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futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5008 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean*
| Message 1 of 67 26 October 2011 at 8:32pm | IP Logged |
Panglot and Panglotism: new type of polyglotism
I am posting here what I had written before concerning a new type of polyglotism.
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Towards a New Linguistic Phenomenon in Planetary Civilization
I am trying to become one of those new types of polyglots who have risen beyond the limitations of being proficient only within their own language groups or within only two different language families.
In my mind a truly globalized plantary polyglot is someone which has become comfortable and fluent in 5 or 6 different major language groups.
Such a polyglot might be called a panglot, omniglot, globalglot, planetaryglot, panlingual, omnilingual, globallingual, planetarylingual or any other names descriptive of the linguistic competance within a wider scope of language families than traditional polyglots.
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Belated Vision of Panglotism:
For me, Wendy Vo, a Vietnamese girl who could speak 11 languages from various different language families at the age of 8, is a great representative of those emerging young panglots, and I think we should pay more attention and consideration to her phenomenon within the context of accelerating pace of globalization and emergence of a planetary civilization. (Let me add Cesare M, a 19 year old serious language learner from Canada, as belonging to this group)
I began a very late start with the languages and got my eyes open somewhat belatedly to the importance of learning languages for acquiring deeper understanding of our planetary civilization. Though a very late starter(after formal education), problably later in life than most polyglots, I have become a polyglot, for which I am very grateful and satisfied. I finally connected the dots, saw the light and caught belatedly the vision of Panglotism. I am just hoping that I will be granted enough time and calmness in life to become a panglot myself.
The strategies or methodologies for panglotism should be different than those of traditional polyglotism and should lead to the explosion of those so called 'hyperglots'.(another topic)
I know that polyglot communities and many Western polyglots are heavily centered around Latin based languages(Romance, Germanic and Slavic), with a few who have acquired skills in and with many increasingly interested in learning the Far Eastern language(s).
I, nevertheless, present this idea and vision in preparation for the emergence of a more fully mature and truly globalized panglot community.
Edited by futurianus on 30 October 2011 at 9:50pm
3 persons have voted this message useful
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin
| Message 2 of 67 27 October 2011 at 3:09am | IP Logged |
Interesting topic. I am very attracted to the idea of learning all the major languages of the world (a dozen or so) in order to get a truly global perspective. It must be wonderful and enlightening to be able to understand and take part in the internal conversations of all the major nations and cultures of the world. However it's an extremely time-consuming endeavor and I'm not sure if it's feasible for those of us who aren't devoting their life to language learning. If the human lifespan isn't increased, I'm skeptical that I'll have enough time to do it.
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| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5008 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean*
| Message 3 of 67 27 October 2011 at 7:29am | IP Logged |
Concrete Definition of Panglotism in Lieu with its Strategies
To become a panglot will not need more amount of time invested than to become a traditional polyglot.
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A clarification:
The concept of panglotism or globalglotism should be discussed in lieu with its methodolgies or strategies, which would need to be discussed in another topic.
At this place, however, let me just say that my approach to it is that of more balanced apportionment of time and energy towards learning human languages in its various branches. It is an approach which focuses on learning few selected languages from major language families, rather than 10 or 20 languages within a language family or two, especially at the stage of laying foundation.
Thus a more fully defined concept of panglotism should be necessarily entwined with its strategies and methodologies to give it a more concrete and identifiable historical definition.
It is not so much a question of number of languages, but of the breadth and scope of languages one studies.
Time spent on becoming a panglot will be same as that on becoming any traditional polyglot. The difference will be the focus, way of looking at languages, approach and resulting linguistic capacity.
It is an approache that will fill the serious gap in traditional approaches which are too regionalized, though have met and is meeting the various needs and motivations of traditional language learners. As our world changes, what we used to think of as very important independent languages would be more and more perceived as only a regional dialect of or a variety within a language family group and we will begin to attach more significance to other language groups to the same level that we used to give to our regional independent languages. This will bring about a shift in our views and approaches to the so-called foreign language learning, first among language and cultural enthusiasts, and later even in our educational institutions.
To simply put, an aspiring panglot would be deliberately and strategically focusing on learning just one or two language(s) from an entirely different language group, rather than trying to learn 7 or 8 different subcatagory languages from a same language group, and replicating this approach a number of times in different language families, at the stage of laying foundation in panglotism.
Once this foundation is firmly laid down and one becomes a glabalglot or a foundational panglot, one could easily progress to become, should one choose to do so, a fully developed master panglot, and assimilate quite a number of languages quickly and become a super 'hyperglot', at a much faster speed and greater magnitude than the traditional hyperglots.
Edited by futurianus on 27 October 2011 at 7:48am
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 4 of 67 27 October 2011 at 9:24am | IP Logged |
I think it's a very laudable aspiration and one that I sometimes entertain for myself. However, terms like "panglot" and "omniglot" evoke in me an image of knowing ALL the languages of the world, rather than just a fewer number, but more spread out. "Globalglot" is better, but it's a bit of a mouthful.
A question: which languages are the world languages one would focus on? English, Mandarin and Spanish seem to be the big three. Arabic surely comes next. And then? French for its importance in Africa, I guess. If India ends up uniting around Hindi, that could be a major one, as well.
Hey, I'm doing pretty okay already!
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| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5955 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French
| Message 5 of 67 27 October 2011 at 11:24am | IP Logged |
futurianus wrote:
Once this foundation is firmly laid down and one becomes a glabalglot or a foundational
panglot, one could easily progress to become, should one choose to do so, a fully
developed master panglot, and assimilate quite a number of languages quickly and become
a super 'hyperglot', at a much faster speed and greater magnitude than the traditional
hyperglots.
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Civilization's next evolutionary step represented by the development of planetary
linguists or "glabalglots" whose advanced and superior community is presently
represented by Cesare M. and an eight year old Ms. Vo (no offence intended to either),
and the suggestion that one might look down on the learning achievements and abilities
of mere hyperglots in favour of the new and improved super hyperglots? Fun!
Edited by Spanky on 27 October 2011 at 11:33am
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| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin
| Message 6 of 67 27 October 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
Ari wrote:
A question: which languages are the world languages one would focus on? English, Mandarin and Spanish seem to be the big three. Arabic surely comes next. And then? French for its importance in Africa, I guess. If India ends up uniting around Hindi, that could be a major one, as well.
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I would personally include: English, Mandarin, Hindustani, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Persian, Arabic, Malay, Russian, Swahili. I feel that for this kind of list geographic spread and population size are the most important factors, and you can see that reflected in my choices.
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| futurianus Senior Member Korea, South starlightonclou Joined 5008 days ago 125 posts - 234 votes Speaks: Korean*
| Message 7 of 67 27 October 2011 at 5:31pm | IP Logged |
An Alien Panglot/Globalglot and His Six Languages
There is an alien from outerspace, from a star system called Lingomedra, who had come to our planet with a mission to understand human language in its entirety within six years of time.
After a preliminary survey of a variety of different languages and some attempts at learning different languages, he quickly realizes that he is limited by time and ability to learn all of those languages through simple mathematical calculations.
He then comes to a conclusion that he could learn by himself only 6 languages during his given time on Earth.
Now he has an anthropological motivation, rather than economical or political one, to understand as much of the significant human languages, that is, to understand languages in order to understand humanity as a whole. He also want to lay a good foundation upon which he could learn other languages, should he be sent back to the Earth later for further investigation and research.
After much further research and toying with different languages, he finds that there are some basic types of languages, with each type having a number of cognate languages, that there are specially shaped language groups with similar shapes--a circular language group with circular languages, a triangular language group with triangular languages, a square language group with square languages, etc. It does not take long for him to figure out that if he were to learn one triangular language, it would become easier to learn another triangular language, even as there are many similarities in their structures and properties.
He also finds out that the experience of learning totally differently shaped languages rather than a number of similarly shaped languages somehow gave him a much better ability to learn totally newly shaped languages, and even other similarly shaped languages.
After much consideration in the light of his mission, he comes to a conclusion that it is best to choose one of each differently shaped languages, rather than six similarly shaped languages or three similarly shaped languages each from two different shape groups.
Through this, he is aware that he will gain a much stronger ability, an almost instinctive capacity to digest new languages, whether their shapes be similar or be entirely different, and that he will have a very solid foundation from which he could digest many other languages, even as most of other languages will share some similarities with those six different types of languages which he would have mastered.
He then chooses the following six languages with the ones in the bracket as his optional choices:
-English
-Spanish(French)
-Mandarin(Japanese)
-Hindi(Tamil)
-Arabic
-Turkish(Uzebek)
He then makes a one hundred page report to his comrades back at the headquarters as to why he chose those languages, and recommends his comrades to take a survey of and toy with human languages themselves and choose their own particular languages and their numbers according to their own judgements, with the only proviso that they try to understand human language in its total beauty and richness as it is only by putting different pieces of the puzzle together that a clear and total picture of what human language is will emerge, when they are also sent to the Earth with the same mission.
After taking some time to explain his own particular approach to human language system, he returns back to his task of making a gigantic net composed of six different threads to catch the most slippery and evasive Leviathan, lock, stock and barrel, the Language of Earthman.
Edited by futurianus on 27 October 2011 at 8:30pm
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5955 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French
| Message 8 of 67 27 October 2011 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
futurianus wrote:
He then chooses the following six languages with the ones in the bracket as his optional choices:
-English
-Spanish(French)
-Mandarin(Japanese)
-Hindi(Tamil)
-Arabic
-Turkey(Uzebek)
He then makes a one hundred page report to his comrades back at the headquarters as to why he chose those languages, and recommends his comrades to take a survey of and toy with human languages themselves and choose their own particular languages and their numbers according to their own judgements,
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futurianus wrote:
After taking some time to explain his own particular approach to human language system, he returns back to his task of making a gigantic net composed of six different threads to catch the most slippery and evasive Leviathan, lock, stock and barrel, the Language of Earthman.
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Perhaps the comrades back home might profitably replace Turkish and Uzebek with Leviathan.
Edited by Spanky on 27 October 2011 at 7:46pm
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