What Does Polyglottist Mean and How did the Polyglottist Language Academy start?
The word Polyglottist is a synonym of “polyglot” which describes someone who speaks multiple languages. The origins of this word are Greek: polyglōttos, from poly-(many) + glōtta (language). In accordance with our name, our school emphasizes the learning of multiple languages.
I founded Polyglottist Language Academy while I was a graduate student at the French department at UC Berkeley, writing my dissertation on animals in 16th century French literary and non-literary texts. I acted with ignorance since I had never taken any business courses and despair because the Academic job market for humanities has stagnated for decades. In 99 percent of cases, I am a strong believer in the power of knowledge but at the same time, I cannot refute the magical force of ignorance in the remaining 1% of cases. Ignorance can indeed be bliss because it releases one from the fear of failure, especially when one is embarking on the long voyage of starting a business. The beginning of this business adventure was exceedingly similar to a trip I took in my 20s to the Amazon jungle with my best friend. Biology was my least favorite subject in high school and I never bothered to gain any basic knowledge. Once again, this ignorance served me well, for my fears were diminished by my ignorance of Amazonian flora and fauna. I had a highly romanticized perception of rainforests from movies where the main characters survived countless encounters with snakes, piranhas, crocodiles, and other creatures of the Amazon. Navigating a business is in many ways similar to exploring to Amazon jungle, in that one never truly knows what to expect.
Many language schools in the area focus on one language and its culture. Unlike these institutions, I had always dreamed of learning multiple languages, so that is what I wanted to offer students at my school: a possibility to study different languages in one place. For the first year, Polyglottist Language Academy was just me teaching French and Russian. Then people started asking me about Italian and Spanish, and I decided to ask my colleagues in other language departments at UC Berkeley if would be willing to teach at Polyglottist. Gradually, we started growing by adding just one new class per semester. Five years later, the time in which I am writing this, there are five different languages taught at the school. There are still a lot of things to be done looking forward, for example, I want to be able to offer classes on literature and culture. We are going to slowly start this process by offering Italian workshops (in Italian) for our Italian students this summer.
Olga Sylvia, PhD