Adventures in Polyglot-land

Wanna join me on my adventures in Polyglot-land?

Poly-watta? Never heared of ... yeah sounds reasonable.

I'll quickly dot the i's and cross the t's for you.

There are people who speak one language and people who speak more than one. Mastering two languages makes you a bilingual (although there might be a difference there, some call bilinguals people with 2 native languages, but I won't bore you with discussions between language professionals like myself). If you speak 3 to 5 languages, you would qualify as a polyglot (from the Greek poluglōttos, which means 'with a lot of tongues'). And then there are people with 6 or more languages in their basket, they are the hyperglots.

The land in my case is Flanders, the northern region of Belgium, a small country in the north of western Europe.

Hence my native language is Dutch (or Flemish, as some prefer to call it, but again, I will not drag you along insemantic discussions between language professionals like myself).

So what am I? Bilingual, polyglot, hyperglot?

What languages do I speak?

There is Dutch, but that might be cheating a bit since that's my native language, but anyway ... Dutch as number 1.

Since Belgium is a bilingual (o yes!) country, we start at a young age with French, the other official language in Belgium (there is even a third, German, but that is a minority group and German is therefore not compulsary in school). So, French. When I wanted to become an interpreter, my parents insisted that French would be my first language and so it happened. French, language 2.

Numbers 3 and 4 are English and German, as part of the interpreter education.

I had in the mean time taken up Spanish, but dropped out in the third year, started again 10 years later but dropped out again in the third year (babies 'n stuff). But now finally, i'm starting the fourth year. I have a B1-level at the moment and I am hoping to reach B2 in 2 years. Number 5, check!

In 1997, I lived in Denmark for a while, to work and to experience life in a foreign country, on my own. I picked up Danish by listening to my room mates and later trying to speak it myself. I borrowed a Danish course from an Indonesian exchange student and from there on my knowledge of the language rockets, so much so that after half a year, people always mistook me for a native Dane, although they weren't too sure about my accent (and it might be that being blonde put them on the wrong foot). That's language number 6 for you!

So ... as a language lover (I prefer lover to nerd), what do you do when you master one language? You start on another one. I have to say that I never intentionally choose a language, I prefer to hear a language speak to me (pun intended). My lucky number 7 is Italian. It was actually a friend who suggested to me that we take an Italian crash course together. I hesitantly agreed, because at that time I was still very much in love with Spanish and starting Italian felt a bit like a betrayal, stupid I know. I still kept the option open to drop out if I felt that it was too much for me and it took me a while before the language kinda grew on me but hey, things can change and I have fallen head over heels in love with Italian, so much so that I am starting year 3 next month. I am now an A2 and I hope to have a B1-level in 4 years and who knows, I might even go for a B2.

And what about languages 8 and 9? They are Bulgarian (currently A1) and Korean (very much a beginner). I won't talk too much about these two. As I mentioned before I prefer to see what language comes on my path and the stories of Bulgarian and Korean are so much fun that they deserve there own blog post. So more on them later.

I sometimes get the question: 'What is going to be your next language?' And in all honesty, I cannot say. I am thinking about Icelandic, sometimes Finnish or Hungarian, I even thought of Farsi and Hebrew, but I think it will be Turkish. But honestly, I have no idea yet.

I never intended to be a polyglot, it is something that happened to me, it is the way my life went. I do see people's faces when they hear how many languages I speak, but it wasn't really until this summer that I realised that 9 languages is quite exceptional and that there is whole polyglot community out there. So I decided to venture into these unknown and unconquered lands. Wanna join me?

PS I'll be writing in English, although that is not my native language (but I want to be universal and reach people across the globe - and Dutch is hardly what you can call a universal language).