Kaizen Blueprint

In this episode, our guest shares his amazing journey of learning seven languages: German, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Spanish. He reveals the stories behind each language and his unique approach to mastering them through immersion, conversation, and goal-setting.

We delve into the joys and challenges of language learning, the beauty of linguistic diversity, and the impact of thinking in different languages. He also talks about the historical evolution of English and how geography shapes our speech.

Tune in for an inspiring conversation about setting realistic goals, continuous improvement, and finding joy in learning new languages. This episode is perfect for anyone passionate about languages and personal growth.

00:00 Introduction and Language Background

07:34 Setting Language Learning Goals

14:42 Methods for Language Learning

20:45 Motivation and Passion for Language Learning

25:26 Ranking the Difficulty of Different Languages

36:46 The Impact of Language Learning on Social Interactions

49:29 The Historical Development of the English Language

52:31 Setting Realistic Goals and Continuous Improvement in Language Learning

56:36 The Importance of Practical Learning and Understanding

01:00:29 Language Learning as a Tool for Personal Growth

01:07:05 Language Learning as a Tool for Professional Growth

01:09:38 Finding Joy and Personal Growth through Language Learning

Find David at:
David Maizels - LinkedIn

Follow Me At:
www.kaizenblueprint.com

https://www.instagram.com/aldoschandra/

Transcription:

Welcome to the Kaizen Blueprint Podcast, where we explore topics for continuous personal growth and improvement.

David, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Aldo. Now, I took you in in this episode because of your language learning skills, but before we start getting into that, tell us all the languages that you speak. Whether that's fluently, intermediate, maybe conversationalist, the whole nine yards. right. right. So let's see. At Abington, I had the privilege of studying German since we were in class together. I studied French, studied Italian, studied Chinese, Japanese and some Arabic.

But please don't make me start speaking all of it right now. I some of them I retained a lot better than others, but I would definitely say I'd be comfortable talking to you in German, French, or Italian right now. Got it. And why did you start learning these languages? What made you interested in those? I would say that was because of our amazing German professor that I was not expecting to meet. It was a complete, just wonderful gift in life to have met Dr. Colucci, who told me that, you know what, David? Go try it. It'll help you out in your language learning, help you out in just life in general. It'll give you the whole new way of thinking.

And I said, okay, let's do it. And that's exactly what happened. Got it. And when we first met, I've, I had one year of German. well, I studied in Germany. I did an exchange program in Germany. And basically I had that opportunity to immerse myself in the German language, the German culture. And when I came back, everything was so easy. I don't remember what class that we took. was like German two or German three. But yeah, it was one of the more advanced one. But then you

Up there too. So you had a German kind of background studying. Correct. In my high school I took about two years of German there. But it wasn't on the same caliber as to what we were being taught. So actually I had to do at the very beginning a little bit of catch up. Because I was missing so much. But you know, you just got to put the effort in and you get the rewards. So why German in high school? In high school I was just looking for something a little bit more challenging than Spanish or French for that matter at the time.

I said, you know what, let's try German. It's difficult, I was in my high school already offered Japanese and I figured, you know what, I'm doing the challenging stuff already. Let's make it more challenging. And so yeah, I tried German at high school, had a great first German teacher, second one, I'm sorry, but not the same caliber. And then of course, Dr. Kaluchi, who was like, know, way up there. Yeah, yeah. No, he was very knowledgeable. what got him

to telling you to learn more languages other than German, was it the skill set that you had or? I think it was just my general like willingness to do it because I will tell you this, when I first came to his class, we had our first test and you remember how rigorous his easy 10 page tests were. And all of sudden I got like a horrible grade on it and I was just like, what? It completely shook me so I just asked him like, hey, what's the correct answer here? What did I do incorrectly here? How can I learn from this? How can I redo this? And then he ended

Then he gave me that chance, which was not something that every professor would give you, because I'm sure, you know, in college or any or anything in life, if you make that kind of mistake, you're not getting a second chance. He could have easily said, sorry, you know, better luck next time. But no, he said, OK, here's what you did wrong. Explain it to me. And then I went home that day, I remember before work, I just completely rewrote the test correctly, just for practice. And eventually that practice became my general study method. And eventually he did let me retake it. I aced it. And then from that point on, it was

pretty much constant repetition. Got it. And what made you start learning other languages after then? After then, he was just talking to me and he told me that because he grew up in part of Italy where they say German is the first language, that having two different languages actually helps your thinking more. Basically, it provides you with new avenues of interpreting things and of analyzing things. And to me, that was very insightful because as the more German I picked up, and of course I know English and German are both Germanic languages,

But it's still a different perception of how you think of things because English has a lot of French influence, has a lot of Latin influence, and a few Greek words here and there. Got it. So the whole different aspect in how to analyze things, how to, you know, get to this, get to a solution, but through different angles and avenues really just made it more interesting to me. And I said, hey, I need more of this. So Italian, French, continuing Japanese, more Chinese, Arabic, even Spanish, actually. about that. And I was just like, you know what? This is actually so helpful because like it's a completely new way of interpreting the same information.

but in a different way. Got it. Tell us more about how you start learning one language after the next and what made you kind of, where's that cutoff point where you're like, okay, I think I've studied enough. For example, I think you said Italian after, or is it French? I'd say Italian would be my most conversational language. French I've actually have used in a professional environment before and German. Really? Okay. Actually, yes, at Lowe's, but these are not all places. Okay. So you did German and you went Italian,

or French? when I was actually even taking German back with Kaluci, I was taking Chinese and Japanese as well at the same time. So I was already doing it then. it's really greasing the gears and getting everything going. And then suddenly I'm like, you know what? I want my extra four credit hours. Let's do French 100. Let's do Italian. Let's, know, do all that. And what what is your methodology of learning these languages? It's more so of interest to me, because one thing is that Kaluci also mentions that when you learn a language,

You're learning an entirely new, not just a new thought process, but you're learning the whole culture, the whole history, the whole literature as well. And that's really exciting because again, there are so many great works that are written in, that we have to re -translate into English. Not that English has amazing literature, do not get me wrong, but it's again, as you know, reading Goethe in German, and in English night and day, but yeah, but night and day difference, no? And same thing with French or Italian, and even of course Chinese and Japanese and other languages too.

Got it. So walk us through the first step into learning a language. How does that work? Do you read a book first or do you get motivated first? What is the somewhat methodology of learning a language? That's a good one because that really depends on the people. Like the traditional approach, like when you're in a school is, okay, we're going to do the alphabet today. And that's of course for language that have an alphabet. Some languages, like for example, Chinese, do not have an alphabet. You kind of need to get thrown off into the deep end and say, here you go, learn all these characters.

And for example, for Arabic that has an alphabet that we don't use, you need to essentially sit down and say, okay, memorize drawing all these characters that are the alphabet. Basically, for non -Latin languages, you need to just kind of just go a little bit off in the deep end. Chinese is an extreme, of course, but essentially learn the alphabet. That's the first, that's like the most traditional basic step. However, I understand that people learn languages not in the traditional means in the classroom. Some people, it's just simply conversational. Like, you have a coworker who just speaks Spanish, for example, which is very common.

and you'll just pick up phrases from them and you'll use them but you won't use them grammatically correct if you know what I mean. You'll speak like improperly. That doesn't think wrong with that because the point gets still communicated but it's not the traditional thing that you know you and I encounter. Well that's when the connection thing comes comes into right? You start picking up certain languages or not certain languages but certain words and certain letters and then you combine them into one and that's when you start connecting to exactly to to each word and then it creates a whole sentence.

Yep, it's a very beautiful process. Like I was very happy. Like I had a coworker with my job who spoke with like three words of English and I picked up enough Spanish from just hearing her say things that I was able to communicate with her. I'm like, awesome. This is great actually. And it was kind like a little breakthrough moment, but I'm like, okay, I don't need to sit and you don't need to do Spanish professionally now. I just need to just enough to communicate again, like you need to have goals when you're also learning a language too, which I think is really important.

Like, and I'm sorry, I'll go off here a little bit. It's okay. But everyone's just like, I want to be fluent in, for example, French, for example. But what do mean by fluent? Do you mean like fluent enough to go attend university? Do you mean fluent enough to order at restaurant? Do mean fluent enough to go, you know, talk to people at a book store or at school maybe? Like, what do you mean by fluent? I think that's what you need to establish. What are your goals for learning a language? It's just like with you running. It's like, you know, if you want to go run a whole marathon, you're not going to do the whole thing the first day, right? You're going to run a mile.

few miles you get the build up, a lot of build up. And I think once you establish your goals of, I want to learn this language to this point that I'm comfortable with, that's like the great first step right there. Got it. And I think that goal aspect is very important. I remember I took Spanish during my high school years and I think the goal was to just get a good grade. Correct. And because of that,

want to do the bare minimum and get that 100 and be done with it. And I remember when I went to Mexico for the first time, I took an eight week course of learning Spanish because I know that when we're there, we weren't going to go to just the tourist area like the Tula and Cancun, but we were driving to other cities where it's just Spanish people that don't speak a word of English. So obviously in those aspects, I need to learn Spanish. But I've learned so much in that eight

course that prepared me into going into Mexico. And then I was like, this is actually working. And then you start immersing yourself into the world and eventually you learn everything. then, well, not everything, but you learn just enough and you learn more than the two years that I went to high school. Did you have that same experience when you first? For immersion? Well, when you first studied in school and did that help a ton versus?

whatever other methodology you do on the side as well. regarding immersion, it depends on how you want to immerse yourself. For example, like the best way to do it, of course, is to go to a country where your language, your target language is spoken and just live there, immerse yourself there, maybe attend an accelerated learning program if you really want to master the language. And that would be the most like best way. For me, though, I remember our German professor told me that, there's a school in Vermont called Middlebury. They offer German immersion programs. And he said,

I think it'd be great for you to go because he was willing to do a whole German program with me right at Abington. I really wish, but you know what happened, fortunately. then so I went there one summer. It was fantastic. And I feel like every single thing that I've learned prior to that, because Middlebury has a very famous rule. like, hey, no more English. After this date, nothing. We ask you to even for text messages, even for your entertainment, please stick to your target language.

Which wasn't really a problem, know, I said on my video, you know, I have Steam. I took all my games to German. It's like, yeah, so it's like nothing super new. And I knew that the shows that I liked, for example, could have German subtitles and German dubs. So it wasn't that big of a difference. Yeah. Even creating a German playlist. So it wasn't too bad. That's true immersion there. It was. Yeah, because all we were doing, we were just talking German the whole time. it wasn't, hey, how you doing? like, amag, and VGates. And that's all you heard.

Even in the classroom, there were like one or two places where we could speak English. For example, like the university bookstore, because you know, the people who work there, they don't speak the dozens of language that school offers. So that was the one place where it was okay. So Middlebury is a language school? It's a university. Yes. They're kind of their forte is in foreign languages. Wow. So when I came back, I was very excited and I was talking to Kaluci because for him, it was very easy to in German. For me, it was like...

Hold on, one second. But towards the end, I found myself like much more comfortable in German, even using more, of course, not the most complex words, but like more rudimentary words to kind of get the point across. And he was very happy about it. Then eventually I stopped hearing about him for from two weeks. I'm like, maybe he's busy. Eventually I come back to, hey, we're sorry that he passed away. I'm just like, oh, wow. There goes our German professor, you know? Well, at least he had an impact on your life. 100 % he did. Absolutely. Definitely for the better. Yeah.

Well, going back to the goal aspect, what is, for someone who's starting out that might not know what their goal is, but they are motivated to learn a certain language, what are the common goals that you see that could be effective for other people? I would say the first goal is to kind of break the ice, so to speak. Like, you need to make that first... This is really critical here. You gotta make that first mistake. I know everybody doesn't want like, well, you know, I'm a perfectionist. I can't do anything wrong. No, no. With language learning, you have to.

Because like you will make a mistake eventually like everything in life exactly of course and you got to learn from that You go you have to have that learning experience Like it's not always gonna be perfect and a lot of people have like struggles They're like afraid to talk, you know, I'm sure you remember back in high school, like, you know, have kids like afraid to talk They don't want to they don't want to mess up and but you can I understand completely but you kind of have to because you're not gonna learn otherwise, yeah and So that's one that's step one in opinion step two is then getting whatever you deem the basics

If you're learning, you know, not in the conventional way, in conventionally, like, you know, watching TV or watching movies or music or co -work, or, you know, co -work, we speak different languages than you, you kind of sound a baseline. You kind of sound a baseline of what you want to learn with them or what phrases need to be known or what alphabets need to be studied. you can choose more advanced vocabulary, conversational, then practice writing, reading. You get the idea.

So what is the conventional and conventional to tell us more the difference between those two aspects? So conventional would be like, for example, like, you know, going to school, taking a language course, language learning seminar, whatever you want to call it, and kind of learning, you know, here's the alphabet, we're going to learn days of the week, we're going to do numbers now, we're going to do, you know, colors, we're going to do countries, we're going to do basic geography, facts about the little country. That's, I'd was more conventional, you know, the way we were taught in school. In conventional, my opinion, can also be just as effective is, hey,

I have a coworker who only speaks French. This might be applicable somewhere in Canada, for example. And they only speak French. They don't speak a lick of English. So you gotta speak, learn French, speak the basics with them. bonjour, say comment ça va. At least get that thing going. Even if you can't understand exactly verbatim what they're saying, need to, the more you hear from them, the better. Now, of course, let's say you want to develop this further, but you don't want to have time to go to school or you have other life issues, but you really want to perfect this.

Then this is where think media involvement comes really in handy because the internet is a huge place. Everything's on there. I'm sure you can find your favorite TV show dubbed in the language that you want to learn. mean, Disney Plus has it in pretty much everything. Yeah. So Netflix. Exactly. So you can definitely watch the classics or things that you like in your target language, be it French, Italian, whatever. And then it's your thing. Pick something you really like. Let's say, for example, Simpsons. People really like the Simpsons. They kind of get the gist of what's going on there. If you just switch it to French.

you'll kind of already get what's going on. They say, wait, that's new word right there. I don't recognize that. Let me write that down. Boom, then you have, then you're learning that way. But when you're learning that way, that's difficult for someone who's just learning the language because that's not just one or two words. That's the entire sentence and each word of the sentence. And it can make convoluted and confusing. Yes, can be. Hey, what's it going to be? Nobody says it's going to be easy, of course. But you're right. That's a very good point, actually. And to the point where

Sometimes when I was getting more comfortable with German, I'd still have the English subtitles on because then I could match with what they're saying to the English, which was a little bit of an extra step. when I was like, wait, what's that word right there? Rewind. Go 10 seconds back and eventually pick it up. Like, oh, that's the word right there. That's, for example, the word for elephant. But then you pick it up. Got it. Do you think extroverts have better advantages?

when it comes to learning a language? wouldn't say necessarily. I would say extroverted people are much more able to kind of break the ice, so to speak, and do the more talking and learn that way. But not necessarily. The thing about each language is difficult in its own way, and it offers its own challenges. For example, everybody says, well, Spanish is so easy. It's most commonly spoken language in the US, aside from English. Yeah, that's true. But Spanish has so many dialects.

That's true, along with many other languages. Not everyone just speaks Mexican Spanish, and even of course Mexico has its own dialects within the country. For example, like if you really want to learn Spanish, then somebody from the Caribbean, say Puerto Rico or Cuba or Dominican Republic, their Spanish is going to be very different than what we're learning in school. Right. So that's another challenge. So in somebody's example, very introverted who says, hey, you know what, I'm not too comfortable talking, but I really like learning all this new vocab and these new ways of saying the same words that I'm learning in school.

they could excel there, absolutely. That's still, and of course speaking and having knowledge of these dialectical words for different region or regionalisms, whatever you want to call them, they're both equally valuable in my opinion. Of course speaking is always preferred, but having regional dialects, for example, like again, if you and I say go to Germany, I don't speak Austrian German to you. No. Exactly. So again, it'll be a little bit clueless, but say somebody else, for example, in our class who really studied Austrian German, they'll be right at home. Yeah.

So to each their own. Got it. So after finding out what the goal is, right? That's number one. And number two, what is the next step there? The next step would be getting some kind of baseline. Be it the alphabet, basic phrases. Telling, hello. How are you? I am great. What about yourself? Those kind of things. Then you start adding more complex vocabulary. When I say complex, I don't mean like, let's write a whole encyclopedia Britannica. No, no, no. I mean just

I'm doing good, thank you for asking. What are you doing later today? You gotta build the conversation. gotta kind of keep it, like, how would you talk in English, Or whatever your native language is, and then go from there and say, hey, how would I contain this conversation? Think about the conversations you have, for example, professional, family, friends, and kind of continue those conversations, but in your target language. Got it. And to me, I think that's the next step as well, of kind of retaining the language as well. What's applicable to you?

Because what's in the textbook, for example, could be completely irrelevant to what you or I... I do you remember we had examples from the 1980s? So it wasn't exactly that modern, but... Then I just changed, I'm like, hey, instead of listening to the cassette, I'm playing Xbox. You know what I mean? Like, you're making it more relevant to yourself, and that way, in my opinion, you're retaining a lot more. Got it. So after retaining a lot more and understanding the basic key phrases...

By then, should we start writing down to things that, or is it better in a conversational setting and having conversation with people or it's a little bit of both? I would say it would have to be a healthy mix of both because writing is also an essential component in any language. And having that component along with speaking is really helpful and will basically maximize your attention of the language. like jotting down like basic phrases like, you know, what you did, we know.

I remember very often, for example, my Japanese classes would have to write down what we did that day. So I have like Japanese with me, I remember it was at my last period. So she would just expect us a little writing quiz. How was your day? But everything had to be in Japanese, of course. Did you have to write them in the Japanese characters too? of course. Wow. Well, whatever characters we knew. She didn't expect, of course, complete fluency, but you know, just give me a basis, give me a little rundown. How do you stay motivated in all these languages

Well, I'm only human, you know? I'm not gonna say that, oh, every day I do, you know, an hour a day, again, it's only 24 hours in a day. Sure. And it's little bits here and there. like, hey, I really want to keep studying. It's something I just really love. It's not something that I just think about, oh, I have to do this. It's more of like, hey, I need to find time for this, because I just love it so much. And it can be in a variety of mediums. For me, for example, could be just sometimes I just turn on my German playlist. And to me, that counts as just interacting with German.

Or I'll just watch the news in German. Or I'll open up Instagram and say, I can look up French newspapers right here. They have pictures that have, no. And if I'm really struggling, I can just hit see translation. If I'm really struggling. again, just any kind of interaction or if I my days off, for example, like today, I'll bust out my workbook and know, do just a little bit. It's just something that you just really, if you really love something, you're not going to have say, find time, you're not finding excuses. You're gonna say, hey, I can do this today and I'm gonna love it.

Absolutely. I think that's the difference between people who do stuff and people who just do stuff for the passion of it. It's like your job, right? If you find something that you really enjoy, you're just getting paid on the things that you really enjoy. In terms of the language aspect, you really love learning languages and because of that, you completely immerse yourself in the content that you're watching, the things that you're reading, and it's

things that you do on your free time and I think for the viewers, right? It is important to find that thing that you really enjoy the most and immerse yourself completely because it's... I like the phrase, like it's... You you are in a sum of the five people that you surround yourself with but I think that sixth person could be the things that you immerse yourself. If you go on YouTube, what are the algorithm telling you to watch? And that is basically based on your history, right? So I think

For you in the language learning space, you probably go on YouTube and search up key phrases in certain language or perhaps what are the culture differences between one language to the other or one culture or tradition. So I think because of that, you completely immerse yourself and it's just on a daily basis that you learn these things. yeah. Actually, you're right. Like if I open up my YouTube, for example, it'll jump straight to shorts or whatever you called.

And it'll tell me, here's how people in Berlin say this and ha ha, here's how people in Saxony say this and here's how people in Bavaria say this. And I'm like, yeah, this is all really cool though. Cause like, this is actually stuff I like. Now I know how, for example, like if I go there, I shouldn't say, for example, this specific phrase that people in Berlin use versus people that in Bavaria will be like, hmm. You know, start raising eyebrows. Like we have the same thing in English, even in the United States, of course. Like, of course, like, you know, if you walk into Boston, you say, y 'all, how are y 'all doing today? They're gonna be like, hmm, what did you talk about?

Who is that? Exactly, immediate eyebrow raises. yeah, essentially, you just believe, going back to if you really love something, you'll just put yourself into it and nothing will stop you basically. Got it. I forgot to ask you in the first few minutes, but the most important thing is, did you learn all the bad words before you learn, hello, how are you? And all the language did you learn? Yeah, I'm not going to lie to you, Yes, absolutely.

Because he was like it's such an important It's important to learn the bad words. Yes, because just in case like somebody says something, you know what I mean and Yeah, I feel like some languages have a lot more Complexity in their vulgarity. Mm talk about professional at least To the point where it's like for example in Russian, which is my parents native language sure They can get very creative and I'm just like, huh?

And other languages have just have such sheer dialectal differences for example in the case of Spanish. That not necessarily... say one thing bad, they'd be like, that's okay. Why'd say that perfectly normal word to me? of course context would tell you otherwise. Is it true that in the Russian language there's actually a dictionary full of the bad words? I would not know you. But yeah, going back to particularly even

Even in German, can get German can get very colorful with its swearing. I will admit. Yes. French, what I've experienced is a little bit mild compared to like English. Well, French and English have a lot in common. And as for Chinese, it just depends on because Chinese has how much regionalism and like each province of China has its own dialect nearly or language, depending on you ask. It just depends on context. Like in one region, this word is OK.

For example, the word xiaojie, which is supposed to mean miss. However, in another part of China, xiaojie has a completely different meaning that's not something you should call a word. Wow. And kind of get where I'm going with this. to me, I was just like, that's really important to know that, okay, use this part in Northern China and do not say that these combinations in Southern China, for example. Got it.

Now, I would say list all the... Now that you went through all the languages about the vulgarity of it, now tell us, based on the language that you know so far, what are the... I guess start from the easiest to the hardest. Well, here's the thing. This is gonna be different for everyone. Sure. Because every single person has a different background. English might not be their first language. They might speak a completely different language. And of course, of your viewers might say, hey, well, that one's very easy for me because XYZ.

So again, just just my personal experience, but you know, I'll go hard as to easy. That's okay with you. So I would say Chinese just right off the bat is one of the most difficult languages I've had the pleasure of studying. Not that I hated it. I absolutely loved every second of it, minus my hand hurting from writing all the time. But it was just, it was a pleasure to study it and to really dive into its intricacies. And of course, the nice thing about Chinese that it actually has two faces. What I mean with that is that it has a traditional Chinese that's used in mainland China, then it has

Traditional Chinese, which is the very complicated old style Chinese characters that look very beautiful writing them, but physically write them is like hurts. Really? Well, they're very complicated. The average simplified Chinese character has about, I believe, six to seven strokes versus traditional can have a new between 10 and 14. Got it. And they have the same meaning, So traditional Chinese, for example, if you and I go to Philly's Chinatown, we'll see traditional Chinese

For example, also in Japanese, the kanji system that they use is also traditional Chinese. Same thing in Korean, which I believe is called hanja, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. And in Vietnamese as well, prior to the French arriving, they also wrote in traditional Chinese. So you will see it very often. And in my opinion, it's very important to study it. Study both, actually. But it's just another kind of, it's a joy of the language, as difficult as some people might find that. Got it. And then I'd say we have Arabic. Arabic. I thoroughly enjoyed.

studying Arabic, I felt like I was getting the grasp of it just from, well, from a semester's point of view, but I loved it. I wish I could have continued it. But the difficulty of Arabic is that the language stretches from Iraq to Morocco with tons of variety between. But in terms of dialects or just? completely dialects, yes. For example, like Iraqi Arabic and versus, you know, Moroccan Arabic, it might be very difficult for them to understand each other, actually. Even in a very simple conversation.

And I saw this because the Arabic professor we had at Addington, she was a Moroccan woman. And however, she said, I'm speaking to you all in Egyptian because this is how most Arab media is portrayed, something that everyone can understand. However, they asked her out of curiosity, please switch to your native dialect. And she did. They were clueless. And I was asking her, hey, would it just be easier if I start speaking French right now? She said, yeah, probably. Got it. So what's the next language? I would

See, German does have its difficulties, do not get me wrong. I mean, it really, really does have its difficulties as you and I both remember. Be it the false friends, be it the prepositions that we need to use, be it just literature as well. And of course, the many, many, you know, switches from conditional, Preteritum, all that fun stuff. Like I still practice my Preteritum when I'm like bored at work because it's just so important. There's so much of German literature is written that way.

It's so key to recognize that and then I'm going to save Italian afterwards actually what I know is a very bit surprising people because a lot of people have Italian roots they hear it at home, but The thing about Italian is that the standard Italian dialect that we're taught and so that is taught is actually just Tuscan The Tuscan dialect Italy. What is Tuscan? Is it so? Tuscany the region of Italy. god. Yep It was a mutually agreed upon between the north and the south during their unification that Tuscan would be their language of language of choice.

versus every other dialect that Italy offers. And again, including parts of Italy that don't speak Italian as the first language. But a lot of us, for example, Italian Americans come from Southern Italy who speaks Sicilian or Neapolitan. And that's why, for example, you hear the difference between, for example, Muzzadell or mozzarella. Gabbagool, Gabbacollo. So they're not incorrect. It's just their It's just their dialect. Different dialects. Versus standard. Wow.

Okay, so let's reiterate here. So we got the top one is Chinese. Yes. Then you said Arabic. Arabic, yep. Then you said German. German for its many difficulties. yeah. Especially the sentence structure. You know, I try to do Duolingo on German. I always fail at the der, das, like the article. Always fails. So we got German. Yep. The next one is Italian.

What's the next one here? I forgot about Japanese actually, I'm so sorry. Where do you write Japanese at? Japanese I would say either tied with Arabic or just in between or maybe even above it. Is it because of the character? Because the pronunciation is pretty... You're correct. The neat thing about actually Arabic and Japanese, kind of go back to that, once you hear it pronounced once, that's exactly how it's pronounced. There's no accent changes like Chinese has, for example. It's exactly as written. Unlike French.

unlike English, for example, which have the interesting pronunciations. The thing about Japanese though is that not only so, the speaking part is very easy, very straightforward. Once you master the sounds, yeah, absolutely. The writing. Because Japanese is one of the very few languages that uses three writing systems at the exact same time. And it's very normal to have sentence with hiragana, which is the indigenous Japanese language.

Katakana, an alphabet just for foreign words and loan words, and then kanji. They're all used interchangeably. So they could be used in the same newspaper, right? Well, absolutely. Like if you want to say, for example, the German car is over there. You would use hiragana as well to describe, you know, it's something's over there. German would be deutsu, which would be written in katakana, and kurama, for car, is written actually in kanji.

So that would actually be all used at once and that would be the correct usage of it. I mean, in Hiragana and Katakana, there's, I think, 140 total characters, roughly? Please don't plan this as fact, right? But that would not surprise me if that were the case, yes. But Kanji, well, my point is the next one here and Kanji have like... Thousands. Yeah, unlimited. Yeah, thousands.

That's why Japanese can be a little bit discouraging to some speakers because they feel like they're not learning enough kanji that they won't understand enough and it's... Yes, like there are some that you will hit a point like, I don't know this one. This one's way too complicated for me. And you'll hit that point. That's totally okay. There are many powerful tools we have online, like for example, G -Show for Japanese that will put this kanji blurb, if you will, into hiragana so you can understand it, you can read it. And then you'll learn.

Got it. And I think let's be going back to kind of the list. Let's start hitting roadblocks in all these languages that kind of make them more difficult. For example, like in Arabic, one common misconception that we have when we learning is that you actually learn something called modern standard Arabic. OK. Technically, nobody speaks. Now, I'm just saying, why are we teaching this? Because modern standard is giving you the groundwork foundation to learn other

In Arabic. Which are actually spoken, yes. That's how Arabic is taught here in the United States and in the West. however, for example, if you want to learn just, for example, just Egyptian Arabic, there are courses for that as well, or Levantine Arabic called Chami, or other things too. So it'd be really, I think that can be kind of a tricky thing about learning that. And as for Chinese, it's just, you have to constantly keep learning and memorizing and taining all these characters to really have a solid backbone in Chinese. Wow. And I've had the pleasure of these

of these pleasures I'll call them, of learning these languages. And it's something that makes each language challenging, in my opinion. But it's definitely a rewarding challenge, of course. So what's the next one after? Italian, right? Yes, we had German, we had Italian. Then I'm going to have to say French. French. French, the thing that makes French so complicated is that it's not like phonetic like other languages. The only one that's not phonetic is actually also Portuguese.

Portuguese is not written exactly how it sounds by the way they do they have the Portuguese in French under what's something called nasal ization where they kind of skip letters So yeah, that's why French can be that's why you see French written with like 70 million vowels and only two of them are pronounced You have an example I do actually the bird for French is wazoo and wazoo is not spelled how it sounds us in English of course, but in French it's O I s e a

That's a of vowels. That's a lot of vowels. Yeah, it really is. But you only heard like two when I said it. Say it one more time. Wazzle. Wazzle. Yep, that's a bird. It sounds like a W then. Well, because the O -I sound makes that W sound. it's very tricky, but especially regarding pronunciation in French. But I feel like once you overcome that hurdle of pronunciation, this is, believe, that kind of break the I smell. Like you have to make that mistake in order to properly...

understand how French sounds work, then you're allowed to kind of excel and like, there's so many resources available in French. need Canada's right up there. Quebec is about seven hour drive from us. again, you have all those resources, resources at your disposal. And from there, you can kind of really hit the ball running. Got it. And lastly, I am going to put Spanish. I'm not saying that Spanish is an easy language. Not at all, but as compared to the other one, I'm saying in terms of acquisition, you have, especially here in the United States, we have so many resources available for Spanish.

that it's pretty much at your disposable, sorry, not disposable, at your disposable, excuse me, Jesus. Disposable. Disposable language. Disposable language. But yeah, but we have so many resources available here in Spanish. In fact, we have more Spanish speakers here than in Spain itself. So if you really want to learn Spanish living in the United States, the resources are 100 % there at your disposal.

And also we're at the border with Mexico too. I mean if you're going to California most of the names like the city's names are someone in Spanish. That's history. Yeah, yeah. That's a different topic. Not much I love that, but different topic. And yeah, you have so many just available resources again. You hear Spanish so much in United States even even Telemundo is free. And you're on the basic TV package. So if you really want to immerse yourself that way, you absolutely can. Got it. Is that on the languages we have so far?

Let's just reiterate the rest. So we got Chinese at the top, then Arabic slash Japanese, then you got German, then you have Italian, then you have French, and you have Spanish. Is that everything? That would everything. Yes, that would be everything. I just, you know, it was a privilege really to learn all of them into, know, amazing, we had amazing teachers, we had

people who very helpful, people who actually were native speakers of the language. So I did reach out to them when needed help. They always there to help me out. that was really awesome. It was a very, very good time. And truthfully, I wish things worked out where I could just keep studying them. hey, so love you, you know, as our French friends would say. So how does your mind work when you're learning all these languages? Do you think in different languages on?

Every hour of the day? what are your... Like, what are your thought processes? If I'm David, right? I'm walking around the park and then I'm looking at stuff and thinking about stuff and I have a million thoughts that go into my brain. What language do they speak to you? Is it still in English? For the most part, yes, I will admit, but once in a while, like out of my curiosity, like, hey, how would this sound in German? How would I approach this in German or in French or in Italian? And then it will start coming to me, then I'll start, then I'll continue.

And I will admit, at work sometimes if I'm like stuck in German and somebody talks to me, I'd say, yeah, if you get this, know, right, hold up now. And then that happened to my manager once and thankfully he actually did speak German. He was just like, okay, I get it, David, you know German. That did happen once. but eventually like you will get more and more thinking into it. Eventually to the point where you'll just start, you will start thinking in that language eventually.

It's not gonna happen overnight. know a lot of people like language you say hey you gotta start thinking in this language, but that's like a really complicated step. Because like I think for the most part you're still taking the your target language and translating it into your native language for most of the time especially in the beginning. But as you get more advanced you will start thinking in that language. It's a little bit. Not a lot but gradually. Because again nothing happens overnight, right? Yeah. I mean I have the same issues too sometimes how because I know multiple languages as well.

Sometimes I know a word in a certain language, but then I couldn't really explain in another language. I actually get exactly what you're saying because there are... The English language is about, what, 300 ,000 words, I think, give or take. German has four. So you can be a little bit more expressive with yourself in German. Like there are some... Like, come on, you and I both know, for example, denken, nachdenken, übernachten. They all have different meanings to us. And I can say in German that like, hey...

If you say in English, man, I really thought about that. German has multiple ways to express it to what degree of thinking you were doing, to me is very remarkable and allows more fluidity in the language and how you perceive things and how you want to write about things or express yourself, which I think makes language more beautiful. And even languages that, for example, have less words than the language that you know, for example, you can still express yourself very well, even with the less words in language. Do you have an example for

Well, I think something I always find very interesting about languages that have less words than your native language are that you can, that the expression can be so simplified, you get the point across just as fast. I'm kind of going a little off on a little bit of attention here is that the reason why, for example, some people say, Spanish speaker speaks so fast, because the Spanish language, for one thing, it's a subject drop language, meaning you don't necessarily need to say,

every single time. it. Or to or to... It's of it's understood just from the verb. Right. And Japanese actually is the fastest language in terms of length of information exchanged per minute. So for example, let's say for this example, you ask me, you know, hey, how you doing? I say, I'm doing really good. You know, days, no, it's weather night. It's the weather's out. Sorry. Weather's out. The weather outside is really nice. And however, in Japanese, I can just say, Genki desu. Owe tenki desu. And that's...

complete sentence is done and you know exactly how I'm doing and I just made a comment about the weather. boom, we got that out the way. That was... I know I speak fast. I know that. It's okay. But you can see that, again, the time spent to explain that is really quick. Versus in German, it takes a little bit more time, a lot more time I should say, to express the exact same thing. And again, to me, it's just like, it's fascinating how each language perceives this information and how they express it so either quickly or slowly.

For example, one thing that I you and I both hate from German, when they have the prefix, they get all the way to the very end of the sentence. Yep, you gotta wait for that last word. Exactly, the last little preposition or entire word, that's true. But I think that's the kind of beauty of it. And the thing that makes that really excites me about it is the thought process of how, for example, Germanics thought or how Japanese perceive things or how the Chinese or how the Semitic, in terms of Arabic.

also perceive things and express the information is really fascinating because it really opens up all these new avenues of how to perceive information, analyze it, problem solve. It's a very, very useful tool, I'd say. Got it. Now, when you're learning this language, obviously you get bogged down into the cultures. Which culture do you find more intriguing? Which culture have shocked you in a way? And can you tell us like example of what are the things that you find interesting about these cultures?

That's a very loaded question. The thing is that each language has its own very, very rich culture. I do not want to diminish any one of them. I can't just say, oh, here's a top 10 ranking. No, you can't do that. And I really enjoyed, for example, how each culture has something unique to offer you, some new perception of things, example. Like little nooks and crannies, for example.

Like, for example, in Italian, you need to use, for example, a definite, an article with, for example, a thing, like a noun. Like, you can say, this is my car. You have to use, for example, la mia macchina. You have to use that. However, if it's a relative, a blood relative, especially like in family, for example, this is my fiancée, mia moglie. It's not implied, you don't need to say la mia moglie, it's redundant. Just to kind of that familiar bond, it's very...

I really like that a lot how that's so family based that you can just kind of, you you don't need to use a definite article to say this is mine or this is my family. Implied. And Chinese actually has the same thing, believe it or not, where you don't need to say, for example, this is my father, this is my mother, you just say, wo baba. Wo baba. Yep, that can say that's my dad. Or that's your dad, conversely. That's their dad, you know? Yeah, so different languages have similar things, yes.

How you say things depends on the person that you're talking to or about the person that you're talking to. their relationship, of course. And Japanese, for example, has, you know, separate words for what you say for your parents versus what a stranger would call your parents. For example, like every Japanese to know chichi and ha ha for father and mother. However, 弟さん, お母さん. If, know, you're talking to someone else's. And I think that's a very interesting that all these languages have that in common, except for German.

But it's just the dirty dust at this point. Yeah, exactly. But it's very interesting how all these languages have that in common with each other. based on these relations that, okay, yeah, there's a certain value here. That's really important. And that's really awesome. Yeah. Well, these come from traditional sense too. mean, yesterday, yeah, or two days ago, I was learning Vietnamese. And one of the things that I was looking up on Duolingo was, say, I am like,

I am.

used be a lot more complicated, too. We used have cases, declination, gender, just like German has today. But English language is something that's very fascinating to study because of how much it's changed over its millennia of history. So why did it change? geez. Okay. So there are a few key points in the history. Well, here's an English course comes from England. kind of got to go across the pond a little bit and just talk about English language history. There are a few.

critical moments that kind of shapes the modern English language as we know it. So first one is the arrival of the Romans as they brought the Latin language into Great Britain. This happened about, excuse me, first century. the Romans arrived, built London and the Southern, know, London, Londonianium. And there you go. There's the Gallo Latin language that was also similarly spoken in French because the French, they used to be the Celts.

And again, they also got Latinized as well, would eventually become the French language. Got it. But of course, the Gallo -Britain language emerged as a completely separate language as well. However, there are also holdouts, for example, of Celtic languages that existed in Scotland and in Ireland because the Romans never conquered them. Got it. So they remain distinct. So as the time went on and of course, as the Roman Empire fell in about the fifth century and the last legions left Britain, they were kind of there to defend themselves. The language remained a little bit Icelandic.

It's isolated. Then come the sixth century. And then all of sudden you have the arrival of the Anglo -Saxon tribes. Of course, this name sounds a little bit familiar because they came from Germany. And the German tribes came to England and, well, for one thing they conquered and then they mixed with the population. So a lot of the Latin words that exist in English, mostly for law and for religion, come from that time. However, a lot of German words and lot of German grammar came from the Anglo -Saxon tribes.

that came in mixed with the British population to create a kind of proto English that existed. Now the most drastic change in the English language came actually in the 11th century when William the Conqueror or the bastard, however you want to call him. Now he was in Syria. When he came and conquered England. Now William the Conqueror came from Normandy, which were Frankified Vikings who lived in Normandy, France. They spoke a early version of French. When they came, they completely, it was the most

drastic transformation of England by any conqueror, because they completely imposed their way of life, their language, their customs, their rules onto the English people. So that is actually also because of William the Conqueror and his linguistic changes that happened in the English language. This essentially allowed English to become the, or it's like the early modern English Modern English now. And of course then we have Shakespeare who added a whole bunch of new stuff in language and then of course everything else that happened in history. But

Those are the three main key turning points in English language development. The Romans, the Anglo -Saxons, and William the Conqueror. actually, thing is though, is that you kind of still tell the difference. For example, let me ask you this in German. How do you say a house? House. Exactly. What's a really large house? Grosser Haus. No, no, no. German. Like in English, like a really large house. Mansion. Exactly. The word in French for house is Maison.

Mmm. See, and here's the other thing. It's also kind of a food thing also. I like, I love food. Except for example. So here's the thing. So like for example, like the Anglo -Saxon peasant would work with a cow and cow in German is of course, coup. However, when you cook the cow, becomes beef. Beef. Buff in French. As another example. But buff is cow or is it like beef? Beef. Okay. It's the same as beef. Basically like we kind of just loaned those words into the English language to make it more refined.

And it's very interesting to me how these little linguistic changes came from. Because you're correct, we can speak more, you know, basic levels, but we also have so many French loanwords in English. And even, that's also why when people are learning English, they struggle so much because it's not written as it's pronounced. It's not like German is, for example, because it's the French influence right here. Like through, thorough, though.

You know what I'm talking about, The UGH. Yeah, the UGH. Yep. Which is like, huh? How you pronounce that? Ugh. Exactly. Ugh. And I think that's one fascinating thing about a language's development and how it... Yeah. You know, from being conquered, from someone just taking over and changing the language. And that's essentially how the English language came. Well, this early modern form. Of course, English then, of course, continued to change.

Shakespeare was a huge influence on the English language and how it's, know, had so many added additional new words. Then of course we get once the British are, you know, conquering the whole world. Yeah. We had so many additional new words put into the English language. And then we have course, modern English. Got it. So what do you think language come from? Because, it, you know, from a biblical sense, we have like the Adam and Eve, right? Starting out and whatever, whatever English that they spoke. But then how does it,

I don't know if you know this, but how does we start having different languages? Why can't the entire world speak one language and we'll be communicating properly throughout the entire world? Why do we have different languages? I think that's more of a geography question, more so than anything. Because I believe when people are family, when I say borders, don't mean like softboards that we just drew on the Atlantic. for example, here's...

America hears Canada because when you go up to the border, there's no real the only real hard border between the US and Canada is, for example, the St. Lawrence River and Mexico is the Rio Grande. You have this hard, hard distinct borders right there versus arbitrarily. this forest is our border, for example. And you have like a mountain border, for example, like I'll use, for example, Georgian or Armenian or Albanian. These are or Basque, even the Basque language, too. These are languages that are complete that are geographically isolated from their neighbors that

Trade is a bit hard. It's not very hard to go there. Back in ancient times, of course. And these languages developed independently of all their neighbors. So that's why even though they share such close proximity to each other, linguistically, it's hard to understand each other. And I think, for example, like I also like, you know, I study history. won't promise I won't talk about this for too long. recently I found myself really enjoying history of India and how India developed. And India is, of course, a huge diverse place. Sure.

In fact, the Northern Indian languages are actually, they belong to the Indo -European family. Meaning they have something similar with German, English, Russian, Persian, Italian, Spanish, subject to a great agreement. That's only thing in common. But then when we get in the South, you have the Dravidian language. And because of the Deccan Plateau that kind of was served as a hard border, that's why these languages are so distinctly different from each other.

I think it's a great example of how that, know, more so geography than anything will shape a language's development in relation with their neighbors. The neighbors. it. Yep. So going back now to learning the language, how does learning a language help you in your daily life? Because now that you're learning, well, no, not that you're learning, but you know how to learn a single topic, whether that's languages or any other aspects that you're learning right now or cultures.

How does that help you in your daily life now? Well, I'd say it makes me more extroverted, more so than anything, because I'm more like willing to go out there and say, know, hey, how you doing? Just like, even more so, work in my professional environment. Once they put me in sales, you kind of have to go talk to the customer. Not the cold call, in a but occasionally. And then you kind of have to go out there and say, hey, how you doing? Can I help you? Can I help you with something? And that really gave me that boost that, you know, hey, it's OK.

You gotta do it. And even when I'm actually learning stuff, my acquisition of it is a little bit different because now I'm just like, hey, I can take this, this works with that, then I start linking things all together and then I put them in a group. And that way I'm like, all these things have this in common because, for example, let's take flooring, these things, all these products take underlayment. These ones don't. There's a hard distinction right there. I can worry about these later.

Get the ball rolling from there, so to speak. Well, it seems like you understand the foundation of it and then just work yourself through. yeah. Through many layers of whatever topic that you... Build the cake? Exactly. And I think when it comes to learning, when we're going to school, we don't really know how to learn. We were told what to learn, but then we don't know how to. Except that, read this book, read this chapter, it takes this test.

And we both grew up in American style and I think it's more practical. When I was studying in German, it's more theoretical. Which is a very big distinction between our education system and pretty much any other European education system. You know, you need a theory. Yes, here are the facts. Now, what can you do? Now, the ball's kind of in your court now. It's like, for example, I know in Italian education system, they're very based on oral exams. Oral exam. Interesting. Basically, that like...

Not so much like a written test, but like an oral exam of, hey, explain to me everything that you learned. For example, like one of my friends who did a study abroad in Italy, they did their final in the geography course, for example, they had like a giant map of the world out and they said, hey, explain to me this and migration patterns and all this and that. And then like, know, conceptualize like, hey, what's the so what of this? Not just, can you point to this and

I know for example this was an American test on geography, be like, hey, here's this country, what country is this, what river is this, what mountain is this, check, In my opinion, you just memorized, crammed a bunch of facts into your head, and they'll go out the window in like two minutes. Versus in Germany or in Italy or in France, it stays like that. Because you had to think about it, you had to process it, you had to say, what's the so what of this? Which I think is much more important, which is much more better, which is better.

Yeah, I mean I agree. I think one of the ways to learn is to teach other people what you have learned. That's still a method of learning. there's one... I kind of listened to a podcast about this. There's... I think it was Naval Ravicon. And it's one thing to know something, but it's another to understand it. Like, could, well, not know it, but more memorize it. Like, yeah, I can memorize, you know, in the 50 states in an entire...

you know, United States, but then do you really know what each state's if let's say you travel to each one and talk about a certain thing or two about each each state. So what are your thoughts on that one? I think you're right. Like most of our education is now centered around memorization, which I think it really should not be because like, yes, if you and me, for example, we can memorize absolutely everything about God, pick a book that made us read in high school, know, in English class, but we won't really get the so what of it.

We'll just, you know, forget about it second we're done versus, Hey, here's for example, in Japanese, in example, in Japanese or German or French, here's a topic, read about it, learn about it. Then I'm going to ask you about it, but I'm not going to ask all of these same questions about it. Like I think even our own German professor, he tried that with us a little bit of, Hey, here's a topic. Go, go figure it out about it. Practice it. Then we'll come back and then I want you to make your own sentences. They don't need to be super complex. Just make the sense.

I think that was the best approach we could have had. Yeah, because you're adding a little bit of creativity into it. I think when you have this practical sense of learning, you just copy and paste what it says in a book or what other people have said or maybe things that you find in Quizlet. Quizlet's better. So when you have this theoretical type of studying, then you make up the things that you have learned and then start making things on your own. think in life it's the same way.

One thing that, same thing with language, right? This is where I'm trying to get at is one, you have a goal. Of course. And then two, you start building the foundation. Same thing in any industry, right? You start learning the basics. I come from a real estate background. So you start learning about what type of house is or how does a house build. And then afterwards, then you start executing and understanding.

Maybe you start building stuff or maybe now you're creating your own sentence structure or maybe you're learning a different dialects. And I think in life that's very important. You learn things and then eventually you start doing it and you start implementing things. I think that cutoff is where people get stuck. It's like, I want to learn, I want to keep on learning, but you're not executing on whatever that is that you learn. That's actually exactly what our German professor told me because he told me that so many kids in the US take Spanish in school and millions do.

Mm -hmm, but because they don't use it they don't go off what they've learned it just withers away and It's like I was like, yeah, I took Spanish in school and it's whatever but You're missing out on so much You know what mean? And I feel like the practicality of actually as you said, you know literally building the house of literally going to go out and speak the language Beyond what you learned, you know stumble through it make your mistakes. I mean, I'm sure even building I'm sure and hey, know even on my side of things, too

100 % yes. It happens all the time. And you have to keep going. That's, I guess, the human experience, I guess. Well, making mistakes is still part of the process. I think many people are just afraid of making mistakes and they get stuck in this paralysis analysis of, okay, let's keep going. Let's research more. But you're not going anywhere. You feel like you're going somewhere. You feel that you're productive. But at the end of the day, now it's based on results, not necessarily based on what you think that you've learned. Oh, yeah.

I feel like with language, you have more... You can tell when you've made a mistake, how to overcome it, why that mistake happened, and then, for example, how to make sure it doesn't happen again. You have that process there. For example, feel like in German, for example, everybody is confused on gender. And when you have a preposition for the English speakers who don't know what we're talking about, it's like, for example, in, out, about, for, you know, those kind of things between...

And in German, they have to be matched with a certain case. Yes. In English, it's very, this doesn't exist anymore. It's just saying, you know, for whom is this? And yes, that's the correct issues of it. We've been over this a million times in German class. You remember this. Not who's this for, for whom is this? But the thing is though, is that you need to make those mistakes to learn. Sure. And I still find it kind of ironic that we learned, I learned more about English grammar from my German class than I did from any English course.

I mean, when you say that's true though, especially with our teacher. It was very rough on us. But hey, worth it. So what are some key takeaways here that you want other people to learn when they want to learn a language? Besides the basics that we talked about, let's say I want to learn maybe Spanish or something. Should I start at Duolingo? Should I go on Babel? Should I go Rosetta Stone? What do you recommend for people to start learning languages? I think Duolingo is a great

free resource that we have. It's an amazing thing that anyone can get. But one thing is that I've noticed that a lot of people just kind of, as you say, they don't go out of it. They just do it, kind of like a check mark, and then they're done. As we said earlier, you need to go off of it. You need to get outside the box. need to take the vocab you learned. During the pandemic, I actually worked as a tutor. I tutored kids. I tutored college kids. It was great.

And had one kid who kind of self -taught himself Japanese. So he did just have Duolingo. It was all possible. And he wrote down everything he learned. And then he reworded things to kind of get the correct sentence structure. And then I was like, okay, this is really impressive here because this is exactly, in my opinion, what you're supposed to do with Duolingo. It's a free resource, yes, but you need to go outside of it. need to kind of break the sound barrier, so to speak. know what I mean? Break that barrier.

And then you can really maximize using Duolingo. Got it. So use a tool, but then learn by yourself outside of that immersing yourself. Have like a notepad out, know, jot some things down and then just keep using those and then keep building on that. So eventually you will actually get somewhere with Duolingo. It's possible. It's completely possible. Anything's possible. So how do you stay motivated during this learning process? I would say motivation is that just like with anything, you need to set realistic goals for yourself.

Yes, yes, you want to be fluent. Yes, you want to be able to go, you know, read this book in this language. Of course, that's great. But we need to start being realistic here. Like, you're not going to be fluent in six months. I know there's so many videos on YouTube that say, I learned Chinese in six months and stunned locals like, no, that's just like, in my opinion, that's to an extent. Yes, that does that. That is valid. But it's just for like shock value. You know what mean? It's like, hey, I did this impossibly hard thing and it was easy. Like, you know what mean?

But what I think more so is that to say, you have realistic goals for yourself and say, hey, I did this, that's step one done. What's step two? Again, there has to be a game plan there. Again, you can't just say, hey, I want to build a house. I say, hey, foundations, walls, electrician, plumbing, all that stuff there as well. Then you can talk about furniture and aesthetic and all that. Got it.

So breaking things down. of course. Yeah. Because again, it's a lot. You want to say, hey, I want to be fluent in a language because what avenue will you take? How you how you achieve that goal? Of course, there's not just one way to fluency. There is like multiple ways that sometimes intersect. Sometimes they're parallel and you kind of just kind of go for the ride, I guess. Yeah. I mean, that that sims it's like running, right? It's not that I want to do a marathon in two weeks, for example. No, you need to break it down.

Not two weeks, maybe that's a little exaggerated. Maybe that's little bit way too motivational there. Maybe in six months, right? I to do a marathon in six months, but that might be a little bit too overwhelming for someone, right? So you start breaking things down. Okay, maybe I'll run a few miles tomorrow. Maybe I'll just put on my shoes today. And then you put on five miles, then 10 miles, and eventually you reach that certain point. I think in language learning, it's the same thing. Maybe fluent is way too overarching of a goal, but okay,

Get the foundations first, let's have a basic conversations by week one. And then week two, numbers from one to a hundred. And then week three, you start breaking down and you have these little goals and eventually these continuous process and these continuous disciplines that you do on a daily basis becomes into a fruition. Hence the name, my podcast name is Kaizen and it's continuous improvement. So I think that is important

And generally anything in life, what you do on a daily basis can become infuriating and become your goal, right? Absolutely. So in terms of goal, I want to switch gears here. So what's the end goal for you? You know thousands of languages. You know so much culture. What is the end goal for David here? Well, the thing is at first I really wanted to become a language teacher just like our German professor. But after getting into the education field, I was like, you know what, maybe this isn't

And because you're right, like most of the kids I was working with was like, hey, I'm taking French. I just need that check mark. I don't care about French culture. I don't care about this and that. I just want the check mark. Then I got my A minus and I'm done. And I completely get that too. All right, David, what is the end goal for you learning all these languages, understand these cultures? What's in it for you? Well, you know, life is not exactly a straight road as you and I both know. And at first I thought, hey, I'll become a language teacher.

I thought it'd be really cool to have a history teacher or language teacher who knows all these languages, can pronounce all these cool things. like really, one thing I loved about our old classes was how our professor could just segment into pretty much anything. It was a good excuse to, with language, you could talk about anything. And I said, hey, you know what? I want to that too. Unfortunately, the pandemic might not have been the best time for that. do all the hardships going on. And I said, you know what? Maybe this isn't for me. I need to take step back and reevaluate. And now I decided that, you know what?

I do want to go to grad school. I do want to go study international relations. I think that's a great combination of everything I've been studying so much, economics. She got to learn, but I'm doing it. I'm doing it. And, yeah, that's the next goal is to get kind of get into international relations and hopefully work in DC and maybe just maybe try to the world a little better, better place a little bit. Got

And what made you into United Nation? Is it because that's where everyone have different languages? not the UN. I'm kind of more thinking about like DC, like, government stuff. I think that would be the goal, in my opinion. Got it. In our podcast, we ask the same questions at the end for many of our guests. And that is, what is one thing that you do on a daily basis that help you in your life that you could bet that other people could benefit from?

One thing that I do is that you can like I said earlier, I love for example, German, love French, love Italian, I love, you know, reviewing bits of other languages I've learned too. So you just got to find the time for it. And then you can, it's kind of like a reward for yourself. Like, hey, you just got to, I just clocked out. How can I reward myself for, know, this, this day and building the example, listening to German, a German podcast, for example, like Taggart Show, or, know, listening to something, listening to some French music or just something that's in what I love.

is the best thing and I'm still learning and it's really just rewarding and I feel like that's something that I do in my time that maybe someone else maybe who's not even doing languages or not even doing real estate which like find that little like little time to do what you love which is so much better for you and be it educational be it a hobby I feel like that is something that everybody in my opinion needs. So how do you know if it's something you love or how can you find it? that's a good question well here's the thing you got to try a lot of things that you know.

Like for me, a lot of kids have a favorite subject in school. For me, was history of languages, I think as you noticed. What was yours? What is? Your favorite subject back in school, if you remember. My favorite subject, was definitely sociology or psychology. Just learning how people interact with each other, communicate with each other, and why understanding why we are doing the things that we are doing.

finding something relating to sociology or psychology, maybe reading a book relating to those topics or a podcast or just some kind of information or maybe even something fun and entertaining with it. I think that would be a great constant self improvement. Maybe it's not like a great, maybe it's not like in the traditional, like, you have a grade, you achieve this milestone, but more so like, hey, I did this for myself and this is what I love. feel like over the years, we've all come across something, maybe it's something from school, maybe it's something from sports, maybe it's a hobby you like.

But just find that time for you and to do that speaks volumes. absolutely. I think in today's world, we are so bogged down into our day -to -day work life and maybe our family and our kids that we don't have time for ourselves. I think the time for ourselves is very important. Doing the things that we enjoy, whether that's hobbies, reading, or any type of activities just for ourselves is truly important.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to wrap it, actually. Yeah, awesome. Well, any parting words? Where people can find you? Well, I don't have a website, fortunately, but hey, you found me on LinkedIn earlier, so I'm there. Yeah, and if anybody has any language learning questions, I'd be happy to help get them started or see what I can do with them. Awesome. Well, David, thanks for being on the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure, Awesome. I'll see you on the next one.