Anyone here got inspired to continue learning a new language after the conference? Well, the six-day Georgian lessons were particularly a treat for me among a lot of the other talks/lessons I attended (Nahuatl, Maori, etc.).
I’ve been transferring my scribbles and notes to a separate notebook to keep them organized.
How about you? Any languages you want to start learning after the conference? I’d love to hear your thoughts and tips. We can definitely learn something from each other.
Such a pity that the conference is now over, but hope to keep in touch with everyone real soon!
I love your notebooks and also, your notes are so neat! I can watch them all day.
Hungarian (Polyglot Conference 2020) - Köszönöm szépen to all friendly and warm Hungarian people out there because I love the Hungarian language so much. This language never crossed my mind and during the conference, I fell in love hehe
Nahuatl, Quechua and Cherokee (Polyglot Conference 2020 & 2021) - I got inspired so much by the sessions and the speakers of those languages that I want to learn them, at least at a basic level.
German (Polyglot Conference 2021) - I studied the language in high school but I struggled a lot for many reasons (but %99 not about the language). I assumed I would never ever take up German but I still kept my grammar books. I keep having eye contact with them right now.
Extra;
Esperanto (Polyglot Gathering 2021) - that language is so easy, why not?
Yeah, I got inspired to learn a few too - Igbo, Nahuatl, Quechua, Arabic, Persian, Swahili, Malay, Tagalog, Korean, Dutch, Burmese, Turkish just off the top of my head.
Others will probably be added too (such as the Ancient Eastern Dialect of Tigrinya or something) just to skew my previous language learning plans further.
It’s a shame the talks/lessons were so interesting!
I’m totally in love with your notes, @MarkOng How did you create the stickers? They are extremely sweet!
This year was my first here and I got a lot of motivation. I realized that my speaking skills in French and Spanish are far from my writing/comprehension skills. Definitely need to attend some speaking sessions! And I indeed got inspired to learn new languages and to really start with the ones I’ve already some study material (books) for here. The wish to learn many different languages is HUGE but my brain keeps telling me why learn specific languages when they probably aren’t really useful. Still, wish wins over brain.
Long story short, what really changed for me during/after the conference:
Started with Azerbaijani and Swahili
Booked some classes for Thai and revised the alphabet and tone rules
Booked some speaking classes for French and Spanish
Bought a book for C1/C2 Turkish to brush up my skills and to avoid forgetting what I already know
Added Indonesian, Georgian, Dutch, Swedish to my list of want-to-learn-in-the-future
You’re a lot more organised than me, Mark, and your ქართული writing looks particularly impressive!
It was Georgian that hooked me the most this year too. I doubt I’ll have a chance to learn much more of it in the foreseeable future, but I’m trying to master the alphabet so that I can decipher the words more easily, and I’m then going to go back over the lessons and notes to at least consolidate what we learnt. I’ve found out that there’s a Georgian restaurant in south London, so If I manage to stick to that plan, I could reward myself with a trip there to sample some Georgian food too!
Like Steph, I got encouraged by the fact that I understood almost everything in a Dutch session (thanks to a combination of English and German, along with having once learnt a little Dutch grammar and some of the small but very common Dutch words that aren’t cognates of either EN or DE), which would probably make it easier than most languages to get to A2 or B1 level in. Matias’s presentation on Catalan suggested that the same might be true for that language, but coming from French and Spanish.
The Conference and the last Gathering also inspired me to try to resurrect my Polish too, not least because you hear it a lot in south London (albeit less so since Brexit, sadly) and there are a couple of decent Polish cafés/restaurants within long walking/short rail distance. I can still understand quite a lot but I can’t speak more than short, very simple sentences.
The language that captivated me most at last year’s Polyglot Conference was Nahuatl and if going to Cholula next year was anything more than a pipe dream, I’d be very tempted to learn that. I also ended up doing an 18-hour course in Scots with some other other conference attendees after last year’s event.
As it is though, more important things, limited time and trying to learn Chinese means virtually all of the above are just going to have to go on the long-term ‘I’d love to do’ list. But it’s great to get exposed to and inspired by new languages and one day, maybe …
I can watch them all day.
