I finally returned from my trip to the Cook Islands, New Zealand and Australia. I loved the layed back tropical paradise atmosphere of Roratonga, the green and clean nature of New Zealand, and the energy and optimism of Australia, and friendly people everywhere. But more than that, I was impressed by all the excellent and enthusiastic linguists (in the sense of competent speakers of many languages) that I met. Here are some more pictures. I also met with Cooper in Brisbane at the University of Queensland but it was raining and we were rushed, so no picture, sorry!
Here are some pictures, first of all, of Sydney linguists Alexis on the right, and Roy. Alexis speaks French and English flawlessly, being himself from New Caledonia. Roy is a programmer and speaks French, as well as Arabic, some Tagalog, and Aussie English of course, and is working on other languages including Indonesian if I remember correctly. He may correct me here.
Next are Andrew (in the middle) and Robert, both into multiple languages as well as computer programming. Robert in particular has an ability that stretches from Mandarin and Cantonese to Russian, Ukrainian, German and a few more, while Andrew is fluent in French and Chinese at least. We had a lively dinner with my wife Carmen in a Chinese restaurant in Sydney’s Chinatown.
1 comments on “The world is full of linguists!”
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I am very happy you met so many multilingual friends. : ) I am learning Chinese and I used to study French although my French isn’t too great since I rarely have the opportunity to speak it but since I have alot of opportunities to practice my Chinese it is getting better and better. But I love languages especially unique ones and have been studying a bit of Korean and Arabic. I think it is difficult to learn a language because it takes alot of time but if you practice and be patient you will be amazed by how well you improve. I am happy to read your articles and I have watched some of your videos as well. It is good to see other peoples ideas for language learning. Keep up the good work. : )