七旬奶奶和她的11门外语

山东 位春岭

年过七旬的徐奶奶自学了包括英语、法语、韩语在内的11 门外语，并且大多数都达到了能够进行日常交流的水平，令人赞叹不已。

Videos of 77-year-old Xu Xiuzhen,who speaks different languages with foreigners while working at a scenic spot selling water, postcards and headdress flowers,have brought her instant fame.

Xu's village is located at the base of Moon Hill, a popular tourist destination famed for a moon-shaped hole at the summit.She has been working as a tour guide and vendor (小贩) in Yangshuo, a county and resort town in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region since 1998,when the area became famous for foreign backpackers and organized tours.

Xu, who dropped out of junior school in the third grade, began to learn different languages in order to attract more foreign customers.Xu said she would convert words in any language into Chinese characters based on their pronunciation and then memorize them.Repeating the words in her head before going to bed and immediately after waking up has given her fluency in basicconversationswithforeigners,shesaid.

Over the past two decades, Xu has taught herself 11 foreign languages,including English, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.In addition to making her incredibly popular, her linguistic prowess has made it easier for her to communicate with foreign tourists.Xu has also become one of the busiest tour guides in Yangshuo.Her reputation draws a large crowd of tourists every day, especially foreign visitors, who come to meet the multilingual guide out of admiration.

“More and more foreign tourists are coming to Yangshuo, and I hope they will feel at home here with my help,”she said.

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