Throwback to when I met a polyglot IRL

Throwback to when I first met a polyglot irl. You’ll probably know who it is as I describe it. <br><br>I’m an Australian living in Seoul. I’d been living there for 3 months, and I’d never heard a Caucasian accent in Korea before, except from the Canadian English teachers at my school back then. I looked up and saw a tall, lanky looking white dude speaking fluent Korean to a middle-aged Korean lady. I was so shocked. I thought there was some kind of confusion. My brain just couldn’t compute that a white dude was speaking Korean. <br><br>He looked over at me and flashed a very familiar looking smile. And that’s when it hit me. This was my first time meeting a polyglot irl. <br><br>I’m not sure why I was so shocked, I think it was because previously I had no real examples of what a polyglot looked like. There’s no typical polyglot. They can come from anywhere and look however they want. And at that point, I was still a monolingual. <br><br>Anyway, I approached him and said hi, and he told me his name was ….. of course you know who it was, but I’ll save that for the end. <br><br>He was in Korea studying Korean in a university program for international students. He’d already studied Korean for three years in university in Australia. <br><br>He was also a pretty good singer. He used to busk in the park singing Korean songs and often doing ASMR content in Korean. <br><br>I met him at a time when I had just learned the Korean alphabet and was still trying to figure out the tones and how to pronounce the sounds. I practised speaking with him a few times, and he helped me a lot. <br><br>Anyway, even though we lost touch and he moved away, I didn’t forget that meeting. I often think about it as the time my mindset shifted and I realised I could do it too. That I could be that person. <br><br>I did it too. I learned Korean. <br><br>When I met him I didn’t know that I would eventually learn Korean. I was focusing on Chinese at that time and already had three years of Chinese under my belt. But the universe had planned this meeting to happen at that exact time, so I could meet him and learn from him even though we lost touch and never met again. <br><br>I’m so grateful for that random meeting. And I’m sure the universe will align again when the time is right for me to meet him again. <br><br>That person is Josh Carstair, formerly known as Korean Englishman.