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Price of Polyglottery - New Prof | ||
Tags: Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4293 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 25 of 90 25 September 2013 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well of course objective things can be said about languages, and Linguistics does
indeed do this. We're all fascinated by language, but what IS a language? The theories within formal Linguistics are the only serious answers available. They aren't well known in the wider public, and the answers are often dismissed because people don't understand what worth there is in the question. But that's normal in the history of science: things do not seem puzzling until you stop taking them for granted. For example the Newtonian revolution was the end of the presumption that all movement implied physical contact in the manner of clockwork. Until then it was simply presumed that the physical world (ignoring the metaphysical) behaved more or less like clockwork. The understanding of language that Formal Syntacticians believe in is very estranged from what a linguaphile and language-learner experiences, but so is the chemist's idea of what "water" is when compared with a swimmer's. Of course, Linguistics is a younger science than Chemistry but it proceeds by the same method of induction and deduction, twinned with wider theory. No, none of the mechanisms of how linguistic stimulation is comprehended is evident to your consciousness, but neither are the mechanisms of how your brain comprehends visual stimulatation. Here's the psychologist/ biologist Robert Sapolsky talking about language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIOQgY1tqrU 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4692 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 26 of 90 25 September 2013 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Because for my part, where they come from isn't that interesting. It is their implications on the human world I care about. Whether they were invented by tree gnomes, or are a product of long cultural human evolution doesn't really matter except maybe to understand the origin of some phonetic changes. What I care about is that they're the easiest tools in the toolbox to convey information to other people for me. I want to talk to lots of people because I am a generally social person. Where they come from is useful to understand the relationships between certain related languages. That linguistics is a science is true. But that's not really something that makes me lose sleep at night. I'd use a pretty scientific (or more engineering) mentality to solve problems anyways. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4293 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 28 of 90 25 September 2013 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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You don't need to be interested in either the human world or the way human
beings work, of course. Look at the career of Noam Chomsky. edit: I was replying to Tarvos. Erenko: I don't recall that Arguelles has claimed that Polyglottery is a science. Are you sure? Edited by Retinend on 25 September 2013 at 1:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4293 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 30 of 90 25 September 2013 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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My apologies, he does indeed say "science." But from the context it's clear that he's
not meaning it in the modern way, but more in the traditional sense of "science." In the context of what he's saying he could have said "teachable," "Polyglottery is a science" "Polyglottery is teachable." Arguelles is using the word very pedantically without regard to its strong modern connotations. This is from Etymonline.com:
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4692 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 31 of 90 25 September 2013 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see why you can't structurally approach language learning the same way you do
history, psychology or organic chemistry... in fact, I wish more people did that. Also, chemistry and other scientific disciplines are not capitalized in English. In any case, like I've stated a hundred times now, I don't really have any beef with the content of his presentation. It's just the thing that would make me daydream and go sit in a windowsill somewhere while thinking of hot chicks.
No, you don't. You can be a linguist and study purely linguistic phenomena. Arguelles is right in saying that. There's nothing wrong with that. I'd just feel like I'd been shut inside a very tight closet somewhere on the top of a very cold mountain in the Himalayas though, so you'll forgive me for wanting a bit more fire and brimstone and genuinely Cool Stuff? Edited by tarvos on 25 September 2013 at 2:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4293 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 32 of 90 25 September 2013 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tarvos, you said:
"Because for my part, where they come from isn't that interesting. ... I want to talk to lots of people because I am a generally social person." To which I said that you were making a false dichotomy. I can't make heads or tails of your response. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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