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Last edited by Jorge200223 (talk | contribs) 4 days ago. (Update) |
Wouter Corduwener | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 24, 1989 |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Education | Bertrand Russell College Utrecht School of the Arts |
| Occupation(s) | Youtuber, Hyperpolyglot |
| Mother | Rachma Corduwener |
Wouter Corduwener (born February 24, 1989) is a Dutch YouTuber and artist known for his multilingual conversations with strangers. He claims to have learned more than 20 languages.
Introduction
editWouter Corduwener was born on 24 February 1989. He hails from Amsterdam, Netherlands. His mother’s name is Rachma Corduwener; she is a polyglot, she knows Dutch, Arabic and French.
Education
editWouter did his schooling from Bertrand Russell College. Then, he studied Illustration at Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (Utrecht School of the Arts) in Utrecht, Netherlands; he graduated at 22. Dutch is his native language. At the primary school, Wouter learnt English; at the secondary school, he learnt French and German.
Career
editAfter graduating from the Utrecht School of the Arts, he started selling art materials at ‘Studio AK-27’ in Amsterdam. After working at ‘Studio AK-27’ for half-a-year, Wouter started ‘Millustrations’ and started selling his own handmade art, woodcut prints, etching prints, character sheets of people; he also started doing drawings.
Becoming a hyperpolyglot
editWouter has been selling his art in Zaanse Schans village, Netherlands, which sees a huge influx of tourists of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. At 23, he observed that a lot of passers-by were speaking various languages like Mandarin, Spanish. As Mandarin Chinese sounded very different to the languages that he already knew, he became interested in it. Wouter started learning Mandarin Chinese by interacting with the tourists in Zaanse Schans village. Every day, he used to learn a few phrases in Mandarin, he used to note down the phrases and words; a year later, he was able to have basic conversations with people and started connecting with people and their cultures. Later, Wouter tried to improve the tones in Mandarin by listening to native Chinese speakers and repeating the words with the right tone. He also started learning other languages in this same style, by interacting with the tourists; the tourists were always eager to teach him their languages. Likewise, Wouter learnt Russian, Hebrew and Thai. He used to record people speaking languages to listen to the audio later and learn. Initially, learning the languages was just a hobby for Wouter; but each year, as he learnt more languages, he became serious and started buying grammar books and dictionaries to learn the languages thoroughly. As of 2023, he learnt 29 languages including Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, French, Thai, German, Korean, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Dutch, Afrikaans, Spanish, Catalan, Vietnamese, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Jamaican Creole, Buryat, Japanese, Greek, Farsi, Japanese, Indonesian, etc. Out of these, Wouter speaks six languages at a high level and the remaining ones at a basic level.
Becoming viral
editAt 26, he was learning 18 languages; as he was learning numerous languages, he thought of shooting a video. So, on 1 July 2015, Wouter published the first video, ‘Dutch polyglot speaks 18 languages with tourists’ on his eponymous YouTube channel. Even though he shot this video for fun, it unexpectedly became viral and got covered by Dutch news. This viral video started his YouTube channel. As of November 2023, Wouter has 528K subscribers on his YouTube channel, 469K followers on his Facebook page ‘Wouter Corduwener Languages,’ and 47.4K followers on Instagram. Also, he streams on Twitch. Wouter earns from a variety of sources like advertisements and ‘membership’ on YouTube, merchandise, and sponsorships; he also accepts donations on Patreon.
Interesting ways of learning
editHe uses a variety of ways to learn languages. Wouter learnt Indonesian with a dictionary, Danish by speaking with fellow online Danish gamers, and he learnt other languages by listening to music, watching movies with subtitles, reading grammar books, dictionaries, etc. In addition to the above-mentioned methods, he also learns languages on the streets by speaking with foreign tourists and researching on the internet. Wouter befriended people of different nationalities speaking different languages, this helps him practice languages with them. He video calls multilingual people and speaks in their languages, he also texts in different languages. Out of all the languages, Wouter felt Chinese and Russian to be the most difficult ones; initially, while speaking these languages, others didn’t understand him. He spends around 25 hours per week in language learning.