Multilingualism

I can speak 2 languages well enough to get by in every day situations in those languages. I’ve been (semi) actively trying to learn a new language (German) over this past summer. It’s difficult to find a tool that is an easily affordable, quality product that will keep me entertained long enough to properly learn a new language.

First I’ll give you a little bit of background information. I grew up in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Ontario is a predominantly english speaking province, but the location where this varies is once you start getting close to the Quebec border. Ottawa is located right on the Ottawa river (or if you are from Quebec, the Outaouais river), and actually has a noticeable amount of french. The other thing that helps with this is that the Canadian federal government has many branches located in Ottawa (including Parliament), and, as per the Official Languages Act,

the Constitution of Canada also provides for guarantees relating to the right of any member of the public to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any institution of the Parliament or government of Canada in either official language

As a result, I grew up in a very bilingual friendly environment. My mother is French-Quebecois and speaks both english and french, and my father is from Ontario and only speaks english. My mother insisted that I receive education in french, so I attended elementary school in french. After elementary school, my father wanted to ensure that I had received education in english before I went to University, so I was enrolled in a mixed language program in an english high school. Over time I have lost some of my ability to speak french simply because I haven’t been using it very much. I understand french very well, but I have trouble partaking in conversations or writing in french.

I’d never really been interested in learning other languages simply because I felt that, knowing 2 languages, I was already ahead of the curve compared with the overwhelming majority of people who only knew a single language. In April and May of this year, I visited and traveled throughout Europe. One of my early stops was Paris. Whevener I was out and needed to speak with anyone, I always found myself wishing I hadn’t lost my french, and found myself wishing I could communicate better with the people I was encountering. It was then that it dawned on me that France was the only country along my trip (other than England) that I would be able to easily communicate with the locals. I would be going through countries that spoke Czech, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, and many other languages, and I wouldn’t be able to understand any of them.

It turned out that I ended up being very lucky in a few ways. Firstly, most of the locations we went to were, at the very least, accustomed to having english-speaking tourists visit and spoke enough english that I could communicate that way. Secondly, a friend of mine on the trip introduced me to a mobile application that teaches its users languages. The application is called Duolingo (more on that later though). Seeing as I wouldn’t be able to learn nearly enough italian in time before we reached Italy, I decided on learning german. It was a long and arduous process, but I learned enough german that I was able to recognize and understand words written on signs, and make some very basic (and laughable) orders in restaurants. Since the trip, however, I’ve slacked off a decent amount on keeping my german current and learning new things.

Here are a few reasons why you should strive be able to speak at least 3 different languages (information sourced from the Wikipedia articles listed at the bottom of this post):

• There are 20 different languages that at least 1% of the world’s population speaks
• English is only the 3rd most (natively) spoken language, with Mandarin being (natively) spoken by more than 2.5 times as many people
• There are 6 different official languages of the United Nations (English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic)
• Traveling through Europe, you will encounter more than 15 different languages

Given this information, I am challenging myself, and you, to learn a new language by the end of 2014. I will be using Duolingo to learn German, but they also offer Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese on their mobile app and web application. They have Dutch, Irish and Danish currently in beta on their web application. You can view the languages here, sign up here, download the iOS app here, or download the Android app here. If you’d like to challenge yourself (and me) to keep current with your learning, you can follow me here and you’ll be able to see my progress.

Best of luck with your learning!

Data Sources:

• Languages by Number of Native Speakers
• Languages by Total Number of Speakers
• Official Languages of the United Nations