Kris**Kris ** What up, everyone? It's Kris here. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it. And today's episode is a learner profile episode with André Liss, a Canadian hyperpolyglot. So we get into his learning ideas, which revolve around music and using music as a learning tool.
And during the interview, he takes us through his story of how he got, how he fell in love with languages basically, and how it developed and what kind of music he basically remembers as being pivotal parts of his life story so far. And the fun idea we had for this episode was because music is such a big part of André's life and, and you know, the kind of the theme of the episode. We thought it would be fun to take these songs that André mentions along the way and sort of underlay them or overlay them, I don't know, either way, so you can listen in while this happens. Now, this might be a complete failure and I will never do it again, or it might be pretty cool. But anyway, I hope you listen to it with a sort of a welcoming ears and, and give it a shot. It won't be overpowering or anything. I'm just going to try and do it as sort of a mood music. So if you suddenly hear music, there's nothing wrong with your iPod, I was going to say, I don't know if anyone still uses iPods, but there's nothing wrong with your device, that's intentional. That's something I tried to do and hopefully you enjoy it.
And other than that, I just wanted to give a little explanation for the intro. You're going to hear a very interesting intro and the first reason that the intro is like that is because as, right as I was doing the intro, I saw, I looked at the Google Hangouts and André was just laughing like silently. I don't know how to explain it otherwise. But right as I was about to do this really serious intro, he was just like he had this huge smile on his face and I was just like, it was hilarious. And I just broke out in laughter and this was after I had already messed up the introduction once because I didn't know what I was going to say and then it sort of yeah, bungled it basically.
And before the interview had started, me and André had been talking about keeping it real and how on the website or on the blog I, I tend to share a lot of personal information, well not personal information, more like, you know, I tend to share everything and, and we were talking about keeping it real. So, so when I made that second mistake, André just said, keep it real, keep it real and we, we just kind of rolled with it. So I, I, I left this one in. I know I could have recorded a new one and put over it, but yeah, he's right, you know, keep it real and, and that's the sort of the theme of Actual Fluency if anything.
And one final thing, I've set up a Patreon page for Actual Fluency, which means you can become a patron of the show. If you like the content, if you love what I'm doing here, all these episodes for free, then please do consider supporting the show with a few bucks every month. It really helps and it's greatly appreciated. You can find the Patreon page on actualfluency.com/support. And here's the interview with André Liss.
**Kris ** All right everyone, it's time for another episode of the Actual Fluency Podcast. [Laughs]
**André Liss ** Keep it real man, keep it real.
**Kris ** Okay. And, uh, we're having a lot of fun doing this interview. Uh, so, uh, so we're just going to keep it real and keep going. Uh, it's another edition of learner profiles and underlined today, I've got with me Canadian hyperpolyglot Andrew Lis. Andrew, how are you doing today?
**André Liss ** Uh, not bad at all. I'm happy to say.
**Kris ** Fantastic. I love that. You just, uh, keep going and keep it in, keep it in. No, no bloopers here.
**André Liss ** Keep it real. Have a ball here.
**Kris ** So Andre, why don't you give people a little backstory to how you got into languages and, um, you know, how you developed this passion.
**André Liss ** Well, um, from a very young age actually, I was born to two, uh, unilingual Anglophone parents. And because I grew up in Canada, we had French from a very young age. And I, I took to it like a fish takes to water. It was, uh, it was really natural. I was always the best kid in class, uh, in French.
And although, um, the education system in North America, uh, doesn't like to stream pupils too early. It's a system that's, uh, geared towards late bloomers or at least it was in, in my day. Whereas here in Europe, uh, they tend to stream you very early on. And I often wonder if, uh, I'd been in an early streaming system, if they hadn't noticed the aptitude, if they wouldn't have, uh, got me into more intensive language learning at an earlier age. But that's, uh, that's one just for speculation.
So it was, wasn't until I got to high school where, uh, we had the opportunity to take other languages as options. So I started with German. And I had a crush on my German teacher, so I did extremely well. Um, and Spanish. Uh, which after, after German, everything is easy. And then I, uh, I decided to change schools so I could really pursue it and, uh, I went on to do Italian and Dutch. I even did three semesters of Cantonese. First language I ever gave up on.
**André Liss ** Um, and, uh, when I was 18, really when I was 17, I began to travel. And kind of never looked back. I've, uh, lived all over the world, literally.
**Kris ** Fantastic. And you ended up in, uh, in Vienna.
**André Liss ** I did. It's sort of a funny story. Because, uh, I was living in Thailand actually. I found a job there, uh, through a previous company I had worked for. I thought, ah, I'll go for a year or a year or two and it ended up being like practically almost five years. It was like yeah, four and a half years. Um, and while I was working in Thailand, I used to come to Europe like every five weeks. I came very often. Usually in economy class.
**Kris ** That's a long flight.
**André Liss ** Yes, it was like 10 and a half hours each way. And I got to see like all the really, you know, nice countries in Europe, you know, uh, Sweden, uh, I was like five times in Norway. Uh, I've been to France, of course, to Austria, uh, Switzerland, and I knew that to develop my career more, I really couldn't be in Thailand because I was the only technical writer in the country.
**André Liss ** It was certainly unique, but it wasn't great for career development. It was certainly a great gig while it lasted. But, um, because it was somewhat unsustainable, I thought, uh, I should really go to Europe. And of all the countries I'd been to, I chose Austria because, uh, I was in Tyrol, which is out west in, in the Alps. Just beautiful. Uh, like spectacularly beautiful. And I really, really got on with, with people that I met. So I had like friends in the office and also I had friends outside the office and it was the only place of, of all the places I would travel with any kind of frequency, uh, that I had friends inside and outside the office and I thought, aha, I like these people. I'm going to Austria.
**Kris ** That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool actually. And it's a nice country. And, and we talked before the recording of how bad it is that I've lived in Budapest for six months and I've yet to go to Austria, Vienna when it's, you know, a stone's throw away.
**André Liss ** Can I tell you a story, uh, about, uh, um, I summon you to Vienna, okay, Kris?
**André Liss ** Come to Vienna. Uh, I remember after I'd been in Thailand for six months. Thai, Thai is such a hard language. I mean, how harsh language can, can I use in, in, in your, in your podcast?
**Kris ** Well, uh, let's keep it, you know, uh, T.
**André Liss ** Let's keep, let's keep it family friendly.
**André Liss ** It's, Thai is tough. And this was like the last language I learned. This was like basically number 10 in the repertoire. And after six months, I mean I could barely get out, hello, how are you? What's your name and, you know, turn left, turn right.
And then I went to Norway for work. I went to Bergen. Um, up in your original neck of the woods, not quite, but sort of. At least you have similar spelling systems.
**Kris ** Yeah, neighbors, you know.
**André Liss ** Norway is awesome. And I went to a film festival. Uh, it was an Italian film festival. I kid you not. And, uh, there was one movie about the, uh, Mafia in Naples. And so most of it was in a dialect that I just can't make heads or tails out of. So I read the Norwegian subtitles.
**André Liss ** Yes. And I thought, goodness gracious. If I'd been in Norway for six months, I would be reading the newspaper and subtitles and talking about all manner of things. But you know, in Thailand, after six months, I can barely get beyond, hello, how are you? Uh, it's just that kind of language. It took a lot of persistence. That was really the biggest challenge.
**Kris ** Yeah. It's funny with the hard and and easy languages because the question pops up all the time. Like, what's the hardest language in the world? And and a lot of people quickly come in and they say, well, there aren't really no hard languages because you, and you know, I, I get it. It's like,
**André Liss ** That ruffles feathers.
**Kris ** Well, it's like an, it's like an encouragement, you know, they're trying to say like every language can be learned at some point. They just take, you know, 10 times the time of learning Norwegian or whatever, you know. Uh, so it, in a sense, objectively speaking, you know, there's no unlearnable language, right? As far as I know anyway.
**André Liss ** Well, I mean, you as a, you as a polyglot, I'm sure you've been to the odd cocktail party where it comes up that you speak a whole bunch of languages. And they say, oh, what are they? You list them. And, uh, I mean, like what's the most exotic language you know?
**Kris ** Well, Russian is probably the most exotic and hardest that I know. Even other than Hungarian, believe it or not, but, uh,
**André Liss ** I do believe it. I do believe it.
**André Liss ** But there, there are no vowels. You
