The Superlinguists: Multilingual societies

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is it like to live in a place where you have to speak several languages to get by? Simon Calder travels to India, where a top university only teaches in English, the one language that the students from all over the country have in common. And he meets people who use four different languages with their friends and family, depending on whom they are talking to. In Luxembourg, it is not so much family, but other situations that require four languages, such as going shopping, watching TV, or school lessons.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yes, as I'm going to be
0:02.0	Is that's going the BBC?
0:04.0	Lejo, what is BBC,
0:06.0	and so it's BBC?
0:08.0	And I'm going to be BBC in need.
0:10.0	Pustra we have said that
0:11.0	or what you will be your radio BBC.
0:12.0	Yes, as those multilingual messages reveal you're listening to the BBC.
0:17.0	I'm Simon Calder welcoming you to the third program in our series here on the BBC World Service about people who speak many
0:25.4	languages, the super linguists. My current location is the gateway to India in
0:32.1	Mumbai, the Grandiose archway facing out across the harbour
0:37.2	that welcomed the world to what was then the pride of the British Empire.
0:42.4	I've come to the largest city of the most
0:45.0	multilingual country on the planet to find out how a vast nation can function
0:51.1	with 22 official languages and many hundreds more depending on where
0:56.7	exactly you place the border between dialects and individual languages. Later I I'll be visiting Western Europe's most linguistically versatile nation.
1:08.0	But first, I'm off to Crawford Market to get a sense of the range of languages spoken in this one city.
1:17.0	Hello.
1:20.0	Hello. Hello. Hello.
1:21.0	How are you?
1:22.0	You're sitting there, you have your Chai.
1:25.0	T, I would like to ask you, gentlemen, what language you speak?
	...

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