WEBVTT

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So about two years ago,

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I was featured in
a New York Times article called,

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"Adventures of a teenage polyglot,"

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which featured my passion
for learning foreign languages,

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this peculiar hobby that I had.

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And at first I thought it was great.

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I loved the fact that language learning
was getting more attention

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and that it wouldn't always

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seem like an isolating hobby

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that was suddenly putting me into contact
with people all around the world.

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And as I spent more time
in the media spotlight,

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the focus of my story began to shift.

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So whereas I've always been interested
in talking about the why and the how,

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why I was learning foreign languages,
how I did it,

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instead, it turned into a bit of a circus,

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in which media shows wanted
to sensationalize my story.

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So it would go a little something
like this,

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"Hello, I'm here today with
17-year-old Timothy Doner

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who's fluent in 20 languages.

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Oh, I'm sorry.

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He actually can insult you in 25 languages

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and he's fluent in another ten.

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Tim, how about you tell our audience
'Good morning'

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and 'Thank you for watching', in Muslim?"

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(Laughter)

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"Er... Arabic."

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(Arabic)

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"Great Tim. Now can we get you

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to introduce yourself and say,

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'I'm fluent in 23 languages' in German."

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"It's not really true. But..."

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"No, no, just tell the audience."

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(German)

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"Perfect. Now how about

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a tongue twister in Chinese?

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(Laughter)

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"Well, we could talk about Chinese,

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you know, a lot more Americans
are learning Chinese these days,

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and I think there's
a lot of value in that."

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"No, no, no. 
Just give us a tongue twister."

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(Laughter)

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(Chinese)

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"This guy! Tim, how about

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another tongue twister in Chinese?"

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"I will prefer not to, but you know

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we could talk about China.

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There's a lot you can gain
by learning a language.

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"Oh Tim, I'm sorry,
That's all the time we have."

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(Laughter)


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(Applause)

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"Now why don't you to tell our audience

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'Goodbye' in Turkish

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and we will be over here?"

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"You know we haven't talk
about anything substantive."

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"But Turkish please."


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(Turkish)

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"How about that kid, right,

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wonder if he gets any girls...

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(Laughter)

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Now stay with us because up next,

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a skateboarding bulldog
in a bathing suit."

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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So, as funny as that was,

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it highlighted two pretty major problems


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in the way my story was covered.

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On a personal level,

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I felt that language learning was now 
becoming like a bit of a task, almost.

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It felt like something that was suddenly
had to be rigidly organized.

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Something that had to be 
compartmentalized, rationalized,

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expressed in a concrete number.

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I speak X languages.


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I know Y languages.

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As opposed to what I'd always done,

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which was just learning languages
for the fun of it.

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Learning to communicate with people,


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learning about foreign cultures.

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And on a bigger level, it's cheapened
what it meant to speak a language,

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or to know a language.

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Now if I can impart you
with anything today at TEDxTeen,

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it's that knowing a language

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is a lot more than knowing
a couple of words out of a dictionary.

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It's a lot more that being able


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to ask someone where the bathroom is,

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or telling them the time of day.

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But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

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So for those of you
who aren't familiar with my story,

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maybe a lot of you here
don't know what the word polyglot is,

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and it's a pretty weird one.

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I started here.

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So this little tot is me, circa 2001,

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and this is the beginning
of my language learning journey.

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I actually was a child actor 


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before I'd learned any languages.

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And I always had a little bit of a gift
for accent.

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So I'm going to auditions
for radio commercials,

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or for TV commercials,

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and I'd do an Austin Powers impression.

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I'm not going to do one now.

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(Laughter)

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Or maybe I would do 


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Apu from the Simpsons.

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In fact there was actually
one time an audition

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which I was asked to leave,

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because they told me to speak
like a little kid with a lisp,

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and I wanted to do
Darth Vader in a French accent.

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(Laughter)

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But, that taught me the basics of

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of how to breakdown sound.

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How to pick up a foreign accent,


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or foreign speech patterns,

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and really live with it.

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Now fast forward a little bit,

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I'm now in about third grade,

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and I've just started French
for the first time.

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But six months into a year,


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into even two years later,

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I can't converse with anybody.

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French is just another subject in school,

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and even though I can tell you words 


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for elbow, knee bone, shoelace.

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I couldn't really have
a fluent conversation with anybody.

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Fast forward a little bit more.

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In seventh grade, I started Latin.

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So Latin of course is a dead language,

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and in learning Latin, you really learn

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how to breakdown language,

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to see language as a system

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with rules, and as a bit of a puzzle.

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So that was great,

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but I still didn't feel
like language was for me.

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So, forward a little bit more.

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About 13,


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and I've been interested in learning more 


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about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

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I started studying Hebrew.

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Now, I had no way of doing it.

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I had no idea
what I was supposed to be doing,

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so I listen to a lot of Rap music.

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I memorize lyrics,
I'd spit them back out,

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and I would just try to chat
with native speakers,

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once a week, once a month,

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and I've got that incrementally,


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I started to understand a lot more.

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Now I didn't sound like a native speaker,

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I couldn't speak very articulately and

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I certainly didn't know the grammar.

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but I had done what I'd never
managed to do in school,

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which was to pick up
the basics of a language

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all on my own.

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Forward a little bit more.

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I started taking Arabic when I was 14 


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in a summer program going into 9th grade.

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This is summer of 2010.

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After a month I found
that I could read and write

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without a problem.

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I'd learned the basics 
of the formal language

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and one of its major dialects.

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And it turned me onto the fact that I
could really pursue languages as a hobby.

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So, it finally came to March 24th 2011.

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So I've pretty vicious insomnia,

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and as I was studying more languages


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using grammar books or watching TV shows,

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and let's say Arabic or Hebrew,
became one way of focusing my time.

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So on that night, while I was 
awake till some ungodly hour,

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I recorded myself speaking Arabic
into my computer screen,

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subtitled it,

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and I uploaded it to YouTube

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under the title, "Tim speaks Arabic."

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(Arabic)

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Next day I did the same thing,

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(In Hebrew)

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Tim speaks Hebrew.

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And the comments, when I trickled in,
were fantastic.

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I got things like,


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"Wow, I've never seen
an American speak Arabic before."

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(Laughter)

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You blame them?

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In addition to that I got things like,

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"Wow, maybe you should 
fix your vowels here."

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Or "maybe this word 
is pronounced this way."

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So suddenly language learning had gone


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from the solitary pages of a book,

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or my computer screen,

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into the wide world.

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After that I was hooked.

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I had a community of speakers
to interact with,

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and essentially had a teacher 
or conversation partners

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for any language that I wanted to do.

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So I'll show you a quick montage of that.

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Video: (Arabic) I started studying 
Arabic roughly, 6 months ago.

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(Indonesian)
This started... one, two, three, four...

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maybe four days ago.

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(Hebrew) I actually feel

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that reading and writing
are easier in Arabic

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(Ojibwe)
I certainly find Ojibwe difficult!

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(Swahili) But I came home
the day before yesterday.

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(Pashto) How is my pronunciation?
Thanks so much!

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Have a great day. Goodbye!

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(Applause)

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Tim Doner: That became my way

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of reaching out to the world.

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But as I was learning all these languages,


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I faced a number of obstacles.

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So number one,
I had no idea how to teach myself.

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In fact, I'm sure many of you
if you were told

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you have to learn Pashto by next month,


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you wouldn't know what to do.

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So I experimented.

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Here's one thing.

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So in my Latin class, I read about
something that Cicero described,

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called, "Method of Loci."

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technically Locurum.

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But it's a technique 
in which you take mnemonics.

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So let's say you want to learn 


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10 vocabulary words on a list.

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You take each of those words and

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instead of memorizing them in blocks.

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you integrate them
into your spatial memory.

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So here's what I mean.

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This is Union Square.

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It's a place I go every day.

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If I close my eyes


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I can imagine it very, very vividly

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So I imagine myself 
walking down Union Square,

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and in each spot in my mind
that has resonance,

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I associate it with a vocab word.

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I'll show you right now.

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I'm walking down Park Avenue,


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and in Japanese "to walk" is "iku"

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I go a little bit further, turn right,

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sit on the stairs where I can "Suwaru".

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Directly north of there
is a statue George Washington

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which I used to think was a fountain,

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so that's "nomu", "to drink".

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Right next,
there's a tree that you can "Kiru", "cut".

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If you want to go north
for Barnes & Noble,

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you can "Yomu", "to read".

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Or if I'm hungry and I want to go
to my favorite Falafel place,

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I can go one block west of there,
so I can "Taberu", "to eat".

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I missed one.

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Alright. So 8 out of 10!
Not bad!

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So I found that most of the time


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by experimenting with methods like these,

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it made language learning
a much more interactive experience.

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It made it something
that I can remember much better.

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and I had a lot of fun with.

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Maybe that's not for you.


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Here's another one.

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So a lot of people often ask me,

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if you're studying so many languages
at the same time,

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how do you not confuse them?

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Or how do you learn
so many vocabulary words?

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In Spanish I learn a word for table 


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and the word for book
goes out the other ear.

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What I do is I embrace those.

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So for example,

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take these three words in Indonesian.

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These were actually among 
the first 50 words that I learned.

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"Kepala", "Kabar", "Kantor".

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Lexically there're unrelated
to each other.

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"Kepala" is a head. "Kabar" is news.
"Kantor" is an office.

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But they all sound similar "K", "A". 
Right?

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So what I would do,

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is I would memorize vocab
in batches of sounds that were similar.

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So if I hear the word "Kepala"
in Indonesian,

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I automatically think 
the words "Kebar" and "Kentor".

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Same in Arabic, "Iktissad", 
"Istiklal", "Sokot".

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These three words are unrelated.

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One is economy,
one is independence, one is downfall.

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But if I hear one, it triggers...
(Laughter)

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(Laughter)

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it triggers the rest.

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Same thing in Hebrew.

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(Hebrew)

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Even that those are 
return, remember and to shine.

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Or in Farsi in which they are related.

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So for me if I hear the word "Pedar",

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which means father,

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I automatically think in the words,

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"Mada", "Barodar", "Dokhtar".

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Mother, brother, daughter.

00:11:08.509 --> 00:11:10.268
So again this is one method,

00:11:10.268 --> 00:11:13.304
and I'm not saying this will 
make you fluent in a language,

00:11:13.304 --> 00:11:14.896
but it has been one of my ways 


00:11:14.896 --> 00:11:16.845
of overcoming those obstacles.

00:11:16.845 --> 00:11:18.697
So you may be wondering,


00:11:18.697 --> 00:11:20.909
what's the point in doing this?

00:11:20.909 --> 00:11:22.932
Why learn Pashto or Ojibwe


00:11:22.932 --> 00:11:24.344
when you live in New York?

00:11:24.344 --> 00:11:26.529
And there's a point to that.

00:11:27.165 --> 00:11:29.512
In fact,
I've lived in New York my entire life,

00:11:29.512 --> 00:11:32.027
and I'm always blown away
by the number of languages

00:11:32.027 --> 00:11:34.094
you can hear on a given day.

00:11:34.094 --> 00:11:37.217
Walking at a street,
I see billboards in Chinese or in Spanish.

00:11:37.217 --> 00:11:40.362
I see Russian bookstores,
Indian restaurants, Turkish bath houses.

00:11:40.362 --> 00:11:42.220
Yet for all that linguistic diversity,

00:11:42.220 --> 00:11:43.748
mainstream American culture 


00:11:43.748 --> 00:11:45.366
remains decidedly monolingual.

00:11:45.366 --> 00:11:47.174
And if you don't think that's true,

00:11:47.174 --> 00:11:49.925
look at the reactions
to Coca-Cola Super Bowl video.

00:11:51.015 --> 00:11:55.264
So as I started to play around more
with language learning,

00:11:55.264 --> 00:11:57.048
I found that I had my own community


00:11:57.048 --> 00:11:58.502
of learners here in New York.

00:11:58.502 --> 00:12:00.068
I'd go to outer boroughs,

00:12:00.068 --> 00:12:02.462
and for lack of a better word,
embarrass myself.

00:12:02.462 --> 00:12:04.121
I try to talk to people all day,

00:12:04.121 --> 00:12:05.461
get their views on things,


00:12:05.461 --> 00:12:07.361
and use my new found language skills.

00:12:07.361 --> 00:12:09.719
Video: (Russian) What's your name?
- Natan.

00:12:09.719 --> 00:12:10.938
Natan.
- Good day.

00:12:10.938 --> 00:12:11.984
What's your name?

00:12:11.984 --> 00:12:13.770
I'm Tim.

00:12:14.150 --> 00:12:15.611
Pleased to meet you.

00:12:15.611 --> 00:12:17.099
Pleased to meet you.

00:12:17.099 --> 00:12:18.387
Where are you from?

00:12:18.387 --> 00:12:20.135
(Urdu) This book is written by

00:12:20.135 --> 00:12:22.251
Qudratullah Shanab himself.

00:12:23.735 --> 00:12:25.655
What is 'nawist'?

00:12:25.655 --> 00:12:28.795
It means the writer has written...

00:12:31.282 --> 00:12:33.036
Oh okay, Khod-Nawist (self-write).

00:12:33.036 --> 00:12:34.728
From khod-nevashtan in Persian!

00:12:34.728 --> 00:12:36.909
TD: So maybe you have to use
a lot of English,

00:12:36.909 --> 00:12:38.250
maybe you're not really


00:12:38.250 --> 00:12:40.336
that particularly interesting
when you talk,

00:12:40.336 --> 00:12:42.381
but the point is you're getting out there 


00:12:42.381 --> 00:12:43.822
and you're getting exposure.

00:12:43.822 --> 00:12:45.438
So I don't speak Urdu that well,


00:12:45.438 --> 00:12:47.379
it was kind of an awkward conversation,

00:12:47.379 --> 00:12:50.407
but just from that,
I've learned a new word: "Khod-Nawist".

00:12:50.407 --> 00:12:51.977
I'm not going to forget it now.

00:12:51.977 --> 00:12:53.740
So moving on, you may wonder again 


00:12:53.740 --> 00:12:55.513
what's the point in doing this?

00:12:55.513 --> 00:12:57.342
And I try to explain to people a lot

00:12:57.342 --> 00:12:58.994
what my various motivations are,

00:12:58.994 --> 00:13:01.491
but I often feel that this quote
from Nelson Mandela

00:13:01.491 --> 00:13:03.101
is the best expression of that.

00:13:03.101 --> 00:13:05.532
"If you talk to a man
in a language he understands,

00:13:05.532 --> 00:13:07.159
that goes to his head.

00:13:07.159 --> 00:13:10.005
If you talk to him in his language
that goes to his heart."

00:13:10.005 --> 00:13:11.256
So as I began to see,

00:13:11.256 --> 00:13:12.717
there's an enormous connection 


00:13:12.717 --> 00:13:14.158
between language and culture,

00:13:14.158 --> 00:13:15.520
language and thought.

00:13:15.520 --> 00:13:19.015
And quite honestly
if you want to learn Persian for example,

00:13:19.015 --> 00:13:22.221
you pick up a dictionary, you say,
"I know how to say 'thank you',

00:13:22.221 --> 00:13:24.091
I know how to say 'how much is this?',

00:13:24.091 --> 00:13:25.573
and I know how to say 'goodbye'.

00:13:25.573 --> 00:13:27.313
Oh, I speak Persian."

00:13:27.313 --> 00:13:29.015
Probably not, let's see actually.

00:13:29.015 --> 00:13:32.022
In fact, if you want to buy something
in a Persian bookstore,

00:13:32.022 --> 00:13:34.067
you might ask someone 'how much is this?'.

00:13:34.067 --> 00:13:35.733
Generally, he will tell you this:

00:13:35.733 --> 00:13:37.013
"Ghabeli nadaareh."

00:13:37.013 --> 00:13:38.596
Which means, 'it's worthless'.

00:13:38.596 --> 00:13:39.775
(Laughter)

00:13:39.775 --> 00:13:43.150
So in fact this is an ingrained
cultural practice called, "Taaraf",

00:13:43.150 --> 00:13:45.389
in which two people having a conversation,

00:13:45.389 --> 00:13:47.760
both try to behave
more humble than the other.

00:13:47.760 --> 00:13:49.264
So if I go to buy a book,

00:13:49.264 --> 00:13:51.906
it's rude for that person to tell me
'it's five bucks'.

00:13:51.906 --> 00:13:53.853
He has to say "it's worthless, please.

00:13:53.853 --> 00:13:55.917
You're so good-looking,
you're so talented,

00:13:55.917 --> 00:13:56.745
(Laughter)

00:13:56.745 --> 00:13:59.224
Take it for free,
I'm so humble, take it for free."

00:13:59.224 --> 00:14:00.767
(Laughter)

00:14:00.767 --> 00:14:04.276
Or you might find something
like this phrase:

00:14:04.276 --> 00:14:05.752
if you want to thank somebody,

00:14:05.752 --> 00:14:08.029
if you want to show your gratitude
towards them,

00:14:08.029 --> 00:14:09.370
or say 'nice to meet you',

00:14:09.370 --> 00:14:12.230
I could say, "Well,
I know how to say 'thank you' in Farsi.

00:14:12.230 --> 00:14:13.735
I speak Farsi."
Maybe not though.

00:14:13.735 --> 00:14:16.776
In fact I've often heard this phrase
when I talk with Iranians,

00:14:16.776 --> 00:14:17.852
"Ghorbanet beram."

00:14:17.852 --> 00:14:18.910
Which literally means,

00:14:18.910 --> 00:14:22.770
"May I sacrifice my life for you."
(Laughter)

00:14:22.770 --> 00:14:24.771
So again, it's poetic,

00:14:24.771 --> 00:14:26.723
you might call it melodramatic.

00:14:27.833 --> 00:14:31.598
but this is something you really
have to understand the culture to get.

00:14:32.536 --> 00:14:34.263
I don't want to exona-size this,

00:14:34.263 --> 00:14:37.266
because, think about it,
we have this in English all the time.

00:14:37.266 --> 00:14:39.006
If you ask somebody 'how are you?',

00:14:39.006 --> 00:14:40.451
what you're expecting to hear?

00:14:40.451 --> 00:14:41.209
'I'm fine'.

00:14:41.209 --> 00:14:43.355
If you tell me anything else,
I'm not interested.

00:14:43.355 --> 00:14:44.896
(Laughter)

00:14:44.896 --> 00:14:46.035
But we do it anyway.

00:14:46.035 --> 00:14:47.217
We say 'bless you',

00:14:47.217 --> 00:14:49.870
even though that has no real
religious connotations now,

00:14:49.870 --> 00:14:51.527
when people sneeze, right?

00:14:51.527 --> 00:14:54.123
So, it's interesting we think
about the fact

00:14:54.123 --> 00:14:55.533
that most linguists believe

00:14:55.533 --> 00:14:58.501
language doesn't inherently
affect the way you think.

00:14:58.501 --> 00:15:01.444
Right. There's no language
that will make you a math genius.

00:15:01.444 --> 00:15:03.152
There's no language that will make


00:15:03.152 --> 00:15:05.563
logic problems impossible to understand.

00:15:05.563 --> 00:15:08.034
But there's a real tie
between language and culture.

00:15:08.034 --> 00:15:09.868
There're so much language can tell you


00:15:09.868 --> 00:15:11.604
about one culture's mindset.

00:15:11.604 --> 00:15:13.079
And in fact on planet Earth,

00:15:13.079 --> 00:15:16.228
every two weeks, another language dies.

00:15:16.228 --> 00:15:17.750
No more people are speaking it.

00:15:17.750 --> 00:15:19.774
Because of war, because of famine,

00:15:19.774 --> 00:15:21.730
oftentimes just because of assimilation.

00:15:21.730 --> 00:15:24.483
Maybe it easier for me
not to speak my village language

00:15:24.483 --> 00:15:26.245
but to speak, Arabic let's say.

00:15:26.245 --> 00:15:28.763
Or maybe I'm from a tribe in the Amazon,

00:15:28.763 --> 00:15:30.070
my habitat is cut down

00:15:30.070 --> 00:15:32.819
and it just makes more sense for me
to learn Portuguese

00:15:32.819 --> 00:15:34.874
and lose my culture.

00:15:34.874 --> 00:15:36.064
So think about that.

00:15:36.064 --> 00:15:38.264
Two months from today is April 1st.

00:15:38.264 --> 00:15:40.349
For many of you that day maybe stressful


00:15:40.349 --> 00:15:41.864
because you have a paper due,

00:15:41.864 --> 00:15:42.780
or the rent is due.

00:15:42.780 --> 00:15:45.105
But for two groups of people
around the world,

00:15:45.105 --> 00:15:47.860
for two cultures that means
the death of their language.

00:15:47.860 --> 00:15:50.745
The death of their mythology,
their history, their folklore.

00:15:50.745 --> 00:15:52.495
Their understanding of the world.

00:15:52.495 --> 00:15:54.684
Now again, you,
brushing up on your Spanish,

00:15:54.684 --> 00:15:56.496
going to Japanese class,

00:15:56.496 --> 00:15:58.788
is not going to stop language death.

00:15:59.228 --> 00:16:02.770
But what is does do,
is begin to open up your mind to the idea

00:16:02.770 --> 00:16:05.517
that language in its sense, in essence,

00:16:05.517 --> 00:16:08.743
represents a cultural world view.

00:16:08.743 --> 00:16:11.490
And if I can impart you
with anything today at TEDxTeen,

00:16:11.490 --> 00:16:13.003
it's this:

00:16:13.003 --> 00:16:14.983
you can translate words easily

00:16:14.983 --> 00:16:17.377
but you can't quite translate meaning.

00:16:17.377 --> 00:16:18.382
Thank you.

00:16:18.382 --> 00:16:19.858
(Cheers)