Kaufmann was born in Sweden in 1945 to Jewish parents from Prostějov in Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic.

[2][3][4] In June 1962, Kaufmann quit his construction job and worked aboard a German tramp steamer in exchange for passage to Europe.

[4][5][6][7] He hitchhiked through Europe, picking up basic language skills in Spain, Italy and Germany.

[4] He went on to join the Canadian diplomatic service, where he began learning Mandarin Chinese in Hong Kong full-time in 1969.

Though he supports using techniques such as flashcards for memorizing difficult words, he spends most of his learning time listening to native speakers and reading.

[3] He prefers not to have a fixed study schedule and enjoys listening to content in his target languages while performing other tasks.

[8] As of 2025, he has an understanding of 20 languages, though his ability to speak and write in them to a highly proficient level varies considerably.

[3] Prominent language-acquisition scholar Stephen Krashen has studied Kaufmann's approach to learning, and those of other polyglots such as Kató Lomb.