![]() From that point on, it was more a matter of learning because I was interested and because I knew I could do it. Thereafter, I was transferred to Japan, so I learned Japanese. Initially, I was sent to Hong Kong to learn Mandarin Chinese. I then worked for the Canadian government. Eventually, I ended up going off to Europe, to France, where I did my university, completed my university training there for three years. So then I got very much turned on to French because I had a professor at McGill University who was very stimulating, got us interested in French civilization. I had learned the grammar and all those kind of stuff, but I couldn’t speak. However, in Montreal, Montreal in those days was what they called “The Two Solitudes.” You had a million English speakers and two million French speakers, and there wasn’t much mingling. You know, I like to say that at the age of 16, I could only really speak or carry on a conversation in English. Would you mind sharing with us how you went from being monolingual into being a hyperpolyglot? Kind of what were the steps there? From Monolingual to Hyperpolyglot: Steve Kaufmann’s Journey The way that you traveled the world and you were kind of a linguistic nomad for quite a while of your early life in a way of learning languages. I have to admit, I’m actually a little jealous of your language learning journey. There’s a link in the description, if anybody’s interested in that. I actually had a chance this weekend to read your book, The Way of the Linguist: A Language Learning Odyssey. ![]() And I have been following your career, your YouTube channel, and other places that I’ve found you online for quite a while now. How Steve Kaufmann went from monolingual to hyperpolyglot I have a channel at YouTube, where I try to encourage people to learn languages because I think it’s a great thing to do, and it’s a lot more fun than people realize. Learned, 9 or 10 languages, set up LingQ with my son, Mark. I was always interested in languages, but in the last 15 years, I’ve been particularly interested. And then I was in the wood business for about 40 years and I had occasion to learn other languages, Swedish and so forth and so on. I’m retired now, I’m 75, but when I was working, I was initially a Canadian government trade commissioner, so I learned Chinese and Japanese with them. I have a great interest in languages during my professional career. Could you first give us kind of a quick elevator pitch of who you are and what you do? Thank you for taking the time out of your day to come and talk to me today.
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