How Do Multilingual People Work? Groundbreaking New Research

Two years ago I participated in the first polyglot conference in Budapest. My goal was to show how conflict management could be a wonderful career choice for people who speak more than one language. A video of that speech was eventually published on Youtube.

Unresolved Business

Even though I got some really good feedback after that speech I couldn’t shake the idea that something was missing. What else could be done to help multilingual people find a good fit in the job market? What could I do to help more of them be happier and more successful at work? After talking this conundrum over with a friend of mine, he encouraged me to reach out and do something new. I’ve described this exciting project in the video below:

If you haven’t yet, please take a few minutes to participate in this important study.

Lots of Good Data

The first step is for us to get a real understanding of how bilingual and multilingual people are doing at work. We want to go beyond the personal experiences of one or two people—who work in one or two industries—and gather thousands of responses from all over the world. Not only is it important that you participate in the survey, it is also important that you encourage other bilingual and multilingual people to take the survey as well. Please share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and on any other social media where you have an account.

The more responses we get, the more accurate our information will be. The more accurate the information we get, the more we will learn about what works and what doesn’t for multilingual people in the work place. Our goal is to get really specific. What languages are best to learn in France? Which jobs do polyglots enjoy the most in Brazil? Are polyglots more valued in the USA than they are in Russia? We can’t answer these questions unless we get enough responses from people in all of those places. Please, please, take this survey and share it with every bilingual and multilingual person you know.

Who Should Not Take This Survey?

Please don’t mistake my enthusiasm for a lack of scientific rigor. We don’t want just anyone’s responses. If you are under the age of eighteen then, I’m sorry, but I’m not asking you to participate. If you have any significant work experience it was likely gained illegally.

If all the Spanish you know is a handful of phrases like ¿Dónde está el baño? then I’m not asking you to participate. If all the German you know is Guten Tag. and Wieviel kostet das? then I’m not asking for your responses either. We are looking for people who are at least functional bilinguals.

Who Should Take This Survey?

Functional and perfect do not mean the same thing at all. If you can have an unscripted conversation with someone in a foreign language, for more than five minutes, then please take this survey. It doesn’t matter to me that you can’t speak without making mistakes. As long as the other person can understand you and you can understand him/her then please take this survey.

There may be some people who are thinking, Well, I don’t exactly love my job so maybe I should not take this survey. Nothing could be farther than the truth. By all means, if you have a job that you love then please take this survey. If you have a job that you hate then please take this survey. If you have a job you think is just okay then please take this survey.

Others may say, Well, I don’t really use my languages much at work, maybe I shouldn’t take this survey. Wrong again! One of the things we want to see is how many people out there are bilingual/multilingual but don’t use their languages at work. Whether you use your languages every day, only occasionally, or not at all, please take this survey. Even if you are retired we want to know about your career as a bilingual/multilingual person.

It’s true that, in isolation, your responses might not be particularly helpful to people. When compared with the responses of thousands of other people from all over the world, your responses—no matter how obvious or boring they may seem to you—will be helpful. They will be helpful because they are part of a greater truth.

Great Answers to Great Questions

Studies have been done that show whether or not people who know two languages make more money than people who know only one. Studies have also been done to show if a bilingual French speaker makes more money than a bilingual German speaker. While nice, these studies leave us asking more questions.

Do they make more money because of their language skills or because those people happen to work in a more lucrative job? We don’t know. They might make more money but do they like their jobs more than people who only know one language? We don’t know.

Does knowing English, Japanese or Chinese really open doors for you in the job market or is it your university degree? Is it something else entirely? Are languages like Danish, Zulu and Hindi not really worth learning—for professional reasons—or do some people benefit greatly in their careers because they know a less popular language? If they do then why are they benefitting so much?

These are the kinds of questions we want to have good, solid answers for. We want to eventually publish a study—based on empirical data—that will help companies see the value of multilingual people. We want our study to provide the basis for good career advice to bilingual people and polyglots from all over the world.

All our study needs now is you. Please take a few minutes and participate in this survey.

Polyglot Leadership

Last month I had the privilege to speak at the very first Polyglot Conference in Budapest, Hungary. I spoke on why being a polyglot is an advantage in the field of conflict management. At the end of my presentation I used the words of a polyglot peacemaker (Nelson Mandela) to sum-up why more polyglots should look into the field of conflict management: When you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. My studies and subsequent career change into conflict management have been the main things keeping me from posting here regularly.

Studying and practicing interpersonal conflict management have led me to also study other fields such as psychology, organizational psychology, communication, negotiation and leadership. When most people hear the word authority they tend to think of positional authority (like being a policeman or a CEO). There are actually many different types of authority. There is little doubt in my mind that my friend Richard Simcott obtained quite a bit of expert authority when he made this video back in 2008:

Since then Richard has been highlighted in the news in several countries, both on TV and in written articles. If you’ve seen the video you know exactly why. This video also got him voted, by the public, as the ambassador of multilingualism in an EU conference on multilingualism. When Richard published a video of a panel discussion from this conference I was surprised by something.

What the heck was Luca Lampariello doing on the panel? Don’t get me wrong. I have immense respect for Luca’s abilities. I was merely surprised because I was unaware that he would be participating, other than as a conference attendee. Not surprisingly, Luca’s insights in the discussion were great; it would have been a shame if he hadn’t participated. All the while I couldn’t avoid the suspicion that Richard had somehow been influential in getting Luca up there. I later had this suspicion confirmed.  This is merely one example of what Richard has done with his expert authority, he has combined it with moral authority. Instead of using it for self-aggrandizement, Richard has used his authority to point us all in the direction of many other fabulous polyglots, Luca being only one of them.

In this video (taken during the Polyglot Conference in Budapest), who is leading the charge, sounding the trumpet that Emanuele’s abilities are noteworthy? It’s Luca. From what I can see, Luca is following Richard’s example in combining his expert authority with moral authority. Instead of figuratively trying to keep all the pie for himself, Luca makes the pie bigger so that there is more than enough for everyone he interacts with.

Mohandas Gandhi is considered the father of history’s largest democracy: India. Who elected Gandhi to his position? What made Gandhi an expert in non-violent resistance and nation building? The answers are no one and and nothing. All the same Gandhi was able to mobilize Indians from all social classes and religions. What Gandhi had was moral authority. This kind of authority has an infections, synergistic impact with a wide ripple effect.

Since the video of Emanuele has gone viral (over 300 thousand views in a little over a week), Emanuele and Luca have made another video. Since thousands of the viewers of the first video were from Poland, this second video that Luca and Emanuele just made is subtitled in both English and Polish. I imagine that Michal Grzeskowiak was instrumental in making this happen.

Emanuele is not the only person to have been changed by the Polyglot Conference in Budapest. Ask anyone who attended and that person will tell you how unforgettable the experience was. Notable and charismatic figures from the online language community (such as David Mansaray, Benny Lewis and Susanna Zaraysky) appear more pumped than ever. In fact, many people, such as Brian Kwong, are spontaneously and independently stepping up to add a whole new and fabulous dimension to the online language learning community. Those of us who participate in this great community are fortunate to have such great leadership. They are great leaders who inspire other people to also be great leaders.

English Comes from Turkey: Part II

Last month I wrote about a BBC article that describes a bold claim from Dr. Quentin Atkinson. This claim is that the Indoeuropean language (from which English and many other major word languages descended) came from modern day Turkey, not the Caucus region. The new theory is based on the results of a computer program that is normally used to show how related the DNA from different species is.

Evolving Species and Evolving Languages

Evolution is certainly a buzz word. It has a halo effect that seems to add  legitimacy to what a person says. Because of this people apply the word to situations that I often find strange. An actor’s career evolves even though it doesn’t give birth to new acting careers? Another tangible difference between the evolution of a career and the evolution of, say, chihuahuas, is that human beings have free will and the animals facing extinction did not.

Rob Schneider Has Free Will

Rob Schneider is an example of this. A successful comedic actor, when asked if he would consider a dramatic role, he replied, People don’t ask Andre Agassi, ‘You know you’re the No. 1 tennis player in the world … have you thought about polo?’ Rob’s career has faced the gamut of stimuli: everything from being extremely popular to almost forgotten. Through it all he sticks to comedy. Why? Choice. It’s true that outside factors are important. Some actors change out of perceived necessity and others change because they are famous and think they can get away with a different type of role. Though there are many outside factors there is one internal factor that can completely invalidate all others: free will. When it comes to human beings, their perception and interpretation of their experiences is much more important than the experiences themselves.

Croatian Does Not Want to Be Serbian

At the moment, Croatian and Serbian are mutually intelligible. Contrary to the trends of most other languages, Serbian and Croatian may no longer be mutually intelligible after 100 years or so. The reason for this is Croats are taking words of non-Slavic origin, inventing new replacement words of Slavic origin, and trying to phase the old words out. In Croatian the word for university is sveučilište. When you break down the different elements of the word it means the same thing as university (place of all knowledge/learning) but uses Slavic morphemes instead of Latin ones. The word in Serbian is yниверзитет (univerzitet). If the Croats continue this trend then their language will eventually cease to be understood by Serbs, Bosnians, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.

One could argue that this is evidence of linguistic evolution since Croats could feel threatened by the Serbian language. This argument has dubious merits but let’s consider it for a moment. Does it explain the way other mutually intelligible languages in similar circumstances have changed or not changed? Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are mutually intelligible but are not giving way to each other, in spite of Norway historically losing its statehood from time to time to the other two countries. Laotian, Isan and Thai are another example of mutually intelligible languages that have not made significant efforts to distinguish themselves in spite of conflict between their speakers.

What Makes the Difference?

People make the difference; their perceptions make the difference. Basque and Welsh should have disappeared long ago but they haven’t and probably won’t. Hebrew was resurrected from the dead! On the other hand, Dutch, Mongolian, German and Turkish were militarily and economically dominant languages that have left a proportionately tiny linguistic impact on the world. This is why I can’t accept a purely evolutionary explanation for a quintessentially human driven phenomenon. A physicist lives in a world of relative certainties; a psychologist does not. She may be able to predict with as much as 80% accuracy how different people will react to different things but, in the end, she will never know for sure. This theory that Indoeuropean came from Turkey may possibly be better than the one that claims that it came from the Caucuses. This, however, would only be so if the latter theory were slightly better than a wild guess.

English Comes from Turkey: Part I

This recent BBC article highlights the work of Kiwi researcher Dr. Quentin Atkinson on the origin of Indoeuropean. This is a language that we actually know very little about but many of the world’s major languages are derived from it (see the map below). The green countries mainly speak languages that descend from Indoeuropean, the neon green ones have an Indoeuropean language as their official language (or an official language) but actually have multilingual societies, and the turquoise ones have large minorities that speak an Indoeuropean language.

My friend Vlad (over at Forever a Student) has been attempting to learn Persian/Farsi. He speaks eleven languages, some of them with a near native level of mastery. Most of his languages are Indoeuropean: English, Italian, Slovak, French, Russian, German, Czech, Spanish, German and Portuguese. He also speaks two that are not Indoeuropean quite well (Mandarin Chinese and Hungarian). The man can’t help but be a philologist! Here are some examples of connections that he’s made between his different Indoeuropean languages and his newest Indoeuropean language: Persian.

Vlad:

Apart from the most obvious ones like bad (bad), tche (che), barâdar (brother), nou (new) and others, there are also a few mind blowing vocabulary relation to Slavic languages:
vopors – to ask (Rus vopros – question, Svk prosiť – to ask)

Zohré (Venus, Svk Zornička – Venus)

zohr – morning (Svk zore – morning red sky)

zan – woman (Svk žena – woman)

zemestân – winter (Svk zima – winter)

zamin – ground (Svk zem – ground)

Here’s a list of some other cognates I found so far:

Hast – there is, il y a, es gibt

Barâdar – brother

Markaz – market

Mâdar – mother

Dochtâr – doughter

Kelid – key

There are a lot of other cognates as well, but they are obviously much younger:

garson – boy

botri – bottle

taxi – taxi

All of these languages must have had a common source. We call that source Indoeuropean even though we have no idea who the Indoeuropeans were, what they actually called themselves or even exactly how their language worked. The modern language that is closest to the original Indoeuropean is supposed to be Lithuanian. What scientists have commonly suspected is that, after the wheel was invented, the Indoeuropeans left their home in the Caucuses (see below) and went all over the place.

Dr. Atkinson applied technology that shows the level of commonality in the DNA in different organisms to languages. This apparently was done with a huge data base of cognates. His results led him to believe that Indoeurpean does not come from the Caucuses but from Turkey.

What do you think of this idea? Do languages change the same way that organisms evolve?  Does it matter where Indoeuropean originated?

A New American Polyglot and Wise Words from Anthony Lauder

This is a quick hodgepodge post. Tommy McDonald is the newest polyglot I’ve come across. I have great respect for all polyglots but particularly ones who come from places that are culturally monolingual. His, subtitled, video below shows skill in English, Spanish, Japanese, French, German and Italian. How’s that for variety?

 

 

Anthony Lauder is very good at breaking things down into easily understood, yet insightful, pieces. I highly recommend all ten minutes of the following video.