{"id":18088,"date":"2023-04-26T15:15:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T19:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/?post_type=nouvelles&#038;p=18088"},"modified":"2023-04-26T15:15:48","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T19:15:48","slug":"introducing-alex-freedman","status":"publish","type":"nouvelles","link":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/news\/introducing-alex-freedman\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Alex Freedman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Did you know that more of the world\u2019s population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are many good reasons to learn a second (third? fourth?&#8230;) language. It can positively affect our cognitive abilities, improve our attention and task-switching capacities, and even slow mental decline as we age. There are employment benefits. And, to quote Emperor Charlemagne, \u201cTo have another language is to possess a second soul.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I interviewed six bilingual Canadians for 2023 Rendez-vous de la Francophonie, including Alex Freedman, Executive Director of the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/crfc-fcrc.ca\/en\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Community Radio Fund of Canada\/Le Fonds canadien de la radio communautaire<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, an independent not-for-profit funding organisation whose mandate is to provide support to campus and community radio stations in Canada.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alex was raised in English but attended a French public school in London, Ontario. His mother speaks five languages (German, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French, and English), and his father speaks French with an American accent. Even so, he says he doesn\u2019t usually think in French and can still find it daunting to do French presentations at work. He and his wife want to ensure their children are better equipped, so his wife speaks French to the children, and Alex speaks English. The children also go to a francophone school.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alex believes it is essential for English-speaking Canadians to \u201csee across the hedge\u201d into the Canadian Francophonie, and learning to speak French and passing that ability on is a great way to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can listen to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/rvfranco.podbean.com\/e\/podcast-franco-alex-freedman\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">my conversation with Alex<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/news\/francophonie-podcasts\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">RVF\u2019s podcasting page<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Image: Alex Freedman presenting at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, 2022<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Catherine Fisher, blogger<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18091,"parent":0,"template":"","categorie-de-nouvelle":[63],"class_list":["post-18088","nouvelles","type-nouvelles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categorie-de-nouvelle-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nouvelles\/18088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nouvelles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/nouvelles"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"categorie-de-nouvelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rvf.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categorie-de-nouvelle?post=18088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}