Guest Post: Daniel Owen – Recruitment Consultant for Euro London Appointments, Multilingual Recruitment Specialists. Daniel has written for us twice before (links below) and has a unique perspective to offer our readers in regard to what employers are looking for when it comes to bi- or multilingualism in the workplace and in the job market.

By Daniel Owen

Working at Euro London Appointments, Europe’s largest independent multilingual recruitment consultancy, new jobs come in daily for us to recruit for. These jobs are far ranging across many different sectors and at many levels of the pay scale but the one constant that they do have is that they all require the knowledge of at least one other language, sometimes even three or…  read more

When I went back to school to study French I had a lot of people… and I mean a lot of people say to me, “So, you’re going to be a teacher, right?

“No?

“Well, what are you going to do with a degree in French?!”

I’ll tell you what… a lot!

As part of building this blog into a resource for language learners and teachers, we are kicking off a new series of guest posts by people who use multiple languages in their everyday work. You can expect to hear from industry leaders, international firms, artists, and individuals to get their perspective on why, and how bilingualism and multilingualism are important in the workplace.

We are happy to say that the search for…  read more

As part of our series on Language in the workplace, we will have guest contributors share their stories about how they use their language skills at work. Here, Juliana Rambaldi, opera singer.

by Juliana Rambaldi

It’s a lucky thing I turned out to be an opera singer. I love singing, and I love learning languages. Luckily for me, opera singing is all about voice and language.

Opera comes in a variety of flavors, but most of the great works are written in Italian, German, and French, with some important pieces in English, Russian and Czech. It’s vital to be able to sing and be understood in the top 3 (although admittedly, it’s hard to understand the words when we hit those high…  read more

Yesterday’s interview with Michael Erard was fun, informative, and lots of other adjectives besides.
He’s a linguist and author who has written about language in the New York Times, Slate, Wired, Science, the New Atlantic and more. He recently released his second book, “Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners”, an investigation into super-learners who speak a whole slew of languages – 6, 12, or even 50. Yep, that’s a thing, unreal though it may sound.

I asked him questions from our members – a mix of language enthusiasts around the globe, including teachers, linguists, monolinguals aspiring to learn their first language, and polyglots working to improve their fluency in several. Michael shared some fascinating insights into…  read more

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Meet Michael Erard, PhD, a highly accomplished linguist and author. He’s an expert in all things linguistic, from the psyche of language learners to the intricacies of rhetoric. Not only is he skilled at illuminating the complexities of language, but he’s done so in such publications as The New York Times, Science, Wired, Slate, The Atlantic, and New Scientist.

He practically wrote the book on hyperpolyglotism. No, wait – he DID write it.

Erard’s second book, “Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners”, is about the rare birds who speak 6 or more languages and the upper limits of…  read more

Guest Post – Selina Rawe: Socio-cultural Anthropologist
When a language dies, the culture it once belonged to loses some of its essence. Sad though this feels, in a rapidly globalizing and industrializing world, many social groups face such significant change that the loss of a way of life and, indeed, an ancient language, is inevitable.
Take, for example, the life and death of Nushu. Nushu, which means “women’s writing”, developed in the Jiangyong county in Hunan Province, China. The story behind how it started and the continuing story of the practitioner’s lives demonstrated the culture that arose from this language, and also shows why, when the last “practitioner” died in 2004, that part of the culture died too.

It is believed to…  read more

There’s been a lot of excitement lately about the phenomenon of hyperpolyglotism: fluency in a staggering 6 (or more!) languages. Rare but omnipresent throughout the centuries, people conversant in as many as 12 or even 20 languages are surfacing more frequently than ever before – especially as new technology shrinks the world.

A recent Collins competition to find the UK’s most multilingual student resulted in the discovery of Alex Rawlings, whose story about teaching himself 11 languages made it to the BBC.

Then Timothy Doner, a 16-year-old who has already taught himself over a dozen languages, was featured in the New York Times.

For many of us, this is a reality beyond our grasp—mind-boggling to even imagine. We who struggle to master even 2 languages…  read more

As a Livemocha blog reader,  you’ve likely already heard plenty about the benefits of bilingualism. But who doesn’t love a well-written article from a credible news source that makes it fun to learn about the complex science of the brain?

A recent article in the New York Times gave a spot-on explanation of why, and in what ways, bilinguals are smarter. Check out the excerpt below, or read the full article.
Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only…  read more

SABAM, the Belgian collecting society for music royalties, has taken their role of policing copyright law to an unexpected level. Check out this post about SABAM’s recent decision to start charging fees to Belgian libraries for reading copyrighted stories to kids.

An excerpt:
This morning, word got out in Belgian media that SABAM is spending time and resources to contact local libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start charging fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids.

Volunteers. Who – again – READ BOOKS TO KIDS.

SABAM got in touch with the library to let them know that… they should start coughing up cash for the audacity to read stories from copyrighted books out loud. The library rep calculates that…  read more

Almost fifty students ages 16 – 22 entered the Collins Livemocha Most Multilingual Student in Britain competition, kicked off last year to mark the launch of the Collins Livemocha Active courses in French, Spanish, Italian and German. Nearly half of the entrants spoke four languages or more, but two entrants, including our winner, Alex Rawlings, amazed us by being able to speak over ten languages.

We were mightily impressed by the range of languages spoken by all entrants: the more traditional European languages were well represented, while some students spoke languages such as Azerbaijani, Balochi, Farsi, Pasto, Igbo, Bulgarian, and Dari. Appearances were also made by Gaelic, Latvian, Esperanto, Cantonese, Japanese, Arabic, Dutch, and Sindhi.

Eleven judges tested Alex’s language skills and each…  read more