Why I Love Foreign Languages

Hello and welcome. Welcome back to what is now the fourth episode of my Simple English podcast, episode number four. I want to thank you if you are listening. I want to say, how are you doing? I hope you're having a good day or a good evening whenever you're listening to this.

And I hope you have had a good, good week. This is going to be a little bit of a special episode. Because we're going to be talking about... foreign languages and we're going to be talking about my experience why I have fallen in love with foreign languages and learning learning languages as i'm sure all of you are aware of by now as i'm sure you all know i am english i live in england and i must say that english people

in general are not big fans of learning foreign languages. We can say we are a bit lazy. English people do not normally speak another language and even in school the learning of languages is not very popular. At university not many people choose to study. foreign languages. Why is that? Well, I think all of you will know that English is everywhere. Not

Literally everywhere, but almost everywhere. I think most English people, whenever they go on holiday, whenever they go on vacation, whenever they go to another country whenever they visit a foreign foreign place they don't need to learn the local language or at least they don't think they need to learn it because A lot of people speak English, and the English people can cope, they can get by just speaking English.

Now, I think that is a real shame. Well, first of all, for most of my life, I was the exact same. I was your typical average English person who was lazy with languages. I remember lots of times going to Spain and Portugal and Croatia and Greece.

on holiday and not speaking the language or maybe I learned how to say hola como estas or not even como estas I just learned how to say hola and maybe I learned how to say hello and maybe thank you so that in the restaurant on holiday when the waiter, when the server would bring the food could say thank you and that was it I was very lazy with learning the language because you can use English but This episode, I would like to explain to you why that has changed, why I really love...

learning foreign languages now and why I actually want to become a polyglot. Well, depending on your definition, you could say I already am a polyglot. Poly, of course, coming from poly, Greek. meaning many or lots, and glosa meaning tongue or language, poles gloses in modern Greek, many languages, polyglot, someone who speaks.

lots of languages that is what i want to become but why is that well i suppose my adventure in foreign languages started with French, le français, but it wasn't until recently. that I started to like French, so let me tell you the story, but I hope you're sitting comfortably, because we're actually going to have to go back in time. We will have to travel to the past because my story with French doesn't begin with me, but actually with my grandmother.

That's right. Now, my grandmother, unfortunately, she died. She passed away, we can say. To pass away, it's a sort of... pleasant nice way of saying to die she passed away before i was born before i came into the world so i didn't know her but i know that my grandmother grew up She was raised in Egypt, you know, the country Egypt in the north of Africa. And you might be wondering, well... What does this have to do with French? Well, she was raised in a nunnery or a monastery by nuns.

You know nuns, they are very devoted Christian women. And she was raised by nuns in Egypt who spoke French. for whatever reason they were a french-speaking group of nuns and so my grandmother spoke french later when she met my grandad my grandfather and they got married and they moved to england together um they had children they had a family my dad my auntie and my uncle um but

Whenever they wanted to talk about things, whenever they wanted to discuss things that they didn't want their children to hear, so they wanted to discuss things in secret so that my dad my uncle and my auntie wouldn't know they would speak not in english but they would speak in french i suppose This meant that my dad, growing up, he had an interest in French because he wanted to know what his mum and dad were saying, what they were talking about.

And I suppose he passed that interest to me. I remember my family always liked France and liked French. And sometimes they would say, for example, if we were going on a walk, they might say, on y va, before we left the house. It means, let's go, we're going now.

I think for that reason I decided to study French at school. I wasn't really sure at school what I wanted to do and what I liked, but... some of my friends were doing french although it really wasn't very popular but in school i did french and i enjoyed it i did quite well and so i decided to take french for what we call a level as well in England. A level is like high school in England, in the UK. Also called college or sixth form.

So yeah, I took French for A-level. I chose French as one of my subjects. And it was funny because... the sixth form the high school it lasts two years in england and in my first year i was actually not doing very well in french i was Sort of around the middle of my class. So I wasn't the worst, but I definitely wasn't the best. And I was not going to get an amazing grade, not going to get an amazing mark.

in the exam. But at the end of the first year, everything changed with French for me. And the reason... that it changed was actually because i found a podcast that's right i found a podcast called inner french It is made by a man called Hugo, Hugo Coton, I believe. He now has a YouTube channel as well called EnnaFrench, you can search it up if you like. um and this podcast was amazing for me because he spoke in a slow and understandable french and for the first time in my life

I could listen to a French person talking and I could understand. Because even when I was studying the language and studying the grammar at college at sixth form, for my a level i couldn't understand french people when they spoke they spoke too quickly if i tried to watch a film in french i couldn't understand it But this podcast, the dialogue, or monologue really, but the audio was nice and slow and understandable.

And he explained the expressions that he used. He explained the things he said. And it meant that I was able to understand French. And the great thing about this podcast... was there were lots of episodes and in the first episode episode one he spoke very very slowly and i could understand but gradually after episode two and episode three and four up to maybe episode twenty or thirty he gradually started to speak a little bit faster

and to use slightly more difficult expressions and to speak a sort of more higher level French. And this was great because I was able to listen to this podcast and I was able to make progress. And like that, in the space of a few months, meaning... at the beginning of a few months i was not great in french and after these few months i had made such progress that my grade my mark in the exam

at college had gone from a grade C, the letter C, up to a grade A star, which is the best grade in England. We have A. And then we have A star above A. Stars are those things in the night sky that twinkle. Apparently they are balls of gas millions of miles away. I mean, who really knows? No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm sure you know what a star is. But yes, a star. So I was very, very happy. And I suppose that podcast...

is really the inspiration for this podcast. So that's how my journey began, really, with French and with foreign languages.

This is not the end. There is more to come. No. My experience with French... And learning French in this way with the podcast meant that I now was able to listen to and understand. content in French. I was, after a few months, I was able to watch films in French, watch Netflix series, television shows on Netflix in French. And I was able to understand. And I was able to speak as well. I actually have a very good friend of mine, Christopher. Or Christophe in French.

Hello, Christopher, if you're listening. Although I don't know why you would be listening. I don't think you're trying to learn English, but anyway. And we used to speak in French together, and that was great.

I really loved this method of learning languages, this process, this way of learning. And actually... i have become addicted to it so after a few months while i was still at college i was still studying french for exams in the second year, year two of my A-level course at college with French, I decided, you know what, I want to start learning a third language, a new language. And so which language did I choose? Well, fortunately, I had a holiday booked.

in the summer and that holiday was to go to Greece now I love Greece my family have been on holiday lots of times to Greece It is probably our favourite country to visit on holiday. And normally, like lazy British people, we didn't speak the language at all.

We maybe, I could say, efferesto, which I thought meant thank you. It was terrible pronunciation. It is really efferesto. But anyway. But yes, I decided... that i wanted to learn greece uh to learn greek sorry um for for this holiday now i wasn't sure that i would go on holiday because this is 2021 There were lockdowns and restrictions and quarantine and everything else to do with COVID-19 that I thought maybe we will not go to Greece in the summer.

But the holiday was booked, the holiday was planned, so I thought, let's hope. Hope that we can go to Greece, me and my family. And that hope... This idea of having a holiday to Greece helped me a lot and it gave me motivation, I think, to learn the Greek language. because the Greek language was very hard in the beginning. I didn't know any words and it made me realise that actually French

It's very easy if you speak English already because a lot of the words, a lot of the vocabulary is very similar. In Greek, there actually are some words which are similar. Which is very interesting. A lot of scientific words, for example, have Greek origins. For example, pneumonia. disease of the lungs is pneumonia in Greek. That is very difficult English there, so don't worry if you don't know what pneumonia is. But anyway.

It was very hard in the beginning but my idea was that if I could learn a few words, the basics, the very basic words, how to say, to be, to have and these verbs then i would be able to find something in greek that i could listen to like a podcast and that was my plan

And it took a little while, it took a few months, but yes, I was able to do it. I found a podcast called Easy Greek, also a YouTube channel. and another one called LinguaTree and they helped me so much and I loved these channels and I loved learning Greek It was really amazing and it was strange because I spent a lot of time learning it and I think my family...

didn't even realise that I was learning it, really. They knew that I was spending a lot of time in my bedroom learning Greek, but I don't think they realised that I was actually really learning this language. But we went in the summer. We were able to go to Greece. The holiday happened. Fortunately, there was no COVID-19. There was no restrictions, no quarantine.

And we were able to go. And we arrived in Greece. I arrived in Greece and I was so happy. And I was able to speak the language. And it was an amazing feeling because... For the local people, the Greek people, it was very unusual for them. It was not normal that they should see an English boy, an English person. who has learnt the greek language because lots of greeks especially in these touristic places places where lots of tourists go learn english and they speak english because

Lots of English tourists come. And so it was such a surprise to them when instead of speaking English, I was able to speak their language to speak Greek. And it was great. I was even able to meet some friends, made friends with some local teenagers. And this opened a door for me because we were able to... go out and do things at night we went to bars we went swimming we went um some of them had a job at a hotel and so we went to their hotel and we went in the swimming pool at night

And it was so cool for me because I was no longer just a tourist. I didn't feel like an English tourist, but I felt like... a real local, I felt like a real Greek because of the language. It was an amazing experience, really amazing. And I love the language as well. It is beautiful. It is aghappimu. It is my love. And I think at that point I realised that... I really like learning foreign languages and I think I decided that I want to go to university to study languages.

and I want to become a polyglot. This meant that I had to leave behind my other plans because I had some other ideas for a job in science or in medicine maybe because I also studied science at college at sixth form for A-levels but science didn't I was good at it, but I didn't love it in the way that I loved languages and I love learning foreign languages. So I have decided that I want to study.

languages, and this means that I am at home at the moment. I am having what we call a gap year in England. That means I am not in education. for a year I'm having a year of pause a year just to work to make some money and to start this podcast And then next year I will be back in education. I will go to university and I will study languages because languages really are my passion.

I would love to be a polyglot and speak lots of languages. At the moment, I am also learning Italian, l'italiano. Mi piace molto. I like it a lot.

So yeah. So yeah, that is really my... experience or an introduction to my experience with languages. I would like to know what is your experience? Why are you learning English? What languages do you speak? Do you already speak many languages? Are you already a polyglot, maybe? Tell me. Leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

You can also follow me on Instagram if you like. My name is Reuben Constantine, the same as on the podcast. I'm sure you'll be able to find me. But yes, thank you for listening. In the next episode, I would like to speak about some of the benefits of learning languages, not just for me, but for all of you, for everyone in general. and why a bilingual brain is a healthy brain compared to a monolingual brain, someone who just knows one language.

But that is the end of this episode. I would like to thank you so much for listening. And you will hear from me in the next episode. Goodbye.