Monolingual Child to Polyglot Adult: Stefani's Journey (1)
Hello, this is Steve Kaufmann and today I have a special guest.
It is Stefani Kostadinova, who is originally, in fact, is now
living in Bulgaria, but has traveled to many countries and
we are going to talk about...
and has a, a background, I should say, academic background in language learning.
And so we're gonna talk about language learning.
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So Stefani, hello.
Good morning.
At least in my time.
Hi.
Hi, Steve.
It's great to be here on your channel.
Could you, Stefani, give us a brief introduction to you and,
and your activities as, as it concerns learning languages?
Yeah.
I have been into learning languages for a very long time and I actually grew up
in a monolingual household surrounded by a lot of dialects, uh, which is
normal in Bulgaria, but truly just one language at home and not really much
that I would hear outside of my home.
So for me it was a journey that was about the love of languages.
And I liked it even at school where, you know, I often argue that it's not the best
way to learn the way that is presented at school, but I enjoyed it even then.
And I would always do this outside activities, you know, outside of
school and you know, a lot of getting a lot of input into language learning.
And for me it was really Spanish that opened the floodgates
because with Spanish, which was not available at my school at the
time, and I really wanted to learn.
And with that language I figured out, you know, how to
learn by myself and everything.
And from then on I'd added more and more languages as I find it fascinating.
And, um, you know, a number of things that you said there are quite interesting.
One is that you grew up in a monolingual family, right?
Uh, and I remember, I remember I was at a Polyglot Conference in Montreal
and talking to 600 people and I said, how many people here grew up in a mo...
grew up in a family that had more than one language, and practically
no one put their hand up.
So the myth that you have to be raised in a multilingual
family it's simply not true.
It can be a positive factor, but it's certainly not necessary.
Yeah.
Uh, the second thing is Bulgaria, you say a lot of different dialects.
Mm-hmm.
How different are these dialects from each other?
Are they still Bulgarian or are they different sort of slavi languages?
Right, so they are, they're still Bulgarian, or at least that's how
they're classified by linguists.
If, if somebody from the eastern part of the country, like closer to the
Black Sea or something goes to the Southwest, for example, and like,
especially in villages where the dialects are very strong, chances are they're
not gonna be able to understand much.
So, I really, it, it's, I do think it's, uh, the same language, but you know,
sometimes we don't understand each other.
If we are speaking in.
Yeah.
So, and, and of course Macedonian of course is a separate language, right.
But is has some similarity with Bulgarian.
Is there sort of a gradual transition from Bulgarian to Macedonian and
then from Macedonian to say Serbian?
Is there a, a, a gradual, uh, progression there, or are they all distinct?
Yeah, so with Macedonian, There's a whole lot of political issue there, um, mm-hmm.
. So I'm gonna try to kind of skate around that as, as well as I can and
not really get too involved into that.
But, um, generally linguists disagree.
Um, there's quite a lot of, you know, some say that, many actually
say that it is really the same language, kind of part of a dialect
continuum, the way that Norwegian and Swedish would be in Danish maybe.
Um mm-hmm . So it's kind of a dialect continuum between
Macedonian and Bulgarian.
And most linguists say that.
And of course there's a lot of like other views which are mainly driven by politics.
And again, I don't wanna touch that.
Um, but really depends where you are from.
I would say like what part of Bulgaria you are from.
Um, mm-hmm.
for example, there is actually a region in Bulgaria that's called Macedonia.
Um, as well as in Greece of course, but in Greece they mostly
speak Greek and the region of Bulgaria that's called Macedonia.
And what in the Republic of Macedonia is spoken uh, there's like
quite a lot of similarity there.
Obviously in, in towns, cities it is not so much, but in villages it's like
they speak almost, almost the same.
Um, but if you look at Northeast Bulgaria, they wouldn't be able to
understand Macedonian very well.
Just because they're much further away from the border.
So it's kind of, yeah, the dialects really play into question there.
But, and with Serbian, cause you mentioned Serbian as well.
I would say that Macedonian as in like what is spoken in, um,
the country of Macedonia perhaps borrows a lot from Serbian.
I, I would say.
So there's...
that interesting uh, kind of dynamic that's happening.
Yeah, it's, mm-hmm.
, certainly quite a lot of exchange.
So, yes.
And you know, it's interesting is in French, the mixed vegetable dish
is called ... did you know that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
This refers to the fact that there's such a variety of
languages spoken in the Balkans.
I guess.
I don't know.
So from a background of all these different languages and dialects,
you go out and learn other languages.
Can you tell us how many languages you speak and what was your experience on your
path towards learning these languages?
Yeah, so for me, I, I always distinguish between two things, like
how many I speak and how many I learn.
Um mm-hmm.
and
good, good advice.
Yes.
Yeah.
I usually, I say currently that I speak eight.
And for me, it's speak kind of, I kind of feel comfortable to say I speak a
language at around the intermediate level.
Uh, when I'm a beginner, I don't feel comfortable.
So yeah, that's, I would say that out of those I would, I'm fluent in
five and intermediate in three, and I study a couple of more currently
Persian and Russian, but I don't say I speak them because they're
just in their beginning stages.
Although Russian is weird 'cause I, I've always been able to understand
it just by virtue of being Slavic, but not really speak it, so yeah.
It's, it's always been...
which are the five?
Which are the five?
The, the, yeah.
Where you're comfortable.
Yeah.
So obviously my native one and English, and um, then
Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
very focused on the romance group,
and the three intermediate languages?
French, German, and Greek.
Aha.
Greek.
Very good.
Yeah.
Uh, first let me tell you that your use of English to me is, is a model of how
people should speak in another language.
No one.
Would you think that you are a native speaker.
Uh, because there's a trace of an unidentifiable something accent that
says you're not a native speaker.
However, your use of phrasing, your use of words is a hundred percent native.
Not only native, but at a higher level than many, many natives.
And I've always said, you know, people strive to be, you know,
mistaken for a native, forget it.
You're not gonna achieve that.
Focus instead on, on using words, you know, in, in a, in a economical,
intelligent, accurate, uh, elegant way.
Mm-hmm.
And if you do those things and you pull it off with a slight accent,
in fact, it sounds better than if you try to not have an accent,
but you can't use words properly, I think that should be the model.
When we learn a foreign language, you speak English the way you speak English.
Very impressed.
Very impressed.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for the kind words.
And actually, just to add, uh, something quick here, I, I've never
been concerned with accents, which, um, yeah, it's just never bothered me.
And also I think it really depends kind of how your mouth moves.
It's really weird, but you know, when your, when your mouth is moving a
certain way, thanks to your native language, and sometimes it picks up
easier, some accents than others.
And I've noticed right from day one, I had a really good accent in Greek,
better than my English accent, but my Greek is much worse than my English.
So there, there's that.
I, I would think too, I, I think particularly the vowels I would imagine.
Like Greek has very standard vowel sounds like Spanish, Greek, and
I presume Bulgarian and English, uh, like, uh, Swedish, uh, there's
a lot of dip thong Portuguese.
Mm-hmm.
dip thong type sounds that are more different.
So it's gonna be more difficult to to, to hit those.
Um, where...
did you study abroad or how did you go about learning these languages?
. Yeah.
So I did, uh, study abroad in, in the US.
I, I did a year in the US when I was, um, 11th grade.
Mm-hmm.
And then I also, I went to an American university here in Bulgaria.
And then after that, you know, where the American university
here teaches entirely in English.
And then after that I got my master's degree in the US again,
which was another two years.
In what subject?
In business.
Okay.
So yeah, it was, uh, I've lived in the US quite for quite a while.
Um, but mm-hmm , the other languages that I learned, I really learned kind of
before I went to the respective countries.
So I did an internship in Germany back in the day, but I learned German before that.
Um, I worked in Spain for a year, but I learned Spanish before I went to Spain.
So I wouldn't say that travel is the key to my language learning, definitely
not, but I think that it must have certainly helped with English back
in the day in high school, I guess.
But yeah, it was always for me, learn the language before you land.
That's, that's just how my life turned out.
Not there's anything wrong with doing it the other way around, but in my case...
your way.
Your way is so much better because you arrive, you hit the ground running,
you can make friends with the locals.
You can really build on it.
If you arrive hoping that just by being there, you're gonna learn the
language, I think you're in most cases going to be disappointed.
You basically settle into a pattern of living with other expats and
speaking English the whole time.
So not good.
Just curious, I would imagine that your pronunciation in
Spanish is very good as well.
You mentioned Greek.
Yeah, I would say better than in English.
Yeah, for sure.
for sure.
And and better than your German.
Even better...
I'm talking pronunciation.
And maybe you're German, maybe you're more fluent in German, I don't know.
But because the point that you made about the similarity of, of pronunciation.
I would imagine that you would find Spanish pronunciation more natural to you.
Yes, yes.
Very much so.
Spanish, much more natural than French.
Much more natural than German.
yeah.
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
No, for sure.
Uh, and so what do you do now in, in Bulgaria?
I work for a tech company.
I do strategy for them.
Mm-hmm.
And then at the same time I do this on YouTube where, you know, I make videos
