Luca Lampariello: The Impact of Mindset on Language Learning

I think Luca is one of the most prodigious polyglots that I know, having, you know, a really high level in probably 10 or more languages. I mean, I don't I should ask him the next time I see him, but, you know, that he really has a high level and a high function in pretty much all of his languages from Russian to Swedish to even Hungarian. And I've seen him kind of in action how he learns languages and he spends a lot of time doing various methods, which we discussed of course in the first original podcast episode. So, go back and check that out if you want to hear that.

Um, but yeah, so it's kind of a catch-up episode, a catch-up episode and we talk a little bit about uh, kind of developing a mindset for language learning, taking on an identity in different languages, uh, the mindset and and what it takes to learn a language. So, a little bit of everything today. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Luca. And I will see you in a future episode.

And don't forget to check out bite size languages, which is my series of listening practice courses for beginners. Available for Spanish, German, Italian, French, Russian and Danish, which are recorded myself with my sister. Um, you can go find those out on bitesizelanguages.com or on actualfluency.com. Just check out the top bar. And these are really good for improving your pronunciation and your listening skills and your vocabulary in kind of a natural setting. Uh, with obviously recorded by native speakers, and there's 100 dialogues for you to kind of dig into and and learn. So, check out bitesize languages if you haven't already and let's dive into the episode. All right, Luca. Welcome back to the actual fluency podcast.

And then uh, slowly but steadily I I created a company where I basically uh, teach people a school, more than a company. Yes, there's a company behind, but it's a it's called Smart Language Learning Academy, where the core idea is to help people learn languages better and efficiently because I believe that there's a wealth of information, but a dearth of know-how actually how to do things. So, uh, I'm very big on education and the power of education. I'm very passionate about that. And this is what I've been working on uh, for the last two two years, more or less. Ah, this is a little bit succinct and concise, but there's more to it than the eye, but in a nutshell that's that's it.

So, that secret is something we talked a little bit about nine years ago and I I just I just read the the kind of the show notes, but has any of that methodology or approach changed since then? Have you evolved your method or are you following a similar kind of structure as back then?

I I have, you know, what one of the things, one of the gifts that making YouTube videos has given me, I think, is again, it allowed me to come into contact with wonderful people like Richard Simcott, with you. Um, you know, and countless other very interesting people have a different um, you know, approach to language learning and I think it's very enriching because remember back in the day when I was 20, I was not even using the internet. You think you're in your own world and you think, "Oh, what I'm doing is great. Uh, it's the way of learning languages," and then do you realize that there's many efficient ways of learning and acquiring a language efficiently. And then getting to know the perspective of other successful language learners enriches your your vision and allows you to improve your your overall approach, uh, whether it's teaching, coaching or learning languages for that matter.

But you were you were right there at the first polyglot uh, conference which kind of in many ways started this uh, community as we know it today of of many hundreds, maybe even thousands of language learners that not only like to learn a lot of languages, of course, but also meet up and and go to create content and and go to conferences all around the world. I mean, you see it's crazy. I it became almost like this, I don't know, it's like we were all secret spies or something. You know, we met in New York City having, uh, you know, some of the best food in in Chelsea in in Manhattan and then two months later, we were meeting up in in Berlin, you know, it's like, you know, it's like some kind of spy organization, you know, remember Berlin, you know, and uh, so that was that was a good time and and I think that it helped really to mainstream it a lot that the it gave this push that, you know, language learning is not impossible for adults. It's not this insurmountable challenge that I think a lot of people still have this notion of. They have this idea that, "Oh, if you if you're not born into a multilingual environment, or if you don't start learning it when you're a kid, it's impossible." Um, and that's really nice to see.

Anyway, regardless of that, the polyglot gathering is the polyglot gathering and the polyglot conference and these polyglot uh, events around the world have created, it's true. They have created some sort of movement, but I think that at the end of the day, um, you know, with YouTube and Twitch and all these platforms in general, through the internet, people anybody, uh, from all all walks of life at any age, they can just go and, uh, say, turn on YouTube and see, um, Richard Simcott or you they can watch a video by Richard Simcott, listen to a podcast of yours. And like, they have contact with people have, um, dozens of years of experience in language learning and the world has changed.

Before, we just had one system that was school, right? We we we we we got used to thinking that the way we learn at school is the way to go. And that's that's the reason why we replicate a lot of times when we start, when we first venture into the experience, in the adventure of learning languages ourselves, we just replicate those methodologies and strategies. And then we realize much to our dismay that they don't work, right?

But the amazing thing is that the amazing thing about education, the the reason why I'm so proud of the work I do, I'm so glad and lucky that I'm doing this, is because you people do not realize the potential that we have as human beings to learn anything. And language learning is just one of the many skills, and many things we can actually learn. The problem is that the entire system, the entire education system, and I'm not just referring to language learning, is based upon knowledge instead of skill-building.

And, um, once you realize that, and once you realize there's a wealth of information out there on the internet on understanding how learning how to learn, not again, not only just language, but languages, but anything, then you realize that you can do so much so much more than what you're actually doing. This is my mission, this is my passion, this is what drives me, compels me, uh, makes me tick so to speak. It's just waking up and saying, how can I, uh, not only inspire, but help people understand their potential when it comes to learning a language. They can learn one language, two language, two languages, three language.

When people tell me, "Oh, you speak 15 languages, you must be very talented, right?" This is a very common line. Or, "Oh, that guy must be a genius. He speaks seven or eight." As this sounds like magic for monolingual people. The reality is that these people know how to use their brain and how to learn languages what I call the brain-friendly way or the smart way, but there's nothing particularly strange about me. When people meet me, they say they go like, "Okay, you're a normal person." They go, "Yes, I am a normal person." And I don't even spend all my time hitting the books like you can imagine a polyglot so passionate about language learning just spending the whole time, uh, you know, reading or listening. I just live my life through languages and I have to sign a way that which is unique to me, but also flexible and relies on solid learning principles that allows me to learn languages and maintain some more.

And again, the the thing I really truly passionate about is just to show you, and this is this is the project I'm working on right now, that this academy that I've built, is to show to show people the potential of what they can actually achieve if they work on three pillars. Their mindset, so their limiting beliefs about themselves and how they can learn, their skill set, how to learn, the strategies, the methodologies and their self-management, understanding how to manage time and how to manage, uh, themselves. And especially the first two, so the the the the one in the middle, the skill set, methodologies is what is normally implemented in school, very, uh, to, you know, not not very well, not very efficiently. And the other two are completely neglected, psychology, so the psychological aspect of learning languages and the self-management. I I don't know, maybe Kris, in Denmark, which is a very advanced country, they talk about the psychology of learning, but...

Now, um, just to give you a few examples of how I work with students and what the, you know, the common hurdles are for each area. The biggest hurdle is actually, um, these limiting beliefs that people have about themselves and about, uh, learning. We all have, right, Kris? Like, uh, we we have limiting beliefs we about, um, about how we think the the world the the world works, right? So, um, I think Mark Twain used to say, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble," right? Something like something like that what gets us in trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so, right? So, um, this means that we take some things for granted and we say, "Oh, this is this is the the the way languages are learned."

So, let me give you an example of that. Just for example, um, typical typically, when people start learning a foreign language, they don't have experience with that, they believe all these things that they got from hearsay, right? They hear around like language learning is difficult, I am too old, my memory is bad. I cannot remember vocabulary. Um, you know, you have to move and live in country. You have to have a great teacher. Uh, blah, blah, blah. All this stuff is very common. It's more common than you believe and, um, the the first thing is actually to help them with questions and with some exercises and also, um, by talking to other learners, by writing their ideas, we have a community, of course, it's not just a course, it's the community that makes a difference, where people write their experiences. And it's amazing to see how learners help each other. It's not just me talking about these things in the course, but it's just it's the the amazing thing is when they see peers, like people in their in the same position as them, come to certain realizations, it really helps them.

Like, "Okay, um, I think I'm not good at language learning." This is a very typical thing. But then they they realize that actually, through again, through uh, exercises, through uh, asking me, asking my team, asking other learners, they realize that all these limiting beliefs have to do with the way they were taught to learn or to unlearn at school and they have nothing to do with them as a person. This already, like, is a big is a big thing. Uh, but this this is very general, Kris, but this involves this concerns everything. Like just to give you another example, speaking. People are terrified to speak a foreign language generally. Um...

So, so what I'm saying is that all these ideas, false false beliefs or limiting beliefs, uh, and, um, and psychological problems that people have when it comes to all moving all the moving parts of what I call learning a language, they have to do with their perception of reality, not of reality itself. They you know, after five years of learning or failing at learning a second language at school or college or whatever it is, then we, uh, come to the conclusion that the reason why we're not able to speak a language is because of us, but it has nothing to do with our brain or our capacity to learn. Everybody is able to learn a second language.

The problem, Kris, is that for those, uh, of of you guys who are guys and girls who are listening to us, the problem is that there's a scientific reason why this is difficult to believe even if you might be thinking, "Oh, maybe, oh, this guy seems like he he knows what he's talking about, but I still don't believe it." The reason why is because we as adults think with our, uh, prefrontal cortex, right? The rational part of our of our brain. So, uh, someone says like, "Oh, learning a language is not difficult or learning grammar is not complicated or this and that." But then the emotional part of our brain, that doesn't believe it. And the problem is the rational part believes the 100% what the emotional part of our brain believes in. And the emotional part was actually influenced in our childhood at school. So, there's some sort of cognitive dissonance between these two parts, where in order to believe that, in order to realize that actually, speaking a foreign language, learning grammar, learning vocabulary and everything else involved in language learning is actually easier than than you think is by doing that, by living it. Once you live it, you will understand, "Oh, actually he was right. Actually speaking was not that difficult. Actually learning grammar the way he suggested, not the traditional way, was easier."

So, again, the hurdles when it comes to mindset are like, um, overcoming the limiting beliefs by living these situations by trial and error. The skill set is about learning new brain-friendly ways of, uh, learning, uh, you know, languages. Again, the traditional way of going about grammar, vocabulary and treating every single part of language learning as again, as as a single part, not separated from the others, doesn't work. And we teach them how to learn holistically because we have unlearned to do that. Come to think of it, Kris, we have learned our native your your Danish and my Italian. We never thought of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation. We just, you know, expose ourselves to the language. Uh, we were exposed to the language. We use the language, we learn it. That's how you can learn a second language with a few tweaks, of course.

And then and then time management, the hurdles is people do not follow through. They don't know how to create solid language learning habits. So, uh, sustainable language learning habits. This is all about how do you manage yourself? So, we ask them again. We we make them think. We make them rethink. We reframe the way they go about, um, you know, their beliefs, their the learning strategies, strictly speaking and the way they organize their life and they organize their time and energy to learn in the long run.

Whereas when I go to a new language like right now Portuguese is kind of my main focus. I'm I have that terrified feeling. But yet, recently I had a a conversation with a an elderly lady of my building and I don't know if it was because I knew that there was no chance she would understand any English and I needed to communicate something. I'd locked myself out of the apartment, so I needed her to buzz me in, you know? Um, and and that just that flowed so well, even though I'm sure I made like 900 mistakes in in two sentences. And again, it was it was some kind of confidence that yeah, well, you just got to do what you can do, right? It's just taking your own it's almost removing the ego of of who you think you are, who you think you should be and just accepting that at that time, at that moment, this is what your your language skills are like and you should just use them to that ability as much as you can.

Well, instead if you're in class where like you're talking to your teacher and you know that you have this again, the mental, the the emotional part of your brain, the primitive part, reptilian brain that reminds you, oh, you have to perform, you have to remember words, et cetera, et cetera. You have to be perfect. Then you forget about content and you focus on form. And I will tell you one more thing that happened recently. Now, this video hasn't been published yet, but I I recounted this story to my students recently in our monthly Zoom meetings, is that I have um a Hungarian teacher and I uh I don't know if you ever heard of Csisi. Csisi basically is a Hungarian creator. She she has a YouTube channel and I made a recorded an interview uh, I think in December with her. And I knew that this would be posted on on YouTube. And I was sweating, you know, I was like, oh, oh, oh, my like, uh, you know, I I was just totally focusing on form instead of content. So, you know, I was thinking of the right word to say, to conjugate to conjugate the right verb, et cetera, et cetera. And it didn't really go very well.

Within and and and two months prior, so same knowledge, same more or less, the same knowledge because in two months you're not going to move from A to B2 to C1. Two months prior, I met my uh, Hungarian teacher in uh, Budapest. And we spoke for two hours in Hungarian and I had no problem whatsoever. Sure, maybe sometimes I expressed myself Tarzan-like, but I was totally focusing on on content, on on on communicating because it was like an a natural environment where the the purpose of the meeting was just to talk, to talk about everything and everything all at once. So, then then and there, I realized, looking back, I realized this is like, you know, if it doesn't matter how many words you know, and how many phrases you you you know, or pronunciation or grammar. What really matters is your state of mind and the confidence. Sometimes it, you know, you're confident, be it because, well, in in general, it's important to be confident. But again, out of necessity or maybe you're telling an interesting story and you don't give, um, it's not important for you anymore what how you're saying it, but rather what you're saying, then it makes the entire difference. And then you realize, "Oh, now I understand the state of mind and mindset and the impact that these two general mindset has on you on your perform on your overall, um, communication and speaking skills and language skills in general.

Um, so maybe that's a good area to get some of that inspiration and and push ourselves and and just the knowledge that it's okay to be, I wouldn't say like the idiot in the room, but accept that you can't be like as eloquent in your in a language you only spend a couple months learning unless you're native language that you spend all year all your life perfecting, you know? And and I I felt that helped me a lot in the beginning and it is tied to perfectionism, which funnily enough was the last podcast episode we recorded or we published here. Uh, so if people haven't seen that, it's 187 with Heidi Lovejoy. Um, which is probably a huge part of people of of people's lack of uh, using their language in public because they feel like, "I can't say anything until I'm confident to a certain percentage because obviously you can never be confident, right? Even in your native language, you're probably not 100% sure sometimes." So, it's funny that we have these arbitrary rules for ourselves that are, like, I want to be perfect in a way, but also you can't be perfect because you don't know what perfect is. So, it's kind of like you're stopping yourself uh, on on different points at the same time.

And second, we get into this, I call it the second language learning syndrome, where when we speak our own native language, we don't care about mistakes, right? We don't.

So, it's it's again, the the impact that these preconceived ideas or biases that we have towards ourselves and and and our learning impacts language learning hugely. And it's not something that people talk enough. And and I'm I'm glad you you you quoted, you cited people on YouTube like Xiaoma or other people who go just like, we go to they hit the streets and they talk because they show you can actually, um, you know, talk even when you don't speak a language really well and people will, um, you know, will be inspired anyway and native speakers will be appreciative of the fact that you're even if you say a couple of words, they that that puts a big smile on people's faces in general. And when you speak the language, it opens entire world.

So, it's always it's always, uh, really it's worth learning a language. I remember when I was in in uh, in Poland, there's a couple of episodes, uh, when I was, you know, I grabbed a cab, was on my way to the airport and this guy, this taxi driver was a little bit grumpy at the beginning. He was just he told me in Polish, "Hey, I was supposed to grab a coffee with my friend and now you come here and I have to go to the airport." He was grumpy, right? But that's that's fine. He said something at the beginning like that. I pretended I didn't understand because at the beginning I didn't say a word. He just said that, right, to me, thinking I didn't understand. Then I jumped on the on the taxi and again, for the first couple of minutes, he was grumpy, he didn't say anything because I thought he thought I didn't speak I didn't speak Polish. Then I I started speaking Polish. He started telling the entire story of his life, his family, showing stuff and at the end you just like patted me on the uh, you know, he he just said, "Hey, you're a good boy, you're going to find a nice Polish girl, you're going to get married." And it it changed the entire, um, you know, interaction between the two of us. So, language learning is is like it's amazing what what a couple of even a couple of words can do and imagine if you can hold an entire conversation. It just mind-blowing how it changed my life and that of many other people around the globe.

Um, but one thing I just uh, a final, uh, question I wanted to ask you, uh, that I was curious about. I'm finding personally as I'm learning more foreign languages and especially introducing more sounds, uh, for instance right now the Portuguese with the, you know, the at the end of everything. Uh, or almost every word ending in SH uh, an SH sound. I find that it creeps into my other languages and it kind of makes, you know, it kind of messes me up a little bit. Uh, but I've always noticed that no matter how many languages you've been working on and and and you speak, you know, Slavic languages to a high level, you speak Hungarian, you speak uh, you know, Swedish, uh, you have a a wide variety of sounds there. Um, so do you do anything kind of actively to maintain your your uh, pronunciation and and to avoid some of those uh, new newer sounds maybe spilling over into uh, your other languages? I I feel even my English is affected sometimes by if I'm doing a lot of language learning in a week or in a month, I feel like my English gets a little bit weaker in in terms of the pronunciation.

So, to me, it's there's two important things. First, it's identity building, I call it within the language system. And the second thing is that I kind of design a way to make sure design a lifestyle to make sure that I kind of get exposed or at least practice a little bit most of the languages that I speak because in our brain, we have two main mechanisms. We have storage and we have retrieval. Storage is basically store information in our neocortex, right? So, we have that information there like long-term memory, et cetera, et cetera. But retrieval is the act of fetching these pieces of information and using them on the fly, right? This is when you haven't used a language in a long time, then you get rusty. This is the the typical expression that explains, uh, this is like, "Oh, I got rusty."

So, um, let's say that you start mixing up languages or, let's say, some sounds start getting complicated in one or the other, or, you know, when you start using one language much more than the other or when there's not a balance between, uh, various various languages. And on top of that, it also depends on the individual and on a number of things that happen in in in their head, which I cannot explain because I'm not in their head. So, it's it's a very complex thing that could have a lot of, uh, a lot of reasons, but my simple suggestion is when people mix up languages or they see that one language starts influencing the other is to, um, find a way to tell your brain that, "Oh, both languages are important." If if you if if for whatever reason your brain starts thinking, "Oh, this language is less important," then it starts neglecting it. And, uh, this impacts pronunciation, grammar and fluency in general.

It's like, imagine having a family, every time you learn a new language, you have a new born in the family, right? And that newborn needs a lot of attention. The other and the other brothers and sisters get a little bit, um, jealous. So, you need it it's it's it's difficult to take care of everybody in the family. You have all these running children, right? Running around. And, um, it happens, but again, it depends on a number of, um, on a number of factors. The reason why this doesn't happen to me or happens a little bit at the beginning is because I again, I have designed my my, let's say that my life, I live through languages. So, on a daily basis, I use between four and a very on a very unfortunate day, just four, and then a very lucky day, 10 or 11. But on average, it's six, between six and eight languages I either use or I listen to or I read in, et cetera, et cetera. So, that's the reason why, uh, my brain knows these languages are all kind of equally important and doesn't mix them.

It's it's very complex to explain this and we don't have the time. But the bottom line is, exercise like, you know, put in the the time and and and speak or do something in the language and you're going to tell your subconscious part of your mind that language is important. Um, and the the pronunciation is going to improve subconsciously. So, I don't do anything particularly, like, you know, deliberately I sit down and I vocalize and I read out loud. None of that. Most of my learning, I would say 90% of my learning happens subconsciously. I put in the time, expose myself to the language, I use it in a meaningful way, be it listening, watching movies, talking with friends, living experiences. And the the beautiful infrastructure that we have within our skull takes care of the rest.