What is Auto Lingual, and who's behind it?

My name's Mille and I'm from Denmark where I also currently live.

I'm a language learning enthusiast (some call it "nerd").

I've been into language learning for over ten years now. Learning languages is a passion that keeps on giving. I enjoy the process and the opportunities and benefits that foreign languages provide are just invaluable.

My goal with this website is to write insightful articles about languages and language learning. My articles all reflect my personal, subjective view. There are obviously other ways of going about language studies, but what I write here is my approach.

I'm looking forward to connecting with other language enthusiasts as well as people who might want to pick up another language, but don't know how!

My mother tongue is Danish, and I speak English and French too, as well as an intermediate level of Standard Arabic and some Algerian Derja.

English is a language I learned in school. Or that's the official part. In reality the internet, films and TV got me to the level of English that I have now. I'm definitely not a native English speaker, but I consider my English good enough to write this blog. (I do, however, encourage my readers to correct any mistakes I might make).

French is a self-taught language for me. It's something that I spent around 3 years working on before I started to consider myself "fluent".

Regarding travel

I'm learning these languages without traveling to the countries where they are spoken. In fact, in spite of how much I love to travel, I will never travel to a country where my target language is spoken during the year that I'm learning it — this way you can always know that I have had no unfair advantages.

Of course I do like to travel to that country after I've learned the language, because that's the whole point of learning a language — using it! I love going to new places and experiencing new things, and even moreso when I have the benefit of the language to help me.

This also gives me a sink-or-swim test to find out just how well I've learned the language. Is it as good as I want? Am I really fluent? I'll share those results with you too. (As you know, I have been in Italy for the past few weeks, using the language I spent the last year learning. I've already given a brief update on that, and I'm looking forward to making a more detailed report on my experiences when I return home.)

Regarding methods

I'm not selling a method. I'm not promoting a method. In fact, I don't even have a method. Each language is different, and trying to learn one language based on the rules of another is a silly idea.

I believe the idea of a method is the single most obvious flaw in products like Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur, etc. Even more organic products like Busuu suffer from this major flaw. The moment you try to fit Mandarin into the mold of what worked in Spanish, you have failed.

I do have some things I always do, but I do not have a formula or a schedule, and I approach each language differently. And with this blog, I have taken on the role of guinea pig, allowing myself to be a test subject for any idea — even if it's crazy — so that hopefully my readers can benefit from my experiences. As you have already seen, this year is no exception.

Regarding polyglots

I do not think that learning languages makes a person "cool", or interesting, or makes a person any better than anyone else. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite — if you're a socially awkward geek or nerd, learning another language is only going to make you a bigger geek, who is even more socially awkward.

If you're uninteresting, or irritating, learning another language is only going to make you uninteresting to more people, and give you the ability to irritate more people. In photography, we often say "nice camera, now show me your photos," and in language, I feel the same way. I don't care how many languages you speak, I only care about what interesting things you have to say.

I don't have any interest whatsoever in the "polyglot community" or having any status therein. Aspiring to be a polyglot is stupid. Learn a language to use it, not to show it off. I learn languages because I have a desire to use them.

If you look around the language blogs, you see several different blogs by several different people with different attitudes toward language and learning, but the ones that rise to the top all have one thing in common: they're people who are using the languages they learn. And that's perhaps the most important thing I have to say: I like your languages... now use them to tell me something interesting.

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I hope you'll enjoy reading my articles. I've put a lot of work into them (and continue to do so) so I'd appreciate any comments, opinions, shares and shout-outs!

Get in touch on me through my contact page or through social media (click the icons below)