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Do you consider yourself a polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5352 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 65 of 89 24 March 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
So I'm not C2 level in my own native language then, because I didn't know 'internecine'. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6871 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 66 of 89 24 March 2013 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I've spoken English for 27 years and don't know what "internecine" means. I just asked my sister in grad school and my mom who's a teacher; my sister was ignorant of both words, my mom just knew what "snarky" meant. That said, I think word lists are a good tool, even if they are compiled by someone else. They probably shouldn't be your vocabulary bible, but at least word listed organized thematically can be great STEPPING STONES to get you pointed in a good direction to real world language usage. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zundung Newbie Belize Joined 4271 days ago 10 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* | Message 67 of 89 24 March 2013 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know that word either. Note that not all native English speakers have university degrees. C2 is simply a very high level in the target language. It doesn't equal a walking encyclopedia Britannica. :D
And Sterogyl made a great point. A B2 speaker can learn words like razzmatazz and a C2 speaker may never hear of it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4654 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 68 of 89 24 March 2013 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Heh. The tricky question... The basic definition of polyglot differs so much depending on who you ask.
My answer is: 1. Do you consider yourself a polyglot? No. Maybe I qualify, but I don't care. 2. Are you planning to become one? No.
What are those? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spolszczyc Newbie Canada Joined 4267 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Polish, Serbo-Croatian | Message 69 of 89 25 March 2013 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't consider myself a polyglot right now, but if everything goes well, in the future, maybe I will consider myself one.
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| Mithrandir Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4182 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Korean, Russian | Message 70 of 89 18 June 2013 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if at this point in time it would be at all helpful to have more specific
terms for the different types of linguistic abilities out there? It's been brought up more than once that in it's most simple definition a polyglot is just a person who is capable in more than one language. However there seems to be a number of people (myself included) who feel you can only be a true polyglot if you're fluent in more than about 5 languages... there seems to be a lot of needless semantic arguments that appear to me to be rectifiable by maybe coming up with some new words. I feel like this is probably the right forum for that haha. Oh and no, I don't consider myself a polyglot yet. Always wanted to be one but only learned about the actual term and historical occurrences of polyglots till recently. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4256 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 71 of 89 30 July 2013 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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To me "polyglot" is just another arbitrary box to cram people in. I don't know if I am a polyglot or will be and I most certainly do not care. The semantics surrounding the words "polyglot", "fluency" and such are something I have not the faintest interest in partaking, so I detain from using those words. I have a list of languages I want to learn and levels I want to achieve, so if that constitutes with wanting to become a polyglot then so be it.
To the people who think C2 means having thesauri for lunch and knowing every word that pops up once or less in ten million instances then to you I say that that idea is plain ridiculous and only fit for defenestration. But I knew "snarky" and I'm not native, woop, I'm probably like B1 then eh? Oh you had to look that up? Pity, you must not be C2 in English then. Somewhat of a serious post scriptum. If we really wanted the term "polyglot" to have any sort of value it should be based on merit rather than just the amount of languages an individual speaks. Something like A person who can claim proficient command of 1. a total of three languages all of which are from different language families 2. a total of four languages which are from two different language families, yet not from the same subdivisions (slavic, romance, Germanic...) 3. a total of five languages from the same family, yet not all of them from the same subgroup, is by definition a "polyglot". Of course, this is arbitrary and useless too but maybe a little less useless than what is currently in effect. Who knows. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4176 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 72 of 89 30 July 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd say that knowledge of collocations and idioms would be a far better indicator of someone's level than knowledge of obscure vocabulary. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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