Do you speak multiple languages?
Do you speak, read or write in more than one language? Has knowing multiple languages helped you understand words better — their meanings, associations, pronunciations or spellings?
Have you ever relied on your multilingualism to help you solve word games? The article you’re about to read refers to a New York Times game called Spelling Bee. The object of that game is to form as many words as you can using only a specific set of seven letters. Have you ever played? If you haven’t, give it a try. Do you think knowing multiple languages might benefit a player in this game? In “How My Multilingual Upbringing Helps Me Solve Spelling Bee,” Lam Thuy Vo writes that her knowledge of Vietnamese, German, English and French gives her an edge in word games: As a child born to Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, I was sometimes asked to translate documents into German, some of which were much more important than I had realized. Growing up in this kind of household also meant being somewhat linguistically agile. From an early age, I made acrobatic leaps between grammatically and tonally disparate languages without thinking much about it. “Con ơi, con có thể giúp mẹ với Steuerberater được không?” “My child, can you help me with the accounting?” my mother would ask me occasionally when I was in my teens. This type of sentence was not uncommon in my childhood home. If you look closely, one word, the German term for accountant, Steuerberater, is not like the others in this Vietnamese sentence. And yet it made perfect sense to my teenage self.
This directly affects how I experience a game of Spelling Bee. When I started playing, I would sometimes find words from different languages.
In the United States, one in five people speak a language other than English at home, according to the Census Bureau. That’s roughly 60 million people who seesaw between at least two languages. Experiencing the world in multiple languages has made me experiment with how I approach finding words in puzzles that were constructed by people who do not know the languages I do. (However, I’d love to one day solve a Spelling Bee written by a native speaker of Vietnamese, German and English who also dabbles in French.) Sometimes that means I’ll type a word in one of my languages that is familiar to me but that I’m not sure others know. For instance, the German words schadenfreude (pleasure derived from someone else’s troubles) and gesundheit (a response to a full-bodied achoo!) may have spread throughout English enough that they’d represent an acceptable answer for Spelling Bee. But dankeschön (a way to say thank you very much) is a word that I’ve heard some friends here use but that others may not be familiar with.
Students, once you've read the entire article, then tell us: What is your reaction to the article? Can you relate to any of the ways that multilingualism has helped the writer? Can you think of benefits that she didn’t mention? How important do you think it is for young people to learn a language other than English? How can language-learning be beneficial beyond playing word games? Do you think there are disadvantages or challenges to being multilingual? Have you experienced any? What languages can you speak, read or otherwise understand? How did you learn those languages? Was it at home, at school or from friends? How did it feel learning a new language? Did you struggle or resist? If so, how or why? If you speak only one language, have you ever wanted to learn a second one? Why or why not? In her final paragraph, Ms. Vo writes, “In an increasingly connected world, it shows that even if we lead individual lives, the cultures and words within them do mingle with our own.” Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? Do you speak multiple languages? Are you learning a new one? How has that knowledge expanded your world?
Have you ever relied on your multilingualism to help you solve word games? The article you’re about to read refers to a New York Times game called Spelling Bee. The object of that game is to form as many words as you can using only a specific set of seven letters. Have you ever played? If you haven’t, give it a try. Do you think knowing multiple languages might benefit a player in this game? In “How My Multilingual Upbringing Helps Me Solve Spelling Bee,” Lam Thuy Vo writes that her knowledge of Vietnamese, German, English and French gives her an edge in word games: As a child born to Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, I was sometimes asked to translate documents into German, some of which were much more important than I had realized. Growing up in this kind of household also meant being somewhat linguistically agile. From an early age, I made acrobatic leaps between grammatically and tonally disparate languages without thinking much about it. “Con ơi, con có thể giúp mẹ với Steuerberater được không?” “My child, can you help me with the accounting?” my mother would ask me occasionally when I was in my teens. This type of sentence was not uncommon in my childhood home. If you look closely, one word, the German term for accountant, Steuerberater, is not like the others in this Vietnamese sentence. And yet it made perfect sense to my teenage self.
This directly affects how I experience a game of Spelling Bee. When I started playing, I would sometimes find words from different languages.
In the United States, one in five people speak a language other than English at home, according to the Census Bureau. That’s roughly 60 million people who seesaw between at least two languages. Experiencing the world in multiple languages has made me experiment with how I approach finding words in puzzles that were constructed by people who do not know the languages I do. (However, I’d love to one day solve a Spelling Bee written by a native speaker of Vietnamese, German and English who also dabbles in French.) Sometimes that means I’ll type a word in one of my languages that is familiar to me but that I’m not sure others know. For instance, the German words schadenfreude (pleasure derived from someone else’s troubles) and gesundheit (a response to a full-bodied achoo!) may have spread throughout English enough that they’d represent an acceptable answer for Spelling Bee. But dankeschön (a way to say thank you very much) is a word that I’ve heard some friends here use but that others may not be familiar with.
Students, once you've read the entire article, then tell us: What is your reaction to the article? Can you relate to any of the ways that multilingualism has helped the writer? Can you think of benefits that she didn’t mention? How important do you think it is for young people to learn a language other than English? How can language-learning be beneficial beyond playing word games? Do you think there are disadvantages or challenges to being multilingual? Have you experienced any? What languages can you speak, read or otherwise understand? How did you learn those languages? Was it at home, at school or from friends? How did it feel learning a new language? Did you struggle or resist? If so, how or why? If you speak only one language, have you ever wanted to learn a second one? Why or why not? In her final paragraph, Ms. Vo writes, “In an increasingly connected world, it shows that even if we lead individual lives, the cultures and words within them do mingle with our own.” Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? Do you speak multiple languages? Are you learning a new one? How has that knowledge expanded your world?
