Description
Have you ever wondered what is holding you back? Why on earth is your progress stalled, even though you just found a new language, revived an older one, met new friends, discovered literature… You learn a day, two, then take a break. At day 133 of your “pause” you wonder if you will ever achieve anything meaningful with your studies. Every restart feels harder. Eventually, you start dreading all this. You avoid conversations about your goals as they make you feel ashamed. In the worst case, you may consider not visiting language events anymore. The ’backlog’ of language learning you feel piling up on your shoulders seems just too embarrassing. It is a spiral which is easy to enter, as life happens, and sometimes throws curveballs at us.
This is, however, not a prophecy, and you can change it anytime. No matter how long you have been riding this road, you can leave it anytime. I know. I have been there, for around 20 years, and I have never felt better about language learning than today, and it is just the start.
Allow me to give some inspirations from my personal life and building up on advice of experts in psychology.
Born and raised in Germany, Christian Vetter was always intrigued by other languages in cultures. Being tired of the discouragment in his social circle, he left eventually for a bigger city. He loved the next language, the grass on the other side, always a bit too much. ;-)
In 2018 though, he entered a job in Customer Support, which facilitated organized learning as clients are eager (and sometimes expecting) written and spoken replies in their languages.
As of today, he speaks German (native), English, Dutch, Spanish, can converse in some Italian and French, and is learning the languages of his best friends (Finnish, Lebanese Arabic, and at the time of the conference, Czech).
This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering 2025: https://www.polyglotgathering.com.