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10 The Linguist Vol/57 No/2 2018
www.ciol.org.uk
Military linguist David
why a career in the Na
L
inguists looking for a challenge could
try studying Chechen – particularly
tricky for English speakers, as "there
are no language-learning resources from
English; they're all from Russian," explains
Warrant Officer First Class (WO1) David
Bagnall. The only solution is to learn one
language via the other. Fortunately for
Bagnall, he's linguist extraordinaire for the
Royal Navy, speaking a mind-boggling 15
languages – seven proficiently, and the rest
to conversational standard.
Not content with his tally, he's currently
adding two more: Romanian "because my
family love going there on holiday"; and
Chechen "because I want to branch out into
less-spoken languages". As well as Hebrew,
Arabic, Pashtu, Farsi and Serbian, Bagnall
can thankfully read and speak the Russian
required for learning Chechen. Yet the two
languages aren't related: Chechen is a
Northeast Caucasian language using Cyrillic
script. "People think I'll understand it
because it's written in the same alphabet as
Russian. Well, Hungarian is written in the
same alphabet as English. So is Welsh. Good
luck deciphering those languages without
studying them!"
Winner of the Institute's new MOD Award
for linguistic achievement, Bagnall was
neither born to linguists nor raised
internationally. A working-class boy from
Wrexham, he developed a love of languages
Fighti
ON TOUR
David Bagnall in Afghanistan in 2015
