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Shae grew up in the Arizona desert, where school offered two language options and most classmates saw no reason to learn either. She picked Latin at a school that rarely offered it, fell in love with Rome on a study abroad semester, and years later built a life in Bologna, where waiters still look shocked when the American at the table starts asking questions in Italian. In this episode of Connected By Language, the content creator behind the Shae Jordan YouTube channel opens up about the force that has shaped her entire journey: perfectionism, and the fear of making mistakes that she says has held her back more than any grammar ever could.

The conversation covers how she built immersion from thousands of miles away, starting with Peppa Pig because Netflix was too hard, why exchanging audio messages with a girl from Modena became her best speaking practice, and the discovery that surprised her most: coming back from a months-long break to find her Italian had actually improved. She also shares the bittersweet story of tracing her great-grandparents to a small mountain town in Lazio, only for Italy’s new citizenship rules to close that door, and why learning the language has become her way of bringing the heritage back into the family.

About the guest: https://www.youtube.com/c/sheajordan

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 Intro

0:41 Latin, Spanish, and the Language She Actually Wanted

21:29 Fluent and Unconvinced

33:55 The Environment You Have to Build Yourself

38:24 What Would Have to Change for Her to Believe It

🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

🇩🇪 JOIN TANDEM DEUTSCHCONNECT: invite.tandem.net/DCV-37-NK4D

Evgeniya knew at five years old that she wanted to teach languages, fell for German through Rammstein songs, and arrived in Germany to discover that the language she'd studied at university was not the one people actually spoke. Fifteen years of teaching later, from classrooms in Moscow to a multicultural au pair household where German, Spanish, and English mixed at the dinner table, she has seen every kind of learner, and one pattern keeps repeating: people pass their B1 or B2 exams and still cannot bring themselves to speak.

That gap is exactly what DeutschConnect was built for. In this special episode of Connected By Language, we go inside Tandem's EU-funded project supporting migrants in Germany: free live audio rooms called language parties, where learners practice speaking German in a safe space, no sign-up for classes, no grammar drills, just conversation guided by qualified tutors like Evgeniya. She shares what actually happens inside these rooms, from shy listeners sending emojis to a proverb that turned out to exist in nearly every language on Earth, and why her advice for first-timers is simply: don't be so shy. Find the invite code in the description to join, plus 90 days of Tandem Pro for free.

About the guest: https://app.tandem.net/community/MzAwNDI0MTU%3D

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 Intro

3:32 The Teacher Who Became the Student Again

12:24 What is Tandem DeutschConnect?

29:34 Everyone in One Room

50:36 Fifteen Years of Watching Who Arrives

🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH

Most people fall in love with a language and then find reasons to learn it. Veronica does the opposite. Before a single flashcard, the 21-year-old from Hong Kong runs the numbers: what career does it unlock, where is the market, how hard is it, and what's the payoff at the end. If a language doesn't pass the test, it doesn't get her time. In this episode of Connected By Language, she opens up the framework that made her choose French over every other option, and explains why in Hong Kong, a language certificate can be the line on your CV that gets you into a Japanese company.

But then Berlin happened. Somewhere between a street interview where a French girl answered "what's the most romantic sentence in your language" with a single word, and trading Cantonese for Spanish with her internship partner on the way to film shoots, the spreadsheet met something it couldn't measure. Veronica still swears by her system. She just knows now that you don't need an exam, a certificate, or fluency to let a language change you.

About the guest: [coming soon]

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 Intro

3:39 Growing Up With a Framework

15:56 Languages as an Investment

31:01 When the Framework Was Not Enough

37:14 What Calculation Cannot Give

🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH

Sayaka was born and raised in Okinawa, learned English as an investment in her future, and moved fifteen times following military life across the world. In this episode of Connected By Language, she explains how living in survival mode, setting up a new life again and again in a foreign language, shifted her mindset from speaking perfectly to simply getting her point across, and how that philosophy now shapes the way she teaches Japanese.

The heart of the conversation is kanji. Having taught the writing system to both Japanese children and foreign adults, Sayaka discovered a gap: Japanese kids learn how kanji works, while foreign learners are handed lists and left to memorize thousands of characters alone. Her answer is the Super Kanji Map, a poster organizing all 2,136 kanji by their readings through a parent-and-child system, so learners can guess the pronunciation of characters they've never seen before. She shares why building it took years, and her advice for anyone stuck between understanding a language and truly speaking it.

About the guest: https://www.youtube.com/@wrightjukuonline

About the poster: https://superkanjimap.my.canva.site/

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 Intro

0:38 The Island, the Bases, and the Language Between

33:52 Making the Invisible Visible

36:29 The Super Kanji Map and Why It Exists

53:22 What the Intermediate Wall Feels Like From the Inside

🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH

Vincent wasn't supposed to be a French teacher. He was a construction engineer who hated French at school, until years of traveling revealed he had a talent for teaching the language like an equation to be solved. In this episode of Connected By Language, the founder of French School TV explains how he quit his job at the French Institute in December 2019, three months before Covid put the whole world on their phones, and turned that gamble into a language school with 3+ million followers across social media.

He shares the philosophy that shaped it all: giving away complete courses for free because the more you give, the more you receive, building a team of teachers who are encouraged to propose anything, and running every decision through one simple filter, doing the opposite of what the worst manager he ever had would have done. A conversation for anyone dreaming of turning language teaching into something bigger than themselves.

About the guest: https://frenchschooltv.com/

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 intro

7:59 How a Career Change Became a Calling

14:45 Building a Team Around a Language

24:28 The Philosophy Behind Giving It All Away

30:34 What Language Teaching Looks Like at Scale

🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH

Xena is an Italian content creator who grew up bilingual between Italian and French, with Senegalese roots and the sound of Wolof in her childhood home. In this episode of Connected By Language, she shares how a multicultural upbringing shaped her relationship with languages, why she once pushed away the language of her heritage to fit in, and how she now finds connection in places where words fail entirely, from dance trainings in China to dinner tables in South Korea.

The conversation follows her journeys across Asia, including the mistake so many Europeans make of assuming English will carry them everywhere, and the small cultural moments that no textbook can teach. Xena explains what she's really searching for in her random food adventures and unplanned encounters, why a stranger asking to take her photo turned into a lasting friendship, and why she believes anyone still figuring out where they belong is luckier than they think.

About the guest: https://www.instagram.com/xiexiexena?igsh=b2Y2ZDM4YnhzOXFz

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 Intro

0:23 Italy, Senegal, and the Languages in Between

19:06 Falling in Love With Asia One Random Experience at a Time

26:59 When Two Cultures Meet and Neither Has the Words for It

44:53 What All These Worlds Gave Her That One World Never Could

🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH

Guillaume grew up near Brussels as a monolingual French speaker who failed to pick up Dutch at school and thought languages simply weren't for him. In this episode of Connected By Language, he explains how discovering his own learning methods changed everything, eventually building up to seven languages at B2 level or above, plus a collection of others including Norwegian, Catalan, and Mandarin.

The conversation centers on how he combines this skill with animal rights activism. During an international outreach event in Amsterdam, Guillaume held 500 street conversations in a single month, half of them in languages none of the other activists could speak. He breaks down why addressing someone in their native language connects to their values in a way English never can, how the Socratic method opens minds that direct arguments shut down, and what humans and animals share in the language of communication itself.

About the guest: https://www.activism.wtf/

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 intro

10:17 What Polyglots Get for Free

14:34 Seven Languages in the Streets of Amsterdam

37:32 How to Have a Conversation That Actually Changes Something

52:53 The Language We Share With Animals

🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH

Katerina is a Czech language coach who moved from the Czech Republic to Germany at nineteen and built her career explaining Czech to German native speakers, a niche she carved out for herself. In this episode of Connected By Language, she talks about the fear and structure that shaped her own German learning journey, why she barely speaks her native language anymore despite growing up with it, and how one supportive teacher taught her the difference between knowing a language in theory and actually living in it.

The conversation moves into how Katerina built an online language business from scratch, starting with a simple system of learning one new word a day and turning it into pre-recorded courses, coaching, and in-person retreats in Prague. She shares her philosophy on staying human on camera, why she never tries to convince hesitant students, and what she believes anyone starting a language business needs to understand about finding their own reason before chasing scale.

About the guest: https://www.tschechisch.online/

What is Tandem - Language exchange?

Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.

🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App

0:00 Intro

0:22 From Forced to Fluent

17:22 Why Most People Fail at Languages and What Actually Works

44:22 What It Actually Takes to Turn a Language Into a Living

1:05:22 What She Would Tell Someone Starting From Zero

🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.