Old Woman Polyglot Surprises Fellow Countrymen from Bernama- An 84-year-old woman living in a remote Novgorod village of Utorgosh in southern Russia surprises her fellow countrymen with the knowledge of foreign languages. Everybody, who is acquainted with Maria Ivanova, is sincerely surprised, how an ordinary villager with secondary education, who worked at the local flax-processing plant for more than 40 years, could become a polyglot, Russian news agency, Itar-Tass, reported.Maria Fyodorovna Ivanova was born in a village in the western Ukrainian Lvov region. In 1946, she got acquainted with a Russian tankman, married him and came with him to the Novgorod region. There she had to learn the Russian language.Apart from Ukrainian, in which she sings the songs, she knows well Russian, speaks Polish and prays in Latin. She also understands and can speak in Serbian, Slovak, German and English. Her favorite writer is famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, and she learnt by heart his collection of poems. “Unfortunately I did not work as an interpreter,” Maria Ivanova joked.
Language learning is, and has always been, not for the elite and gifted, but for those who have a passion for languages. My grandmother was from Ternopil, Ukraine and had little education, but spoke Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, English and German to start, and could communicate in many other languages. Her secrete: She enjoyed talking, with everyone.
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