Judith Meyer: An Incredible Language Learning Journey

On this episode of the actual fluency podcast, I'm joined by Judith Meyer, who shares her incredible language learning journey with us. We also talk about how to learn languages in general, and at the end of the show, Judith shares a secret for those who are attending Polyglot Berlin.

Doing great, thank you.

Fantastic. Well, first of all, thank you so much for coming on to the show. I know you're very busy with planning the conference. So, thank you for taking the time to to be with me today.

Oh, it's my pleasure.

Great. All right, I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with you because obviously, you're quite a prominent member of the polyglot society, but if people haven't heard about who Judith Meyer is, could you just give a brief introduction to yourself?

Well, um on the forums, you may have seen me as uh Sprachprofi. And uh yeah, I write at learnlangx.com. Basically, I started learning languages at school. I come from a monolingual household. My parents only speak German even to this day, but I was always fascinated with languages. So, I learned four languages at high school and then started self-studying more. And now there are about 12 languages I know at some level or another.

Cool.

I mean, in terms of studies, uh I have a degree in uh Romance Languages and computational linguistics. So, I know a bit of the the background as well, the linguistic part.

Cool.

And uh that's also what I uh what I do as uh my job now. Just to some computational linguistics uh also occasionally developing language materials for companies and yeah, that's about it.

Great, thank you. Um I think I found you via the uh you know, the Skype Me Maybe video uh Benny Lewis did.

Mm-hmm. I was part of that.

Yes, exactly. Uh because um not only did you have to do the um Latin and the Ancient Greek, which was a bit unusual, even compared to some of the Oh, sorry, Modern Greek, um compared to the other languages, but also you were doing it with uh Iverson, of course, the delightful Iverson. Um how did you find that experience being part of this uh kind of I mean, it I would call it a viral hit. I mean, it has, I think, 400,000 views or something. Did you enjoy the experience?

Oh, yeah, it was an interesting experience. I came to it kind of late because uh I'm I'm shy, I must admit. So I was like, "Hmm, get on there in video and sing." I'm not a good singer and so, I I kind of joined late but uh Benny found a found space for me and it's actually perfect because uh I would have done Latin and Greek anyway.

Awesome. I mean, you're you're a better singer than Benny though. Don't tell him that though. Don't tell him I said that.

I think he might have it.

Yeah, oh, there's a chance. Yeah, definitely. Um so yeah, if we um I guess you talked about you learning a lot of languages in school, but where it all began was really at you you had this uh fork in the road at age 12. You you had the option to choose either Latin or uh French, right?

Yes. Well, actually, I started learning languages at at uh the age of 10. I had to to learn English.

Oh yeah.

And then at 12, at 12, they uh the German school system, at least in the area where I grew up, uh has everyone choose between Latin or French and you have to do one or the other. I chose Latin because I thought I might want to learn other languages in the future and then Latin would be helpful for me.

Yes. And uh forgive me for for for getting about Germ uh for English, but I mean, you you're completely native speaker in English and and I'm a I'm a English as secondary uh learner as well. So, it's it's easy to overlook that that's actually a language that we at some point learned. Uh but of course, being from Denmark and Germany, that's part of the high school curriculum for a very early age now.

Yeah, um I don't know how I first got into languages really because as far as I remember, uh I was like creating secret codes or secret alphabet, secret languages, uh I was reading books about, well, it's not linguistics really, popular popular science kind of books about linguistics, like uh covering where languages come from and how future languages might work and uh things like that.

Right.

That's kind of that influenced my decision.

And a little uh thought experiment. Do you think that that you would be different today if you started with French at 12? I say started, but if you picked 12 uh French at your age 12 rather than Latin?

Um, I don't know. I mean, Latin has given me a completely different appreciation for words and uh stylistic devices and and what's going on really because you don't study it like a like uh a natural language, like like a living like a living language. You have a much more introspective view of uh of the whole thing. So, I don't know. I I think I would have still started learning other languages and probably gotten quite good at it too.

Right. And we'll get back into the uh Latin discussion later because I have a a funny story I want to share, but if we move on a bit uh fast forward two years, you you get to Esperanto. And of course, you're a big proponent of Esperanto. I see you're very active in the various Esperanto communities and meetups. Um how did that make a difference? Because I know you you really say that learning Esperanto is probably one of the best things that ever happened to you, but can you can you maybe explain that in a sentence or two why that is?

Well, it's because of the community. Um through Esperanto, I really got to know people from around the world and uh you know, people who are also interested in languages. It was my first exposure to the learn language learning community, to people who are as crazy as I am.

Right.

And it made me feel good about myself and it gave me the courage to to start on other languages and also the support that I needed to start on other languages.

Fantastic. And and do you how important do you think? I know it's a leading question, but how important do you think uh confidence is when you approach language learning?

I think it's it's quite important. Especially when you want to self-study. Obviously, I was very fortunate that at high school, I was able to study four languages, but Latin uh sorry. Esperanto was was the first language that I studied on my own. And before that, I never thought it possible, I never even had the idea that I could be studying a language on my own. But here I found a self-study course, uh you know, receive lessons by email, send answers back and get corrections, it's all for free even. And uh this this way I learned Esperanto and uh it gave me the confidence that I started to think, you know, I could learn any language on my own and that's when I started to study Modern Greek and Mandarin on my own, which are, of course, completely different things, but

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

Yeah. So, it's it it's definitely uh very helpful to know that it's possible to learn a language on your own. You have to make that experience somewhere otherwise you're going to stick to to language lessons.

Right. Yeah. And and of course, that's part of I mean, my motivation to write about my language learning because I'm I'm very much like, you know, Benny where school didn't provide me that much. I mean, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a in a in a bilingual, trilingual country. But the school that just didn't provide me with a lot. So I felt like, well, I can't learn languages. So why do you even try?

Definitely.

So, that brings me on to another point. What is it that drives and motivates you to keep learning? Because you talked about why you wanted to learn Latin at the in the first place and Esperanto. But how do you find that motivation? Because obviously, learning 12 languages is quite a bit of work. Either way or the other. So, so how do you motivate you in in putting more work in and keep going with it?

It's mostly because I have concrete goals with the languages. Like, for Chinese, I hope to have this huge stack of Chinese books that I brought back from China that I want to be reading. So, obviously, I have to work on that.

Sweet.

And,

And and reading Chinese, of course, not the easiest thing you've ever done.

No, but uh it's getting there. I mean, I've been at it for 10 years now. So, I can I can some books.

I'm looking forward to getting into that world of uh Chinese characters.

For other languages, like Indonesian, uh Indonesian is my most recent addition. I started it last year. And for that, it was just a matter of, "What if?" I don't know. I I get this inspiration sometimes and I want to try uh test my limits so to say.

And is it then now that you know it?

Ah, I think it might be, it might be.

Really? That's interesting.

Yeah, it's it's a very easy language.

You've done that before, haven't you? With the um the cultural uh free classes. with another language? Am I remembering?

cultural institute? No. No, just the uh Esperanto free classes but that was like a internet based uh exchange.

Right. Okay. Well, that's I mean, that's that's that's that's great. And the motivation I'm using that very same trick and I may have bitten off more than I can chew. I I decided to set it as a goal to learn Russian before the conference. Um so that's a little over three months. So, uh I need I think I need to work a little bit harder than than usual to uh to achieve that, but having that specific date cannot be stressed enough how much it helps in your daily motivation.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for Indonesian, I had that uh very soon after I joined the class. I found that this cultural institute, uh the Embassy or the cultural institute were also organizing uh a speaking competition for Indonesian. And I always thought a speaking competition is an awesome idea for a foreign language, you know, for foreign language learners. Uh and I wanted to participate in that one. The only problem was that it was only six weeks away.

Now, I I saw that speech. I I saw it on uh I think it was on YouTube or something.

Yeah.

And I just can't believe you did that. You know, how do you I mean, that must take so much confidence to walk up. I mean, obviously, you're you're a skilled language learner, you you learn faster probably than the average person, but after just seven weeks to walk up to people who probably are quite a bit more familiar in the language and and and actually speak about something interesting in within the language or language learning. I mean, that must have taken some some confidence at least.

Yeah, but I I always knew that I wasn't competing on the same level as them. I mean, here were people who had studied Indonesian for 70 years, somewhere married to Indonesian people. So, uh of course, I I wasn't aiming to be as good as them. I wasn't aiming to win the competition. For me, my my goal I had set myself was just to be able to walk on that stage without having to be embarrassed by my level and to be able to to give a speech even if it's, uh you know, not great oratory style, but I you know, give a speech and be able to do it.

Excellent. And do you um do you often use live tutors or uh other people to practice the language when you're going through it?

Uh I use them more as uh as a check or um for practice really. I do most of my study in self-study because that's how I learn best is when I have some quiet time to myself, a good book, maybe a a good uh online course. And then I book a lesson with uh a tutor via italki, you know, online on Skype. And the idea is to to answer any questions that I may have had in the meantime and also just to practice what I learned.

Uh-huh. And you use the Anki or the uh Memrise for vocabulary?

I use Anki a lot, yes. So, I I would also enter the vocabulary or ideally find an existing Anki deck.

Yeah, yeah.

So for this, to help me memorize.

That yeah, I I I find that a lot of people talk to me about creating their own decks. And I think there is some merit to it, but for most languages, there's really no need to reinvent the wheel, right? I mean, there are so many good Anki decks out there that before you start going crazy on creating your own decks and spending 20 hours making a deck and 10 minutes revising it, just check there's already one there.

Yes. I I found that often it's better to uh to trim down existing decks rather than create your own. I mean, you you can say there's a huge existing deck and half of what's there I I don't need to learn, but okay, then just delete that half that you don't want to learn or schedule it for later. You can still use that deck.

Exactly. What do you think um you mentioned uh the Assimil and Teach Yourself. Uh what do you think of the Michel Thomas and Pimsleur series?

Um Michel Thomas is is great. The only problem is that uh I've basically exhausted the language that they have it for.

Oh yeah. Yeah, they only have about 10 or something, right?

Yes. So, yes, that's definitely a course I would use to start. If if this mysterious language has a Michel Thomas course, I would probably use that before the Teach Yourself or before anything. I really like his method.

Yeah, and it's like sentence by sentence by and then even I mean, the first lesson in Russian almost had me want to kill myself. I mean, it was like, "E svini che." And he said that eight times or something. I'm like, "I get it now. I get how to say, 'I'm sorry,' in Russian. Can you just move on?" And I looked at the player and it was like, oh, there's still 22 minutes left of this session. And then you have 40 more lessons. So, I totally agree on that.

Yes, we definitely need to create more Michel Thomas courses.

You know, I really wanted to see what it took to create the Danish Michel Thomas, like the technical aspect. That would be so awesome, wouldn't it?

Mm-hmm.

All right. So, moving on from this specific outline you gave, and I really like it, by the way, it's very similar to my approach. What do you think is the hardest step in language learning? Is it going from knowing nothing about the language to basic fluency, you know, being able to to talk to someone or to maybe watch a basic show on the television? Or is it from being that level, the basic fluency, to becoming master level, you know, expert, native level?

Uh it's definitely going to expert and master level. Especially, of course, for for the exotic languages, but even for European languages, I think we often underestimate how much work goes into it. Because we can basically understand everything at that level. Uh just learn a bit of Spanish and then uh at the higher level, you just tap into this common European vocabulary that you already know.

Right. So, you so for you it would be simpler or easier, being careful to use those words, but to get to fluency, then it would be to get from fluency to C2 or the equivalent.

Yes.

All right, that's good.

Well, it's it I mean, it's it's going to take more time. Uh it's not necessarily easier because I'd say it's uh it's more it's a lot more fun. When you're already fluent and you want to get to a native level and you have the right inspiration and you're burning to know this language, then uh it's it's the easiest language uh language learning hours you're ever going to spend. But it's still going to be a lot of hours.

Yeah, being able to watch the television shows without having to look up in a dictionary all the time or listen to the radio, read the newspapers. That would be possible at a B2 level or whatever. And so, even though it takes longer, you say, from getting to fluency or from fluency to mastery, it's still a more enjoyable process.

Mm-hmm.

So, you said that you'd studied um quite a few languages in high school. Yes. And you've obviously been highly successful. So, why is it that other people are not highly successful in a classroom environment? Do you think it's the um independence you had when you started learning languages or is it is there some other factors that makes this difference?

Um, no, I I wasn't very independent at the beginning. And to some extent, I never was for the other languages. Okay, I can tell you when I started learning English at high school, I was quite bad. I had Ds and then Cs and um then I started to talk to people online about this third year in or so and my marks improved radically. So that was obviously a case where independent study of the language really helped or just having a use for the language, being able to to speak it, uh definitely helped.

Oh my god, that's so.

So, I I think that I was also very lucky to to be at a school where the teaching was generally quite good and actually all of my classmates did quite well.

Oh, really? So, you I mean, I I totally agree with the fact that the the subjects you had in school, particularly when you were a bit younger, the ones you did the best in, usually had teachers that you maybe not like necessarily, but you definitely enjoyed their teaching. And I think so, so for you it was you had good teachers and you had a high interest in it as well. Because obviously, you need a bit of both. You can't just have good teachers and sit back and, "I'm going to learn this by doing nothing." There's hard work in it.

Well, you have to have an interest in history, I guess. I mean, I'm not religious. So for me, the the religious aspect of being able to read like the Latin Bible or Latin ledgers of the early times of Christianity is not so fascinating. But I am interested in Roman history and medieval history and most of that is written in Latin. And also, well, through Latin, I developed a love of literature and uh well-written literature. So, if you're interested in that or if you think you might be interested in that, that's that's one one reason to uh to learn Latin.

Right.

So. But for example, one really really fascinating thing I've read in Latin was uh an eyewitness account uh by Tacitus uh about the outbreak of Mount Vesuvius.

The volcano that buried Pompeii.

So, uh yeah, I I read about this and the people at the time didn't know what was going on. They didn't have any records of uh volcanic outbreak. So, it it was it's a crazy crazy story written down in Latin and most thrilling than any novel you could imagine nowadays.

Right. So, you wouldn't you wouldn't actually recommend anyone learning Latin just for the benefits to language learning. There you would just say, well, Esperanto is more useful now.

Yes, if they could be convinced to learn Esperanto, I would definitely prefer Esperanto for that. I mean, Esperanto gives you uh the same kind of logical base as uh Latin. It teaches you about grammar. It uh teaches you about uh grammar in a very regular way that is easy to understand. It teaches you about how the words uh go together, how they can be modified.

Right.

Of course, if you're the same person who says, uh I can't imagine Esperanto or it's ugly or whatever, then, yeah, I mean, go ahead and learn Latin, but you're going to spend like a year or so getting the same kind of basics that you could have in Esperanto in a really short time.

Right. But it it sounds quite interesting when people speak Esperanto, I feel like, and I I I signed up um, well, I didn't sign up formally, but there's somebody there's a website, Languages Around the Globe or something. And they were running a little interest poll to see who would be interested in doing a some weeks, I don't remember exactly it was three, four, five or six or something uh worth of Esperanto, just to see how how much it would help you appreciate other languages or I mean, how much you could could get in that time period.

No, I never studied Ancient Greek. I only studied Modern Greek.

Right, why not? When you have Latin, isn't that a natural not a bridge, but isn't that something that you'd go into as well?

Uh, I guess somewhat consider that that way, but for um I found that most of the the Greek texts are also available in Latin. Some of them are only available in Latin and have only been retranslated into Greek. I guess I I figured that just reading Latin texts already gave me a good enough uh idea of the European ancient world and the mythology and everything you can read about.

Right.

So, if I were to learn another ancient language, I might uh study Ancient Chinese once my Modern Chinese is good enough.

Wow. That sounds like a challenge.

Yeah, well, it gives me a different different kind of worldview.

Right.

That's what I'm mostly interested in to to see the world from a different angle and just learning Ancient Greek after Latin, I don't think it would give me the same kind of idea.

Well, that's it's good to know because, you know, for for somebody who's never studied either of these languages, it might be weird looking at it from the outside what what the benefits are. So I'm really happy that you you can kind of shed some light on it for us.

What sorry?

Sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, what I like about Latin is kind of related to that is that in Latin, you can say things uh very concisely. You you have a three-word sentence and in English, you have to launch a big explanation. It's kind of what I like about Chinese as well.

Uh-huh.

Online group classes. And there I had a program uh to to teach people to to read Caesar and other Roman authors within just 25 classroom hours.

Really? That's fast.

Yeah, so obviously, at that point you still need uh to consult the dictionary rather often, but it's uh it's common anyway if you're reading Roman text. And you can get started on all these interesting texts and see what what they wrote. And they're called classics for a reason because we we still look at them today and they still influence us today.

Yeah. And I I guess for me, what when that's another point of why I didn't learn Latin is because I learned German from grade six, or maybe even grade five, or something like that. And German, I know it's not the same as Latin, but it uses, you know, the genders and the cases. So that's very useful for me when I'm learning Russian, because there are more cases and there's the same amount of genders. But if I hadn't learned German, and I just had Danish and English, Russian would be twice as hard because the I wasn't familiar with the gender system.

Not really. I mean, yeah, German will teach you about the case system, but it's used completely differently than in Latin. Because uh in German, it's basically useless. The cases are useless.

We must create new German.

Yeah, I'm saying it because every every information that you need is already encoded in the sentence in a different way. But Latin, that's not the case. You really have to look at the words in order to understand what what's going on and you look at the cases and uh it allows you more freedom of expression. It allows you to to write things that just cannot be translated nowadays.

It's definitely the problem with the genders, isn't it? Because in you know, I mean, one thing is finding out what is the gender of a word and then what is the what is the correct ending for for that gender. Um Danish luckily only has two um, well, uh yeah, two genders, yeah. So, it's 50/50.

Definitely.

Speaking of Berlin, I just wanted to mention your conference, your polyglot conference, uh also known as Polyglot Berlin.

Polyglot Gathering.

Polyglot Gathering, sorry. Um just give me a little bit of a a background. How did you just decide to host a a polyglot uh gathering?

Well, it was quite easy. Uh we were all in Budapest at the Polyglot Conference last year. Uh and Richard was saying that the next conference uh would be in 2014 in New York or Montreal and everyone was like, that's a bit far, don't you think? So, the European polyglot community wanted to meet up earlier than that. And I think some people tried to have a meetup in in Poland that same summer.

Okay.

But that was a bit too quickly and it didn't really work out.

Yeah, it's not easy to organize that.

Yeah, you can't organize it that quickly. But I thought, okay, if you give me one one year, more or less, then I have enough time to organize a really big meeting and I can make it even a longer meeting. You know, in Budapest, we only had two days and now we're going to have four days.

Right.

Uh we're going to have 200 people rather than 100 people. And uh it will be even a full day uh event all the time.

That's incredible. And also that's why I signed up immediately when I found out about it, because uh you you you'd almost sold out when you made it public. I think you had 180 seats out of about 200 taken. And I just quickly registered and I just, you know, called my bank and said, I'm going to need a a temporary overdraft for this because uh I need to go to this and just the the amount of, you know, things going on just seems like you really thought of every possible angle to to language learning.

Yeah, well, uh it's I must say that uh I got inspired by uh Esperanto events a lot and trying to to bring a lot of Esperanto items into this this conference for example, there'll be uh a an Alligatoreo. Um like Alligator Room, which is uh a place where people uh practice foreign languages. It's a room where you're not allowed to speak your native language and you're not allowed to speak the the common language of the meetup, so that would be English. So everyone has to try and communicate with uh whatever bits and pieces of what other languages they know. And probably switch five times in 10 minutes or so. It's really great to great exercise for the brain.

That's fun. Yeah, I've read some of your uh logs about it and it it it sounds like you just have a blast at these rooms because you just switch all the time and yeah, you might not be as good in in language A as you are in language three, but just the fun of moving around them and.

Yeah, and and getting to practice all those languages that you're not so good at.

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm so excited about it and I I I just want to thank you for uh for putting it together. I mean, it I know it's a lot of work and uh really looking forward to that. Uh here on the the last comment of of today's episode, can you share any are there any secrets or kind of little surprises that maybe the listeners who are going to to the Berlin event might get a little sneak peek off. Do you have anything extraordinarily cool planned?

Um, one thing I don't think I've announced anywhere else yet is uh we're going to have a culinary festival. So, for that, uh I'm asking all the participants to bring some kind of local food or local drink, local candy, whatever. Uh and then we'll have tables for every country and you can try all kinds of foreign delicacies and foreign sweets and foreign drinks.

That sounds yum.

This is also something I copy it from the Esperanto movement.

But I noticed how how international this meeting is getting with people coming in from Singapore, from Brazil, from North America, other Asian countries, even from Africa. So, I definitely wanted to the chance to make to do this culinary festival.

Mm-hmm. I think it's not not quite as long. I think it's more like a 10-hour flight from New York, but still there's people even from Australia, I think from Australia it must be a 24-hour flight.

Right. That's thinking more of you if you don't want to pay, you know, several thousand, you probably have to do layovers in Washington and all all over the world, probably.

No, you're welcome. It's my pleasure. And I guess uh all that remains is do you have any, you know, kind of shout outs where can people uh get to you? Obviously, we uh we mentioned your podcast, oh no, not your podcast, your website, learnlangs.com and you have the polyglotberlin.com. But are there any other projects or anything people should know about that you're doing right now?

Um, actually I just launched a new blog. It's called Understanding Germany. Now, it's it's not a perfect fit for the language learning community, but if you're interested in Germany, in traditions, in the worldview, why is Germany not taking a more active role, for example, in the world? You can read all that in my new blog, understandinggermany.de.

Sweet. And is that in English or in German?

Yeah, it's in English.

Okay. I I imagine some people might not be fluent in in German. But um that's amazing. Thank you so much, Judith. And um I'll talk to you in in Berlin.

Yes, looking forward to it.

Me too. See you.

See you. 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.