| Alex Rawlings, a 20-year-old student at Oxford University, has won a search to identify the most multilingual student in the UK Publisher Harper Collins bestowed the title on Rawlings as part of a nationwide search they launched last June in promotion of their new language and learning courses, according to the company's website. Rawlings showcased his fluency or near-fluency in 11 languages including English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian. Rawlings said his mother, who is half Greek, spoke to him in English, Greek and some French when he was growing up. He is currently studying German and Russian at college and taught himself other languages like Dutch because he was determined to talk to people on his travels or simply because he thought the language was interesting or beautiful. "When I was younger I always wanted to speak different languages," Rawlings said "We often visited my mum's family in Greece. My dad worked in Japan for four years. I was alway frustrated I couldn't talk to other kids in those countries because of the language." Rawlings said he's met many friends through his fluency in multiple languages and that picking up new languages gets easier over time. Rawlings plans to perfect his Russian while studying abroad in the small city of Yaroslavl, and said the next language he plans to learn is Arabic. But he says no matter how many languages he learns, he'll always have a soft spot for one. "My ... |
