Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/13/watch-this-tv-journalist-report-the-news-in-six-languages.html
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Anglophones speaking more than one language is already impressive.
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I do understand that for many people this is a kind of parlor trick that’s cool to watch. But the ability to communicate, even in a rudimentary fashion, in a non-native language opens amazing doors for people. I try to convey to native-English-speaking students that just being able to have a simple exchange with a Spanish speaker breaks down barriers in amazing ways.
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I need to learn Swiss French and German badly.
Native english speaker who got a degree in Japanese.
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Mr. Crowther is an impressive individual. The ability to communicate in so many languages has to make for a rich life. I struggle with Spanish but the little I know has opened lots of doors. I wonder where and when he started picking up his language skills. That should be a fine item to have on one’s resume.
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born in Luxembourg to a British father and German mother.
His CV is available there too.
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Thank you
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Luxembourg is perhaps the most multilingual country on Earth. It’s the only place I’m aware of where you almost have to speak multiple languages to be able to function in society- for instance, most newspapers are in German, while restaurant menus are in French. Their schools initially use Luxembourgish as the language of instruction, before switching to German at the age of about 7, then to French in high school. Even their Parliament is multilingual- bills are written in German and debated in Luxembourgish, but the official text when they become law is in French.
And that’s without taking into account the sizeable (45%) foreign population, many of whom are Portuguese, so Portuguese will be heard on a street in Luxembourg as much as English or the 3 official languages.
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Huh. I didn’t even know there was such a language as Luxembourgish until just now, I assumed they just kind of spoke French and/or German. I also assume the same (perhaps also incorrectly) about Switzerland.
There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as Liechtensteinian, though, in case anybody else was wondering :-|.
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This reminds me of watching the Olympics on Finnish television. There were Finnish sports journalists who were able to interview athletes from around the world following their events in multiple languages–Russian, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, etc–and of course in English when it was their only common language. All of it closed captioned in real time. That was just one of many ways in which their Olympic coverage was a million times better than ours in the U.S.
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So…with Portuguese basically being a dialect of Spanish (don’t @ me!), this becomes substantially less impressive.
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I am still impressed.
You are asking for trouble with your analysis of Iberian languages though. I understand that reading the two is easier than speaking them.
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Swiss German is quite different from standard German, though German-speaking Swiss people understand standard German. I think it’s a bit closer to Austrian German- at one point, I had three colleagues who were native German speakers, one each from Switzerland, Austria and Germany. The Swiss and the Austrian could speak German to each other but had to speak English if they wanted the German to understand them!
There is an official language of Switzerland which is only spoken there- Romansh- but it only has a few speakers in a relatively small area of the country.
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Yeah. But don’t get me started on how hard it is to conjugate in Ruritanian.
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That covers English, German, French and Luxembourgish right there
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For context: his German is a.b.s.o.l.u.t.e.l.y perfect. No hint of an accent or any wrong grammar and it has that unique TV journalist cadence that is different in every country. You wouldn’t be able to tell that he isn’t a native speaker (though he probably is, if his mother is German)
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From his bio (already linked above):
He is a native speaker of English, German and Luxembourgish as well as a fluent speaker of French, Spanish and Portuguese.
He probably learned Portuguese before Spanish.
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Sorry, I can’t really write a coherent comment right now - my basement seems to be flooding…
Daaaaaaaammmmmmnnnnnnnnnnn!!!
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psh, but you guys, I can write OOP in Javascript AND Actionscript 3.0 (that’s right, I’m into dead languages…)
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His German is absolutely flawless and 100% accent free 
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