Hello y'all, how are you? I'm Elysse and today I'm very excited because we're going to start a new series on this channel.
But Elysse, what's this new series about? Well, I'm going to explain.
It's called Painting with a Polylck$92ks I can't speak English.
Painting with a Polyglot. And in every episode I'm going to choose a language, whether it's
French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, et cetera et cetera, and I'm also going to choose
a flag of a country that speaks that language. And the rules are that I can only
use the colors of the flag, and on top of that I can only talk in that language
during the entire video. It sounds fun! Sounds fun, no? I'm very excited. Today obviously
I'm speaking in Spanish, so I'm gonna tell y'all which flag or flags I choosed for today. Choosed? Chose.
So today we have the Dominican Republic because I wanted to use the dark blue.
Also Nicaragua for its medium blue, and Guatemala for its light blue.
And y'all already saw that I'm wearing my Woody Woodpecker T-shirt because I need to wear something that I don't care about getting paint on.
In these episodes, I'm going to talk about different things, for example
maybe a special topic, maybe something happening in one of the countries whose colors I'm using,
For #awareness, y'know
But today it's really simple, I'm just going to respond to questions that you guys asked me on instagram!
Y'all already know that I always like talking to you guys, that you guys ask me questions,
but yeah! Let's start.
First I need to stick the canvas to the wall because I'm not an artist and I don't have an easel.
What's the origin of that word (caballete)? Does it have something to do with horses (caballos)?
I have to use-- it's not PlayDoh, in English we call it putty.
Something sticky to make it stay on the wall.
The ghetto that's currently taking place...
we're going to put it here. I'm gonna move it a little bit.
All ready, we're going to see if it stays
I think so. There we go.
I have my palette to mix the colors, my brushes, my watercolors,
but I'm not going to work with watercolors today because it's too hard for a video of 20 minutes or less.
So we're gonna put them away in here. Given that we're only working with blues today,
we only need blue and white.
We're gonna start by tracing,
and with that we can also start with the questions that you guys asked me!
And the first question is "How are you chiquitaaa". From my sister, Mary.
I'm good, just a little tired because I got up at 6 to watch the sunrise with a friend. But, all good!
When are you going to come to Brazil and what cities do you want to visit?
I don't know if y'all know this, but it's really expensive to travel to Brazil from the U.S.
I don't know why but it's real expensive.
Something like 600 dollars just to get there, and to come back it's another 600 dollars.
So I think it'll take me a while to visit Brazil. But when I go,
I'd like to visit Rio de Janeiro, of course, just because it's famous.
But I've heard that it's not really safe to travel [there] if you're a woman.
And that's not a stereotype. My Brazilian friends have told me
that it's not really safe to travel [there] alone if you're a woman. I really don't know.
But yeah, I'd like to see RJ. Piaui? I've heard a lot of things about Piaui.
In my time learning Portuguese, I think I've researched a lot more about the
language than the countries. So I basically know nothing about the geography,
what the different cities have to offer. If you Brazilians have any
advice for me, a woman traveling solo to Brazil, what are some of the safest cities for me,
and also what are the most fun things to do there? Thanks.
What's your favorite word in Spanish, whether by definition or sound? For definition,
I'm trying to think of a word that we don't have in English that we do have in Spanish.
It's really hard. It'd have to be slang, maybe.
AH cuchibarbi! Cuchibarbi is Colombian slang.
It describes an older woman who dresses as if she's 20.
She doesn't dress her age, yknow?
I don't know where it came from, but yeah.
We have the dark blue of the DR, the medium blue of Nicaragua, and the light blue of Guatemala.
Did y'all know that the stripes of the Guatemalan flag represent that Guatemala
is a country in the middle of 2 oceans? That I didn't know.
Y'all see that?
I don't know if y'all saw that but... what a mess already.
What made you want to start a YouTube channel? Ok. The channel I have now,
whose videos you're watching now, only dates back to 2016 I think. But in fact,
I started uploading videos on YouTube when I was 11. However,
what I uploaded back then was very different. I used to work with clay-- it wasn't PlayDoh,
it was clay that you put in an oven. So I used to make my things,
and I would upload videos of what I made. My mom liked to see what I made,
so I thought the people of YouTube would too. I don't know why. It's changed a whole lot
what I upload today, you all know that now I'm more interested in linguistic content.
And I like more what I do now. But yep, that's how I started to upload YT videos, aaaand yeah!
Those videos don't exist anymore, so don't try to search for them.
Ok, I think we're almost done with the black. Real cute, no?
What is the next language you're going to learn? That's a good question.
I think in the future I'd like to learn Russian. Russian, yeah.
You all don't know this, but when I was a kid, my school had Russian classes.
I lived in an area that wasn't really rich so that's kinda weird. But also you
have to take into account that I lived in a place with a lot of Hispanic people so it didn't make
sense to teach Spanish in schools. I remember so little from the classes I took, but I remember
things like cat, pencil, what else.. Menya zavut which is "my name is".
But yeah, I'd like to learn Russian because I like how it sounds. But I'd also like to learn it
because I'd like to travel to Russia. Also I wanna bring my mom, because she speaks Russia (russian lol)
So I could practice with my mom, that'd be cool. My mom likes to learn languages too.
She speaks English of course, Spanish of course, Russian, I think in college she also studied
French and German but she doesn't speak them much anymore because she doesn't have the opportunity
to use it constantly. I'm trying to make a gradient with this, so that it fades,
but I don't know if it's working. That's what's difficult about being an ARTIST!
What's your earliest memory with your favorite relative? Ok woah, what a question.
I'm not allowed to have a favorite relative given that I have 10 siblings and an incredible mom.
. But my earliest memory, I think it'd be... I'm gonna tell y'all a story. When I was little,
my dad was a camera repairer. He used to work with camera parts, and he would bring some
back to the house to make new cameras. He was really good at that.
So, one Christmas in particular, to all the girls in my family, he gave us a camera.
It's a really sweet memory I have, but he gave me a really cheap Point n Shoot.
I couldn't really do anything incredible with that, but... oh, by the way, I think that's when I started
to become interested in things like that. Like cameras, making videos, etc.
But yeah, he gave me a cheap point n shoot. My sister Mary and I went outside one day.
It was raining really, really hard that day. And I remember we were trying to make videos
as if we were weather girls. I remember I was already recording Mary, and when she took
a step back towards the rain, it was like the wind slapped her because she fell immediately like
WHOOSH
It was the funniest thing of all time. And afterwards when we watched the video,
all we could hear was her saying "It's RAINING!" I don't have that video anymore,
but I have it in my mind. Yeah. Ok, well my gradient isn't working that great. Oh it looks like shit.
What's it like living in the U.S.? Living in the U.S.... well, I think that a lot of people here,
really they don't know what it's like to live outside of the U.S. It's really rare to travel abroad
before you're 18 because our country is so big, there's so much to see so the majority of people here
don't leave until adulthood. I think that a lot of people don't recognize the privileges we have here.
That's why it frustrates me sometimes to live here, I see people acting like idiots and it frustrates me.
I'd like to live outside of the U.S. someday, maybe soon. I think my time here has come to an end.
I think it's time to feel something new, have something more stimulating, yeah.
I'm only now realizing that I've been working with this little circle for the whole video. Just this little circle.
Speaking of the positive, I think it's really fun to live in the U.S. because it IS a melting pot,
and there's people here from all around the world, and that's what I like.
Meeting amazing people from all around the world, and you can do that really easily here.
And also there's almost every food imaginable here. When I went to Spain, and when I went to Portugal
and Mexico, I always missed my country just for the food. But like I said, I feel like my time here
has come to an end. I don't know where I'm going, but just somewhere else in general.
But also in the U.S., there's always something to worry about. There's like a million things
happening at a time, like wars happening in other countries that people don't even know are happening,
constant things like the oppression of women and minorities. But when things like that
happen constantly, people begin to ignore it. But if certain people don't shut up about it, like activists,
the other part of the country reacts like "Oh, why are they always complaining about something..." etc etc.
So it frustrates me to see that happening constantly. So we're not gonna
talk about that too much today, maybe in the future, but not now. Today we're just gonna paint.
But yeah, that's how it is to live in the U.S. Are you still learning Spanish?
YES! YEEEEEEES You never stop learning. Ever.
I don't care if you've studied for 20 years for one year, for a month, for a week, you'll never be able
to stop learning. And why? Well, because languages are always changing. They're always
transforming themselves into something new. And that's why I think that I fell in love with languages.
You have to change at the same rate as the language that you're learning.
I should've had a plan, no? It's a little boring. This is abstract.
You like it? I like it.
Ok, but what was I saying. You never stop learning. There's always transformations happening in languages,
like slang, and I'm always trying to put myself outside of my comfort zone with language. Always
talking to people from different countries to learn new words, new accents, et cetera.
There's always something to improve in my opinion. I wasn't going to tell you guys until the end
but this is actually a self-portrait.
Does it look like me? Nop? Ok.
What are two languages that you'd like to learn that you haven't tried to learn yet?
I think I have to mention something. It's that in March, I don't know if you guys remember what I did
I put this really big declaration on my Instagram like "I'm going to learn Korean!" and I made this really long post.
What happened was that I made that declaration during my final exams, so it turned out that I didn't
have enough time to study it. Afterwards when I finished my exams, I went to Mexico. It was a
really big mistake to start to learn another language right before traveling to another country.
Because when I got to Mexico, I just wanted full immersion and I didn't study any other language
for the whole month. Before starting another, I have to return to Korean, practice it,
and have a base at least. But aside from Korean and Russian like I already mentioned, I
I'd like to learn Arabic. I've always liked how it sounds and it's really interesting,
because I've never learned a language where you read right to left.
And also, I'm a very competitive person, and now that my sister Mary speaks Arabic,
I have to learn too because I'm really competitive. So we'll see what next year holds,
maybe I'll start to learn Arabic, maybe not. And the last question is
"How is your accent in Spanish?" You guys can judge me because I'm not a Spanish language expert.
I think my accent is pretty good because I've been speaking it for like 10 years, I think.
And well, I've practiced with people from all over the world, from Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela.
So I've had access to the different regions
but for that same reason I think that my accent is a mess, because it's a mix of all.
Because what I do is, I adopt different things from different accents. Same thing with the vocabulary.
My vocabulary, I think for the most part, is Latin American Spanish, but there's also some
European Spanish things. The other day in my polyglot group that I have on Whatsapp,
my friend Sam asked this Argentinian girl Gabi, "What does Elysse's accent sound like? I don't know."
And the girl, Gabi, told us that it sounds like a... what did she say...
a Spaniard talking Mexican style. I think that in general I agree with that, it's just that
I don't do the THHH with my c's and my z's. Because that's too hard for me and also
there's no point in talking like that because I've grown up speaking to Latin Americans,
so it doesn't make sense to talk like that if there's no one here that talks like that.
It'd only be more difficult to communicate, yknow? Ok so, that was the last question
so I'm gonna keep working with this. Aaaaand we'll meet up in 20 minutes, okay?
Okay. Bye. For now.
Ok, y'all ready? 3, 2, 1...
It turned out good, no?
I wasn't lying about it being a self-portrait, because the lines aren't perfect,
and it's a representation of how I'm not perfect either, and how.. ajkxnjsskh
WOW how deep. And it's art, it's art.
Go to hell, it's art.
Well y'all, I hope that y'all have liked this little video,
the first episode of Painting with a Polyglot!
I promise next time I'll have a plan for the painting because this time it turned out a little boring.
So next time, I'll have a plan. It's cute, but it's not like wow.
But yeah, you can follow me on Instagram, @elyssespeaks (e l y s s e s p e a k s)
I think. Yeah
But thanks to you guys for all the collaboration on my Instagram, and elyssespeaks,
and this project in general. Because it's something very close to my heart.
It's incredible the amount of love I receive from y'all. I love y'all!
I love y'all so much and if you have suggestions for my channel, for elyssespeaks, for whatever,
y'all can talk to me down below in the comments.
PLEASE like n subscribe. I don't know how to say like and subscribe in Spanish.