Multilingual people

Nowadays, speaking several languages is not only extremely helpful, world-oriented and attractive, but also not as seldom as you may think at first. Given that multilinguality is clearly more than just our daily business, we would like to present some facts about multilinguality to you - and we guarantee you that you will be surprised!

We want to start and finish this article with stars and starlets. In Hollywood, one has to be talented to make it big. Besides their acting talent, some world stars however have a further benefit: they speak several languages. Here is an excerpt: Oscar winner Natalie Portman (Black Swan) speaks English and Hebrew as mother tongues. Above that she learned German, Spanish and even Japanese. What linguistically impressive swan indeed. Jodie Foster, Oscar winner as well, is an equally true language talent: Apart from her mother tongue English, she also speaks French fluently. She's so good that the synchronization for French movies, in which she partakes as an actress, is actually done by herself. On top of that she also speaks a bit of Italian, Spanish and German. Hollywood’s breakthrough bad guy Christoph Waltz is also represented in the list of successful multilingual actors: He’s fluent in German, English and French and also synchronizes the characters he plays by himself. One could say he even owes his breakthrough to that talent: the role of SS-leader Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds was quadrilingual - Italian was the fourth language. 

Several languages, several faces

A study of the University of Hong Kong proved that people are noticed differently depending on what language they are speaking. Furthermore, the counterpart’s origin has an effect on the perception and assessment of the conversation. As an example, openness and extroversion are connoted “typically English”, whereas conscientiousness is generally understood as being a “typically Chinese” trait. Who know... being multilingual can also make you multi-personal. ;-)

Terms

Ever heard the of the word “polyglot”? A “polyglot” is a person who speaks lots of different languages. Although nowhere does it say how many languages one must speak, or how well, to be called “polyglot”. Well-known polyglots are, for example, Giuseppe Mezzofanti, Johan Vandewalle and Emil Krebs. And we’re not talking about people who speak, like, five languages. Emil Krebs spoke 68 languages in word and script. Sixty-eight! 

Artists

Back to our stars and starlets. A Wikipedia list proves that there are a many multilingual artists. You might be surprised how many world stars are among them. There is “Queen B” - Beyoncé. She’s singing in English as well as Spanish. Listen to her song "Irreplaceable" in the video! Vocal power Christina Aguilera is not to be outdone though; you can listen to her song “I turn to you” exclusive on alugha!

Moreover, Celine Dion offers “The power of love” in an unbelievably variety of eight! languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Japanese, Mandarin and German. Hottie Enrique Iglesias is our “Hero” in English, Spanish and Italian. Lady Gaga may not have been born this way, but nowadays she articulates in English, Italian and French. Robbie Williams and Ricky Martin are singing multilingually as well - in English and Spanish.

We ‘alughad’ their songs for you in one video as well!  

Hip-swinging queen Latina Shakira is also waiting to be viewed.

We could pursue this list for a very long time, for example with the legendary ABBA, on which we have recently reported.

But we don’t want to keep you from watching the videos any longer ;-)

So listen in, it’s worth it!

So this was our lesson about “multilinguality”, now go and enjoy your fav videos! :-) 

#doitmultilingual 

#singitmultilingual