Matthew Youlden speaks nine
languages fluently. Check out this video in which he speaks English, Irish, German,
French, Hebrew, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian.
Matthew Youlden
speaks nine languages fluently and understands more than a dozen more. He’s
what is known as a polyglot, a member of the multilingual elite who speaks six
or more languages fluently. He’s also a sociolinguist who studies the
revitalization of minority languages. But to see him in action on a daily basis
– deftly and comfortably talking to native-speakers in their own languages –
suggests that he’s more than a polyglot. Matthew, who is originally from
Manchester, England, is a language chameleon: Germans think he’s German,
Spaniards think he’s Spanish, Brazilians think he’s… Portuguese. By his own
account, Matthew has mastered a staggering number of languages by utilizing abilities
that we all possess: persistence, enthusiasm and open-mindedness. According to
Matthew, the more languages you speak, the more points of view you have:
“I think every
language has a certain way of seeing the world. Each is a different worlds – a
different mindsets. I couldn’t possibly choose only one language because it
would mean really renouncing the possibility to be able to see the world in
many different ways. So the monolingual lifestyle, for me, is the saddest, the
loneliest, the most boring way of seeing the world. There are so many
advantages of learning a language; I really can’t think of any reason not to.”
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