In 1968, when the Cultural Revolution in China was raging, Canada did not want to send him to Taiwan. He spent three hours a day one on one with Mandarin speaking teachers and read enormous amounts of Chinese. That kind of established his idea that to learn a language, you need to listen and read a lot,. I'm talking millions of words. So that the brain gets used to the language and you start to discover the patterns of the language.
Steve Kaufmann is a very prolific language learner. He has learned at least 20 languages to varying degrees during his life. Some of them he learned during his career as an international diplomat and businessman, and others he has learned during his (semi) retirement. In this interview Steve talks about his language learning experiences, methods and motivations. We talk about various metaphors and similes for language learning including ocean voyages ๐ข, cows ๐ฎ, skiing โท and cutting grass๐ก and and I ask Steve about cross-cultural experiences he has had during his career.
There is a video version on YouTube but only the audio version contains my intro and ending rambles about getting my hair cut and how you need to remember that you're a baby cow-shark on skis ๐๐ฆ๐ฟ๐
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