Hello and welcome to my profile! 😀

I am a very experienced polyglot and have been teaching myself languages autodidactically since I was 8 years old, so I have over 30 years experience in independent language learning. I have studied over 50 languages to date, of which I speak about 15 at an advanced level (virtually all Germanic and Romance languages and some others like Russian), about another 10 -15 at intermediate level and the rest at beginner´s level, but I always try to get better and improve my skills and also regularly take up new languages. My current main focus is on European and Asian languages (esp. Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, the Slavonic languages, Farsi/Persian, Finnish and the Celtic languages as well as Arabic, Thai. Korean and Hawaiian), but not only.

As of 2019, I speak and/or have studied these languages (the levels are subject to change since I work on improving on them constantly and on a *daily* basis):

Native: English & Dutch

‘Second languages’ (C2): German, French

C1-C2: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian

B2-C1: Catalan, Danish, Afrikaans

B1-B2: Greek, Esperanto, Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, Indonesian, Malay, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Welsh , Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Romanian

A2: Icelandic, Hebrew, Arabic, Finnish, Irish, Turkish, Persian (Farsi), Dari, Ukrainian, Hindi, Yiddish, Slovak, Hungarian, Luxembourgish

A1-A2: Albanian, Old Norse, Tagalog (Filipino), Swahili, Balinese, Cantonese, Gaelic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Thai, Basque, Georgian, Slovene, Nepali , Vietnamese, Mongolian, Korean, Ladino, Urdu, Guaraní (Jopará) [<- thanks to duolingo!], Hawaiian, Maori, Noongar (an indigenous Australian language), Lakota, Ojibwe

Passive knowledge: Latin, Old English

My aim is to achieve a level as high as possible in all of my languages eventually (at least a C-level), so that I can read books comfortably without needing a dictionary. A practical ‘usage value’ of the languages I am learning is not important to me at all, because I only get to travel rarely these days.

I am a ´third-culture kid´, having grown up abroad bilingually with 2 native languages (English/Dutch) plus 2 second languages. Born in the late 1970s, at a time long before the advent of the internet when it was not – comparatively – easy to find people with the same marginal and obscure interests, I spent an extremely lonely and isolated childhood and youth as a social outcast. Never having had any friends or just comrades to hang out with when I grew up,  I dedicated all of my free time to pursuing my various hobbies on my own, like teaching myself my languages and learning about their associated cultural background. I got to travel frequently as a child, teenager and young adult, visiting over 20 countries in my early years.

Being the eternal ‘misfit’ and rather a polymath, my background is not in languages and linguistics, but in both the arts and humanities and natural sciences. I have a Fine Arts qualification, as well as two degrees in Art History (with a specialism in modern architecture; both degrees with a ‘Distinction’/summa cum laude) with Archaeology and Heritage Studies as minor subjects from a British university, as well as a qualification in the contemporary natural sciences. I work as a freelance illustrator and writer, artisan/craftsperson, designer, model builder and, occasionally, also as a zero waste and environmental consultant. I am based in western Europe.

I consider my languages merely a tool and a means to an end to pursue all of my other interests, but don´t enjoy translating, analysing literature or discussing grammatical peculiarities, so studying languages or linguistics at university has never been an option for me. Languages are more of a way of life and a passion for me and something that I ‘live’ on a daily basis rather than a ‘science’ to be studied (hence the name ‘polyglottando’ for my blog, which implies the action of what a polyglot does 🙂 ).

I have very many and very varied interests, among other things environmentalism and political activism, world politics, art and crafts, architecture, books, the natural sciences and gardening to name but a few of my interests. I am also a great fan of the ‘Harry Potter’ books and collect them in all languages (in order to read them, not just as collector’s items!). As a committed environmentalist, I do not fly for reasons of climate change (!) and I don’t have a car, and I lead a ‘gadget-free’ lifestyle (no TV, no mobile or smart phone, etc. – I don’t need these things 🙂 ). When I travel (not very often these days due to personal circumstances), I use the train, a coach or even a bike or I hike, which has the nice side effect of getting to experience the target culture and country much more intensively.

You can also follow me on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Polyglottando/843034165737625 and on twitter: polyglottando@polyglottando

If you want to send me a private message, you can contact me via the facebook page ‘polyglottando’.