Why I Taught Myself 20 Languages - and What I Learned About Myself - Ideas - Ted

4/10/2015
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04/09/2015
WHY I TAUGHT MYSELF

20 LANGUAGES AND
WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT
MYSELF IN THE
PROCESS
http://ideas.ted.com/whyilearned20languagesandwhatilearnedaboutmyselfintheprocess/
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PROCESS
4/10/2015
TimothyDoner
During the past few years, Ive been

referred to in the media as The Worlds
Youngest Hyperpolyglot a word that
sounds like a rare illness. In a way it is: it
describes someone who speaks a
particularly large number of foreign
languages, someone whose all-consuming
passion for words and systems can lead
them to spend many long hours alone with
a grammar book.
But while its true that I can speak in 20
different languages, including English, it
took me a while to understand that theres
more to language than bartering over
kebabs in Arabic or ordering from a menu
in Hindi. Fluency is another craft
altogether.
I began my language education at age
thirteen. I became interested in the Middle
East and started studying Hebrew on my
own. For reasons I still dont quite
understand, I was soon hooked on the
Israeli funk group Hadag Nachash, and
would listen to the same album every single
morning. At the end of a month, I had
memorized about twenty of their songs by
heart even though I had no clue what
they meant. But once I learned the
translations it was almost as if I had
downloaded a dictionary into my head; I
now knew several hundred Hebrew words
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now knew several hundred Hebrew words

and phrases and Id never had to open a
textbook.
I decided to experiment. I spent hours
walking around my New York City
neighborhood, visiting Israeli cafs to
eavesdrop on peoples conversations.
Sometimes, I would even get up the courage
to introduce myself, rearranging all of the
song lyrics in my head into new, awkward
and occasionally correct sentences. As it
turned out, I was on to something.
IF THE STANDARD OF
SPEAKING A LANGUAGE
IS TO KNOW EVERY
WORD TO FEEL
EQUALLY AT HOME
DEBATING NUCLEAR
FISSION AND
CLASSICAL MUSIC
THEN HARDLY
ANYONE IS FLUENT IN
THEIR OWN NATIVE
TONGUES.
I moved on to Arabic, which Id study every
morning by reading news headlines with a
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dictionary and by talking to street vendors.

After that it was Persian, then Russian, then
Mandarin and about fifteen others. On an
average day, Id Skype with friends in
French and Turkish, listen to Hindi pop
music for an hour and eat dinner with a
Greek or Latin book on my lap. Language
became an obsession, one that I pursued in
summer classes, school, web forums and
language meet-ups around the city.
By March of 2012, media outlets such as the
BBC and The New York Times featured
stories about me, The Teen Who Speaks 20
Languages! For a while, it was a fantasy; it
made what many thought of as a bizarre
hobby seem (almost) mainstream, and gave
me a perfect opportunity to promote
language learning.
After a while, though, my media moments
felt more like gruesome chores than
opportunities to spread the word. Most
news shows were interested only in the
dancing bear act (You wanna learn more
about the Middle East? Cool Say youre
watching Channel 2 in Arabic!) As
lighthearted as that might have been, it left
me with an uncomfortably personal lesson
in modern media: when the goal is simply
to get the viewers attention, the real
importance of a story often gets lost in
translation.
When I was beginning to discover
languages, I had a romanticized view of
words like speak and fluency. But then I
realized that you can be nominally fluent in
a language and still struggle to understand
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a language and still struggle to understand
parts of it. English is my first language, but

what I really spoke was a hybrid of teenage
slang and Manhattan-ese. When I listen to
my father, a lawyer, talk to other lawyers,
his words sound as foreign to me as
Finnish. I certainly couldnt read
Shakespeare without a dictionary, and Id
be equally helpless in a room with
Jamaicans or Cajuns. Yet all of us speak
English.
My linguistics teacher, a native of Poland,
speaks better English than I do and seems
right at home peppering his speech with
terms like epenthetic schwa and
voiceless alveolar stops. Yet the other day,
it came up that hed never heard the word
tethered.Does that mean he doesnt
speak English? If the standard of speaking
a language is to know every word to feel
equally at home debating nuclear fission
and classical music then hardly anyone is
fluent in their own native tongues.
Reducing someone to the number of
languages he or she speaks trivializes the
immense power that language imparts.
After all, language is the living testament to
a cultures history and world view, not a
shiny trophy to be dusted off for someones
self-aggrandizement.
Language is a complex tapestry of trade,
conquest and culture to which we each add
our own unique piece whether that be a
Shakespearean sonnet or Lol bae g2g ttyl.
As my time in the media spotlight made me
realize, saying you speak a language can
mean a lot of different things: it can mean
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mean a lot of different things: it can mean

memorizing verb charts, knowing the slang,
even passing for a native. But while Ive
come to realize Ill never be fluent in 20
languages, Ive also understood that
language is about being able to converse
with people, to see beyond cultural
boundaries and find a shared humanity.
And thats a lesson well worth learning.
WatchBreaking the language barrier,

Timothy Doners talk at TEDxTeen 2014.
Featured illustration by Dawn Kim/TED.
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incontext"
Author
Details
ABOUT TIMOTHY DONER

Timothy Doner is a Harvard
freshman who received
notoriety for studying more
than 20 languages. He spends
much of his time attempting to
perfect his linguistic skills in
different neighborhoods of New
York City; his Youtube channel,
PolyglotPal, has received more
than 5 million hits. He spoke at
TEDxTeen in 2014.
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4/10/2015

WHY I TAUGHT MYSELF

During the past few years, Ive been

now knew several hundred Hebrew words

dictionary and by talking to street vendors.

a language and still struggle to understand

parts of it. English is my first language, but

mean a lot of different things: it can mean

WatchBreaking the language barrier,

ABOUT TIMOTHY DONER

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