European speaks 19 languages

Languages in the video: English, Slovak, Hungarian, Czech, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Serbian, Farsi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Dutch, Taiwanese, Japanese and Cantonese. My book: http://www.foreverastudent.com/p/book.html My podcast: https://soundcloud.com/vladimir-skultety Language Blog: http://www.foreverastudent.com Frequently asked questions: Q: What is your job? A: I work as an interpreter of English, Slovak and Mandarin Chinese. Q: What was the most difficult language you've ever studied? A: Mandarin Chinese. Q: How old are you? A: I'm 34 now. I was 32 in the video. Q: Which language do you like most? A: Difficult to say, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be: Hungarian, Russian, Cantonese and Persian. Q: Which language do you dream in/think in? A: I think probably those that I use most often: Slovak, English, Mandarin. Q: When did you start learning foreign languages?/How long did it take you to learn all the languages you speak? A: I don't think there was a starting moment in my life. Very fortunately I grew up with 2-3 native languages and spoke 5 at an almost native level by the time I was 13 and just continued learning languages here and there as I grew up. It took me my entire life. Q: Could you give me some tips to learn language XYZ? A: I have a blog where I wrote probably everything I think about language learning (http://www.foreverastudent.com). I also made a lot of videos about language learning here on this channel. Feel free to check them out. Q: How long does it take you to learn a new language? A: It depends on the language. Also it is difficult to tell what it means to 'learn a language'. To get to a C1 level in Russian it took me about 3 months because Russian is very close my native Slovak language and most Slovaks could do it, to do the same thing in Chinese took me about 7-8 years. Q: How should I start learning a language? A: https://youtu.be/l0aGvTQp9FY Q: What is your secret? A: I don't think there is one. Only passion, lots of time spent on practice, good conditions and a bit of talent. Q: Where are you from? A: I was born and lived most of my life in Slovakia. Q: You made a mistake in the French part. It shouldn't be 'ce video' it should be 'cette video'. A: Thank you, I'll remember. Q: You made a mistake in the Serbian part. It should't be 'kuči' but 'kući'. A: Thank you. I realized it the moment I said it. Q: The Spanish part was too short. A: I'll try to make a video where I speak only Spanish next time. Q: You don't speak Portuguese, you speak Brazilian. Why did you learn that ugly Brazilian Portuguese and not the real Portuguese from Portugal? A: I must've gotten about 100 comments like this and worse. I honestly don't understand why all the hate against Brazilian Portuguese from Portugal. I just felt silly writing 'Brazilian' instead of 'Portuguese' especially since as far as I know the official language of Brazil is called Portuguese, not Brazilian. It's like saying I speak 'American' instead of 'English'. But, lesson learned, next time I will proudly say I learned 'Brazilian Portuguese'. I learned Brazilian Portuguese because: I love its sound, wonderful Brazilian smiling people, the country, the music, the nature and because I'd like to live there one day. Q: You didn't learn Greek! You should be ashamed of yourself. A: I got about 50 similar comments. I have no intelligent answer for this. People help me out:) Q: Why didn't you learn Arabic? Armenian? Hindi? Indonesian? European Portuguese? Greek?... I'm dissapointed. A: I never had a good reason or interest. Q: Were you ever interested in learning Scandinavian languages? A: Originally no, because I never had a chance or good reasons to learn them, plus it's too cold for me up there, but recently I went to Finland and I read a book by Stieg Larsson, enjoyed both very much, so maybe some time in the future I will. Q: Great Chinese but you speak with a Taiwanese accent. A: I lived in Taiwan for 5 years. I'm not doing it on purpose. I don't know how to speak in any other way. Q: The use of the word 'geil' in the German part was inappropriate/wrong/off. A: Some people really seem to think it was inappropriate, but some people in the comments don't. I learned German when I was a teenager and didn't use it since. I said the word without thinking too much. It's definitely not that I used it on purpose to sound cool. #polyglot #multilingual #language #foreign languages #Vladimir Skultety