Multilingual People

I am amazed by people who fluently speak multiple languages. I thought about this yesterday at work when helping two students from Belgium and Poland who spoke flawless English. I know that foreign language is taught earlier in schools in Europe, but even so I still think it's a remarkable skill. I'm reminded of our cab driver in Zurich who seamlessly switched between speaking English, Swiss German and French. In addition to those three languages, the flight attendants on Swiss Air also speak Italian. From talking with people here it seems as though England is more similar to the U.S., in that students take one foreign language beginning in secondary school and rarely reach the level of fluency.

We had coffee with Chris' Italian labmate Dario and his Mom today. Dario's Mom speaks Italian, French, German, Arabic and English (Arabic because she was born in Egypt). His Dad speaks Italian, French and German but not English, so it should be interesting trying to communicate with him when we stay at Dario's house in April. His Mom was so nice and is really looking forward to our visit. She shared a story with us of meeting a friend when she was 9 years old vacationing in Italy (she lived in Egypt at the time) and her friend was from Germany. They became pen pals (writing in German) and are still friends to this day. She's very happy that Dario is making "international friends" and I'm really happy that we're getting the chance to learn so much about other cultures.