Do I really know 20 languages?
So when can you say, you know, a language I say, I know 20 languages.
What does that really mean?
I often get criticized because I'm obviously much better than some
languages than other languages.
I was thinking about this because I had a conversation just a couple
of hours ago with my Turkish tutor.
And actually I didn't do too badly in Turkish.
We discussed Turkish history.
We discussed, uh, you know, the situation in Turkey, the economy,
quite a variety of subjects.
Of course I made a lot of mistakes, but I noticed that I'm getting better every
time I speak because I'm putting so much effort into my listening and reading.
I'm getting a better sense of the grammar, things that I didn't notice
the first time I noticed them now.
So then I thought to myself, you know, at the present moment, if I
look at my 20 languages, Turkey, He's already in the second group
just because I've been refreshing it for the last six, seven weeks.
So if I look at my 20 languages, I would divide them into three
groups in terms of my level.
The first group, first seven languages would be English, French, Japanese,
Mandarin, Spanish, Swedish, German.
Those are languages that I feel comfortable with.
Quite comfortable speaking.
I may make mistakes, but I have a large vocabulary.
My accent isn't too bad.
I manage.
Call it either just something less than or something more than B2.
The second group of languages are languages where I can communicate.
Uh, I can understand, uh, movies.
To a large extent, not perfectly.
And these are Italian, Portuguese, Cantonese, Russian, Ukrainian.
And I would add in now Persian and Turkish.
Even though those are two languages that I've been going at recently,
I have conversations with my tutors in both Persian and Turkish.
So I am better at those languages.
So maybe I'm a B1 in some of them getting closer to B2.
Certainly I have a large passive vocabulary in all of those languages.
It only, I think what's missing is that I have to speak them more often in
order to be able to speak them better.
But I can read, I can listen to, uh, you know, radio programs.
And with the help of LingQ, I can work my way through what they're saying.
So it's not a completely foreign language to me.
Then the third group are languages that I had that sort
of B1 type level at some point.
I have a large passive vocabulary, but I could not try to speak it now, but I
could very quickly revive them, believe.
And these are Korean, Greek, Romanian, Italian.
Czech, Polish, Arabic.
So I'm talking tens of thousands of words that I know and ability to read.
I can read, you know, Twitter feeds in Czech, no problem.
But if I had to try to speak, it would take me, whether it's two days or three
or five, something along those lines.
When I was in Korea and I was able to get into conversations with people
over at the dinner table, it was fine.
So, those are, I would almost call them dormant.
So, they right now are something less than B1, but in terms of potential
are in that between B1 and B2 range.
So, can I say that I know 20 languages?
When we know people, we don't know everything about people that we know.
We know some.
Well, we know some.
Less well, we have gotten to know people.
And I think it's in that sense that when I say I know 20 languages,
I know something of 20 languages.
In fact, I know quite a bit because I understand how the structure of
the language works, even though I can't produce it correctly.
All the time, some of the time, most of the time, I have
a large passive vocabulary.
It's not like I know nothing about them.
My vocabulary level in all of those languages is close to B2 because I
have a major emphasis on comprehension and, Vocabulary rather than speaking.
I'm not drilling myself in simple conversation.
So to that extent, I can say I know 20 languages.
And it all reminds me of the video that I once did called learning a
language is like falling in love.
And it's true.
And I will leave you a link to that article, which was on my blog.
And it basically says that to do well in learning a language.
You have to fall in love with the language while you're learning it.
Ideally, you focus on the one language.
And that was my mistake with doing three languages, Persian, Arabic,
and Turkish at the same time.
Right now I'm focused on Turkish.
I love my Turkish.
It's like when you are in love, you're obsessed with the object of your love
and all of their, you know, features and characteristics and behavior patterns.
And even if there are some behavior patterns that irk
you, that doesn't bother you.
You're not judgmental about the sort of object of your love.
By the same token, as I said in the article.
The language doesn't judge you, so it's a very easy relationship.
You just love the language.
You want to imitate the language, which in a sense is the highest form
of loving something is that you want to be like the object of your love.
And, uh, you know, you can then move, like I can have an affair with Turkish
right now, I can move on and I've still got my other girlfriend, which is.
Persian or Arabic waiting in the wings.
And I might get interested in another language at some point.
And all of that is fine, but I can't possibly maintain them all.
I don't have enough time in the day to be speaking to people in
all of these different languages.
Now, obviously the more opportunity I've had to speak these languages,
the better I speak them.
And many of these languages I learned before LingQ and had plenty of
opportunity, whether hitchhiking in Spain or traveling in Germany while I'm
business there to speak those languages.
However, with those languages that are in my first group and particularly
languages that are in the second and third group, you can see from my statistics at
LingQ that I have a very large, Passive vocabulary, and even languages like German
or Spanish or Swedish, or even Danish, which I didn't even include, not to
mention Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, Korean, over 90, 000 known words in Russian.
The passive vocabulary is there.
And even if through lack of opportunity to use them, I have trouble speaking them.
I consider, I know them, I have gotten to know them, I know
them, and I can go back to them.
And I think it's important that we recognize that all of us learn
languages for different reasons.
We learn them to different degrees of proficiency.
For some of us, it's very important to be able to speak well, even with
a limited vocabulary, because we live surrounded by the language.
We have to communicate.
In my case, for example, with my Turkish, I focus in on input to
improve my comprehension, and now I'm starting to speak more and more
so that by the time I go to Turkey, I will be able to communicate.
So, because Turkey is now the most recent object of my affection, let me
see if I can say some things in Turkish.
Alright, there you have it.
Basically I said that, uh, you know, I had a chat with my tea
teacher a little while earlier.
We talked about a variety of subjects including history and in fact, we
talked about a great deal of things.
I manage quite well, but I made a lot of mistakes.
Turkish uh, verbs are quite difficult, but as I improve and if I improve,
I will do a longer video in Turkish with subtitle, subtitles, so you can
judge how well I have engaged with the latest, uh, object of my affection.
Uh, thank you for listening.
Bye for now.
