Monday, March 19, 2012

The most multi-lingual student in Britain

Here's an article about Britain's most multi-lingual student, who at the age of 20 is fluent in 11 languages.

Alex, who was brought up in London and went to Latymer School – one of the country's leading fee-paying schools – reckons he had a head-start. "My mother is half Greek and she spoke to me in Greek and a little bit in French when I was young," he says. "My dad had a job in Japan at a university for four years and we went out to visit him."...

For the record, the 11 languages he speaks fluently are English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian. He took A-levels in German, Spanish and Ancient Greek – and also studied French and Latin at GCSE level.
 That's an impressive list, although it should be noted that four of the languages in which he's fluent are really just modern Latin, which he studied to the GCSE (roughly the equivalent of the old year 10 School Certificate in Australia).

And in related news, this article explains why bilinguals are smarter.

1 comment:

Sophia said...

Only slightly jealous of this kid.