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I'll save you some time.
First of all, an important quote from her (Kató Lomb) book to give context:
Question: Is it possible to know 16 languages?
Answer: No, it is not possible—at least not at the same level of ability. I only have one mother tongue: Hungarian. Russian, English, French, and German live inside me simultaneously with Hungarian. I can switch between any of these languages with great ease, from one word to another. Translating texts in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Polish generally requires me to spend about half a day brushing up on my language skills and perusing the material to be translated. The other six languages [Bulgarian, Danish, Latin, Romanian, Czech, Ukrainian] I know only through translating literature and technical material.


What's more or less good in her book:
- she promotes the idea that (invested time + interest) / inhibition = result (inhibition = fear of mistakes)
- she insisted on learning words in phrases, sentences, or chunks rather than isolated
- she argued that adults have better logical and associative capabilities than children
- she utilized false friends and compared grammatical structures between her native Hungarian and the target languages, basically doing language transfer

What's not good in her book:
- she argues that women are better language learners (and interpreters) because prehistoric men hunted buffalo while women stayed home and chattered
- she essentially guessed how words sounded based on spelling rules she deduced herself, therefore learned to speak fluently but with terrible pronunciation
- she advises buying any dictionary you see because you might never see it again (which is arguably more of a historical issue)
- she advises against cramming grammar from textbooks, yet her personal method involves taking a novel and spending hours scientifically dissecting sentences to deduce the grammar rules herself, meaning she was actually doing more intense grammar work than a textbook requires
- she argued anyone can learn languages with interest + time, underestimating the discipline required to follow her method (classic example of survivor ship bias)
- she emphasizes reading and translation first, speaking comes much later, so months studying the language it's possible you'd still be unable to buy a train ticket or understand a simple question on the street

I love your videos, but when I signed up to your email list I had to unsubscribe because I was receiving 1-4 emails every day and felt spammed 😢

I'm Hungarian, so I knew who she was, but still learned a lot of fantastic details about her life. I started learning many foreign languages before, but the only one I could succeed in so far is English and that was the one I learned without courses and suffering through textbooks, just by pure immersion.
I have do try her method with German, as I live in Austria at the moment, but feel really isolated due to my poor speaking skills. Writing a diary in your target language is such an amazing idea to get comfortable producing language. I understand enough when I read or hear German to get by in my daily life, but speaking and writing gives me so much anxiety that I completely freeze.

Reading Kato Lomb’s book inspired me to start learning languages when I thought about how lucky we are in resources and the advanced age of when she started. I think it was the first book I ever read about learning languages.

I was already a Russian / Hebrew / English speaker by the time I developed interest for languages. I chose Swedish. Back then the internet was in its infancy, no YouTube, smartphones, apps, let alone AI friend. I didn't even have a Swedish dictionary. I started entering mIRC swedish  chats (text only), asking people for word by word translations. It was all about the passion, and it gave me a solid base.

6:00 My break through in learning English (at school) was reading "Lord Of The Rings". Took me several months and a lot of frustration trying to find words in the feeble school issued dictionary. But then I was hooked on novel in the original.

Ah, the good old pre-brain-rot era. Storing languages in your brain instead of thirty-second conspiracy theory summaries ❤

The scenario of being one lesson ahead of your students creates an intense motivation and focus as a teacher! There's a lot at stake. Been there done that :) You learn from your own teaching. Works with any subject but requires nerve.

She didn't have internet to hear Native speaking. :) And even get a good book to learn language was difficult. This is absolutely different now, it's so easy to learn a language (if we wish it).

1:35 What a wonderful story. At the tender age of four, this genius kid already established the very method by which later generations of self-declared hyperpolyglots would count their languages.😂

Kató Lomb's "Polyglot: How I Learn Languages"

Hace mucho que estaba esperando la historia de Kató Lomb. Es muy inspirador. Gracias por este video.

That's so cool. To be able to learn so many with so little resources is inspiring!
Have you seen Kazuma from the channel kazulanguages? He's Japanese and up to at least 16 languages, and in his mid 20s. Shows the difference in resources and freedoms between the times doesn't it?

Did you ever got fluent in your own language? I speak 5 languages daily, including the one I know the best, but TBH it's always not perfect most of the times, lol

I'm glad I saw this video.  Because it taught me the number one skill in language learning is to be DRIVEN.  You are going to conquer this whatever it takes.

But she only revealed it in Pitjanjatjara, which is why only a few Australians have achieved grue enlightenment and wisdom.

I literally just told this to my husband last night that the more I just learned words, I can speak the language better and I’m gonna throw grammar out until I feel like I can formulate sentences and then I’ll figure out how to do the grammar.

What an inspiring story! Is there a book about Kato's life that you read and would recommend? I'm 71 and on my fourth language. I suppose I need to speed things up a bit!

Interesting video! 😊