Everything I Learned From 30 Years of Language Learning

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I failed Spanish in school. I had terrible pronunciation in English for years, and still somehow ended up speaking multiple languages, working as a translator, teaching languages to CEOs and world-class athletes, and building a business around them. People often ask me how I learned so many languages. The truth is that it wasn't one big breakthrough or one magical method. It was 30 years of trial and error, a lot of repetition, and slowly figuring out what actually works. I grew up in a small village in the Basque Country, a small mountainous region in the north of Spain. My native language is Basque, one of the oldest and most unique languages in the world. It doesn't belong to any of the main European language families, and it has completely different grammar and vocabulary. I learned Spanish as a kid in school with classes a couple times a week, but mostly watching Spanish TV and occasionally speaking to native speakers, although 99% of my life was in Basque. I also read a lot in Spanish, mostly history books and magazines that I found at home, but I didn't really start speaking Spanish regularly until I started middle school in a bigger town when I was around 11 years old. And I used to fail Spanish in school all the time, despite my speaking and writing being actually better than those of many of the native speaking kids in class. I guess because I was reading a lot and they weren't. But unfortunately, classes and exams were extremely old-fashioned and based on deconstructing phrases and analyzing grammar. And I was a pretty bad student in general, but for some reason I did really, really well in English. Unlike Spanish classes, which were aimed at teaching a bunch of already fluent kids a bunch of pointless grammar, English classes were extremely basic and slow. We started taking English classes when we were around eight, if I remember correctly, With non-native teachers whose pronunciation wasn't exactly great and whose methods were antediluvian. So, after 5 or 6 years of English classes, many of my classmates wouldn't pass an A2 test. Seriously, that's how bad language classes were and still are in many countries. But, somehow I did much better than most. I think video games helped a lot at this stage. Thank you, GTA Vice City. My parents were so wrong about you being a bad influence. I was doing so well in English that I could get away with not paying any attention in class, never doing any homework, and still getting 95 or 99% scores in exams. Well, in all the other subjects, I wasn't paying attention or doing homework either because I had ADHD, although nobody knew it at the time. This was the early 2000s. Back then, ADHD was about as unknown in Spain as non-corrupt politicians and efficient bureaucrats.

[00:02:55]Anyway, I was doing really well in English in school, but the complete lack of pronunciation training was the biggest problem. It led to fossilized errors that were very hard to correct later in life. When I passed the Cambridge C2 proficiency exam in my 20s, I had to do a lot of pronunciation drills to stop sounding like Javier Bardem in Pirates of the Caribbean. But, university is when I really started getting into languages. I did a degree in tourism and hospitality. Would I choose that degree if I was 18 and going to university now? Probably not.

[00:03:29]But, at least I had French and German classes. So, I did 4 years of French classes and at the end of it, I knew very little French. It's true that in uni I was a lot more interested in other things and I was paying even less attention than in school, but I don't think most of the other French students did much better. I later improved my French comprehension by simply having French TV on and reading magazines and books and looking up words and comprehension became easy after years of reading and listening but I still couldn't speak much until I eventually figured out the right way to learn. My results with German were much better even if I only did two years of German instead of four. I learned a lot more German than French mostly because classes were very practical conversation oriented. The teacher was this flamboyant German character. He was like Berlin personified and he made classes interesting fun and practical. So after a couple of years of classes I was able to have decent conversations in German.

[00:04:28]Still when I moved to Germany right after university I realized that my German still needed a lot of work. So Germans have high standards and what do you do when you can't do anything else but you've got decent English? Exactly.

[00:04:43]I got a teaching certificate and started teaching English. I had zero experience and wasn't a native speaker but I had something most native English teachers abroad could only dream of.

[00:04:54]A car. So the academy that hired me sent me to companies in the area to teach business classes. On hindsight I think I got extremely lucky with this because I got paid to spend lots of one-on-one time with managers and CEOs talking about what they did and I also taught English classes for the Real Sociedad football team both the players and the staff inside their training facilities.

[00:05:17]And if you don't know Spanish football outside Real Madrid and Barcelona Real Sociedad is a pretty good team. And they also have one of the best football academies in the world. It was really interesting regularly talking to the people who mentor world-class football players when they're coming up. And of course teaching the players themselves was fun. Anyway eventually I did a master's degree in translation and I worked as a translator for a while not an interpreter a translator. A translator is for texts and interpreter is for speaking. In fact I noticed some professional translators I worked with could barely speak English. Before Zoom calls with clients, they'd be like, "Can you do the talking?" Even though they could read and write perfectly fine in English, they could barely speak. They were terrified of speaking. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are different skills. You get good at what you practice. Remember that. And later, I went back to university one more time and got a postgraduate diploma in international business, import-export logistics, international trade, geopolitics, all that important stuff.

[00:06:18]And I moved to Germany again. This time, after passing a C1 German test. I worked in the economic department of the Spanish Embassy. And later, after quickly learning Romanian, also for the German-Romanian Chamber of Commerce. I lived in East Berlin at the time with lots of people from the former Soviet Union. I learned Russian and Romanian to talk to my neighbors there. I also learned Italian by going to a German-Italian language exchange, listening to podcasts, and more importantly, using language islands.

[00:06:49]This is when everything started clicking. I got good at learning languages. And at some point, a friend asked for help. He wanted to learn Spanish. So, I made a learning plan for him. And he liked it so much that he said that I should do this for a living.

[00:07:03]And I decided to give it a try. The university I had studied in has an innovation center. It's a startup hub for students and alumni with interesting and innovative projects. I contacted them. They liked my idea, and they accepted me in their program. Yes, for someone who's always been a bad student and struggled in school, it seems like I'll keep going back to university over and over again for the rest of my life.

[00:07:26]It's almost like I have Stockholm syndrome at this point. So, anyway, I started giving language training to local companies, mostly companies that do business abroad. My previous teaching experience was really helpful for this.

[00:07:38]And I started learning more and more languages. And I also started a YouTube channel. Can't really be a polyglot without a YouTube channel, right? And eventually I got contacted by the International Association of hyperpolyglots. And I was invited to join this elite club of I was invited to join. And here we are.

[00:07:56]Just reached 100,000 subscribers without having to abandon all dignity and turn my channel into lazy reaction video drama slop. And I'm about to launch a language learning app. You'll be able to download it on Google Play and App Store very soon. So, what was the point of this video? Just me taking a long victory lap and promoting my new app?

[00:08:16]Yes, but I also wanted you to see how far you can get by simply continuing to try over and over. Keep trying long enough and practice will make you good.

[00:08:26]Or you'll get lucky after enough tries.

[00:08:28]Usually both. All right, enough motivational talk for today. If you want a step-by-step guide on how to learn a language fast, watch the next video.