Skip to main content

Kobe's Connection To Languages

On January 26, 2020, global basketball superstar Kobe Bryant died tragically at the age of 41 in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna among seven other people. Kobe Bryant is considered one of the top basketball players in the NBA’s history, In his NBA career, Kobe Bryant won 5 championships with the LA Lakers, earned an NBA record 15 selections for All-NBA teams and 12 for All-Defensive teams. He has also led the league in scoring twice, won the Slam Dunk challenge and got 4 All-Star Game MVPs in 18 appearances. He won his Season MVP in 2007-08, won the Finals MVP in the next two years and the list of his achievements goes on.
News of Kobe’s death shocked the world and when his death was confirmed, social media exploded with countless fans' tributes to Kobe’s sudden death, alongside tributes from his friends, NBA current and former players, and even president Donald Trump. His impact both on and off the court was undeniable, with Kobe acting as an inspiration for boys and girls around the world. Other than his philanthropy and his character, Kobe was renowned for his on court competitive spirit and will to win. This is no better exemplified than in Kobe’s relationship to language.
Besides being completely fluent in English and Italian, Kobe learned words in Bosnian, Serbian, Spanish, and French in order to be able to trash talk his rivals and get into their heads by talking in their native language. He once swore at Jusuf Nurkic in Bosnian, trash talked Tony Parker in French, Andrea Bargnani in Italian, and sweared in Spanish towards Marc Gasol.
It’s obviously clear that he was very serious about his competitiveness if he was willing to go all the way to learn how to trash talk in 5 different languages besides English in order to get into his rivals’ heads.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Own Personality Shifting Experience

In my research paper, I'm researching the connection between languages and personalities.  Many studies that were done in the field support the idea that bilingual people tend to have different personalities when speaking in a different language. In his article " For Three Years, I Spoke Only Hebrew to My Daughter " Scheiber is talking about his own experience with being bilingual, and how he thought that he could “pass down” the Hebrew he learned from his native Hebrew speaking Israeli mother, to his daughter.  “I am funny in English. Or at least I have my moments. Not so in Hebrew” (Scheiber, 2014) is one of the examples Scheiber gives to emphasize the differences he feels about how his personality shifts between English and Hebrew. He said that this happens as a result of him being colder, stricter, and somewhat harsher when speaking in Hebrew then in English.  As for my personal experience with personality shifting when switching a language, the thing t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Multi Language Country

If you ever happened to scroll down the streets of my hometown Haifa, or any other city in Israel for that manner of fact, you will easily notice people speaking in different languages besides Hebrew. You will most likely hear people speaking in different languages such as Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, Amharic and many more. We Israelis consider this part of the “Kibbutz Galoyot” phenomenon. The biblical meaning to “Kibbutz Galoyot” is bringing jews back from exile from all over the world back to their “home” land- Israel. In the Israeli society today, it basically means that besides being “Israeli” jews, they have different backgrounds, cultures and traditions, and often languages. Growing up in this environment was very enlightening. From a very young age I was exposed to different traditions, different food and languages. Even in my own family there are several different languages spoken, and different types of food. My mom and her sisters were born and raised in Iran...
1 comment
Read more

Cultural and Language Loss in Israel

Reading through other language logs and looking at the comments on my previous posts sparked my interest in researching heritage loss in Israel. I learned about it in high school history class, but I did not approach the topic back then the same way I do now. Hearing about language and cultural loss in America got me thinking about my Israeli roots. Do immigrant families lose their languages over the years in Israel like they do in the US? In my own family, there are descendants of immigrants from all over the world. My mother immigrated from Iran with her three sisters, my grandparents from my dad's side immigrated from Central Europe after WWII, and my cousin's wife immigrated with her family from Russia. One of my cousins (her dad has Moroccan roots and her mom is from Russia) that is now about to turn 7 years old grew up speaking Hebrew with her dad and his side of the family, and Russian with her mom and her side of the family. When she grew older, she was able to understa...
1 comment
Read more