Love, Joy, and Languages

A podcast to boost your LOVE of languages and bring out the JOY in learning them

About the show

Love, Joy, and Languages is a podcast where you can learn about language learning; supporting your children in their language journeys; and overcoming the many challenges faced by adult language learners, parents raising multilingual children, and expat language learners. I sit at the intersection of these three worlds, and I want to share my own journey navigating this crossroads while inviting you to discover your own, unique language learning journey.

  • Music used as intro & outro in this Podcast is "Home" by artist Nick Gallant, licensed from TuneCore

Love, Joy, and Languages on social media

Episodes

  • Episode 44: Language & Cultural Identity - Interview with Urmi Hossain

    3 July 2023  |  Season 3  |  48 mins 53 secs

    Sharing an interview with Urmi Hossain, a polyglot, author, YouTuber, and a woman empowering and inspiring others. Urmi shares her history of language learning, which began in childhood as she grew up in Italy with Bengali heritage.

  •

    Episode 43: Language Learning Jealousy

    26 June 2023  |  Season 3  |  25 mins 42 secs

    Jealousy. It sucks. In this episode, I give a bit of the darker parts of my youth as an extremely jealous person and explore how that has affected me as a language learner, even though I healed my toxic jealousy long before beginning languages. I talk about comparison as a gateway to jealousy, but it's important to note that comparisons are part of human nature, so I think it's valuable to reframe them instead of beating ourselves up over making them.

  • Episode 42: 3 Quick Tips For Getting Unstuck In Your Languages

    19 June 2023  |  Season 3  |  11 mins 47 secs

    Sharing my top tips for what to do when you feel stuck in your languages. It's totally normal to reach a point where you don't know where to go next or what to do, and you feel like your learning is getting stagnant. There are so many creative ways to overcome this, so I want to share my favorites in today's episode.

  • Episode 41: The Value of Not Finishing

    12 June 2023  |  Season 3  |  34 mins 2 secs

    I'm back with Season 3 of Love, Joy, and Languages! Starting off this season with a deep discussion about finishing resources. Or, more specifically, about focusing on finishing rather than on content and progression. I talk about my history of feeling a need to finish every single resource I started, how that led to avoidance and stress, and what I did to change my mentality.

  • Episode 40: Celebrating Your Wins!

    13 February 2023  |  Season 2  |  25 mins 30 secs

    Sharing language learning wins submitted by listeners across the globe. Understanding and enjoying content in new languages, making friends through language exchanges, successful conversation practice, speaking progress, starting a new language, returning to a beloved language...it's all here, and I'm celebrating every success story!

  •

    Episode 39: A Joyful Chat with a Special Guest Co-Host

    6 February 2023  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 2 mins

    Talking about all sorts of exciting and joyful things about language learning with one of my favorite language learners, teachers, and human beings.

  •

    Episode 38: Non-Level Victories in Language Learning

    30 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  20 mins 26 secs

    Discussing all the victories I see in my language journey that have nothing to do with reaching a level. Moving up a language level is often our overarching objective, but sometimes reaching a new level is so far away that it's difficult to recognize our progress. And progress, by the way, doesn't only show up in results. There are so many things we do (or don't do) with respect to our languages that indicate progress but that have less to do with our abilities and more to do with the actions we take or our mentality regarding our languages.

  •

    Episode 37: Celebrating My 3-Year Soberversary (And What That Even Has To Do With Languages)

    23 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  28 mins 2 secs

    Discussing my journey to and through sobriety and how it ties into my language learning journey. There’s a very clear mental connection between my journey to sobriety and my journey to sustainable, holistic, and joyful language learning. For me, in my personal story, the connection between these two paths is very strong because they overlap by several years and definitely affected each other, so it just made sense to do an episode that talks about this intersection of my life.

  •

    Episode 36: Listener Q&A: Textbook vs. Real Life Learning

    16 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  25 mins 2 secs

    Answering a listener question about learning languages from textbooks versus real life experiences living in a country where the language is spoken. Sharing several things I enjoy about both learning styles because they're both very different, but they're both valid. There are definitely benefits to each language learning style, and I want to highlight several of those in this episode.

  •

    Episode 35: Happy New Year! A Year with No Language Goals

    9 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  30 mins 41 secs

    Recounting my (failed) history of setting language goals, discovering the reasons why various goal-setting methods haven't worked for me, and what I do in order to keep making language progress without having any solid goals to motivate me.

  •

    Episode 34: If I Believed in Myself

    19 December 2022  |  Season 2  |  30 mins 30 secs

    Exploring what my language life would look like if I approached it from a place of self-belief. How would I respond when I make mistakes? How would I approach something completely new, whether it be a new language, a new grammar topic, or meeting a new person who speaks my new languages? What feelings might come up when facing something very difficult in my language world, if I had self-belief? How would I feel when I receive criticism? And most importantly how can I bring more self-belief into my life?

  • Episode 33: Curiosity, Inclusion, and Representation in Language Learning Spaces - Interview with Elle Charisse of Speaking Tongues Podcast

    12 December 2022  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 3 mins

    A chat with Elle Charisse, the host of Speaking Tongues Podcast, where language and culture are celebrated through storytelling. Elle shares a bit about how she grew an interest in languages growing up in New York City and how curiosity in languages and culture led to the creation of her podcast, where she converses with multilinguals from all over the world. Elle and I touch on a range of deep, thought-provoking topics seldom discussed in the largest of language learning spaces, from representative language in course material to the issue of homogenous speaker panels at language conferences to the need for inclusion of all multilinguals from all walks of life. This is a conversation you don't want to miss!

  •

    Episode 32: Impostor Syndrome, Part 2

    5 December 2022  |  Season 2  |  21 mins 48 secs

    Discussing impostor syndrome and what I actively do to work against it in my own life, but especially when it comes to being a language learner. I briefly talk about what impostor syndrome is and recap the thoughts I shared about it in Episode 31. Then I dive into three things that I've been working on in my life to handle those feelings of being an impostor, including mindfully working against negative confirmation bias; claiming my own labels or titles without additional qualifiers; and deeply knowing ourselves as we are in order to leverage our identities, histories, personalities, and preferences to live authentically and genuinely as ourselves.

  •

    Episode 31: Impostor Syndrome, Part 1

    28 November 2022  |  Season 2  |  17 mins 46 secs

    Discussing impostor syndrome in our language lives, especially with respect to certain aspects of language learning. I briefly talk about what impostor syndrome is and a bit of my experience with it. I also explore things I've noticed – conversations, thoughts, and ideals – within the language learning community that, in my opinion, sort of breed impostor syndrome, things that I think can easily lead to this phenomenon in a person’s language journey, even if they’ve never before experienced it in other areas of their life

  •

    Episode 30: An Open Letter to Beginner Me

    21 November 2022  |  Season 2  |  8 mins 28 secs

    Reading a letter I wrote to "beginner me." She was excited and scared. She jumped in head-first, and she needed some words of wisdom to keep her from drowning. These are the words I wish that version of me -- that Heidi of 5 years ago -- had heard. It's going to be a beautiful and exciting journey full of struggles and uncertainties. But it'll change your life, and you're going to succeed.

  •

    Episode 29: Sunk Costs in Language Learning

    14 November 2022  |  Season 2  |  18 mins 58 secs

    Discussing the sunk costs -- resources that can't be recovered -- in language learning and how the sunk cost fallacy may influence our paths ahead, sinking more of our time, money, energy, and emotions into something that may not be working for us. I give examples of how I made language decisions based on the sunk cost fallacy mentality, which led to more wasted resources and time spent chasing a path that wasn't right for me. I give my thoughts on the importance of working around this mentality and making language learning choices based on our needs and desires, not on what we've already put into the process.