Alex Rawlings, Oxford University Student, Speaks 11 Languages

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

I was surprised when I read the news about this polyglot. It was amazing. His name is Alex Rawlings from London. He is 20 years old and he speaks 11 languages — English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan, and Italian. I cannot imagine myself speaking 11 languages, still far away from that. I wonder how he can do that.

"When I was younger I always wanted to speak different languages," Rawlings said in the BBC video.
"We often visited my mum's family in Greece. My dad worked in Japan for four years. I was always frustrated I couldn't talk to other kids in those countries because of the language."
"My favorite language is Greek because I've spoken it since childhood. It has sentimental value for me and I have a strong emotional connection with Greece," he said.

Do you know any polyglot or someone who knows several languages? What have you learned from this incredible story? Thanks for reading. Feel free to share this article if you like. If you have any opinions, please leave a comment. I love reading them.

Photo credit
The Huffington Post

Reactions:

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Random posts

Learning Indonesian – A Native English Speaker's Perspective

Indonesian is the first language that I have really tried to learn. I studied French and Italian for limited amounts of time during my schooling, but only because I was forced to learn them. With Indonesian it was different – I study Indonesian because I love the language.

When I was searching about learning Mandarin on the Internet, I found a very brilliant tip in reading Chinese text. This technique can be applied only by those who know Traditional Chinese phonetics (注音 Zhuyin ) So, here is the technique:

The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has held a two-day event promoting the Asia-Pacific culture in the capital city of Taiwan, Taipei City, on September 28-29th. The participants come from the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, the Marshall Islands, Vietnam, Tuvalu, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, Palau, Nauru, Malaysia, Kiribati, Japan, Indonesia, India, Fiji, and Brunei. Apart from performing dances from each of the countries, the participants also displayed a wide variety of handicrafts and artworks as well as authentic cuisine on each country's booth.

It's not every day that someone somewhere has the chance to create a new writing system for an existing language. More often than not, most of the language already have an established writing system.

Задумывались ли вы выучить иностранный язык на другом языке. Это то, что я сейчас делаю. Я учусь несколько иностранных языков на английском языке, который для меня является иностранный язык. В вопросе о неудобство и трудности -я не обнаружил никаких трудностей в изучении других языков на английском языке. Возможно, что английский язык стал почти как мой родной язык. Я использую английский язык всегда и везде. Из-за частого использования английского языка, я чувствую себя странно, когда я переключаюсь на индонезийском языке. Кроме того, я чувствую себя странно, когда я использую компьютер своего отца, который запрограммирован на индонезийском языке.

On my daily routine sitting in front of my computer reading many articles about languages, technology, and entrepreneurship, I usually find interesting subjects to learn. And this time, I have an even more interesting subject about language when I read that Afrikaans is considered as an easy language, if not the easiest, for English speaker or speakers from its language family. I was like “Seriously?!”

Let's meet Balint Brunner from the United Kingdom Facebook | Twitter | Website Could you tell us about yourself, including the languages you know? My name is Bálint and I’m seventeen years old. I was born in Budapest, in Hungary, to Hungarian and Greek parents. Currently, I live in the United Kingdom, where I’m also enrolled in secondary education. I’m the author of a blog called ‘I wish to be a polyglot!’, which some of you may have encountered already.

Many friends asked me about how many languages I know. I was born in Medan, Indonesia. Luckily, Indonesia is a diverse country and so does Medan. You can find the diversity of Medan in almost anything, such as ethnicity, culture, language, culinary.

Learners learn languages in many different ways, such as attending language classes, playing games, or listening to audio. Whatever the methods are, they usually cover four aspects of language learning: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Mastering only one or two of these is not enough because, in reality, we read, listen, speak, and write.

People who have studied Chinese must realize that Chinese character is not just a character, but it is also an art. Every stroke in the character forms a beautiful combination of a meaning. It is said that Chinese character evolves from time to time based on the actual object. Although I cannot say that it is 100% true, there are books about Chinese pictogram. For example, you can see below how "sun" and "moon" was written in the past and the evolution of it until nowadays. Characters 日 and 月, on far right, are the characters used today.

Search This Blog

Nee's Language Blog