Many readers responded to our call for testimonies on the subject of multilingualism and its practical consequences. They described how, through family stories, expatriation trips and other adventures, they learned and then mastered between 3 and 7 languages.
Mixes, errors and flaws
Monika was born into a polyglot family and juggles between German, Flemish, English and French (as well as, to a lesser extent, Spanish). She evokes precisely this permanent game of back and forth between several languages for them and their loved ones: “Being polyglot allows us to communicate better because we find that a word is sometimes more suitable in another language than the one spoken at a specific time. Or one of us cannot find the correct word and offers it in another of our four languages. Yes, with age, we sometimes mix two languages, or even three!”
Mauricio, who is fluent in French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, English and Czech, recounts the same tendency to mix languages and accents. Marie-Laurence sees this phenomenon as an opportunity, as does Héléna (first name changed at her request). About these “rifts between [ses] spoken languages”, Helena writes:
“There is a jubilation in voluntarily using the syntax of another language in my mother tongue, that is to say the one I master to the point of assuming poetic licenses. There is also a jubilation in recognizing the syntax of another language in a written or translated text.”
The importance of sounds
All explain that, insofar as they are already plurilingual, learning a new language is easier phonetically. Pascal, for example, speaks French, Spanish and English but has difficulty writing certain words, learned only orally, such as cough (“cough”) in English. “After a little research, I found its spelling, but this curious incident made me think that words are often memorized with their sounds, as happens with children who cannot yet read and write. This faculty remains, even once we know how to write.”
Héléna says she can easily learn simple words or expressions in an unknown language by conversing (Persian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese…) and sees herself as the puppet of a ventriloquist.
A question of age?
Gerard, who converses in English and French (sometimes switching languages mid-sentence), remarks that his 9-year-old grandson, who has been bilingual since early childhood, never has a problem with involuntary slipping. from one language to another. Mauricio notes – and this is the majority opinion – that “children have fewer problems than parents with different languages”.
Monika observes, for her part, that multilingualism makes it possible to retain good cognitive faculties for longer:
My father is 100% unilingual, my mother is very good at languages but has never really had the opportunity to learn languages other than in immersion, during vacations. Guess who has dementia today…”
Professional benefits
Obviously, mastering several languages is also an asset in the professional world. Monika, who has lived in Canada, says that it was thanks to her French-English bilingualism that she was able to work for the Canadian federal government. Over the course of his career, this has allowed him to communicate better with his colleagues. Moreover, she became a specialist in German and French in a company in Colorado without ever having studied languages. “Even my rudimentary knowledge of Dutch is valued.”
“I am the language I speak”
We don’t express the same ideas and we don’t do it in the same way depending on the language we use. Anja-Hélène van Zandwijk, born in France to Dutch parents and now living in the Netherlands, describes a “impression of double personality which [l’] has disturbed in [sa] youth but [la] fascinates today”. Like all the readers who have written to us, she evokes a sentimental relationship with her languages and evokes “a constant struggle” et “a certain relationship of mistrust and uncertainty with each of [ses] two languages”.
Monika met her husband in France. For the couple, “French remains the sentimental language”:
“However, I grew up speaking German, and I stayed in Germany until I was 19. French and me is and always has been a love story!”
Although Monika uses German to communicate with her parents and brothers, French has remained a language of choice, “the one that[elle] used for counting, talking to babies and animals”.
Héléna, who speaks five languages, noticed that her voice changed depending on which one she was using: “I am told that the tone of my voice changes enormously depending on the language: it is lower in English and Italian, higher in French.”
“It’s as if my brain becomes different with each language. My personality, I would even say.”
“Furthermore, depending on the language used, the same fact or the same practical information can take on a different connotation, not only because of the vocabulary. There is probably a cultural layer assimilated with the language. […] Ultimately, I am the language I speak.”
She concludes her testimony with one regret, that of not having “Courrier international multilingual, with the possibility of reading the articles in the original text, including in unknown languages, as one reads bilingual editions”. Know, dear polyglots, that we always publish the URL links leading to the original articles that we use and that there are even editions of Courrier international in Portugal and Japan!