Most Singaporeans are bilingual, being fluent in English and their respective mother tongue. Some are even trilingual, but have you met a Singaporean who speaks 11 languages? Meet Jonas Tan, a Year 2 psychology and linguistics student at Oxford University. In a video interview posted on April 28 by fellow Oxford student and TikToker Ollie, Jonas showcased his extraordinary language...
Then he flexed his linguistic abilities by saying 'how are you' or to that equivalent in Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, Thai, Vietnamese and Italian.
"However, when I was in secondary three, I happened to chance upon a video of this teenager in America who could speak 20 languages, and me, being an insecure teenager, thought if I could be like him, it'd make me cool," Jonas reveals. As to how he learned 11 languages, Jonas credits his attention span or the lack thereof as the main factor.
"I found that many of the languages, especially ones spoken in Southeast Asia, helped me to better connect with others, and that pushed me to actually commit to better learning them. "In that sense, I don't claim to have learnt all 11 to fluency or perfection, but they just happen to be the ones that I speak the most often."
"The language has very intense diglossia , and few resources are available to learn kotuntamil , specifically the one spoken in Singapore.
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