Kris Hello guys and welcome to episode 132 of the Actual Fluency podcast. Today I'm joined by my friend Josh Cohen when he talks about his experience learning languages and how he got interested in languages at quite an early age, which is interesting for me as I also point out in the recording itself, because most of the people that I have on generally don't have good experiences when they grow up in school or a similar environment. Most people, I think, kind of, you know, they might do okay, but then later on as an adult, they realize what they were missing out on and what they were capable of as well.
So I hope you enjoy enjoy today's episode. There's a little bit more back to the basics of the podcast, the language learning stories of people. And as I've said many times, if you have an interesting language learning story, or if you've been learning a lot of languages yourself or unusual language learning story also, do be in touch, send an email, kris@actualfluency.com and I'd love to invite you to be on the show as well.
Also, a quick note, today's episode is still sponsored by Glossika. The folks over there have really been nice and supportive of my podcast and website for the last few years, so I'm really grateful for them. They offer audio courses in more than 50 languages. Uses spaced repetition and it's a mixture of sentences that you can learn by context and it grades you on how well you're doing. So it's a progressive system as well, and it uses an algorithm to see where what kind of content it should be showing you. So give it a try. try.glossika.com. That's spelled G L O S S I K A. That's try.glossika.com, and they'll get you 1,000 repetitions. And if you like it, it's a small monthly fee. If you don't like it, you know, nothing lost. All right, here's the episode.
Well, Josh, thank you so much for coming on the Actual Fluency Podcast. I'm really excited to talk to you today and hear a little bit more about your language learning background and and present. So, why don't you start by giving the listeners a little introduction to you. How was your background? How did you get into language learning?
Josh Koehn I began learning or became interested in learning languages when I was quite young, being born here in California. I've always been around lots of cultures and different languages spoken by my neighbors and everything. And when I was really little, I, in about, I think it was fourth grade, maybe, I began to take Spanish in school. Um, I went to a private parochial school. And we had a very competent Spanish uh teacher who came in and began giving lessons. And I realized very quickly that I enjoyed it. And seemed to have a knack for imitating and picking up what she was saying and repeating it and not only repeating it, but remembering it and just thoroughly enjoying the classes.
And so that was, I don't know, how old would I have been at that point? Seven years old, eight years old, maybe? Um, and about that same time, somehow, I remember the story of how it actually happened, but I became interested in the country of China. And I began reading, you know, any books I could get my hands on about that, about about the country and the culture and of course, the language immediately stood out to me. And uh one of the first books I read about language or having to do with languages and linguistics was uh one of Mario Pei's books. And uh I don't exactly remember the title of it at this point. I do have it here in my library somewhere, but Anyway, there was a short chapter on there about Chinese. And uh there was no audio. I had no, I had no resources as far as CDs or tapes or anything. Um, but there was pronunciation given on the page and I tried to pronounce it as it was written and just, you know, kept repeating those phrases over to myself and uh the next day, or within the next few days, I went into a Chinese American restaurant to get some food with my family and when I left, I turned to the lady behind the counter and I said uh Dojeh. Dò-jèh Thank you very much. Goodbye. in Cantonese. And she lit up like a Christmas tree. And she started rattling stuff off and I said, "Hey, hey, hey!" This is about it. I think I might have said, you know, "Neih hóu ma?" or something, but And uh I knew right then that I that there was something special there. You know, I'd made a connection and it was an incredibly powerful feeling to to make somebody's day and get put a smile on their face just by saying a few words in a language that I didn't really speak, you know.
Josh Koehn But uh And yeah, and those those were the two languages that I Spanish was first and the first words I, of course, I learned in in a Chinese language were Cantonese, but very quickly, I realized that coming out of mainland China, you know, the majority spoke Mandarin, and that was a lot of what the instruction was in, the the books I began to find, or CDs given to me by friends or whatever, you know. And so I switched to learning Mandarin very, very, you know, basically right away. And uh I think I still have a few of those first CDs that a friend gave me. He he had lived in Hong Kong and various other parts of China and he knew Chinese very well. He was actually from my hometown here. And uh he had given me some of his old learning materials and I started teaching myself Chinese at about eight years old.
Josh Koehn And yeah, it was it was fun.
Josh Koehn Well, I my approach for many years now since then, but especially at that time was I was very focused on speaking from the get-go, even if it's just a few phrases. And so it took me a while before I began to, you know, delve into reading and writing and because I was focused on speaking and getting the tones, you know, getting the tones right in the language and you know, just trying to uh sound as natural and native as possible. And uh so it was a it was a good good beginning at that point, of course.
Kris Mm-hm. And you had some uh audio materials by then to uh to listen to it.
Josh Koehn Oh, yes, very much so. Yeah, I had I had um I was I'm just, well, how should I say it? I'm just young enough that I didn't have recourse to tapes, but it was just when CDs were starting to come out. So, um you know, I was using them and it was uh had a computer. I didn't have a smartphone at that point with all the apps and things we have today, but uh I had some basic introductory courses and I started talking and next time we went into that same restaurant where I first spoke Cantonese, I pulled I I started uh saying some stuff in Mandarin and lit up all over again. You know, it was it was a connection made all over again and it was it was pretty special to be able to realize that.
Kris Mm. So what what kind of places or or yeah, how did you make use of it in in the early days? I I imagine not much Facebook or MySpace pages in uh in in in Mandarin. So did you seek out opportunities to use it all the time or was it mainly, you know, repeating and shadowing the uh the materials you had available?
Josh Koehn In the very beginning, yes, it would have been a lot of that, just using the materials and like I said, I I became very interested in the country itself. And so I, you know, every time I got my hands on a book about China, I'd read it. And uh most of the time, you know, there's vocabulary at some point in the book that and so I'd pick up, you know, phrases or or the odd vocabulary word and next time I'd see somebody, you know, in a restaurant, generally, that's how where it worked at that time, because I didn't I was young enough, I couldn't get around by myself and I didn't have any, I didn't know any, you know, Chinese people as friends really.
Josh Koehn And uh I just, you know, see them in restaurants and things and um yeah, it just I just kept building on on what little I had and and seemed to it seemed to stick, you know.
Kris That's pretty cool. So what what came next? Did you uh, I mean, you're still pretty young at this age, honestly. A lot of the people who come on on here, they either they had some kind of very multilingual upbringing, so they had, you know, several languages in the in the house or they discovered what you discovered at eight. They might have discovered that when they left school. They were very bad in school and and not interested in languages in school, maybe. And then they found it later. So I would say eight is is very young to find that kind of passion. So how what did you do after? Did you choose a a language uh oriented uh future from there on or was it just Chinese for a while? What what went on there?
Josh Koehn Um, for the next few years, it would have just been Spanish and Chinese. Um, you know, I was always interested in, you know, linguistics and I read I read many books about languages and you know, picked up phrase books and different things, but it was I never focused on anything else until, um, going to uh Montreal in what was it? 2010, maybe? And uh So yeah, I I didn't I didn't have any um at that point I didn't really have any plan or goal of what I wanted to do with with these languages. You know, it was just a kid's fascination and since I did go to I I the Spanish that I did study, um I took that for I studied that for seven years in in my private school that I went to, church school.
And uh after that, I didn't uh go on to pursue college or get a degree. I went to work on my family's farm and just helped out where I could. Um we had uh we had some Mexican laborers, some guys working for us. And even as a kid, I found myself taking on the role of interpreter sometimes and using what I knew to communicate between them and you know, the boss, my father, or whoever it was that was in charge of the day's work or what was going on. And uh you know, I I know I made a lot of mistakes, obviously, but uh they seemed to enjoy helping me out and we were able to communicate and get across what needed to be done and you know, it it worked out.
Kris Yeah, and that's the that's the beauty of a language I think. It's not about speaking perfectly or making no mistakes. It's about communicating a message between two people or multiple people. So I think you hit kind of a one of the secrets of language learning, if there is such a thing, early on is you mustn't be afraid of making mistakes, because then you just never speak, you just hold back.
Josh Koehn Yeah, you don't you don't, in my view, at least, you don't you don't ever progress forward. I mean, if you're going to be scared to speak whatever language it is you're trying to learn, you know, what are you doing then? You're not you're not learning the language if you're not going to actually be in some senses, you're not learning the language if you're not going to be speaking it.
Josh Koehn
