36. To master sounds in a new language, you have to build the muscles (like a six-pack, but in your throat)

Introducing Ray, a Polyglot Educator and Researcher Snackable, A few minute podcast from Self Access Center and VR Lab campus. Wemix Ekatapec Have you ever wondered how many times you open the bridge today hoping to find something tasty and quick to it? Picture how your English will be if you edit in bytes. Keep it simple, keep it short, keep it snackable. A place where broken English is welcome. So hello community, why Mexican topic, how's it going? Welcome to another season of Smackable. This is season #5 and well, today we are starting starting this season with, with such a great guest guys. I mean, I, I was reading her history, his, his resume and I think this guy is brilliant. So today guys, we have Raisaran. He's a linguist, A linguist, educator, researcher, and specialist in English for academic purposes. He holds a master's degree in applied linguistic with a specialization in TESOL. TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of another Languages. Also, he has a bachelor degree in Business administration. In addition, he started I was reading that he started his doctor degree in philosophy at university. Anawak yes, and our university. In addition, he speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese and French and he has an intermediate level in Turkish. And I think that he's a beginner learner of Japanese, Korean, Swedish and Arabic. So guys, this guy is, is, is brilliant and, and I think we are, we are about to know more about him. Also guys, he has served as program coordinator, teacher trainer and expert in technology for institutions such as Technological de Monterrey, University of Central Florida University and National Central University in Taiwan. Also, he has been a coordinator of language programs in the US, in the USA, in Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, German, and Germany. Sorry. And I think that's it. I mean, I am impressed by, by your resume, by by your experience as a as a everything. I mean, welcome, Ray. Welcome to this first episode of season #5 here at Snackable. Speaker 2 Thank you. Ray's Journey from Business to Linguistics Thank you for. Speaker 1 Having me the invitation, No, thank you, Thank you. And well, Ray, I think it will be very impressive to know about you, about your career because as I have mentioned, you are a coordinator, you are an educator, you're a trainer, you have AI guess that you have a trained teachers as well as a student. So I don't know. I am, I am impressed. So, well, I would like to start right well, of course, by by thanking you for, for accepting the imitation and for sharing with you your knowledge and your experience about this field of linguistic out of this linguistic field. All right, but I would like to start with this question. I mean, you have a bachelor degree in business administration, but your master's degree is in applied linguistic. So when did you realize that language was going to be more than a subject? Speaker 2 OK. So basically, like you mentioned, right, For my bachelor's degree in business administration, I had to do an exchange program to a different country. I was studying in the US at the time, and the requirement was to do 1 exchange program, right? Somewhere else besides the US So they sent me to Sweden. That's why I know some Swedish, right? And part of the program was learning basic Swedish, right? And that's when I realized that of course, I liked business administration, right? But my passion was learning foreign languages and coming across a different language like Swedish, right, that I had never seen before was enchanting, you know, like the way it sounded, learning new vocabulary and basically starting from scratch. It was like learning from even basic stuff like the numbers and going to class. So that was more fun than going to business management, marketing class or even production management, which I hated. And it was more fun, right, to be engaged in a learning about the culture, the language itself, and also being able to communicate in that foreign language. So that trip changed my life. And then I went back home and I decided to add linguistics to my major, right. In the US, you can do that. You can if you want to do a double major, right, Dual measure at the same time. And it just means that you got to take extra classes. And that's what I did. And that's how I, yeah, became enchanted. Or, you know, fascinated by learning learning foreign languages too. Speaker 1 OK, So you are a natural learner that that is, I think that is such a skill, you know, because most of the times I think that I mean, I have to mention this, you are a Mexican, right? Speaker 2 Yeah, Yeah, I was born in Mexico City. Yeah, that's correct. Speaker 1 Yeah, so many Mexicans. I mean, if we grow with with our culture, I mean, you know, that we are not self learners. I mean, so we are so used to to having a teacher that is in front of the class and he research and he investigates and he's in charge of our learning. All right. But I think that you have mentioned something important and I would like to know how is it that French, how is it that Portuguese, OK, how is it that you learn those those languages? I mean so. Speaker 2 Basically, once I started doing my linguistics program right back back in college, they also require you to know a different language besides your native language, which is Spanish, right? And the easiest one was French. So I thought and I, I enrolled in classes and then I realized is that, you know, like spelling and writing and pronunciation based. It's, it's complex, but I liked it too, right? And I always kind of liked, you know, foreign movies and French movies back in the 70s where like a big thing. I have a lot of friends who make movies actually movie directors. So that was also an influence. And Portuguese also they offer Portuguese classes. So, you know, for me it was like it was easier to go for the Romans languages, right, because you have a foundation and, and then you can pick it up faster, though of course, you know, it comes with different problems, especially for pronunciation, but which is the toughest one Now that you mention French, because Portuguese to some certain degree or extent, it's easier to be mimicked, right, or, or picked up if you speak Spanish because of the repertoire for sounds. But French, you know, you got to do a lot of extra work with the, the correct or the right pronunciation. So that's pretty much why I became fascinated because even though they come from the same family, right, the pronunciation is, is not similar or is not exactly the same for French. So that's why I became fascinated by French language and culture too. Speaker 1 That is amazing. Mastering Sounds: Confidence Over Perfect Performance Actually, once I give it, I would try to French and I couldn't. To be honest, I couldn't. So my mind was kind of, I mean, I have English. I mean, I am so familiar with English that when I started learning French, it was like, no, my accent was like, I don't know. I just, I mean, as as soon as I started thinking in French, it was something weird because I just started thinking in English. So I couldn't even speak Spanish to my teacher. It was English and it was like, Oh my God. And, and also what you have mentioned the accent and the, and the sounds and so on. And I don't know, I just, I just, I just couldn't. I have to admit that I just couldn't but and. Speaker 2 Like I said, it's just like a lot of people, including myself, you think you going in, going into French, it's going to be easier than learning like German or any, you know, other language. But in reality, I think it's got, you know, French itself. It's got some sounds that are not easy, especially for Spanish speakers. Right. But it's all practice, though. Like you bring it up. Yeah. Or it's pronunciation. It's just like mimicking sounds, but also working out the right muscles. And, you know, there's lots of practice. If you don't practice, you can never like, you know, imitate the right sound or the same one, right? But even if you don't make the right sound, if people understand you, that's I think that's all that matters, right? Of course, having good pronunciation or being understood by a big majority of the other, you know, people or speakers from that language, it's feels good. But as long as you can get your message across that thing, that's what matters the most. And that's what is got to do with confidence mainly, right? So pronunciation, as you probably see once we keep on talking about this, is mainly confidence, right? 70% is how confident you are and then 30% is performance. If you are confident enough, even if people are not understanding you, you're going to keep on going. You're not going to have that block in your mind and you're not going to be mumbling or being shy if you just keep on going. I mean because confidence is the main thing for public speaking, especially in this case in a second language. Speaker 1 OK, excellent. The Lingual Musculature Model for Sound Production Now that you have mentioned pronunciation, well, as I have mentioned at the beginning, you are a researcher and I think that most of your work has to do with pronunciation has to do with phonology and with phonetics. So I think that some of your work has to do with the lingual musculature. All right. Speaker 2 Yes, that's correct. So what? Speaker 1 Can you? What can you say about it? What is your that research about? Speaker 2 OK, so pretty much like I mentioned, that is saying that every sound that you make right with your body for any human language, right, is going to require you to use your muscles from the stomach all the way up right to your mouth. The regular is like and the lips. So basically that theory behind it. It's like if you exercise enough, if you build up, let's put it in in simple ways, right. If you have a six pack in in your muscles for speaking right, then the chances of you mimicking a foreign language right are even higher, though. So if you practice a lot of exercising like tongue twisters or even kind of like warm up exercises that people who are into acting do, like pop pop by, you know those rituals they do before they go on the stage, they're going to help you out because basically what you do is you're warming up your machine, right? And our bodies are machines and all we're doing is producing sounds based on those muscles. And for example, used to make a simple sound like P, right? You take about 171 muscles just to be able to produce that piss sound, right? Not even Pi like so if you work out pretty much is like the fitness of the lingual musculature, which is like, you know, the way we pronounce and we come up with sounds using our bodies. If you keep it trained or eats healthy and also fit, then your chances of mimicking a sound in a second language are going to be higher. That's pretty much what all that research goes down into. Speaker 1 All right. Leveraging AI Tools for Accurate Pronunciation Analysis And have you applied it to your classes, to your students? What results have you got? I mean, because most of the times, well, the thing that you were saying that our body can produce, can produce the sounds. It reminds me when I was taking singing lessons. So I, I don't know, somehow I, I related to it because when you sing, of course, of course you, I mean, you have to feel the, the voice and the sounds in different parts of your body, your nose, your mouth, your, even your, your lungs, your stomach. All right. So it is kind of hard. I mean, of course, I am conscious that I am learning to sing and sometimes I, I am shy to be honest, to produce some sounds. So now if we move that scenario to to the English lessons or to learning a new language, what results have you gotten from your students? Speaker 2 OK, so pretty much that most of the the stuff I worked on or the research I did while I was at UCF in, in Orlando, right, required people being recorded and also also having them do exercises kind of like a routine like going to the natural gym, right? Signing up for a gym, of course, it was free. And also coming up with some devices. I have some devices that have created that help you out with your pronunciation and it's based on the sound or the target sound that you want to practice, right? For example, if you speak Spanish, Mexican, Spanish or Latin American Spanish and you don't have the TH sound like that, right? It's a device that that helps you produce that and it's pretty much is helping you work out. It's literally like you go to the gym and you turn on the treadmill, right, for 30 minutes and all you do is run to exercise, to build muscle, right? So when it whenever you go and run the actual marathon or you run for like 10 kilometers, right, you got the stamina and also the muscles that are required to run already. So this is exactly the same idea behind it now. Also, when I started doing this, that was before AI or ChatGPT or any of the new device tools that we got, right. So basically what I did, which was a lot of work was record the students before pretest and test and post test and recorded them beforehand and then afterhand and analyze it using spectrogram, right? Pratt, which is an old device, I don't even know if they still use it. He was able to give you a spectrogram based on the formats and just with science, right? I could also tell the students either improve it or not, not just based on my perception and their own perception, right, But recording themselves and having recordings of them before they started and after they started the the project, right, was pretty much how we measure that. And they, students themselves were the ones that actually decided. We always, of course, gave him feedback and rated how well we thought they did or how much they improved. But they actually were the last person to say, Oh yeah, Oh my God, I've improved so much, right? And that's because, of course, based on research, again, the best judge for your own pronunciation is yourself, right? Because you hear your own and the frequency that it's in your ear and you know, like bouncing back in your skull that it's different than the perception that we have of your voice once you're talking, right? Because the way I sound, I think I sound is not the same way I sound when I hit recording. And even when I listen to this audio later on, I will be like, Oh my God, that is not my voice. And that's why a lot of people freak out when it comes to recording their choices, because they don't sound the way they think they sound because of the echo in the skull. So that is for me, that was the main thing we did with the students recording themselves and they rated their own progress. But of course, based on the spectrograms and the frequencies and the numbers, right, the formats using mathematical science, we could actually tell whether or not they were making the right sound, which is what Chad GBT and all the AI analysis do for free, which is amazing because now you needed someone with training to help you with that. And now anybody can just go and be a Chad GBT. For example, I want you to help me to practice my pronunciation of the letter TH or the phoneme, the right, And after that, I'm going to record myself and I want you to analyze it using a spectrogram or like frequencies and everything I did by hand, right individually. Now it can be done in seconds, which is amazing though. So that's something I'm using now. I'm relying on AI now instead of doing it on my own. The Dual Nature of AI in Language Education It's saving me a lot of time. Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess. I guess that is one of the most, that is one of the most objective things about AI. I mean, to know how to use it properly, you know, because you are, you just mention it, you just have or you just have gotten more free time, you know, So that is incredible. But well, what is your perspective? I mean, is technology helping or hurting language learning right now? Because I mean, I can, I can say it from my experience. So I have seen that many students, at least here in Mexico, I know that you have been abroad and, and you have worked with many students from different countries. But at least at least what I can see here in Mexico is that most students are using AI in order to procrastinate even more or to be more or to be lazier, you know. So I think that is not a good use of artificial intelligence. So for you in your perspective, I mean you have no many cultures and many students. So what is your perspective? What is your take on on the use of technology? Is it or hurting learners? Learners. Speaker 2 OK, I think now because it's just the beginning, right? It's a big shift. It is not beneficial now because we don't know how to use it. That's you brought up a great point, but I believe that if we include it in an effective way, it is gonna change it like it is already right. Reshaping the way we teach. I, I can think about maybe, you know, back in the day when I was doing my, my bachelor's degree in business administration and we had to do all the accounting formulas by hand because the teacher was like, no, you have to learn how to do this, right? But at the same time, Excel was right there, right? And the first step they did was like, they taught us how to do the formulas by hand, which was painful. It was long papers, right? Big pieces of data by hand. And once we actually move into Excel, he took us like not even 1 one minute to do all the calculations, right? So I think AI is exactly the same. It is not beneficial when you use it like that, like you said, right? For example, in grammar, if I give him an exam and I can do that, right? Yeah, I can say this is a grammar exam. I give him the multiple choice questions and they input it into ChatGPT and within 2-3 minutes Max, whichever time you know to type it up on the computer, they'll get the right answers, right? But they're not learning or picking up anything based on that. But if we train them on how to use it as a special tutor, right, which is what we're moving I guess towards now, it's we can think about AI as having a private tutor to our site. Even for me, like I'm working on advanced stuff for phonology, then I can always rely and instead of just being me and reading stuff online, reading articles, published journals or even books, I can rely on AI of course, always very fine, right, the authenticity of the text and use it as my private right tutor, which is great. And I believe that now, like what you mentioned, just because many of us don't know how to deal with this change because it's so erupt, it's so sudden, it's not being used in the right way. But I think that once we start including it into our lessons and our two daily routines and assignments, I think it is going to be beneficial. So yes, you know, at first I don't think it's it's good or even for beginners, I should say. This is what I think this is going to move forward to. When you're first learning the language, you should learn the basics on your own. And then once you reach a maybe A2 level, then you can definitely rely on the help of AI tools, right? But that doesn't mean that you can never use AI, even if you're at one level, right? You, you can use it to your advantage. And like you said, this has to also be a little bit on yourself. If you're an autonomous learner, you're going to take advantage of that. And if not, you're just going to look for a way or a shortcut, like you said, to not finish your homework or your assignment. So that depends on, you know, each individual I guess. The Indispensable Human Element in Education Yeah, I totally I completely agree with you. And I think it has to do with the thing that we have to re educate ourselves maybe. And also I mean now that we have this position of being teachers and somehow we inspire our students, we have to educate them, re educate them as well. You know, because well, it brings to mind that as you have mentioned, you have outlook your your exams and so on. But as I have mentioned, I have taken single lessons. So now it leads me to the further question, do you think that somehow our jobs are going to be replaced by AI? And let me tell you why I'm thinking this. Well, I remember that I, that once I upload a recording of myself singing to Chachi PD and I ask him, ask it, can you tell me what are the, the high tones and the downtowns and so on? Can you tell me how in tone is this woman and so on. And actually Chachi Petit will answer with, with the, with the correct answer. I mean, and I, and I didn't ask my teacher, of course, I am planning on go on going back to my classes because I love it. That is something that I, that I, that I love. But I mean, now that you that you say it, it is like I have the the feedback in in just a couple of seconds even. Speaker 2 You know, so I think, like I said before, right Of course, let's say for example, right, I know basic Japanese, right, I know maybe a one if I want to improve, I can also go and pay for a tutor, right, a teacher or I can definitely just go into ChatGPT or there are better ones that I use like clot the the European one, which is great if you never used it is even more academic is better than ChatGPT right. You still got to pay, but the free version is still good. And let's say I want to learn Japanese and I got two options, right? Like I said, I can use AI or I can always go and find a tutor or a class. And I think that the main difference is going to be that I should definitely use ChatGPT, right? Or any other AI to improve. But if I really want to use it or feel like I am part of the language, right? Because learning the language is not just being able to speak it, it's being able to be part of the culture, right? That's something that we study with social linguistics. That's when we need the human touch. And I think definitely a lot of people are are going to lose their jobs, which is right, because that's what's happening. That's reality, I think. But the most qualified are going to still be teaching. And those are the ones who are really going to relate this AI dilemma with humanity, how we can keep our humanity into the lessons that we teach for language learning and not just for language learning, Because if this can be for math, this can be for chemistry, right? I can, I can just fit it. Any question about any subject I got here like 100 maybe teachers different subjects right in my school right now. And they, if we combine a ChatGPT, that thing is going to be smart and faster than we are. But if we all right, try to develop a lesson that is more humanistic or more ethical, I think that's inauthentic. That's when the human touch it is going to come into play. So I, I think definitely is retraining re educating, like you said ourselves, especially teachers, right? And lots of changes, including a lot of virtual activities, critical thinking skills, which is of course disappearing. And and that's, I think that's what I believe, right? I can be wrong, but that's what I see this going towards in the future. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that you have mentioned something important that AI is never going to have. And you said this human touch, you know, no, I mean, that is never going to happen. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. At least now we don't have it. Yeah. Speaker 1 Exactly. Speaker 2 Yeah, for now we're save. I don't know, this thing is moving fast and learning faster than we ever thought you could learn. But I think for now that's it's safe to state that even when I teach now, and I'm also teaching now, when I see my students, I have a small class, but they're like in high school now. And I can see the difference that it makes if I talk to them and approach him and, you know, show them that part of humanity we're kind is that we have when we teach, you know, the environment that you create in in the classroom that that report that you build with them, that is something that right now any of the AIS don't have, Right. That's exactly true. I guess. So that's my take on that for now, yeah. Embracing Your Accent: A Part of Who You Are Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with you. I'm going back to this thing about sounds and production and accent. Do you think that accent is really important? Speaker 2 Actually, like I said, there is a lot of different dialects and accents, right? For example, mine can be like Mexican American. I don't sound British, but I, I think basically right, what we have to define is if the person who's talking feels comfortable with their dialect or accent, right? In this case. So for example, when I speak in Spanish, I have the Mexican, Mexican, Spanish accent, right. But if I were to move to Spain, maybe I have to adjust it a little bit because, you know, people say, oh, he's been in Spain for one month and he sounds like he's Spaniard now. It's just because if you are talking and people are not understanding you right, you have to adjust some of the sounds that you have. Is the same when Americans move abroad and they go to England, right? Or even British people come to other places, they use of course, or they try to use standard English, right, instead of their own dialect. So I do believe it's important to be understood by others, right? But the most important thing I believe, right is that your accent matches your own personality. If you feel authentic when you're talking, right? If you have this thick, right, different accent in, in a foreign language, but you don't feel comfortable, then you're going to try to improve it and you're trying to feel shy, like you said, right? But or you're going to feel shy sorry when you communicate with others. But if you, if you're comfortable with your dialect or your, your skills and your accent, then I think that's all that matters because that accent is part of your personality, right? And that is who you are. Of course, we have that wrong perception that if you have a thick accent or a second language accent, right, then most likely you're not good at that language, which is of course nonsense. And it's been proven that that's not right. It's even wrong, right? Even some people who are not native speakers, they're sometimes much better than native speakers when it comes to teaching grammar or stuff like that. And you brought up a great point for accent and pronunciation. There are many different Englishes out there. So if we have a guy from Scotland coming into the US and it's happened before, right when he starts talking, people are going to be like, Oh my God, I don't understand what he's saying. And that can be frustrating. He's a native speaker, right? And it will be exactly the same. If you got somewhere from Chile going to Mexico and they started talking super fast within the 1st 5 minutes, you might be completely lost. I still remember one time I was watching a movie right in Chile and my mom was looking at me like what is this? I don't understand anything. And I'm like mom just Spanish. She's like yeah wait, it's been like 5 minutes right by the time she asked me that question. So all I'm saying is that part of your identity is your accent, right? What we call dialect, and we like calling like that in linguistics. It doesn't matter if you're a second language learner, it's a dialect that you have. And if you are happy and satisfied and that's part of your personality and that's authentic to you, that's all that matters. Now, of course, if every time you speak and you mispronounce a word and it's really hard for others to understand you, that's what you have to practice because that is creating a problem, right? Or even if you're mispronouncing that word, that might be something offensive, right? Then that's maybe an issue. But other than that, I do believe that pronunciation, it's great because it shows that everyone is different and we have all different dialects and different ethnicities, and it's also sometimes part of our culture. That's what I think. Speaker 1 For sure. Discovering Your Persona in a New Language Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree with you. When do you do you agree or disagree that with the idea that when you speak another language you can be a different person? Speaker 2 OK, I do agree with the idea and based on some of the research I've done, like I said for the project that I worked on, right, we go by different levels and the last level is finding your persona in a different language, right? Which is the hardest one when you're learning a foreign language, of course, sometimes you feel frustrated because you can be really outgoing or funny in your native language. But once you start talking in the new language, right, because your vocabulary is limited or you don't know, you know, like enough grammar to crack up a joke or something like that, then you might be frustrated and finding that persona right now, that even personality, do you do have different personas Once you start picking up different languages, right? Then that is one of the hardest parts of it because you got to find your own persona in that different language, right? And it can be of course, similar to the one you have in your first language, or it can be completely different. And you'll see this once you, like you said right at Travel, met a lot of people who are polyglots too. They, they know a lot of languages and the way they behave in one language is completely different to the way they behave in another one. And some of them are exactly the same person, right? And this is of course based up to your personality. And also, I believe in the rules for the language, right? Like in, in Japanese, everything is more respectful. And you know, there are certain sort of ones that you can talk to people who are your age, same age or people who are older than you. So that that also has to do a lot with the rules or what it's allowed in the language, right? So even if it's the the same language, like Mexican Spanish, you know, we have a lot of, we use a lot of curse words. We have a lot of things that we use dialects that are used by other dialects now, right? Because of TikTok and the influence, yeah, media, Mexican media and Latin America. So that that's something that I do agree with. People have different personalities or personas in very different languages. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I can and I can test it myself because to be honest, I am chattier in English than I am in Spanish. I don't know why. Yeah, in Spanish it's like, oh, yes, yeah, you're right. But in English it's just like I debate, I give my my opinions and my ideas and so on. And it is like, I don't know why, but I just feel more comfortable and speaking English sometimes. As you have mentioned, one of the limitations that I, that I got is that it's a vocabulary, For example, I want to express my ideas. And it is like, Oh my God, I don't know how to say that anyways, I try to do it. So I don't know. It might be that what motivates me is that I am going to learn my vocabulary. And no matter if I don't know how to to say the proper word at that specific time, I am going to research to research it later. And I am going to learn. I think that is my the the the reason that I am like a more in like chattier in English. Speaker 2 Yeah, you're right. It might be your brain, like, challenging itself, you know, saying like, I don't know this word, but I'm still going to be able to communicate and, you know, send my message across because I'm talking now and this is what I want to do. And yeah, I mean, but yeah, you're right. I do agree with you. Yeah. Ray's Unexpected Cultural Awakening in Turkey OK, So what we are coming to the end of this interview. OK, So as I have mentioned at the beginning, you have been all all over the world I guess. So which control experience has impacted you the most as an educator? Speaker 2 Okay, there is many, but I'll probably say the very first one, which was my first full time job when I moved to Turkey, to Istanbul because I didn't know anything about it and to be honest, I was just broke. I have been traveling. I was, I just fresh out of college, I have been traveling in Europe for about 3 months and backpacking. And I, of course I wanted to teach, right? And I was done with it. And I was like, you know what? I'll, I'll see what's out there. And I apply to many jobs. And to be honest, I was like Turkey, it's nearby, I can afford my ticket, let's go, right? And once I landed, I didn't even know they spoke a different language, which is right, Sometimes people are dumb. I was really dumb. I thought they spoke Arabic and I was surprised. So as soon as I landed, I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. You know, the culture was great. So it was a different shock. It was surprisingly good. It was like, Oh my God, this is this place is amazing. And you know, funny fact, like Turkish is one of my favorite languages and I kept on learning it and I kept on actually studying it because it was so beautiful. So it was a big surprise that sometimes, right, we don't know enough information about the culture or the language itself. And we make, yeah, bad judgments about people and their own culture. So for me, that was my first time traveling full time at different rules, different culture and completely different language, right? I didn't even know how to say hello or anything like that. And now, if you even ask me, I remember more Turkish than Chinese, Mandarin, which is like, you know, the last language I tried to learn when I lived in Taiwan. So that was a most shocking thing for me, finding a new culture and a new language that I didn't I didn't even know existed. Final Thoughts and Multilingual Farewells OK, thank you for sharing your your experience. And well, before we go, I have this set of snack questions. All right. OK, so please just answer with one word or a short phrase. All right, So the hardest language you've ever tried to learn? Speaker 2 Mandarin. Speaker 1 OK, a word in any language that you just love the sound of. Speaker 2 Sarhosh. Speaker 1 What does it mean? Speaker 2 Drunk in Turkish. Speaker 1 All right, OK Grammar or pronunciation? Speaker 2 Pronunciation. Speaker 1 All right, a country that completely changed the way you see education. Speaker 2 Taiwan. Speaker 1 All right and well, finally finish the sentence. Learning a language is really about. Speaker 2 Yourself. Speaker 1 OK, excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Ray for for accepting this invitation, for sharing your knowledge and what I would like to do something different in this episode. Most of the time I just say goodbye to our our community. But well, now I would like you to say goodbye and to invite to our community to listen to this episode in 2 languages, the ones that you choose. Speaker 2 OK, so you want English or a different language like 1 Turkish? I can do Turkish, yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, please go ahead. Speaker 2 Gad Gad Audios record. What is the name? Zackable. Yeah, Nackable Shurdasa Link is made. Alda Sendioto. And then the next one will probably be easier. Portuguese right all. Speaker 1 Right. Speaker 2 Obligado Bevenidos Nos tamos ferrandos nakabu La Liga prakutar interbista cons melda vice the ficar no no Nos website multiplicado adeos. Speaker 1 All right, that was amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much. So guys, he had said it, so listen to a snagable. Thank you so much, Ray. Speaker 2 Bye bye, see you how good it is. Speaker 1 See you.