TED Community » Gary Nelson

More About Me

I'm passionate about

music, languages, travel, photography, art

Talk to me about

anything in my profile and possible projects (online work preferably).

People don't know that I'm good at

singing the occasional blues song ;-)

My TED Story

Learning a language IS possible. I've always been passionate about languages. I enjoy helping others to learn English and I hope to improve the languages I speak and maybe learn some more.

Comments

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  A comment on Conversation: How many languages is it possible to know?

  Mar 8 2013: I had the same question myself about a week ago. I remember reading in the Guinness book of records that a translator in the UN spoke approx. 25 languages and had learned something like 45 in his life (a lot he had learned and became in disuse). I was quite astonished to find out that that in recent years, a man was discovered in Brazil who has the ability to speak at the age of 40 something in the range of 60 languages. He hopes to be able to learn around a 100 languages in his life. I feel that being able to communicate in 4 languages is extremely satisfying and continues to passion me, however rather insignificant in comparison. I am quite sure motivation is the key factor as well as a superb memory when it comes to speaking scores of languages. Nevertheless, just because someone doesn't have the best memory, it shouldn't deter us from learning. It's never too late to learn!