NOT A POLYGLOT

I am not a polyglot. I speak 3 languages (sort of). So why do I offer advice on language learning?


My name's Lamont, and three years ago I started teaching myself Swedish. Today, I also speak French to a decent level, but Swedish and French are both fairly easy languages for an English speaker, just like Spanish, Italian and German are fairly easy languages.
Counting the number of languages we speak is not always fair because while one person may learn Norwegian and Portuguese to a basic level, someone else may learn Chinese to a very high level. I know who has achieved more out of those two language learners.



In the last 20 years, language learners have become obsessed with the idea of becoming a polyglot. There is a problem with this: How much of a language do you have to know in order to say that you can speak that language? If I wanted to, I could quite easily learn German and Spanish in 2020 enough to be able to say that I speak those languages. In theory, that would make me a polyglot because then I would speak Swedish, French, German and Spanish. But it would not give me a better idea of how to learn languages to a high level; it would not give me a good grasp of the languages and in my book, it would actually be a polyglot fail.


You don't need to be a polyglot. Just be a better version of yourself. Not everyone can speak 10 languages, not everyone can be Luca Lampariello, Lindie Botes or Steve Kaufmann. Everyone can just aim to learn more. Learn more of the language you already speak before you take up a new language.



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