YouSaid · the spoken record

Vaughn Smith

lines on the record: 73
first: 2022-09-07
most recent: 2022-09-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Some of the words they're there, but it might take me some time to think about the words, okay, well, that word is cell diums or yautiums, little simple words like that. Actually, those poor examples, because those are words that I know too well. But is Veitsinat, they would just come slowly. It's just a matter of just putting myself in the place of the language and just kind of like a slow computer rebooting information bring it to the forefront so that it's ready for use. Bulgarian was the same thing. I was in front of the Bulgarian embassy. And then someone comes up and I had not spoken Bulgarian for about 10 years or so. And here I am having a conversation with Bulgarian again, but it was a lot faster than, for example, the Latvian conversation for the Latvian embassy. So in answer to that, I don't have a problem memorizing the words that I studied well, but some of them, if I'm learning new words, then of course I have to come back to it repetitively too, actually, commit them to long-term memory.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll give an example recently. I think it was two weeks ago. I was in front of the Bulgarian embassy and it was a Saturday that the European Union embassies were having their open house and we were going from embassy to embassy. I went to the Latvian embassy, had a pretty good conversation, and I realized I had not spoken Latvian for more than 15 years, but I was still able to converse.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with that second possibility. There are people that are simply, they have the capacity, but they just don't live in a place where they're exposed to the languages and they might not participate in active language learning to the degree that I have or that other hyperpolygots have. They might use a superior memory capabilities for other things.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Richard Simcock, I've never hung out with him in person, but I really enjoyed the conversation and I made plans to meet with him in Mexico in October for the Polyglat conference that he is hosting. But other than that, I have not met Polyglot set no more than, say, eight languages or so. And the ones that I do that know some languages, we have a meeting that we do every Sunday, the district language exchange, and it happens at different places, typically on Sundays at about 5 p.m. We used to meet at Meridian Hill Park on sixteenth Street, Northwest DC. We'll meet at places such as Acha Beer Garden, and when I'll meet with someone, it's really fun just skip from language to language, and we're just kind of like, yeah, we're practicing. We're impressing all these other people that are standing around us looking at us. And it's always fun to just, okay, I know this one too, and we'll jump from this to that. Yeah, not people that I hang out with on a daily basis. I don't have a close friend that's a polylot, nor do I have a close friend that regularly that would speak more than five languages.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See some here and there. I met Richard Simcott via Skype, so I've met him, spoken with him. That was while the Washington Post article was being written”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a good memory for languages, certainly, but also for numbers, words, directions how to get places good land navigation, as far as things that are difficult for me to remember, it's difficult for me to remember I find it sometimes schedule memory. For example, some would say Avon at seven o'clock on Saturday, do this. And the time would come around. I'm not thinking about it. It's simply, that's an attention span thing. It's not like the recollection, but it's simply not catching something at the time when it was scheduled. Now, of course, I have a calendar. I put everything in the calendar, so it's not a problem. But that was a difficulty for me prior to that.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Translating lyrics, listening. Listening, I started with when I was back at Wilson High School. I'm at Sidig Kuznitsov, and he loved music. And he gave me these tapes. This is the early 90s. Everybody used cassette tapes. He gave me these cassette tapes with bands like Quino Crimatori, Nautilus Pampilios, Russian bands, and from there I listen, and already some of the words I could recognize, you know, little words here and there, but then I started putting it together. If I listen to the songs, if I knew about fifty percent of the vocabulary of a sentence, I could figure out the rest of it. And I could guess some of the words or at least break it down the possible meanings of certain words and later find out, oh, okay, it was this, or it was that, it meant this. And certainly a lot of other music that I get from Czech and Slovak, I'd decipher it the same way.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instead of set at Nik, for example, said Nalak, I like you, or said at Nik I like. And these little nuances and all these exceptions to rules and irregularities that make the language grammar very difficult.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Several noun cases and a very rich vocabulary, very large vocabulary, and a lot more words are in regular use to say specific things more so than, say, any of the Germanic languages. An opposite of that would be, for example, Norwegian would super easy. You just have one little word. It doesn't change it, doesn't inflect. The verb, the person of the verb is the same, no matter who is it that does it, there's simply the infinitive form. There's the past participle, and then there's the present, which you simply put the letter R after the vowel of the infinitive. And that's grammatically just giving an example of how easy it is for me to learn Norwegian grammar. Everything is difficult about Hungarian as the case is knowing what case, the singular, the plural form, the verb changes when the recipient of the verb, if it's a first-person verb, it changes when the recipient is in the second person singular, set at nail.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, you know, when I study language, grammar is super important to me. So I think it's always like I don't have a problem with pronunciation. I can learn different writing scripts. That's fine. So I think the two biggest challenges here for me would be something that's a very complicated grammar, for example, Estonian or Finnish, Hungarian and Lithuanian. I think to me are grammatically very challenging. And as far as orthography and writing systems certainly kanji or Chinese symbols, Chinese characters, Mandarin characters would prove difficult because there's a lot more to memorize.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think about it that way what's the best language for romance I guess any language has a capacity of being romantic If you're thinking about romantic feelings of couples getting in love, that sort of thing. No, I've even finished as more romantic to me than, say, Portuguese.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A focus on learning languages and periodically I'll delve into the history of linguistics. One of my favorite books is one that was sent to me by Nioleskripske. She's a Lithuanian and she sent me a book called The History of the Lithuanian Language. And it's a very fascinating read. I haven't read the whole thing from front to back, but I'll read little chapters here and there when I have some free time and I look into it. And it goes into the older Baltic variants that were much closer to, I guess what people would consider Sanskrit, for example, some of the loan words from Old Norse and other interesting little facts of how the words are put together.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I speak Russian, you know, I tell people this when I'm teaching them Russian or tuting Russian. Russian is a loud language, just taking into consideration the majority of the people that I've met that speak Russian, it's always loud Sigdagroomka, not a paruski gramka governing, it's twice the energy output when someone's speaking Russian, even if you're just at a table at the house.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I think when I get angry, somebody cuts me off or something. I'll curse out in Slovak. And I think that the reason for that is because when I lived with Dushan and Tanya Pavelkovy, they were the people from Slovakia, eastern Slovaks, Vikodnyaria, that's what we call them, eastern Slovaks are known for their aggressive demeanor, just hot-blooded people, and they're always cursing and swearing. And when they get upset, they always have something to say, which is pretty nasty. And I picked up on this a lot because I spent every day working with these people. And it pretty much picked up as a habit. I'm driving, someone cuts me off. It's like, I don't want to say it because, you know, they would be bad words. I swear to God, that sort of thing. That's just like a lighter version of what they say. But just like it stuck with me over the years. So that would be one of the examples, yeah, feelings of little fits of rage here and there. They come out and slow back a lot, even if I'm in Mexico.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great. As far as the actual words that I know, if there's some new word I might have to find out. But usually if I go by pronunciation, then I can write pretty much anything.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I talk about this, you know, I'm sorry, let me back up a little bit. So I forget to mention that for a part of each year I live in Mexico in Odisaba. That's my mother's hometown and just south of the city about like a 10-15 minute bus ride is the village of Rafael del Gado. That's where everybody speaks it on the street. They speak mostly Nawatul and then Spanish is secondary to them. So that would be the proximity that gives me that plus the fact that it's a distant cousin of mine who is a professor of the Navat language who taught me.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nawital is, I think it's just the sound the way it flows, it's a very quickly spoken language. And when I'm listening to it, when I speak it, it just kind of puts me in the place. And the place where it's spoken is a very beautiful lush, mountainous, natural bucolic place. And I've never spoken Nahuatl that associates with someplace boring. There's nothing boring about it. And the people are very friendly when they speak the novel language. And I think those things kind of like give me the picture of novel being beautiful.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Russian. So, like the Russian friends that I learned from are also very witty and they enjoy, you know, telling jokes all the time.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spanish, what we are from, particularly the Mexican Spanish variety that we speak, which is from Oisaba Veracruz State. It's a very vulgar and a very colloquial Spanish. And every other sentence that anybody says on a regular daily basis is either some sort of insult or a pun on something, a metaphor, and it's a very rich language in that sense.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was about fifteen leaving Alice Yield Junior High School going to Wilson, that's when I decided, okay, I want to do this. I want to learn more languages. And this is going to be my thing. This is going to be something that I'm good at. I can see that. I can learn it pretty quickly. My peers are telling me, wow, I've got good pronunciation. I can memorize the words, the vocabulary pretty fast. So that was the turning point.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it was not directed by the school, so it started with my mother having material in France or my mother's fascination herself with the French language.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Slowly a realization you know I grew up bilingual when I was very young because English and Spanish. English and Spanish. My mother would take us to Mexico and learn Spanish there, come back. So as far as I remember being bilingual, and then I think when I was about 11, I took an interest in learning French and when I was about 13 in school, started learning German just on my own”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recently, I was streaming in Czech. I think I had some Latvian words sprinkled in there. I dream in Nawatal, Spanish, Russian, English, of course, some others I can't exactly remember it might have been a long time ago. Slovak, I had dream in Slovak I was speaking to somebody in Slovak. In my dream, of course. And that's about all I can remember right now.”
2022-09-07 · Conversations with Tyler · Vaughn Smith on Life as a Hyperpolyglot · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source