In this post, I’m really happy to share the transcript of
an interview/discussion I had with Higor, a polyglot who speaks 9 languages at
various levels! It was an honour to be able to talk to someone who has had such
success in their language learning, and I thought it would be interesting and
different to share someone else’s opinions on this blog. It is a very long conversation, but it will be worth reading it to learn from Higor!
You’ll notice that some bits are a bit more informal and
there are a lot of commas, which is how I broke up some of the sentences
because I wanted it to still sound like it was a naturally flowing
conversation. The reason for this post is not to try and show off my grammar
and vocabulary, but to give you all the information that I learned from Higor.
Enjoy!
Matt:
For those who may not know you, can you introduce yourself? Where you’re from,
what you do etc?
Higor: My
name is Higor and I’m from Sao Paulo, Brazil. In the last few years, I’ve been
learning foreign languages systematically. I started to learn languages always
looking for better ways ever since I was 15 years old. I think this was the
moment that I became interested principally. Not only this, after I left high
school, I was first studying aerospace engineering but I noticed that the
course wasn’t for me, and I changed it to neuroscience. My focus when I was
studying this course was principally trying to understand the mechanisms behind
learning languages. I have an interest in learning and memory, but especially
about languages, and I believe that the neuroscience course really helped me to
find the answers that I needed. There are many issues that polyglots around the
world have because they use only their experiences or opinions, but many of
them don’t really know the explanations behind these things, and this is the
main area that I was interested in. I wanted to discover all the answers to
have the ability to explain to people why one thing is better than another in
language learning.
Matt: What
languages do you currently speak and at what rough levels?
Higor: Languages
that I can handle long conversations in and I can do everything I want to, like
in my native language, are 6 in total. After Portuguese, I have English,
Spanish, German, French and Swedish. I consider that I have an intermediate
level in Dutch and Italian because I can use these two languages to travel, to
read some books if they’re not too complicated and understand the majority of
what happens in films, but I still don’t classify these two in an advanced
level because I know that I need to improve my vocabulary a lot. When I feel
like I have the same vocabulary level as I do in the first 6, then I’ll put
them in the advanced category. And the last one that I started learning and I
continue learning nowadays is Hungarian. After many years of learning
Hungarian, I still consider my level basic. It’s a language where I needed to
develop many new strategies, applying principles that I already knew and it
forced me to become more creative if I wanted to progress. I think that by the
end of next year I will reach an intermediate level, but being in Brazil and
not having so much contact with Hungarians is a bit complicated to advance in
the same way that I could advance in the others.
Matt:
I’ve heard that Hungarian is a very difficult language to learn. Do you think
it’s the most difficult of all the ones you’ve studied?
Higor:
Yes. I am a person with a lot of experience in learning languages, and even for
me I think it’s difficult. I’ve travelled to Hungary three times so far. The
last time I was there for 45 days, and I could progress very quickly because I
was in contact with Hungarians all the time, so I was always using the language
with people. But when I compare the level of difficulty with other languages in
Europe, it is definitely the most difficult. I don’t compare it with Asian or
African languages because they may be even more difficult, but for all the
Europeans who want to try something difficult, Hungarian is definitely the one.
Matt: The
languages that you’ve learnt or are learning at the minute, how did you learn
these languages? Did you learn them all in the same way?
Higor: I
think I learned English in a random way, and that’s why it took so many years
until I got to fluency. Since I was a child I had English at school, but I
could only speak it fluently when I got to 15 years old. But I don’t consider
that I stopped learning it because I am always finding and learning new words
and expressions. Spanish I also had at school, and I was lucky because my
teacher was very good. I didn’t like it before but he changed my perspective.
Before him, I had native Spanish teachers but they were terrible and didn’t
know how to transfer their knowledge, and I think this is a problem with native
teachers because they learned their languages in a different way to how someone
learns a foreign language and they didn’t know how to transfer that knowledge.
Matt: I
think that’s such an important point. A lot of language schools or websites try
to sell themselves by saying “We have native teachers” because it looks good.
In some ways, it can be good. But in other ways, it can’t. Some people seem to
think that non-natives can’t be a good teacher, but if anything, they’re
probably better because they’ve studied it and know how to approach learning it
as a foreign language, rather than as a native language that they absorbed as
kids. They’re more aware of the difficulties that someone might face. Because
we absorbed our native language as children, we may not be aware of the parts
of the language that others really have difficulties with, but non-natives will
likely understand these a bit better.
Higor:
Exactly. After Spanish, I learned German. I started studying by myself but then
I found a private teacher and had 2 lessons a week and I think it helped a lot,
and I was very focussed. Bit by bit I could practice with Germans who live in
Sao Paolo. After German, I learned French and Swedish. For French, I had a
private teacher from the start because I wanted to focus on having a good pronunciation.
This is a principle that I always give emphasis to when I talk about language
learning. If you don’t master pronunciation in the beginning, everything else
will be difficult because pronunciation is the first step that we need to
master. It is how the language will be encoded in your brain. The science that
also agrees with what I just said is called psycholinguistics. It’s the part of
neuroscience that researches how we learn languages and the neural parts
related to the learning process. After French, I started studying Swedish by
myself and after some months I hired a teacher just to check how my level was
going, and she was amazed that I hadn’t had a teacher before, because I was
already talking in the first lesson. I used different methods for these
languages, but the principles behind these methods were the same. I always
focus on pronunciation in the beginning and then I learn a lot of useful
vocabulary and things that I’ll really need in conversations. In the first few
months, I completely ignore what I know I won’t need in conversations. In the
past, I’ve had the problem of learning words that aren’t useful, but I was
curious. But now, I try to focus on what is more useful. And then Italian and
Dutch I started learning when I was travelling, so for these two I just had
contact when I was travelling. At the beginning in Belgium and Italy mainly,
but then I put more effort into these languages and practiced a lot by reading
books and using language exchanges. You probably know this term, right?
Matt:
Yeah.
Higor: I
met some people who spoke the languages that I wanted to learn and I also
helped them with the languages that I knew and I think this is an amazing
method.
Matt: I
think using language exchanges is one of the best things I’ve done. I’ve got an
app called HelloTalk. I discovered it when I was watching a video in Spanish
and the person in the video mentioned the idea of a language exchange
application and I’d never known what it was, so I thought I’d have a look. I
downloaded HelloTalk and for me it’s been one of the most useful methods I’ve
used in my language learning, because you’re put in an environment where other
people are in the exact same situation as you.
Higor:
Exactly.
Matt:
You want to learn their language and vice versa. Not everyone you meet will be
nice, but that’s just how life works unfortunately. The majority will help and
encourage you, and more importantly they make you feel comfortable to use the
language even if you make mistakes. At the very start I was always making
mistakes and I was embarrassed because I kept thinking “What if they don’t understand
me? I look so stupid”, but people there were encouraging me. And it’s through
pure repetition that eventually the language starts to click in your mind a bit
more. And when you have people there that encourage you rather than making you
feel bad, it makes such a huge difference when learning a language.
Higor: I
can give you an example of what I did learning Dutch. I had a language exchange
partner that was living in Sao Paolo who I would meet twice a week. I’d help
her with Portuguese and she would help me with Dutch, and it was simply
amazing. It was better than any course or any private teacher because, as you
said, you have another person in the same situation and you develop a
friendship together.
Matt:
Exactly. You’re not just on your own with a textbook, you’re able to use the
language to connect with people. You’re obviously there to learn, but now
you’re able to meet another person and who knows who that person will end up
being in your life? A lot of them may just be someone you practice with for a
little bit of time, but I still speak to people on HelloTalk that I started
talking to when I downloaded it a year and a half ago. Some you may speak to
for a week and never again, no problem. But some you might speak to for the
rest of your life, so you’re making actual connections in the world which is
one of the main reasons I think people should learn languages more.
Higor: I
think it’s very productive for someone who wants to master languages to keep
these friendships because you are not only learning the words or sentences in
an abstract way, you’re actually having the opportunity to transfer this
knowledge to practical situations in life, and this makes a huge difference.
Matt:
Yeah, you’re able to discover language that’s used in regular conversations.
One of the biggest mistakes I made when I started learning Spanish was learning
categories of words that I’d never use, like colours, animals, days of the
week, months of the year. I thought I was making good progress, but in reality,
I’d never end up using these words. It felt easy because there was no pressure,
I could Google all these words and then just memorise them. It was a waste of
time but fortunately I now know it was a mistake so when I started with French
and Italian, I knew to look for words that would occur in conversation, not
loads of random animals. So, I guess once you’re in this language exchange
situation, you quickly realise what words you’re going to use most frequently.
Higor:
Exactly.
Matt: When
it comes to learning a language, there seems to be a spectrum of grammar vs comprehensible
input. For example, in school you’d be studying grammar and doing drills and
exercises, so that’s how I started trying to learn Spanish because that was all
I knew about studying a language. Once I started researching more, I discovered
this thing called comprehensible input, which I am now a massive fan of, but at
the time I wasn’t sure about it. But there are very successful polyglots like
Steve Kaufman who only use comprehensible input, so they read and listen and
absorb the language this way. So, you could say these are two ends of the
scale, grammar vs comprehensible input, where abouts on this scale do you find
yourself? Do you lean more towards one end?
Higor:
This is a very good question. A long time ago, I hated grammar. I didn’t like
it at school, but nowadays I have a big respect for it, because I understand
why it exists. The current way that people see grammar is just a group of rules
of how to write or speak properly, but this is only a side effect of what
grammar really is. The world where we live has some rules, some things you can
do and some things you can’t, and languages try to reflect what is possible in
the world. The grammar is just a translation of these rules and how the world works.
I can see a connection between the two aspects that you asked. It’s necessary
to have comprehensible input when you are learning a language, because if you
don’t understand what is going on, you can’t absorb it. I think it’s possible
to learn a language without grammar, as I know some people personally who
learned languages only by being in the country and listening, without ever
having the discipline to study or to find and understand all the details. This
proves that it’s possible, but it takes way longer. I think this guy’s name was
Krashen.
Matt:
Yeah Steve Krashen.
Higor: Yeah,
he is the linguist who developed this concept. He was trying to see some
patterns of how people learn. If you want to go faster, then studying grammar
works, but it’s possible to learn a language without grammar, but it takes much
longer. When you know the rules about how a language works, you don’t need to
memorise so many things. So, the grammar helps you to save time by not needing
to focus only on vocabulary. Also, when studying grammar, there is a limit. You
don’t need to learn grammar forever, there is a moment where it really ends,
but vocabulary doesn’t ever really end because there are just so many words in
a language that you are learning all the time, but with grammar there is
technically an end point.
Matt:
That’s a great point. It relates to what you said earlier about how you
consider yourself fluent in English, but you never really stop learning. It’s
the same with natives in their own language, for example tomorrow I might go
and discover an English word that I’ve never heard of before, so technically
I’m still learning too. I suppose technically there is still an endpoint in
vocabulary, but it will just be extraordinarily far away because of the huge
number of words in a language. And I’ve gone back and forth with grammar in the
past, and I think a balance is crucial. At the start I thought it was all about
grammar, I tried it and it worked a tiny bit but then I got bored and it became
too difficult. But I think when you combine it with comprehensible input and
you receive the language more, you can combine the two a bit more and it makes
more sense and makes the whole process quicker. I had problems with the
subjunctive in Spanish and at the start when I was studying it, it made no
sense. But after receiving this input for a long time, suddenly these rules
started to make more sense and it made my learning quicker. So, I now try to
start with some grammar to build up a bit of a base of knowledge, and then I
try to read and listen a lot. I then use grammar as a small reference point in
the future to speed up the process every now and then if I have found something
that is taking longer for me to understand. Another person that Martin was
interviewing (a YouTube channel that I like – El Jardin de Martin that Higor also
knows) said the same thing. You can learn a language only using comprehensible
input and never using grammar, however it will take a very long time. Using
grammar can help speed up this process.
Higor: Exactly,
grammar is not useless like some people seem to think. The people a long time
ago who invested a lot of time just to organise the grammar really knew what
they were doing. The rules don’t exist just to make our lives more difficult,
it is exactly the opposite. But when we try to memorise the rules without a lot
of knowledge, it becomes very hard because we can’t make comparisons between
what we are learning and what we already know. So, I think a combination of the
two strategies is the best. A person should have contact with the language and
also use some grammar materials to help them along the way, and then they can
check on the rules whenever they need some guidance with their comprehensible
input.
Matt: So,
what would your exact approach be to learn a language nowadays? If I said to
you, Higor tomorrow you have to learn this language or that language, it
doesn’t matter which. What would be your exact steps? I know in today’s world
we have to think about our other priorities as well, for example work, studies,
other languages, but in a hypothetical world let’s say you had nothing else to
do other than learn this language. Take me through your steps of what you would
do.
Higor: The
first thing I would do, depending on the language of course, would be to
quickly research the language to discover some curiosities about the language,
for example where it’s spoken, it’s history. I would like to know more
information to make me more interested and motivated in the long term. Once I
know why I am doing this and how I will use the language in my life, I will
focus on mastering the pronunciation. For this, I could use some YouTube videos
to learn the pronunciation of the vowels and consonants, but just these videos
wouldn’t be enough. I’d also need to talk to a native to see if they can
understand my pronunciation. If they say it’s fine, I can progress to the next
step which is vocabulary. As I said before, in the first months, like 3-6, I
would focus on words that I can really make sentences with. For example, the
things you said before like animals, colours, months etc, they are not so
important. You invested a long time in learning these animals but they won’t help
you to speak the language. I would focus principally on learning the modal
verbs and the conjugations for the most common pronouns. When you check a book,
you always have a list of all the pronouns and all the verbs, but in the first
stages I only learn the conjugations for I, you and we, and I would completely
ignore the rest at the beginning because I know that if I master these three it
is enough to start talking. And if I know the modal verbs, I can already
communicate a lot of ideas, even if it’s in a simple way, the conversation can
still continue. For example, the person who knows these pronouns and the modal
verbs, can make hundreds of sentences just from knowing useful verbs that
people use every day like study, eat, read, watch etc. For example, in English
there aren’t so many conjugations, so people don’t need to worry about these,
but it makes a huge difference in the beginning instead of saying “I eat” to
say “I can eat” or “I can study” etc. Because of this verb not needing the
conjugation, the person can make lots of sentences with a very small
vocabulary. Little by little I would focus on learning things that I need, and
I would like a private teacher which can actually be very cheap depending on
the language. I would use a method called ‘code switching’ which is when you
can talk to a person and switch between languages when you don’t know how to
say a word in the foreign language. So, if I was teaching you Portuguese and
you knew 50 words, I would get you to talk and try to use those 50 words in
sentences, and whenever you don’t know how to say something, you can use
English to replace that word. You will end up with sentences with some parts
Portuguese and some parts English, and the teacher can then help you learn the
words that you were missing in your vocabulary. Applying this principle for a
few months can really elevate a person’s conversation level. Everyone needs
different vocabulary, and code switching helps to focus on what you need
specifically. This is a method I’ve used when I was learning German, and I then
applied it to all the other languages after. After reaching an intermediate
level, I would start to look for ways to ‘fix’ the language into my life, by
making it something regular. Maybe planning to always watch a movie in the
language, or read books, or talk to people every day. It can be tricky to keep
in touch with the language, and if you don’t you can forget it. When you
organise your life in a way where you have to use the language consistently,
you create a bubble where it is much more difficult for the language to be
forgotten. After this point, I wouldn’t stress too much about studying, and I
would just enjoy the language. If I then come across any issues, I would just
try to fix them on the go.
Matt: I
really like that phrase you used ‘I want to make it difficult to forget’ which
is a nice way of expressing that you use it so much and incorporate it into
your everyday life, that even if you wanted to forget it, you wouldn’t be able
to, and this comes from the consistency.
Higor:
Exactly.
Matt: Do
you think it’s possible for someone to have a ‘talent’ for learning languages?
Some people can be too quick to give up in their language learning because they
think it’s too hard and they say they haven’t got the talent for it.
Higor: I
don’t think you can have one specific talent that automatically makes you learn
a language, however I do believe this is a combination of a lot of things that
will vary from person to person. I think a lot of what talent is made out to be
is really created by effort, but there are people in the world who have
different levels of understanding, of memory, of attention, of concentration,
and these components really make a difference when learning anything, not just
a language. Personally, I’ve always had a good memory, not just for language
learning but for everything (faces, places, numbers, words) and I can see that
this helped me a lot learning languages. But someone trying to do the same as
me with a worse memory, they will have a lot more difficulty than me. So,
somewhat yes, I believe there is a natural effect of ‘talent’, but I would
break this word into many components. I wouldn’t put the responsibility of
learning a language in just one thing known as ‘talent’.
Matt: I
agree completely again. Learning a language requires a lot of things, and if
you just say that you either have talent or you don’t have it, I don’t think
that’s accurate because within that there is memory, attention, motivation, all
the things you said. Some people may have a lot of one but not much of another
thing. I think that some types of food can improve your memory, but for the
most part it does just seem to be a natural thing we have from birth. You might
have a better memory than me, but I might have better concentration than you. Just
a random example, which probably isn’t true anyway because I have terrible
concentration, but there might be people with these skills in different levels,
and they all have to combine to make that one so called ‘talent’ for language
learning. I’ve seen a lot of people online saying ‘no, you don’t need a talent
to learn a language’, which I think is a good way of answering it because it
will give people a positive boost. They might want to give up, and see all
these experts saying you don’t need a talent, and that will help motivate them.
I like this, but it’s also important that they know that some people have more abilities
than others naturally.
Higor:
Definitely.
Matt: Final question, when do you think you can say that you
can ‘speak’ a language? I’ve seen a lot of different opinions on this. I’ve got
friends that claim they can speak a language but they really can’t, and friends
who moan that they can’t speak a language when they are actually very
impressive. Personally, I’m always very hesitant to say that I can speak a
language. I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying I can speak a language unless I
had a B1 intermediate level, but this is just my opinion. What do you think?
Higor: There are different levels of fluency, and even a
native speaker in a language can have a small vocabulary. For example, I’ve had
situations before talking in English, Spanish, German etc to native speakers,
and I’ve used words that they don’t know. In 2020 I was talking with an English
person when I was playing cards with her in a hostel, and I used the word
“smog”, and she didn’t know this word. She thought it didn’t exist, and I
explained that it was a combination of “smoke” and “fog”. She researched it and
then she was amazed because she had learned a new English word from a Brazilian.
But I can’t consider that I speak English better than her because she is a
native, but at the same time I cannot say that I can’t speak because in reality
I know a lot. In my point of view, I say I can speak a language when I can
communicate a message without much effort, but whenever someone asks me which
languages I speak, I always explain exactly what my levels are, and what I can
do with each language. There are a lot of polyglots who answer this question by
just saying a number, for example I can speak 10, 20, 30 languages, who somehow
inflate this number. But they never really say “I have 2 languages in advanced,
5 in intermediate and 10 in basic”. I think that many polyglots do this because
they like the attention they receive online. But in my perspective, this isn’t
very useful. I don’t fool myself with knowledge that I don’t yet possess.
Matt: I think it’s always better to be more modest. If I’m
going to say I can speak a language, I always want to quickly explain what I
mean by that, and what I can and can’t do in that language. Two people can say
they can speak a language, but they could have very different levels.
Higor: Yeah, also two people with a ‘B1’ level don’t
necessarily have the same knowledge. These letters try to diminish the
subjectivity of what people say, and whether someone can speak or not speak is
a very grey area, with black and white in the extremes.
I know this was
a long read, but I think this was such a fascinating experience hearing about
Higor’s language learning journey.
If you want to
hear more about him, you can find him on his:
YouTube channel
- Mundo do
Poliglota - YouTube
Instagram – @higor.poliglota
Comments
Post a Comment