English LingQ 2.0 Podcast #16: Polyglot Kerstin Cable Talks Learning Languages & The Women in Language Event ( (2)
I mean, there's the pronunciation and the spellings in Welsh are something to behold, like, um, but yeah, I love that "linguistic adventure". That's that's a great, that's a great term. I like that. Um, well, thank you. Anyway. I feel like you're a bit of a, a bit of a champion for Welsh. Um, thank you from the Welsh people, thank you.
Kerstin: Very undeservedly. Don't don't make, make no mistake in my Welshclass every Thursday evening I get told all the time, Oh, I've got, I'm teaching four German and people, and there is a Syrian refugee who's learning Welsh.
And that, you know, because the community is so small, everybody just seems to be like "here is a non-Welsh person learning Welsh. Look at them! I love it. I think it's a lot of fun. I think I'm having so much fun with Welsh. I'm so grateful to the language and its teachers.
Elle: Excellent.
So you, as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, you co-host the Women in Language event with Lindsay Williams and Shannon Kennedy.
Kerstin: That's right.
Elle: Uh, tell me about the event. How, how long has it been running for now? Is it you've had two?
Kerstin: No, we just finished our fourth
Elle: Oh four. Wow. Excellent.
Bad research there.
And so, um, tell us a bit about why you started the event and, um, yeah then how was the most recent one? Cause it just happened last month, right?
Kerstin: Uh, yes, it happened in March. Um, it was a little confusing because in 2020 we had, we moved from our usual slot, which was in, which is in March and we kind of moved it to September.
So that year just seemed to confuse everybody. But women, Women in Language is an online language conference, a four day event. We have about 30-ish speakers, 34, I believe this year. And we ha... we host sessions all live all hosted by one of us, three organizers. We host panel discussions. We have got a very lively live chat running all the way through, and it's a real buzzing event.
The idea behind Women in Language was to champion, we, we say champion, celebrate and amplify the voices of women in language. And just, we can widen that out to less of heard voices in the sense that, you know, we're totally open. We've had nonbinary speakers, transgender speakers. That's that's no deal.
The idea though really was from noticing, and obviously when you're a woman in the polygot space, you notice more, right? The things where you see the lack and we felt there was just a little bit of an imbalance in terms of media attention, for sure, general sort of the idea of what a polyglot, "like that, that image seemed to just be a load of guys.
Um, and then not meant the kind of here is an expert panel of people who are multi-lingual, and lots of ..."that, all skewed man. And I'm a strong believer in, this isn't really about like what I, you know, like, I'm not saying I'm making, women in language exists and now the world is perfect. I'm a strong believer in when I've got something that really gets me riled up and I get a bit ranty and I might've had a bit, might've had a rant or two about whatever, I'm such a graceful person.
That you've got to do something about it. And I felt, not just me, it was sort of Lindsey, Shannon and I we didn't sit down together and say, Oh, we are really unhappy. Am I allowed to say pissed off? We are really unhappy, you know, we didn't sit down and say, Oh, something needs to change. Instead we kind of, I had my rant and then that was it.
And then months later, Lindsay, Lindsay sort of brought up, Oh, I'm looking at International Women's Day, which is the 8th of March. And I thought maybe we could do some kind of an event thing. Maybe I wanted to organize something. Do you want to, do you want to, you know, do you want to help? Do you want to do something together?
And I was like, Oh, that sounds amazing. I just got really excited about it. We brought Shannon in and then when we started looking at well, who could we have? Who could we work with? Really quickly realized we don't have a one day event. We've got like a festival here and we called it Women in Language to kind of set that flag down.
Um, but it isn't an event about women. It isn't an event where we discuss women topics, whatever those are, and it isn't an event that excludes men at all. So now that we've just had a fourth one, you were asking about, um, something we're very proud of is in the four years we've had over a hundred speakers. So we bring, we don't have a lot of repeat speakers.
We focus on bringing in new speakers every time, new voices. We have improved in terms of diversity. I would say our first one was like, people we know turns out they look like you, but it was, you know, we've certainly improved on that and I'm really proud of that. And, um, it's a really welcoming space, but the other thing from just sort of anecdotally looking for the names of registrants, we've had more guys this year.
Like, and every year just kind of get this movement going. So people realize, okay, even if there's just even if, even if there's just a lot of women on stage, doesn't matter, it's still a really cool event. And I personally don't really see that many expert panels where it's just women. So I'm just so proud and delighted to be putting all that together and being a part of kind of putting it out in the world.
It is so much fun. Um, and it's only $29. So we get a lot of participation and we try to open it up as widely as we can. And yeah, it's sort of become a movement and an event that has a name in the space, which I don't know, I don't know if we planned that, but here we are.
Elle: Here it is. It's fantastic. And so then next year's event is a safe bet?
It's going to happen next year? I know it's early days. You just had the fourth one, but...
Kerstin: Well, you know, if you've ever organized an event, you probably know that there's moments where you think I'm never doing that again in my life ever.
There's a good chance. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And we would be in the Women, International Women's Day sort of time slot. So that's the first, usually the first weekend in March, roughly.
Elle: Excellent.
Kerstin: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's too special really. It's it's a special time. People really love it.
Elle: Wonderful. Um, I wanna ask you, a lot of our listeners, viewers are learning English.
Hmm. And, um, I'm sure other languages too. And I always like to ask anyone I get on who has mastered, so to speak, languages outside of the native language, um, if they have any advice. And from you, I would love to know, I noticed that reading through your website and listening to you that, kind of, inclusivity is a big,
big thing for you. Um, and the message on your website is, you know, anyone can learn a language, doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, you can do it. It's really positive. I love that. Do you have any advice for anyone listening, who, um, might be thinking, you know, wondering if they actually can, if they, they've never learned a language outside of their mother tongue. They're wondering, can I actually do this?
I don't know? Do you have any advice?
Kerstin: So for those people, my advice would be to not spend too much time in wondering if you can do it and to just try. Try try try. And when you, because if you're spending a lot of time wondering, can I do this? Can I do this? Then when something goes a little bit wrong or you make a mistake, then you're already asking the question and then it's really easy to go
"Ah, there's the evidence. I'm going back to bed", don't do that. Don't do that. Instead, try to just find something that makes you really want to do it because there's many things in life that you and everybody, you're doing it. Doesn't matter if you can do it or not, right? You're just doing it because it's fun. You know, if you, I don't know, go to the cinema, you don't, you don't go like, Oh, I don't know.
Am I too stupid? I don't know what I understand this. Like most of us, we have at least one thing in our life that we just do because it's awesome. And you would do it even if you weren't sure that, you know, you could go all the way. Like, you know, how many people play, play football slash soccer and they're never going to be a professional player.
It's not about that. And if you treat languages like that, if you treat English like that... like find something really cool and just kind of follow that and stop asking, can I do this? Because then a year down the line, you'll be like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It turns out I can. And that's a nice feeling.
That's great
Elle: advice. Thank you. Um, so what's in store for you for the rest of 202?1 of course it's a weird time, but things are still happening, the world is still ticking over. What's in store?
Kerstin: Well, the, there is, uh, at least one more podcast season coming and I'm hoping for, I've got plans for the next three. So that's good.
No, let's do the next one first, which is, uh, it's going to be a season about teaching. So I've got a few interesting teachers. We're kind of talking more about teaching and something I really like, which is talking business because I'm a one-person business, which means you spend a lot of time thinking about all this kind of stuff.
And there i so much mindset and psychology. I feel like we have a parallel with languages and I really like that space that the coaching, I guess, motivating space and the exploring how to overcome your inner hurdles and, you know, really sharing strategies and sharings. What's worked for me in the last nine years of doing this.
Self-employment thing. So I'm really looking forward to that. That's the podcast on a personal level, I'm hoping to go home and see my family. And this, this is weird, Elle. You know what I miss almost as much, possibly some days more than my mum?
Elle: I hope your mum's not listneing to this!
Kerstin: Well I can, I can talk to my mom on the phone, right? But I can't talk to the vineyards.
And I am from the Moselle Valley, which is all vineyards. And I have found, like, I really miss just looking at the vineyards and just seeing that's like my, my feeling of home is when I'm in a vineyeard.
Elle: And enjoying the products of the vineyard, I'm sure.
Kerstin: I mean I've got some in the fridge. That's fine. I grew up in a wine-making family and yeah, vineyards, I think are really important to us. So I felt, I never know, I never knew before the pandemic stopped me going for so long that I missed the landscape of my home. And I really just want to, you know, just go home to, to see home.
