Steve Kaufmann: Canadian superpolyglot and entreprenur

On this episode of the actual fluency podcast, I'm joined by Steve Kaufmann. Steve talks about how he got into learning languages, his best tips, and he also shares how his 90-day challenge in Korean is going.

Thank you. Uh, glad to be here, Kris. Uh, glad to have an opportunity to talk to you.

Sweet, and those are, uh, we it's been a brewing for a week or so. We had a little email going back and forth, but we're finally here.

Right.

Fantastic. I gave the listeners a little introduction to who you are, and I'm sure most of them already know you, but could you give a little moment to talk how you got started with all these languages in the first place?

Well, there's sort of two things, how I got started with languages and then how I got started in the sort of last 10 years of Link and making videos and so forth and so on.

Right.

So, um, I mean, uh, I I guess when I was in Montreal, I I, although I was born in Sweden, and moved to Montreal when I was five, um, very quickly became English-speaking. We didn't speak Swedish at home. My parents actually are originally from Czechoslovakia, and they said we're in Canada, now we speak English. And Montreal in those days was sort of part English-speaking, part French-speaking, and the two didn't meet.

Right.

I was with the Canadian government. They sent me to Hong Kong to learn Chinese. There after I lived in Japan. And so I just got, I I realized that I could learn languages. And so then I got interested in learning more of them.

That's fantastic. And the, uh, the university education, was that related to the diplomatic work you went on to do?

Well, to the extent that I went to l'Institut d'Études Politiques, Sciences Po in Paris, and then when I wrote the Canadian diplomatic service exam, I think the fact that I was an Anglophone studying at Sciences Po gave me an advantage because I I don't know what it's like in Denmark, but, you know, you write this exam and sort of 50 people out of 2000 are selected.

Right, yeah.

to enter the Foreign Service. And and they they look at a variety of factors and and I think that might have helped.

Right, and then you said you jumped to, uh, sort of 10 years ago, you got into the language learning business, as I, you know, you started up Link.

Exactly. I mean, it was a long story. We had a, we, uh, my company, we sell lumber. We've got a sawmill in Alberta. And we also developed software for the, uh, sawmill industry. And so we did require, you know, programmers. And I was learning Cantonese at the time, and I became aware of a Chinese immigrant who had all his money stolen at the Vancouver Airport when he arrived here.

Wow.

And because there's Chinese gangs that prey on the Chinese immigrants who arrive with $10,000 in a in a bag, you know.

That's

So, we'll give him a job and if he's good, he stays, and if not, at least we've helped him out a bit. And so then, uh, he had a very high TOEFL score, but really couldn't communicate. So we started looking at ways that we could help someone like him, who wasn't going to benefit from going to an ESL class, uh, help him to improve his English.

Right.

labored on.

labored on. So how long did it take you from when you had that idea?

I'll tell you though, as a, I'm 68 now and I mean, uh, it gives me more pleasure than anything else. The interaction with the community, learning different languages, I mean, it's a great thing to be doing. I mean, there are people who once they retire, they don't know what they want to do. Uh, I don't have enough time in the day to do all the things that I want to do.

Yeah, that's, uh, can be the challenge to to, you know, to be learning all the languages at the same time as you're trying to help all other people learn the languages, right?

Well, I don't really help other people. I mean, we have Link. Uh, my son Mark is sort of a key person who comes up with the concepts and and coordinates our team of programmers and and, uh, you know, graphics people and customer service people and so forth. And I'm kind of the the call me the guru who learns languages and obviously I have input in some of the things that we do, but, uh, no, I I and I still am involved in my lumber business. And other activities.

Sweet. And, um, so with regards to to language learning to bring that back a little bit, what have you what I mean, obviously, you've gone through a huge development, I assume, from your first language to now Korean. What are some of the the big aha moments you've had during your learning all these different languages?

Well, I think the first one was, uh, okay, learning French. I realized that that the level of one's commitment to the language, wanting to learn it was such a big factor.

Mm-hm.

And then once you do that, then if you pursue things that that interest you, whether it be in back in the in the early 60s, you know, the the Nouvelle Vague movies in French, or whatever it is, if you follow your interests, if that enthusiasm and emotional commitment is there, you're going to learn. If it isn't there, it's going to be a long uphill struggle.

Right.

So that kind of was the French aha moment. The Chinese aha moment was that, uh, basically, I learned Mandarin about nine or 10 months. Half the time or less than half of the time half the time of the other diplomatic students in Hong Kong. But I put in seven, eight hours a day. I did it tremendously intensively.

Wow.

And most of my time was listening and reading. And, uh, and that my I I was basically oblivious to all the grammatical explanations, but focused rather on the patterns of the language and practiced those patterns.

Right.

So I think the the aha moment with with Chinese was that intensity pays dividends because you're sort of creating this white heat of intensity. I kind of think of it as as, you know, the neural connections kind of heating up because you're you're not giving it a chance to go back to English, like you're just overfeeding it with Chinese in this case, the target language.

But how do you, uh, sorry for interrupting, but how do you if you're studying eight hours a day, isn't there some, I mean, obviously, the more you put into a language, the more you learn, but isn't there a natural just like a a breaking point where, you know, putting in more time means that you're losing things from the, you know, the other end of the session or the day? You know.

No, you don't lose things. That's that's a complete fallacy.

All right.

Uh, in my opinion, you are absorbing the language through exposure. The more exposure, the more you absorb. You may not be able to retrieve everything immediately, on call, for a test or something, but it is it is gradually being absorbed. And so that I have never worried about what I forget. I never worry about what I get wrong. It doesn't matter because what really matters is the the end result after what's going to be a long period of time. So what I remember in one week, two, whatever, two months, three months is of no significance. I know from experience that with enough exposure, you will only get better.

Right.

And so people work for eight hours a day. Well, they can study for eight hours a day. And the other thing is, you have to vary it. So I would listen, I would read, I would write, I would practice the, uh, you know, flashcards and eventually just handwriting the characters. I would listen, I would go jogging and listen. Uh, just kind of varied it.

Right.

So, there was lots of variety there.

And that's the important thing. I I I I've watched your daily video logs on it wasn't too many days ago where you said that, um, it was about, you know, you were doing the Korean challenge, but you kind of had to switch to Russian for a day or two because the politic political situation in Ukraine is so interesting. And and so it's

Absolutely.

important. It's important to have an interest in in the language, you know, whatever material, whether it's news or literature, if you really want to power through and learn that language really fast and efficiently, isn't it?

Absolutely. And the interest can vary. I mean, I know there are people who learn Japanese because they're interested in anime. Uh, so it really doesn't Some people like listening to songs, popular music, German rock music. I I don't even listen to English rock music, so I'm not going to listen to German rock music. But a lot of people, I mean, those are the kinds of things. So you have to find what it is that you find interesting. You don't have to like everything in the culture. You just have to find something that'll turn you on.

A focal point.

Focal point. Yeah.

And how did you select the, uh, the languages originally? You you were required to learn for for your diplomatic service?

French, I mean, you know, it was always around you in Montreal, and, uh, all of a sudden, I got interested. In fact, it was because I did a course at university on French civilization, you know, and discovered all the French thinkers and writers and painters and all of this kind of stuff and it became interest. For whatever reason, it caught my fancy. So then I went off to France.

You talk about that a few times in your video logs, the Kim Young-ha's podcast.

Yes.

So that's a a top tip for learning languages is find an interest point or many interest points, I guess. There's no limit, of course.

Exactly. And and the number of people who, you know, on my YouTube channel, who come on and say, you know, can you tell me where I can find resources for this or that? Well, if you aren't motivated enough to go look for it, uh, there's not much point in me telling you.

Tough that way.

Uh, you aren't I think a language learner has to be a he's a hunter. He's a lone hunter. He has to be motivated to seek out content, to seek out people, to seek out the language, to to be interested in the the patterns of the language and how the words work. If you don't have that kind of hunter instinct, you know. People come to I'm they ask me, should I learn Japanese, Arabic or I'm like, how do I know what you should learn? What are you interested in, you know?

Exactly. And and I guess, um, have you had any I I don't want to call them language failures, but have you found any languages you started to learn and then you lost interest because you couldn't find this, uh, focal point?

Yes. Well, initially, Korean, because I started Korean. Like I didn't start Korean from scratch here on the 90-day challenge. Uh, I decided I would try to learn Korean back seven, eight years ago, and a major major motivation was the fact that I could speak Chinese and Japanese. So I figured that Korean would be like low-hanging fruit, you know, because so much of the vocabulary comes from Chinese.

Right.

Right.

And I want to just add that if anyone's listening and you're learning a language, it doesn't matter which one, there is a podcast out there for you, you know. There's so many language podcasts on the iTunes store.

Yeah. Absolutely. And you have to use your imagination. Like, you know, search in the target language. Don't necessarily search in English. If you search in English, you'll get, uh, podcasts with a lot of English on them. I mean, assuming you're an English speaker.

Right.

Uh, you know, whatever, Japanese 101, which might be fine, but that's not what I'm looking for. Uh, so go to Google Translate, punch in whatever you want, uh, history podcast in, uh, whatever language, and see what comes up.

Yeah, and I'm sure something's going to come up.

Yeah. Uh, uh, or radio stations or whatever. Very often, like I found the radio stations for Czech, Romanian and Russian were all very helpful. I looked for radio stations in Korean, but none had any transcripts. Right. Uh, you know, another thing someone had suggested is go to iTunes and change that little flag in the lower right-hand corner to whatever, you know, Portugal, you know, whatever language, so that you'll find popular podcasts from that country or in that language.

And you actually had Kim Young-ha's podcast transcribed, so you could study the the words on the, uh, in Link.

Yeah, because if I just listen to it, I don't understand it all. So, or very little. So, and so I went to ODesk, which is an an outsourcing website, and, uh, uh, fortunately, like I wasn't going to pay $50 an episode, but fortunately, there was a nice person, a Korean person in the Southern US, who is also a a literature, you know, major at university, and she's very interested in the podcast, and she also teaches Korean. So, from a number of points of view, she was willing to do it, and she only charges me, well, significantly less,

Right.

to the point where I can afford to do it. I mean, I'm it's still cheaper than going to a classroom.

Yeah, and there's also Fiverr, uh, there you find many services there, if you need anything, uh, usually for $5 or less. Of course, ODesk is a little bit higher quality usually, but if people are really strapped and and want to look, you know, fiverr.com is a is a good alternative.

Fiverr, how do you spell that?

Uh, it's it's like a fiber, just just an extra R on it.

F I B E R?

No, Fiverr, as the five.

Oh, Fiverr. Fiverr. All right.

Uh, Russian B, I guess, but yeah, um,

And what is Fiverr?

It's just like ODesk, but it's like, um, for $5. So it's a bit more

Okay, okay.

like a marketplace kind of thing. And that's how I got the introduction to this podcast, for instance, uh, some nice lady recorded a two an intro and outro for $5, so.

Oh, very good.

And, uh,

I'll I'll look that up. That's a good tip.

Yeah, you can find anything on there like,

All right.

writing and artistic work and of course, you have to be careful because some of it is, you know, crap, but there are good people in between, so if you just find those with the high ratings, then that's a really good service.

Okay.

Um, you talked about this 90-day challenge, and I guess we can use that as kind of a segue to talk a little bit about Link, uh, in specifically, because I I wanted to ask you this question and I don't know if you're familiar with Memrise or Anki.

Yeah, yeah, familiar with it. For sure.

So So if you took, uh, just a brief moment, what is the biggest advantage to somebody signing up for Link over using, say, Anki or Memrise or a similar flashcard type app? What what do you gain?

Okay. Well, ours is not a flashcard app. Uh, personally, I I can't do I mean, I do flashcards to some extent if I'm waiting, uh, you know, in a doctor's office or or something, but I don't do an awful lot of flashcard.

Right.

But at the rate that I accumulate new words, uh, I would spend, I would have to spend all my time on Anki. Like,

Wow.

In Russian, I got 80, 90,000 words. I mean, granted, in our system, each different form of the word is counted as a new word, because the system can't isn't set up to distinguish root words. It's something we might do in the future, but we're not doing it now.

Right.

You can't go through them in Memrise or Anki.

But I tried, you know, I I just want to give a little personal, uh, approach here because I tried Link. Uh, I I I'm not, you know, I haven't used it extensively, so that's why I'm also asking. I'm sure a lot of members or listeners haven't tried it either, so I'm I just want to, you know, is it really for true, if you don't know anything about a language, or do you advise that people know a little bit first? Because I tried to open it up in Russian, and,

I think no, it's it's a resource. Uh, there are people who start from scratch. I have started, you know, like, you know, I wouldn't say I don't think there's any language that I have exclusively studied at Link. Uh, I like to get myself a little teach-yourself. I did that for Czech, for example.

Right.

For Romanian, I found a wonderful grammar resource on the internet that I printed out with lots of examples, which is the kind of grammar book that I like. Not too much explanation, lots of examples. So I think any language learner has to be, as I say, a hunter. And so come to Link, find out what it is in Link that you find useful and use it. And then look for other resources. Right.

Right.

So, uh, you know, I I think it's unrealistic to expect that that, I mean, when I was studying at school in Hong Kong, Chinese, I was constantly in the bookstore looking for additional resources. Right. I think as a language learner, you have to be on the prowl for things that are going to help you.

Great. And the the Link, of course, is you're talking about pricing as well. I know I know that a lot of language learners, uh, can't really go out and spend, you know, uh, what is a Pimsleur course these days? It's several hundreds at least. And your you Link is, uh, what is the membership is starting at $10 a month?

It's basically, it comes to $10. Right.

So I think that and there's so many resources, um, submitted by the members.

Right.

And lots of content to I mean, almost too much content for one language learner, isn't there?

I mean, one of the issues we have to deal with at some point is to better organize our library, because we have so much content. Uh, but basically $10 a month and you can study all of the 21 languages there if you want.

Right.

Um, and you can earn as well, because, uh, on our system, the, uh, you know, the tutors are paid. Uh, so if you, if you, for example, offer discussion, uh, in your language, um, which would be difficult for Danish, unfortunately for Danish, but, uh,

Get it started, Steve, get it started, you know. Danish is moving up in the world.

Yeah, if we get enough content in Danish, we'll start it. Anybod anytime people come along with enough content, we'll start it. We do have Norwegian and Swedish. Yeah. I don't know why we discriminate against Danish. But, uh, sorry about that.

That's okay.

Uh, so, uh, you know, the, uh, now where are we on that? Yeah, so there are some things that cost additional money. For example, if you want to have if I want to have a conversation with my Korean tutor, it costs me essentially, uh, $20 an hour. However, if I give an hour's worth of English to someone, I get $20 an hour.

That, yeah, that's a fantastic system.

So, so some people say, and some people say it should be free and stuff, but we we found that if you if people do make their points, which they can then subsequently use, they're a little more serious because our tutors have to provide a a decent report, often with an audio recording, after the lesson. And we also have, uh, you know, uh, correction, but again for points, but you can set how much you're willing to pay for a, you know, writing correction.

Right.

So and and also those people who submit content for our library, they also earn points. Not very much, but a small amount.

Enough to keep you motivated and

Enough to keep you motivated. And if you recommend friends and they join, then, uh, you that's, uh, 200 points or like $2 a month. So if you have if you have, uh, five friends who join, uh, then you can be a member for free.

Fantastic. And, uh, we talked about your 90-day challenge, which of course was, uh, originated on the Link blog, if I'm not mistaken.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And, um, so give us a little, you know, insight update here. I know you do a video blog every single day, but how do you feel like this 90-day challenge has how how do you think your results are compared to what you expected when you started out 90 days ago or 84 or something?

Well, I think what I wanted to do, we had two goals. One was me personally with my Korean. And the other one was to have an activity that would motivate our learners. And, uh, sometimes you do need a nudge. And since we don't we're not at school, we don't have, you know, we're not preparing for a test, we don't have to face the teacher every day. So it's very easy to kind of slacken off.

But you got a long way, and that's the point.

Oh, yeah.

But you but you're still not pretending that you're suddenly fluent after 90 days or anything. You're realizing that I've come a long way, but the progress to getting, you know, to to a high level is ongoing and it's not it doesn't have an end date.

Yeah. Well, that's right. I I think all this stuff about how much you can learn in two weeks, two months, three months. I don't really favor that. Uh, at Link, we essentially measure people's level of activity. We don't level, we don't measure, you know, what they have achieved, what level they are. And a lot of these levels are quite arbitrary. You know, you say someone is B2. Well, they might be B2 in speaking, but not in reading or not in listening. And what does it all really mean?

Yeah, I've seen a lot of, um, you had a little bit of a negative backlash from the lot of the YouTube, uh, troll or close to trolls that, uh, blew the whole Benny Lewis argument out of proportion. That was some time ago, but still, um, just goes to show that, you know, that it's not it's not about X days or X months. It's about enjoying the process, and you can kind of take a one day at a time approach and see what did I do today. You can't really say what did I do, you know, or what am I going to do in three months. I just think that's unrealistic.

That's a good point. Yeah, just every day. Stay with it, enjoy it. Which languages do you speak, by the way, Kris?

Um, I speak Danish, of course. English, as we're doing now, and I have a German very well.

Yeah.

German and I'm just starting on Russian, so I've been doing Russian for a month and a half.

Okay.

And, um,

Powerful experience.

It's, uh, it's a nice I I really enjoy Russian, actually. And I get more excited about it as I continue.

That's that's good. Yeah.

I found a, uh, tutor on Italki, um, who I've become really good friends with, and we talk almost every day, and that just keeps me so motivated.

Great.

And I don't have to pay the, uh, $20 an hour that, uh,

Yeah.

somebody else might have. But Steve, it's been amazing to talk to you, and, uh, thank you so much for doing this. Here on the, um, remaining last minute of of the show, what is in store for the future of of Steve? What is the next big language you're going to try and get on? Are you going to go back and revise or are you picking up a new one?

No. No, I mean, I know that I should go back and improve some of the languages that I've sort of learned. I mean, I'd love to do better in Russian and and even Chinese or, you know, all these languages. I I guess the only one where I don't feel a big urge to do much is French, because I think my French is as, you know, it's probably the one I speak the best.

Right.

Um, it depends. I might learn up some Ukrainian, which won't be very difficult with my Russian, because it's topical right now. Uh, there's talk with a couple of friends of ours that we might go to Vietnam, so I might do Vietnamese because it's a bit like Korean, there's a lot of Chinese vocabulary there. Uh, but then with if I were to do Ukrainian, I might want to do Polish. Right. And often in the distance is Arabic and Turkish, and I don't know. Yeah. Who knows?

Where do you stop? Where do you stop, you know? So many languages.

I'm not going to stop. I'm going to continue doing it.

Fantastic. Steve, thank you so much. Are there any, uh, do you want to give any shout-outs here? The final moment.

Not really. I just, uh,

Where can people find you? That's always nice to have.

Well, of course, uh, they can find me on YouTube as LingoSteve. Uh, and they can come to Link, l-i-n-g-q.com. Uh, and they can comment on our forum. They can send me, uh, an email at steve@lingq.com. And, uh, I'm always happy to talk to people and, uh, offer them my perspective. On things.

Great. And, uh, yeah, I just want to say you're also very responsive on YouTube. You responded to my comment almost immediately, so, uh, if people want to want your opinion on something, then that's definitely the way to go.

I try I mean, YouTube, uh, really did improve when it was bought over by Google, but they finally got their the way comments are handled a little better than it was, so that I am able now to respond to most comments on my YouTube channel.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Steve. It's been a pleasure.

Thank 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.