Multilingual person from Canada

by Kiho Muroga
(Tokyo, Japan)

I want to tell you the story of a multilingual person who is my English teacher. My English teacher, Aarone, is from Canada. His grandmother is French, so he went to a French school when he was in elementary school and junior high school.

Therefore he can speak French fluently. In addition, before he came to Japan, he worked in Korea as an English teacher. He can also speak Korean. Of course, he is a Canadian, so he can speak English.

One day we talked about the pronunciation difference between English and French. I heard a lot of interesting stories about pronunciation from him.

In addition, we talked about Korean. In Korean, the word which means “Hello” is pronounced “Ann nyonn haseyo” (which is in Romaji). And the word which means “Good bye” is pronounced “Ann nyonn.” Therefore there is only one difference, “haseyo,” but the meaning is so contrastive. I asked him “What does 'haseyo' mean?” He said to me that “haseyo” means “do” in English, and “faire” in French.

I thought he was a great person because he can use many languages. I respect him. I was so curious about what is the same thing and different thing in English, French, Korean, and Japanese. I was really happy to hear these stories.

Finally, I decided to study hard and know many things about language. I will do my best!

I will take a French test this November, so I will soon study hard for this examination.