An Inspiring Life of Languages & Travel with @Jo Franco (1) Ein inspirierendes Leben voller Sprachen und Reisen mit @Jo Franco (1) Una vida inspiradora de idiomas y viajes con @Jo Franco (1) Une vie inspirante de langues et de voyages avec @Jo Franco (1) Una vita stimolante di lingue e viaggi con @Jo Franco (1) ジョー・フランコと旅する語学人生 (1) 조 프랑코와 함께하는 언어와 여행의 감동적인 삶 (1) Inspirujące życie języków i podróży z @Jo Franco (1) Uma vida inspiradora de línguas e viagens com @Jo Franco (1) Jo Franco ile İlham Verici Bir Dil ve Seyahat Hayatı (1) 与@Jo Franco 一起享受语言和旅行的鼓舞人心的生活 (1) 与 @Jo Franco 一起体验语言与旅行的励志人生 (1)

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.

If you listen to me in a podcast service, please leave a comment.

Hello, Jo, how are you?

I'm very well. Я в полном порядке.

Thank you.

First of all, where are you located?

Geographically?

Currently geographically based in London, strategic, partially for Derzeit geografisch in London ansässig, strategisch, teilweise für

language learning the other travel. Sprachenlernen der anderen Reisen.

Which to me goes hand in hand and language has always been the biggest gateway Was für mich Hand in Hand geht und Sprache war schon immer das größte Tor

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 そして、私はその生存の多くを複製しようとしたように感じます

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? バイリンガルまで学校で2つの言語を教えてもらえますか？

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. それで私はルールを破り、人間としての私と非常に一致しました。

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. それで、コメントしたいことが他にありましたが、私は忘れてしまいました。

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. 私にとって、それはより良い言葉の欠如のためにすべてとても異質でした。

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