Monday, October 15, 2012

How to become multilingual?

Whenever anyone asks me as to what do I do, I reply saying that I am a multilingual inspirational speaker. I add the tag of being 'multilingual' right in front of my profession. In fact, I even remember that during my interview for a job, the interviewer was questioning me continuously for twenty minutes and not even once did he look at me. But the moment I answered for one of his questions that I could speak 5 languages, he immediately looked at me and I was sure that I had landed in the job which duly happened as well. While leaving my job after 3 years, my manager also mentioned to me that it was this ability to speak 5 languages that he remembered which I had told about myself to him about 3 years back.

There are many such incidents like the above which have motivated me to come up with this blog. In fact I plan to write a book on the same lines as well of which you can have a copy in sometime soon. Just before starting off with the book, I wanted to share some sample lessons from my journey of having developed the ability to communicate with people in 6 different languages and here they go;

1.Desire to talk
This is the foundation if you really want to be a multilingual speaker. If you want to be a writer who can read/write multiple languages, probably you can do it with silence. You must be willing to talk on any random topic with any random person in any random location. This randomness is what that will build the field for your trial and errors while learning a new language. The more you expand this field the more expertise you achieve in developing your linguistic skills. Start talking to more number of people from diverse backgrounds on different topics wherever you find a homo-sapien. Your language teachers will be few among these audience.

2.Persevere the practice
As a baby learns to spell letters and words first time in school through repeating and rewriting, likewise you will have to repeat and rehearse whatever new word or sentence that you learn in a new language. Many give up in the middle because they find themselves forgetting the recently learned words and sentences in the new language. There is no harm in learning it again if your forget once or a million times. Just keep your perseverance going until every new word/sentence that you learn in the new language gets registered in your subconscious mind which you can utter even while you're asleep.

3.Deliver without inhibitions
Oftentimes, in such occasions of learning new language we end up at the receiving end of tantrums and comments from friends, family and colleagues. These negative comments build a barrier avoiding us from moving forward to continue our practice. Just shed all such inhibitions. No one in this world was born perfect knowing everything. Everyone learned step by step and became what they became. Consider yourself as a child who has started an expedition towards being multilingual. A child can make umpteen mistakes until it learns and so can you. Just keep delivering your talks in the language you wish to and soon you will see yourself getting better and better day by day and the target to be multilingual doesn't stay far. Would you be interested to read more on how to become multilingual, then please share your feedback on www.facebook.com/ismohanbn

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