What’s Babel Babble all about?

Hi there, my name is Oleg, and I like languages. I’ve learned some, taught some, and finally decided to blog dedicated to:

• Language learning

• Language policy

• Language revitalization

• Linguistic communities

• And everything in between

My plan is to:

• Blog about my language learning journey

• Interview linguists, educators, and linguaphiles (shoot me a line at [email protected] if you want to have a chat!)

• Share articles, facts, tips, factoids, and the odd longest word in the world

• Debunk myths and make sense of our multilingual world

My languages

I don’t think I qualify as a polyglot, but here’s my stack:

🇱🇹 Lithuanian — the language I feel most comfortable in, the language I think in.

🇬🇧 English — the language I acquired as a kid and kept perfecting all my life. Never having lived in an English-speaking country, I ended up with an “international” accent and a weird combination of go-to slang words.

🇷🇺 Russian — while technically my L1, this is a language I don’t use much in my daily life. I speak it with a slight Baltic accent, weaving in words from other Slavic languages and dialects spoken in Lithuania.

🇹🇷 Turkish — I majored in Turkic studies, lived in Turkey, and even worked as a soap opera translator. While I don’t use it often, I maintain it at a relatively high level with books, movies and music.

🇪🇸 Spanish — I’ve been self-learning Spanish for many years, and while I’m definitely conversational and I can read novels without much trouble, I’d love to take it to the next level.

🇸🇪 Swedish — the language I’m learning currently. Wish me luck!

In the past, I’ve taken courses in Arabic and French, but I very much doubt I could form a coherent sentence in either. I have a decent understanding of several Slavic languages, and I can fake speaking in Polish for a few minutes.