مرحبا جميع
Merhaba arkadaşlar
سلام دوستان
Bonjour toute le monde
Hallo alle
大家好
Hello welcome to my channel
My name is Zoe
I am a polyglot
I speak 7 languages
I don’t really count dialects
Because I speak different Chinese dialects and Arabic dialects
Let me tell you something about me
I am Chinese but I live in France
I've been living in here for almost 6 years
I'm doing my PhD in Sociology here
In this video I would like to show you my language learning journey
How can I speak seven languages and how have learned all of them
Of course I am gonna speak in 7 different languages
Maybe there is gonna be your mother tongue
To be honest I am not perfect in all languages
I am still learning
I think doing videos like this and opening my channel
is a very good way to document my progress and my journey
Maybe you can find some inspiration from my story
I hope you are gonna like it
as Chinese, Mandarin is my mother tongue
For those foreigners who don't know much about China
I would like to say that China is actually very big
We have different languages and dialects in different regions
And there are many ethnic groups
For example I am from Guangxi
Guangxi is a province in the south of China
There are many different ethnic minorities in this province
My mother is a Zhuang
So we have a language called Zhuang
It's a language not a dialect
because it's very different from Mandarin
but it's very close to Thai
So if I want to learn Thai in the future it should be very quick
And I also speak a dialect of our region called Gui Liu
This dialect is very close to Mandarin
Then my undergraduate studies were in Guangzhou
So I learnt Cantonese
which is another dialect
It's also very different from Mandarin
Actually I didn't grow up with many international languages
And my parents don't even speak English
But I can say I did grow up with many dialects
In fact French is almost like my second mother tongue
At the moment I speak more French than Chinese
At the beginning I learned French for a year in a language institute in France
I got my C1 level then I continued my master in social sciences in France too
I remember my first course
it was general sociology
the teacher came and he talked about different schools of modern thought
like Positivism, Postmodernism, Marxism...all the isms
frankly I didn't understand anything
I already had a C1 level at that time
I didn't understand anything
I told myself it's over
I can't even take the notes
how can I finish my studies and continue my PhD here in France
Then I got up the courage
I did something
I made recordings of all the lessons
I listened to them and transcribed them at home
I know it's very difficult very long very boring
but after a month I could really understand half the lessons
and then more and more
Now French is my academic language
my working language
I give conferences in French
Sometimes I give lectures in French and English at the university
there are very funny things
Because I learned French especially the academic terms
Sometimes I can't even say them in Chinese
I'm really ashamed
Arabic come on
I have learned Arabic since 3 years
at the beginning of course I have learned classic Arabic
I even travel to Morocco during the summer holiday for taking lessons
I mean for learning Arabic
then after my Master in France I decided to go to Egypt to learn Arabic
I went to Egypt
I was in Egypt
I saw that people don’t speak classic Arabic on the street
I mean in the normal life
They can speak with me a bit
but it’s weird , rare, not in a natural way
So I decided to learn the Egyptian dialect
I noticed that when I began to speak a bit dialect with people
the communication became easier and much better
After 4 months in Egypt I went back to France
Here I have a lot of Syrian and Lebanese friends
Personaly I love the Levantine Arabic
so I learned it and spoke a lot with people
To be honest
Arabic is very difficult
It is the most difficult language I have ever learned
I swear to God
everything is difficult
grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation
everything is difficult
That’s why at the beginning I have learned a bit
I wanted to talk to people to practice my Arabic
But when I spoke with people, they couldn’t understand me
Why?
because all pronunciation is wrong
So I told myself
I will never speak this language in my life
Because it's really difficult
But thank God I didn't give up
then I kept learning every day and finding any opportunities to practice with people
I have traveled
thank God I am very happy now because I can speak with people fluently
I can understand well
But even untill now I am still learning Arabic
Now Turkish!
What I wanna say?
I've been learning Turkish for 1 year
I've been to Turkey a couple of times
I mean only for traveling
I like Turkey very much
especially Istanbul I really like it
For me Istanbul is the most beautiful city in the world
I am a Istanbul lover
I love Istanbul
To be honest
It is very easy to practice Turkish in Turkey
Why?
because people are very welcoming and kind
and always happy to talk to me in Turkish
But one of my Turkish friends said this is not because they don't want to speak English with me
but because they can only speak Turkish
But anyway it's good for me
I mean I can practice more my Turkish
Ah there is something funny
Even when sometimes when I started to speak a little Turkish
People ask me if I am Turk
But, me?
Do I look like Turk?
Maybe
Hello, I hope you are doing well
How did I learn Farsi?
I think I started learning Persian and Turkish at the same time
I mean since one year
To be honest
Because I knew Arabic, learning Persian was not very difficult for me
But at the beginning when I was speaking Persian
I always had a bit Arabic accent
when I said salam or wallah
because in Arabic is Salam and wallah
the pronunciation is very different
I knew that I still have a little Arabic accent
At the beginning I learned Persian by myself with a book
and then I have practiced with my Iranian friends
People always ask me why I want to learn Persian
Honestly, I just like this language very much
In my opinion Persian is very beautiful, poetic and melodic
and cute
Yes I think Persian is very cute
Even when I speak Persian
I feel like I am cute haha
Well, in fact, I wanted to go to Iran several times
But unfortunately I could not go because of the corona epidemic
even my trip was canceled several times
I really really hope I can come to Iran very soon
German non!!!!!!
To be honest my German is very very bad
Because I speak it rarely
Well
The funny thing is that
I learned German in Egypt
at the Goethe Institute in Alexandria
Because at that time I had the plan to do my PhD in Germany.
But ironically
I met many Egyptian, Palestinian and Syrian friends in the class
and eventually I have spoken and learned more Arabic than German
After Egypt, I kept learning until I reached B2 level
But the problem is that I have never lived in Germany before and...
Yes I can say a lot and understand most of it
but sometimes I have the feeling that I don't know the colloquial language
But maybe next year I will live in Germany
and maybe have more opportunity to practise
This is how I have learned 7 languages.
sometimes people asked me if I come from a Diplomat family
or if I have already learned those languages since I was a child
The answer is no!
I was like most of you
I spoke mostly my mother tongue
I have learned some English at school but never really practiced a lot before I go abroad
I don't want to say that I am talented
I prefer to day that I am passionate about languages
and hard working
During this language learning journey
I realised how much potential we have if we really want to learn and achieve something
Sometimes somepeople say" no, I am too old to start learning a new language"
in my opinion
I think the most important is passion, patience and persistence
And you have to find a good method
To be honest I watched a lot of videos on Youtube as well
I have learned a lot of thing from Youtube
from other polyglots as well
different method
so it's time to share with you my method, my story, my experience and my tips
to really to help you if you are intrested in languages like me
As I said at the beginning
I am not perfect in all languages
I am still learning
I am still progressing
I still make a lot of mistakes
So doing this kind of video is kind of like to document my progress
I hope we can progress together
I just started my channel
I know that everything is difficult at the begginning
If you like my video or you want to support me
please give a thumbs up
I would like to share with you more about my language learning experience
some tips and some funny cultural gap stories in the future
see you guys