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Jonatan grew up in northern Sweden with Eritrean parents, speaking both Swedish and Tigrinya at home, and was promptly labeled the math kid while his more extroverted sister got the language person title. That label stuck until a passionate Spanish teacher named Lars changed everything, and what started as a school subject eventually took Jonatan through Spain, six years of medical school in Hungary, fluency in Hungarian, Russian, and several other languages, and back to Sweden with a completely different understanding of what languages are actually for.

In this episode we explore what it really means when a doctor speaks a patient's native language, why the difference between a direct conversation and an interpreter goes far beyond words, and how Jonatan turned a quiet longing for his polyglot community into Stockholm Polyglots, a growing nonprofit that brings language lovers together every two weeks across ten languages at a time. We also get into the Hungarian saying he opens every event with, and why he believes every language you speak makes you a more complete human being.

About the guest: https://polyglots.se/

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

4:14 The Language Person He Was Not Supposed to Be

13:31 Language in the Hospital Room

35:11 Building the Community Sweden Forgot to Build

43:32 What Seven Languages Taught Him

🌟 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 Podcast.

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

Ali Alradhi grew up in Basra, Iraq, surrounded by brothers who traveled the world and spoke English fluently. At twelve, he asked for a dictionary instead of a toy, started reading five to ten pages a day without knowing why, and spent the next decade quietly building an obsession that would take over his entire life. By the time he was twenty two, he had turned down Arabic music, Arabic friends, and anything that wasn't in English, bought a one-way ticket to Turkey, and started over from scratch.

In this episode, Ali walks us through how that radical self-taught approach shaped the way he now runs Just English, a language school in Turkey where English is the only language allowed in the building. We get into what it actually takes to hire great teachers, why mindset always comes before grammar in his classroom, what English genuinely represents for people in Turkey who desperately want it but can't always access it, and why he believes the word "impossible" is just another entry in the dictionary.

About the guest: https://linktr.ee/alawiiiz

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

2:07 From Basra to Fluency

13:30 Building a Multilingual Classroom

47:20 What English Really Means in Türkiye

56:30 The Outsider Advantage

🌟 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 official Tandem Podcast.

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

Frank grew up in London convinced he was simply bad at languages. Seven years of French at school, five of German, and not a single conversation to show for it. So at twenty-two, fresh out of university, he did the only logical thing: bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires with no contacts, no savings, and barely enough Spanish to order a coffee.

What followed was equal parts terrifying and transformative. In this episode, Frank walks us through what real immersion actually looks like from the inside: the supermarket anxiety, the elevator small talk, the football team he joined by pretending he understood every word, and the pandemic lockdown that unexpectedly turned Argentina into home. We also get into how that journey eventually led to a language teaching career, a viral moment on Instagram, and a philosophy about fluency that has less to do with grammar and everything to do with the confidence to just keep going.

About the guest: https://www.instagram.com/frankly_speaking_english/

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

4:24 From “Bad at Languages” to Moving Abroad

14:45 Designing Immersion & Building Real Fluency

44:47 Turning Language into Career & Leverage

58:58 Reflection & Mindset