Gaw, you feel wonky today. What the hell happened?! Oh my life! Oh, I don't know if I'm gonna
survive this video. Hey! So, today, I want to address a little thing that is kind of,
er, annoying. But it's also a little bit confusing. And it's annoying because it's confusing,
and it's confusing because it's annoying, and it's just....it's a vicious cycle really.
Today I want to try and answer the question what is a polyglot? A polyglot is something
that I..It's a word I'd never really heard of to be honest until recently in the past...5
years let's say. And so the fact that I hadn't heard of this word means that a lot of other
people also hadn't heard of this word and also still haven't heard of this word. But
this word, 'polyglot', is now being used more and more and more within the sort of online
language learning community and I feel like for some people, it kind of is, erm, scary,
because the think "Oh my goodness! I'm not, I don't speak seventeen languages. Maybe I
do speak seventeen languages and I don't speak them to C2 level that means I'm not a polyglot,
that means I can't go to these events that have the word 'polyglot' in the title. Oh,
what a disaster!". But I just want to say to those people that it's totally ok. See
the thing is about the word polyglot - there is no strict definition. Like, if I, if I...where's
my phone? Let's do this right now. Ok, let's see, what is a polyglot? Let's check and see
what the old er, search engine extraordinaire that begins with a 'G' says. "Are you trilingual?
Are you monolingual, bilingual, trilingual, multilingual or a polyglot?" See, there you
go multilingual and polyglot are being used separately even though technically 'poly'
means multiple, like many, like a polyglot, polyglot, a poly- , polygon! That's a shape
with many sides, right? And then 'glot' is language. Kind of like in the term, one of
my favourites, 'glottal stop'. But-ter! So, it just means multiple languages. Ok. So it's
not 4, 5, 6, 7, 17, 52, 103. It's not to A1, to A2, to B1, to C2, blah blah, to C2. There
is no clear definition of what it takes to call yourself a polyglot. Now I actually filmed
a video, erm, a few months back before I went to the Polyglot Gathering this year in May
in Berlin. And I filmed this video and I never actually edited it. In this video, basically,
I was of the opinion that, you know, there is no clear definition, let's all calm down,
let's not worry about specifically what a polyglot is. I actually kind of ended it by
saying that at the same time, I feel like it's saying "Yes! I am a, er, I'm the best
footballer you'll ever find". It's something, there was some kind of arrogance there I felt
so I would never have called myself a polyglot. And then I went to the Polyglot Gathering
in Berlin. I know it's ironic the name 'polyglot' and I said I wasn't blah, blah, blah! But
I went there and I went to one talk with Richard Simcott, who I'm sure you've heard of if you're
watching this video, and he outlined that for him, the definition is changing and a
polyglot is someone, for him, who actively goes forward and learns languages for no particular
reason, just for the pure love of language and the love of learning language and the
love of communicating with people via different languages. And I thought this was so beautiful.
It's so open, it's so accepting. There is no definition, there is no specific number,
specific requirement that you have to, erm, achieve, that you have to attain before you
can say, yeah I'm a polyglot. And before you can say, yeah, I'm going to go to the Polyglot
Gathering or the Polyglot Conference. No! If you love language and I'm telling you this,
like, from the heart 'cause the battery's about to die! If you love language and you
actively learn languages and you enjoy that process, and you have no limit to what you
want to do and how many languages you want to learn, then you are a polyglot. And I think
that that is now becoming the widely accepted definition. And it's something that I myself
would, err, would like to believe. I would love, I want, for me, this is the new definition
of what a polyglot is. I hope that cleared something up. What do you think? Do you agree
with this definition? I've very much taken this definition that I use myself from Richard
Simcott so thank you to Richard for, err, for sharing his opinion on this in Berlin.
It really helped me personally to kind of get a bigger, much broader perspective of
this word, and that's what I want to share with you today. But do you agree? Is this
your opinion? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to get chatting with you about
this and to know if you think "no, it should be this set number of languages or it should
be a set level" or, whatever you think, please just share in the comments, I'd love to hear
some opinions on this. And as usual, if you enjoyed, please subscribe. I hope you enjoyed
this video, I hope you found it useful and I hope that it will inspire you to use the
word polyglot more confidently, more comfortably, and to perhaps even attend a polyglot event.
This isn't like a sponsored video of any of those events! I've been to two events myself,
one Polyglot Gathering and one Polyglot Conference in the past year, and I loved them both. The
atmosphere is incredible, there's no competition, there's no, err, like peacocking, if you like,
of you know, "Well, actually my badge says err, I speak 52 languages, so, you know, come
at me!" There's none of that. It's just really friendly, really warm, really open, and just
to share some time with people who share that same passion for language learning as you
do is a real gem and it's something that I think if you're watching this video, you should
probably take advantage of. Ok, thank you.