Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

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einzelne
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby einzelne » Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:47 pm

Dragon27 wrote:The problem is that something being "unsuspected" (in this case - language skills) is not a well-defined objective property. We're basically sharing here personal experiences - I found out that this famous person knows languages and I had no idea!


My thoughts exactly. I’m happy to see that Leibniz is being discussed here as a celebrity (just imagine tabloid covers: Newton vs Lebniz — what a wonderful world it must be!) but in his case I’m not surprised at all.
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby mentecuerpo » Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:17 pm

The Colombian pop music singer Shakira gives short interviews in six languages.

Shakira is a native Spanish speaker, so all the six languages she speaks are derived from Latin.

Learning to Speak Romance languages is easy to achieve for any native speaker of one of them.

I have not seen Shakira speaking other European languages besides English; I have not seen her speaking in any different language that is a non-Latin dialect, as I would imagine.

The other thing is that she speaks in short interviews, so she may have the script prepare for all these languages, and Shakira may sound more proficient than she is, but not bad for a Latin American pop artist.

https://youtu.be/LpdKT_A5AW4
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby SCMT » Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:26 pm

Nigerian native and NBA great Hakeem Olajuwon:

https://www.playerswiki.com/hakeem-olaj ... activz.com

Besides, Hakeem has fluency in many other languages apart from English. Reportedly, he is fluent in French, Arabic, and the Nigerian languages of Yoruba and Ekiti.

EDIT: And with the increasing trend toward the globalization of professional sports, I would assume there are many, many more polyglot athletes. Hakeem "the Dream" is just the first that came to my mind.
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby Cavesa » Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:52 pm

mentecuerpo wrote:Shakira is a native Spanish speaker, so all the six languages she speaks are derived from Latin.

Learning to Speak Romance languages is easy to achieve for any native speaker of one of them.

I have not seen Shakira speaking other European languages besides English; I have not seen her speaking in any different language that is a non-Latin dialect, as I would imagine.


She also speaks Arabic, sometimes sings in it, and there are some bits of interviews on youtube in it. If I remeber correctly, she is of Lebanese descent
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:08 pm

Lara Fabian (singer) speaks French, Spanish, English and Italian.
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby IronMike » Wed Apr 14, 2021 1:02 am

Ug_Caveman wrote:I genuinely didn't realise Diane Kruger was a German native when I first watched National Treasure her American accent was so good. From what I've heard from native francophones, she is equally competent in French as she is in English.

I saw her in a Russian (Russophone) movie many years ago. Can't remember the name. (A Perfect Plan?) I thought her Russian was good, but again might have been taught for the film.

Interestingly, my wife ran into her during the filming. My wife was hiding from rain in a bookstore in downtown Moscow, and Kruger was sitting on her phone in a corner of the store. My wife said it was obvious who she was. (National Treasure was a family-favorite in this house!)
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby mentecuerpo » Wed Apr 14, 2021 3:39 am

Cavesa wrote:
mentecuerpo wrote:
She also speaks Arabic, sometimes sings in it, and there are some bits of interviews on youtube in it. If I remeber correctly, she is of Lebanese descent


You are right; many of her first Spanish songs have an Arabic sound, making the songs sound unique, different from most Spanish pop songs.

Unless she is a second-generation Lebanese Colombian immigrant, It may be hard for her to have learned the language. My experience is that third generations immigrants do not speak their grandparent's native tongue.
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby Querneus » Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:18 pm

Cavesa wrote:She also speaks Arabic, sometimes sings in it, and there are some bits of interviews on youtube in it. If I remeber correctly, she is of Lebanese descent

I was once interested in finding out about Shakira's Arabic, and I couldn't find evidence of anything except for the occasional short song bits... I couldn't find YouTube interviews of her saying something in Arabic just now.

I would love to know how I could get a decent edited version of this song, in which she sings in Arabic for a stretch, though... And she sings it while a guy plays something that looks like a koto or guzheng, too! I dislike it when performers or musicians play awesome songs in concerts and never release them. :(
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby s_allard » Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:01 pm

As I survey this list of celebrity polyglots, I can’t help asking how did they acquire these great language skills ? A bit of snooping around the internet points to a few major factors :

1. Upper class or aristocratic family background
2. Parents of different languages
3. Growing up and living in different countries
4. Attending exclusive private schools
5. Exposure to other languages at a young age
6. Work in fields that require voice training (e.g. film, theatre, singing, etc)

These factors do not apply equally to all the celebrities listed here of course. But one thing is quite clear, at least in my mind : the earlier you start the better. This is a banal observation of course but it also says that learning a foreign language to high levels of proficiency, especially pronunciation, becomes more difficult with age.
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Re: Unsuspected celebrity polyglots

Postby badger » Sun Apr 25, 2021 1:55 am

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, is something of a polyglot according to wikipedia:

"Williams speaks or reads eleven languages: English, Welsh, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, and both Ancient (koine) and Modern Greek. He learnt Russian in order to be able to read the works of Dostoevsky in the original."

I'm not sure if he's on Instagram though.
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