Christ may have spoken three or four languages. “His mother tongue was Aramaic; he then learned Hebrew in his rabbinical training and he may also have known Greek and Latin, both of which were spoken in Palestine at the time” says Grosjean
So knowing another one, two or even three languages has always been around but how do we in todays society respect others variation of language yet communicate?
One shop in America reports via the article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-leveen/how-america-can-get-her-b_b_545925.html that when asked its staff spoke the following languages.
Adnan Abdillahi: Somalian
Ricardo Corbet: Spanish and a little Italian
Christina Nemr: Arabic and French
Gerri Pineda: Tagalog
Amish Singh: Hindi
Erni (Ita) Tazkiah: Indonesian
Minh Thai: Vietnamese and a little French
Nova Wakkary: Indonesian
This could so easily be your customers or patients as it is indicative of our society, our common language is the designated language of the country for communicating but it doesn’t stop us keeping another language or learning something completely new. Bilingualism is however starting to become more widely accepted.
According to François Grosjean, the author of Bilingual: Life and Reality, most of the world’s population is bilingual. While quantifying bilingualism is tricky, Grosjean reports these rough measures:
Europe: 56% Great Britain: 38% Canada: 35% United States: 17%
the article further describes the reality for all of us that:
We almost expect today’s world-class performers, such as the tenor Placido Domingo and the tennis player Roger Federer, to speak multiple languages.
History is full of bilingual luminaries, including Jesus Christ.
Grosjean writes that Christ may have spoken three or four languages. “His mother tongue was Aramaic; he then learned Hebrew in his rabbinical training and he may also have known Greek and Latin, both of which were spoken in Palestine at the time.”
What we do have difficulty with is communicating when the languages are different to those that we currently speak. That is why here at EMASUK we are creating simple to use digital tools and resources to support businesses, the health service, education and police forces to enable them to do their jobs on a day to day basis as simply as possible in real time.
To find out more just contact us we will be pleased to hear from you via email at info@emasuk.com or call us on 0845 862 5400.
EMASUK 