2023-10-30 06:09:00
Alex Rawlings, journalist and filmmaker, speaks 16 languages
Alex Rawlings was born 32 years ago in London. He grew up in one of the most multicultural and multilingual cities in the world. When he left his house during his childhood, he heard regarding fifty different languages. At his school, almost all of his classmates had at least one parent from another country. In his case, his father was born in the north of England, but his mother is of Greek descent.
“I remember that as a child when my mother tried to teach me the language that she had learned from my grandmother, I always answered in English. Until she was eight years old, she had hardly said any word in Greek and that worried my mother a lot,” Rawlings recalled in an interview with Infobae.
Then, her mother had an idea: take a trip to the town in Greece where her family had grown up. For the first time, Alex encountered people who did not understand English. She forced him to make an extra effort to speak the language that he had been absorbing for eight years, but that he had always avoided.
Over the summer, he began to dabble in the language. When she returned to England to start the new school year, his mother told her that she mightn’t stop speaking Greek all the time and everywhere. During that trip she not only internalized Greek. Being an international tourist destination, she had contact with German, Italian, French, and Dutch. At that moment, without realizing it, he had fallen in love with languages.
“I understood that languages were not just a game that my mother liked to play with me, but that they were a way to connect with people around the world and to escape the limitations that our native language and the place where we were born put on us. . “So I decided to try to learn all the languages in the world to break down barriers and borders and find people with whom I share interests, passions and friendships, even though language separates us.”
Rawlings masters little studied languages such as Catalan, Afrikaans and Zulu
Alex is part of a select group: hyperglots, people who speak more than ten languages. In his case, he is fluent in 16: in addition to his native English, he speaks Greek, German, Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Dutch, French, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Italian, Serbian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Zulu.
-How does your head work? At times don’t you feel on the verge of collapse with so much information inside?
-(Laughs) If I feel on the verge of collapse, I don’t think it’s because of the languages I speak. On the contrary, sometimes I think that speaking many languages is what saves me. Look, one thing I did notice with the many languages I learned is that the process becomes easier and easier for me, as I begin to perceive linguistic patterns and common aspects that – whether true or not – help me remember and retain more information. new. Learning languages that are not part of your culture also helps you see the world differently. It helps you think more flexibly and more creatively.
-For example?
-My native language -English- is a very rigid language when it comes to syntax and grammar. You can’t play with word order as much as in Spanish, Greek, Hungarian or Slavic languages like Russian or Serbian. English has a huge vocabulary that allows you to describe and express many emotions, but always in the same way and in the same order. I feel it when I speak English. I feel like I am more limited in the ways I have to express myself. On the other hand, by being able to play and rearrange the words in a sentence with more freedom in languages like Spanish or Greek, I feel like I have a lot more expressive freedom. And that, I say, is also noticeable in the cultures of those linguistic communities, right?
-Are we as we speak?
-I think that a lot of philosophy is codified in the linguistic constructions that each language has. For example, in English emotions are something that comes from oneself, like “I’m too lazy to do that today.” But in that expression, English gives you a responsibility for your emotions. You are the lazy one. On the other hand, in Spanish you would say: “I’m too lazy to do it today.” Laziness does not come from yourself, but from the world, so you are not so guilty of the emotion you feel. In Greek, I would say it very differently. You would say ‘βαριέμαι’, meaning that the idea of doing it ‘bores you’, also absolving yourself of guilt for not doing it.
Learning a foreign language requires regarding 300 hours of study, according to an expert
Estela Klett is a reference for multilingualism in Argentina. For more than 50 years she dedicated herself to language teaching and directed the Modern Languages department of the UBA. Today she is a consulting professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and believes that, to learn a foreign language, there are no secrets. It demands time and energy.
“The time depends on the person, the desire or motive that leads them to learn and the place where they do the learning. If you study in a country and learn its language of social communication (example: an Argentine speaker studies English in England or Australia), you will achieve your objectives sooner than if you study English in Argentina, in an educational institution,” explained Klett in dialogue with Infobae.
According to the expert, fluency when speaking a language that is not your own is acquired in at least 300 hours of classes at an institute. The factors that condition learning, she added, are age, motivation, practice and frequent study.
“The most effective method for learning a language is sustained interaction in the language studied. Textbooks that follow the guidelines of the communicative and actional approach for foreign languages tend to be effective in the hand of a committed teacher and a student eager to learn,” she remarked.
Alex Rawlings works as a freelance journalist, is also a writer and filmmaker. In 2012 he was recognized as “the UK’s most multilingual student”. As a hyperglot, he discovered and applies a learning method – which he put into his book “How To Speak Any Language Fluently” – that promises to master a language in three months.
For him, there are three key points that affect success in language learning. First, motivation. There has to be a “why I want to learn a language”. Second, the resources. Third, time.
“The list of languages that I speak may seem very random to someone who doesn’t know me, but the truth is that behind each language that I have managed to learn, there is a story hidden. There is a friendship, there is a trip, there is a writer or a film director that I like, or I have worked or lived in the country. Then, you have to see what resources you have at your disposal. Here we see the enormous inequality in the language market, as some have many resources (such as the main European and Asian languages), but others do not like all the minority or indigenous languages, such as the African languages of South Africa, where I find these days,” he noted.
Although the most important thing regarding his method lies in time. Or, rather, in the distribution of time. Rawlings recommends dedicating one hour per day to studying a language seven days a week, five or at least three during the first trimester of learning. He distributes that hour of study into three blocks: 15 minutes in the morning, then half an hour following lunch and, finally, another 15 minutes at night. In repetition and consistency in that not at all unrealizable scheme, he believes, lies the key to success. At least from his success.
The 15/30/15 method, he says, doesn’t feel like a burden to the trainee. He recommends the first 15 minutes, with the brain just activating in the morning, to review content from the previous day. The longest session, the 30-minute session, is aimed at learning new words, new grammatical structures, and improving pronunciation. The last 15-minute session is also intended to review the midday learnings. The emphasis on review is to establish concepts and have a feeling of progress. Breaks, according to his theory, help the brain unconsciously absorb information.
-Following that model, how long should it take to speak a new language fluently?
-There is no simple answer here. I recommend continuing, in principle, for three months, but each person learns languages differently, which is something that is not reflected well in the school system. Many people become disappointed in the classrooms and never devote themselves to learning a foreign language once more. The only way to overcome that is to try once more with an open mind and see what works for you and also what doesn’t.
-Can learning a language be finished at any time?
-The truth that all of us who dedicate ourselves to learning languages know is that the learning process never ends. There is always more to learn. You’re always going to make some mistakes. Some words are always going to escape you. The secret is to enjoy the process, not just want to get to the end. But, from the beginning, speak the language you chose as much as you can, take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way, and then you will see how you improve and gain more confidence.
Being a hyperglot allowed him to learn regarding new cultures without the language barrier.
Language is perhaps the most difficult barrier to overcome when it comes to meeting a person or delving into the history of a country or accessing a culture. Rawlings defines multilingualism as a passport that opened doors both in the great metropolises and in the most remote towns of the world.
“I mightn’t imagine my life without speaking so many languages. Learning languages is a passport that gives you the opportunity to enter spaces where you are normally not supposed to be. If I didn’t speak languages, I guess I’d still be in London looking out the window at the rain and thinking regarding how to pay the mortgage. All my friends would be English,” she warned.
The British journalist lived in seven countries despite his youth: the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Spain, and South Africa. And he also traveled a lot, both for pleasure and for work, invited to conferences or to give workshops like the ones he gave in Argentina and Brazil the only time he visited Latin America.
“With languages I have learned that there are many ways to live your life, and that there are more things worth achieving than just advancing little by little in a career that you have never been truly passionate regarding,” he reflected. “We get the opportunity to have a life only once. I hope that when I finish mine, I can say that I managed to get to know the world, see its corners, understand its beauties and its peculiarities. But the most important thing is to say that I have been able to communicate with people in their language, without forcing anyone to speak to me in mine.”
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