Dr. Aurea Diab knows 5 languages
Humans interact mainly through oral
communication. However, doing this is not easy because there are many different
languages around the world. Despite the fact that English, Chinese, Spanish,
Arabic and a handful of other languages dominate digital communication, the website,
Ethnologue: Languages of the World provides a table of the distribution of
languages by area of origin as of the year 2013, which is summarize here:
- Africa:
2,146 languages, 30.2 percent of all languages;
- Americas:
1,060 languages, 14.9 percent of all languages;
- Asia:
2,304 languages, 32.4 percent of all languages;
- Europe:
284 languages, 4.0 percent of all languages;
- Pacific:
1,311 languages, 18.5 percent of all languages.
It is important to say that the
Ethnologue lacks population estimates for about 4% of the languages because it
does not automatically extrapolate population estimates to the current year but
waits for reports from reliable sources.
When a person is a polyglot, communication
is easier. In addition, if one likes to
read, they know that reading a translated text is not the same as reading the
original text. There are slangs and expressions that only the one who knows the
language will understand. Even as watching a foreign movie without subtitles or
translation is more fun and it is also easier to understand.
When Pope John Paul II traveled around
the world he was able to speak with everybody. He was one example of a polyglot.
People feel more comfortable when they are talking with people that know their
language.
According to Ross Perlin, even in an era
of Google Translate and mobile translation apps, hyperpolyglots -- people who
can speak at least six languages, as defined by University College London
linguist Richard Hudson -- are increasingly valuable in the business world. Typically,
hyperpolyglots have deep fluency in a few languages and are notable for an
ability to quickly become proficient in dozens more. Some can pick up a new
language in a matter of weeks.
Andrew Gebelin, the director of European
proxy research, said polyglots who can quickly become proficient in new
languages are more desirable to the firm than someone with perfect fluency.
"If I were choosing between two candidates -- one who was semiproficient in
three languages and one who was fluent in one other language only -- I would
definitely gravitate toward the one with three," Gebelin said.
According to Oxford Dictionaries, being
a polyglot is knowing or using several languages. I interviewed a polyglot -
the Coordinator of the World Languages Program at Dillard University, Dr. Aurea
Diab. She knows 5 languages and wants to learn more.
Aurea Diab is from Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. She started to
study French and English in elementary school. When she was in high School, she
learned Italian. Since she had always been interested in languages. She got two
undergraduate degrees: one in Portuguese/English in Brazil and one in Spanish
in the United States. She then received a Master's in Romance Languages and
Ph.D in Linguistics. When she was 21 years old, she started to teach English in
Brazil. She has been teaching foreign languages at Dillard for 15 years.
Aurea is fluent in Portuguese, English,
and Spanish. She says nowadays she can understand, read, and write both French
and Italian, but she has difficulty speaking these languages because she does
not practice them. Whenever she travels though, after listening to the language
for a few days, she is able to speak it again.
Dr. Diab decided to study Italian
because she traveled to Italy once and fell in love with the language. She was
never interested in learning Spanish. However, when she moved to the United States
she decided to study it because it would be good for her career.
In addition, she started to study
German. However, she got sick and had to miss a few classes. She said when she
came back, she could not understand anything, so she dropped the class.
However, she will try again because she has many German friends and would like
to visit their families in Germany and to be able to speak to them. For Aurea,
German was the harder to learn. French and English were the easiest because she
learned them when she was a child.
When asked what caught her attention in
each language, she said that the Romance Languages (Portuguese, Italian, French
and Spanish) are very similar. In addition, Aurea said that the second language
that a person learns is the most difficult.
She likes to read and thinks that
reading a book in its original language is more interesting than reading a
translated one. Moreover, the fact that she can talk to everybody is awesome.
When asked for an advice to a language student, she was direct; “Practice every
day. Going to class only is not enough if you want to learn.”
Taynara Matos
Works Cited
Erard, Michael. "Multilinguals Get the Jobs" Al Jazeera America. 26 August 2013. Web 4 April 2014 <http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/26/polyglots-get-thejobs.html>
No comments:
Post a Comment