Oregon Woman Learns to Speak Six Languages Fluently
The six official languages of the United Nations are considered the most geopolitically important languages in the world—not to mention that native speakers of those tongues represent about a third of the global population. Emily Liedel decided to learn them all to fluency.
Introduce yourself and your quest.
Professionally, I'm a freelance journalist, translator and language entrepreneur. I write about international affairs, urban issues, food and language. Personally, I'm on a quest to learn all of the official languages of the United Nations (Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese and Arabic - English which is my native language) to native-level fluency by my 35th birthday in 2019. Currently, I speak everything but Arabic, and I'm still finishing up becoming fluent in Chinese. I also speak fluent German and Swiss German (the dialect spoken in Switzerland) so I like to say that German is my bonus language.Read More