Conor’s Law: Local Language = Local Success

Conor’s Law: Local Language = Local Success

– How important do you think it is to learn the 
local language? I think it’s fantastic. I love being able to walk into a cafe, to a grocery 
store and being able to speak both Russian and Romanian. It’s absolutely incredible. I also 
feel more at home and I feel like the people respect me more and it’s a fabulous experience 
to be able to speak three languages in one day. Okay. That makes it kind of unique in Europe. 
Do you think that’s so unique? Yes. I love it. – Cześć and greetings from Warsaw, Poland. 
You can probably see behind me some street performers there with some fire. We got a busker 
playing some music. It is a beautiful late spring actually still here in Warsaw. Beautiful 
evening, you’ve got Warsaw train station and a lot of guys in particular are going to come to this 
city this summer and many of them are going to be maybe thinking of a relocation to Warsaw and the 
reason it’s known as Conor’s law is because one of my clients who came here with me last year he 
didn’t want to learn a word of Polish and at the end he had to agree with me that it basically is 
a game changer. So in this video I’m going to outline what Conor’s law is and what’s 
the value of it. So, let’s go. Chodźmy! – I looked in my closet and this is the 
most multilingual t-shirt that I have. So, if you recognize any of the languages emblazened on 
this t-shirt here, then drop a comment down below and tell me which ones that you recognize. Now, 
the first main reason to learn the local language whether you come for relocation to this region or 
to travel is pretty obvious that is communication. Not everybody in the world speaks English or your 
native language if it is different to the local language and not English. But we’ll just deal with 
English as it is the world’s global lingua franca for the purposes of today’s video. And there is a 
company called Education First which produces an annual ranking and they give us a pretty good 
idea about the level of English proficiency by country across the globe. And when I look at 
the region where I bring my clients to the most, so if we’re looking at say Poland, other parts of 
Central Europe like say Prague in Czechia or even down as far as Romania and Bucharest all the way 
up to say Tallinn in Estonia and the other parts of what are commonly referred to as the Baltic 
States so Riga, Latvia or Vilnius in Lithuania. The level of English is actually pretty impressive 
overall. It’s not quite as high as countries like say Sweden or Denmark or the Netherlands where 
I used to live where it is really really really amazing their level of English considering they’re 
not native speakers. It’s actually not that far off being a native speaker in general. 
It’s a bit lower in this region. However, in those kind of countries definitely most people 
will be able to speak a fair deal of English. However, there is a dichotomy when you go to 
say Moldova or Ukraine where I am now. I’m in Odesa Mama or say to Kazakhstan where I go quite 
often with my clients. There there definitely is a significant drop overall in the level of English 
proficiency. Also, you should be aware that in big cities versus small cities or the countryside, 
again, it’s going to be a lot easier to find people who speak a good level of English in the 
cities versus small towns and in the countryside. Also, if you are going somewhere where there are 
a lot of foreigners, so say you go to a restaurant in the historic center of a city, let’s say here 
in Odesa, it’s going to be easier to find people who speak English than say if you go out to a part 
of the city that there aren’t so many foreigners. Also, if you are dealing with people who’ve got 
a higher level of education, also more likely to speak English than people have less education. 
So there’s just a lot of factors where you’re traveling in the region about how you’re going 
to be able to find people to communicate with if you don’t speak the local language and you 
know I meet people who say or live they don’t just say they actually live in certain countries 
in this region for many years and they never learn the local language and they say ah I don’t need 
to deal with anyone who doesn’t speak English for example. However, with this dichotomy in 
particular language, you’re probably going to be fine if you are doing the touristic stuff even in 
here in Odesa, if you just use English. However, that you are taking a risk all the time that 
you’re going to end up in a situation where you won’t be able to communicate and you’re 
constantly going to need an interpreter. Obviously then if you’re doing more sophisticated 
things that involve legal documents for example then you would be in a weaker position or you’re 
negotiating something if you’re always dependent on people speaking English. So the first main 
reason is just communication. – One thing I would just say is that you get that level of credibility 
with the local people if you’re conversing the local language. Um I still think people are a 
bit wary of Brits here. That could be just the fact that we don’t have the greatest reputations 
in Europe for partying and whatever else. Um, so it’s uh unquestionably people are a lot more 
receptive to you speaking the local language. – So an interesting paradox that I’ve observed is 
that as the level of English goes up which often is correlated with the number of foreigners who 
come to live in the country and rely on English. So a good example of that is Warsaw. The city has 
so many people who come from other countries. A lot of them come here here in Ukraine and 
from Belarus. But also a lot of Americans, a lot of Western Europeans are now moving there 
and because Polish is such a difficult language because it’s definitely one of the more difficult 
in the Foreign Service Institute of the state department in the US, they actually rank it in 
their third category. So in my experience having learned many Slavic languages like Ukrainian, 
Russian, Belarusian, and now I’m learning Polish, it is going to take at least double as a native 
English speaker than say learning Spanish or Italian. Maybe even take longer than that. So they 
tend to all just stick to English. More than 90% of them if they have that kind of perspective that 
they’re a foreigner and they are maybe hanging out with other foreigners, maybe even living and working in co-working spaces. And for those people, they probably don’t really care too much about 
this video because they’re not intending ever to learn the local language, no matter what I say, 
because they don’t actually aspire to join local social groups that would have a lot of Poles 
in them and integrate themselves more into say Polish society. They just want to hang around 
with other foreigners. And what’s interesting is as you have more and more of those people and 
the level of English goes up on the one hand the necessity to learn the local language for point 
one which was communication goes down but speaking it for credibility then goes up. So it really 
depends on your preference and I’ve often heard from guys who go to these countries like Sweden 
or the Netherlands. I actually studied in the Netherlands. I learned Dutch when I was there and 
I often met even Western Europeans who told me, “Oh, Conor, Dutch is so hard. I will never learn 
it.” And that just sounded like a bit of an excuse to me because, well, Dutch is not that hard a 
language to learn as a native English speaker or even if you speak Italian or French it’s relatively 
easy. Believe me, having learned Belarusian, Ukrainian, and even Russian, and now I’m learning 
Polish, these languages take at least twice as long to learn in terms of time, maybe even three 
times as long than learning, say, Dutch. The thing is, they didn’t have the motivation because they 
did not desire to actually join those other social groups. They were perfectly fine in hanging out 
in their foreigner bubble. And they actually some of them even had a bit of disdain for 
the locals that they just weren’t really there to hang out with them and they wanted to live in this 
kind of alternate society that isn’t really wedded or interested in the country per se. Everyone’s 
free to make their choice about that. Personally, obviously I advocate on this channel for being 
more integrated. If you move to another country and learn the local language it’s kind of like a 
no-brainer for me and I also look at it in terms of what I get out of it over the long term. It 
is not something that’s going to give you a high return on investment in the very beginning. 
You get a boost. You get a very strong boost in the beginning and you end up in the middle phase 
which takes a long time and you’re not going to get that much value out of it in terms of the 
social connections because you’ll tend to be a bit hesitant when you speak because now it’s going 
to be more complex your speech patterns as opposed to the very beginning where you’re just basically 
blurting out a little bit more primitively different very basic sentence structures 
and then at the very end when you get to say on that European common framework of languages 
around a B2 level you get a huge return on your investment but it may be several years down 
the road and of course for a lot of people are not even sure if they’re going to hang 
around uh long enough in order to get that return investment. I’ve had clients who told 
me it was the best decision they ever made it was complete game changer in terms of their social 
life especially their dating life. And personally, I’ve gotten just huge returns on the investment 
in the languages that I have pursued to learn to a high level. There was none I ever regretted 
learning for this region or also the languages that I learned for Western Europe like 
Italian, Spanish and German and French etc. So just remember that is an interesting 
paradox and it’s a personal decision for you to make whether you want to be more integrated 
into the society that you move to or you prefer not to really integrate at all and just rely 
in English and live in some English speaking bubble. The decision is yours and you know which 
side of the fence that I personally advocate for. So, so there I’ve outlined for you what my clients 
dub ‘Conor’s law’. So, you can make of it what you will. Maybe you still decide that learning 
the local language is not for you. I did have a European client who was investing in real estate 
in Ukraine recently and he has other investments. He’s from the Nordics and one of the place he 
has investments is Estonia. And he said, “Yeah, I appreciate that. Obviously, it’s going to be a 
big advantage for me to learn Ukrainian, but he said I’m going to wait for the Ukrainians to learn 
English.” Well, that might be a long wait first of first of all and it’s not like Estonia 
because that’s where you had to get investments where it’s a small language. Ukrainian is 
spoken by roughly we’ll say 40 million people and yeah the zeitgeist is obviously with the 
Russo-Ukrainian War that probably people are going to be pretty keen to maintain that. So I foresee 
in the future it being a similar situation to here in Poland in Warsaw where it is quite tough 
socially if you don’t speak Polish even though the level English is really good here in the city. So, 
if you are down for learning languages in general, not necessarily a specific one, it can be Polish, 
can be Ukrainian, it can be Russian, it can be even French or Spanish or German if you happen to 
be watching this and heading off somewhere else, Portuguese. Down below in the description to this 
video, I have my free little language learning course that you can go down and enjoy. I’ll get 
you started with some pointers about how to learn languages. I have learned over 10 languages. So, I 
have lots of experience and I spent a lot of time figuring out how the process works and what you 
need to be successful. So just tap into my over it’s probably two decades experience with learning 
languages and you can speed up that process and you know save yourself a good amount of time and 
get further along with whatever language you are planning to learn. Now looking at how my clients 
have done when I started having in-person clients back in 2019. I actually had my first one in 
2018. I guess we can start there. And if I look at how many of them learned the local languages, 
it was not so many in the beginning. I think it was pretty rare. But what I’ve noticed in 
the last couple of years is that amongst them, there is a way higher percentage now learning at 
least the basics of the local language. I would say it’s definitely the majority of them. So 
that has changed and often quite often they’re moving to places like here in Warsaw, in Poland 
or in the Baltics. With the Russo-Ukrainian War, less guys are moving to Ukraine for understandable 
reasons. Hopefully that changes in the near future and they are getting to grips with the local 
language because even though the level of English is quite high, they understand after 
having the in-person experience here that yeah, it is quite difficult socially to excel if you 
don’t invest in learning the local language. And I’m not saying that it is the only way to 
be successful with your quality of life here. Say it’s Warsaw in Poland. You can make friends 
rely, you know, just being dependent on English. You can date girls if you’re a single guy without 
speaking Polish. But it is a big advantage if you do learn the local language. So kind of leaving 
money on the table if you don’t in my opinion. So, if you happen to be new to this channel, go check 
out three playlists that I put together. The first one is a series of vlogs from the cities where I 
live my in-person experience with my clients. So, go check that out first. It’s the first playlist. 
You get a sense of the flavor of the region and of hanging out with me in a city like Warsaw, Poland, 
maybe. Second playlist is vital for the single guys amongst you who are watching that is a series 
of tutorials for dating the nines and tens uber beautiful women of this region. Third playlist 
is my vodka vodcast series where I dive deep into mentality of the people and the cultures of this 
region. Also got some dating advice in longer form out there. is well over 50 hours of content. I’ve 
been filming the vodcast for several years now. So, be discerning. Scroll through and pick out some 
of the videos that appeal to you and you will in long format be able to get a better sense of how people 
in this broader region think. The region I’m dubbing New Europe. Also, if you don’t know what 
New Europe is, I have another video about that. Go check that out after you’ve watched this one. 
So, it’s the summer time here in Warsaw, Poland, but actually today the weather’s changed a little 
bit. So, it’s still warm. It’s a little bit breezy and the sun has gone behind the clouds. So, I’m 
going to say do widzenia! See you in the next video. Ciao-ciao.

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Recommended reading:
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