that munanga linguist

I have read phrases such as "so'n'so speaks English as a third, fourth even fifth language" enough times that it has started to strike me as rather odd: For many on the desert, like elder Reggie Uluru, English is a foreign language, or used as a third, fourth or even fifth language .  Source: Sydney Morning Herald "The end of Uluru's long quiet conflict which baffled both sides" (November 1, 2019) [ link ] While this expression is not particularly common it seems to be a minor trope. It comes in different guises; it can be used with cardinal instead of ordinal numbers: However Chaoke noted more than a decade later that the usage rate of Evenki remained quite high, and that it was still common to find Evenki speakers who were proficient in three, four or even five languages . Source: Wikipedia "Evenki language" [ link ] Or with a different series of numbers: The main language groups living in these communities are Jawoyn, Mi...