Interview with Luca Lampariello of "The Polyglot Dream"

In today’s show, I chat with the man, the legend, the one and only, Italian polyglot Luca Lampariello. Over the past 20 years, Luca has reached a very high level in 9 foreign languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Mandarin Chinese. Luca is full useful tips and strategies, which he shares in depth at his excellent blog, The Polyglot Dream.

In the interview, we discuss:

How Luca got interested in languages.
Procedural vs declarative memory.
The weakness of rote memorization.
How to train your brain to learn better.
The myth that you have to be a genius to learn lots of languages.
The myth that you have to learn a lot of words to become fluent.
The myth that just reading or listening a lot will make you a better speaker.
The ability to translate and communicate are very different things.
Whether there is a proper order of acquisition for foreign language skills.
The myth that polyglots can speak all their languages perfectly.
The importance of maintaining previously learned languages as you take on another.
Luca’s daily language learning and maintenance routine.
The myth that intensity always equals speed.
Luca’s favorite tools for different stages of learning.