Christopher Huff: Toki Pona and Polyglot Gatherings

Actual Fluency Podcast episode 41 with Christopher Huff. Welcome to the Actual Fluency Podcast, the podcast that gives you the tools and inspiration to learn languages faster and more efficiently. And now your host, Kris Broholm.

I'm doing so well. Thanks for the nice introduction. How are you doing, Kris?

I'm fantastic. And you're of course calling from Beijing, China.

Yes, Beijing, China, not to be confused with Beijing, Germany or Beijing, Greece.

You never know there might be one in America. They seem to have a lot of copy cities over there.

They do. They have an Athens in my home state.

Yeah, Athens. I've seen London as well.

Yeah, London as well, Canada has London. Anyway.

Anyway, you're calling from China. Yeah, you're calling from China. We already, we've only recorded for about a minute and we already went off topic. So I guess we can put the disclaimer in now that we we rant a lot and we talk about what we feel at the moment, so we might start at one place and end up somewhere completely different, but

Sure.

It's the beauty of the show. But anyway, Kris, you know, I met you about a year ago, almost, maybe a little less. And you're from America.

I am from America, the Southeast.

And that's what people probably know about you at this point. So if you could just take a moment to, you know, how did you get into learning languages and how did you come up to, let's say, this year so far?

Oh, man. Wow, it's a great story. Strap in. It's really a great story.

Okay, just the Cliff Notes then.

Okay, Cliff Notes. Uh, well, I was a teenager and I fell in love with someone from Romania. And uh, this young lady, I thought I could win her heart, so I asked her how and she said, well, it would help if you learned Romanian. And she thought this was a lark. I'd never actually do it. But I said, okay, so I ran to the bookstore, picked up a Romanian dictionary, teach yourself Romanian, went home, pored over it, and promptly realized that she wasn't serious.

Oh, fantastic. I've I've actually never heard that story before. That's a a nice little exclusive there.

Yeah. All right, cool. And uh Esperanto, yeah. Uh, I remember you were one of the people who were kind of pushing the conlangs at the Polyglot Gathering, and you were one of the reasons that I I tried to explore it as well, and I definitely also saw the the benefits of of learning Esperanto in terms of grammar and but do you think it's it's it's good for particularly English native speakers because the grammar is so maybe non-existent. It's good to get a an Esperanto to bridge that little gap into more advanced grammar.

Yeah, I I do. I think that Esperanto helps people in a way that learning Latin in school used to help uh English speakers. So uh long time ago, not that long ago, really, English speakers used to learn Latin in school compulsorily or Greek, one of the two. Uh George Washington, for example, he had to study Latin in school. And I think it opened your mind to grammar concepts that are not native to your own language. But it was using a language that isn't spoken as widely.

Yeah.

To say the least for Latin. Esperanto is obviously spoken more. Um, but I think now Esperanto is like a way to open your mind to languages, especially from like Western Europe that have a lot of similar things like um, they have some similar sounds like the vowel sounds are the same and that sort of thing. But the grammar is the important part. It can really open your mind. Esperanto can also open your mind with some of the grammar to Russian too, because uh many words in Russian work the same way as Esperanto words. Um, and that comes from the creator of Esperanto being a linguist himself, a polyglot also himself. Um, but Esperanto fills an important role for in the same way Latin used to, I think.

Yeah, that's cool. Uh, can I just ask you, uh, there's some crackling on the line. I don't know if it's your headset or something. Just uh try to uh I don't know if you if you're to way you're moving your arms or something, but there's a there's a there's a noise that keeps coming back.

Problem solved.

You're you're on it? Good, perfect.

Problem solved.

All right, that's cool. And and I know for a fact that when we started talking about a year ago with the the the language hour we were trying to do and all the other projects, I know for a fact you like to sort of skip between languages and sort of, you know, maybe not get into an intermediate stage in each. Can can you explain a little bit how that process was back then and has it changed till today?

Yeah, I'd have, I'd be happy to. So when we first met almost a year ago, I think, and uh I was really jumping between them because I uh really wanted to leave nothing out. It was kind of like playing with certain toys and you feel bad about the ones on the shelf.

Right.

So uh, but on my shelf, it's just a bunch of language books and if I've got one in my hands, there's 10 more of different languages that I want to get to next. So it was really for that reason. I just was interested in too many things at once and wasn't very good about goal setting.

Right.

It's uh always right there in my face that I should be focusing on Chinese. And if I get tempted by Korean or Russian or any of the other languages I hear around uh here if you can believe it. Uh, I tend to lose sight of the big picture. But uh being here has helped me focus more. I'd say it's changed in that way. I'm focused more on Chinese.

Yeah.

In in Fukuoka, which is amazing. I thought it's incredible. But I realized that it takes an intense amount of vocabulary learning, which is something I never used to focus on, and a lot of commitment to one language at a time, which is also something I hadn't done. So those two things are pretty new, the vocabulary and the focus on one. Those are both new for me.

Um, there's still some noise going on. Sorry, Kris. It's uh, it it I I know people are going to be a little bit annoyed with it's it's like, you know, that static you get if you're messing with your microphone.

Oh, I promise I'm not.

Okay, yeah, it's probably it's it's must be a technical problem then. Um, all right, we'll have to, we'll have to make do.

Hmm.

Okay, and so you you you got to China. Um, tell us the story of how you got to China. You know, Robin's story is also very interesting and I can only recommend people listening to the the podcast I did with him, which was episodes 9 and 10. And we talked for hours and hours and that's why I had to split it into two episodes, but his story is truly fascinating. You know, it's it's very interesting. But how did you get to China and, you know, uh, yeah, how did you get to China? I'm sure a lot of language learners are looking into possibilities of how to uh relocate.

Well, let me encourage anyone who wants to come to China, um, especially for language related things to come. Uh, you're always going to be welcome here. I mean, I've never met people more welcoming. Of course, I haven't, I haven't lived for a long period of time in another country before. But uh, I've really never encountered what I thought would be more or less hostile based on how Americans act normally towards foreigners that can't speak their language.

Right.

I thought they would be relatively uh hostile, but by no fault of theirs. But really, it's an amazing place to be, an amazing place to live. Uh, I would say if you speak English, you can probably, I'd say definitely get an English language related job if you don't have any skills that you are trying to find a job for in China. You can find an English language related job, even if you have an accent of some kind. Uh, I've, I've known and known of people from Africa, people from Eastern Europe, uh, people from South America, Australia with not your typical accent for an English teacher, coming and being perfectly happy in an English teaching job here in China, which is what I'm doing here.

Cool. But how did you, how did you decide to go to China in the first place?

Oh, yeah. Well, last fall, which I guess is more than a year ago, uh I I had set my sights on the on Prague. I thought, wow, the Czech Republic, what a perfect place to go and try and find an English teaching job to do a little gap year after college and find myself and all the rest of the things that people try to do when they travel for the first time.

Right.

But uh But I ended up with a list of a few different places that did not include Prague. I had Japan, uh Korea, Shanghai, Beijing and Taiwan. And I almost went to Taiwan.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Essentially what I did was um I had a year of experience teaching various languages, most of all English, in my home town. And I used that year of experience, which is like the minimum of what they want normally, and a certification that I acquired online. Uh, it didn't take much time. Um, and just sent my resume all over. There were, I think 42 different places that I sent it to. Well, with all seriousness, I I really didn't want to go to the places I sent them to. I didn't waste anyone's time. Uh a good percentage, a pretty hefty percentage responded one way or the other. And uh I was able to choose basically which place I wanted to go and focus my energy on the interview. And I ended up in Beijing for a number of reasons. Uh, one of them being it was near places I wanted to visit like Japan and Korea. And I knew I probably couldn't learn Chinese alone. So I thought it would be really great to to have the people around me helping and uh involved.

Cool. And um when you did you have any preparation at home in terms of Chinese or did you just say, you know, I'm going to I'm going to cross that bridge when I get there and look into how to learn it or did you prepare in any way?

Wow, most of it was the latter, I got to say. But I I did a little bit with the, you know, the Roman alphabet version of the language. I didn't really learn any vocabulary or anything like that, but trying to pronounce words. I wanted that to be over by the time I came. And that was pretty much over by the time I came. Um, people will tell you they've never mastered the tones if they're not a native speaker. You know, they can try for 60 years and still find their tones are lacking.

Right.

But uh I don't I don't really believe that actually. I think you can do it. Um, I certainly haven't.

Right.

Uh, but yeah, I didn't prepare too much actually, and uh I'm starting to reap the not the benefits, but the disadvantages of not preparing before I came. Um, just because there's the learning material here, there's not always um a lot of it available. Unless you go to certain bookstores and that sort of thing. More or less, I'd say I'm doing most of the preparing after the fact.

Yeah. That wouldn't be preparing, would it?

No, it's like catching up.

Yeah. So is this and and this is why you're sort of giving it an extra, let's say, an extra effort now in the here in the end of the year because you felt like, you know, I didn't really do enough during the year.

Well, yes and no. I mean, I didn't prepare much before I arrived, but I arrived in July, and since then I've been studying pretty hard. Um, not nearly as hard as people who've inspired me like Robin, for example. Uh, not to mention him again, but it really he really inspired me and and hearing his story kind of changed my outlook on a few things with Chinese. One of them was I'm just going to take it really seriously. So since about October, maybe the end of September, uh I set the goal to learn 800 characters, recognition and writing them given the pronunciation and the meaning. I can write them and recognize them as well. Uh by Christmas Day. So today I'm at 714, but who's counting? And I'm on track to finish. Christmas is uh not too far away at this point. So I I think I'm going to make it. And when I do, I'm going to be I'm going to be sharing how I did it on my blog uh as well, which you can find by searching language Kris Huff, you can find it that way very easy.

Sweet. And are you you're you're celebrating Christmas in China then?

Yep, I'll be celebrating Christmas with the saxophone toting Santa Claus that adorns many of the shops here, singing uh Chinese songs.

That's hilarious. That's like a morphing of several several different cultures and um, nice times.

You wouldn't you wouldn't believe a lot of the Western things that think you'd never see and then they end up here. For example, uh the Chinese population loves the Transformers movies.

Oh, really?

Very popular here. And that was something I never thought. I mean, of all the things to to make it to China, it's amazing.

Yeah. Well, that's really cool. What are some of the what are some of the surprises that you've had coming into China? You know, you must have had a lot of ideas in your head on how it would be to live in China. What are some of the myths that that you've sort of confirmed and that you've sort of totally denied and and and seen end up the other way instead of?

Well, I had heard that if you are a foreigner in China, you will have your picture taken many times. Particularly if you're tall. So if you're above like 170 centimeters or so, you're probably going to have your picture taken because people want to pose with a foreigner and all of this. And I thought that was just like rubbish, you know. I thought, wow, this is such a patronizing thing to say. You know, China is a proud culture, they don't need to take a photo with a foreign person to prove anything. I thought it was very weird and patriarchal and false.

Right.

And then and then on three or four different occasions, it's happened. And I don't think it's anything I did to merit such attention. But I just think it might be the way that we take a photo in front of the Statue of Liberty or a photo in front of, you know, some landmark somewhere. I think it's just a part of the traveling experience for them. So if someone's in China is taking a picture with you and and like laughing and enjoying it, probably they aren't too interested in you. They they probably just want to show off the picture as part of their travels. Like look at this exotic person that I saw when I was traveling. They're probably not in their hometown, you know.

Tall. Godzilla person.

Right, exactly. This tall, lanky, a little bit overweight gentleman.

Yeah. Who claims to not have done anything to to merit this attention, but it's probably making a fool out of himself everywhere.

Right, thinking that it's all him. Like, oh, of course, you can take a picture.

You want an autograph too?

Yeah.

But well, that's how we are, I suppose, vanity. But it's it's nice. Any other sort of myths that maybe you've confirmed or

Uh, yeah, actually, for some reason, people spread a rumor around that uh Chinese grammar is really, really easy. And I have a Chinese grammar book here beside me and it's not very small. Uh, I would say Chinese grammar doesn't have as many things to memorize like declension tables like Czech or Finish or Russian or something like that. That we're used to calling that's that's what the grammar is. It's remembering endings or remembering verb aspects or something difficult, it's it is difficult. But Chinese has unique challenges even in the grammar that make it still quite difficult, I would say.

Right.

That's been surprising. I thought it was just going to be, you know, 1, 2, 3, I want pie. I can I can speak Chinese.

Right.

But uh it's not that way at all. I'm I'm learning more every day how ignorant that is.

Right. I guess even some people struggle with the grammar of Esperanto, which is about as simple as it can be, so this just shows you that grammar is a sort of a concept and of course you're gonna have harder grammars, but you know.

Yeah, you know, people I people love to hate on grammar. I don't know why I love it. I think it's fascinating.

Yeah, tell me about that. You used to, you used to really enjoy that. I remember we talked about that a lot and I said I detested it and you said, oh, I love doing it. Where did that come from?

It's still true uh to a degree. But uh it's not too useful. Like cuz now that I've come here and changed my goals and hopefully grown over the past nine or 10 months. Uh my my focus is shifted. So I still enjoy grammar, but not everything I do in language learning now is because I want to enjoy myself, you know. Uh, I've got specific goals now that I want to meet. And if I want to meet goals of speaking Chinese or speaking enough Korean to travel there soon or something like this, I have to have words. You know, and you can't put you can't put the vocabulary or you can't put grammar on a flash card easily.

No.

But you can put the vocabulary and use it right away and if grammar is not great, at least you can get to the train station and find your way home, you know.

Yeah, make it. Yeah.

It's very different. Yeah, exactly. Making mistake, not an issue. In fact, it's probably good for you. Uh as our friend Benny has taught us many times. You you want to make a goal of make mistakes as often as you can because those are when you learn something new.

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, it's.

Yeah, totally.

Well, that's that's really cool. And what are your plans for the New Year? Any spectacular goals or

Well, now I have to ask you which New Year.

Oh, right. The Chinese one or the Well, I was thinking about the Western one, which is coming up in about two weeks time.

Yeah, the Western one, actually, this is important. Uh, good question. I I think for the New Year, I've got a a resolution for the first time.

Oh, yeah?

And uh yeah, and I think it is going to be this year, 2015, I will put my headphones in a drawer and not touch them again until 2016. New Year's 2015 will be the year where I put my headphones in a drawer and lock it and don't touch them again until 2016. And the reason is, I have colleagues and I have friends and people that I've encountered who did not learn Chinese the entire time they were here. And they maybe they stayed here for five years. And there's one gentleman who's a businessman who'd been in Chinese or in China for 32 years and he still could not speak Chinese.

Wow.

And the only reason that could possibly be is that he did not speak to Chinese people.

Right.

In Chinese. He didn't try. And the times that I don't try are the times when I'm listening to music or listening to your podcast or listening to something and I've got my headset, my headphones are in my ears, blocking me from this world of people that I could be communicating with, befriending even. I could be making some relationships. And most importantly, for my goals here, learning some Chinese and becoming a better speaker. So I'm not speaking when I'm listening to music and I'm not listening either.

Right. Yeah, you're.

I'm wasting my time.

I think that's a brilliant one actually. And I think a lot of people could could could do with that. You know, sometimes I I have headphones in and this obviously, you know, when you I live in Denmark and this Danish people around is limited as to how much language practice and enjoyment I can get out of that. But sometimes I just wear headphones to block people out because they're talking about, you know, what uh, I don't know, Strictly Come Dancing or some stupid TV show on Big Brother or something. I just want to block the world out, you know. At that point, but and at another point, I sometimes I I don't do it and I I see some people just, they just every single day they just wear those headphones and they have it on like, you know, Slayer or something. Like really loud heavy metal or something. I don't even know what that is. And it's like, it's so loud that when I hear my music, which is, you know, not to be too civilized or anything, but it's quite nice music. It's not noise. Uh I can hear, I I can't hear my own music for theirs. Then I know that they're absolutely not going to do anything in life, pretty much, you know. So I I think it's a good now your headphones are not.

Now your headphones.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, they couldn't even, you know, if there was a if there was a an aerial attack on Denmark, they wouldn't be able to hear the sirens because it's so loud. And they just, they just destroy their ears. I mean, that's one point, right? They just destroy their ears. They're going to get uh bad hearing and they're going to or maybe even lose it. And I just think that it's stupid.

Yes.

He got to a great, great level, but I think that was more due to his, you know, he had a job and he had, he he had a a social life that way. But some people might not be as fortunate. So I think, you know, I think this is quite a good resolution. I was expecting something uh, you know, like, oh, I'm going to do 2,000 characters or something or

Something flippant.

Finish Assimil with ease or something. No, that's cool. That's cool.

What what one more word on that. I I found personally, even if you're not in another country, uh, which many of us aren't. And you're still you still have language learning goals. I found that when I have my headphones in, almost always, it is idle time. It's not time I'm spending working hard on something. Almost always. Like you can obviously have music playing in the background if you're doing your flash card, doing memorized, whatever. You can have music playing and put your headphone. But for my own personal goals, I wasn't meeting them if I had my headphones in. So I'm just killing them. I'm killing them in next next year.

That's perfect. And obviously not going to buy any more Michel Thomas and Pimsleur, I suppose.

Or just listen to them on the loud speakers.

Right. Carry your laptop around with you on the loud speakers.

Like a boom box on my shoulder.

Yeah, exactly. I was thinking exactly that. Yeah. No, I I think that if you're in the country and there's so much opportunity for input, I don't think the audio courses are of such high value as if it like, for instance, where I live, it's very hard to find Russian speakers, for instance. Then I think the value of audio courses goes up quite quite a lot. Um, of course, they're always helpful, but I think if you're in the country then I you should probably at home focus on something like vocabulary that you can't just pick up in the street, you know. Of course, you can sort of, I guess you can deduce it if you know all the other words around a word or all the other characters around a character. Or maybe you can't. Can you?

You I can't.

Okay. That's good.

There there's there's a little something I mentioned in the Q&A section of my Toki Pona talk in Berlin last year or this year that I gave. And I still haven't tried it yet, but I want to mention it again just because it's been a while. And anyone listening to this, I hope you can understand what I'm saying. So in Toki Pona, you have the way of making compound words, and it's based on these 120 or so little blocks, little building blocks. And you can make immense structures with them.

It's a very interesting approach anyway. I just as you know, I just learned Toki Pona last week. And um the approach of learning a minimal amount of words to describe the world around you is definitely uh yeah, I'm just gonna stay with interesting. Um, and I think one of the approaches that I really like about speaking fast is sort of a hybrid between Benny Lewis and Moses McCormick where Benny Benny's like, you know, trying to sort of He's just basically, if you know one word in the language, go and say it to someone. And Moses is like, okay, if you go out and speak to a foreigner in that language, they're going to ask you some questions. So we're going to teach you the answers and the questions first. So you should have a base to build on.

Yeah.

And I think I'm going to take it a step further with the the frequency tables where if you learn 500, the 500 most common words in a language, you have, what was it, 75% of written in the language? Obviously, it varies from language to language, but I think it was something like, you know, 500 words that counted for 80% of the written and normal, which is completely ridiculous when you think about it. But of course, it's not much use if you don't understand the last percentages because it it it can be a bit misleading to think, oh, I understand 80% of the words. The problem is that the words that you don't understand are usually the most important for the sentence. Like that will be the nouns or, you know, somebody would say, there is a, I don't know, a plane or something, you know.

Or action verbs. Like he blanked me and you don't know what it is.

Exactly. So and and you can't deduce those from from the meaning, but

Right.

Whether or not we can can sort of do it with real languages, the whole deconstruction. First of all, I think it would be an amazing task to do. Like I think it'll be I think it'll probably be a PhD worthy in in sort of linguistics, because you have to do so many considerations. And it's part of why Toki Pona is so impressive, I feel like, is that how do you limit yourself that much? And how do you figure out how to limit yourself?

Right.

I guess you can use Toki Pona as an inspiration and try and translate try and use those 120 words and see what how far that gets you. Uh but then again, I guess the problem is that every single Toki Pona word has like, what, a handful of meanings.

Yeah, so many. Yeah, so many. And different grammatical uh uh places too.

Yeah, they can be anything.

Yeah, I think I think if you

Well, I I see some some problems. Oh, go ahead.

Well, I I see some some problems. Oh, go ahead.

Oh, yeah, I was just going to round it up by saying I think that the approach of getting uh the most used words or grammar rules first, I think it's always going to be advantageous. So, for instance, the frequency lists, I only work with frequency lists because I don't think it's necessary to use to to learn a word early in the early in this in an early stage that you might never use in, you know, I don't know, hundreds of hours of speaking whereas then you don't know the word for house or something, you know. It's like a word you know all the time. And I or pronouns and stuff. So I would I would say if you could do some kind of a a package, a bit like what Moses is doing, he has that FLR method. I haven't actually had a chance to look take a closer look at it yet, but, you know, if you could package a foreign language into into that.

It's amazing. It really is amazing. Yeah. There there's a big problem with the approach I think, and it's that it doesn't help you become a good listener at all. And unless you find someone extremely patient that will explain every three or four words using the words you know, uh you're going to probably have some trouble. I mean, if you if your goal is to go to a country for three days and use, you know, just ask yes or no questions and ask how to get places. You don't really need that. It's like a philosophical little jaunt. You don't really need it at all. So I think those two are the main the main issues with the approach, but it's still interesting. I'd like to try it one day anyway.

Yeah, just trying to sort of build it build that package, the the intro package.

Yeah.

That could be interesting. But even even though I, you know, I just want to wrap up Toki Pona as well because I just I just did it last week. So it's it's perfect. You did the talk in Berlin, which was incredible, you know. Um, I I I watched it I didn't watch so much of it because I didn't want to I didn't want to learn too much ahead of the marathon that I was attending. I thought that would be cheating. So I only kind of just briefly looked at it and um and it was quite impressive. I was trying to get to the actual talk at on the day and I couldn't get in through the door because there were so many people in that small classroom and of course, it was is is perceived as as quite a large success, so, you know, congratulations on on that. It's it was definitely the talk of the gathering, I feel like.

Wow, thanks very much. That's that's very flattering. Thank you very much. I I'm I'm really glad that you didn't decide to cheat because everyone that was in there watching my talk, they all walked out speaking fluent Toki Pona. So I'm very

Right.

Right. It's not true at all.

But yeah, no. They definitely didn't know all of the vocabulary, but of course that doesn't take long.

It's it's it's a pretty expansive list.

Right. No. It's it's a nice list. But I it's nice that you like I just wrote on the blog recently. It's it's just it makes you think and it it was really interesting to sort of every time I tried to say something in Toki Pona on the first day, I was trying to say, okay, I have this English phrase in my head like in my opinion or I don't know, uh I would like to do this or something. And then, you know, I was trying to find the corresponding Toki Pona the translation for that sentence or those words uniquely. And I I'm pretty good with memorizing an a limited amount of vocabulary, particularly when it's not Russian.

Right.

But you can't translate a sentence by sentence or you can sometimes if you're lucky, but then it usually sounds bad as well.

Right. Yeah, that I've had the exact same experience with Chinese, uh because I realized even in talking to people that are learning English as part of my work here, that there's so much grammar in English that makes a sentence good or bad English, that isn't necessary at all to convey the meaning.

Right.

Like, you know, a Chinese a Chinese native will speak English and say, how different, like as a question. Or they'll say, is no. And I know exactly what they're saying. And it's hard for me to even, you know, correct them, like obviously it's my job and I do it.

Right.

But I I don't feel the really like a need to correct them because there was no problem. We communicated. There was no problem. And it's all the the grammar is such a big part of the language that's not always necessary for conveying the meaning. But that's what you're talking about where I think the sentence translation, if you try and do that, the grammar is all wrong and strange and foreign. But you can still put the words in order and it's all it might work, but it's just not grammatical. That's why I think there's some problems with translating like that.

Yeah, and you're also it also requires a a lot higher ability in the target language. You know, if you if you want to say, oh, yeah, it would be my utmost pleasure to accomplish this task for you. You know, that's speaking kind of uh in a sort of a fancy way. But if you if you think about it and and try to wear the Toki Pona glasses and you like you just distill that into the basic elements and then you translate it, then you try and say it. And then suddenly you realize that you don't need a lot of fancy vocabulary. You just need the basics. And you are suddenly you're speaking.

Yeah. Yeah.

I know a lot of people do that as well. And I think maybe not listening while you're doing it.

Right.

Yeah, I'm pretty good at both, but um Okay. And then I'm like, oh, fuck, I don't know what that word is. And it's like, there's this one word I'm missing. Uh and it shouldn't collapse the whole conversation, but it kind of does.

Yeah. Yeah.

So if you could kind of make your sentence simpler, then I think that's a big win. So I'm very surprised at the usage of Toki Pona, I must say. I was very skeptical. You probably remember me from

Yeah, you do.

Yeah. But um through a lot of random coincidences, I I have now managed to take it on and I would say, I wouldn't learn it for speaking it or writing it or communicating with it, but just for realizing how other languages work. I think it's quite a priceless experience. Uh to be honest. I don't know if you have any any less remarks on Toki Pona.

Yeah, I do. I I'd love to share with you something about Toki Pona that makes me uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Yeah. It betrays my ignorance about certain stuff. Most things, probably. For instance, there are so many words I know in my native language that I have a vague association, kind of idea about what they are. For I'll use an example, betray my ignorance about cars and how they work.

Uh huh.

So I know the word carburetor. I know the word piston. I know the word antifreeze and all of these things. But imagine if I tried to act like I knew what I was talking about in Toki Pona. There's no chance. No chance. I could pretend and use some little words in English and everyone would think, wow, he knows about cars. Ha ha. And I can kind of wipe the sweat off my forehead and get away with it. But in Toki Pona, there's zero chance. I don't even know where to start because I don't know what they actually are.

Right. Or what they mean.

Very interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I I guess one one important thing to say about Toki Pona as well for those people who don't know it at all is that it's not a perfect language and it's not, you know, it's not scientific in any way. It's it's just it was just a brainchild of, you know, a person from Canada and at the end of the day, you can't really make it, I I I hesitate to make it sort of a, you know, a holy text or anything, you know, a way to a way to discover the meaning of life, even though that is what some of them like to uh like to call it. And I appreciate it if you're making the language that it can be a journey of self-realization, but I think for the most of us, it's just, you know, a little fun thing and if it helps in any way, which I think it does, then I think it's worth doing because it doesn't take any time. And of course, you're free to write it on your name card at the next conference.

Yeah.

So you can say TP as well.

Yeah.

It's hard to talk in though. I feel.

That's true. Oh, even harder to listen.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that's the problem, I think.

Very difficult. Oh, man. I was so grateful that uh my my friend Yopp Kief who's the the other voice answering the questions for me in the presentation video. Uh, he is, I think, just a remarkable language learner to start with. But his Toki Pona, I mean, he can listen and and and speak like I've never seen. Of course, there aren't very many opportunities to listen to Toki Pona or speak it. But wow, he seemed not to have any any trouble at all.

Yeah.

Uh I I think there's a certain level you can reach, but with Toki Pona I think that at the next conference, which I will be happy to announce that I'm attending.

Woo.

Uh if anyone has Toki Pona on their name card at that conference, I may not look too long in your direction. Hoping to you. Take your time with me is what I'll say. Take your time.

Right. Be patient. Be patient. Yeah, me as well. I would say just because I learned it last year. I it's really hard to use in practice because it all sounds the same. The syllable structure is the same. It's hard to make out the different words. And then you have to, of course, modify every word and the modifier comes after the head, so it's like It's hard to follow.

Yeah, I'd love to.

It'd be fun if you when you when you get back to a more stable connection where we can actually show video as well. Then go back to do uh do sort of a weekly show, but yeah, there's always so much to talk about and I think maybe it'll be interesting for people to look at the old uh language hours. I think I'm going to public I'm going to put them out on the blog, I think. And then people can watch them because also an interesting point about this whole language learning experience or the journey is that we change our minds all the time. Whenever we learn something new, whenever we see something new, try something new, read, even just hearing something new. And I think if you go back to I haven't done it yet, but I imagine if we go back to some of those recordings we did, when you were still living in America, and I was just getting started. I think that they might be very different from what we've talked about today and also what what our verdicts are really and I mean, we still say Benny Lewis all the time. I guess that's a chronic failure.

Yeah, we do.

Not at all. I mean,

Not at all. I mean, I I've been inspired by him and so many others. I'm happy to mention them every time, you know. I could talk about each of them for an hour each, you know.

Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. But but Kris, thank you so much for for coming on. It was nice that you had the time to come on the podcast as well. I've been trying to I think I've been trying to get you on since I started the podcast, to be honest, but because you were traveling and, you know, you were in China on stable network conditions and and everything. And you were so busy in the beginning, too. It was like I couldn't get a Facebook message to you for two weeks or something. And then suddenly I would just get like, oh, yeah, yeah. What what's up, dude?

Yeah. Apologies there. Moving to a country where Facebook isn't as welcomed as other places tends to make it difficult.

Right. We should have sent you some uh other message instead of a Facebook message.

We'll figure it out as we go.

Exactly. Anyway, Kris, any less uh shout outs or

Uh just want to say the conference we've been talking about if you don't know about it, it's uh Polyglot Gathering in Berlin. It happens uh from April 30th to I think May 5th each year. So far, it's been happening. This will be the second annual coming up in 2015. If you're hearing this, you are welcome to come. You do not need to speak many languages. We will be happy to have you there to learn as much as you can along with us. We'll be happy to see your face there and get to know you. And it's just a great time for anyone who loves languages, uh anyone who wants to hear more about learning them and hear from people who love them just like you do. Please come. You're welcome to. You can sign up there at polyglotberlin.com and come and hang out with me and Kris anytime.

Yeah, definitely. And uh you're more than welcome to buy us a beer in the uh rooftop bar, which is a nice place to hang out.

I highly recommend that, by the way.

Awesome, Kris. Well, have a good uh Western New Year and a Christmas and uh a good Chinese New Year. And that's a few months from now, but but still, uh you know, have a have a good time and uh we'll uh we'll be in touch.

I wish you the same. What a pleasure to talk to you again.

Thank you and likewise. Bye.