New York is known for its multi-cultural makeup, but one
native son took his exposure to people from across the globe as a
reason for him to learn some of the many languages
present.
Now teenager Timothy Doner is a proven polyglot, having
learned 23 different languages.
Doner is only 17-years-old but he has a grasp on languages
that are only spoken in lands far from the East Village apartment
that he shares with his parents.
In addition to the expected European languages- French, Spanish,
Italian, German- he has linguistically into some much more remote
territories, mastering a number of African
dialects.
isiXhosa, an official language of South Africa, is one of the
more unexpected tongues in his vast vocabulary, as is Wolof (spoken
in Gambia), Swahili, and the Native American language of
Ojibwe.
Doner began receiving attention from language enthusiasts
across the globe when he started posting videos of himself speaking
in the different dialects on YouTube.
Urged on by enthusiastic commenters, he continued his work,
largely teaching himself new languages in either a few weeks or
months with the help of instructional books and flashcard apps on
his iPhone.
In one video where he speaks from 20 consecutive languages,
he also mentions how he meets with an Iraqi language partner to
perfect his Arabic and watched WWII movies to help him learn
German.
He was the subject of a profile in The New York Times in
2012, where experts included the then-16-year-old in a small and
scattered group of language fiends who are deemed 'hyperpolyglots'
because of their ability to pick up and master languages so
quickly.
While his voracity for languages doesn't seem to be slowing
down, Timothy, who is a junior at the prestigious Dalton prep
school in Manhattan sees the lighter side of his skill.
He's been able to quip back at people insulting him in
different languages- like one group of diners at an Israeli
restaurant who said that Doner and his father were trying to be
cultural by eating at the establishment. He then politely told them
that he spoke fluent Hebrew as they left the restaurant.
'Learning a serious number of languages kind of helps you
become a bit of an eavesdropper. I find most of the time that I
accidentally follow people perhaps for a little bit longer than I
should,' he told ITN.
Timothy has no plans of stopping soon, as he talked about how
'now I want to learn to speak Sudanese or Malay'.
Watch video here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FOiXtWcQ8GI
