Why These Multilingual School Kids Want to Learn More Languages

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Hello, I'm Lucian

and I'm age 7 in Year 3.

My name is Gabby...

and I'm 6.

I'm Mr. Marley

I'm 32 years old

and I'm the MFL leader at Reay Primary School.

Except I'm not 32 I'm 31!

You start.

You start.

I can speak Portuguese and Spanish and English.

At home I speak a language called Amharic

because I'm Ethiopian.

I speak Spanish

and a bit of French.

Irish!

English.

German.

Arabic.

Portuguese.

Czech.

Chinese.

Swedish.

and maybe a little bit of gibberish...

[Amharic] My name is Mahder.

Greetings! I am 10 years old.

I can communicate in English, French and Spanish.

I've got quite a lot to say

My favourite word is wŏ [我]

because it means 'I'

and it doesn't sound like 'I'

because it has two letters

when you do pinyin

[Spanish] Hello! How are you?

Thank you very much!

and...

I like...

my...

hands!

If you're hungry

you say

[Czech] I'm hungry

Manos?

Manos, yes, these are hands.

I would like to speak

probably Spanish

because Spanish is known

halfway around the world

and it's the most spoken language

in different countries around the world

So I would like to learn Spanish.

I would like to learn Arabic

because our neighbours

speak a lot of Arabic

and I wonder what they're saying sometimes

Our teacher's Spanish

and sometimes, erm

we play Spanish games

sometimes we do the piña dance

and piña means pineapple.

piña, piña, piña!

Being from Ireland

I studied Irish at school until I was 16

but unfortunately I am nowhere near fluent

and I would love to be able to

go home, go to the Gaeltacht

and be able to order a pint in Irish.

All the languages are quite

are extremely useful

because on the summer holidays

I visit new countries

and English isn't the most important language

because we all have different opinions

on what the most important language is

Having worked in London for so many years

it's heartbreaking that some children

never cross the River Thames

never mind leave the country

or speak another language

so for me

for children to understand another language

a culture, to gain experience,

to have teachers that are passionate about teaching

those languages as well

really opens those eyes

and really opens those opportunities

for children that they may not think

are necessarily available to them.

...and that's the end.