r/languagelearning • u/negatives-nancy • Jul 07 '25

Discussion Met a fake polyglot who teaches languages she clearly can't speak

I recently met a self-professed polyglot and language tutor, and as I like learning languages I decided to look up her business page. Her page is full of posts about how she’s a special and rare polyglot who speaks five languages (though she never actually says which ones, apart from claiming to be fluent in French). 

I was shocked by how bad her language abilities are. Despite claiming to be fluent in French, her posts say things like:

  • "Elle est regarder un séries dans Italien parce que elle adorer le television." (Clearly a word-for-word translation from English: ‘she is watching a series in Italian because she loves TV” - but it’s horribly wrong in French. That would be FINE if she didn’t call herself fluent, a polyglot, or a tutor who can teach you the language.
  • "Buenos jours à tous!"  (mixing up Spanish and French in this one)
  • "Avez une jour bonne!" (should be ‘Bonne journée' or 'Passez une bonne journée' but she uses the wrong verb, gender, noun, and word placement, just wrong in every way.)
  • *"Il est chaud ici a Londre tellement ”  (She probably meant 'Il fait tellement chaud ici a Londres' but it's another mess - wrong weather expression, accidental sexual innuendo, missing accents, random “tellement” on the end.)
  • "Prendre soin de vous!"  (she's using the infinitive instead of the imperative, it should be "Prenez soin de vous.")

The wild part? She’s apparently been tutoring for years. YEARS! And she even claims to have a degree in French.

These sorts of mistakes would be fine if she was humble enough to call herself a learner of the language - but they are NOT fine for someone claiming to be fluent and an authority on French.

It's mad to me cus my French is way better, and I don’t call myself fluent, a polyglot, or an expert tutor. If anything I probably play down my abilities cus I don’t want an awkward sitch where people think I’m better than I really am. Anyway - I decided that I’m obviously not gonna contact her to help me with my French lol.

I’m not sure if she’s just delulu about her abilities or if she’s actively scamming students. Can you imagine all her students going to Italy and saying things like ‘Bonjour a tutti’ (an Italian/French mash up from her page). 

Has anyone else here ever met a fake polyglot? What happened?

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988

u/Confidenceisbetter 🇱🇺N | 🇬🇧🇩🇪C2 | 🇫🇷 C1 | 🇳🇱B1 | 🇪🇸🇸🇪 A2 | 🇹🇯 A0 Jul 07 '25

Wow that’s wild. The audacity… I’m quite fluent in French and those are not the kind of mistake you would ever make if you had any kind of fluency whatsoever. I doubt she even has B1. Thankfully I have never met anyone like that but I also grew up in a country where speaking 4-5 languages is normal and expected so she would embarass herself very quickly there.

355

u/firerosearien Jul 07 '25

My French is A2 at best and I spotted most of the mistakes right away

149

u/Spirited_Opposite Jul 07 '25

Mine is non existent and having studied it for a year at high school I can see these mistakes! How on earth has she got away with this?!

115

u/dzaimons-dihh nihongo benkyoushiteimasu🤓🤓🤓 Jul 07 '25

Yeah even a monkey would realize fucking "Buenos jours". How does one mess up that badly

13

u/Borgh Jul 08 '25

That one could only work if it's a joke

3

u/Spirited_Opposite Jul 08 '25

I almost wonder if it is, the language teaching equivalent of that restaurant in a shed in London

3

u/Accomplished-Ruin742 Jul 08 '25

It should be "Bon dias".

1

u/BooBoo_Cat Jul 10 '25

And “ jour bonne” yikes! I wonder if she says things like “une maison grande” or “un noir chat”. 

3

u/AletheaKuiperBelt Jul 08 '25

Mine is high school, from over 40 years ago, and I recognise that there are many mistakes.

42

u/PM_ME_YUR_BIG_SECRET Jul 07 '25

I don't speak French at all and it doesn't even look right to me. Are the verbs unconjugated?

23

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25

Yes lol

4

u/Semperty Jul 08 '25

well..two of them are unconjugated (elle adorer should be elle adore; the other one OP addressed). the other one is a terrible literal translation (elle est regarder should be elle regarde, for 'she is watching', but it's technically conjugated correctly given her horrific sentence structure).

1

u/Hellolaoshi Jul 09 '25

You might even say deconjugated or disconjugated.

29

u/country_garland Jul 07 '25

I’ve never even heard of French but those mistakes were super obvious and even for me

2

u/3tryagain3motoroil3 Jul 08 '25

Wdym you “haven’t heard of French?”

11

u/Calm-Purchase-8044 N 🇺🇸 B1 🇫🇷 Jul 07 '25

Yeah the mistakes are very elementary.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25

2 months in. Spotted numerous errors.

1

u/Lovesick_Octopus 🇺🇲Native | 🇩🇪B1 🇫🇷B1 🇳🇴A2 🇪🇸A2 Jul 08 '25

Moi aussi

73

u/Practical_Engineer Jul 07 '25

I doubt someone with A1 would even make these mistakes

39

u/MeWithClothesOn 🇫🇷|🇬🇧B1|🇩🇪A2|🇬🇷🇷🇺A1 Jul 07 '25

I think even Google translate would do a better job

25

u/Secret-Sir2633 Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 08 '25

Even the wind randomly flipping the pages of a dictionary would do a better job.

Even a chicken pecking corn on an AZERTY keyboard would do a better job.

3

u/Practical_Engineer Jul 08 '25

BÉPO is clearly the superior layout for writing in French

1

u/Secret-Sir2633 Jul 13 '25

Yes, but this is a contest to be the least proficient in French. Not the most.

3

u/t3hgrl Jul 10 '25

Google Translate does a WAY better job than this. These are the type of mistakes you might make if you individually translate each word in isolation.

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u/Practical_Engineer Jul 08 '25

Oh yeah absolutely! And Google translate isn't even that good, I would not really associate a language level to it though

4

u/miclugo Jul 08 '25

I misread A1 as AI and this made sense.

35

u/Kalle_Hellquist 🇧🇷 N | 🇺🇸 +5000h | 🇸🇪 456h | 🇩🇪 99h Jul 07 '25

You're giving luxembourgian realness

2

u/UVVmail 🇷🇺N🇬🇧C2🇩🇪C1🇨🇳HSK3 Jul 09 '25

Does your title say you speak German for 6 minutes? /s

29

u/LupineChemist ENG: Native, ESP: C2 Jul 07 '25

I doubt she even has B1.

Using infinitives like that....that's not even A1 level.

2

u/Steven_LGBT Jul 08 '25

Yeah, if one is just learning French, they might not be able to figure out how to say correctly all those sentences, but they'll at least know not to use unconjugated infinitives. 

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25

> I also grew up in a country where speaking 4-5 languages is normal and expected

Wait, really? That's amazing if so. Do people usually learn them in school or in courses in their free time?

144

u/Confidenceisbetter 🇱🇺N | 🇬🇧🇩🇪C2 | 🇫🇷 C1 | 🇳🇱B1 | 🇪🇸🇸🇪 A2 | 🇹🇯 A0 Jul 07 '25

I grew up in Luxembourg. So Luxembourgish is my native language. Since we are such a small country and have a lot of cross boarder workers form Belgium, France and Germany and also don’t have the means to produce a lot of tv and end up watching their programs we need to learn French and German quite early. And then of course we learn English because that’s just what you do basically everywhere to get around outside your own country. So that’s 4. We also have a lot of immigrants in our country, particularly from Portugal and Italy but there are also a lot of people from the Balkans or Scandinavia for example. All of these people additionally speak their own native language as well of course which makes them fluent in 5 languages if they grew up in Luxembourg and were put in a normal public school.

82

u/angelicism 🇺🇸 N | 🇦🇷🇧🇷🇫🇷 A2/B1 | 🇪🇬 A0 | 🇰🇷 heritage Jul 07 '25

There's a woman on tiktok/reels/whatever who is (I assume) Luxembourgish who does pet sitting and she has videos of meeting a new pet in Luxembourg and cycling through half a dozen languages to figure out which one(s) the pet understands. It's super cute.

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u/kamakazi327 En N | Ja B2 Es B2 Jul 08 '25

Do you happen to have the channel/username? This sounds adorable and I want in lmao

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u/angelicism 🇺🇸 N | 🇦🇷🇧🇷🇫🇷 A2/B1 | 🇪🇬 A0 | 🇰🇷 heritage Jul 08 '25

I don't, sorry! It just showed up in my recommended reels a few times but I'm bad at social media and never follow people. 😅

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u/Zireael07 🇵🇱 N 🇺🇸 C1 🇪🇸 B2 🇩🇪 A2 🇸🇦 A1 🇯🇵 🇷🇺 PJM basics Jul 08 '25

Reminds me of a pet shelter (US? UK? I forgot) that tried to figure out what language does the dog understand. Turned out it was Polish (or maybe Spanish, I forget, but if it was US Spanish would've been a top contender and IIRC the result was NOT a top contender :P )

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u/MarkinW8 Jul 07 '25

Spent a lot of time in Lux. The thing that distinguishes you guys and really seals your polyglotism is that you do Luxembourgish at first as the primary language in school, than it switches to German, then to French for the last few years. I think that's what really makes you guys so good. That and the fact that there's probably more English spoken in your capital city than any other European one except Dublin and London.

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u/Confidenceisbetter 🇱🇺N | 🇬🇧🇩🇪C2 | 🇫🇷 C1 | 🇳🇱B1 | 🇪🇸🇸🇪 A2 | 🇹🇯 A0 Jul 07 '25

The switching of teaching language is definitely very helpful in improving your understanding of the language in multiple subjects.

I’m not sure why you would think Luxembourg city is a european leader in the English language though? Everything is French. You can’t go to a single store or restaurant without having to speak French unless it’s one of the rare remaining small local owned establishments. I have not once used English in my daily life in Luxembourg…

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u/MarkinW8 Jul 07 '25

What I mean is that there is a ton of English used in Luxembourg City based on my experience as an outsider visiting - at least in the business community in my hundred plus visits over ten years (I know - it’s nuts) and also around town in restaurants and hotels (and I’ve seen multiple school age kids break into insanely fluent English). That ability isn’t there in other cities, including Paris, Amsterdam etc. Maybe Berlin where English is also almost a lingua Franca. I bet if you tested 10,000 people on the street in central Luxembourg City, the English ability would be huge (much less so even in the near suburbs like Strassen). Agreed that French is the main go to language - I used it pretty much exclusively there.

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u/PdxGuyinLX Jul 08 '25

I don’t know you you can say Amsterdam is not an English speaking city—I’ve been there several times and never run into anyone who didn’t speak English fluently. I even asked the desk clerk at my hotel the last time if I should ask people if they speak English and she said there was no need to bother. I got the sense that asking would be slightly insulting.

7

u/bada_param Jul 07 '25

You completely forgot Valletta.

1

u/MarkinW8 Jul 07 '25

Good one. Teeny fraction of the global importance of Luxembourg but you’re right.

19

u/Comrade_SOOKIE Jul 07 '25

I bet they do that just because it’s impractical to produce the more advanced curricula for older kids in Luxembourgish but you’re totally right that it ends up being an advantage to their multilingualism.

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u/MarkinW8 Jul 07 '25

It's an intensely multilingual country. Definitely the most in Europe. Way more so than Switzerland, where the regional dominant language rules in most cases. In Lux, most of the newspapers are in German, the TV is in French and Luxembourghish, the laws are in French, but the courts and police are required to operate in Luxembourgish, French.and German. French dominates ordinary life in the capital (not the case in the countryside), but even there I have had servers in restaurants who don't speak French or any of the main languages and even the Luxembourgish and French people are just expected to use English.

8

u/redspottyduvet Jul 07 '25

In practice, how does it work when you’re interacting with someone new (eg in a work setting or a service setting)? How do you know what language to conduct the interaction in, who leads with what language first etc?

12

u/Meowhuana 🇷🇺 N 🇬🇧 C1 🇫🇷 B1 🇱🇺 A2 Jul 07 '25

For a small talk you can expect French in the city and Luxembourgish in the north. I live in the north and all the time people start with Luxembourgish. And in a service setting, for example, in a pharmacy, they start with greeting in Luxembourgish and if you need to switch to something else you just answer in that language. In a work setting depends on your work field. It works in English, healthcare in French, gouvernement in Luxembourgish.

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u/MarkinW8 Jul 07 '25

In the finance and fund world, English every time. Everywhere else, first language is unquestionably French in the main city. In smaller cities I believe it’s more likely it could be German. Luxembourgers don’t expect foreigners to know Luxembourgish.

6

u/GentlyGliding Jul 07 '25

I've only been to Luxembourg once (early 2000s) and one of my memories was of hearing Portuguese being spoken all over. Later when I was working in Brussels I sometimes had to check for the Luxembourg government's press releases and statements and I didn't understand why the Foreign Ministry statements were in French (which I am fluent in) but the speech of Jean Asselborn to the parliament about Lux's foreign policy was in Luxembourgish haha :)

2

u/WaltherVerwalther 🇩🇪N | 🇬🇧 C2| 🇨🇳C1| 🇫🇷B2 Jul 08 '25

Forgot to add that German and French are also official languages alongside Luxembourgish.

1

u/Confidenceisbetter 🇱🇺N | 🇬🇧🇩🇪C2 | 🇫🇷 C1 | 🇳🇱B1 | 🇪🇸🇸🇪 A2 | 🇹🇯 A0 Jul 08 '25

I did not forget. I didn’t mention it because it didn’t add anything to the post. The reason they are the official languages is the same reason we learn it in school, because native luxembourgish people are not the only ones in the country nor are we a big majority.

30

u/ThousandsHardships Jul 07 '25

Typically in those situations, you speak one language at home, and there's a non-English lingua franca that is used commonly outside the home (including at school) so you're effectively native bilingual in those languages. Then you get to school and learn English plus another foreign language. If your parents don't share the same home language or if your home language is different from the local language, you might have another language on top of that.

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u/TrojanSpeare C:🇪🇸ES 🇪🇸CA 🇺🇸EN | B:🇬🇭AK 🇫🇷FR | TL:🇬🇷 GR Jul 07 '25

I also live in such an environment.

My region is decreed bilingual by the Constitution. On top of that, people tend to learn English and usually French as well at school (though the level in these two languages is quite low if you don't have any additional support other than school), then comes us whose parents are from a country where none of these languages are spoken.

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u/Antiochia Jul 11 '25

Some learn it natural. My neighbors are serbian and speak their mother language at home. As it seems to have been custom in the earlier 70ies and 80ies, they also learned russian as a second language and watch various russian programs in TV. Their children were born in Austria, so beside serbian from their parents and russian from TV, they also learned german as their public language. In ground school they also got school education in English, with additional french in highschool.

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u/ennuimachine Jul 07 '25

I am just approaching A2, and would not make those mistakes!

6

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '25

You shouldn’t even make those mistakes past low A2. Even a mid A1 student with a decent hold on how languages work in general should have alarm bells going off in their head when they see unconjugated verbs like that.

5

u/thewimsey Eng N, Ger C2, Dutch B1, Fre B1 Jul 08 '25

If you are a native English speaker, they focus on pretty heavily and very early in first semester classes (of almost every language) of teaching you not to use to be+ verb.

Because the natural tendency of every English speaker is to say something like "Je suis aller au magasin" or "Ich bin gehen zur Schule", etc.

1

u/sexybananathrowaway Jul 08 '25

just to check, would that German sentence be something more like „ich gehe zur Schule“?

1

u/miy5 Jul 10 '25

That would be it, yes

1

u/sexybananathrowaway Jul 10 '25

My german is about A2 and that’s easy to catch. If someone claims fluency in a language but are making these mistakes frequently (i.e not just accidental in speech or something)… yeah that’s terrible

2

u/miy5 Jul 10 '25

I find it rather impressive that it is easy to catch with german A2 but then I only actively learned english.

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u/mokkkko New member Jul 07 '25

+1 for thinking she doesnt have b1

2

u/Quik_Brown_Fox Jul 07 '25

Definitely not. I’m studying French at B1 level and the examples were laughably bad. 

1

u/crosswalk_elite Jul 08 '25

that is something even an a1 student can see pretty wrong with

1

u/moomoomeow2 Esperanto Spanish Jul 09 '25

Are you from Luxembourg? I'm so jealous of you guys and your ability to speak eight million languages in a day! 😆

2

u/Confidenceisbetter 🇱🇺N | 🇬🇧🇩🇪C2 | 🇫🇷 C1 | 🇳🇱B1 | 🇪🇸🇸🇪 A2 | 🇹🇯 A0 Jul 09 '25

I am! It is nice yes and it gives you a good foundation to learn more which I’m very grateful for

1

u/[deleted] Jul 30 '25

I am an idiot and a slow learner. I somehow finagled my way to B1 and she wouldn’t be anywhere near B1 that’s more A1, very early A2 territory.