Archives: August 25, 2016

It’s been a while since the last interview. Today we feature Irina Pravet who is from Romania and currently lives in Finland. 

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

My name is Irina Pravet and I coach foreigners settling abroad who are looking for a sense of home, as well as people who are learning languages. I was born in Romania and when I was 5, my parents and I moved to Canada – first Montreal, where I learned French, then Toronto, where I perfected my English (today my strongest language). I grew up trilingual and as soon as I had the chance, started learning Spanish and German in school as well. When I was 21, I immigrated to Finland, and I’ve been here ever since. I guess all this moving around between cultures and languages has made me very aware of them, passionate about finding home wherever I am, and ended up shaping my career.

2. What are some peculiarities of Finnish?

I’m so happy you asked this 🙂 Finnish is unlike most other languages (apart from Estonian, and it also shares some similarities with Hungarian) It’s very phonetic and easy to read. Once you learn the alphabet, you can read almost everything. One of the most notable aspect of Finnish is the fact that it doesn’t have any gender or articles (which was a relief after studying German). When people talk about it’s difficulty, they never mention how the lack of gender and articles makes things a lot simpler. Finnish is best known for it’s 15 cases, of which 12 are used actively. 6 of these 12 cases are primarily used to express directions; they are called local cases. Cases are added to the end of a word, and the word is inflected. For example, ‘school’ in Finnish is ‘koulu’. If I say ‘at/in school’ then I add the inessive case (+ssa) onto the end of the word, so ‘at/in school’ becomes ‘koulussa.’ It takes a bit of getting used to the cases because it’s a new way of thinking about things but in the end, it’s very logical. Also, there is no word for please in Finnish. You use the conditional tense for politeness.

3. What is your life in Finland like in comparison to Canada?

It’s hard to say exactly because I left Canada at a transitional period in my life, at the age of 21. So when I think about Canada, it’s hard to separate it from my childhood/adolescence and early adulthood. I joke that I only know how to be an adult in Finland 🙂 I guess the biggest differences are that whenever I have to do something new in Finland, as an adult, I also need to learn some new vocabulary. For example, doing banking and taxes in Finnish involves learning new concepts, but also new words. It makes some of these things feel a bit harder and scarier than they need to be but I try to take small steps forward so as to not let them paralyze me. Otherwise, I would say I live a pretty normal life: I’ve met friends throughout the years, from school, work, and friends of friends. We’re a pretty international and diverse bunch, much like my group of friends in Canada.

4. What are the benefits of a TED appearance? What do you need to do to speak at the conference?

Speaking at TedxOtaniemi was a huge project for me. I didn’t know what all the benefits would be ahead of time but looking back now, I would say that they include getting your name and message out there, and somehow becoming a spokesperson for the message as well. When people are getting to know me professionally, it’s easier to refer them to the Tedx video for them to get a sense of what I stand for and what I believe. Doing the talk was also extremely helpful in that it helped me really verbalize the message I wanted to get out in a very concise format. As the saying goes “If I Am To Speak Ten Minutes, I Need a Week for Preparation; If an Hour, I Am Ready Now”
As for what you need to speak, I would say the #1 prerequisite is passion for a cause/message, #2 courage and #3 perseverance.

5. Do you dream in a foreign language?

I have no idea… I’ve often tried to figure out what language(s) I dream in but I never can remember the actual words; rather I remember their meaning. I assume I dream in English, and if I spend enough time in Romania, I probably start dreaming in Romanian… whichever language I am immersed in.

6. When you learn a new language do you always follow the same strategy?

Yes and no. I tend to follow my curiosity and feel my way around the language in different ways, depending whatever gets me excited. It depends whether the language has similarities to other languages I speak or whether it is completely different. Either way, I try as much as possible to hear the language at first and immerse myself in its sounds, and also stay close to people who are speaking it. I have a much harder time motivating myself to learn if I don’t know anyone who speaks the language or have an immediate need to use it.

7. Which resources do you normally use most?

This feels odd to confess but I don’t use much in the way of apps or more modern language-learning resources. I tend to gravitate towards a basic textbook to get me started, find a reliable online dictionary, make my own flashcards and google things from time-to-time when needed. Otherwise, I tend to ask people and work up the courage to use the language and adjust as I go along. I’ve tried language learning apps like Duolingo and Memrise and although they are really fun, I don’t seem to stick to them for very long. That’s just me, I’m old school like that!

8. How has speaking multiple changes changed you as a person?

I did an entire talk on this topic at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in 2015 (here’s the link) and strongly believe that learning a language will change your life. Not only because it’ll open your eyes to new cultures and people you wouldn’t have met otherwise, but also because it will change the way you see yourself. A language is a medium through which you can express yourself, and every medium has its limitations. So when you step outside the limitations of one language, you’ll be thrown into situations with different societal norms and, if you’re observant and persistent enough, learn to react to situations in completely different ways based on the language spoken. This is a whole new level of mental gymnastics, and the feeling you get when you start to perceive yourself as, for example, someone who can ALSO be ‘reserved’ instead of ‘perpetually loud’ can feel very expansive. It’s like redefining your identity.

9. You know you’re a language nerd when…

… you find yourself explaining how a certain grammar construction isn’t so hard to grasp, and go on to explain why only to be met with wide-eyes stares from those who lost you at a word like ‘adverb’.. it happens.
OR
you’re having lunch with polyglots and they ask you to explain how Finnish cases work with genuine interest, and you ask ‘Are you serious?’ while feeling like you’re dreaming =D

10. What is your single best non-obvious tip for language learning?

As soon as you decide to learn a language, begin to think directly in that language. Even if your mind is blank in the beginning, add to it slowly but surely, and think directly in that language, instead of translating from another one. This is an invaluable skill that takes practice but can be used for learning any language and speaking it fluidly from the beginning.

To learn more about Irina or to see her Tedx talk, please visit Languagecatalyst.com.

The long wait is finally over! Lindsay Dow who runs the blog Lindsay Does Languages reveals her language learning hacks, favourite podcasts and why fluency is a myth!

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

My name is Lindsay and I run Lindsay Does Languages, a business and blog dedicated to inspiring others to learn languages. My first experience with different languages was in primary school when I went to French Club because we got croissants at the end of term. True story. It gets better – I later started studying Spanish because I wanted to translate Shakira songs. Yup. It didn’t take much to get me hooked and languages soon became part of my everyday life and later my work.

Lindsay Does Languages started by tutoring people privately in their homes and businesses and then expanded online to teach students around the world through tuition on Skype and via online courses. That’s where I am now.

What languages do you speak?

I hate this question! I’m going to answer it more like ‘what languages have you studied?’, which will give a more accurate answer.

In order of when I started studying them: French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Korean. I’ve also dabbled teeny tiny bits with loads of other languages including Polish, Danish, and Thai, but this is mostly out of curiosity or travel.

Do you dream in a foreign language?

Occasionally languages will be part of my dreams but I don’t often dream fully in languages other than English.

What do you think of constructed languages? Would you be interested to learn one?

Initially, no. I couldn’t see the benefit and I’m not much of a sci-fi fan, where a number of constructed languages originate from. However, recently, I’ve become interested in Esperanto due to friends that speak the language and finding a couple of old books last summer very cheap! It’s on my list for the year.

When you learn a new language do you always follow the same strategy?

Ahh, interesting question. There are some things that stick but mostly, I try and improve my strategy with every new language I start. I think this is why I’ve started to study so many languages over the years – I’m determined to keep improving my strategy.

How has your strategy to learn new languages changed over the years?

Nowadays my study definitely includes more tech and I’m currently focusing on speaking sooner than I used to. I love books, you see, so it was easy for me to get stuck in a reading rut.

Do you have a favorite language?

Nope. Each language is special to me for different reasons. They all have different times of my life, music, memories etc attached to them. But if you’re looking for a one-word answer to the question – Spanish. Spanish was the language that showed me it could be done and that I could learn languages well. So I guess I have a lot to thank Spanish for.

Are there any language blogs or podcasts you follow closely?

There’s this girl, Lindsay Does Languages. She’s pretty cool. I think she also co-hosts a podcast called the Creative Language Learning Podcast. It would be wrong of me not to mention her. 😉

Seriously though, I love listening to the Actual Fluency Podcast as well and reading, among others, Eurolinguiste and Fluent Language.

What is your definition of fluency?

It’s a myth! I think fluency is often put on a pedestal as the ultimate, unreachable end goal with a language, but the truth is if you look at it that way, you’ll never be fluent. For me, fluency is being able to express yourself clearly without many hesitations or stopping completely. You don’t know a word? Mime it! Fluency is half confidence in my opinion.

What is your single best non-obvious tip for language learning?

Ooo, I think it’s all about using the things that are a part of our everyday life for language learning as much as possible. Right now, my current favourite recommendation is Snapchat. It’s great for accountability. Short and sweet language bursts throughout the day! I wrote about it in more detail here (there’s also a free guide you can download and keep forever!)

Check out Lindsay’s website and YouTube channel to learn more!

Today’s interviewee is Kris Broholm from Actualfluency.com who currently lives in Budapest. He runs a popular language learning blog and has helped me set up our Danish site. His in-depth interview is definitely worth reading!

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

I grew up in Denmark and lived there most of my life. I started learning English in grade 4 and German in 5. However by 11 my entire inner monologue switched to, probably terrible, English and it’s been that way ever since.

I always enjoyed language classes but a major depression removed all my interest in school and so my results were very disappointing.

Then 2 years ago I discovered the on-line polyglot community and the rest is history.

What languages do you speak?

I tell people I know some: English, Danish, German, Esperanto, Russian and Hungarian.

How do you prepare for an interview, and how do you find new interview partners?

One of my primary philosophies when preparing for an interview is that I don’t want to know a lot about the person I’m interviewing.

This is to make the conversations more valuable to the listeners or viewers who often don’t know much about the person I’m interviewing or their projects.

If I did a lot of research before every interview I’m sure it would decrease the quality of the podcast a lot, because suddenly I would be asking questions based on that information and not from a reactionary point of view.

My favourite way of finding new guests is to simply ask my audience, who would you like to hear from? Most of them say Moses McCormick or Tim Doner – the latter of which I believe will be on this season, but I sometimes get some great suggestions that I hadn’t heard of or thought about.

How much editing is necessary before you publish the interviews?

I want the interviews to be uncensored and unfiltered and so I make a point about telling every guest that once I’ve made the introduction there will be no editing of the conversation itself.

However, that doesn’t mean I can just upload the file directly so I would say each episode takes about 5 to 6 hours to make.

0.5 hour prep and pre-interview chat
1-2 hours interview
1 hour editing the audio for the podcast
1 hour editing the video for YouTube
1 hour uploading, writing and scheduling.

What are the best parts and worst parts of language blogging?

The most amazing part of being a language blogger or content producer for me is when people write me to thank me for my content. I’ve had a fair number over the years and it’s the single most rewarding experience of my entire life.

Especially my content related to depression and fighting back to get out of the proverbial hole so many people find themselves in these days. Just the idea that I, little me, actually managed to help make just one other person’s life better.

On a personal level that’s pretty awesome. To add just one more best part, the accountability that’s built in when you put your language learning on display.

I HAVE to study Hungarian, not just to actually speak it and live here in Budapest, but also so my readers and listeners don’t start to send me emails asking, “hey Kris why are you not doing anything??”

There are very few “bad parts” about being a language blogger. Of course it’s a lot of work upfront where any kind of financial return takes years to build up, but that’s more or less obvious when you start.

In general, as long as you get into a rhythm you’ll grow as a person and hopefully inspire others in the process.

The HARDEST part is for sure to keep consistent. I’ve managed to be more or less consistent with my podcast, but the blog posts have been a bit too sporadic. I hope to change that in 2016.

How is your life in Budapest? What are the pros and cons of living there?

Right now it’s extremely cold. Every day is -5-15 and going out is physically painful. Summer on the other hand was 35-40 every day and way too hot.

So I’ll put the weather on the “cons” side of the argument.

However, Budapest is an amazing place with lots of history, beautiful buildings, cultural offerings, bars, cafés, restaurants and pretty much anything you could ever want.

And it’s very affordable with a very nice tax system for freelancers.

I’m very happy here in the middle of Europe with excellent transport connectivity to the rest of the world and I plan to stay here for the foreseeable future.

What are your long term plans? Do you want to do something outside of blogging in the language field? You mentioned you have a book in the pipeline.

My long term plans are to continue to develop Actual Fluency to the point where it can generate enough income for me to go down in hours on my day job. Then I would look to possibly teaching more Danish, as that is one of my unfair advantages in the world.

Yes I have a vision of a pretty epic book in my head, but for now I can’t share any more details. I recently released a 30-page book where I talk about the right mindset to start learning a language and also share my own language learning story, how it was an escape from depression that motivated me to get into learning languages.

Do you dream in a foreign language?

Well, I live my life through a foreign language so of course my dreams are mostly in English. I have caught myself dreaming in foreign languages before though.

What do you think of constructed languages? Would you be interested to learn one?

I’m relatively fluent in Esperanto and I’m a big fan of the positive effects to your learning it can have to learn a really easy language. Esperanto also comes with a global community of people who you can instantly connect and become friends with.

I’ve learnt all the 120 words of Toki Pona and spent two days trying to speak it and although it is a bit of a silly language I found it had great effects on how I perceived the world and language in general.

I was learning Russian at the time and I was struggling to speak, because Russian is very different from English.

My problem, I discovered through Toki Pona, was that I was not trying to convey the meaning my mind was trying to convey, I was actually trying to translate from English into Russian, which severely impeded my progress.

After learning the Toki Pona word for goodbye “mi tawa” translating directly as “I leave” something clicked and I understood that when we say goodbye, we’re actually conveying the meaning of “I leave” at the most fundamental and rudimentary level this is language.

I’d recommend people spend a day or two learning it as I did, but then after that I would not spend a lot of time on it. I think the value of such a minimalist language is mostly for its creator and the first time you learn it as a learner.

I know some people speak to each other in it during conferences and stuff, but I’m not really interested in that as I don’t see it as a practical language, but more as a philosophical experiment.

How has your strategy to learn new languages changed over the years?

One of the great things about learning languages is that you can do it in so many different ways using a million different tools.

My strategy is constantly changing but I think the core is simply to engage a lot with the languages and have many lessons with native speakers.

Do you have a favourite language?

Hungarian is my favourite language right now. It’s so different and unique to any other language I’ve ever studied and it sounds awesome too.

What do you think of LearnWithOliver.com?

It’s a good concept. The main problem with spaced repetition learning today is the quality of the courses or decks and the lack of focus on full sentences.

LWO manages to do both and also offer a lot of ways to learn at an affordable price. I’m a fan.

What is your definition of fluency?

Being able to speak to people in the language without significant hesitation. Making mistakes is OK but you can’t take 15 seconds per word 🙂

I think my German is at this level. I have a high understanding, can read books and watch TV in it but when I speak I make mistakes. Also I sometimes have to explain missing words but that’s totally fine too.

What keeps you motivated to keep learning?

I’m trying to find as many avenues of motivation as possible. The primary one is to speak the language, to understand and conduct business in it.

Secondary motivation I get from going to Polyglot events all over the world and meeting up with fellow language learners as much as possible. By seeing people who’re doing much better than me I get super motivated to study on my own languages.

My blog and podcast are also sources of motivation because as I explained earlier if I’m not learning anything it’s very hard to blog about it.

What would you recommend a new language learner? How to get started?

My book “Polyglot Beginnings” has a lot of tips and tricks on how to develop the right mindset for a new language learner. I think it’s incredibly important to work on the mindset first to avoid burnout or desperation later.

The other tips is simply to keep going. Sometimes the road to fluency seems incredibly long and impossible, but the only way to fail is to stop learning.

And what point would you recommend to read up on grammar?

I don’t focus a lot on grammar. In most languages you actually don’t even need to worry about it.

For grammar-heavy languages like Hungarian and Russian I try to systematically learn about the various cases and then I consult tables when I have to try and memorise endings or rules.

How has speaking multiple changes changed you as a person?

I’ve developed a thirst to find out more about foreign cultures and in the process also become more open and tolerant. Two years ago I had no idea about Hungarian culture and now I’m living here.

Do you travel more now since you’ve learned a lot of languages?

Yes for sure. It’s a great way to experience other cultures and to broaden one’s horizon. The Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen once said; “To travel is to live!” and I agree 100%.

How can you know anything about your own life if you don’t know anything else?

Have you ever started a new language and then given up for some reason?

Yes, I gave up on French on several occasions. First I was very tired of school and just quit the subject. Secondly I was trying to learn at home, but I had not yet found the polyglot community so I had no network, no accountability and no-one to talk to about it.

One day I’ll get back to French.

How important do you think is talent when learning a language?

I don’t think talent is very important. We’ve all learnt at least one language so we’re all capable of learning more.

What talent does is speed up the process and allows you to learn more languages faster. Some people might also just be talented at concentration, which is a huge plus for language study.

Do you use mnemonics to learn new words?

I don’t generally, but if there is new information I particularly struggle with (like a tricky word) I will try and make a mnemonic for it.

The argument, which I’ve not yet found an answer for, is: “Is the effect of a mnemonic so strong that it’s worth spending many times the time on each word, rather than simply repeating it more times?”

How much time do you spend learning languages per day or per week?

I currently aim for about 1 hour of study time per day, split up into 2-3 sessions. This does not include tutoring sessions or classroom hours.

Unfortunately I sadly reach my goal, but as long as I get a little something done every day I’m happy.

Which language you learned did you find most/least challenging and why?

I think the first foreign language you try to learn on your own is always going to be the most challenging. You have to learn not only a brand new language, but you also have to teach yourself how to actually learn.

Objectively speaking Hungarian and Russian cause me struggles because they are soooo different than the other languages I know.

Esperanto was extremely easy for me and I think anyone would say the same.

Any books about language learning you can recommend?

I think Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis is a great primer to get rid of most of the limiting beliefs that stop most adults from learning languages.

Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner is a great comprehensive resource. It does focus a lot on Flashcards, so if they are not your cup of tea you will have to skip a lot of the book. If you do enjoy making your own flashcards this book is right up your alley.

Any tips for people who want to start blogging about language learning?

Be very realistic with your reasons for doing it and the time it will take to keep up. I suggest keeping to a very fixed schedule, because there is nothing worse than visiting a blog where the last post is months old.

I’d suggest people do it for their own sake, but also mine. I love to read other bloggers and it really motivates and inspires me to do better in my own language learning and blogging.

But yeah, be realistic that it’s a serious commitment.

To learn more about Kris Broholm please visit his website over at ActualFluency.com.