Which Characteristic Features do Succesful Internet Polyglots have?

Let's collect the charateristic features of successful internet polyglots here on my blog! :) To make it interactive, we will do this in English, not in Dutch. I will start making up a list...

1. He or she has already successfully learned several languages to at least intermediate levels.

2. He or she has an own blog and / or an own You Tube channel.

3. He or she uses individual learning methods tailored to his / her own person.

4. He or she is well integrated in the internet language learning community.

5. He or she takes part in Polyglot Conferences or Polyglot Gatherings.

6. He or she inspires many other language learners.

7. He or she is capable of giving good language advice to learners who have questions about language learning.

8. He or she teaches, translates or interprets languages professionally or hobbywise.

9. He or she is the type of person who does not easily give up learning certain languages.

So far my own ideas, I will add your points to this list, if I agree to them.

English: Video about my life as a home polyglot

HOME POLYGLOT = THUIS POLYGLOT versus TRAVEL POLYGLOT = REIS POLYGLOT Ik heb een nieuw begrip uitgevonden "thuis polyglot", hetgeen precies het tegenovergestelde van "reis polyglot" is. Nou, ik ben een hele typische thuis polyglot en wat de kenmerken ervan zijn dat vertel ik in deze video in het Engels. Natuurlijk heeft deze situatie van mij invloed op mijn manier van telen leren en talen gebruiken. I have invented a new expression "home polyglot" which is the opposite of a "travel polyglot". I am a very typical home polyglot and I explain this in detail in my video. Of course this situation insfluences my ways of language learning and language usage. Zijn er nog meer home polyglots? Are there more home polyglots? Fasulye

Video "Skype Me Maybe" gezongen in 32 talen

Met grote dank aan Benny Lewis, die de bijdragen van vele bekende internet polyglots samen heeft verwerkt in één muziekvideo ter promotie van de opkomende polyglot conferentie in Boedapest, Hongarije, in de lente van het komende jaar 2013. Fasulye

A lifetime study of languages - is it possible?

I would say that it is possible to study languages during your whole lifetime as I myself am an example of a person who is doing this. To do this you need to begin your language studies early in your life ideally in your school age and you need a mixture of passion and intrinsic motivation that means motivation which comes out of yourself. learning languages can be lot of fun but it's always connected with lots of study work, so you have to keep your motivation. In life you have to do one or more professional eductions, if you want look for a partner to live with and get children. And you have to work or be a housewife or househusband. Such circumstances can enrich but also engage your life so much, that there is hardly any time left for language learning. I have read about especially women who were so fullfilled with childcare that they couldn't continue their language studies for a while. I have been a single person so far in my life, so I don't have family distractions from language learning. Another factor is good health. I could imagine some diseases which make it impossible to continue language learning. I have heard that some medicaments exist which for example affect your memory or your concentration. But what you can do for yourself is have a healthy lifestyle with physical exercise and healthy food avoiding smoking and too much alcohol. There is no guarantee that you will avoid any serious disease but it will be more favourable that you remain in good condition and shape so that you can just continue your language studies also at an advanced age. I think that a good work - life balance is favourable for your language studies. The job shouldn't be so overdemanding and stressful that you don't have any more time left for private hobbies such as language learning. Ideally you could try to find a job where language knowledge is useful and apprecietated and if you are lucky you get better payment due to your language skills. So theses are just some aspects you have to consider, if want to make language learning your lifetime occupation. It's not so common that will say that not many people do this, but it's a feasible way of life. What are your thoughts on this topic? Fasulye

Interview: Jimmy Mello asks Fasulye about language learning

My blog reader Jimmy Mello, who is the owner of a language school in Brazil, has interviewed me recently. I was asked to give language learning advice.

Here you can read the whole interview:

http://www.brazilianpolyglot.com

I hope that this interview is inspirational for language learners.

Enjoy!

Fasulye

Final results of the Goethe - Institut video - competition

These are the winners:

1. Richard from Great Britain: 477 votes

2. Akin and Firat from Turkey: 413 votes

3. Chiara from Italy: 189 votes

4. Lily from Bulgaria: 132 votes

5. Anastasia from Lithuania: 78 votes

6. Immanuel from Germany: 61 votes


Here is the link: http://www.goethe.de/ges/spa/prj/mes/vid/deindex.htm

My personal congratulations to all of the 6 winners!

My persoonlijke feliciaties an alle 6 winnaars!

Fasulye

Video-Voting Goethe-Institut

The jury of the "MehrsprachIch" video-competition has now elected 9 multilingual participants to take part in the public voting on Facebook. To vote you need to have a Facebook account and everyone is allowed to give only one vote in total.
Voting period: 18-07-2012 to 24-07-2012

Here is the link to the video-voting:

http://www.facebook.com/goetheinstitut.deutsch/app_388017324588318

On this page please click on the icon of "MehrsprachICH".

These are the 9 finalists:

1. Vesselina from Bulgaria

2. Immanuel from Germany

3. Akin and Firat from Turkey

4. Anastasia from Lithuania

5. Rita from Lettland

6. Lily from Bulgaria

7. Georgia from Germany

8. Richard from Great Britain

9. Chiara from Italy


Of the participating You Tube polyglots is Richard Simcott the only one who has reached the the final voting. Benny Lewis and Stefan Kelly are not among the succesful ones.

This is bad luck as well for Jimmy Mello and me! We both aren't among the succesful ones either.

So good luck to the finalists and I am already curious who will win the competition!

Kind regards,

Fasulye

Goethe-Institut: Multilingual video-competition

I am a participant of the multilingual video-competition of Goethe-Institut.
The competititon is called: "mehrsprachICH". This means "multilingual" whereas "ich" means "I" in English.

On the You Tube channel of Goethe-Institut you can see the videos of all the participants so far:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mehrsprachICH

For this competition I chose my first You Tube video to show my capacity of switching in 4 languages.

Goethe-Institut has subsiduaries all over the world and is wellknown for the teaching of the German language. Their German language exams have a high reputation internationally.

Fasulye

3 Female Polyglots Talking on International Women's Day 2012

Susanna, Jana and I had the idea to make a video together on this symbolic day. To record the video we had a Skype conversation on Sunday evening where we talked about female language learners and the possibilities of encouraging more female language learners to show their language skills on the internet.



My special thanks to Susanna and Jana for this interesting Skype conversation and to Susanna for her technical work on the video integrating our photos into it!

Fasulye

Female Polyglots: A Video to Come

My topic on this blog about female language learners and polyglots has been most read by the readers of my blog.

One result of this post is that we made a video - three female polyglots together - where we discuss the topic of female language learners and our experiences.

We will present this video to the public on Thursday, 08 March 2012 because this day will be International Women's Day 2012.

I will present this video here on my blog as well!

Fasulye

Polyglots: Rubriek Popular Language Blogs

NEDERLANDS:

Op mijn blogwebsite heb ik een rubriek "Popular Language Blogs" ingericht die ik verlinkt heb met de websites van mijn favoriete bloggers die een gespecialiseerde talenblog schrijven en die ook regelmatig updaten. Het kunnen blogs van polyglots zijn, maar dat is voor mij geen voorwaarde om een blog in deze rubriek optenemen. Wat ik belangrijk vind is dat de bloggers zo serieus met het leren van talen bezig moeten zijn dat ik me door het lezen van deze blogs voor mijn eigen talenstudie geïnspireerd voel.

Momenteel heb ik zeven favoriete blogs van talenbloggers verzameld en mij valt daarbij op dat daar (tot nu toe nog) geen vrouwen bijzitten. Ik heb al heel wat blogs gelezen die door vrouwen geschreven worden, maar ik heb daaronder nog geen blog gevonden die ik in deze rubriek wil zetten.

Het valt me ook op dat bijna alle blogs in mijn rubriek in het Engels zijn geschreven. Alleen de blog van Luca is meertalig. Maar ook dat hoeft niet zo te zijn, als de blogs maar in een taal (of meerdere talen) geschreven zijn die ik zelf kan begrijpen.


ENGLISH:

On my blogwebsite I installed a rubric called "Popular Language Blogs" which I linked with the websites of my favourite bloggers specialized in language blogging who update their blogs regularly. The bloggers can be polyglots but that's not my condition. What I find important is that the bloggers are so seriously occupied with language learning that by reading these blogs I myself get inspired for my own language studies.

At present I have collected seven favourite blogs of language bloggers and I noticed that (up to now) there are no blogs written by women represented. I have read quite a lot of blogs written by women already but I haven't found a blog yet which I would put in my rubric.

What strikes me as well is that almost all of these blogs are written in English. Luca's blog is the exception as it is written multilingually. My favourite blogs don't have to be in English but they should be written in a language (or several languages) which I can understand.

Fasulye

What is a polyglot lifestyle and how can you create it?

Generally I prefer writing in Dutch because I have a certain preference for this language. But my blog statistics show that a huge quantity of readers read my English post about female language learners and polyglots.

Therefore this post also in English is a tribute to my readers' statisitics. I am known as not being a fan of translating so I will not translate this post into Dutch.

About myself I say that I have a polyglot lifestyle, but what is that? I can't even travel around to foreign countries nor do I have contact with native speakers in my home country Germany.

I would say that it's possible to have a polyglot lifestyle even, if you are not rich and not mobile and don't have contacts with native speakers in your own country.

What's typical about me is that my thinking language during the day always changes. This comes naturally to me as I always think in imaginative dialogs. I imagine an existing person and then think in the suitable language as if I were in a conversation with him or her. But when I want to think in Danish I still have to force myself a bit because I am not intermediate in this language yet.

I have forum activies, letter correspondence and e-mail contacts with people in different languages during daytime.

I do my cooking with recipes in my foreign languages (by using cooking books and cooking magazines).

I have regualar conversation groups with Germans (= who have the same native language as I have!) speaking Italian or English

One of my friends is Dutch, so I have been speaking on the phone and writing in Dutch on a daily basis since 2000.

If it fits into my schedule, I do polyglot skyping with language learners who speak my Romance languages in exchange for the languages I can offer them.

As far as I have acces to books and magazines, I read them at least in some of my foreign languages.

It's normal for me that I have serveral language activities every day - without counting the study time of my target language (which is Danish at present!)

What can be encouraging to others about this is that you don't have to be - financially or geografically - privileged to have a polyglot lifestyle, but you can create your own language oriented surroundings. This works very well for me personally.

Do others of you have experiences with a polyglot lifestyle? I am curious to hear some response on this topic!

Fasulye

Female language learners and polyglots

As this is a topic of general interest, I will write about it in English and not in Dutch.

I studied 3 years of Romance languages at university and in my language, linguistics, litarature and civilisation classes 90 % of the students were female and only 10 % of the students were male.

Same experience with my evening courses at the adult education centres (volksuniversiteiten): In the language classes not more than 10 % of the students are male and about 90 % of the students are female. A typical example is my new Danish course: We are 5 students, 4 females and 1 male.

As a conclusion I can say - covering my own lifelong experience - that language courses normally are dominated by female participants.

But what's the situation with among polyglots? On You Tube the most wellknown polyglots are all males with me as an exeption. But where are the other female polyglots? I have had contact with a few female polyglots and they all don't want to present themselves in public. Discussing language learning in a forum is OK for them but making You Tube videos would be too much. Therefore they remain unknown to those people who don't follow the discussions in a language forum such as HTLAL (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com).

Therefore I know that other female polyglots exist and I could name them for example in a discussion on Skype, but I also respect the decision of other people not to present themselves in public on the internet.

Fasulye