Polyglot Olly Richards Chats about his Story Learning Method, YouTube channel and a Near-Death Experience! (3)
I just, you know, I heard, I heard, I read, I heard about this guy, Benny Lewis and how he was blog blogging.
And, um, so I thought, well, I could, I could do that. So I started a blog and then that all developed into, you know, everything that's happened since has kind of developed from that. But my first passion around this was always, um, blogging. Cause I just, I've got a long background in languages, language learning, teaching, and I wanted to create stuff. Right. I wanted to blog about my experiences and um, and so... that I did that I did for years and years, but, but one of the trends that's happened, you know, on, on online in recent years is the video has become so much more, um, important, you know? And, and so I've been, yeah. I've decided I decided to get, to make a go of my, of my, of my YouTube channel. So I can, I've learned how to do YouTube. I've been uploading videos on and off about seven years, but I just never, it was always like a way to make my blog more interesting by making a quick video of me speaking Cantonese or whatever. Um, but I recently, I sort of decided to, you know, quote unquote, "do YouTube" or "learn YouTube". So I, um, I, I took it quite seriously. I recruited a team who helps me, uh, with the channel or kind of a production team and, um, have been making or experimenting with all these different videos. And, and I just love to have ideas. I have like a million ideas a minute. I've always been that way. And so I, YouTube is kind of a very cool way to just have an idea and be able to put it out there.
So, like, for example, I remember watching the US presidential elections last year. Yeah. Uh, and thinking to myself well that's interesting, because I've watched these, these debates that they had. And, and it's complete cliche now that you'll get, you'll get someone who's like speaking to the audience in English and then they'll turn to the camera and speak in Spanish. I thought, well, that's kind of weird. I know why they're doing it, right? But it's also quite cool. Wouldn't it be fun to make a video with like, talking about the Spanish that they use. And, and so I just made this video on, on US presidential, analyzing us presidential candidates. I found some clips of them speaking Spanish.
And then just talked about it. And that for me is just so fun to do. And so I use YouTube as a way to just, just, just kind of get my thoughts and ideas out there. And, um, and fortunately it seems to be really resonating with people.
Elle: So are you actively learning a language right now or are you in that polygto maintain mode?
Olly: Yeah. Well, what I'm actually doing right now is I've, I've gone back to learning Kanji. So Japanese or Chinese characters in Japanese, it's like been a bit, a bit, a bit, a bit of a love-hate relationship with, for me for four years. But I haven't, I have to say in the last few years in particular, I haven't been all that active with language learning, um, as much as before. And I often think about why that is. I'm very influenced by my surroundings, right? So I've often traveled a lot and, um, you know, my ideal... well, my ideal scenario for learning a new language is either when I'm, when I've got a community of people around me. For example, when I lived in London, I had a bunch of Brazilian friends, learnt Portuguese, or else when I travel or go to the country.
So when I went to Japan, learnt Japanese, um, and, but then kind of right now, I'm in a stage of life where I'm quite like, um, I'm quite chilled really. Um, I live in like in, in, in a little village, in the middle of the countryside in England, I hardly ever hear foreign languages. Uh, so I don't kind of have this big, or I haven't had this, this, this real urge to be studying for, for a while, but it, but it kind of comes back in fits and starts. So recently I've kind of decided, right, it's time to properly learn to learn, to, to, to read and write Japanese, like... like I said, that kind of big unfinished project. And so I've got, I'm working on that currently, so I'm, um, I could tell you how I'm going about it, if you like, but given that I haven't had that much success in the past, I'm not, not sure it's particularly useful information. Um, but yeah. Um, but I do maintain languages a fair bit. I mean, I always regularly speak Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Cantonese, French from time to time.
Um, um, but yeah, it always kind of changes. I I'm, I'm always very I'm full of admiration for people who are, who dedicated lots of time every day to actively maintaining languages, even, even without a, um, a particular reason do so. Cause I'm, I'm just not like that. I I'm, I've always been someone very much kind of led by my surroundings. Um, so, so yeah, but I suspect when the world starts to open up again properly and, um, and, and, and more traveling is to be done. I suspect I might, I might pick up the bug again quite quick.
Elle: And how about your kind of entertainment time then? Do you find you watch movies, TV shows, read books, blog posts in the different languages, you know, or do you kind of just gravitate towards maybe English or the langauges you know best?
Olly: It's the same answer, right? I don't do stuff for the sake of the languages, right? I know this is probably a quite, it's probably quite an uncommon answer among the, the guests you have here. Cause I know a lot of people are just incredibly dedicated to the way that they kind of structure their time to practice different languages.
See, for me, it's never, it's never been in about the language as such. It's always been about what I can do with that language. So I'm, it's not that I'm particularly interested in learning Japanese it's that I want to be able to communicate with my Japanese friends and talk to them in Japanese. It's not that I necessarily love the act of learning Portuguese, it's because I love to go and hang out with, with Brazilians in Brazil. I just love being there. So like, so when I don't have that immediate environment, it's not something that I just really seek out. Um, so it's difficult. I do think about this sometimes. I mean, I, I will watch movies in Japanese and Portuguese and stuff. Well, whatever, um, but, but again, like I say, it's just not something that I, I try and force. I think one kinf of relevant question here is what it means to maintain a language. Because I think for me, the languages I've learned fall into kind of two categories, the languages I've learned and I, and I'm still pretty good at, and then the languages that I've learned and I've kind of let them fall away. And I very much believe that once you've learned the language to a strong level, which I normally, uh, pinned down at about a B2 level, B2 or higher. You never lose that language. Right? So for example, my French is probably not great right now. But I still understand everything. And given 15 minutes of practice, I can get it back to a good level, even though I haven't really spoken to for 20 years when I, when I was last in France, but that's, but that's quite common among, among people who, who have got languages to that kind of level are going to B2 or, or, or above level. And so when I think about the languages that I've, that I've had at that level or I've got to that level still, I, I'm not worried about losing them because I know that the day that I need them, I'll get it, I can get them back very quickly. So for that reason, I just choose not to spend my time in some arbitrary maintenance mode.
Um, but rather I just, I just do what I want to do in my life. And, you know, if languages are part of that, great. If not, no worries. Um, I know I'll come back to them later, so yeah, I'm very, I'm very much, um, I'm very kind of Laissez-faire with that, that, that, that kind if thing. It's not very practical, not very practical, practical help for people, but that's the truth. Elle: But that's like, you know yourself, right? You're not going to force it because, and also if you do force it, if you're like, Hey, I'm going to spend X amount of time each day on these different languages and you're not necessarily enjoying it, you're just doing it as a chore, is it really that helpful? You know, maybe.
Olly: I think it can be helpful. I mean, if you're spending a lot of time, if you're spending regular time, picking up a language, it will have an effect. For sure. For me, it's more a case of, I won't enjoy it if I'm forcing it. I, you know, I, I, I'm always, I've always been very busy. I've always worked hard and I have, I have a lot of things I like to do. Um, you know, I spend a lot of time, you know, walking, cycling, for example, seeing family. Uh, so I don't, I don't feel like I have time to do something that I don't really want to do and, you know, maintaining languages that, that maintaining languages where, where there's no particular outcome there, it kind of fits into that category. Elle: Right. I See.
Olly: Sorry.
Elle: No, don't apologize. Um, so for everyone who's listening and watching, who's going to rush to Olly Richards, your YouTube channel, what can they expect from your channel moving forward for the rest of the year and beyond? Olly: A lot of fun language stuff is what you can expect. You're not going to find videos of me saying, you know, here, here is my six month uh, Korean progress or anything. It's, it's I used to do that, but I don't do that anymore. I, what I try to do is I try to think what will people enjoy, what will people find interesting? Um, so I'm working on a video right now, for example, about the defense language Institute. So the green Berets in the US, what methods they use to train their special forces to learn languages faster.
Um, I'm working on, uh, on, on some videos about, um, about different, about different languages, obviously. Bit of a statement of the obvious. I'm working on, I'm working on a video right now about how we create our book. So like when we've got these, you've got these books in different languages, or how do we create a Brazilian Portuguese book and that, or how do we make a Korean book? Making A video describing all of that. We've got, um, you know, videos of like celebrities speaking Japanese and things like that. And I'm having a great time, uh, at their expense. So yeah, a lot of, a lot of stuff where I'm trying to sort of,but this isn't, this isn't frivolous. I'm trying, I always try to sort of talk about different language topics, and then tie it back into what you can take away from it. So if I'm, if I'm making a reaction video to Colin Firth speaking Italian, I'm not sure.
