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ItalicaMente, your new family. Good morning everyone, I'm with the legendary, mythical Stefano. Stefano, how are you today? Hi Luca, hi everyone, very well, thanks, and you? Great, and we are at the first episode of a long series, a long and fantastic series of the podcast Italica Mente. ItalicaMente. I'm so glad that we can finally collaborate with Stefano. I'm working with Stefano, a person of absolute worldwide value and caliber.
Tell me about it! I'm thrilled too. So, what are we talking about today in this first episode, Luca? Exactly, let's get straight to the point and drop the mutual flattery. Today's topic is a serious as well as fascinating one: polyglotism. Meaning, how languages have changed our lives and perception of the world. And I'm very curious to know what Stefano thinks about it. Look, speaking many languages can actually change your life. As for me, I feel above all that on a personal level it has.
It has really enriched me as a person, you know? Many people say, we hear it often, when talking about polyglotism, that acquiring a foreign language. allows you to also acquire, as some say, a new personality, a new soul. I wouldn't put it in those terms, honestly. But certainly. a new point of view from which to observe the world and other people, yes. And I feel that knowing new ways to look at the world, and therefore also new cultures, has made me more. inclined to accept differences, to accept new experiences, to be more tolerant. Even if maybe this also depends a bit on age, meaning that as I matured maybe this happened, but I find it's mostly because of the possibility to see.
to see the world through different lenses. What do you think about it? Beautiful! Speaking of lenses, I like to use this metaphor, besides the fact that I agree completely on everything as usual. I like to talk about prisms, about light, about the breakdown of light in terms of languages and personality. In fact, very often, in my opinion it's a stereotype. Especially people who don't know what it truly means to speak many languages think: "You have more personalities, you have more souls." In reality, the soul, the personality, the person always remains the same.
What changes is the way in which we express them. That's why I really like the image of the prism, the light that hits the prism and breaks it down into main colors. I like to think that languages allow to break down everyone's personality and to show the various sides of everyone's personality. So in my specific case, but also in yours, there is the Italian Luca, born in Italy, the one you see and observe now, hands and gestures included. We'll talk about it during the podcast, in other episodes. but there's also the American Luca, who in theory was born in New York and has never been there,
the French one, the Spanish one, and it's beautiful because apart from the change of voice and timbre, there's also. I feel I express different sides of my personality. So I really like the prism, the idea is to show these different sides of my personality. And then I agree with you, dear Stefano, that speaking many languages helps you understand that we are all different, but we are all the same at the same time. We all want the same things, but express them through different cultural codes. So, the more languages you know, people you meet, countries you visit, the more you understand and have a more complete picture of humanity.
To me, this is one of the most beautiful things about polyglotism. Beautiful, I would like to add a very concrete case, which is. the way in which some languages express the idea of having, possessing something, objects, a car, a house, etc. In languages like ours, Italian, the verb "to have" exists, right? Instead, in many other languages, some of which you also know, the idea of having something is expressed in a completely different way. One says rather "on me exists" or "by me exists" something, or "as far as I'm concerned a car exists" or "a house exists" etc. So.
Seeing this new way of expressing the idea of having, possessing, which in reality doesn't exist, also made me understand. from a certain point of view, how much we actually possess nothing at all. The things we "have", in quotes. They actually exist on their own, and we are lucky to be able to say they're ours, but they are not truly 100% ours. I don't know if I managed to make you understand the concept a bit, but it served me well as a concept of open-mindedness, to understand the world.
Absolutely, in fact, when they say that language and culture are one thing, they are one, two parts of the same ball of yarn. Because there are languages spoken in certain geographical areas of the world, where perhaps meteorological aspects, to talk about another aspect. don't exist, like in Italy we see snow "once in a blue moon" in Rome, a typical expression. Oh, there's snow! Actually, In my 45 years I've seen 3 popes and it snowed 3 times, so the math adds up. Anyway, apart from this, what I wanted to say is that in some languages, surely in Suomi, that is Finnish, there are descriptions
of meteorological aspects like snow that maybe don't exist in Italian. In English, for example, in England there are 50 ways to call rain. Which we don't have in Italy, we have "pioggia", "pioggerellina", but anyway, apart from these two or three words, we don't have many. So it's beautiful and very true that languages and culture are interconnected, they are part of one, I call it the famous ball of yarn, indistinguishable. Beautiful, and by the way I wanted to add that what you describe about have/be exists, and for example in Russian you say "by me exists", you don't say "I have".
Exactly, like Finnish, Japanese, other languages I have encountered. Finnish, Japanese and other languages. Ok, well, apart from the fact that polyglotism therefore changes your life. The lens through which you see the world changes, it becomes more colorful, but there's also another more concrete aspect in language learning: the profession. Very often people learn languages, for example, if they have to move abroad, if they have to use them in work contexts, in the office.
However, in our case, yours and mine, languages are not only a tool to understand the world, but also a tool to make a living, to make ends meet, or better yet, to give value. to one's own person, which in my opinion is the most important thing. Sure, we don't want to live in a hut, so we must gather some cash before the end. of the month. However, we have the huge luck of working with what we adore. And in your case, Stefano, tell us a bit. What happened in your career and existential trajectory? Yes, practically I have spent my entire professional career working with foreign languages.
I started out as a translator. Then I started teaching languages online. Now I work as a designer of online language courses. So truly, my entire professional career has always had to do with languages, and from a certain point of view, I've always had the impression that without foreign languages I wouldn't have known what to do professionally in life. So I am very, very happy to be able to work with what I love most, with one of the things I love most in the world, namely foreign languages. Beautiful, for me it's the same thing. I don't know what I'd have done in life if I hadn't started working with languages. Indeed, as a matter of fact, Mine was a career underway towards engineering,
underway towards, let's say, a scientific career, scientific subjects, because my father wanted me to follow in his footsteps and become an engineer, slash mathematician, dash mathematician. But after finishing my university career, I found myself in Paris due to various circumstances, because my girlfriend at the time basically wanted me to move to Paris to be with her. Maybe it's a bit unfair to say that she forced me. I went there on my own, but we. agreed to live together in Paris. And in this chambre de bonne, this small little room on the eighth floor in a building in the 9th arrondissement,
snow was falling. Speaking of snow, there you do see it often and not "once in a blue moon". And at that moment I was looking for a job as an engineer and I asked myself: "is this really what I want?" Because in the end, yes, my father wanted me to work with numbers, but deep down I really wanted to work with words. Destiny helped me because an email arrived from a Hungarian guy who had seen my videos that I started publishing back in 2008, and he asked me if I wanted to become an Italian teacher. And that changed my career, my existential trajectory, because I immediately said yes, I became a language coach and then I created the Smart Language Learning Academy, which is the academy I run
now. So I must say that languages have not only changed my vision of the world, but my career in general. And in this regard Steve Jobs gave a beautiful speech maybe 20, 15 years ago, which maybe you've seen too, an opening speech for the academic year, I believe, at Stanford, saying "follow your heart, listen to your inner voice and do not let the background noise muddy the waters. And concentrate on what you really want to do because work is 80% of your life. If you do something you adore, then things change radically." So, in this sense I must say that on one hand we were lucky, but in my opinion, on the other hand we had the courage to follow our hearts rather than what society, friends,
relatives and acquaintances dictated. This is a fundamental point. And then Stefano, there's a last point we want to address today, which is the personal one. We talked about the existential and philosophical, we talked about the professional, meaning the concrete. But let's also talk about what happened to us in life. There are so many things, that if you want we can do a 7-hour podcast, a marathon solely on everything that happened to us in life because of or thanks to the languages we speak. But Stefano, I wanted to know from you, maybe one anecdote among many, how did your social life, emotional life,
and everything related to it change? Yes, look, without wasting too much time now talking about all the friendships born thanks to the fact that I spoke other people's language, because we said it in other contexts, but let's emphasize how speaking the same language, someone's mother tongue, truly allows you to connect on a much, much deeper level. And therefore truly friendships that lasted years and that were very deep thanks to the fact of speaking the same language. On the other hand, I live in Brussels, as you know, and here in Brussels exists this "expat bubble", where people always speak English.
Instead, I had the pleasure of learning French, and therefore then connecting also with Belgian people, because Belgians also exist, even though in Brussels it's hard to find them. But apart from all this, how could I not mention the episode that changed my life, in my opinion, for the better naturally, when I had started studying Finnish on my own, that is by myself, on my own. Hear how many different ways. to say the same thing. On my own, and a few months later I saw from afar a person I knew was Finnish, and I asked myself: "Should I go talk to her, go practice my somewhat broken Finnish, or not?"
I didn't know whether to go or not. Thank heaven, that day I had the courage to go talk to her, and that girl today is my wife. So, saying that studying Finnish changed my life would be an understatement. Let's say, it's a euphemism. Therefore, much of who I am and what I have today I owe to this thing, and to the fact of having had the courage to go talk to someone. Therefore, guys, remember: Go talk to people, because only something positive can come out of it, in my opinion. Luca, what can you tell us?
It's very true, beautiful. Well, from what you said, we can already infer two things. One, as the famous Kató Lomb used to say, the Hungarian polyglot, translator and interpreter, languages are something worth learning even poorly. Even if you know three words, it makes a huge difference when you say something. In some cultures, just knowing three words changes everything. Maybe in France a bit less because people expect you to speak French, but if you go to Sri Lanka and speak Sinhalese, you change the world of the people next to and around you. And the second thing is that it's always worth talking to someone. As you said, when you see someone, there are those three seconds: "do I go or not?"
If you think too much - true in any situation - you lose the moment. But if you go, it can literally change your life as Stefano told us. As for me, I also wanted to talk about an episode, let's say interesting, which is my "date" or my "appuntamento galante". I don't know if in Italian there's a word to replace "date", which is a word with one syllable practically, but I would say an "appuntamento galante", let's say. Because I had met the one who would then become my girlfriend for several years, a Polish girl, in Krakow. We had exchanged various messages over several months, but I was using Google Translate to make my life easier and she was particularly impressed
by the use and mastery of my accents, etc, etc. However, we had to thank Google Translate. But then, when it comes to people in person, it's a whole other thing. It's not like I could stay with Google Translate to communicate. However, I already had a B1 level, in my opinion sufficient to survive. And so, when I finally saw her, we met in Krakow, I still remember, in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter, we sat down and she caught me by surprise because she didn't want to speak English. English is our lifeline when we haven't mastered a foreign language yet, and so I told myself this is my safe shelter,
and I start by asking her if she wants to have the conversation in English. But she caught me by surprise and said "No, no, no, no, but you speak Polish. very well, why speak English?" Because she herself didn't feel confident speaking English. And so I had to speak for eight hours, because then we stayed together a lot, all night, super romantic, but it was a beastly effort. Especially at the beginning, I tried to find strategies, tactics, tricks to be able to escape some difficult conversational hurdles that were particularly hard.
Consider that she wouldn't slow down. She always considered me as a native speaker and almost never noticed my. language problems, so in the end I still managed to escape. But just to tell you, it's just one of the many episodes for which it is worth learning a language. But learning a language means learning many lessons of humility from the world, from ourselves, because you have to put yourself in situations where you step out of your comfort zone, always, every time you learn a language. I like to think, and then I conclude: I like to think that it's true that maybe speaking multiple languages doesn't change your personality, but to some extent, it's almost like reliving
one's own life several times, because if you think about it, you have to reface a series of situations you faced and of which you don't even remember. the moments when you didn't, for example, have self-confidence, you have to reface them in a foreign language. For example asking for, buying a train ticket at the ticket office in the station for the first time, go to the supermarket, go to the doctor, the bank, have a date, go to the cinema, talk about the cinema after, talk about a movie after having gone to the cinema. I think that what in English is called fluency, that is speaking a language, mastering a language,
is the result not only of study, but also of facing many situations and overcoming them. But there's always a certain. embarrassment, let's say, at the beginning, because it's as if you started from scratch, as if you had to relearn, right? To be with others, to face social situations that instead in our mother tongue are absolutely normal. So it's normal to also have, and here I'm already making a connection to an upcoming episode, it's normal to also sometimes have fear of making mistakes, fear of speaking, fear of exposing oneself. We will talk about this in another episode. Exactly, exactly. So to conclude, today we talked about three aspects of polyglotism that are important and that have changed our lives.
One is a more philosophical aspect: that is, how learning many languages opens us to the world and broadens our horizons. Two is the more concrete aspect of work, because not only can you use languages for work and multiply the possibilities of a personal career, but languages could also become your actual job, as in our case. And three: the myriad of experiences, friendships, loves, experiences in general that can bloom like flowers from the garden of language learning.
Wow, we must close on this image, Luca. Let's conclude like this. We close on this poetic image. This podcast came out a bit longer than usual, but Stefano and I will try our best to restrain ourselves to avoid it lasting 4 hours, every episode lasting 4 hours. We'll do our best! Guys, have a good day and we'll talk, basically see you at episode number 2, 3, 4, etc, etc. Bye!
