The UK's Most Multilingual Student: Then & Now

[@cpnlsn88]

I find Alex Rawings hypnotic to listen to. The point about African languages is very valid. A lot of people from Africa do have a lot of languages as a norm. Yes it makes you question how languages, cultures and speaking groups are perceived.

[@UltimateMoralizer]

Alex Rowling is a very amazing, inspirational person. I love his videos and how he has such a passion for languages.

[@lumihiutaleitakaamos3949]

I’m quite similar. I grew up with a passion for languages and liked how the opened the key to different cultures. I’ve studied about 50 languages in total to varying degrees. I find it’s impossible to retain them all and speak the fluently, but passively I can understand quite a lot of languages, especially the written language.

[@arcticpolyglots]

Interesting conversation! The stuff Alex says starting from around 21 minutes about learning smaller languages reminds me about what I've talked with my wife. She also learns smaller and a bit random languages. The common thing is that Alex speaks English as a mother tongue and my wife Russian, so two huge languages. I am totally the opposite, as a native Finnish speaker who had to learn Estonian and Swedish as a child I already speak three quite small languages so now I want to focus on learning big languages. I wonder if this is a common phenomenon that polyglots who speak big languages and are used to the fact that almost everyone speaks their language to learn then some more random languages to have the feeling of being unique and to belong to an exclusive community like it was with my wife's Finnish studies. Then people speaking small languages as a mother tongue like I do, wanting to learn big languages.

[@keeganaustinreeve6417]

Oh that's interesting! Would ancient languages count as small ones? :) That makes sense though, because both small languages and large languages have different advantages. So, if you want maximum utility, you'd learn a couple large ones (say, to read a wide range of books or watch a lot of high budget movies which are not available in small ones) and a couple small ones (say, for a niche community that you'd not be able to access otherwise and maybe to understand a very unique lifestyle that cannot be very widespread, for example, a small fishing village in a remote region). Although, I'd say that Finnish and Estonian and Swedish are not extremely small, so I don't know whether you'd really get the maximum utility out of them, so to speak, unless you just like those regions a lot, but maybe medium sized languages like these also come with the best of both worlds: a unique group for whom you need to know the language to really connect with, *and* a large amount of media to read and watch.

[@fredericjanelle]

Bonjour, je ne comprends pas le concept de "big and small languages". Toutes les langues sont importantes. En fait, moins il y a de locuteurs d'une langue, plus chaque locuteur est important pour maintenir la vitalité d'une langue. Salutations du Québec!

[@christydalgaard]

Apropos small languages> I really want to learn the Hawaiian language. It’s such a beautiful language.

[@Kurdedunaysiri]

What happened with Tsakonian documentary ? I can not wait for it

[@Hinderlengjes]

Is there any remembrance now of our old languages teacher Derrick Herning, (originally from Fife) who became Polyglot of Europe away back when? Maybe 1970s? He died quite recently - perhaps a few years ago. I'm sure he spoke a lot more languages than the 11 languages Alex listed - including Gaelic, and all the prominent Romance (including Romanian) Germanic (including Faroese and Icelandic - he mainly taught German at school) and various Slavonic ones - he'd learned Russian as a national serviceman. (BTW - in Scotland we don't have any problem distinguishing Palma, Parma and indeed Palmer, which is what the subtitles coughed up! Maybe if Richard used his Scottish accent - which is very good - he'd be easier to understand!)

[@ramzidz6150]

36:00 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@elisesteele6939]

If you are want to learn a particular dialect, you might want to find a language partner that speaks that dialect. They'll know the dialect and the local lingo. Forget about the writing system. If I remember right, that's how the youtuber laoshu50500 (rip) learned so many dialects and then made courses to help other learn them. You might want to check out his videos.