I wasn’t originally planning to post Jessica Contrera’s Washington Post story (archived) about a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages; after all, I’ve done a bunch of posts about polyglots (e.g., 2007, 2008, 2015, 2020, and of course Michael Erard’s Babel No More). But I soon realized this was exceptionally well done — Contrera spent months with her subject, 46-year-old Vaughn Smith, and interviewed all sorts of people about him — and I couldn’t resist sharing it. Here are some excerpts:
“So, how many languages do you speak?”
“Oh goodness,” Vaughn says. “Eight, fluently.”
“Eight?” Kelly marvels.
“Eight,” Vaughn confirms. English, Spanish, Bulgarian, Czech, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Slovak.
“But if you go by like, different grades of how much conversation,” he explains, “I know about 25 more.”
Vaughn glances at me. He is still underselling his abilities. By his count, it is actually 37 more languages, with at least 24 he speaks well enough to carry on lengthy conversations. He can read and write in eight alphabets and scripts. He can tell stories in Italian and Finnish and American Sign Language. He’s teaching himself Indigenous languages, from Mexico’s Nahuatl. to Montana’s Salish. The quality of his accents in Dutch and Catalan dazzle people from the Netherlands and Spain. […]
How did he get this way? And what was going on in his brain? But also: why was he cleaning carpets for a living?
To Vaughn, all of that is missing the point. He’s not interested in impressing anyone. He only counted his languages because I asked him to. He understands that he seems to remember names, numbers, dates and sounds far better than most people. Even to him, that has always been a mystery. But his reason for dedicating his life to learning so many languages has not.
His origin story:
He thought, at first, that there were two languages. English, like his dad spoke, and Spanish like his mom spoke. Vaughn liked visiting his family in Orizaba, Mexico, liked the way the Spanish words sounded in his mouth.
But growing up in Maryland, he often tried not to use them. He didn’t want to feel even more different than the other kids. He was already browner than them. He already didn’t understand why they laughed at certain things, or why they seemed to be able to follow instructions from the teacher that made no sense to him. Spanish was his first secret.
When some distant cousins of his dad’s came to visit from Belgium, they used words different than Vaughn had ever heard. Vaughn became more and more frustrated that once again, he couldn’t understand.
“I was like, ‘I want that power,’ ” Vaughn remembers.
From then on, he was entranced by every language he encountered. His mom’s French record albums. A German dictionary he found at one of his dad’s handyman jobs. A boy from the Soviet Union who joined his junior high class. By then, one of Vaughn’s favorite places was the library. He checked out a beginner’s guide to Russian.
Soon after, he overheard a Russian woman in a grocery store.
“Здравствуйте, как поживаете?” Vaughn asked. Hello, how are you? He explained that he was trying to learn Russian.
He liked the look he put on that woman’s face.
“Like she was hit with a splash of happiness,” Vaughn remembers. […]
By 14, Vaughn was living with his dad again, in a basement apartment in Tenleytown, not far from D.C.’s many embassies. He no longer needed to fear looking different than his classmates because the student body at Wilson High School included kids from around the world. Kids who spoke other languages. Immediately, Vaughn had an in.
There was a clique of Brazilian students, so he started to learn Portuguese. He befriended a brother and sister who would write him lists of phrases in Romanian., and watch as Vaughn memorized them all. When he noticed a shy Ethiopian girl, he asked her to teach him Amharic.
On the weekends, he took the bus downtown to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, which he’d discovered had the city’s best selection of language books. The way Vaughn describes it, any time he reads something in a book, he can remember it almost perfectly. When he returned to school, he had even more to say, and more that he could understand.
In an environment where he never felt like he fit, he was connecting in a way that no one else could.
But by 17, his mom had moved him back to Maryland. Vaughn tested into the highest-level Russian class at his new school, despite never taking classes before.
His high school diploma would be the last he’d receive. A counselor encouraged him to apply to a trade school for medical assistants, but he didn’t get in.
“Once that happened, I just gave up on the idea, and that was the very end of it,” Vaughn remembers.
And so began an adulthood marked by jobs that came and went. Vaughn has been a painter, a bouncer, a punk rock roadie and a Kombucha delivery man. His friends encouraged him to start a YouTube channel, but after a bout of depression, he stopped filming. On days when there aren’t carpets to clean, he helps a friend tint office building windows. He was once a dog walker for the Czech art collector Meda Mládková, the widow of an International Monetary Fund governor. She kept him on as a caretaker of her Georgetown home, which was the closest he ever came to having a career that utilized his languages. Visitors to the house spoke nearly every Eastern European dialect, and before long, so did Vaughn.
Beyond high school, he never had the chance to take a proficiency test in any language. And the more he learned, the more he understood the complexity of what it means to “know” a language.
Here’s the result of an fMRI scan the author and Vaughn took:
I’d assumed that Vaughn’s language areas would be massive and highly active, and mine pathetically puny. But the scans showed the opposite: the parts of Vaughn’s brain used to comprehend language are far smaller and quieter than mine. Even when we are reading the same words in English, I am using more of my brain and working harder than he ever has to.
This matches what the researchers have found in other hyperpolyglots they’ve scanned.
“Vaughn needs less oxygen to be sent to those regions of his brain that process language when he is speaking in his native language,” Malik-Moraleda explains. “He uses language so much, he’s become really efficient in using those areas for the production of language.”
A bunch of experts are quoted, including Michael Erard, and there’s a good explanation (including a chart) of the various levels of “knowing” a language; best of all, there are audio clips of him saying sentences in many of the languages mentioned (including translations). As a copyeditor emeritus, I am contractually obliged to mention that the Spanish word presented as “intelligente” should have only one l, but I hope that won’t dissuade you from reading this excellent article and admiring its subject (Erard says he’s often more inclined to believe in someone’s language abilities when they don’t seek out chances to perform or monetize their skills, and that’s certainly the case here). And although I try to avoid getting into politics and suchlike, I have to say the American educational system clearly failed this guy. There’s nothing wrong with cleaning carpets, but his talents could surely be put to better use. (Thanks, Bonnie!)
The more languages one “knows,” the less well one knows each of them.
@hat
I think the only employee jobs that require just language speaking ability are call centre type jobs, and given the type of jobs he does, I have the impression he might prefer something outdoors or with more face to face contact.
The Washington Post also has a Youtube video about the story available here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vd-u6lrXMNs
Edited to add: the man could also do translation and interpretation work. Given that he lives in the Washington D.C. area there must be a lot of training and work available in those fields close to him, no? Since he values the human contact aspect of learning languages I think he might be well suited to working as an interpreter.
@pancho
I don’t know how it works in the US, but here interpreter jobs normally require the applicant to have passed a very tough set of exams, usually after several years of intensive study….
@PlasticPaddy, in the United States I believe it varies by state and I think it might also depend on what level and type of interpretation. Where I live I think ( it’s been a while since I looked into it ) I would have to pass a test and possibly be certified to work for the local hospital, but I would definitely have to study and become certified to become a court interpreter and it is more difficult, yet I’m not sure I would still need an undergraduate degree or not ( again, it’s been a long time since I looked into it.)
I’m sure if he wanted to work for embassies or federal agencies he would need a lot of training and study but at least it would give him a goal to strive for, and work at a lower and local level, like at health clinics and schools, might be more within reach for him but it really depends on how things are set up in Maryland, or Virginia or the District of Columbia.
I suspect he already has a bit of practical, every day experience. Both he and I are the sons of immigrant mothers and like a lot of children of immigrants I bet he has had to translate for his mother since early childhood as I did.
(This is why why I had looked into interpretation a number of years ago, because I was having to interpret regularly for a family member at the local hospital, and one of the employees ( I think she was an official interpreter herself ) thought I would be good at it, as did the official who interviewed a relative of mine for his citizenship test.)
The more languages one “knows,” the less well one knows each of them.
Like many impressive-sounding generalizations, that is sometimes true and sometimes not.
I think the only employee jobs that require just language speaking ability are call centre type jobs, and given the type of jobs he does, I have the impression he might prefer something outdoors or with more face to face contact.
But the reason he has “just language speaking ability” is that he was dumped by the educational system, which saw him as just more brown-skinned cannon fodder. If he had been from a well-off white family, I guarantee you he would not have wound up doing “the type of jobs he does.” Maybe he would have been an interpreter, maybe a government worker (State Department seems a likely fit), maybe who knows what?
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
If he had been from a well-off white family, I guarantee you he would not have wound up doing “the type of jobs he does.”
Well, maybe. In the article he suggests he may be on the spectrum. It is extremely common for autistics of any race or ethnicity to be under-employed.
The only thing I can say definitively is that it is very unlikely that his guidance counselor at school would not have more aggressively pointed him towards college – but even then, lots of white autistics, no matter how smart we are or how many special skills we have, still end up with a distinct lack of formal education, long before we hit the ends of what we could have learned with proper support.
What impresses me is not just his unique talent, but his active curiosity.
Truth be told, there are not many jobs which require polyglots. Diplomatic interpreters specialize in particular areas and need to be fluent in four or five languages. Medical or court interpreters will have their hands full with just one or two languages.
However, someone who can pick up languages quickly would make a great field linguist. Being able to get quickly to monolingual interaction is a great and rare talent.
But the reason he has “just language speaking ability” is that he was dumped by the educational system, which saw him as just more brown-skinned cannon fodder.
Right on.
However, he seems to be as moderately happy as myself and anyone else I know. From my own experience with other people trying to influence me in this or that direction, I get bristly when I see this being done to anyone, for whatever well-meaning reasons. Only now that I’m 73 have people stopped regretting to my face that I didn’t become a math professor, and that I apparently do not intend to return to the States.
I now have the Invincible Cane of Impotent Outrage, and nobody is going to take it from me.
I had learned of this article from Tweeter languagejones (“PhD from @penn on regional accents in AAE”) who was underwhelmed by the competence demonstrated. I do not have the competence to adjudicate.
The first “tweet” at molly’s link is in the same vein as my last comment:
# I cannot believe @washingtonpost ran that polyglot article. Let that poor man have a hobby without subjecting him to scrutiny from people like me. #
In the article he suggests he may be on the spectrum. It is extremely common for autistics of any race or ethnicity to be under-employed.
It is also common for autistics to be well employed, but that requires them to be seen as the kind of person who is suited to such employment. I wrote a whole rant about this that has been lost to the vagaries of computerdom, so you’ll just have to imagine it.
However, he seems to be as moderately happy as myself and anyone else I know.
Sure, and that’s great! But he would probably appreciate the chance to be moderately happy in a better paid and more prestigious job.
Language Jones sounds like a real jerk, of a sort that is all too common on the chest-beating internet.
someone who can pick up languages quickly would make a great field linguist
Well, it couldn’t hurt …
Not sure that it’s enough, though. You need the desire (and ability) to pull things apart to see how they work, and the ability to explain it all to other linguists afterwards. You can be very good at picking up languages without any of that.
His friends encouraged him to start a YouTube channel, but after a bout of depression, he stopped filming.
That doesn’t sound to me like he’s living (or has lived) a particularly happy life.
People with mild to moderate autism spectrum disorders are more likely to suffer from depression. And while many of them do find good, well-paying jobs, getting to that point can be more difficult that it is for most people; coming from a poor, minority background just piles extra difficulty on top of that. These days, I worry a lot about how my teenaged son is going to do out in the world. Even though his condition is fairly mild, and he comes from an affluent, well-educated, well-connected family environment, it’s plain to see that he is probably going to have lifelong problems with certain things.
DE: all true, which is why I wonder what education and training could do to provide a direction for this talent. But even without that, facility in the language alone can help a lot in languages where there are not enough people around to record spontaneous conversations and such.
From the article:
[Edit: That was in response to a (sigh) deleted comment.]
The mismatch between “polyglot” and “linguist” maybe (partly) explains the mismatch between Jessica Contrera’s take and the disobliging comments of languagejones; making frequent mistakes in a language is in no way incompatible with being pretty good at actually communicating in it at length (indeed, the phobia of mistakes instilled by foreign-language schoolteachers has surely proved a great way of impeding the development of actual fluency.) Two words:
H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N
Stu, can you get an ICoIO on Amazon, or does it grow organically from our Fists of Impotent Outrage at a certain stage of decrepitude? I feel a need to know before it is too late.
But he would probably appreciate the chance to be moderately happy in a better paid and more prestigious job.
That’s questionable, IMO. Prestigious jobs may pay better, but they also come with greater responsibilities, the need to deal with a wider range of people, bosses who get shirty if you don’t deliver your deliverables on time, etc etc. Such things can be highly off-putting to people such as Vaughn Smith.
For my own part, I was never particularly happy in paid employment and spent much of my life freelancing, even though I passed up the opportunity for career advancement, more money, and prestige (whatever that may be). But I was happier that way.
I think that in any large city he could be a functional interpreter for social service agencies, hospitals, police forces, et al. The criteria for this are different than for business or diplomatic translators.
Here in Portland there are (as I remember) over 1000 Mayan Central Americans or Mexicans who speak one particular Mayan language and not much Spanish. I guy who was good at picking up languages at the conversational level would be invaluable. Other relatively rare languages spoken here are Somali, Nepali, Chuukese (Trukese) (Lao) and Mon-Khmer. The list would be different for other cities — there used to be many Hmong here but I believe they moved to Minnesota.
Refugees often come here with no language skills, and when families come the older members often have trouble with English even f the younger members learn relatively quickly.
In the NHS, there are strict-bordering-on-outright-stupid rules for interpreters. Ultimately, this is because people are afraid of being sued. I have had a Hakka-speaking social support worker refuse to translate for her monoglot Hakka-speaking client whom she accompanied to the clinic, because her organisation had told her outright not to. Not an isolated example, alas.
What makes this particularly ineffably stupid is that there are (of course) not nearly enough actual translators. Accordingly, management threaten us with dire threatenings to use only telephone-contact translators. The radical inadequacy of this model of communication is unclear to such people, who presumably also think that Google Translate is magical and that languages are bags of words.
That comma completely threw me off, BTW. It implies 8 is the total number.
That’s questionable, IMO.
Well, that’s your opinion. I would be more interested in his. Everybody’s different, you know. And I don’t know what you mean by “people such as Vaughn Smith”; all we know about him is what we read in the article, which is not nearly enough information to make judgements on what he needs or wants. (I’m setting aside my dislike for the entire idea of “people like that.”)
That comma completely threw me off, BTW. It implies 8 is the total number.
No it doesn’t, it represents a pause in speaking; I myself would say and write it that way. Your way would be more likely if it were part of a larger structure: “Eight fluently, ten not so well, and fifteen quite poorly.”
Does anyone recognize the snippet of poetry he’s writing in Gaelic at the 20 second mark of the video?
Ná haboir m’ainm leis an bh[…]
a labhoirfaidh im dhiaidh i do chluais
a bhéorfaidh anior(?) ehugat(?)
gealach is grian
Google Translate gives me:
Do not name my name with the […]
who will speak butter in your ear
to bear anior ehugat
moon and sun
I may be misreading the words “anior ehugat”, or maybe he’s misspelled them.
That’s what’s intended: 8 fluently, 25 less fluently (before the 25 turn out to be 37).
What are you talking about? Here’s the passage, to refresh your memory:
Eight. What he goes on to say later is irrelevant to the comma.
It looks more like Irish, so we need Paddy, but I don’t think ‘ehugat’ is allowable Irish spelling either – my best guess is that he’s misspelt a form of ‘thugad’, ‘to you’, as ‘chugat’?
And I don’t think ‘im’ is intended as ‘ìm’, ‘butter’, either – more likely something like ‘am’. But hey, it’s poetry, what do I know!
(‘labair’ or ‘laboir’ in the first line, maybe?)
Aha (sort of) – https://modernkaitlin.blogspot.com/2003/09/good-afternoon-and-how-are-all-of-you.html
And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-aMLdQKWqg
“Does anyone recognize the snippet of poetry he’s writing in Gaelic at the 20 second mark of the video?”
https://ordealbymoleskine.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/eist-do-bheal/
I have thoughts on his language samples in the article, but I don’t want to judge them as I found the sound quality to be a bit lackluster.
Some impressions from the YouTube video.
1. I don’t find his Dutch accent from the one-sentence snippet to be “dazzl[ing]”. It sounds like an American English speaker speaking Dutch. His German accent wasn’t all that impressive either.
2. Listening to any polyglot discussion with Richard Simcott is like nails on the chalkboard for me. I have expressed to Stephen my frustration with so-called polyglots running through their mutual languages in that their conversations tend to sound like this:
• Hi, how are you?
• I’m fine. I hear that you speak Syldavian!
• Yes, I do. Syldavia is a beautiful country. Do you also speak Bordurian?
• Yes, I have learned some Bordurian. The countries do not like each other, but the languages are very similar.
• Yes, they are. I hope to go there someday. Have you been?
• No, I have not. Parlez-vous aussi français?
• Oui, je le parle…
Granted for a video of this length, I wouldn’t expect any depth, but I doubt that there was any in that conversation.
3. I appreciate them showing him using Duolingo, as even Duolingo admits that they only get learners to A2 competency. In fairness, that might be all one wants or needs; I’m using it myself right now to check out Ukrainian.
4. Having moved from the DC area in 2019, it was nice to see a bit of Falls Church. I know the café he was sitting in, although it’s relatively new unlike the phở restaurant and the toy store that neighbor it.
Also, I’m stunned that the language meetup he attends holds get-togethers at Dacha. That place was always so loud and so packed when I lived in the District.
In my country it’s not enough to know several languages fluently to be an interpreter, you need to learn special vocabulary and take an exam. University education is not necessary, it’s more common to take a professional course. Often those courses are part-time so the students have time to work alongside, but the course fee can be expensive unless you are lucky enough to be accepted to a free course. More to the point, the job of interpreter has much the same drawbacks as the job of a carpet cleaner: it’s difficult to find steady work and you often don’t know from week to week if you’ll have an income. It’s common to work for temp agencies or work as a freelancer. Also, the market is slow since a some potential customers wrongly think Google translate or whatever is good enough. If the school teachers would tell you to go to university just to become an interpreter, they would do you a disservice. Financially, you would be much better off working as a carpet cleaner and learn interpreting on the side.
I’m not sure I agree that not having post-secondary education is a tragedy. What I do think is a tragedy is the all too common attitude that some jobs are high status and some jobs are low status, and the pity that come with the low status jobs. The best job is a job you like and a job that pay the bills. That’s more important than prestige.
Then I should apologise to mollymooly for forgetting her, and to Irish for thinking ‘chugat’ is a silly spelling (although I still do)!
“Eight, fluently.”
It’s a mild garden path rather than ‘can’t be understood with a good faith attempt’, but I do agree with DM on the difference between ‘Eight fluently (and some others not fluently)’, and ‘Eight, (all of them) fluently’.
@Jen in Edinburgh and @mollymooly, thank you for identifying the language and the source text.
I figured it wasn’t original to him, but that just makes it all the more ridiculous/strange showing him (transcribing it? writing it from memory?). What was that supposed to show exactly? “Oooh, he’s writing foreign words!”?
Does punctuation represent prosody, or does it replace it, by supplying the grammar/ semantic/ pragmatic information that prosody supplies in speech? Either or both, depending on context, which may be ambiguous.
“Eight, fluently.”
This is an interview transcription. A pause is plausible.
Reading more into it is iffy,
imo.
snippet of poetry
I like this poem and I dislike the music.
Also, I’m stunned that the language meetup he attends holds get-togethers at Dacha. That place was always so loud and so packed when I lived in the District.
One evening I stepped into a café in San Francisco. The place looked lively, packed with people sitting around the tables. As I was asking for my coffee and pastry or whatever at the counter, I noticed something was really off, and realized the place was nearly silent. As I turned around, I saw that everyone was signing. There was a regular monthly meetup there.
What I do think is a tragedy is the all too common attitude that some jobs are high status and some jobs are low status, and the pity that come with the low status jobs.
Of course I agree, but the sad fact is that we have to live in the world as it exists and not in the perfect world of our imaginations, and I repeat that I suspect he would like to have been able to find out for himself whether a high-status job and better pay were worth it. Most of us, after all, whatever our philosophical ideas, do not voluntarily become carpet cleaners if we have “better” opportunities.
And I would have thought it was clear, but apparently it needs to be spelled out, that I am not saying that given the course of his life up to the present Smith could be plopped down in some prestigious job; rather I am saying that given his evident capabilities, if he had been given more encouragement and exposed to wider horizons from an early age it is vanishingly unlikely he would have wound up as a carpet cleaner. He might well have gotten a relatively prestigious job and then waxed philosophical about how his life was empty and unfulfilling, which is the kind of luxury available to those of us with more opportunities.
“I like this poem and I dislike the music.”
The tune is by John Spillane and the words by him and Louis de Paor, I suspect mostly the latter. The arrangement I dunno how to apportion between Spillane and Sinéad Lohan. It’s from 1999 and sounds a bit dated to me
I’ll give the tune itself the benefit of the doubt, because really all I hear is the heavy production and Lohan’s singing.
@ Craig, and everyone else who could answer:
What, in your opinion, are good sentences to showcase multilingual or polyglot skills? It’s extremely difficult to come up with an interesting sentence on the spot, so I would like to have a starting point in the case I find myself in the situation (one can always dream, right?).
@hat
You are perfectly clear, don’t worry
Whew!
@Moa, I actually reject the exercise itself. To me, the act of running through various platitudes about the languages one speaks and their respective cultures, in the languages themselves, seems artificial and too much like a sideshow attraction.
My multilingual friends and I tend to drop naturally into our various shared languages more as the mood strikes — and sometimes when “le mot juste” is in a different language 😉 — than to demonstrate anything special.
Otherwise, I use my various languages only in contexts where they benefit communication with my interlocutor. That seems more like what Mr. Smith does in general than what the Washington Post set him up to with Mr. Simcott.
I know someone who works as an interpreter in the court system, and there’s a lot more to it than just being able to speak a language.
And as he says, the job may require you to tell your client “You’ve been sentenced to fifteen years in prison”. A lot of people would not be comfortable in a job where you have to do things like that.
My grandfather’s interpreter job in the Great War consisted of telling Ukrainian teenagers in uniform that they would be shot tomorrow.
As far as I can tell, the alternatives here in Portland aren’t between a licensed competent interpreter and a self-taught incompetent interpreter, but between some interpreter versus no interpreter. They do rely on bilingual members of the community the person in question belongs to, but having someone able to speak a handful of languages as needed in a particular area would be useful.
As it is, people in various jobs get bilingual points for the least smattering of Spanish, the most common single non-English language here and (I think) in most places.
I think that when the interviewer marvels, he’s actually interrupting Smith, who was making a pause because he was still counting languages. The interpretation that he really only meant to mention 8 out of 37 does not seem realistic to me.
No, I think you’re wrong. As a native speaker, his response seems complete in itself. He’s saying “eight” and then making it more exact by adding “fluently.”
Of course it seems complete, but then it turns out to be too obviously incomplete to have been intended as complete.
I’d have written it this way:
It’s a matter of intonation. If “eight” had a falling intonation, “Eight. Fluently.”, it would mean “I speak a total of eight languages, all fluently.” If “eight” does not, and “fluently” does not have a phrase-final fall (as I imagine the case is here), it would mean “Of the languages I speak, eight I do so fluently…”
(If one were to translate this into Russian, would one use a dash between “eight” and “fluently”? Would it be less ambiguous?)
Of course it seems complete, but then it turns out to be too obviously incomplete to have been intended as complete.
You seem to be assuming people speak in complete, logical, and factually exhaustive sentences. I assure you they do not. They frequently say something off the top of their head, then realize it needs correction, expansion, or other modification.
In Celtic Tiger Dublin I had a Brazilian friend with no relevant qualifications who was on the list of people the Garda station could call to interpret for monoglot Lusophones. I presume that, if formal legal proceedings were initiated, the process was less wildwesty.
This urban legend predates the Celtic Tiger.
@ Craig
Thanks for the explanation! Your method seems to work well for you, but I’m less sure it’s a good method for a monolingual journalist who wants to make an interview about multilingualism… Perhaps?
@molly
This is clearly not an urban legend but an illustration of the Dubliner’s unwillingness to disappoint/admit ignorance, best illustrated by his giving directions to lost strangers without actually knowing the destination or the way to it. I also remember an interview with Che Guevara where a very happy Aer Lingus employee, perhaps not a Dubliner, served as interpreter (In fairness, I think that Che was on a very strict schedule and was not leaving the airport).
I once worked with someone who when asked a question would rather make up an answer than admit she didn’t know. Even if I was sitting right there, knowing the answer because it was part of my work. Drove me mad. (She wasn’t from Dublin, though.)
I wonder how useful Brazilian Portuguese is in Dublin.
@jen
You would be surprised. “One person in three in this town [Gort] is Brazilian”.
https://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1665-immigration/370200-little-brazil-in-gort-co-galway/
I am surprised, indeed. I was thinking about actual Portuguese, from ships and lorries.
@mollymooly: It occurred to me that I don’t think I ever heard or read anyone use “Celtic Tiger” until after the 2008 financial crisis. However, in some discussions of how Ireland was so hard hit, due to the way its economy had developed around the turn of the millennium, people would bring up the “Celtic Tiger” moniker. There was usually at least an undercurrent of mockery from the commentators who brought it up. I assume that this was, at least partially due to the fact that the “Celtic Tiger” description seemed to have been self applied by Ireland, whereas it did not seem clear—or at least obvious—how the original “Asian Tigers” got that name (not that there wasn’t some criticism and sneering at the Asian Tigers after the 1997 Asian financial crisis had stalled their own rapid growth a decade earlier).
You are the one who assumes “eight fluently” was intended as a complete answer. I can’t imagine it was intended as complete by someone who speaks on the order of 37 in total. He clearly didn’t have the total count ready, but there’s no way he estimated 37 as 8.
I don’t speak in complete sentences that much myself, it takes me some effort to write in complete sentences; in speaking I constantly add stuff to the ends of my sentences after I thought I was done. I have plenty of experience of being interrupted by people who thought I had completed a sentence and didn’t mean to interrupt at all; and I think that’s what the interviewer did here. After all, it really doesn’t happen often that “8” isn’t a complete answer to that question!
You are the one who assumes “eight fluently” was intended as a complete answer. I can’t imagine it was intended as complete by someone who speaks on the order of 37 in total. He clearly didn’t have the total count ready, but there’s no way he estimated 37 as 8.
Of course it was. If someone asked me how many languages I speak, I might well say “Three, fluently” (perhaps adding “… although my French and Spanish have gotten rusty from disuse”). One doesn’t want to bore people, and one doesn’t want to brag. Then if the questioner proceeds with “Come on, I know you know more than that,” I would proceed with the explanation of how well I knew which of the many languages I have dabbled in.
@Brett Altschul —
The neutral term within Ireland during the Celtic Tiger was “The Boom”, as in Ann Marie Hourihane’s 2001 book “She Moves Through the Boom”, and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s infamous 2006 statement “the boom times are getting even more boomer” (often misquoted as “even more boomier”). However, “Celtic Tiger” was coined in 1994, near the start of the boom, and was well known within Ireland, though only used ironically, being the kind of blarney one sells to tourists. Here’s a set of four cat-themed postage stamps issued in 2007, right at the end of the boom; the “Celtic Tigress” is hardly more on-the-nose than the “Fat Cat” and “Cool Cats”.
I don’t think anyone has posted this (from CBS evening news) — if they have, my apologies:
Meet the carpet cleaner who can speak 24 languages
That news item was edited carefully so you don’t ever hear him speak for more than a half-second or a second in any language, like flashing a scandalous but exciting body part. I have a sneaking belief that many people would, in fact, be uncomfortable hearing a foreign language spoken within their living rooms.
I need to get in touch with Vaughn Smith, can anyone help me please?
You might start by contacting the journalist: “Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post”.
That’s the photographer; Jessica Contrera wrote the story. But kudos for pointing Tish in the right direction!