A 20-year-old Montreal linguistics student can speak 19 languages that he learned though internet videos, music, films and by having a conversation with friends.
Watch the student who can speak 19 languages
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Georges Awaad can speak Arabic, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Hebrew, Romanian, Swedish, Georgian, Armenian, Cantonese, Korean, Esperanto, and Dutch.
Awaad’s first language is French. He developed an interest in learning different languages when he was 10.
He said: “I’m a very auditory person, so I try to expose myself as much as possible to the language, by listening to music, videos, films if I find them, and by listening to conversations and having them with friends.”
He first learned Arabic from his grandparents and when he told his parents that he really loved learning with his grandparents, his parents told him to learn more languages through Google Translate.
Babbel and the Student Life Network started searching Canada’s most polyglottic, or multilingual, student this year and Awaad was the clear winner.
Ted Mentele, Babbel’s Editor in Didactics, said in a statement: “As a team of hundreds of linguists from all around the world, we are extremely impressed by Georges’ command of languages, especially for someone so young.
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Due to his skills, Awaad served as his family’s translator during a trip to Japan. However, Awaad doesn’t think that his skills are extraordinary.
He said: “I think it’s more that I’m passionate about it. It’s easier for me to put in the effort to learn them because I really love them… It doesn’t feel like work.”
At such a young age, he already can speak 19 languages but, he is not done yet. Awaad is planning to learn more languages and completing a linguistics degree at McGill University.
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