Not only that it lets you get over language barriers with people who don't speak your mother tongue,

but it also unlocks a whole new way of perceiving the world from the point of view of a foreign nation.

In this video, I'd like to talk about why I think language learning is so cool and what are the upsides and downsides of the language learning community.

Perfecting an accent

I wouldn't say that forcefully perfecting an accent in a foreign language is the most important thing, at least not right away.

If anything, it demotivates a lot of language learners that are afraid of sounding funny or dumb when speaking a foreign language.

'Cause chances are that the natives will understand you even if you have a foreign accent,

also because of something I call accent consistency, which we can talk about another time.

I think the best way is just to study the language and the accent will come on its own and improve over time.

And when it does, well, there are some cool things that come with it.

When I speak chinese, I have a slight Beijing accent or when I speak Portuguese, I have a more or less Brazilian accent.

I feel like with every language that you learn, especially if you learn it in its respective country, you kind of get a sense of identity,

based on where you learned it or who taught it to you and where your teacher was from,

which I think is so powerful and only achievable through language learning that you get a sense of identity towards the country that you're not even from.

So for me, embracing the accent of the places where I learned the language rather than speaking a standardized version of it

makes me feel more connected to my teachers and to the cities where I lived.

And it makes me feel nostalgic as if all those places and my friends and the people were always with me.

I know this sounds cheesy, but I'm really passionate about this.

Why do I like studying languages?

I had to think long about this question because the first answer that came to mind was because it gives me pleasure.

I mean, I think the answer would be the same as if you ask somebody why they like to draw or why they like to play games.

I think I'm not the only person who feels this way, but speaking in a foreign language with somebody gives me a certain kind of high,

you know, it's like my mind completely changes, my personality and thoughts to an extent, adapt to the language that I'm speaking.

And when I'm speaking with someone and they understand what I'm trying to say and then they respond back and suddenly, I'm having a whole conversation, it's like...

My thoughts on the word "polyglot"

I don't consider myself a polyglot. I don't use that word just because I feel like nowadays, there's a lot of people that use it just to boost their own ego.

Like sometimes, I'll just see people learning the basics in three foreign languages,

and suddenly they proclaim themselves as being polyglot, and they, like, put it in their bio and whatnot.

I mean I know that we're in the age of Clickbait and using the word polyglot or putting it in your title gets views, but I don't really like using it and here's why.

Firstly, the term polyglot is extremely vague because the definition says something like, "a person who speaks four or more languages."

But, like, on what level? Do you have to be fluent in all of those languages or do you have to reach level C1 or is B2 enough? Is A2 enough?

And before you go googling, I'd honestly say that there's no real answer to that because that's just not how languages work.

For example, the level B2 in Spanish is way more than the level B2 in English.

I'd even say that it's the equivalent of C1 in English.

Okay, every language is different.

You can't put norms on languages because your fluency depends on so many factors.

Some people will say that being conversational in the language is good enough and if you ask me, I feel pretty comfortable with my Chinese. I lived in Beijing for ten months.

But if you were to put me in a small town in the Hunan province, my Chinese wouldn't be better than a toddler's.

All things being said, the term polyglot is so vague that I don't associate myself with it.

I do consider myself as someone who is passionate about learning languages, who likes learning them, who likes learning about them, their historical background.

That's what I study in college, philology.

But I don't need the badge of being a polyglot to enjoy my hobby.

Yeah.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not trying to show a bad light on anybody who is a real polyglot and uses that word, I just personally don't feel comfortable with using it.

Your voice changes with each language.

I heard a lot of people tell me that my personality or even my voice changes when I speak a different language.

That is very much possible because with each language, first of all,

as I said before, the place where you learned it or who taught it to you really affect the way that you use that language in your life.

For instance, I often notice that my voice when speaking Japanese is a lot softer and maybe more feminine than (in) other languages,

which is I think because up until this point, all of my Japanese teachers were always a woman.

That's how I learned the language, from a woman. So I kind of also speak a little bit like a woman.

When I speak Portuguese, for example, I'm way more like maybe open, I smile a lot more and that's just because all of my memories from Brazil are very happy memories.

And yeah, those are truly all factors of me changing my personality every time I speak a different language.

What language do I think in

I have to say that my fluency in Czech and English are both on the same level.

I make mistakes in both languages.

Sometimes I use English even more than Czech, which is my mother tongue.

So my thoughts mostly occur in either English or Czech if I'm not speaking another language, that is.

However, it's interesting that whenever I'm counting something, you know, like I need to count how many eggs I have left in the fridge,

my brain automatically switches to Chinese because counting in Chinese is just so much quicker and easier than in English or Czech.

So I always just go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

It really depends on the situation because for example, when I need to take notes quickly, need to note something, I usually start writing it in English right away.

It's also because on the internet, I search everything in English right because there's always more results.

I make videos in English, so whenever I think about like social media or like new videos, I'm always thinking in English

It's like a default language, I think.

What languages are you planning on learning in the future?

I'm not really planning on learning any more languages in the future, maybe later on,

but like, right now, I'm really just focused on perfecting the languages that I can already speak, just so I can speak them even more fluently.

But yeah, I definitely thought about just perfecting my Azbuka, Hangul and like the Arabic script just because I'm really frustrated when I can't read something,

like even if I can't understand the language, I want to be able to read it, if that makes sense.

So I'm just going to learn a bunch of scripts maybe, but not the languages themselves.

But yeah, that's about it for this video.

Let me know your experiences with learning languages and also let me know if you enjoy me making videos about them.

And yeah, follow me on Instagram, leave a like and I'll see you next week. Bye.