Un artículo publicado en inglés y español, que te ayudará en tu lectura, pero principalmente sirve para expresar una opinión.

An article in English and Spanish which will help you in your reading, but mainly serves to express an opinion.

PLACIDO DOMINGO:

Hitting the Right Note

By John James Carty

Is English the second language of opera star Placido Domingo? I’m not sure.

I wonder about Placido Domingo because he speaks very good English and yet he speaks other languages too. With his Spanish/Mexican background he is, of course, a Spanish speaker but I have heard him speak other languages with apparent fluency.

Many people speak more than one language but find it difficult to assess the level of their third or fourth language. Placido Domingo once said a very intelligent thing about this subject and I often think of his remark. I can’t quote it exactly, as it was made twenty years ago, but it went like this: ‘I speak Spanish, English and Italian. In addition, I know French, German and Russian.’

I may have invented the bit about Russian, but I’m sure he ‘spoke’ three and ‘knew’ three. I love the modesty and honesty of that remark. Instead of claiming to speak various languages he gave an indication of the relative strengths of his language skills in a simple and credible way.

We must remember that in a lifetime of distinguished work in opera he has studied Italian almost on a daily basis and he must know a lot of German. He is known as the best actor among opera tenors and we can assume that this has involved perhaps more than usually careful study of the lyrics in the various languages of opera.

I can’t say that he sang many operas in English but he used his English, like most people on the international scene, to communicate with others and to do business. As for many students, it was a necessity and a pleasure.

His language skills have no doubt improved in the last twenty years but I think the remark was too modest even when he made it. I would guess that even in those days he also  ‘knew’ Portuguese.

But the idea is good – it is possible to ‘know’ a language without speaking it. We could, perhaps, know enough to understand an announcement or translate an article with the help of a dictionary, or be able to surprise people and greet them in their own language.

This concept takes the strain out of judging our skills precisely if we – or our students – know a bit (sometimes a lot) about other languages.