Anthony Lauder: From polynot to polyglot

On this episode of the Actual Fluency podcast, I'm joined by Anthony Louder, who talks about the development from Polyknot to Polyglot.

I'm doing very well, thank you. And I'm was just say about that conference presentation. You're very kind to say it was the best, but in fact, I followed a piece of advice that, um, a colleague gave me many years ago, which is that when you're giving a presentation, the most important thing is to keep the audience awake.

Right.

So if I kept the audience awake, then I'm satisfied.

Oh, people are still talking about their presentation today.

Oh, that's great. Nice.

But we're we won't talk too much about that. I bet you've been asked lots of questions about that already. But um and of course, a lot of people know you from that presentation, and maybe some of them have found your uh fluent Czech videos on YouTube or some of your writing endeavors here and there. But if people haven't heard about you, could you take a second to just go back in time and introduce how do you get into, well, what was what's your first experience with foreign language learning? And how are you how did you that bring you to, you know, a polyglot conference teaching Czech and learning Czech maybe in the first place?

Sure. So I was always absolutely useless at learning languages. And it actually dates back to high school where, uh, I was told I was, I had to learn German because the French class was full. So they stick stuck me in the German class, and um, several months into the class, the teacher died, unfortunately, and they didn't have a replacement.

Right. That's really interesting and I I guess that a lot of people have that same feeling of uselessness in school, particularly the early years where you're learning a language through these, we were just talking about this before we started recording about how they make you kind of memorize things instead of promoting learning how to speak. For instance, I can know I know all the German prepositions and what case they're in, but I I can't form a sentence. Of course, now it's different, but back then, you know, that was the case. You know, we could do all the and in English it was the same, I am, you are, you know, you went through the these all the grammar kind of horizontally. But we didn't learn how to speak immediately. That was on our own. Is that the same you had?

Yeah, in fact, eventually, so I I was starting to teach myself Czech, bought the small number of textbooks that does exist and um, tried talking to people very badly. And after a couple of years of that, I decided I would go to university full-time. There's a university called Charles University here in Prague. And they have a class where you sit an entrance exam. And they have hundreds of people studying Czech there each year.

Okay.

And they said to everybody, hm, you've still got some Russian accent. And when he got to me, oh, well done, Anthony, no Russian accent at all. So I'm good at something at last, thank you for that.

Right. And what do you think about the whole um throw yourself in there, learn a few phrases and just start speaking without that kind of grammar background? Because that's obviously been popularized recently by by the release of Benny Lewis's book. Sure. And and his blog.

Yes, so I I I think that there are two things that I want to say to that. The first one is, I think that's a fantastic way of getting over the fear of making mistakes. Because one problem at university, when we were having the occasional speaking sessions is, they would pounce on every little mistake you made.

Oh, no, that's not in the accusative, that's in the genitive or something like this. Oh, I gave the wrong ending.

And you think, what the hell, this is hardly a welcoming environment. When you get out into the street and you know you're bad, and you get over the fear, then I think that's a very important step where you think, look, the most important thing is getting the message across. You're not going to be perfect, but you get the message across.

Of course.

You know, just going into shops or into the museum, asking people basic questions, talking to tourists, swapping pleasantries and so on. And then they'll ask simple questions like where are you from. But it gives you a confidence. It makes you feel not afraid. And getting over that fear, and realizing that your achievements will not be magnificent, but they'll be good enough, that I think that really is important.

like a mindset change. It's it's not about your level, it's about how you think about the whole going into it.

One of the things I said at that conference presentation you were talking about is that you can have a conversation with just 10 words, as long as you're realistic about what your conversation will be.

Of course.

And that's what everybody does. Uh so everybody, because everybody wants to this is something I wrote about actually, with my conversational connectors, which maybe we can talk about in a little while, which is that everybody wants conversations to be pleasant. So both sides are putting effort into making that the case.

And when you knew that might be difficult to figure out what exactly that means. And that's that's why you that's why you came up with this, I guess, concept of filling the blanks, so to speak, between the facts.

Well,

Let's just talk about that now. I think we should. I think that's a good time. So so conversational connectors, they're in Benny's book as well, and I think your name's there as well.

Yes, I introduced Benny to the idea because I had this revelation one day that I was listening to conversations and very little of what was actually happening in the conversation was information exchange. Some of it was. So some somebody might say, I want a chicken. Give me 10 euros. Here are 10 euros. Here is your chicken. But that's not how conversations tend to happen.

Right.

So I made categories for these such as, um, well filler is one of them, which is whenever you're terrified, or I forgot a word, you just fill it in with these time fillers like, now that's a very interesting idea. And while I think about it, I would like the green one. And while you're saying those first ones, you've thought of the word for green.

Right.

But some of them actually have functions. So you would say things like, I have to say, I don't really like that idea. What do you think? So that's passing over the baton to keep the conversation going, that kind of thing. So and um, as you said in Benny's book, he picked up on this. He actually said, oh, that's a nice idea. I'm going to do that with all languages now. And uh a few people picked it in. Actually, if if people search for conversational connectors, quite a few people have translated mine, because they were Czech and English.

Oh, yeah.

A and a lot of people translated them into something like 20 different languages now.

That's fantastic actually. Yeah. I like the idea.

Yeah. And I I actually was very grateful, because I took some of these translations and I learned my own connectors that other people had translated into other languages and then used them as I've been learning new languages. So for example, now I'm very heavily involved in learning Spanish. And um, because I'm going to be going to Spanish speaking countries next year, so give myself a few months to get really good in Spanish. And I've been learning the connectors that some kind people translated for me.

Awesome. And do you just use uh is there any practical uh tips people should know about learning, you know, 100 different, maybe not all of them, but maybe learn a few from each group and then put it into Anki or something? Would that be what you do or?

In fact, I don't. Um, this I actually have this method of my own. I don't want to force my language learning method on people, because people have I think the best thing is to work your own language learning method out. But I've got one that I call the spiral method.

Uh huh.

And um, I wrote made actually three videos of talking about it and giving a sample session of me using the spiral method and it's on my YouTube channel. So if people rather than me describe it, look on there. But the main essence of it is, um, it's a way to practice joining things together. But but on your own. So you record your voice, you even record a video of yourself and I have a whiteboard. I write things on and I build up sentences and so on. Because the most important skill for output is to combine things well. When you're learning, you learn all these fragments. You know, little bits, little chunks, but to combine them into a stream of stuff, into uh is actually the whole the whole learning process for output is learning how to combine things.

Right, that's how language works. I mean, even even your native language, you don't you you don't have a set of memory memorized sentences. All the sentences we're saying now have never been spoken. Never. Oh. Wow.

That's unique.

Well, that's how unique we are. No, that's I mean, that's just, you know, brain uh from linguistics 101, you know, but um that that's basically the idea that we create, we generate every sentence based on our fragmental knowledge, like you say. We don't remember, like I haven't memorized what I'm just saying now and then repeating it. So so you're saying that we should adapt that for kind of foreign languages as well, and not just do the repeating there.

Right. So if you stick into Anki a load of stuff to learn, you'll learn all these fragments. You'll learn all these words or short phrases you put into that. But you will not learn that how to combine them dynamically on an as-needed basis.

Right. Yeah.

And so I think that this spiral method that I use is really useful at getting you to this ability to combine stuff. Yeah.

I'll definitely put a put a link to it so people can can find it easily, the the videos. And also I'll I'll try and find the connectors. I found the Czech ones, but I'm sure if I spent a little bit more time, I can find for the for the other languages as well if people are interested.

Sure.

So. I think an interesting question about your when you got into language learning is, you know, what made you kind of not accept things as they were? Was it lack of results or was it, yeah, was was it lack of results or were you are you naturally kind of inquisitive into meta-learning and and and what makes us learn?

Right. So um, I don't I I I always need to dig into something very deeply. That's the kind of background I have. I was an academic for a long time and I did I worked in research labs um in the States. And then I did my PhD and I was a postdoctoral research fellow at university for a few years. And all of that is about really digging deep into something to actually understand, what's really going on here?

Right. And what what would you what would you say is your biggest finding, I suppose? If you're a researcher, then you you're often you're looking to find something. Do you have any kind of big revelations that pertains to this um, maybe the kind of conversational connectors, obviously, we already talked about. But did you have any big, like you see the big cartoonish light bulb and you're like, ah, I've been doing it all less efficiently than I could or.

Oh, well, in fact, this is this is a very important thing, because I I I I made a video interview um, a few months ago where I talked about this, which is, it isn't revolutionary, but it really struck me and so I that the main way to fail in language learning is to give up. That's it.

Right.

But you are. And if you just do people people do say, oh, I've been learning Spanish for three years and I'm getting nowhere. And that's because they give up lots of times. And come back to it two weeks later and they're all I've I had friends doing this with learning Czech. One of my female friends here, she arrived in the country around the same time as me, and for the first year or two, we were both terrible at Czech. And she's then slowly starting to make progress by plugging away day after day after day.

Right.

is the only root to failure. And I'm guilty of it myself sometimes. Sometimes I do think, I'll learn uh for example, I was learning German and I got to a pretty basic level in German on my own. But, I thought, um, I'll take a few weeks off. And then I never got back to it.

So the habit is the important.

Just keep just keep going and it sinks in. So it's not a great revelation, but personally, my personal message to myself is, never take more than a day or two off, and when you think you're not learning, just plug away.

Right.

In fact, when I was at high school, this is this was an important lesson in life. I remember being at high school, and we do the end of year examinations in any subject, let's say in physics. And I would go, my God, this is tough. Oh, my God, I hope I pass it. And then I'd pass it, you know. But it seemed like the hardest thing in the world. Six months later, I'd look back at that old paper and think, why didn't I get 100%? It's so easy.

Right.

And I find that sometimes it helps me to do that with language learning, where I think, my God, I'm just not, this is so tough. I'm not making any progress. Then I go back and look at lesson one or two in the book and I think, well, that's easy.

That's great.

So you've obviously have made progress. So look back. Look back.

Is it like it's I guess it's like measuring your arms and legs when you're trying to lose weight and it looks like you're getting nowhere, and then you realize that you've lost 10 inches or something off you.

That's good. Right. Yeah, because we we're always focused on the stuff we're doing now. So this this is this is a great um, phenomenon that happens in computer science. Well, not interesting computer science. In any area of research, when you're doing a PhD and PhD supervisor often warned about this.

Hmm.

So a lot of people drop out of their PhD because they think, oh, I'm reading this person's research and I don't understand it. It's so sophisticated. That guy must be far more intelligent than me.

It should have a name. I feel like this should have a name, this phenomenon.

Yeah, I don't know what the what the name would be, but I think it happens in language learning that you the stuff you do know, you think, yeah, well I know that. I know that. But it's not the hard stuff. The hard stuff is still ahead.

Right.

And because you don't understand the hard stuff, you get intimidated by it, and you trivialize what you do know already. Um and uh so I I sometimes think about that, too.

Like going back and measuring your arms and seeing how far you've actually come.

Right, right. And realizing also that when I when I was, so there's there's this book I'm reading at the moment for Spanish. It's called Spanish for Reading. It's a very good book. And I'm more than halfway through it, probably two-thirds of the way through it. And I it's quite difficult.

Right.

And that is a way for me to realize, despite all my self-delusion and my brain tricking me, I have actually made some progress.

Brain is fantastically good at deceiving us and giving illusions, whether they are of inferiority or or grander, but uh,

Yes.

Yeah, it definitely work. I always think about that um proverbial hill where you just keep going up, up, up and you're like, oh, I can't get up this hill because it's too steep. But then you you get to the to the drop point where it's just cruising from there. Would you say that that happens in language learning as well? Where you reach a point where it suddenly starts becoming easy?

Well, this is Lucas's idea of the epiphany point. And I think it happens not on an input basis, because you can always find more complicated stuff to read.

Right.

And so you never feel comfortable with reading. You always can find something that's too complicated. So you can reach a survival level where you think, okay, I can read the simple stuff.

Of course, yeah.

Even if they're missing vocabulary. So you could discuss your job or your studies to 10 year old child, but they might not know all the words. But still you can both have a very solid conversation about that. And that point, when you reach that point, I think is when it all starts to feel much much easier.

Right, and more natural as well. Because I guess if you you think about it in your native language, there are definitely topics that you don't know the words for. Could be very technical topics, could be very sciency topics or something like that. And and you can still talk around it by using, oh, that thing or you know what I mean, and again, connectors, right?

Exactly. Exactly. And this is one of the things that connectors taught me, how to be able to talk around topics. And slot in your vocabulary no matter how limited your vocabulary is.

Right.

So I decided, fine, I'll come up with my own definition based on what partly what other people are saying, but partly on my own beliefs. And um, fluency to me relates to things flowing. So, it isn't about the amount of vocabulary you have. It isn't about having a native accent. It's about your conversations flowing.

Right.

So, that means, as we discussed earlier, you can keep the conversation going both for you and the other person. Anybody could have a monologue. And when we record videos of ourselves speaking a foreign language, that isn't a conversation, that's a monologue. A conversation flows between people. So I always think see it as flowing to that person then flowing back to me and we it's almost like passing the ball and we're keeping it flowing.

Right. Sorry, that is painless. That is not painful for the other person.

Sorry, that is painful for the other person.

No, that.

Not painful for the other person. So if you say, uh, um, me am train, that's painful for the other person, and they will try to end the conversation.

To avoid that pain.

Or switch to English. Or switch to English. Or switch to English. Oh, yeah. So you have achieved fluency, I believe, when the person that you're speaking with wants the conversation to continue.

Right, it's a pleasurable to the ears as well as the brain.

So I thought, if it's not about vocabulary, can we become fluent with what we have. And this is one of the things that came that was at the heart of conversational connectors, and it's my sort of slogan, be fluent with what you have.

Right, you should write a book.

Oh, thank you.

I think so. Yeah.

You think so?

Sorry, yeah. I think it would be a great idea for a book, like how to, well, of course, you would have to probably add some more stuff than just the connectors, but talk about the the low kind of practical approach to to language learning and and and and how that's different from all the, oh, let's learn 10 languages in a year kind of things going around.

Well, I yes, this is this is a a very important thing that I believe that I'm a pretty poor language learner. I'm not a super guru. I'm not linguistically magnificently talented. But I've I believe I show to myself and hopefully a few others see that even a man with limited abilities like me can actually make progress and do pretty well.

Yeah, and and they're kind of a rarity, right, now I would say, because it's all about how fast can we learn a language and how quickly can we remember hundreds of words and.

Sure.

And and I I totally I totally see the whole connectors and and from a personal level, that's what I've been missing in my language learning. Um because I've always done the whole learn a lot of vocabulary. Even if it's my German, which I've had for eight years in school, which maybe eight years is probably a bad thing to say. I I I'm considering to start saying 350 hours at most, because uh you know, eight years in school, that's nothing when you take the hours. Um just just the fact that we're not in school one-third of the year or more than one-third of the year, I find quite amazing. Uh but you know, vacations and weekends, they take up a lot. Um so for me it was always, well, I know a lot of words, meaning I can understand a lot. But producing, I can't, because I haven't worked on, well, now we we call them connectors, but back then I would probably I wouldn't even have known why I couldn't speak. I would just say, oh, well, it must be because I'm missing words. And I guess that's true. I am missing words, but it's not the word itself I'm missing, it's the it's the phrase, the combination of words.

Right, so this whole idea of combining stuff. In fact, I I I've told this story a few times, but I will say it again that I've taught a few people here in Prague how to do this with Czech. And I remember the first person that I did it with, it was a woman who knew a massive vocabulary, but she couldn't say anything at all. So I I just had, I don't know, three one-hour lessons teaching her some basic connectors.

Right.

I love that from the if I can just interrupt you for a second. I love the part about your talk where you say, what is the point of learning the name of 20 different types of fish.

Yes.

I don't even know what they're called in English.

That's right. Exactly. Exactly.

Yes.

That's hilarious. And I have the same feeling in in Danish. I'm like, is that a fish, or is that the name of an Asian dish or something? I have no idea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I I think one one big advantage that experienced language learners, polyglots have is that they have an intuitive feel for what's worth knowing. So they can extract the useful stuff from a textbook because they've been through the process so many times. They know which bits to skip over, just intuitively. Oh, yeah, I should focus on that. Ah, I'll ignore that.

And if you're ambitious like me and pick Russian first, then when you're done, you feel like you can learn anything, right?

Yes.

But you're not often thinking that along the way though. You're like, I need to I need to stop doing this. Yeah. So so I would actually say, you know, I I I I wouldn't ever say I've learned Russian. I've done it for about seven, six, seven months now. And I'm a very lazy student, so it's not like it's been two, three hours a day, it's been half to a whole hour a day at most. Okay. Um, but what I can say is that if I could go back and do it again, I would probably, like you say, learn an easier language first to get some wins under the belt, because I think that if I hadn't had the blog and, you know, everyone kind of looking at me, then I would probably have given up with it if I was just on my own. I I I wouldn't be able to summon the willpower. Um luckily I got to the Polyglot Berlin gathering. I kind of joined the family of uh language enthusiasts. So I had more motivation from there. Uh but yeah, I would probably have given up if I was on my own. So I think it's very very good tip to start with something. Well, it doesn't have to be, if you're German, it doesn't have to be Dutch. I mean, that's probably a bit too easy. But if you're German, it could be Italian or Spanish or something European that that you can ease into the learning process.

Yeah. But you mentioned going to the Polyglot gathering. And I would like to just say one thing about the Polyglots that I've met, which is that the really very highly accomplished Polyglots are incredibly humble. And when you go on to some forums and people like write very nasty comments and try to make you feel bad about yourself and point out your mistakes and so on. Those are usually not very accomplished people.

Right, it's it's very a very humble community. I mean, a a funny story from Berlin was that there was a guy there who was traveling around Europe with friends. And he wasn't in the community at all. He interested in language learning, so he actually only spoke English. Uh and I mean, not oh, I speak a bit of French. No, it was only English. And people were so nice to him. He said, because I sat down with him at at lunch just randomly. And I said, how do you feel about the whole thing? He was like, it's awesome, you know. And I was like, so do you feel like learning a language? He was like, I guess a little bit, but I mean, the point is that he wasn't totally discouraged by it, even though he never had the interest in the first place.

Right.

Which I thought was incredible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine? I mean, I I would never go to such a an event with one language, know without knowing what kind of people were there, because then I would assume that everyone was just like, oh, you speak one language. Well, uh, you know, go see some sites or something, you know.

Right.

But but that's totally not the case. And and in that ballpark, are you are you coming to one of the uh conferences the upcoming conferences this?

Um, so I was actually intent, I was intending to go to Berlin, but then um, some very unpleasant things happened in my personal life which stopped me wanting to do that. And um, the Novi Sad one, it conflicted with a with some other plans that I have. So I can't do it, unfortunately.

Oh, that's confirmed.

Oh, I thought it was. I thought it was.

Well, I just heard rumors about it, but I I didn't know it was confirmed.

Okay. So I may be able to do that. The one one difficulty is that next year, I will be taking the whole year off to go well, I take every year off. I'm retired.

Right.

So, um, if depends where I am.

But then Berlin next year could be an opportunity in May.

Next year.

Yeah.

Oh, but next May I'll I'll be in Patagonia.

Oh, that's a bit far then, isn't it?

Yes. I'm I'm I'm hoping, hopefully, one of the reasons I'm so heavily in Spanish is that the first six months of next year, I will be in South America traveling through through all the countries of South America.

Fantastic.

And then in the second half of the year, I'm going to sort of come back home and travel around Europe.

Great, great. But then in New York, maybe I I I don't know if I can make it to New York. I I hope so. But it's of course, you know, uh continental flights are usually uh and and I'm an a leg. It's getting better, but still very expensive.

Yeah.

But Anthony, you know, I could sit here and listen to you all day and uh I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way. But I want to just thank you for for taking the time and and you know, it's really exciting that we actually did make it happen in spite of several illnesses and uh technical problems.

Yes. That's right. Yeah. It was very unfortunate because you did have it set up a couple of times and both of us got sick. Um but now it happens. Yeah.

That's right.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. It's very exciting to hear, because you you know, you're so you're so excited about sharing your your experiences. It's not about, well, this is how you do it, kind of thing. It's like, oh, I figured this one out, and then that helped me. It's not, you know, it's not this is how you definitely should do and this is the only way.

Ah, 262.

It was No, well, many more, yes. I really trimmed it down to the bare minimum to get to 262 slides in less than an hour, yes.

Okay. That's the record. All right, thanks so much, Louder, and uh have a fantastic day.

Okay, bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to the Actual Fluency podcast. For more information, be sure to check out actualfluency.com. Until next time, enjoy learning, and have a great day.