Hi, this is Steve Kaufmann again.
Uh, and today I have a special guest, very special because she's not the usual sort
of just language learning type of person.
Jo Franco has a channel on YouTube where she talks about many things,
including language learning, but also things of the heart.
And so I'm going to talk to her about attitude and language
learning, and she's also a polyglot.
So we'll get into all of this, but first.
Uh, if you enjoy my channel, please subscribe.
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Hello, Jo, how are you?
I'm very well.
Thank you.
First of all, where are you located?
Geographically?
Currently geographically based in London, strategic, partially for
language learning the other travel.
Which to me goes hand in hand and language has always been the biggest gateway
to experiencing the most authentic life enriching moments of my life.
And so I figured, Hey, London is pretty much the most
international city in the world.
So every day here I'm like ordering a coffee in Italian.
I'm ordering lunch in French, I'm speaking Portuguese at the gym,
and that's only in a day's time.
So it's really exciting.
Uh, you say, and of course I, obviously, I agree with you that...
I don't need these now I've got everything working...
um, that the language is a gateway to so much, you know, and, uh,
you know, some people think, oh, I gotta learn it, you know, why
would you learn some other language?
All you need is English.
And so some people have a very sort of utilitarian approach to language.
Like I only learn something if I need it.
In fact, until you get into it, you don't realize just how rich a world is
available to you if you learn languages.
So tell us which languages do you speak and what have been some of your, uh,
pleasant experiences in these languages?
Great question.
I mean, we could talk about this for the rest of time.
It's an endless pool, like you really can just keep going for life.
And obviously you've shown that through your work, but in my
experience, so I actually never was supposed to speak English.
I was born in Brazil ... a hundred percent Brazilian.
Right.
And no one in my family was American.
So the fact that we immigrated when I was five years old was
kind of a shock to everyone.
So, um, Brazil speaking Portuguese.
I moved to a town in Connecticut.
I had to learn English, no one spoke Portuguese around me.
They barely even spoke Spanish.
So that was actually a really big moment in my language learning career.
And I feel like I've tried to replicate as much of that survival
mentality to my language learning.
Because I learned English at record speeds cause I had to, I had no other choice.
Uh, and so I spoke, obviously I speak English.
That's my main language day to day and how I kind of think, then I started
learning French in middle school, which...
it's middle school French, you know, you're not going to be fluent
from that, but I really loved it.
I just loved it.
I fell in love with the little pictures of the cafes in the textbooks and I'm
like, man, maybe one day I can be a person sitting at one of those cafes.
I don't know what it was.
There was just something about the European cafe lifestyle
that I was obsessed with before I even drink coffee, you know?
And then in high school I was very privileged to be in a high school
where they taught Italian as well.
So I had to write a letter to the principal and say, Hey, I grew
up bilingual can you please let me take two languages in school?
Which was something that was not allowed.
They didn't want the kids getting confused.
So I broke the rules, very inline with me as a human being.
And I started learning Italian and all of these are kind of grade
school, elementary school classes, not learning too much, but then I graduated
and I had never traveled before.
I could not travel.
We were undocumented for 12 years.
So all of this time, it's a pretty crazy story.
I was in preparation...
I was like in the books doing my little grammar tables.
Cause one day I would live a global life that was in my mind.
I didn't even have a green card, let alone a passport.
So this was all in my mind.
But right before college, I was able to get my green card applied to a
college and went to this school in downtown Manhattan, where I knew
it would be a global experience.
Can I stop you for a sec?
Because you said a few things that I want to comment on before
I forget, you know, at my advanced age, I forget things very easily.
Uh, you said that you arrived in the US at the age of five.
I arrived in Canada at the age of five.
I have no recollection of transitioning from Swedish to English.
I was just with, I don't know what language I spoke when I, you know,
first, you know, played with kids, but in no time I had forgotten my Swedish
and I was just, I just spoke English.
So at the age of five, we transition very, very quickly.
Uh, that was one thing I wanted to say.
What was the other thing about?
Mm.
Oh, yes.
It's interesting that at school they tell you how many languages
and which languages you can learn.
That's so silly.
They should allow kids to explore whatever language they want to explore.
So there was something else that I wanted to comment on, but I've forgotten.
So here we are, you're in college.
So take us to the next stage.
We're going to talk about this on my podcast, too, this whole transitioning
and the brain and growing up bilingual.
So got to college and I didn't.
take any French classes in college at all.
Maybe I did half of a semester, but I didn't love it.
Didn't like the teacher didn't like the lessons.
I didn't, I just didn't, I'm not very much of a rule follower, right?
So the idea that I'm sitting in this classroom where people were
just trying to fulfill some language credits, it was BS in my opinion.
So I didn't, I didn't really love that, but I still decided to study
abroad in Paris my sophomore year.
Which is when my French really went to the next level.
I was living in a homestay with this mom who spoke no English.
And that's what I wanted.
I'm like, I want a struggle, you know, like taking me back to that survival mode.
And at the same time, I started this crazy YouTube channel with my friends from
college, where we were just documenting our French experiences, traveling,
traveling around, taking cheap flights.
To me, it was all so foreign for lack of a better word.
Like I didn't grow up traveling.
So I wanted to film everything.
People ask like, oh, why are you so enthusiastic?
You know, that's the, one of the first things you said to me.
It's because I guess everything that happened in my life is so crazy that I'm
kind of like, oh yeah, I have to film this because I might never be able to
do it again, but it became my career.
Can I stop you here before I forget two points that I want
to make and then we'll continue?
So now I remember what I wanted to say.
You said that, uh, you had these textbooks, French textbooks
with pictures of cafes.
I got turned onto French at McGill university because we had these
textbooks and I got turned onto these pictures of, you know, 17th and 18th
century French people and whatever.
So it doesn't matter what it is.
Uh, you contrast the role of a teacher or a textbook that can actually
turn someone on to the language.
You contrast that with writing exams every year, uh, which is what you
experienced, what I experienced.
And you know, if you're a good student, you're going to pass these exams, you're
going to get eight out of 10 or whatever it might be, and you still can't speak.
So you've got on the one hand, the role of the teacher is not to teach something
and test the student on it and the better students get better marks and
the weaker students gets poor marks.
It doesn't matter.
The role is to sort of trigger this enthusiasm, which I think we
both have enthusiasm for discovery for languages and so forth.
So I wanted to make those two comments back to you now.
So you're traveling and you're enthusiastic.
An amazing point to make, because when you think about language learning, that
is our, those are hours of your life.
That's so much dedication, you could be doing so many other things.
So if you're going to dedicate time, you need to be excited about it.
There's a reason why people are kind of downloading these apps and they're like,
oh yeah, I kind of want to learn it.
But what's the reason why?
Like what's, what are you obsessed about with that langauge?
Or with that idea of your life transforming because you
learn that language and that to me was always the "why".
I was like, if I learn this language, I can live a different life.
And that's so powerful in my opinion, that it would get me excited about doing
grammar charts or whatever, but like doing the grammar for grammar's sake is not
what I'm going to be spending my time on.
So I love that yeah, you pointed that out.
It's true.
It's gotta be something that you're passionate about and a teacher, they can
point you in the right directions, but really that's an individual experience.
So for all of my languages, for the most part, it was the culture excited me.
It was the access that I would get because I would speak this
language and unlock things.
So that's kind of how I learned French perfected, not perfected,
but like really got fluent enough where I can do life and French.
And then Italian, same thing.
I actually loved the fact that Italian was only spoken in Italy for the most
part, because it was not really useful.
And that was exciting to me because I'm like, oh, I'm only learning this
language because I love Italy and Italians and that feels sacred and special.
Whereas the other languages like Spanish, they always say,
oh, you got to learn Spanish.
I actually avoided learning Spanish for the longest time.
Funny enough, I'm like, I don't want to learn it because I speak Portuguese,
I can already kind of understand it, but joke was on me because when I got
back from my study abroad semester, the first project that we were able to go
on and work to make promotional YouTube videos for was a Spanish language school.
So for three months I, I had to go to Spanish school.
And in that summer I learned Spanish.
So that's when Spanish kind of added into the mix.
Stop you there because I have a question.
I have found it very difficult and my Spanish is much better than my Portuguese
and the languages are so similar.
They're like 90% of the same words, 90%, the same grammar, of
course, different pronunciation.
And it's so...
I find it so difficult.
Like if I learn a totally different language, there's no interference,
but it's so difficult to get out of this ... thing into that other
language, which, and you got to shut out the one that you speak better.
So coming at it from Portuguese, was that an obstacle for you?
The fact that basically you understand that you even know you can communicate
in Portuguese and they'll understand you, does that prevent you from
throwing yourself into Spanish?
It's such an amazing question.
It was traumatic the first week in Mexico.
I was, I was like wanting to bite my tongue every five seconds
because I'm like, what is it?
What is it?
Is it ... is it ...? Like I was just losing my mind because it wasn't
just Portuguese that was interfering, but it was Italian as well.
Anytime I speak Spanish I'm basically speaking...
now I'm basically speaking Italian.
Like it's Spanish with Italian.
In the beginning it was definitely Portuguese seeping into my Spanish
and then I did have to block it out.
You have to kind of like find a way to isolate the language in your brain.
Uh, which is funny because now after many years of, of speaking those languages
and I started making videos in those languages, which really, really helped.
So on the old YouTube channel, which we had over a million subscribers,
we would post three videos a week, Tuesdays in English, Fridays in
French Sundays in Portuguese.
And then I would travel alone and go to Italy and make videos in Italian.
And so this kind of went on where I was not only filming myself for a whole day,
speaking a language, but editing myself.
And having to look up like, is that even right?
Is that how you say that?
And it's just, it's a secret weapon, Steve, where I'm like, okay,
there's some magic that happens when you start filming yourself.
And it's convenient that this is what I ended up doing for a living.
So this brings us to now.
I stopped actively learning languages for a long time.
Right?
Like I think all of those languages were in my mind by the age of 24.
I didn't have to do much work.
You know how it is, you go through...
You're already 24?
I'm 29.
As I was 24 these languages were in my mind and I didn't really make the time to
learn new languages because I was getting around most of the world with no issues.
Like I would be in Hungary and of course I didn't speak Hungarian,
but the woman, I would be, I'd be like, do you speak English?
No.
Do you speak French?
No.
Do you speak Portuguese?
No.
Do you speak Spanish?
No.
You speak Italian?
... and it was amazing.
So I'm like, okay, I don't necessarily spend much time learning new languages
and maintaining the ones that I know, then something really interesting
happened last year during the pandemic where it was the first time
in a long time, I wasn't traveling.
And I was kind of bummed in quarantine, like the rest of the world.
And I realized, I am so sad.
The only thing that's gonna make me excited is going to
be learning a new language.
And so I had flirted around with Egyptian Arabic.
My best friend is Egyptin, and I just decided I'm going to book 20
hours of classes online with this complete stranger who turned into
a dear friend who lives in Egypt.
And every day of last year, like for the first two months, I would meet
up with him online 45 minute lessons.
And I started learning Egyptian Arabic to the point where I'm like
... like, and I started communicating with my best friend and her family
who I had known for 10 years.
And that opened up this new Egyptian Arabic door.
Uh, and at the same time I had dabbled in Greek.
I'm like, oh yeah, ... blah, blah, blah.
But then I'm like, I know that if I dedicate my time to this language,
to both of these languages, I will be able to be more conversational.
And so I just started posting more content about it on my Instagram.
So I used to be primarily on YouTube.
Now I've shifted.
I'm definitely on both.
And I started this 21 day language challenge.
We're on day 17 today.
And on Instagram, every single day, I post a video of me reading an entry in
Greek and posing my audience the same question in whatever their language, you
know, their target language is and that's improved my Greek tenfold, you know?
Like in these short three weeks, I'm like, shoot, this is what happens
when you dedicate some time and energy into these languages, you
know, you open you open these doors, so that's my linguistic journey.
Okay.
So, because we're going to have another conversation on your channel I'd like
to sort of summarize and maybe make some comments for the purpose of my listeners
and what I get from our conversation.
Uh, I share some of the problems you have.
In other words, I would like to learn a hundred languages.
There's only so much time in the day.
And, uh, we're always conscious of, uh, some of the languages we have learned
are not as good as they once were, or we'd like to be better at them and
we just don't have the time to do it.
So, you know, it's like everything about language learning, there
is no perfection, you can't learn every language to a super level.
It's fun to explore new languages.
And so that's a good problem to have.
So that's the one thing we're quite similar in that regard.
Uh, the second thing is your enthusiasm.
And I think, you know, to be successful in anything, not just language learning,
you have to be passionate about it.
You have to be enthusiastic about it.
That enthusiasm can partly come from within, but also I think
it's a matter of being open to new stimulus, new opportunities.
Uh, and so the, sometimes the, the trigger can come from somewhere else.
Like it could be a textbook as in your case, but, uh, I think it's a
wonderful, you're a wonderful example.
And of course you're a lot younger than I am, so you can still
learn a whole bunch of languages.
Uh, and I think it's just, if we can infect more people with that enthusiasm
and that attitude, more people will, um, you know, benefit from the joys
of learning 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, however many languages they want, uh, for
whatever reason that they're interested.
And so I, you know, I thank you for sharing that joy with, uh,
the people that follow my channel.
Maybe you want to give us a final comment.
I mean, steve, I think you're a perfect example.
You have the joy as well, it's infectious.
And it says a lot that you've dedicated your life to inspiring
other people to learn languages and learning languages yourself.
I mean, to me, it's a gateway to living multiple lives.
I always say that I'm like, why live one life when you can
live many, many, many more?
There are people in my life who I would have not met nor eould have
never, you know, become friends with, if I didn't speak French or Ita...
or whatever, you know?
Like there's such a missed opportunity when we don't spend time
trying to understand one another.
It's like, yeah, sure we have translations.
We have all of these, you know, services, but there's nothing
that beats that human connection.
When you look at someone in their eyes and speak their language and understand
them in their language, I can really put in more time and energy into that.
I feel like my life will be a million times more fulfilling.
Okay.
Well, on that note, thank you for taking the time to visit with us.
And I look forward to our next conversation at your channel.
So excited.
We're going to get into it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
Bye-bye.