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FashionPolyglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3931 days ago 39 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 9 of 41 09 February 2014 at 7:36pm | IP Logged |
Jiwon wrote:
Because back in my teens, I had as much enthusiasm as you have for language learning.
I believed that I would learn at least ten languages before I die, but I have since
then changed my ideas about learning languages and decided to stick to a few that I can
speak very well, with others that I only want to converse in. |
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I had originally wanted to learn Asian languages with my Official 15 Languages List. I have made several drafts
before coming up with the number 15. Asian languages I wanted to learn include Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese,
Korean, Japanese, & Vietnamese.
I also wanted to learn Polish, Russian, Swedish, American Sign Language/ASL, isiXhosa (South African Click
Language), & believe it or not, I wanted to learn British English.
The total number of languages I wanted to learn with my previous draft would be a Ginormous 27 languages!
Then I realized that most polyglots try to learn too many languages at the shortest amount of time possible. They
don't spend enough time becoming fluent in a language & maintaining it.
The polyglot Benny Lewis, previously knew how to speak conversational Hungarian & Tagalog, 2 of the languages I
want to speak. He forgot them because no one can actually become "Fluent In 3 Months".
The flaws of polyglotism is that sure, you can learn 20+ languages, but the more languages you learn, the less time
you have to practice, & the more likely you are to rush things. When you're rushing things, the more likely you are to
forget what you learned, and eventually, you forget the language.
Polyglots at most, can speak 20+ languages at either beginner or intermediate level, and never reach advanced or
fluency.
15 languages is NOT 20+, so learning them is a HUGE challenge I'm willing to take, but it's also not impossible.
In regards of maintaining 15 languages, that's still possible. I just have to squeeze in time to practice them. I will
probably make a new thread about "Squeezing Time For More Language Practice", at the near future.
Why learn 15 languages? The reason is because "Life Isn't Short". Life is long if you make it be. I believe language
learners would agree to what I'm saying because I believe people who try to speak new languages are the most
culturally accepting & tolerant people. I find those who are most accepting, tolerant, & are willing to learn new
things live the longest.
And that is why I am challenging myself to learn 14 other languages besides English.
Edited by FashionPolyglot on 09 February 2014 at 7:39pm
2 persons have voted this message useful
| FashionPolyglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3931 days ago 39 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 10 of 41 09 February 2014 at 7:50pm | IP Logged |
Doitsujin wrote:
Won Ho Chung is ethnic Korean, but he was born in Saudi Arabic and raised in Jordan. He's
known in the Middle East,
but not in Korea. |
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Since you know about him, do you watch his stand up comedy? I haven't watched his videos, only snippets.
Can you please answer this question (Only if you've seen Won Ho Chung perform before)?
Do you find his humor funny? I'm asking because I want to watch his videos on Youtube to help me understand
Arabic.
Edited by FashionPolyglot on 09 February 2014 at 7:51pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| FashionPolyglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3931 days ago 39 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 11 of 41 09 February 2014 at 9:02pm | IP Logged |
Stelle wrote:
Canadian French is French. We can communicate without difficulty with a French-speaker from any
other country. But there are, of course, lots of differences: vocabulary, pronunciation, a tendency to "eat" words.
People who learn standard French as a second language and then watch TV from Quebec (not the news, but
something with "real people" like interviews or game shows) find it very difficult to understand at first - there's
definitely a transition period. You can learn to speak with any accent, but it all depends on exposure. What are you
watching/listening to and who are you talking to? In large part, that's what will determine your accent. |
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I haven't began speaking French just yet. All I know is Bonjour for Hello & Merci for Thank you.
Right now I am learning to speak Arabic because I might want to grab a career involving interacting with Arabic
Speakers.
Though that choice isn't certain just yet. I have been deciding between Middle Eastern Studies or International
Fashion Business as my college major.
Though it doesn't matter too much what major I'm aiming for as I get to travel around the world & speak different
languages.
I definitely watch interviews in French, and occasionally listen to French music. I don't know any French movies or TV
shows. It would be nice of you to give me any recommendations?
Thanks! And good luck on your Tagalog practice! :)
1 person has voted this message useful
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5286 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes
| Message 12 of 41 12 February 2014 at 9:51pm | IP Logged |
FashionPolyglot wrote:
Stelle wrote:
Canadian French is French. We can communicate without difficulty with a French-speaker from any
other country. But there are, of course, lots of differences: vocabulary, pronunciation, a tendency to "eat" words.
People who learn standard French as a second language and then watch TV from Quebec (not the news, but
something with "real people" like interviews or game shows) find it very difficult to understand at first - there's
definitely a transition period. You can learn to speak with any accent, but it all depends on exposure. What are you
watching/listening to and who are you talking to? In large part, that's what will determine your accent. |
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I haven't began speaking French just yet. All I know is Bonjour for Hello & Merci for Thank you.
Right now I am learning to speak Arabic because I might want to grab a career involving interacting with Arabic
Speakers.
Though that choice isn't certain just yet. I have been deciding between Middle Eastern Studies or International
Fashion Business as my college major.
Though it doesn't matter too much what major I'm aiming for as I get to travel around the world & speak different
languages.
I definitely watch interviews in French, and occasionally listen to French music. I don't know any French movies or TV
shows. It would be nice of you to give me any recommendations?
Thanks! And good luck on your Tagalog practice! :) |
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Frankly speaking, almost everything you write in your posts makes me wonder. Are you serious? 15 languages, because you are a modest person who has come to realize that most polyglots aim too high; you want a career "involving interacting with Arabic Speakers", or alternatively something that has anything to do with fashion (because you like supermodels??); some wisdom about how long life can be and some advice about time management and language learning (of course) soon to come: Nothing of it makes real sense to me, sorry.
If you are a very rich person who does not have to worry about his future, well, keep dreaming, but if you are not I see serious problems ahead of you. Sorry for being a party pooper, but sometimes it's better to wake up before it's too late to reconsider.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4132 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog
| Message 13 of 41 12 February 2014 at 10:16pm | IP Logged |
lingoleng wrote:
Frankly speaking, almost everything you write in your posts makes me wonder. Are you serious? 15 languages,
because you are a modest person who has come to realize that most polyglots aim too high; you want a career
"involving interacting with Arabic Speakers", or alternatively something that has anything to do with fashion
(because you like supermodels??); some wisdom about how long life can be and some advice about time
management and language learning (of course) soon to come: Nothing of it makes real sense to me, sorry.
If you are a very rich person who does not have to worry about his future, well, keep dreaming, but if you are not
I
see serious problems ahead of you. Sorry for being a party pooper, but sometimes it's better to wake up before
it's
too late to reconsider. |
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Let him dream and figure out for himself where his dreams will intersect with reality. So long as you don't build
up a pile of debt chasing your dreams, there's no such thing as "too late to reconsider"!
Edited by Stelle on 12 February 2014 at 10:22pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5286 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes
| Message 14 of 41 12 February 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
Stelle wrote:
Let him dream and figure out for himself where his dreams will intersect with reality. So long as you don't build up a pile of debt chasing your dreams, there's no such thing as "too late to reconsider"! |
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Well, if everything fashionpolyglot told us is true, he is bound to pile up an enormous amount of debt. I prefer to warn him as long as there is time. There will be plenty of people who cry hooray, anyway. And in my personal experience it is quite often too late to reconsider. Life is full of bitter "if only I had, if only I had not" - people. Have you never met one?
3 persons have voted this message useful
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4677 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian
| Message 15 of 41 12 February 2014 at 11:33pm | IP Logged |
Fashionpolyglot, welcome to the forum. This is a great community but also a very experienced and fairly realistic one. Almost everyone here has learned AT LEAST one foreign language (some quite a few more than one) to a certain degree of their own view of fluency. Please expect some to be more encouraging of lofty goals like yours than others.
Personally, I think you are potentially shooting a bit higher than you may think your are. It has taken me 2 years of 2-3 hours per day (on average) to get to my current B2 in German. I'm STILL improving my German. To aim for 15 languages, you are probably looking at 20-40 years (depending on your opinion of "acceptable" degree of fluency)of pretty intense focus. What you are talking about is a life pretty much dedicated to a constant study and upkeep of languages.
I certainly would NEVER want to discourage anyone from following their polyglot dreams, but I would suggest learning one language to your definition of fluency and then (with the knowledge and experience of what it takes to get there)make your decisions on whether or not it's worth it to you to continue with your 15 language goal. If you decide it is, GREAT! Go for it.
5 persons have voted this message useful
| FashionPolyglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3931 days ago 39 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 16 of 41 14 February 2014 at 1:22am | IP Logged |
lingoleng wrote:
Frankly speaking, almost everything you write in your posts makes me wonder. Are you serious?
15 languages, because you are a modest person who has come to realize that most polyglots aim too high; you
want a career "involving interacting with Arabic Speakers", or alternatively something that has anything to do with
fashion (because you like supermodels??); some wisdom about how long life can be and some advice about time
management and language learning (of course) soon to come: Nothing of it makes real sense to me, sorry.
If you are a very rich person who does not have to worry about his future, well, keep dreaming, but if you are not I
see serious problems ahead of you. Sorry for being a party pooper, but sometimes it's better to wake up before it's
too late to reconsider. |
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I do doubt the amount of languages I want to learn. I mean, 15 is a lot of languages. Even with a healthy lifestyle
that can make you live up to 100 years old, languages themselves take a LONG time to master.
And after reading the wisdom of forum members, I decided to change the number 15, to 11 languages. It's still a
lot, although I think people won't be questioning that number. I like to look at things optimistically, but I'm also
practical. Optimistically speaking, I would only have to learn 7 languages, even though I listed 11.
Let me explain:
Since I have 2 forms of Arabic, Spanish, & Portuguese languages on my list, & once I learn, let's say, Brazilian
Portuguese, European Portuguese would not be so hard. Same applies when you compare Arabic & Egyptian Arabic &
Castilian Spanish & Latin American Spanish.
The 2 forms of Arabic, Spanish, & Portuguese have only a few differences, & so much in common, that when you
look at certain aspects, I'm really only learning 3 languages, & not 6.
Learning a 2nd form of a language would only take HALF the amount of time, as when you did learn the first form.
And Tagalog, since I did knew how to speak it once, relearning it is a piece of cake.
Farsi/Persian is one of the last languages I want to learn. I would already know Arabic at that point, so learning Farsi
would take less time & effort.
I could say the same with Italian, because of the similarities it has with Spanish & Portuguese.
Hungarian would be the only Extreme Difficulty language I will have struggles with. Hungarian is at a weird position,
because it's the only Finno-Ugric language I want to learn.
Hungarian being one of the last languages I would be learning, I would have experience, wisdom, more people to
practice with, more resources, & a faster learning speed at that point.
The biggest problem I have with Hungarian is that there is NO similarities with my other languages what so ever. I
would probably spend 1 year more just to learn fluent Hungarian, and that makes all the difference.
BTW, the languages I did remove from my list are Hindi, Hebrew, German, & French. I removed them for certain
reasons.
Since one of the reasons I'm learning a language, is for travel purposes, I don't have to learn Hindi. Indians in India
speak English as a second language.
Hebrew is the language I was least interested in.
And I occasionally have doubts as to why I wanted to learn French & German.
In my opinion, the MAX number of languages anyone can be fluent at, is 12/a dozen, and that's only if most of the
languages in your list include a 2nd form of a language, or some of those languages have several similarities.
If you have a dozen languages in your list, & their all from different family trees, than the number would decrease to
9. Nine because people normally speak 2 languages on a daily basis, & you can practice the other 7 languages once
a week, for at least an hour each (recommended).
I said the max cap was 12, but I only listed eleven. The 12th language on my list is reserved for my future spouse.
Whoever I marry from what race, will determine the last language I will be learning. If I marry, for example, a Korean,
then I would learn the Korean language & become fluent at it. It makes sense to learn to speak the native language
of your wife/husband. You guys agree right?
And if I marry a Hungarian, for example, then I don't need a +1 language. The number 11 will stay.
Polyglots do aim too high, we all know that, but I know a few polyglots that can actually speak 10-11 languages
fluently.
Benny Lewis claims to be fluent at 11 languages. Luca Lampariello claims to be fluent at 10.
And about my career choices, yes, I do want to either "Speak to Native Arabic Speakers", or "Work with
Supermodels". Probably the latter because I can utilize speaking more languages from traveling to different
countries, even though it's not considered a "Language Career". Choosing a Fashion Career that is International, I
can utilize the most out of all the languages I want to learn. If I choose a Middle Eastern Career, I would only be
speaking Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, & Farsi/Persian.
And I'm not rich, so planning for my future is difficult.
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