Hello, my name is Jan van der Aa and 3 years ago I uploaded a video on YouTube in which I spoke 7 languages.
In the last 3 years I've been traveling a lot and I picked up another 3 languages on the way...
So today I will be giving a presentation in 9 languages.
So, the second language that I would like to speak is Portuguese.
At the moment I am in Belo Horizonte en Brazil
I already stayed one month in Brazil in January this year.
And after a few weeks I could speak with natives, but I think that thanks to I know some Spanish already.
I am here for work and also to improve my Portuguese.
I will stay for 2 more months and I hope to improve my Portuguese and that I can speak it fluently soon.
The 3rd language will be Chinese.
So 5 years ago I went to Chinese for the with for a Chinese course.
After I went back to Holland by Chinese was still not very good, I couldn't speak with Chinese people.
Because of the good experiences that I had in China back then, I went back to China a few times each year.
Also for my work I need to speak Chinese occasionally.
When I go to China, the most friends I have there can't speak English so there is no other option, I have to speak Chinese with them.
In the beginning I suffered a lot, it was difficult, but it turns out to be a good thing
If the situation was not like that I might not be able to speak Chinese fluently.
I went to Costa Rica 7 years ago to speak.. practice.. no, to study Spanish and I did volentuur work as well.
Those where good times, I liked it a lot. I learned a lot about traveling, meeting people etc.
I still think that Spanish is difficult language for me and that's not because of the grammar or the vocabulairy...
But it's because in Spanish you have this "rrr'' sound.
I practiced (the pronunciation) a lot with tutorials on YouTube and with teachers,
However I still don't feel very confident with it.
Therefore I started taking Spanish classes again recently with a teacher from Italki
And I hope that I can improve my Spanish soon.
The 5th language will be Cantonese.
Most of the time that I spend in China I spend in the south, in Guangdong and Guangxi.
So, when I lived there and I heard people speaking Cantonese, I liked the sound a lot.
I also thought that is was cool for a foreigner to speak Cantonese.
So from that time on I started learning it as well.
Last year I learned Cantonese for 3 months with an online teacher.
After those 3 months I could hold a conversation with native speakers.
My Cantonese is still not very fluent but I will continue learning it.
In the last few years I haven't practiced my German anymore
So, yeah in the last few years I went to Germany many times and I always try to speak German with the people there.
That is always cool.
For example, last month we went to Germany during the World Cup and we watched the Final match in Dusseldorf
That was cool because we all went in Orange T-shirts.
So we have had a lot of fun as you can imagine.
Last year I studies Japanese for 3 months, for the Add1Challenge.
After learning I did you practice it a lot and therefore it's my worst language now.
I will learn it again when I have the time for it.
Indonesian is a language that I haven't spoken for a very long time.
When I was in Indonesia all my friends where from China, so I learned a lot of Chinese but only a little Indonesian.
Next year I would like to travel to Indonesian again and also to East-Timor.
East-Timor, that country, will be the last country for me in South East Asia.
So, that was my... Dutch is the 9th language, that's my mother tongue, also the easiest.
I hope that you enjoyed this presentation and hopefully you became motivated to learn a language, or to travel yourself.
If you have any questions related to language learning, leave a message or go to my website.
I wish you all the best with your language studies and travels. Thank you.