Diary of a Language Freak

I was a speaker at this event , but unfortunately, they couldn't record my speech properly due to technical problems. That's just my story and you can follow the slides I used during that evening through this link I recorded it with my phone, so the quality is questionable, but I wanted to have something from this evening.

This is originally a TikTok video - what you find here is only the mp3 version. Hope it helps! Check the full explanation + video here

To retain the new information we have, we need to anchor them to something already well "enrooted" in our mind , otherwise, they fly away. Examples in Persian and Dutch follow. Read the full text Subscribe to my newsletter

Have you ever noticed that when you make a language mistake that is particularly embarrassing or funny then you never forget about it? That’s because a strong emotion is linked to that moment . NEWSLETTER

Why all my teachers didn't help me at learning smarter? I want something more back in return for my time and money. So, I try to fix this issue.

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/09/28/experiencing-the-great-resignation-firsthand-5-march-2021/ I don't really remember what I felt when all the flights got canceled. I think that's a sort of way of coping with trauma and to me, it feels like Covid never happened. I forgot all the feelings. Like a huge black hole. I talked about it and other people share the same. Anywa...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/09/02/how-covid-changed-my-life-but-in-a-good-way/ As I said previously , everything was OK , but not great. I was happy to have a job, a good salary, to have kept my Brussels life, to have nice colleagues… but I was not enthusiastic. I thought that this feeling of unease was due to the weirdness of realizing that you don't need to fight for a...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/08/13/a-taste-of-employee-life/ I honestly enjoyed my internship period, especially the first six months. However, already back at the end of 2018, I started to like the idea of having my own business . For the first time in my life, I seriously thought I could do something good . What gave me this confidence? Well, there was a good amount of diso...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/07/29/here-we-go-brussels/ When I came back from Moscow, it was hard to get used again to my usual way of life. First of all, I missed my freedom. The freedom of walking in the streets and not being recognized. The freedom of going home whenever I wanted to.

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/07/25/back-to-russian-part-3/ I had an intense experience interning in Russia, mostly feeling like an outsider with my Italian colleagues. Knowing Russian language saves me from panic in sticky situations. I find diplomacy isn't for me, hate the hierarchy and dislike having my name tied to shoddy work. Although I didn't enjoy the disorgani...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/03/24/hoe-ik-talen-ontdekte/ Hallo iedereen, Ik heet Chiara en ik kom uit Italië. Ik woon in Brussel en ik hou van talen leren en studeren. Door de jaren heen kon ik dankzij talen onvergetelijke ervaringen hebben en dus heb ik besloten om ze te delen via deze podcast. Talen zijn ook mijn fulltime baan geworden - daar zal ik je ook meer over vertel...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/07/17/back-to-russian-part-2/ The first weekend, I had one of the sweetest moments ever . I went to the center to explore a bit. I went walking in the Gardens located right outside the Kremlin, called Alexandrovsky Sad . It’s a small park with a long marble monument to commemorate the battles of the Second World War. People often took pictures in...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/07/09/back-to-russian-part-1/ What I told you about Persian happened between 2012 and 2014. After that year I was really too busy with university and exams… and suffering from crazy anxiety because I was totally lost with my life. I had picked the wrong course at university and I couldn’t see any way out. In those years I posted almost nothing on...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/06/18/persian-fight-and-revenge/ *Spoiler alert*: this episode is highly personal and includes a long rant about my life some years ago. Maybe it’s a bit off-topic, but if you’re listening to this podcast that’s part of the package. Feel free to skip how much you want. In the last episode, I told you about Hungarian and online communities. It allo...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/05/25/hungarian-and-online-communities/ Hungarian was another one of my great language “love stories”. It was the first one that made me show up on the Internet and allowed me to realize its potential. Once again, it started with a trip to Budapest. However, unlike the case of Russian I explained in the previous episodes, I was not prepared ahead...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/04/30/when-did-i-start-teaching-italian/ I was not very used to hearing foreigners and their “wrong” Italian. For me, correcting them sounded absolutely natural. Especially, since I hate being corrected without understanding “why” something is wrong, I would do the same with them. I used to explain to them what was wrong, and why, adding also a pi...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/04/30/the-language-journey-goes-on/ In the last episode, I talked about how Tagalog was important to me. It is an idiom on which the official language of the Philippines is based. Starting from there, I began discovering all the main Asian languages in a sort of ideal journey from those islands to Europe. I started with the Maleo-Polynesian langua...

TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/04/29/after-the-cyrillic-alphabet-tagalog/ So, in the last episode, I talked about how I found out about the Cyrillic alphabet. At the same time, I had fallen in love with the Russian language, but it was too complicated to learn with the resources I had at that time, of course. A last memorable point from that time is that during the tour in Russ...

⁠TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/03/24/comment-jai-decouvert-les-langues/⁠ Bonjour à tous, Je m'appelle Chiara et je viens d’Italie. J’habite à Bruxelles, et j’aime apprendre et enseigner les langues. Avec les années, les langues m’ont permis d’avoir plein d’expériences inoubliables, donc j’ai décidé de les partager à travers ce podcast. Les langues sont aussi devenues mon j...

An unexpected passion: from hating English in school to discovering languages and dedicating the rest of my life to them. TRANSCRIPTION: http://chiaralanguagefreak.com/2023/03/24/how-i-got-interested-in-languages/