
But there's Mixtec, Zapotec, Nahuatl. Yeah.
53:19
Well, it must be 15 languages in Oaxaca.
53:22
In Oaxaca, I think there are yes.
53:24
I think that's about right 15. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
53:28
The what So when I'm talking about the the Mexicans living in Oaxaca that are there they just kind of look they look at these European languages and they think, "Okay, well, that's what like a a real language is."
53:39
They still have this prejudicial a sort of like a downplay on their own indigenous languages.
53:47
The the linguistic diversity in the state of Oaxaca is phenomenal.
53:53
And that's the language is different one from the other much more so than the Germanic languages amongst themselves.
53:59
For example, the Romance languages.
54:03
a That's a a very easily overlooked by the majority of a the urban population of Mexico.
54:14
Where do you still want to see in Mexico?
54:16
I would like to see El Cañón del Cobre. Mhm.
54:20
I'll take that train ride. Yeah. I've never done that.
54:23
I've been to Chihuahua but I didn't have time.
54:24
So that's on my list as well.
54:26
Yeah, don't make me go there.
54:28
I want to explore more of Chiapas.
54:29
I want to meet up with my friend Juan who is periodically teaches me.
54:35
He gives me little lessons in Tsotsil.
54:38
And spend more time in a San San Cristóbal de las Casas. Mhm.
54:45
And yeah, that's there's this place I would like to spend some more time in and I'll see the north of Mexico as well.
54:50
Central America or Central America I would like to see I've been to Belize already but I would like to go back of course.
54:56
a I'd like to go to Guatemala.
55:00
There are countries where I cannot understand the people speaking English.
55:04
And northern Scotland sometimes counts as that.
55:07
Do you have that issue or you just hear through it somehow?
55:11
You know, it's interesting I think that recently the Caribbean also can be hard for me when people speak English.
55:19
Yes, it is English but maybe I understand a third of it.
55:23
Yeah, I've met people from the Caribbean that I couldn't tell if they were speaking English or a very heavy accent in English or it was like a a Creole. Or a mix sometimes.
55:32
Yeah, they'll blend the two. Yeah.
55:32
They were saying a stay ya instead of stay.
55:37
He going to stay ya, you know, like and it's really just sort of a very altered speech but I could tell the base words were English or at least part of it was.
55:49
The conversation that I heard on the bus I could make out what they were saying but not live.
55:51
I listened to the whole sentence, put it together and it's like, "Oh, that's what she said."
55:57
a As far as to give an example with Scottish English I know that the the how the islands the land kind of breaks up the further north you go.
56:06
The it's my idea that the further north you go the more distant the accent is and the more difficult it is to understand.
56:16
Have you ever studied Singlish, the Singaporean?
56:19
It used to be slang and a dialect and now it's almost becoming a language. I don't know of it no.
56:22
Very hard for me to understand.
56:25
How about Hindi and English English?
56:26
Is that the future of English?
56:30
Is it the future of English?
56:30
Well, it's the present of English in in India that's for certain. Sure. Yeah.
56:32
But say 80 years from now as possibly our birth rates fall Indian birth rates are falling as well.
56:42
But what will English be do you think?
56:46
Most of the speakers won't be North Americans, right? It's already the case.
56:52
I suppose a each a a each variant of English where it is spoken will just kind of like what's going by the natural law of language. It'll change.
57:09
But I don't I don't see it becoming a big mush just yet where it's all uniform.
57:15
English used to be uniform and it went into the direction where now there are many different variations of English many different accents.
57:21
So I don't see it coming back together as long as there are different areas where English is spoken it'll keep migrate it'll keep evolving in its own natural direction.
57:34
If you meet a young person who has polyglot talent and they they ask you for advice.
57:38
What what do you tell them? Advice on what?
57:43
Advice on learning or Just they they'll say they'll say, "Well, you've done it." Okay.
57:47
Let's say, you know, I'm 18.
57:50
I'm a polyglot or potential polyglot.
57:52
I see I have this talent.
57:53
What is it I should know?
57:53
You would just say stick with it. Yeah, stick with it.
58:00
I'm assuming that if this person is a polyglot he already has he or she already has developed a system for himself or herself as to the the most effective way to learn.
58:08
So I don't need to give this person any learning advice.
58:11
I don't So the systems are different in your view?
58:12
Well, they they could be different but as long as if if someone's a polyglot that means that they that person came up with a with a system that was effective for himself or herself. yeah. Yes.
58:23
Then I instead so I wouldn't give any linguistic advice.
58:26
I would say probably ask them like what is it you want to do.
58:30
I would concentrate on have that person maybe focus on a on a very useful language.
58:40
A at least one at least one very useful language that would give that person an advantage in a in academia.
58:50
You know, for example, a learn Russian, learn Spanish.
58:52
One of the one of these big languages that yeah.
58:58
Mandarin Chinese, French. And last question.
59:02
In young people if they show some inclination do you think you can spot polyglot talent and if so what do what is it you look for that a person might become someone like you or they might stop it like a mere seven languages and just call it a day.
59:16
Children that I've met that have special abilities some of them being autistic.
59:20
I would spend a few minutes each meeting showing them something, quizzing them.
59:30
Some of these people were very some of these kids were very inclined to a They're like a math genius or they were good at science or good at physics.
59:37
And I'd ask them about okay, well the uh Why is tungsten used as a filament in a bulb, for example?
59:43
Um Most of the time it was like with with scientific quizzing.
59:49
And then I would go okay, after that I would test them with language.
59:53
Like can you memorize this word? What's this called?
59:55
I'd start with English, of course.
59:58
I'd point out 10 different things. What are these called?
1:00:00
And then I'd say do you know any Spanish?
1:00:03
Uh I'll test them in Spanish.
1:00:03
I'll test them something else.
1:00:05
Sometimes uh These are These are the children A lot of these are children of my friends.
1:00:09
And my friends knowing me, they would like their children to learn Spanish, Portuguese, whatever it is that that they think is is is useful for their child to learn.
1:00:21
So I would go and test them.
1:00:22
And uh some of them actually they do They they pick up They pick up very quickly on the words.
1:00:28
And I think that the part of it is the fact that they're young.
1:00:29
For They're They're still this age where they can absorb language very quickly.
1:00:32
Uh but after that I would you know, speak to my friends with the the kids' parents and say hey, this is a good way to go about it. Do this.
1:00:43
Uh I've met customers that um they speak German, but they only speak English to their kid.
1:00:47
And I'd say hey, teach your child your language.
1:00:53
And so really it's like why is this carpet cleaner telling them?
1:00:55
And I would tell them look, it's it's important.
1:00:58
Teach your child your language.
1:00:58
Speak to her in only German. Don't worry.
1:01:00
She will learn There's plenty of English all around.
1:01:04
There will be no problem with her learning English.
1:01:06
Some uh older people worry that if they teach their own language to their kids, it'll somehow replace English.
1:01:12
They won't They won't learn English at all.
1:01:15
That's simply not uh not realistic because we live in a country where English is spoken.
1:01:21
Juan Smith, a real pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.