The Life of a Hyperpolyglot
Hi! My name is Claire Poho and I am a hyperpolyglot: I am fluent in 8 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Slovak, and Mandarin Chinese) and I have some knowledge of various others, including Arabic, Greek, Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Dutch.
I did not grow up speaking all these languages. Most of my language knowledge is self-taught and all of it is the result of my deep passion for language and communication in general.
I grew up in a small town in eastern Czech Republic where you would not hear any other language than Czech being spoken. I discovered my passion for languages after I started watching American TV at 11. When I was 13, I started watching this brand new show; because it was brand new, there were no subtitles available in my native Czech. So, I tried watching it with English subtitles and was surprised to discover that I understood everything and was very much fluent in English!
I am often told that I must have some unique gift to be able to learn languages quickly. I won't deny that: I believe that this unique gift is the curiosity and intense passion that I have for languages!
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When I am in a foreign country, I try to read everything I can: the shop names, advertisement, ingredients lists on the food items I consume... I just can't help it. Even if it is a language of which I have no notion and every single word looks like gibberish to me, I will not stop reading until I find that one word that I can decipher. When you read certain words in their apparent context over and over again, unavoidably, you end up learning a few things. So, because I am curious, look around, and pay attention, I take things in, some of which stick, and I end up learning some of the language. In comparison, most people don't have that level of curiosity (or perhaps it's obsession?) and don't go walking around their holiday destinations trying to decipher every single combination of letters they see pasted on a wall. Consequently, they don't take in the things they are not paying any attention to and don't end up learning new words in the given language.
It has been thanks to my perceptiveness, curiosity, and passion bordering with obsession that I was able to absorb English like a sponge by the age of 13. Along with TV series, I devoured English-language books, including the dictionary, which I flipped through endlessly with zeal.
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Throughout my teens, I picked up French and German, through exposure, and Spanish, which I learned formally at school. I then decided to add Italian, because it is similar to Spanish and French and was thus easy to add to my existing portfolio: I spent a month in Italy one summer and after that forced myself to practice with native speakers every time I encountered one. Having spent most of my time in international environments, fluency didn't take long to achieve. In my early twenties, I studied Arabic and Romanian formally at university and I taught myself quite a bit of Greek during a summer I spent in the country. Sadly, I haven't reached fluency in these languages, but I learned more than enough to get a good feeling for the cultures that speak these languages and the ways their speakers think, express themselves, and operate.
In my early twenties, I thought myself a worldly, global citizen – after all, I knew 7 languages and had lived in 7 countries!
However, except for my not so successful attempt to learn Arabic, they were all European languages and countries. It was the experience of studying linguistics in Cambridge that made me realize I was pan-European at best.
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Around Cambridge, I met people from all over the world, and in the classroom, I compared linguistic phenomena from diverse language families. These experiences opened my eyes to the fact that, while different, European cultures and languages were still extremely similar, and that outside of Europe, there were languages and cultures so different from everything I knew that I really didn’t know about or understand most of the world at all.
I thus decided to move to China for a year: on one hand, to treat myself to a proper cultural shock and have all my beliefs challenged; on the other, to learn Mandarin, driven by the passion to explore the nature of human language and communication in a greater, more universal context.
Just as I expected, learning Mandarin and being exposed to Chinese culture was an extremely eye-opening experience. My understanding of my own ingrained beliefs and of the world at large have never been the same.
Why did I learn all these languages?
Being able to speak another language is a superpower.
Imagine two people talking about you; or perhaps they are talking about stealing something, thinking that no one understands them – but you do! Imagine going on holidays or spending some time in your dream country and being treated to a unique, behind-the-scenes experience, because, unlike all the other tourists, you can communicate with the locals and you can also change their lives by sharing about your own experience! Imagine being able to collect all the secrets of Italian cuisine, learning straight from that old grannie who makes the best lasagna in all of Toscana! Besides, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could read books in their original version? Wouldn’t karaoke be 100x more fun if you could sing and understand the newest K-pop hits? If you could penetrate the mysterious cultural paradigm of the 1.5 billion people in China? If you could be one of the few foreigners to talk to that shaman who has never left his native land?
I am passionate about experiencing the world in as many ways as possible and learning from people with diverse backgrounds.
I am also extremely passionate about connecting the world. Being able to communicate with so many different people in 8 languages makes me uniquely positioned to do just that.
Being able to speak a foreign language is not just useful, it is also a very beautiful human experience, as it allows you to learn from other cultures, be inspired, surprised, shocked and challenged to broaden your perspective. Being able to speak another language can open many doors for you and allow you to have exchanges, foster connections and build precious friendships with people to whom you otherwise wouldn’t have access.
What fascinates me about language as a concept?
I am fascinated by the different ways we convey meaning to others and all the different ways in which we express ourselves.
It fascinates me to see how different cultures developed different methods and employed various verbal tools to create grammatical structures and it fascinates me just as much that we created grammar in the first place, in order to convey meaning better, with more nuance. It fascinates me to experience the disappointment when one language completely lacks the possibility to express a level of nuance that is available in another language.
It fascinates me to see how our brains function when it comes to learning, retaining, decoding, and employing language. The learning process and retention of several foreign languages is a fantastic window for me into the functioning of the human brain – why am I still able to speak fluent Spanish and remember words I have probably never used after 10 years of not using it, when I only learned it casually at school and almost never practiced it? Why has Mandarin, in contrast, felt so effortful to learn, retain, and remember? Why does my brain occasionally confuse certain languages or words in certain situations but not in others? How does my brain process information in different languages?
And finally, how do we learn language, both as little babies acquiring our native tongue and as adults learning a foreign language? How do we just start understanding words, grammar rules, and concepts that no one explained to us? This particular curiosity incentivized me to spend a year at Cambridge University where I got to go really deep on the topic and learn all about the sciences of the differences and similarities between first and second language acquisition - only to conclude that my personal experience wouldn't allow me to agree with the conventional scholarship in the field! How fun!
I have so much more to say – I could talk about language(s) forever! If any of these conversations interest you, reach out to me!
To read more about my thoughts on and experiences with languages, visit the official website of Hypia, a global association of hyperpolyglots that I am member of.
