My name is Alexandre Smirnov, and my passion is learning languages in a high-quality way.
I can speak 12 languages, and I’ve been mistaken for a native speaker in nearly all of them.
Perfect Polyglot is a space where I describe the techniques and learnings that I apply to achieve this goal.
My personal passion is perfecting my ability in a language to be indistinguishable from a native speaker. I enjoy the challenge of fine-tuning my pronunciation, internalizing advanced grammar points, and researching all sorts of other nuanced details, and after going through this process for several different languages, I have lots of useful techniques and tips to share.
Getting to the point where I can reliably do this for any language has taken me many years, so to save you the time and effort of getting this point on your own through trial and error, on Perfect Polyglot, I share the specific techniques and knowledge necessary to acquire such a high level of mastery of any language you put your mind to.
I hope you enjoy the content on this website. If you have any comments or suggestions, I would love to hear from you!
Languages I Speak
All the languages on this list have different strengths and weaknesses, so I’ve avoided grouping them by “proficiency level”. I have experience and knowledge to share about each one.
| Russian | My first and native language that I learned growing up in a Russian-speaking environment. |
| English | Technically my second language, but I learned it at a young enough age that I consider it my second native language. |
| Spanish | The only language I "learned" in school. My strength with Spanish is my real-life experience speaking it in a variety of different situations thanks to lots of travel in Spanish-speaking countries. |
| French | The first language I learned to fluency outside of school, largely thanks to French-speaking friends. I've barely spent any time in Francophone countries, but I regularly get confused for a native speaker. |
| Japanese | The toughest language I've encountered, but also the one I speak best besides my native languages. The extreme challenge of learning Japanese became a training ground for my advanced language learning skills. |
| German | I took this language on as a challenge in preparation for spending a few weeks in central Europe. I have strong grammar skills, but never bothered to learn it past an intermediate level. |
| Swedish | After a year of self-study and a semester abroad in Sweden, I've lost track of how many Swedes I've successfully convinced that I'm a native speaker. |
| Chinese | I've been studying Chinese on and off for several years, and intend to perfect it after finishing up some other languages. |
| Korean | Thanks to knowing Japanese, I've been able to acquire Korean without too much difficulty. This advantage has allowed me to spend more time diving into advanced details of the language. |
| Hebrew | I wanted to challenge myself with a language in the Semitic family, and Hebrew was incredibly fun to learn. It's one of my favorite languages for a variety of reasons. |
| Greek | I spent a few months studying Greek before having to shift my attention elsewhere. I have a perfect accent and a strong grammar foundation, but will need to come back eventually to bring it up to a conversation level. |
| Czech | One summer, I dove in headfirst into studying Czech and ended up sounding indistinguishable from a native speaker after a few months of study. |