Michael Levi-Harris: The Hyperglot Movie (1/2)

So if you haven't seen it yet, it's about, uh, a young man learning a lot of languages. Hence the name, Hyperglot, and what kind of adventures he can go on. And it's on iTunes. So if you go search for the Hyperglot, you'll be able to find it. And during the interview, we get into, of course, the movie. We talk about, you know, what was the inspiration, how did he actually get to the point where he just created a short film? You know, it's over 20 minutes. And how that relates to his personality as a language learner. And also, are there any similarities between the main character in the movie and then Michael in real life.

And during the way we get a lot of sort of, I don't know if you want to call it philosophical, but we get into like a lot of language learning topics. Um, so it's really a nice kind of fireside chat with Michael and he's incredibly interesting to listen to, and that's why I also had to split the episode up in two.

And another little note, unfortunately, there's no video this week because we had to record on location at Michael's school, the Guildhall School for Acting and Drama. Something like that. Acting and Drama seems very similar. I've probably messed that up. But anyway, it was his school where he's on the final years and acting student. It's very prestigious school. Um, so we recorded there and I didn't really have a way to record it. I could use this webcam, but it's kind of hard to fit two people in it and, uh, yeah. So unfortunately, no video this week. Um, but you're going to enjoy also just the, the voices of me and Michael. And I had to record using my phone. So again, it's not as rich as it would have been back in the studio, back in Hungary.

Um, so that interview is coming up in just a moment. But before, I just wanted to talk about what I've been doing lately. I went to London, which is why the background is different, and I've been here for two weeks now. And I just visited friends and went to my company's Christmas party. And after that, basically just hanging out.

And I went to the Memrise offices to talk about the upcoming Membus Tour, which if you haven't heard about it, you should really check it out. It's on Kickstarter. Uh, search for Memrise or Membus. And you can see what kind of amazing project it is. Basically, they want to for the new generation of Memrise, they want to record native speakers saying sentences and words. So you just use the video in the flash card courses, so kind of evolving the flash cards to be more interactive, which is going to be really cool because I think you can gain a lot by seeing how words are pronounced, like what are the mouth movements and, you know, what kind of, also, you know, what kind of body stands do you take. And if you're learning Italian, for instance, you know, maybe you get the hand gestures, who know, who knows.

Um, so I'm really excited about that and I was talking to them about them. And I'll put some more information on the website in a few days. ActualFluency.com. Um, as I was talking about them, uh, they said that I could go on the bus. And I was like, yes. And they said, if two of your audience decides to support the Kickstarter campaign, at the level where they get to go on the bus. So if two of you guys out there are interested in going on a, the most epic Polyglot Road Trip ever attempted, which is quite epic. And, you know, you go to the Kickstarter and support it and make sure you tell them that you were sent here, sent there through Kris from Actual Fluency, I'm going to go with you. And, uh, that's going to be, that could be great fun.

Um, I would have loved to support with the full amount, but unfortunately, I don't have the finances at the moment. Maybe closer to the starting date. It starts, uh, during next year and maybe then I'll be able to support it. But just for now, you know, if you're really keen on going with this epic adventure, recording native speakers all around Europe in a retro two-decker, um, London bus, then, you know, go to the Kickstarter and search for Membus, because it's going to be epic.

And there are also, you know, pledges at lower levels. You can, you know, pledge relatively small amounts and then get Memrise swag bags, which include like t-shirts and notebooks and all this kind of cool stuff. And, you know, I love Memrise. I use it a lot for my vocabulary. And I love the company as well. They have a great business model. And they're always, you know, they're always very nice and friendly to talk to the community, you know, they feature, they, they feature other people's content on their social channels. They, they have guest bloggers and, you know, they're very in tune with everything. And I really like that as a company. And they're just really nice people. So that's why I'm using a lot of time to talk about Memrise. But, yeah, if you're interested in that, go and check it out on Kickstarter. And now, it's time to hear from the creator of the Hyperglot movie, Mr. Michael Levi Harris.

So my mom took me to the bus stop on the first day of of kindergarten. And there was a Japanese boy with his mom. And they were speaking Japanese to each other and as far as I could really tell at that time, I had never heard of another language spoken. At least in a context like that. And I was completely dumbfounded that that they were communicating with each other and I couldn't understand what they were saying. And I I I I I was I had to know what they were talking about. And it was I I and I, I mean, I still remember it. It's very vivid memory. I remember asking my mom, what are they saying? Why why can't I understand them? And she explained to me that they were speaking another language and I don't recall if she knew that it was Japanese or not.

But anyway, it turned out that this boy, Yutaka, um was in my class at school. And I just from day one was obsessed with him. I had to sit next to him every time we were, you know, in a circle and um, and I became his best friend and the the our teacher kind of assigned me to be his helper and help him learn English because he didn't speak any English. Um, but I was less interested in helping him learn English. I wanted to know what he was saying in Japanese. And I found I found myself, you know, just sort of imitating him, not in a mean way, obviously. Um, but, you know, there were other Japanese students in the school and and I would pick up on all the things that they said to each other and try and mimic it and and participate in this conversation, even though I didn't really understand what I was saying.

Um, but I I distinctly remember that um, it got to a point where I seemed to be able to interpret for him. I mean, I can remember going to the nurse with him when, you know, he hit his head or something and going to the nurse as his interpreter and saying, you know, she would ask what was wrong and I would say something to him and then he would respond back to me and I would tell her what had happened and And the thing is, in my in my memory of it, I it feels like I was making it up. But he he seemed to be talking, you know, and he didn't think I was making it up somehow and And and I had the entire school fooled with the exception of the my the kindergarten teacher because I remember going to the, you know, music, she came to pick us up from our music teacher one day and the music teacher said, how does Michael Levi Harris speak Japanese? And the teacher said, what are you talking about? He doesn't speak Japanese and um, but but what I think I was doing was maybe what children do when they learn languages is sort of just imitate sounds and and pick up on words and associate meanings and I did there are I definitely have in my memory certain words and things that I did learn because when I revisited Japanese many years later, things came back to me that I couldn't imagine how else, you know, it was like a deja vu. Right. language.

So anyway, Yutaka and I were best friends for three years until he moved back to Japan in second grade. Um, and then I suddenly found myself, you know, without my best friend and kind of friendless and um, and a bit sad and and and there were other Japanese kids but I wasn't necessarily friendly with them. But I I suddenly um, realized I was lucky enough to grow up in a place where there were lots of um, international people, you know, different companies, headquarters in the in the city and so they they'd had houses for the families to live in and in the suburbs or people who worked for the UN and things like that.

And so there were there were Brazilian kids, there were there were Swedish Swedish siblings, Russian, I mean, a couple of kids from sort of all over the world. And then certain populations that were very big, there were a lot of Japanese and a lot of Koreans and um, quite a few Brazilians actually. And I suddenly realized that there was a whole, you know, world of people speaking different languages and I did it wasn't just Japanese that interested me. And I became absolutely obsessed with all of them and every, you know, every year I would have sort of a new best friend who based on what language they spoke and I got really into um, Berlitz dictionaries, Berlitz Travel phrase books that that seemed to be the biggest thing at the at the time.

You know, this is giving away my age in the in the late eighties and early nineties, it was, um, I don't think language learning was quite what it is today. If you went into a bookstore to the language section, it was pretty much, you know, maybe some French and Spanish books and then Berlitz things. Um, and it was the the best thing my dad could buy me, uh, for my birthday or anything was just a new language. And I had the whole collection, Norwegian, Dutch, Arabic, finish, whatever, whatever Berlitz there was by the end of my childhood, I had all of them. And and I never really used them effectively. I would just sort of, I just liked to have them and to flip through them and, you know, learn how to say certain things and.

Um, and I was very much interested in, you know, alphabets that I couldn't read and, you know, wanting to learn to read them and um, I mean, it's so weird when I just sort of think of memories of my childhood. I I remember I had this dictionary, just a an English language dictionary but at the front of it, it had five alphabets and how to pronounce them. There was the Hebrew alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, the Greek alphabet, the old German alphabet, um that was written with, you know, before World War II. And I can just remember, you know, just staring at that as as a as a for fun. That was like my idea of reading was I would just open that book up and look at the at the letters and um, so yeah, I was always I was always trying to do something with with different languages and it and it it sort of depended a lot on who was around me. So there's different kids in school and who I took a liking to for whatever reason.

Um, and just and whatever was being spoken around me at the time that I couldn't understand, I suddenly had to and that never went away and, you know, we we can when we talk about the hyperglot later that part of the basis of that is even as an adult, I was over I was um, eavesdropping on a conversation that I couldn't understand and I was very, not only could I not understand it, but I couldn't identify the language and that upset me even more because by the time I, you know, reached adulthood, I've become very good at identifying a language even if I don't speak it. So I know, you know, what Finnish sounds like or Hungarian or but even without speaking them. But this language, Maltese, when it was being spoken and I didn't I couldn't identify it and I was just, you know, driving me nuts until I could. Yeah. And so that's always been the case.

Um, and I think I had different motivations for so some motivation or an example of a motivation um why I started learning or looking into different languages. I mean, I at some point I became aware of the as a child. I became aware of the fact that my great grandparents came from different countries. And that suddenly made me feel, you know, special. Like there was a different language in my, you know, heritage as well and um, and they were all from the Russian Empire. Which of course, at the time, I didn't, you know, really understand, well, I think there was still the Soviet Union when I found this out. So that was kind of similar borders to the Russian Empire itself. But, you know, so I just thought they were from Russia. Of course, today, it was Belarus and Ukraine and different places.

Um but when I was a kid, I thought, oh, I'm Russian. So I I should learn Russian and I I became um really into to to trying to learn Russian and I at some point probably by the time I got to middle school, the language sections of bookstores started to expand a little. So I remember the next series that I got into was um the 10 Minutes a Day series. There was, you know, Russian in 10 Minutes a Day and and they these you bought these books and they came with stickers, you know, for various things around your house and you'd put the stickers on things. So I was covering my entire house in stickers for um, you know, plates and salt and whatever in Russian and German. Um, and they had vocabulary cards that you would cut out and uh, and that was I taught myself to read the Cyrillic alphabet with that.

Um, and and it wasn't actually just language either. I mean, I would was really interested in the cultures as well. So I can remember in third grade there were these books, um, my in in the classroom, count your way through name the country. So one of them was count your way through Russia. And each chapter, which was all of, you know, two pages was a different number. And there would be something relating to that number about the country. And and I was, I mean, I was first drawn to it by the the language aspect that, you know, it would teach you, you know, and then teach you about it. And there was country way through Israel. Um, which is another country that I felt connection with because I I'm Jewish and I grew up, you know, learning about Jewish history and culture and all that. And um, and Israel was, you know, connected to that. So uh, so those two particular books stick out in my mind because I thought, oh, these are, you know, the books that relate to me and um, and Hebrew is another language that I was exposed to, therefore, as a child a lot.

Uh, although I'm not, you know, again, I think it's interesting how children develop kind of awareness of what different languages mean because, you know, I I pinpoint my my this interaction with Yutaka in kindergarten as my first exposure to a foreign language. But in truth, I had been to synagogue and Hebrew and um a Jewish nursery school before that. And I remember learning songs in Hebrew in Hebrew school, but I I didn't, um, somehow it it didn't like register that that was a foreign language or that that was, you know, something that people spoke. It was just to me that's just what you did in nursery school and that's what you did in when you went to temple, people sang in this language that but I don't think I had a concept of it as really a foreign language.

And similarly, probably what added to that confusion was that um, my parents and grandparents used a lot of Yiddish words in their regular vocabulary. And some of them I grew up learning second nature as as if they were my own. But every so often there'd be a word that was less frequently used, um, that I could identify as a word that I, you know, didn't know what that meant and it sounded funny. And and I would ask and what that meant and my parents would say, oh, it's Yiddish. And it means whatever. And even even I would say, even until my later childhood, when I did know what different languages were, I still didn't even realize that Yiddish was an actual language. You know, it to me Yiddish was like this collection of words that old Jewish people use. And um, and I'm not alone in that. A lot of Jewish people, you know, I remember I actually studied Yiddish in university. And you'd be surprised at how many people, even Jewish people that you meet who'd say like, is Yiddish really a language? You know, I just thought it was words and um, so so I think my my exposures prior to Japanese being random Yiddish words in Hebrew songs and temple and nursery school didn't quite solidify to me that there were such a thing as different languages.

And um but once I once I that became clear and and I thought, oh, I've got, you know, Yiddish is part of my heritage and Hebrew is part of my heritage and Russian is part of my heritage. And um, so I became interested in those languages. But of course, in my school, there weren't really kids that spoke those. I mean, there was a Russian girl once for maybe a year, but then she left. Um, but there were Brazilian kids and there were Japanese kids and um, so the first language that I really taught myself fluently and very with, you know, with some persistence was Portuguese because I was enamored of all the Brazilians in my school. I thought they were the coolest people and they were so fun and um, you know, they'd have me over to their house and their moms would make these Brazilian treats called brigadeiros, which I learned to make. And in fact, I have a batch um at home in my refrigerator because I'm having a party tomorrow. And I make them. So um, and I was just I was just really into that and and and by that time, you know, again, the the language section was expanding. This was my favorite activity to go to the mall, you know, on a Friday night with my best friend, um, in middle school, whose name was Maggie. Um, to go to the bookstore and just get lost in the language section.

And it and it seemed every year to grow bigger and bigger. So by this time, I discovered Pimsleur. And Pimsleur was fantastic. And I can remember what a big deal it was because it was quite expensive. It was something like maybe three hundred dollars to order this set of 30 cassettes. Um, and I begged my parents for so long to and they just, you know, I don't blame them. It seemed like a very extravagant gift for a ten-year-old or however old I was, 11 or 12. Um, and I really had to push them. Um, of course, now in in retrospect, I I think if they had known how really into it I was and how how much more able you are to absorb it as a child. I think they wouldn't have hesitated and would have gotten me 10 languages and I could be, you know, speaking 20 right now. Um, but who knew, I guess.

Um, but anyway, eventually I managed to convince them to to get it for me. And I really used it and I really got good at it. And when we I remember going at one point to Miami to visit my grandparents, and there's a fair fairly sizable Brazilian community there. And we went to a Brazilian restaurant and I spoke Portuguese with all the wait staff and my parents were suitably impressed that I had done this. Um, so they agreed to get me the next level of Portuguese. And um, and and I think I think I I had I actually think I only had the first two levels and that was it between that and and being able to converse with the kids at school and I bought a grammar book and I bought vocabulary cards and um, I was just I really immersed myself. And I reached fluency, you know, by, I don't know, I was maybe 14 or 15 and maybe not perfectly, I mean, I I that's the whole discussion of fluency is something that drives me nuts. But I was pretty good. Let's say.

Um, and the thing that I that everybody commented on that even from a young age that my parents, you know, picked up on and, uh, and I think I picked up on as well is that I had a really good ear for accents and pronunciation. So when I spoke a language, it sounded really good. And people were convinced that I was completely fluent, even if I wasn't. Um, which later in life kind of poses a problem actually. If you, you know, if you can only say a few sentences but you say them really well, then people suddenly think like, oh, you're fluent. So I could just speak at rapid, you know, conversational pace.

And I remember, uh, I don't remember if it was France or Switzerland where I where I landed because we did a little trip in Paris first. And but at the passport control, I spoke in French. And then when I handed her my passport, the woman who was just shocked that I was American. Right. And that gave me such a good, you know, feeling and validation of, you know, that I still am good at this.

And and in college I spent a summer in Brazil. And I traveled around. And when I was in different parts of Brazil, they thought I was from another part of Brazil. Obviously not where they were from. But and usually because I have blonde hair and blue eyes, they thought I was from the south very southern tip of Brazil where there's a lot of um people of German descent. And so this is a thing that I've that I've had and I still get it. I mean, I still people always compliment my pronunciation.

Now, what I've noticed as I've gotten older and maybe people are just more honest, I don't know. Um is that they don't they no longer quite say that I sound like a native speaker in a language that I don't speak. Um which which has started to bother me. Um, but I also think that that kind of has to do with um with surroundings. And so like if I spend a long time in a place, I feel I don't know, I I'm I which unfortunately I've never really had the opportunity to do, but I feel kind of confident that that I that I would sound like a native speaker. And it's just something that you have to because even here in England, you know, acting and I have to act in an English accent. Um, which which I can do, you know, and I I've been told by English people that I make a very convincing Englishman and they, you know, often people didn't know that I wasn't English.

Um, but that first of all, it helps to be living here and and hearing that all the time. But even to achieve that, I had to I spent about three months speaking in an English accent even outside of school, just in my life and in everything 24/7. Yeah. Because otherwise that's that's the only way to kind of get your mouth to automatically go in the right sort of shapes. Exactly. And then once I sort of felt like I achieved that really well, I I thought, okay, it should now I should practice just going back and forth between English and American because I should be able to do that skill. And that's actually was very hard. And I found myself making a lot of slip-ups when I wasn't speaking English in a British accent, you know, 24/7.

And and various uh, I mean, the the the opening scene with the the three guys speaking Arabic and making a lewd comment about the waitress. Um, that was didn't happen quite verbatim the way it did in But that was completely a true occurrence in real life. It was on the subway and I was getting about to get off at the next stop and I had been eavesdropping on these guys because they were having a really interesting conversation about politics that I was really into at the time. And I could only because the train was so loud, I could only I was sort of getting snippets of it. Um, so I was concentrating really hard. And then when the train kind of came into the station and a woman came on and and they suddenly interrupted this really heated political discussion to make a a comment about her. And it was a very funny one, so I just laughed I I sort of uncontrollably laughed. And they looked at me and, you know, and asked if I spoke Arabic and I I just sort of and they I think had registered that I'd been, you know, standing there for quite some time. So I kind of shrugged and then they started to converse with me, but then I had to get off at the next stop. So so in that sense, those are all quite um semi-autobiographical.

I think I as a character, I think I am a lot like Jake. Um but I don't think I'm quite as sort of socially inept and, uh, and kind of, um, I don't know. He's he's like befuddled a bit.

Um but I that was not the case for me. I was having lots of little success and and I took this really great career path course, um that kind of taught how to measure your success and and which sounds so silly now, but I mean, it's um it was actually really helpful that basically if you, you know, if you can figure out if you can find a way to measure your success and and and that you are in fact improving, then then you're doing well. And I noted that I was every year I was getting, you know, more auditions, more callbacks, more roles, more money, um, in in small increments. So I was I thought I was, you know, doing okay. But I was I was getting antsy that I wasn't quite doing what I wanted, you know, the some of, I mean, I had some great experiences acting in plays, but um, you know, some of them were very small, um, and and and didn't pay much. Um, and and I I wanted more. I mean, as everybody wants, I think, to be to be doing really well in whatever it is that they're doing. Uh and I really wanted to try my hand in film because I hadn't gotten to do that yet.

Um, and I was at a party of an actor friend who and I was talking to this guy who was saying, who, you know, was an actor. And he said, I I think the way to go is you just have to produce your own stuff, you know, you can easily make a film for short film for $300, you know, no problem. And I I thought, well what does that entail? I mean, I I didn't really know anything about short films. I did I I always thought a short film was some was like a 40-minute or a 60-minute film, you know, it was a film, a proper film, but not long enough to be a a a feature film. And this guy said, no way, some short some of the best short films are five minutes long. In fact, for film festivals, that's ideal. They like the five-minute length. And I suddenly just had this epiphany of, oh, I well, I have a really great story that would probably be able to be told in five minutes. Right. And and that was because that this incident, the real life incident had just happened to me not that, you know, long and I and I when I told people about what happened, they've, you know, fell out of their chair laughing. And I thought, if if everybody that I tell, you know, that I tell the story to has that reaction, it must be a good story. So if if a five-minute film is a good good length for film, let me let me turn this into a film.

And um, so that was sort of the birth of the idea. Uh, and then of course, the birth of the of the story, if if that's what you were getting out was just that I was I had I was over I was listening to this conversation between two people who, um, oh gosh. I'm gonna I hate, you know, trying to be diplomatic and politically correct and all that. But I mean, I looked at them and they looked European to me. Sorry if that offends anybody. Um, and they were speaking a language that I couldn't identify. And I was just like, what is this, you know, language? Um, and and even if they I mean, they looked, no, they I would say actually maybe more accurately, they looked Mediterranean. And I thought, well, I speak Hebrew and I speak Arabic and I speak Italian and Spanish and I know what Greek sounds like and, you know, there was every language I could think of that I could enter and Turkish. Um, and I just couldn't get it. And I thought and then I thought I heard words that sounded like Arabic. So immediately, I thought it it must be Albanian because I don't that's maybe one European language that I don't really know what it sounds like. But I know that it's a Muslim majority country. So maybe they've borrowed words from Arabic. Right. Just like Persian and Turkish and so I thought, oh, they must be Albanian.

And so finally, I got, you know, got up the courage to ask and they told me, you know, that they were from Malta. Right. And then suddenly I I had this memory, you know, from like years ago, when I was studying, um, Middle Eastern languages and cultures somewhere along the lines, somewhere, you know, in my past. I I had heard that Maltese was a Semitic language. And it was the only one written in the Latin alphabet. Um, because Malta had been colonized by Arabs at some point in in history. And I thought, oh, I can't believe I didn't think of that. And I felt really stupid. Um, but then I suddenly, it was just reinvigorated my, you know, my interest in Maltese and I thought, I have to learn this language because it's, you know, it's it must be similar to Arabic and I'm and and there must be a lot of Italian influence and I knew some of the history of of Malta. Um, so I thought, you know, I really I set out on a quest to like find some language Maltese language learning materials, which are few and far between. So I was very unsuccessful in trying to actually, um, find them.

But so that was the birth of the incident and then the birth of the film. And then, of course, once I had the idea to make this film, I and I started to write the script down and it went through so many versions. I mean, the the the first script the last script bears almost no resemblance except for the the event. Um and even that, you know, was changed, uh, a lot. And and at some point, what I realized in the writing of it was that the only reason why people, all those people that I told the story to, laughed at at this story is because they know me. And they could just see this happening to me and how funny that is. And I realized that for an audience of strangers, they won't I don't think that they would think that just the main event is particularly funny or or noteworthy without knowing my some of my background.

So that was where that's why it turned into a 23-minute film instead of a five-minute film because I realized I had to explain why somebody would be going to meet a group of Maltese people to learn Maltese, which is seems so random. Right. Um, and then, of course, to make the the the the plot twist more um, you know, to make the audience care more about it, you needed to add a kind of a human element, which is where the love story bit comes in. Um, and some of those some of that was taken from personal experience in terms of people that I've, you know, been out with and stories that I've heard from other, you know, dating stories. I just sort of lumped all the all the bad ones together in one person. Um, and, uh, so, yeah, that was sort of how it came about. And I realized in order to explain the character, I had lots of of of um material, you know, to from personal experience to to demonstrate in a humorous way this quirky person who is obsessed with language learning and, um, Right.

And actually sort of giving me an idea about how in the short film, what you see is kind of the result of somebody who's obsessed with language learning. He already speaks all these languages. Yeah, exactly. And and maybe the next, you know, the next film, whether it's a short film or a feature length, I don't know. But maybe maybe that should delve more into the um the the learning part of the obsessive obsessive learning of it and the way and why and the reasons behind that. I don't know. The few steps between, but it sounds like you're just continuing from your childhood experiences and every time you hear something, you just get so interested in it and when you hear it around you and that's when you decide to learn, uh, I presume Arabic, you had some kind of interaction at some point and or some, yeah, for school or any of that kind. So you just decided to go full on and and learn it.

Um, and frankly, to be honest, the only reason I did that was because um because they didn't have another living language at my school that I could have learned. And same with Latin. I took Latin, I mean, I I thought Latin would be interesting to take, but if there had been a living language, I would have taken that. But I don't regret it because I Latin was was wonderful to take. And I formed a wonderful friendship with my Latin teacher who I'm still in touch with. Um, and it was really useful to go from that to uh to learning other languages.

In fact, it was for my Latin class that I we we had to do, she the teacher assigned us um a uh like a you had to do a research project that was not related to the Latin language, but something Roman culture or whatever. And again, I had to convince her to let me do something that was more linguistic related. And and I don't know how I came up with this idea, but I just when I was thinking about what could I talk, how could I connect the the romance languages in in a sort of research project? And um, and when I was looking at what they were, you know, I knew Portuguese, I knew French, I knew Spanish. I didn't know Italian quite yet, but I I had picked a lot up along the way.

Um, but what I I hadn't realized that Romanian was a romance language. And when I discovered that, and I thought, gee, I know absolutely nothing about Romanian. And and again, it was one of those things. I remember seeing some silly movie with Tom Selleck. I can't think of the name. Uh, but he oh, Her Alibi, maybe it's called. But I don't know. Anyway, this this um this it's a he falls in love with this Romanian woman. And at some point they're speaking Romanian in it. And and this was, you know, again, it was like all the things lined up at the right time. And I thought, oh, Romanian. I'm going to I'm going to research the Romanian language and, you know, write a paper about how it evolved and why is it the forgotten romance language? And all of that. Sounds great.

And in order to do that, I met this this professor at Columbia University of Romanian language who, uh, helped who helped me with this paper. And she was so interested in me that she said, I had to come do her summer language course in Romania. Uh, that summer. And so I I begged my parents to let me do that. And they did. And I went to Romania. And it was a it was for college kids and graduate students. So I was like this 15-year-old among, you know, 18 to 30-year-olds. Um, but I had a great time and I learned Romanian quite well, which I've since, you know, it's quite rusty now. I have not kept it up. But, um, uh, where was I going with this?

Oh, so by the end of high school, I I knew the romance languages and I knew a lot about, you know, Western European languages and I wanted to go beyond that. Um, and I thought just practically speaking, what I I wanted to learn to to study something that could cover a large area of the world because I didn't think I would go into professionally. I didn't think I would go into something where I could use language as a tool. Um and just for whatever, I mean, for no reason that I can really think of that's logical. I I was particularly drawn to at the time, Brazil, uh, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. And Brazil felt like very narrow as a sort of regional studies because it was one country. Eastern Europe felt too broad because there were so many languages that I couldn't how you know, how to decide which one to learn.

And then there was the Middle East where I thought, well, I have a great familiarity with Hebrew already. Um, Arabic would be a gateway to you know, a huge portion of the rest of the region. Um, and if I learn one other one, you know, Turkish or Persian, that would be a a nice sort of uh uh window into that area of the world. So I chose to focus on the Middle East. So I studied Arabic, Persian, um Hebrew and Yiddish all in university. Wow. And all at the same time.

Um, which wasn't so difficult because as I said, I already was very familiar I already knew how to read Hebrew. I was very familiar with Hebrew. And you know, learning to read from right to left wasn't a new thing for me for Arabic and there's there, you know, cousin languages or brother languages, whatever you want to call it. So a lot of the roots, you know, translated over and so they kind of complimented each other really really well. And Persian being Indo-European was not so difficult and again, so many Arabic loan words that it it only kind of enhanced learning Persian. So it wasn't too too difficult to do that. But yeah, I just sort of I guess I wanted to do something more exotic than than the European more European languages.

Um, and, uh, and there was a lot of arguing back and forth, but I managed to convince him that and frankly, I stand 100% behind behind it because I don't wouldn't say that I've forgotten a lot of what I learned in the other classes, but as a tool for continuous continuous learning throughout life. I mean, I mean, a week ago I was in an Uber with an Afghani cab driver who who spoke Dari. And you know, we could converse in Persian. I mean, just language is is the way into to talking to people. And I learned infinitely more by talking to people and by reading newspapers in different languages than I did from any of my professors. I hope none of you are listening. Um of of the various culture and history classes. So, and and also with those types of classes, there's a lot of information that can just you just sort of forget. Um, so I was very glad that I that I studied all those languages. Um,