Language Traveling in Brazil

Hi everyone! After a long, and sometimes bumpy trip from South America, I’m back home for a while. I had an amazing time, and spent it with wonderful people. I also tried to focus on practicing my Portuguese throughout my 3 weeks in Brasilia. I can give a short summary of where I stood in my skills before the trip.

Let’s Close Out 2019, and See What’s Going On In 2020!

Hi everyone! I haven’t written one of these in a while, but I haven’t forgotten about it. Especially in this case when we’ve reached the end of a great year! Let me review the languages done, the trips, and some bonus things…

In 2019, I started learning Czech, and Portuguese. I’ve gotten to a decent level in both, but I was also studying Slovak for a return to Bratislava for the 2019 Polyglot Gathering. As the year ends, I can admit a bit of a secret; at the beginning of the year, in the summer, I was planning to start studying Ukrainian. I already had a good textbook in mind to start studying it, and I was also planning a trip to Ukraine during the Slavic trip I made in the summer. However, I ran out of time to fit a few days for Ukraine in the summer trip, so I had to leave it for another time, and then, after returning from that trip, I decided to go back to studying Serbo-Croatian, but I picked up more momentum after mid-October. After announcing that I’m making a trip to Brazil, I went back to studying Portuguese, but my European accent and vocabulary currently still has a bigger influence on it than the Brazilian accent, and I’m still trying to develop it.

In the section of the language conference trips, I was only able to do a Double this year, attending the 2019 Polyglot Gathering and the 2019 Montreal LangFest. I had fun going to my first Gathering in 2018, but I did better this year. Giving a workshop on something that I really liked, and that later on in the year, served as something really cool and useful, and having more opportunities to practice Slovak and meet more people at the Gathering and have a lot of fun. In Canada, it was a new set of firsts and breaking traditions at LangFest, new venue, new people, and karaoke night. I sadly was not able to go to the Polyglot Conference in Fukuoka, Japan, but by the looks of it, it was a grand event, with a lot of singing and interviews done.

It was quite amazing having gone back to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Portugal, France, and Canada, and go to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Bulgaria for the first time, and to be able to close out the year in Brazil.

Thinking about 2020, I have my language projects set, but not chronologically. I’ll start off in Brazil, and plan to go back to Portugal later in the year, so Portuguese will have a big presence in 2020. I’m also planning another trip to the Balkans, as well as a happy return to Poland for the 2020 Polyglot Gathering, which will be held there for the first time, so I’ll be going back to studying Polish as well, and also hoping to do much better with it than the last time I went there.

As most of my year is shrouded in mystery, I do know that I plan to make another return, this time to Mexico, to my family’s home state of Puebla. I usually go there to visit family, but in October, there is a wonderful reason: the 2020 LangFest Conference, or the PolyglotFest, or just the Polyglot Conference. Now why am I coming up with these funny names for what will happen in October, you ask? Well, the story is that the 2020 Montreal LangFest will actually not take place in Montreal, in August, but will take place in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, in October 2020, in a historic one time fusion with the Polyglot Conference. Being that there were going to be 2 language conferences in the same continent in a span of 2 months, this rare, possible one time merger makes sense. I am looking forward to many of my polyglot friends coming to Puebla to the event, and I have some ideas in my head about it, but I’ll hush for now. Haha. It is as exciting as when the Polyglot Conference was held in my home city, NYC, back in 2015.

I am also embarking on a possible new career path: online English teacher. I’ve researched that it isn’t easy in the beginning, but I hope that it goes well for me. I’ve liked helping learners, and done so in person for a few years, and now, I’m taking my talents online, and seeing where it can take me. Wish me luck!

I hope that you all, my amazing readers, friends, fans, have an amazing and successful 2020, and if you are also a language enthusiast, I hope to see you at either one of the 2 language conferences in 2020. There’s only 2 of them in 2020. Haha.

P.S. Thank you Anja S. for helping to make the Polyglot Conference going to Cholula, Puebla happen. You are awesome!

Some Announcements For 2020, and My Language Projects So Far

Hi guys! We made it to November. Here in NYC, it’s getting colder now, and the sun goes down earlier. But as I see less sun, I am also looking into my future.

Some Important Announcements, and My Plans For The Rest of 2019

Hi guys! 9 months have gone by this crazy year, and I’ve had such an interesting year. Now, I can reveal what’s in store for me for the last 3 months of this year. There’s plenty of activities left to happen in the language world, that’s for sure.

Language Reflections After LangFest, and State of My Languages

I’m happy that many people have enjoyed my 2019 Montreal LangFest post, and that it’s being posted all over the place and read by many people. And as much as I had fun on my 4th year at the event, I took advantage and had some language practice, and I left with a few thoughts in my head.