- Hey, everybody. I'm Benny from Fluent in 3 Months with--
- Lindsay from Lindsay Does Languages.
- And Lindsay's visiting me here in New York,
so I wanted to talk to her about something else
that I'm going to be hanging out with her for,
and that is the polyglot events.
It's something we to kind of talk about in today's video,
and give you guys an idea of what that involves,
and hopefully inspire you to check out one of them.
So, what's been you're feel of these events
that you've gone to so far?
- Friendly.
If I was to sum it up in one word,
I would say it's friendly.
I mean, it feels sometimes that I know a lot
of people have spoken to me, at least,
and said, "Oh, I'm a bit intimidated.
"I'm not ready for that yet."
Well, you're ready.
Just 'cause if it has polyglot in the name
it doesn't mean that you have to speak 17 languages to go.
You're all completely welcome if you love languages.
That's it, really, isn't it.
It's language lovers.
People that love languages, learning languages,
learning about languages, then these events are for you.
- Exactly, and it's essentially it's kind of
like conference themed where you have some people
giving talks about multiple interesting subjects
that are in the space of language learning,
but after the events, you get to hang out
and socialise with people.
It's what I find the best about these.
It's just a gathering of very interesting people
in this wonderful language learning community,
and as Lindsay says, it's not something you
have to ever think that you have to be a polyglot,
and if the word polyglot is in the title,
then it's also for aspiring polyglots,
so always keep that in mind.
The biggest ones that I can think of are
LangFest, which last year was called--
- The North American Polyglot Symposium,
or NAPs for short.
- Yeah, so they changed that one.
- They changed the name.
- Yeah, but that one is in Montreal.
That's kind of for North Americans,
if you can make it to that one.
Then the other two that tend to be in Europe
most of the time would be?
- The Polyglot Gathering, which has been mostly in Berlin,
but moved to Bratislava this year,
and I think we'll soon know
where it's going to be next year.
- Yeah.
- For 2018.
And the Polyglot Conference, as well, which this year
in October is going to be in Iceland.
- Yeah, so there's still time to sign-up for that one
if you guys want to come hang out with some polyglots
in just a couple of months,
and for those events,
it's the same kind of group of people.
They each have their unique aspects.
They're run by different people,
but I enjoy going to every singe one of them.
I think it's mostly if the timing and the location works,
I would highly recommend that you try to check those out.
Okay, so that's kind of the first thing
is those three conferences,
but there are other ways you can meet
other passionate language learners.
Like what would you say?
- I would say there's a few other events
that are kind of a different sort of thing,
like sort of expo based.
There's Language Show Live in the UK,
which is in October in London,
and I think March time in Scotland, as well now.
There's sort of booths there.
You can meet people.
There's things about TEFL, for graduates,
that sort of stuff.
Then I think that's quite similar to EXPOLINGUA in Berlin.
I'm sure there's plenty more like
that around the world, as well,
but there's more on a much more casual basis
much more regularly, as well.
- Yeah, that's right.
Usually, if I am in a city for long enough,
I would see what kind of Facebook groups or Facebook events
there are around language learning,
and sometimes there are specifically mini-polyglot groups
that talk amongst one another,
and they tend to have these regular events
that people can go and practise languages,
and those are free.
They're just being social
and meeting other like-minded people.
Very laid back and the people you meet
there are so friendly, and you've been to a couple
of these, as well, haven't you?
- Yeah.
Yeah, I went to a Spanish one in Milton Keynes
when I was doing my final year of dissertation,
and that was really great help, actually,
to actually speak the language with people,
not just practising online
or doing my own book stuff, so yeah.
Definitely worthwhile checking out.
- Yes, and I guess the last kind of opportunity you might
think of that comes to mind, at least to me,
would be the Esperanto events.
So even if you're not crazy about the idea
of learning Esperanto, I would still
dabble in it for a couple of weeks,
just because it's very easy anyway.
But the people you meet at the Esperanto events,
are the same language learning community.
They are very open-minded, they're very encouraging
to people who are just getting into language learning,
and these events tend to last a whole week,
where you get to hang out with these cool people.
They pick a very cheap place.
It generally is based mostly in Europe.
There's a bigger one as well that happens internationally,
but it's not expensive,
and you will get to talk language learning,
which I know is a passion for a lot of people
watching this right now.
I would definitely recommend you check that out.
And so I'm going to have as many links as I can
to all of these events in the doobly-doo below,
and otherwise, I appreciate Lindsay
coming on my channel again to talk about this.
You can click around her
to subscribe to her channel for sure.
Otherwise make sure to subscribe to mine, and yeah.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
I hope I will see you at one of these events.
- See you there.
- Happy language learning.