Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 161 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great.
I'm excited for today's episode because we're going to talk about a language topic and this is always my favorite topic to talk about honestly.
I love talking about languages and, and specifically, I want to talk about the languages that I speak or, more accurately, the languages that I've studied.
Because in all honesty, I'm not a polyglot.
I know many people think that and I know that I talk a lot about learning different languages, but I have been pretty captivated.
Thank you for watching.
I haven't done it really seriously to try to reach a really high level in different languages.
So just a spoiler alert I taught you that phrase, I think, some episodes ago.
That means that I'm gonna ruin the end of the story for you.
Spoiler alert.
I don't speak many languages, But I've studied quite a few languages.
I've been interested in some different languages, but I don't have a high level in many languages.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I'll talk about the different languages that I've had some experience with.
I don't remember if I did an episode about this.
I think I might have talked about this before, but that's okay.
I want to talk about it again because even if you've heard me talk about this topic before...
I'll talk about it differently in this episode, and so it'll still be new and good practice for your listening.
And before we start, remember that you can sign up for my advanced episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
You'll get two new advanced podcast episodes every month in which I speak fast at normal speed.
So this is great practice that will help you reach the level where you can understand native speakers when they speak fast, right.
And you can also sign up for my US Conversations podcast.
This is a really fun podcast in which I talk to people from all all over the US and we talk about the different parts of the country where these people are from and about a lot of different topics.
And I provide the transcript and the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.
So that's great practice for you to help you reach the level where you can understand more than one person talking.
So the link to that is down below in the description.
And you also have the link to the transcript for this episode down below as well.
Alright, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about the languages that I have had experience with and I speak a couple of them.
So as I mentioned, I'm not a polyglot and everyone has a different definition of what a polyglot is.
So my personal definition, this is definitely not the universal definition, so don't get me wrong.
This is just my reference for myself, but you probably have a different definition of a polyglot, and that's perfectly fine.
So for me...
I would consider myself a polyglot if I spoke five languages at a B2 level, an upper intermediate level.
I say this because I can think of a different term for someone who speaks two languages and three languages and four languages.
We can say bilingual for two languages, trilingual or quadrilingual for four languages, but after four I have to look up what the term is for someone who speaks five languages, and the term that shows up when I do that search it sounds strange, and so I think that's a good indication to me that after four we would just say a polyglot, and some people would say that a polyglot is someone who speaks four languages at least, and I think that's a good definition as well.
I think either four or five languages at a B2 level or higher would be a polyglot, but specifically I'll say five.
That feels right for me.
So As I mentioned, I've been very casual in my language learning for years.
I'm inconsistent with it, and maybe the biggest factor that has kept me from reaching a high level in these languages is that I've alternated between the languages.
I don't stay with one language for a long time, so I study it for some months and then I move to a different language and then I forget the language that I was studying.
So I haven't reached high levels in different languages because it's been just a hobby.
I just really like it.
I haven't needed to do a lot of language learning because it's essential for me.
No, it's just a casual hobby.
However, I am starting to shift my mindset a little bit about this.
To shift something means to change it.
So I've been shifting my mindset.
I've been changing my mindset a little bit.
And I want to start to get more serious about reaching a high level in these languages.
I want to reach a B2 level in these different languages and not just be super inconsistent and alternate back and forth like I've done for many years.
So starting now... my goal will be to reach a high level in a few languages.
So I'm excited about that.
So all that being said, let me start by talking about Spanish.
Spanish is the one foreign language that I can say that I speak well.
And I'm sure most of you know that.
I lived in Mexico for about six years.
My wife only speaks Spanish to me.
And for the first eight years of our relationship, I only spoke Spanish to her.
So you can imagine that I speak Spanish pretty well.
However, I still make plenty of mistakes because I speak this language a lot and it gives me a lot of opportunities to make mistakes, and I don't actively try to get better.
So I don't study Spanish.
I don't try to improve.
I haven't really actively tried to improve my Spanish in many years.
So it's not a language that I would say that I'm learning or studying.
And I would say that I probably have a C1 level in Spanish.
Maybe, I don't know for sure, but that would be my guess.
And so I can confidently say that I speak two languages at a high level, English and Spanish, right?
So, I'm very comfortable in Mexico.
Of course, if I had to live in Mexico for the rest of my life, that wouldn't be a problem for me.
I would be perfectly comfortable.
Of course, I'm more comfortable in English, obviously.
I don't have a ton of experience dealing with technical issues in Spanish.
I usually let my wife do that.
So I definitely have some room for improvement when it comes to technical things in Spanish.
If I go to the mechanic in Mexico, I don't know what I'm saying because I don't really have that technical car language car vocabulary in Spanish, right?
So, besides those really technical issues, those technical topics, I'm comfortable speaking Spanish, obviously.
So I would say I probably have a C1 level more or less in Spanish.
I don't know, something around that area.
I'm an advanced Spanish speaker.
And next, let me talk about Portuguese.
So I first started getting interested in Portuguese when I was in college, I think, and I had already learned Spanish to a pretty good level and Portuguese started interesting me and I started learning it a little bit and then At some point I actually started learning it more seriously because it was really useful for my job.
I used to teach a lot of Brazilian people and I had a lot of Brazilian students who were beginners in English.
So it was really useful for me to speak Portuguese, because a lot of these beginner students expected me to understand when they spoke to me in Portuguese, and I used to have to speak a lot of Portuguese in these classes.
So when that became clear to me that it was going to help me in my job, I got a little more serious about learning it and I reached a decent level.
This was back in 2017.
That was my peak, I think.
That's when I had probably my best Portuguese level 2017, maybe 2018 around there and I even used to do YouTube videos in Portuguese.
I had a decent level.
I think at my peak, I probably reached a high B1 level, I would say.
Maybe even a low B2 level.
I'm more comfortable with saying a high B1 level, though.
I think that's more accurate.
But I don't practice anymore.
I really don't speak Portuguese anymore.
I haven't really needed it in a few years.
And so I've lost a ton of vocabulary.
I don't really know a lot of words for different things because I haven't used this language regularly in years.
However, when I did study Portuguese, I reached a high enough level where I can pick it back up pretty easily.
So if I decided to start learning Portuguese again right now, I could probably get back to my old level pretty quickly.
And that's one of the coolest things about reaching kind of an intermediate to high intermediate level in a language is that Once you reach that level, you can just not do anything with that language for years and you can come back and it's still there.
Not at the same level that you had before, of course, but you can kind of remember a lot and you can pick it back up and reach your old level pretty quickly.
That's something that doesn't happen if you only reach like an A2 level in a language and then you stop for years and you come back.
You don't really have that same advantage in that case, but I reached a high enough level in Portuguese where, even though I don't speak it that well right now, if you give me two months, let's say, I can probably reach pretty decent level again.
So I would say that at my peak I reached a high B1 level in Portuguese And I can still understand Portuguese pretty well.
And I can still have conversations with people in Portuguese.
So I would say that I kind of speak this language at this point.
In the past, I would say for sure, I spoke Portuguese because I had a lot of conversations in that language.
But now I would say I kind of speak it.
Next, let me talk about French.
I've studied French a on and off for years.
When you do something on and off, this means that you do it inconsistently.
You start and you stop.
And that's because I have never been serious about French and I've never had a reason that I needed to learn French.
Like with Spanish, I had a huge reason because of my wife and because I moved to Mexico.
And then Portuguese.
I had a reason because of my job With French.
I've never had a reason why I've had to learn French.
And because of that, I've just done it casually on and off for years.
I've never gotten that serious about reaching a high level in French.
And I've done very little speaking.
So I can understand a lot of French.
I can understand pretty well.
If you put a French video in front of me of someone talking in French, I can understand the majority of what they're saying, probably.
And depending on the topic, I might understand the vast majority of what they're saying.
But I've done very little speaking practice.
So because of that, I would say that I understand French pretty well, but I don't speak French.
However, my goal this year is to reach a B2 level in French by the end of the year.
This will be a hard challenge because I don't know what my level is now, because I don't even speak this language, but I know that it will take me a while, many hours, to reach a B2 level.
But as I mentioned before, I'm changing my mindset with languages.
I want to stop being so casual and alternating between them.
And I really want to reach a high level in some different languages.
I want to have that experience, the same experience that I've had with Spanish.
It's really rewarding for me to have a high level in Spanish because I can live in Mexico and have deep relationships in Spanish.
And I want to have that in a few other languages if I can by the end of my life.
So my goal is to reach a B2 level in French by the end of this year.
I'm not going to alternate this year and start doing Portuguese again or Italian or whatever.
I'm just going to focus on French and I'm going to get more serious about it with this goal in mind.
So hopefully by next year, I'll be able to tell you that I speak French as well.
Next, let me talk about Greek.
So Greek is my favorite language that I've studied.
Learning Greek is pure pleasure for me.
There's no reason why I need Greek.
It's not essential for my job or anything like that, but it's the language that I have enjoyed the most.
Like I said, it's pure pleasure for me.
And I haven't studied Greek in a long time.
I think I reached an A2 level about four years ago, let's say.
I can say that, yeah, I was at an A2 level.
I could actually start to understand quite a bit.
Not a lot, not like French, for example, not even close, but I was definitely able to understand a good amount of Greek when I reached my peak, probably four years ago, and I even had a few conversations.
They were very simple and I needed help.
But I was able to kind of manage those conversations, mostly in Greek at that time.
I would say that I didn't get past the A2 level.
I was probably getting kind of close to upper A2, but no.
But, of course, I've forgotten everything since then.
I haven't touched Greek in years, so it's been a long time.
And, like I mentioned before, I didn't reach a high level in Greek, so I can't just pick it back up like I can with Portuguese, unfortunately.
So Portuguese, just give me a month or two and I'll be good.
Again, Greek, no.
I'm going to need to kind of start almost from zero.
Not from zero, of course.
I can still read Greek.
I still know the alphabet in terms of what sounds the different letters make.
And I still remember some basic words and phrases.
And my goal is, once I've reached a B2 level in French hopefully at the end of this year I will switch to Greek and then I will focus on Greek, try to learn Greek to a B2 level.
So I'm really hoping I can get French done this year and reach that B2 level so that I can start Greek next year.
And it's gonna take me many hours to reach a B2 level.
I imagine that will probably be a two-year journey.
If I really put my mind to it, maybe a.
I can do it in less than that time, maybe a year and a half, but I don't spend my whole day language learning.
So because of that, I think it will probably take me close to two years, let's say, to reach a B2 level in Greek.
But that's okay.
This is my new mindset when it comes to language learning.
I don't want to just have fun and kind of dabble in these different languages.
When you dabble in something, it means you kind of have just a little experience in those different areas.
So I don't want to just dabble in these different languages like I have up until this point.
I want to actually reach a high level level in some different languages.
So I have that in English and Spanish.
Of course, I almost had that in Portuguese, but I've lost that and that's not really my priority now and I want to reach that in French, and then after that I want to reach that in Greek.
So I imagine that after this year I'm going to be doing Greek Greek, Greek for a long time.
So that's Greek.
And then let me just mention the two other languages that I have studied a little bit that I'm probably not gonna study again in the future.
One of them is Italian.
Most of you already know that I did a challenge earlier this year actually starting at the end of last year to learn Italian for a hundred days and I completed that challenge.
It was a good experience.
I learned a lot, and I learned a lot about my own language learning process and motivation, discipline and things related to language learning.
And I even had a couple conversations in Italian but this isn't my priority.
It's not a language that I'm as motivated to learn.
So I won't say that I'll never learn it again, but I don't have plans to do so right now, because I really want to focus on reaching a higher level in these other languages, because those are the ones that inspire me a little more and i really want to have meaningful experiences in those languages.
So i'm just going to focus on those and i'm going to focus on them one at a time right, and just really focus on french, reach a b2 level, then do greek, so i'm not really gonna have the time to do a little bit of Italian or whatever, because I'm going to focus on those other languages.
But it was good to learn some Italian, and I think there are some words and phrases that I'll always remember in Italian, and I think that I really, really like the sound of Italian.
I'll always think that it's one of the most beautiful languages.
And then one other language that I've studied many of you probably don't know this is I studied Indonesian for a little bit.
So I didn't do much.
I think I probably studied it for, I want to say, four months, maybe, something like that.
And it was obviously a challenge because...
There weren't a lot of words that I could just recognize.
Like when I study French or Italian, I can just recognize certain words.
I didn't have that with Indonesian.
So it was a big challenge.
And I think that I just ended at an A1 level, to be honest.
But I was able to understand a little bit.
And I remember I took one Indonesian class but I couldn't actually have a conversation in Indonesian.
I just had like 10% of the conversation in Indonesian.
But it was fun to do that.
I don't think I'll ever learn it again, but I definitely appreciate that experience because it was my first time trying to learn a language that had like zero relation to English, because even Greek has some relation to English.
Of course it's really different, but it still has a little bit of a link to English, whereas Indonesian was just completely foreign to me.
So it was cool to have that experience.
And in the future I might try to learn a language that's really different from English, but we'll see.
Like I mentioned, I'm gonna focus on French and then Greek and then who knows?
So those are the languages that I've studied or had experience with.
As you can see, I speak English and I speak Spanish and I can kind of speak Portuguese and I understand a lot of French, and I hope that at the end of this year I can say that I speak French and that's about it.
I don't speak, of course, but hopefully, at this time next year, I'll be able to say that I speak three languages, or three and a half, and I'm working on my fourth.
So I'm excited to actually try to reach a high level in some different languages not because I want to say that I speak the language that's of course a dumb reason to learn languages I want to have that experience in French for example that I have in Spanish right I want to have that same experience that I really value when you have a high level in a language and you can really form deep connections in that language, that's really cool.
And I want to do that with French and then Greek and then who knows after that.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope it inspires you to do more language learning of your own.
And remember that you can sign up for my advanced podcast episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
The link is in the description below.
And you can also sign up for my US Conversations podcast to practice with my conversations with other English speakers from around the country.
The link is also down below.
That's patreon.com slash usconversations.
And as always, please share this podcast with anyone else you know who might find it useful.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
