Who, I hear you ask, is Julingo? Well, her real name is Julie Maksimova, and she hosts a wonderful series of short and not-so-short videos giving you snapshots of quite a variety of languages, such as Papuan, Ukrainian, Sumerian, Estonian, Icelandic, Albanian, Latvian, Cherokee, Thai,… I could go on, but I won’t; she clearly has produced dozens of such videos!

You would of course assume that with a last name of Maksimova, Julie is Russian. Actually she’s from Latvia, not Russia… but her native language is indeed Russian. (Like surprisingly many Latvians — 24% in fact — her ethnicity is Russian.) But don’t worry about having difficulties understanding her: her English is nearly 100% flawless.

If you just want a taste of what Julie’s videos are like, I recommend the ones on Latvian, Estonian, and Cherokee as a representative and diverse sample. You might wonder why I pick such an odd trio to represent the wide variety of world languages when the first two are from neighboring Baltic states. But, as Julie says, “they may be neighbors but they couldn’t be more different.”

These videos are indeed all wonderful, but I do need to offer one cautionary note. As I learned from my students, producers of educational videos always seem to talk too fast! In particular, Julie will leave complex graphics on the screen for less than two seconds or so, which is at least an order of magnitude too short for a viewer to absorb what’s going on, not to mention to think about it! Yes, frequently slowing down and/or pausing will solve this problem, but I still find it annoying. Other than that, these are excellent videos that pack lots of fascinating information into a short (too short!) period of time.

If you want to find out more about Julie, she has made a Q&A video to answer all your FAQs:

Categories: Linguistics