A Tribute To LaoShu505000, Aka Moses McCormick
The polyglot and Youtuber who inspired us all and invited us into his world of languages and cultures
I would like to begin with a comprehensive list of all the languages he spoke, to varying degrees; most (80–90%) languages maybe fall into B2.
His best languages were Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
All others:
Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Mongolian, Malay, Hmong, Indonesian, Nepali, Tibetan, Burmese, Sinhala, Khmer, Bengali, Tetum, Tagalog, Hebrew, Greek, French, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Georgian, Hungarian, Dutch, Irish, Turkish, Catalan, Italian, Esperanto, Russian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Serbian, Czech, Kazakh, Macedonian, Romanian, Polish, Albanian, Armenian, Arabic, Farsi (Persian), Urdu, Pashto, Assyrian, Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Somali, Twi, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Amrahic, Wolof, Malagasy, Afrikaans, Fulani (Pulaar), Zulu, Haitian Creole, Navajo, Tlingit and Cherokee.
And additionally, he knew some dialects and unique phrases such as Classical Chinese and Japanese Osaka Dialect. And even for some languages, he knew songs and sang them.
Therefore, we can conclude that he not only learned languages to converse with people, but actually took his time to get to know the individual and unique culture behind that language.
The last language he wanted to learn, and perhaps learned to some extent, was Sindhi: a language spoken by 25 million people natively in Pakistan.
In total, with all languages combined including his native language, amount to a whopping and impressive 77 languages he got to speak in his videos.
Moreover, I found this YT comment:
“Laoshu isn’t dead. You can find him in a New York supermarket chatting with local Somalis about the Somali language . You can hear his infectious laughter at a local Chinese Restaraunt, fluently conversing with the owners in Mandarin and Cantonese. He’s warming the hearts of Macedonians at gyms speaking in their native tongue, ‘Zdravo’ . You can find him in the smile of a Hungarian Restaraunt owner, the happiness she feels because of Laoshu. He’s walking shopping malls talking with and learning from Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Hebrews, Jordanians, Israelis, and others. He’s in the friendly smile of a Japanese businessman reminiscing the time Laoshu asked him how he was doing in Japanese.
Laoshu means ‘mouse’ in Chinese but to the people he met, to the people he touched, Laoshu means love. By taking the time and effort to learn the languages of the world, and connect with the people that were raised to speak those languages, Laoshu reminded us all that love isn’t just confined to America — love is universal. Don’t think for a minute Laoshu is dead. Legends never die.”
Yes, Laoshu was special and unique — and connected people to beauty in a way that you only can through speaking with someone through their mother tongue, and getting to know and ask about their culture.
Let’s remember him by all trying to learn a new language, even if it is a few phrases — because it’s in the small and simple that beauty is revealed.
Here’s his YouTube channel if you want to listen to him in his languages:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbRaUB7Hfe3clmKqqj8Nm1Q
And lastly, here are some of my favorite videos from him:
Thank you ❤
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