Wouter Corduwener

Wouter Corduwener is a hyperpolyglot, and a popular YouTuber.

He has more than 520K subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Wouter is also an artist.

Introduction-

Wouter 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-

Wouter 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-

After 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-

Wouter 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-

At 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-

He 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.

Myriad benefits of being a polyglot; his inspiration-

Before embarking on the journey of learning multiple languages, Wouter was shy, a little unconfident, and introverted; but as he started learning languages, he started feeling comfortable and opening up more.

And has been confident of striking up conversations with strangers; also, the strangers have been more willing to interact with him as he would speak with them in their native tongues.

In this process, Wouter made a lot of international friends.

Also, learning languages allowed him to understand other cultures and cuisines.

Richard Simcott, a British hyperpolyglot, is Wouter’s inspiration.

Having a language YouTube channel allowed him to meet and interact with Richard Simcott, and Steve Kaufmann, a Canadian polyglot.

Personal life-

Wouter is in a relationship with Irene Roodenrijs.

He loves cooking.

Wouter lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

So, how are you inspired by his success story?

Share with me in the comment section below.