Támas's Interview With Steve
I have three visitors from overseas and we are doing a variety of things. Right now Thomas from Hungary is going to interview me. So I'm kind of nerves. I hope he isn't going that tough on me. Question 1 : Alright so Steve it's a pleasure for me to interview you and we as link students usually at associative phase with link, when me meet your little white coated character in video and then we get started at link and we see you face, English related video but for me, personally I don't really know much about your life before . We heard that you kind a little bit in business, you were working as diplomat but would you talk little bit more about it, because I'm interested? Answer 1 : Ok well, for talking about my professional career. I started with the Canadian government trick diplomatic trade service. So not existed sort of a diplomatic core that works in embassies, overseas to help Canadian business people together economical intelligence on these countries, you know opportunities, positions that host countries might be taking in some international economics conference . So that was kind of, that's the nature of the job and my first assignment was to go to Hon Kong, to study Chinese because Canada was getting ready in 1968 to recognize the people of republic of China. So that was my kind a language thing I started, and so I studied Chinese in Hong Kong and there after I went to Tokyo and I was in embassy in Tokyo for four years working in different sectors and towards the end of that I was in the forest product subject, as the result of that. I was hired by a major Canadian exporter to set up their offices in Tokyo alright. So then I did that worked with them for quite a while and then I was hired by their largest competitor to do the same as a competitor. I started the Tokyo office for the two of the major Canadian number exporting companies. Then in 1987 I set up my own company where we tried to develop sort of niche products, products that lets say the big industry didn't want to produce. And I have my ideas that how we could actually manufactured those products to Japanese requirements and so that was the beginning of K.P Wood. So I did that and that company still exists I'm not so that active in it anymore, but I spend good, you know wise 25 years in Timber business travelling largely to Japan which I really enjoyed because Japan has a wonderful wood culture. Which is something that was a wonderful experience for me and then along the way I learned other languages. I got interest in other languages, I think once you know that you can learn language one and the second and the third then you get kind of motivated and then of course my son Mark, who, forget that, that is a long story. My wife and I both speak languages. We wanted our kids to speak languages of course whatever parents wants the kids resist, one of the natural things. However he ended up playing professional hockey in Europe he was in Italy and Austria and Switzerland and then in Japan. And he suddenly realized actually it's useful to speak other languages, so he now speaks a number of languages and we started link that about 10 years ago. Question 2 : Alright thank you, my next question is related to what, you have just said because I experienced that everything creates you, make your life starts with big even thing in your life, so my question is what was the one big even in your life language wise and what made you go much deeper than general language learners?
Answer 2 : Ok I would say that there are number of events. The first event was French, because even though I grew up in Montreal especially in 1950's, Montreal was like a divided city, 2 million French speakers, and one million English speakers. They communicated at some level, but people kind live separate lives. So, we have French in school but I couldn't really speak. Then I had a professor at University, who was just very good at say turning me on to French. In language learning when got turned on there is no holding your back; the key thing is to turn the switch. I'm sure every teacher feels is that they could just do it with all the students and just turned the switch that's all they need to do. So he turned my switch and then I just pursued the French that was the major event in my life because I then got interested in, they had the sort of new wave, you know nouvelle vague, movies in those days. French and so many aspects of French culture that interested me and then I ended up quite in France for three years where I did my University training. So, that was the one thing, the second thing was being assigned to Hong Kong to learn Chinese. Yes, I mean coming from a western culture you know, to discover Chinese culture like, yours unbelievable exotic. I was in the fortunate position that government paid for me to studies. So I was earning my salaries and just studying every day. Which was the only time, I have ever been in that situation that's great. So seven hours a day I was studying Chinese. So that was this second major thing, by then when I went to Japan, I didn't have to basically go to school. I knew then you have to, as I always sad listen and read, so I just listen and read eventually my Japanese develop. I guess third thing was this whole link, which started because we hired a guy from China. Who had an immigrant to Vancouver, how he was money storing at the airport by some local gangs a sire because they know that Chinese can rip all the life savings you know in a bag around the neck. I mean lot of these Chinese gangs. And so we felt sorry for this guy, we said we will hire him, and if he is good he helps us, if he is not, if he can't function at least we will gave him couple of months. So in the end it did not work out because of his English. He had his high scoring TOEIC. So we started developing link basically for him and then we thought, it's just kind a good and then we tried to interest the immigration department and it was all bureaucratic mess there. So we just changed what was originally an English language only platform into a Multi-language platform. So that was the third major thing that got me involved and since I started with link, I have learned 7 languages, I have learned more languages in last 10 years, then any similar period in the past. You know Korean, Romanian and more.
Question 3 : My next question that would you abolish the language barriers if you could and how would you imagine the world if it were like the Babylonian tower?
Answer 3: No first of all it's not for me or for any one else to erect barriers or abolish barriers you have people who speak, they speak whatever they want to speak. So what I think is likely to happen, I think that despite the fact that English has become a very useful International language. There are people who say it's you know imperialism, British imperialism, American Imperialism, it's we want to promote Esperanto. I'm not in to that at all. I had no interest in Esperanto. If you may meet someone from Syria and other one from Brazil they are going to speak English. So it's extremely helpful and handy and they are not going to speak Esperanto not, may be one in ten thousand. So it's useful. Question 4 : Do you believe that if you switch to other language your personality changes slightly?
Answer 4: Yeah slightly, you know if I speak Japanese I'm going to bow little more, but I think and if I speak French or Italian I'm going to use my hand little more but fundamentally your personality doesn't change. But, because when you speak a foreign language you are actually imitating those people, you can't speak French well, with out to some extent imitating the French, so to that extent you will also imitate some of their mannerism but I don't think that your personality changes. Question 5 : One of the really inspirational factor when I have buy for this project that you mentioned Seth Godin and I really respect him. Who were the people you really find inspirational and turned out to be important in your life?
Answer 5 : Now that's a difficult question as I say this professor of French at McGill University, Maurice Rabotin was his name. He just turned me on to French. There are number of people I have read about as in Biographies and stuff like that I find very inspiring. But there is one person for me is Nelson Mandela, who sat in prison for 20 or so years and to be treated so badly and then come out and have this attitude of forgiveness and let's trying build something together. To me that is very inspirational. If we had more people particularly Political leaders with that attitude the will be far better place.
Question 6 : What kind of projects do you work on and in your future what kind of project are you planning language wise and in general ?
Answer 6 : Because I'm very Interest the question about that languages are going to be less important and I think that you know we want to contribute to making language learning easier and also possibly to preserving some of the minority languages. I mean Hungarian is minority language but is in no danger. But the native language in Canada is definitely in danger and what tends to happen is let's say with regarding to minority languages then ok we are going to save Cree, which is probably the largest native language in Canada. So pretty soon you kind a have people wanting to get Government money to write grammar books, pretty soon they spend millions of dollars and the number of speakers of Cree just decline year after year after year no matter what. All you does is to create that industry of people who are going to save Cree but in fact you don't save Creek. And what I'm off to believe that all is needed to save our language to help learn the language is the language, you need to get people to talk the language you need to describe that you build the kind of library as we had in link, with audio and text and you give people a way of learning from that material. So even know I think that I'm studying Korean the material I would like in Korean isn't there, there is some very difficult podcast that I have to pay to transcribed, there is some very childish beginner material, but there is no in between material. There are people who are doing this kind of thing there is a person when I started Polish, from Puerto Poland who build wonderful material. I would like to get together all the people who are creating wonderful material not only in sort of English ,Chinese French and modern Arabic which popular language but potentially in all of them in Hungarian let's get some content and that's why if find with Marquez let's have some more languages in link and he from the practical point of view he can justify because don't just have enough people who learn Hungarian but even I managed to get Ukrainian put in there but I'm the only one who studied Ukrainian so I want people to study Ukrainian those are the kind of things relating to language, people getting together understanding each other being able to access to each other's culture.
