Conor Clyne: From monoglot to hyperpolyglot

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.

Hello guys and welcome to the actual fluency podcast. I'm bringing you another episode. This is episode 34 and I'm happy once again to be here with you on this very fine day. Today we're talking to the language star, Conor Klein, who like another Irish polyglot, or perhaps the Irish polyglot, Benny Lewis, left high school with speaking no languages, well, English, of course, and then now, you know, some years later, he speaks over 10 languages and moving on to rapidly approaching 12 and 13.

And Conor and I talk a lot about traveling, learning languages, what's his favorite methods and kind of techniques to learn languages have been and the experiences he's acquired learning all these languages over the years. So that's super exciting but before we get into today's show, I just want to say say thank you, you guys for, you know, listening to the show, but also for those people to those people who sent me messages and emails thanking me for the show. It really means a lot to me.

Some people actually took the time to write reviews on iTunes. And you know, I'm so kind of grateful for that that I'm actually going to read them here and, you know, I just want to say thank you. And if you want to leave a review on iTunes, I would greatly appreciate it. It's actualfluency.com/itunes will direct you to the iTunes page. And you do need to have a kind of an iTunes user to do it, so that's why I'm extra thankful for these people taking extra time out of their day to to leave a review, but Wolf of the North says, "The podcast is amazing overall. Kris, the host brings tons of great guests, he has interesting leading questions, and brings tons of great language learning tips too. I highly recommend it to all language learners and be sure to look through the episode list for a nice tour of famous polyglots, because Kris has interviewed almost all of them."

Thank you so much Wolf of the North. And you're totally right about the list, you know, there's 34th episode. So if you're kind of new to the podcast, you can go back through the list and you'll probably find some familiar names. And if you didn't, I still recommend you to go back and listen to them because, you know, they have a lot of great stuff to bring. I mean, you don't need to be Benny Lewis to have great wisdom about language learning, so definitely go back and listen to that.

And Dato Green says, "Actual Fluency is a great podcast for language learners from any background. Kris Broholm loves language learning and dedicates himself to hearing the stories of learners from all kinds of backgrounds. There's always something interesting and I love his enthusiasm as a host." You know Dato, I'm so so happy about that, you definitely made my day. And those two reviews were two five-star reviews from iTunes. And uh you know, I'm I'm so happy about these reviews that I'm actually gonna give two italki vouchers to these people. So Wolf of the North and Dato Green, if you send me your email address by the contact page on actual fluency, I'll send you a free voucher for a free language learning lesson on italki. And of course that's provided by italki, so if you are looking for a place to find a tutor, professional or just an informal tutor, I recommend that you go to italki.com. That's italki.com.

Thank you so much and me and Conor had so much fun and so much to talk about that I had to split this episode into two parts. So this week you're gonna hear part one, episode 34, and then next Friday you're gonna hear the next part, which is part 35. So I hope you enjoy this interview with the language star.

Today's guest, Conor Klein, is the founder of the popular language learning vlog, languagestar.com, and since he's left school, he's learned over 10 languages independently. Conor, thank you so much for coming on to the show and how are things today?

And later on, I I moved, I took the opportunity to go on Erasmus when I was at university. I was studying law and then I had the chance to go to France. And I couldn't even say anything basically when I arrived the first day. I had to like point and grant when I wanted a sandwich. I was that desperate. And so I had a very difficult experience in the beginning, of course, when I arrived, I couldn't communicate with anybody for several months basically.

But eventually, I started to overcome these initial difficulties and having gotten my French to a reasonably good level, I started I discovered actually Michel Thomas when I got back to do my final year and in between preparing for my exams, I started to learn a little bit of Italian and Spanish. I was quite inspired and very motivated by the simple course and the initial progress I was able to make after after listening to his recordings, which the reason I was actually attracted to them in the beginning was because the back of the box said no drills, no homework, and no memorization. So for me that sounded perfect because throughout my entire school school days, I've been forced to try to memorize things and wrote, you know, learning reciting things wrote and doing lots of homework and then none of it seemed to be particularly effective for me.

Later on, I got the opportunity to study in a few different countries as part of my extended university studies. So I also started learning languages like Dutch cuz I lived in the Netherlands, and Italian. I got a good opportunity to improve that to fluency because I also lived in Italy for a year. I got to study there and then later on I moved to the US and I had the good fortune to to live actually right beside a Latin American neighborhood in Washington D.C. So there I got the opportunity to to speak in in Spanish every day. And also to travel a little bit around Latin America. So I went to Brazil, so I was exposed to Portuguese for the first time. And everything kind of snowballed from that. From initially not having any success at all in learning languages and being quite turned off by the by the whole experience at school.

Then later on I came back after my university, I returned to Europe and I started working in in Brussels which because the European Union's institutions are based there. There were people from all over Europe and of course all around the world but particularly from the different member states and I got the opportunity and to practice all the languages I had been learning quite regularly amongst the friends I made and also I was exposed to new ones. And that gave also inspired me to travel an awful lot within Europe. I really wanted to go in the beginning. I just wanted to go to every single member state, because I had friends and colleagues from each of them or most of them. And I thought it would be great to at least go once to each of their their countries and once, I guess I had gone to all the member states which are 28 today, I decided, well, why not finish off and kind of see every country that I can within within Europe at least and then we'll see afterwards.

But not in a way that I thought I wanted to tick off a list. I don't say, okay, I gotta go and see them all just once and then very superficially just visit for, you know, a day or something. I whenever I have the opportunity, I try to see something new. That could be also a new region within within Europe primarily or somewhere else in the world. And to try and eventually, I will get through all of them, I guess, if I live long enough.

So yeah, so that's kinda my my background and then with with respect to the to the blog, I think I have a and the and the YouTube channel, I have a similar motivation as as I believe you do which is that I also was inspire very impressed by the videos that I saw from other polyglots and language enthusiasts on YouTube in the last four or five years, people like Richard Simcott and Luca Lampariello and and and Benny Lewis and there are so many out there. Steve Kaufmann. And I wanted to do something to contribute to this community because I'd gotten so much out of their videos and their blogs and, you know, information that they were providing free for people who are interested in learning languages.

And the genesis began when I went to the first Polyglot Conference in Budapest in 2013. And there I actually got to meet so many of these great polyglots in person at the conference and then after the conference, I decided, well, I will start doing my own website and YouTube channel. So that's kinda yeah, where it gets us to today. Yeah, in terms of language learning.

And I had I remember sitting on the plane just before I flew back to to Ireland where I had to finish my final year of undergraduate studies that I I promised myself I would come and I would live for one year in Italy. Soon, sometime. So then when I got back, I thought, well, the first thing I'm gonna have to do now that I speak okay French is that I've got to start learning Italian. If I really wanna go there at some stage and live.

And that's when I went to my local bookstore and I found Michel Thomas and yeah, I really it changed the way that I approach languages. It was something, I guess, I'd been looking for because I had such an unsuccessful experience with learning languages in school and this kind of traditional learn grammar rules, learn, you know, learn vocabulary rote and then regurgitate it and this had been, of course, a complete failure for me as a method. So the fact that this was proposed an alternative, really got me super interested in it.

And then after I did the Italian, I also started I mean he didn't have so many languages available. I think Spanish was the next one I looked at. And then I also took his German. Basically, I consumed as many of them as I could at the time. And it's only later that I was able to make use of them, like a couple of years later when I learned Spanish and German.

So, definitely it was a turning point. I also then went and I lived in the Netherlands and and Italy for I actually got to live in Italy just two years later. So that that goal had been achieved. So you gotta change and have new ambitions for yourself after that. But that one I actually got to do very quickly and it was definitely, I think for me, it was the best year I had had up to that point. Really my one year in Italy, so it was definitely worth investing the time and having started learning Italian. And it was definitely a realization of a of a personal goal for me, a dream really. So that didn't disappoint at all.

And then that was just, I guess, as you say, a turning point and then things continued. And yeah, afterwards I I had the great exposure to Spanish in in Washington D.C. when I lived there. And also, I started learning some Russian. I had a semester in university. My the reason I chose Russian is that I was interested in the former Soviet Union as I was studying international relations in in Washington D.C. And that was a region of the world that particularly interested me, so I wanted to at least start learning the language with no pressure to reach a certain level. It was only later that I I now started to focus on that seriously and trying to get it as fluent as possible. Yeah.

Other languages like Russian, I'd never visited a Russian-speaking country when I took the semester. And then I studied the the region. It was only quite a couple of years later that I that I traveled to Russia for the first time. So there it was the other way around.

And then I had a Brazilian friend for example at when I was in university in in Italy and in America, he invited me to spend New Year's Eve in Rio de Janeiro. And so I went there and of course, if you go especially for New Year's Eve to to Rio then, yeah, I was completely enamored of the country. So I really wanted to try and learn Portuguese afterwards. It really, yeah, it was really cool.

So those are kind of personal, I guess, intimate experiences you have, the relationships with people, traveling to the country. Really inspired me to want to learn the languages because they're also an element of the culture of the place, of the people. And not just for communication, but also just to understand also to understand the culture more and to be more involved in it to be more integrated when I travel or live in a in a different country.

So it was never an an ambition to be a polyglot per se. I wasn't, you know, when I was monolingual, I wasn't sitting there saying, I really want to speak, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 languages. This wasn't the the the the mindset I had. I I I really got a lot out of having learned French and Italian and then Spanish in the beginning.

And I remember when I was on my master program, we used to have to pass a proficiency test in one, at minimum of one language. And I had taken French and passed that test. And then I took Italian, even though it wasn't obligatory and taken it. And then I was like, well, I can also try Spanish. Actually I didn't I didn't get through the Spanish, but the the there was one other guy who was also who had lived in different parts of Africa, who was on the course, and he also did the same thing. And there it was just the fact that we spoke three or four different languages at that point.

But things kind of morphed from that when I came back to Europe and I I was exposed to more and more languages. And it's because it becomes so integrated into my daily life through the relationships I have with friends, with colleagues and where I travel to, especially in Europe because it's so linguistically diverse on a very small geographical area. That you end up learning more and more as as you get as you get older. And you get inspired by, you know, new new experiences to want to learn different different languages.

So at this stage I've, I guess at some stage I've started learning maybe 12 or 13 languages. And yeah, so we'll see how many I end up learning overall in the future. It's not I've also let languages go or put them in on hold. Because I had an original motivation to learn it. And then that motivation just disappeared. It it it wasn't there anymore. And I was more interested in a different language. So I haven't with Chinese and with Arabic. So for the moment, I haven't tried to yeah, to learn those languages for the last five years, but there was a time where I spent, you know, a couple of months in both of them and I I traveled to parts of the Middle East and I also had a Chinese trainee at my law firm when I was working in in Brussels. And so we used to chat every every every morning a little bit and I would write messages in in Mandarin. But the the traineeship was only three months. So after that I didn't have the same motivation to keep going. So that was that I I haven't I haven't tried to learn any since.

So I've always had that kind of lifestyle in the last seven or eight years that I'm traveling at least three or four times a month. And when you're traveling, okay, you might be in the country and you might be, you know, you might speak the language. So there you're gonna practice it anyways because you're gonna be walking around talking to people, reading stuff in in the in the in the language.

And I find that if you take, for example, you're always on, you're on a plane or you're on a train, you always have time to read something. I mean, you don't need to spend, you know, five hours a day learning languages, that would never be my my style. I think if you spend half an hour, that's that's more than enough to make to make good progress. If it's consistent. So everybody can find half an hour when they're when they're traveling. Because there's a lot of downtime. You might be sitting around waiting for, you know, check-in or whatever or to board a plane and then you just have something handy. I think that's just it's just about making it convenient.

I mean, I always, I wake up in the morning and I have a usually watch the news headlines in my on my iPad and I you can you can just choose the country and the language. It's just about being prepared and having that. I don't think necessarily moving makes it that much more difficult. I mean the only problem is internet connection if you need to speak to someone like have a class. That can be a little bit stressful if you don't have, you know, you know don't have good Wi-Fi connection and unfortunately technology has not come that far where with your with a smartphone that if you're roaming, then it's not practical to set up a class because you know, the connection the connectivity isn't super in most countries still. But I think within a few years that will even be possible. And then, course. Yeah, it won't be it won't be it won't be a big deal big deal at all. If you're if you're traveling to to maintain all these these different language routine.

But if you're you have languages and travel more integrated into your lifestyle, then it becomes second nature that you don't see such a clear defining line between the two, right? So when you go on on holidays, a lot of time, yeah, for me, I'm I'm gonna be somewhere where I'm gonna speak one of the languages. I'm probably gonna meet people. I may go with a friend who speaks another language. I may meet people there who are also traveling who speak a third or fourth language that I that I'm learning, so it's not so hard.

And I always receive messages on my, you know, Facebook or primarily or emails in the different languages every day in any case. So no matter where I'm traveling, I probably have to reply to things in three, four, five, six different languages as a matter of course. So for me, it's not so daunting to to maintain them for that reason.

So every once in a while, I will open up the newspapers from the Netherlands or from, yeah, somewhere like Spain, maybe for Spanish or Argentina and just take a read through it. Maybe watch something online, watch a few YouTube videos, maybe. There's a Spanish YouTube channel that I I watch sometimes for a little bit of humor. The video is about four minutes long every week. Ola Soy German is the name of it. So for that, I can watch maybe once a month I'm gonna look to three or four of his videos, right? So I'm gonna, you know, catch up a little bit more in when having the language back in my head.

So that's basically what I would do. I mean, you could go a little bit further and say, okay, I'm gonna organize one-hour tuition per week in this language just to maintain it because I don't have the exposure. So I I'm actually considering I will do that maybe in in Spanish and Dutch in the next in the next month or two because I don't have so much exposure to those two languages at the moment. But that would be another way of approaching it.

Online tuition is relatively inexpensive. If you go to there are several different websites like italki is a quite a popular one. And there you can find tutors and you can schedule classes whenever suits you. So it's quite convenient. Even if you're traveling, you can sit down in a cafe with Wi-Fi and have your class one hour. Even if you're in Warsaw for the weekend or Bangkok or whatever, you can do your Swahili class with a teacher from East Africa. Everything is possible with the internet, right? So these geographical boundaries borders don't really exist like they used to say 10 years ago.

I'll definitely make some changes to my daily routine and also include maybe reading something in the language just for a few minutes every day or if there's some sort of program or, you know, language learning app or something I'm using to help me with it, I will do a few minutes of that. Hope just just every day, just to do a few minutes. And then these things together over combined every day, don't have to be more than half an hour, 45 minutes, but over a year if you just have consistency, then that builds up to a reasonable amount of time.

And so it's always good to have a a tutor that suits you, one that you can relate to well. It's that you discuss interesting topics, not just that you're learning the nuts and bolts of the language. I think that's also an important element for learning because it will help help maintain your motivation if you have someone interesting to discuss different topics in the language as you go along as you're learning it.

So if you can talk to your tutor about that and learn the kind of the terminology or you know, the vocabulary for that kind of specialist subject, then I mean, that's gonna be infinitely more helpful than than learning how to, I don't know, buy stocks or something, you know, it's something routinely from a phrase book or something. I mean, most of the phrases you see in a phrase book, how often do you use some of those?

But when I first arrived in London, and the girl behind the bar said, would you like place? I was like, what does that sentence even mean? And, you know, that was because and and and you know, I I consider my English to be, you know, relatively high level. So for me to be stumped by somebody in a in a in a pub was kind of not expected. But this vocabulary just wasn't relevant. There would never be a time where it was relevant in Denmark for me to know what this specific type of fish was called. And I don't even know the name in Danish. So that just illustrates the example even more, right?

I don't necessarily think it declines in the sense of being an English speaker, but if, for example, there's specialized vocabulary that I'm only using in a foreign language that's a language other than English, then perhaps that's the case because you just don't use the words on a daily basis like you would if you're only working in English, for example. And then it becomes a little bit harder to maintain it because your your your specialist knowledge has been spread over, you know, five or six different languages. So maybe they don't come out in English as quickly as they might be if you were just monolingual and using that, you know, all day as your profession. That's what I say that's what I would see the the main difference.