Multilingualism at an Adult Stage of Life

She is 21 years of age, a German national currently living and working in Africa. Abigail Shoenstein recently rose to fame when a song in Luganda, a dialect in Uganda hit rounds on the social media.

While she claims that she has only been in Uganda for a few months, it is hard to ignore the ease with which her Luganda flows with the melody.

Before watching her music video, the song was just another hit with a catchy chorus and groovy mood just like all songs hitting the air waves.

But when the video came out and this white German girl’s identity was shown to the world, Uganda was in shock because she perfected the Luganda better than half of all Luganda speaking fellows put together.

This is in addition to German, English, French and Kinyarwanda to mention a few since before Uganda she had resided in Rwanda too.

Does school play a role?

People who attend school in foreign countries are at the advantage of becoming multi-lingual.

For example, if one comes from Burundi where French is formally spoken, to France where French is formally spoken. They will gradually adapt to not only the French language but English too. While in India they will meet foreigners who too like them are struggling to learn Hindi, so the first easiest language in which to communicate will be English.

What is the advantage anyway?

Multilingual people world over, will always have an advantage over their monolingual counterparts.

You ask how and why? This is because they are seen as great assets for companies they work for as they ease communication with foreigners and customers who speak other languages.

Then, travelling and changing location to such people is not a problem at all since they at least speak almost every formal language.

Oh, not to forget these people rarely fall prey to fraudsters or conmen in foreign settings as their counterparts who are not multilingual always do.

How does this happen?

Let us take an example of a country like German where all signs, posts and banners are in the German language, one comes off as vulnerable when they ask for their way around as a result of not being able to read the language. Ask yourself what will be a consequence if this is inquired from a wrong element within the country? Of course the answer is just on your face but what am trying to say is that usually some people are defrauded as a result of language or communication barrier.