290. Conversations with a Polyglot: What does it take to learn a language effectively?

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar and this is episode number 290. And today I'm going to have a conversation with a polyglot. Hey everyone, welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in for another episode of the Influency Podcast. The interview that I'm going to share with you today started in a really funny way. So one day, my natural informer of things happening on YouTube, Daniela, sent me a message on Instagram telling me, hadar, this guy that I really like just.

Uploaded a video talking about your video.

And challenging something that you said there. And that was like, early morning, I'm watching this and I'm like, okay, interesting. And it had to do with one of the videos that I shared about why it's not effective to learn English through reading books. And I watched the video and I listened to the arguments and I thought that would make a really good conversation. And I contacted this person and his name is Steve Kaufman, and he's a polyglot and a very knowledgeable individual when it comes to learning languages. And I asked him if he wants to talk about those things on the podcast and he happily accepted my invitation.

So we recorded this episode for you.

We ended up not talking about books so much. It was such an interesting conversation, we could have continued it for hours. We actually had also a conversation on his channel, so I'm going to link to that below. Another conversation about pronunciation and intonation and more on his channel. But for now, I want to share with you our conversation and I want you to listen to it all the way to the end.

Because closer to the end, he shared.

Something really moving about something that I talked about. I asked them, I said, you know, you are a native speaker of English learning other languages. It's not the same experience as people who learn English who speak other languages. And what I had to share about that was really touching, especially this aspect about people feeling the need to be perfect or to sound like natives. So apart from all the language learning intel that you're going to get today, I really want you to hear what he had to say there.

I talk about it a lot here.

But sometimes we need to hear it in different ways from different people for it to resonate. So I'm happy about this conversation and I'm not going to make you wait any longer. Let's listen.

Hi, Steve, how are you?

Hi, Hadar. I'm fine, thank you.

It's such a pleasure having you here and thank you so much for agreeing to meet Me here on my channel.

Well, it's my pleasure. And where are you located, by the way?

I'm in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Okay. Well, we were there a few years ago. My wife and I had a great time.

And where are you located? For those who don't know.

Okay. So normally I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia, but in the winter when it rains in Vancouver, my wife and I come down to Palm Springs, California where the sun shines every day. And that's where I am right now.

I love it. Yeah, sun is essential for.

Sun is nice.

Yeah, but it's nice for me. It's essential. I feel like I wouldn't be able to manage without a little bit of sun. So, Steve, you speak about 20 languages, am I right?

Well, yes. I mean, let's say that I have learned 20 languages to varying degrees at times I have spoken like I went to Israel a few years ago and part of that trip was a visit to Crete. So I learned Greek and while I was on the island of Crete, I was speaking Greek. If you spoke to me now in Greek, I'd be lost. So you know a number of these languages. Like I'm working on Persian and Arabic to some degree. I know them. But let's say that I have 10 or 12 languages that I could switch into right now and have happy conversations and understand and another eight that are in varying degrees of disuse or trying to learn them.

Do you have favorites? I think realistically, yeah, no, absolutely. And like, you know, we'll talk about it, but I think it's also a matter of how much you actually use it or, you know, explore them in your day to day life. Because if you haven't been thinking in a certain language for many years, I'm assuming that it's not going to be as present in your mind.

Right?

Correct. I mean, it's part of your reservoir of what you have in your brain somewhere. Eventually you can start getting it back again, but it's not available for immediate retrieval, let's put it that way.

Yeah, and I would love to talk more about that. But before that, I'm just going to say that the reason why we initiated this interview was is because a few weeks ago I think you have shared a video where you were actually disagreeing with one of the things that I said in my videos. And I would. And I would love to talk about that actually, to start with that and to tell everyone that I feel like it's so helpful and healthy to have such conversations online on YouTube where you share your opinion. And then you, you know, not always people are going to agree with it. And I think it's so important to have these discussions so that people who learn in different ways understand that there isn't just one way to learn things. And I really do believe, and tell me if that's, if you agree with that, that you have to explore different things until you find what works for you. Would you agree with that? Like, how has that been for you?

Absolutely. You know, language learning is such a personal thing. It's a personal discovery of a language. People learn for different reasons. People come from different backgrounds. And so if people who study language learning can disagree amongst themselves, you know, input versus output and all this other stuff, if the experts can disagree, well, the language learners can also disagree. And I think it's. It's, you know, we live in a world where you can find all kinds of stuff on the Internet and listen to person A and person B and person C and take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and come up with your own strategy for language learning. The main thing is to enjoy the process 100%.

What has been the most beneficial aspect of learning on your journey?

To me, it's the discovery of the culture, the history, and everything that lies in behind the language. You know, you can have to learn a language like a lot of people have to learn English and English speaking Canada, we're supposed to learn French. So you can lay the obligation on people, but at some point you have to get interested. And to me, it's been the discovery of the. All of the flavors, you know, that lie behind the languages. And that's what keeps me going.

I have a question about that because I've heard the claim that sometimes bilinguals or people who speak different languages explore different facets of their personality in each language. And I can totally tell you that who I am in Hebrew is not exactly who I am in English, also because I use it differently, the different cultures. And also, you know, how I use my voice is different. I was wondering if that has been the case for you because you speak so many different languages. And have you ever felt a little different in each language?

I think who we are fundamentally doesn't change. I think probably people with our various personalities exist in every culture, so we become that person in the new culture. But when we learn a language, we're essentially imitating an aspect of the culture. We're imitating their language, which is a big part of their culture. So when we start imitating their language, we're imitating their culture inevitably. Gestures, intonation. Obviously, you know, an intonation connects with emotion. So there's no question that if I'm speaking Japanese or French or Chinese, Russian, Spanish, I'm different in the way I move. And. But fundamentally, I don't think we change who we are. Doesn't change. But superficially, yeah, we change. Yes, that's my impression. My impression. So when we start to reason differently. Yeah.

What do you mean by that?

Well, for example, I'm just thinking, say, Japanese, where a lot of the way people communicate is somewhat indirect, and it's often what isn't said that is more important than what is said. And then you compare that, say, with the French who want to have everything laid out very, very logically and ordered and stuff. So you, you start to read because you have to communicate in the language. You have to communicate in the way that those people like to communicate. You, you develop that habit of communicating the way they communicate. So obviously, you're almost your third thought process. As you know, as you work your way through, what you want to say is going to be influenced by that language. Although along the way, all the different ways of, you know, reasoning that you have acquired in different languages will influence you even in your own language. So it's. Yeah, you're changing aspects of your way of expressing yourself that will actually cut across all the languages that you've learned. If I'm, if I'm making myself clear there, no 100%.

And I think, you know, especially with languages that are more indirect, like, like you said, obviously it's going to affect your attitude and how, like, even how you use your voice or what you would dare say or not say. Right. Like, out of respect or out of, like, understanding that this is a different playground and you have to adjust yourself.

Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, to me, like, I think about, when I think about language, there's definitely the aspect of intonation, like you said, and rhythm. How, when you start learning a language, how do you approach that? What is the method? Because I know that you, you are a big believer in learning passive vocabulary and expanding grammar and reading, but on the other hand, you're saying that, like, the aspect of intonation, for example, is really. So how do you immerse yourself in a language in a way that you can actually grasp its sense or its rhythm or its musicality?

Well, you just listen a lot. And there's no question that when we first start out, when we haven't heard a lot of the language, we of course, try to imitate what we Hear. But we don't do a very good job because you can't pronounce what you can't hear. And it takes a while for the brain to get used to the sounds of the new language. I remember once I was on this is maybe when I started learning Russian, there was this Internet community and I got on there and I recorded myself saying, you know, reading a sentence in Russian, and of course, I was just roundly criticized by everyone how bad my pronunciation was in Russian. But six months later, having listened to, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours of Russian, I had a better feel for that intonation. And so to me, largely, it's a matter of massive, you know, listening and reading. The more you become familiar with the language, with the phrases of the language, the phrases kind of imply the intonation and then a lot of listening. And then as you start speaking, you want to trot out these phrases that have been bouncing around in your head that you've been listening to. And then as you speak, of course, when you start speaking, you don't pronounce them as well as you think you do. You think, you know, you hear it, you've been hearing it, you've heard it so many times, and you start speaking and of course you can't quite pull it off. Not the first time, not the second time, not the third time. But as you keep on speaking, you gradually get better, and I think you also pick up on how the other person is saying. So there's just a gradual process there of improving is the way I see it. Lots of listening, massive listening.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. Like, whenever I teach pronunciation, I always tell them there is the English that you hear in your head and the English that comes out of your mouth, and they don't match. And you need to make sense of why that is. So I'm a big believer of intentional learning. But you are saying that simply by the act of listening, pronunciation is going to be aligned with what you. What it is that you hear. So you. You've never practiced pronunciation deliberately?

I wouldn't say never. When I. I remember learning French and making a specific effort to pronounce the French R, the guttural R, and of course the U sound. These are not sounds that are easy to an English speaker. When I was learning Chinese, I remember making special, you know, special effort. Today, I'm not sure whether those. Whether that was necessary at that time. I was not yet sort of so convinced of the need for, you know, lots of repetitive listening in the beginning. Like when I start into a New language, like, you know, Persian, Arabic or whatever it might be. I, we have these mini stories at Lingq and I will listen to them 30, 40 times, not at one sitting, but I do lesson one and two and three and four, understanding 30% of each. Then I go back to lesson one again. Then I go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And when I check my statistics at Lingq at the end of two months, I've listened to them 30 or 40 times. So that means I'm very, very familiar with the stories, with the phrases, although there's still those that I don't quite get when I listen to them. But I find that this massive listening has, is something that I didn't do 50 years ago. And I think if you do that, then you may not need to do. I'm not, I just don't. As we, you know, we don't know what works in language learning. So was I better off? I don't know. I like to go sentence by sentence. For example. Now, because it's easy to capture the intonation of a sentence or phrase and repeat that, it's not quite as easy to do. I've never been able to do this shadowing thing where you walk around listening to something, something and try to try to speak while the narrator is speaking. But if I get a, if I. Again, in Lingq, we're in sentence mode. I can do the sentence, I can pick through all the words that I don't know and then I can listen to the sentence again and then I can repeat that sentence and I can try to get the intonation. And very often if you get the intonation, you're going to get the rest of the pronunciation as well. Some things need to be pointed out to you. You don't notice them at first. You know, some things having to do with intonation, like in Russian, the unaccentuated O becomes an ah. You may not notice that the first few times through. You will eventually notice it. But it's possible if, if that's pointed out to you. But I never read the, the explanations about pronunciation. I just get in there. Unless it's okay the C is pronounced as ch or j or k or whatever. You need some of this basic stuff at the beginning. But in terms of some kind of obscure International Phonetic Alphabet, you know, this vowel is pronounced this way. Well, in fact, any of these vowels, there's so many different, you know, fine grained differences in how the ah sound is pronounced. I just find I have to listen to it so many times that it Becomes second nature.

Yeah. So at what point? Because you know, when, when someone starts learning a language and let's say they start learning with Lingq, and we're going to link to your platform later and I'm happy for you to talk, talk about it and tell us what it is. But at what point do you incorporate any speaking practice or encourage people to speak with each other?

Well, there's, of course, you can output anytime you want, right, on your own, if you want. And there is a little. One thing we have now that's new is if I'm going now through my Persian, which is for me still quite difficult, or Arabic, one sentence at a time, then there is an opportunity to reassemble the sentence. So that's a form of output. You're having to put the words together in the proper word order. There is an opportunity to record your voice and compare it to the native speaker and they even grade you on how close you came. But in fact, I don't think it's that accurate. You know, whether you're 85% or 88% or 90%, you know, how do they know? So there's that kind of getting you to produce the language for yourself insofar as interacting with other people. I think that's a personal decision. I don't like to get on with a tutor until I'm able to understand what they're saying, he or she, until I'm able to actually say a few things, the way we count sort of words. Like if I'm at about three or five thousand known words at Lingq, then I start to engage with the tutor. And we can begin by doing some reading, reading of some of the lessons from our library and talking about those things just so that we have something to talk about. But yeah, but if some people like to get going earlier, some people like to wait longer. I have waited longer in some languages, I've started earlier in others. I think it should be personal. You should be comfortable because you're mostly going to be uncomfortable. And so therefore you should start at a point where you really want to start and you have things you want to say, but mostly you want to be able to understand. It's very uncomfortable to have a conversation with someone and you're constantly saying, excuse me, I beg your pardon, could you repeat that?

Right.

And also it's a big fear. Like, people avoid conversations because they're afraid of not understanding the person in front of them. But sometimes it's not even about the English, it's about different dialects, especially in English, for example, because you're used to hearing the English that you hear on YouTube or on TV where it's clear. And then you speak to a person who has a certain dialect that you've never come across, and all of a sudden you're like, I don't understand anything. So that really affects a person's confidence. So I think that is another aspect that we. That in a way, like waiting until someone. Until you're fully confident in understanding could be potentially like getting people to procrastinate a lot more than they'd like to.

Yeah. However, so comprehension, therefore, I definitely recommend that people listen to a variety of accents, you know, even in languages like, say, Portuguese or Spanish. I think we're often. And people get sort of very concerned about should I be listening to Spanish from Spain or Mexico or Argentina or Colombia? And I think it doesn't really matter. You should listen to as much content in different languages or different versions of the language. And in the case of English, where English is such an international language, listen to people with. With accents.

Right. That's a big. I think that's a big point because especially on YouTube, when you think of language teachers, English teachers, you usually hear like sort of the same standard American or Canadian English. And it's like you're not really exposed to different varieties of English. And I think you have to be the owner of your own journey and expose yourself and not just expose yourself to the same teachers because then in the real world you going to face a problem.

True. However, what I would prefer. So I think if, say, take Spanish, it wouldn't matter to me whether my tutor, say, when I start speaking, okay, I've got enough. Actually I speak Spanish, but let's say I didn't speak Spanish. I've now got about 5,000 words. I want to get on with someone and speak Spanish. It wouldn't matter to me whether that person was Mexican, Argentinian, Colombian, from Madrid, Barcelona. It doesn't matter. I would probably stay with the same tutor for a while because I would get used to his or her way of speaking. And also we react differently with different people. So some people make me feel comfortable and some people probably, you know, it depends how. Some tutors are very good at getting you to speak, at encouraging you, and some tutors are not. So you want to be with someone, you know that that's good at that. And then I would stay there and then I build myself up to a certain level where now I'm more confident and I can talk to people with different, you know, different accents and different personalities. Um, but I think a lot of sort of getting used to different ways of speaking is something we have to do on our own. If you take English, there are so many different varieties of English. Scottish, Australian, south us, South Boston, whatever. You can't find tutors in all these different versions, but you don't know. The next person you meet might be from Boston or from Yorkshire or whatever. So that's where you've got to try to. And say in Portuguese, you want to listen to some Brazilian. Different parts of Brazil, different parts of Portugal. You know, you shouldn't restrict yourself to one type, but the range of people you're going to. Certainly if you're looking for a tutor online, you're going to have two or three, you're not going to have 20 and. But you can't anticipate who you're going to meet. Right. So you've got to be ready.

No, but I also think that it's not just about exposing yourself to different tutors, but different content. Because especially in English, you can find all types of varieties and dialects online. Like if you just look for it, podcasts and videos and TV shows. So I think that could also be a way to expose yourself and not just find a tutor with a certain.

Oh, absolutely. And you don't know. In fact, most learners, if they're watching a show, they're not going to know what accents are there.

True.

You're watching a show from Britain, you don't know what those accents are. Okay. So and so's from London, from Liverpool, from Manchester, from wherever. You don't know, you just struggle. So, yeah, watching TV shows like that is certainly similar to if it's an American show or, I don't know, in some other language, there's going to be a variety of accents. Is that person from South America? Is that person from Mexico, from Spain? You don't know. I think there's sometimes too much is made of these different accents. It's words and you got to get used to hearing them all. Yeah, yeah.

So you talked about the experience with certain tutors that make you feel comfortable and other tutors that don't make me feel comfortable. And I want to talk about this aspect of confidence and how you feel showing up in a second language because your experience has been, you know, being a native English speaker speaking different languages. Do you feel that there is a difference between your experience learning languages and the experience of non native English speakers learning English, whereas the demand of them to perform. Right. There isn't like this Appreciation of, oh my God, you speak Spanish, you speak Russian, you speak Portuguese. But instead it's like, how come you're not speaking well enough for me to communicate with you? That is like, in a way, the demand if you're applying for a job, if you're immigrating, if you're like, even if you just want to show up into a public speaking club online. Right. So there is this assumption that you need to know English and that is okay. That's like how you communicate with the world. And I think it's a beautiful ability for us. But at the same time, the experience is different because you're already required to perform at a certain level. And the gap between your passive knowledge and your ability to produce it is generally very big. Right. Like the difference. And unlike, you're sharing an experience where gradually, if you have time, when you have time, you're able to bridge that gap. But what happens when you don't have that time? What happens when you are an immigrant and you have to work three jobs and you don't have time to read a lot of, a lot of books, for example, and to expose yourself? And anyway, you're very much exposed to English because it's all around you, yet you still can't produce because of confidence issue, because of lack of output. How do you, how would you address that challenge?

Well, let's. Obviously, you know, you put your finger on something, people are expected to speak English. People are. If I go, if I find someone in Vancouver who's obviously Iranian and I speak to them in Persian, I get, wah, they love me, you're a hero. Because they're not. Yeah. And they'll say a few things to me, then they switch back to English. Whereas that same person has to operate in English in Canada. I think the first thing is we have to be realistic. I think the non native speaker of English who has moved to North America is going to have an accent in the overwhelming number of cases. And we are used to people with accents, and I think the big thing is to use the language well. If you use the language well, your phrasing is correct, your choice of words is correct, and you have an accent, you get 9.9 out of 10. Like, no one is going to be critical of you. I shouldn't say no one. But no, by and large, we're used to that all the time. I'm dealing in Vancouver with people who have accents. We have people on television with accents, you know, newscasters even. It's. I don't think it's Such a big. I think it's a bigger issue in the minds of the immigrant person who wants to be, you know, invisible, to.

Belong, not to be singled out, not.

Be identified, you know, but that's who you are, you know, that's who you are. You're so much better in a way than the native speaker who only speaks English. Look at you. You speak English very well, and yet at the same time, you speak whatever language language is, you speak as well as English and take pride. Like, I think whatever we do in languages, we have to give ourselves credit for what we can do, not for what we can't do. When I speak in another language, there's moments when I don't understand. There's moments when I can't find the word. Also happens in English, mind you, but happens more often in other languages. It's. It's not perfect. But are you prepared to accept that you're not perfect in another language, but also to accept how wonderful it is that you can speak that other language well? So you have to focus on the positive, and the objective is communication. Like, I think in most cases, people aren't looking to judge you. They just want to communicate. So focus on comprehension. The worst thing is if you say, as an immigrant in Canada, you don't understand what the person is saying. That's the worst situation. You can't keep on saying, excuse me, beg your pardon, could you repeat that? That's just not communication. Now if when you communicate, you use the odd wrong word or you have an obvious accent, I don't think that's a problem. And I've dealt with people, you know, very often immigrants who have an accent who use English better than native speakers in terms of their vocabulary, in terms of their ability to organize their thoughts, sometimes even in terms of grammatical correctness, you know, say a native speaker who has grown up in an environment where people use the language incorrectly, which exists, I presume, in every country, then whereas the native has. The non native has made an effort to learn, you know, correct usage, the non native will use the language more correctly and maybe have a larger vocabulary in some cases. In most cases, no, because the native has heard the language since the. They were children. But so, yeah, I think it's. It's kind of. You are an exception in that you would not be identified as a non native speaker. The vast majority of immigrants, 20% of Canadians, and I think Americans are not native born now, Some of them came as kids, but a lot of people with accents. And internationally, I've dealt with people from all over the world. And we've operated either in English or in their language. But in either case, it's either me speaking their language with an accent or them speaking my language with an accent. And we communicated without difficulty.

I think it's so beautiful what you just said and I really hope that people listen to it again and again because like coming from you, it's, you know, from, from the perspective of a native speaker because they're so terrified of speaking to a native speaker being judged. There is like this superiority over the non native speaker which doesn't really exist except for in their heads. It's not true because there is criticism, there is discrimination, there is language bias. It exists. People do experience that, especially immigrants in their day to day life. But the question is, how much importance are you going to put on that aspect of communication and disregard people like yourself that you're like, as long as you speak and I can understand you and you understand me, that's what matters.

Yeah, there are always going to be people like that. There are people who aren't going to like you because of the way you look. People aren't going to like you because you're tall, short, fat, thin, wear glasses. They don't like the color of their suit. I think those are the minority. I think most people just want to, you know, I go to the bank, I have a Chinese clerk, Iranian clerk, they've all got accents. I had a Russian the other day. She's got an accent, whatever. I'm going there to do my business. I'm not going there to judge that person.

I saw an interview that you did with a Turkish polyglot and the interview was conducted in eight languages, which was incredible by the way. I think it has like a million views. And what was so nice to see is the effortlessness that you had there. And in particular, you know, like you were speaking and then you got to Russian and for a second like the words were not available and you couldn't think of the words and you know, you just acknowledged it and you said, oh, you know, like I forgot my Russian already. And, and I think that is, that sense of ease is something that a lot of people are lacking because of the pressure of, you know, that is required of them, of society or of themselves to show up, to not make mistakes, to, you know, if they get stuck, it's a sign of them not being intelligent. And we know that it's not true. But I just want to say that what you experience there is the ideal in a way, because that what allows you this freedom. And then I think it's easy to minimize the gap between your passive knowledge and your active knowledge. And one of the reasons why I am very much why I am advocating for intentional practice and repetition and speaking practice is because people are so terrified of speaking. And I think that experience is something that is different. Like if that were the case for everyone, oh, I just forgot and that's it, I acknowledged it, fine. But it's not the fear of them forgetting is stopping them from speaking. So this is why being able to retrieve while feeling the pressure from the other person is what they need to practice. And that's why I think that only passive consumption is for some people, especially people who are not feeling confident, is not less important.

Well, first of all, only passive consumption is not going to get you to fluency. I always say to speak well, you have to speak a lot, right? Eventually you have to speak an awful lot. It's not even enough to speak twice a week with an online tutor. I mean, ultimately you should go to the country or be surrounded with a group of friends where the conversation is flying all over the place in multi directions and you're having to get better and better at picking it up and better and better at jumping in and saying things. So ultimately you have to speak a lot. My only point is when you start speaking doesn't really matter. It is conceivable that if you start too early, you will build up a lot of anxiety. You'll maybe get, you know, they talk about fossilization. I don't know enough about whether speaking early might encourage fossilization. So I just say that, that inevitably when you start speaking in a language, there's a lot of anxiety because you think you are intelligent in your own language and when you speak another language, you're not intelligent. Intelligent, you're not as intelligent. So we have to accept that. Because if to speak another language you accept the fact that you're going to be speaking less well in that other language, you're going to be less intelligent. You're going to be able to marshal fewer words to try to say the same thing. You're going to say things that sound more stupid.

And you need to be okay with that to embrace that, to embrace the mistakes.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But you will arrive at a point where actually you can get to a level where you're doing very, very well. Where you have, you're, if not the same as a native speaker, you're comparable in your ability to communicate. You may have certain turns of phrase that you prefer or Certain terms of phrase that still reflect your native language. I often refer, like Germans who say, you know, I have been. I've been in the United States since many years, which is a German structure, not an English structure. And they communicate fine. Nobody, it doesn't matter. So I think the thing is, like, when I was doing that 8 language thing in a way, that was not real communication. That was a performance. Right. I've got my watch, you know, my subscribers. She has her subscribers. We're performing in eight languages. It's a performance. So if anything, I should be nervous because I'm performing and people are going to criticize me. And they do. And they say, you know, your Italian is no good. This is no good. And that is no good.

Yeah, it's a lot of choice to show up like that. Yeah, people are going to have a. I put.

I put myself out there. So I'm. I'm. That's fair game. You can criticize me. I'm saying I speak these languages and I go out there and I make mistakes. And I always make mistakes. And I make mistakes in some of the most basic things. I make mistakes that I immediately, you know, pick up on when I watch my video. And maybe I won't make that same mistake the next time, but maybe I will and we will. You know, there's a tremendous opportunity to make mistakes. And, you know, it's difficult to tell someone, don't worry about it. But the fact of the matter is, in most real life situations, your goal is to communicate. You're not performing. The interview you referred to, we were performing. So we should be a little nervous maybe. Except I don't get nervous. But if you're in a real communication situation, then all I want to do is understand what the person is saying. If I go, I still remember I was in St. Petersburg. I go to the train station to buy a ticket and I asked in what I thought was pretty good Russian, you know, how do I buy this ticket to go to wherever it was? And she comes back with stuff that I hadn't anticipated. Like, we almost have to have been in that conversation before, you know, that we have to be able to anticipate. And so I was, you know, I want to go to Vberg. And she goes, I said, what? Like I didn't understand it. That's the most uncomfortable. Now, once I pieced out what she was saying, then the next time I go to buy a train ticket, I can anticipate what he or she is going to say and I'll do much better and so we have to put ourselves in that situation, that kind of situation, over and over and over again. And the big thing is comprehension. Once I understand now I can use my hands and I can get. Because the goal is. Is communication. And the goal is not, you know, judging people in most cases aren't judging you. And if your concern is that you don't want to be taken for a foreigner or for an immigrant, well, in most cases you will be like once you go there. When I was in Japan, I was a foreigner, period. But that didn't prevent me from communicating.

On the contrary, you should be proud of that. Like, it means that you have history, that you've made a courageous decision for whatever reason or.

Or not proud. It's just individual A and individual B need to communicate for whatever reason. That's it. Not about judgment.

I love that. Thank you so much. Steve, how can people learn with you and learn more about you? And I'm also going to say that we're going to have an interview, another interview on your channel. So go check out Steve's channel.

Yeah.

Where we're going to talk about pronunciation. But how can people learn with.

Well, I have a YouTube channel called Lingosteve, and the platform that my son Mark and I started is called linkq.com so both of those places. I did want to mention a little bit about Israel. So I tried to learn Hebrew before going to Israel, just like I tried to learn Greek. And I found it quite difficult. And eventually I just. From Israel, I went into Jordan and I said, There's 10 million people who speak Hebrew. There's 300 million who speak Arabic. So I decided to move my focus over to Arabic. But another problem in Israel is anyone that doesn't speak English speaks Russian. And if they don't speak Russian, they speak French. And so you're highly unlikely in Israel to come across a person who doesn't speak a language other than Hebrew. So you end up saying, well, geez, I don't really need Hebrew in Israel. However, if you are in something like a parking garage and they have, you know, the vending machine for the tickets, it's all in Hebrew. So you are black. However, you can grab the next person that comes by and they'll speak. They'll be able to explain either in English or Russian.

Or English with you.

Yeah. Well, no, some of the older. They have older recent immigrants from Russia. Russia, they don't speak English. They speak Russian anyway. But I had a great.

You were deprived. Deprived of the opportunity of learning Hebrew. I apologize.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

All right.

Steve, thank you so, so much for this wonderful conversation. I had a pleasure talking to you.

I hope you did, too.

Pleasure was mine.

Thank you.

Okay.

Have a good day.

Thank you. Bye.

Bye.

Bye. Sa.