Ten year-old girl can speak ten languages

Taiwan-born Sonia Yang, 10, speaks 10 languages, making her one of England's top linguists. In just a few weeks, she picked up Luganda, widely used in Uganda.

"Luganda was easier for me to learn than for an English person, because some of the words are similar to Taiwanese and it gets easier with each language you try out," Sonia said.

"But English is definitely my favourite, because people can understand you."

Sonia recently beat 5,000 students in a regional Junior Language Challenge — a competition that tests knowledge of other languages and the ability to pick up new ones — and will head to the nationals finals tomorrow. The little girl speaks Taiwanese, English, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Portuguese, Kazakh and Luganda. She picked up Kazakh (a Turkic language) and Portuguese just for the qualifying rounds of the competition.

Sonia was born in Taiwan, but moved with her family to England when she reached primary-school age. She is currently a student at Greenbank Preparatory School in Stockport.

"Sonia is a very bright and hard-working girl — definitely a star. Her family moved to England specifically to give her the best education possible and we are delighted they chose Greenbank," the school's deputy head, Heather Burnett, said of the bright pupil.