JimC Senior Member United Kingdom tinyurl.com/aberdeen Joined 5546 days ago 199 posts - 317 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 9 21 February 2012 at 3:59pm | IP Logged |
BBC Article
Cult of the hyperpolyglot
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 2 of 9 21 February 2012 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
It's a nice article, but the title confuses me. In the US "cult" has mostly derogatory connotations. Is it different in the UK, or is this just an editor trying to make the story sexier than it really is?
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jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5417 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian
| Message 3 of 9 22 February 2012 at 2:20am | IP Logged |
kanewai wrote:
It's a nice article, but the title confuses me. In the US "cult" has mostly derogatory connotations. Is it different in the UK, or is this just an editor trying to make the story sexier than it really is? |
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I think we tend to hear "cult" used more over here in relation to say a film having a "cult following"; somewhat underground but the fans it does have are very enthusiastic about it. Do you use the phrase " a cult following" very much in the US? Perhaps the UK has a more relaxed relationship with the term as cults are not talked about much in the media here and we have less cults out there, especially ones who do some horrific things. We will say it in a derogatory way but we often use it in a light-hearted way.
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 4 of 9 22 February 2012 at 7:27am | IP Logged |
ah yeah, we have that - cult movies, cult bands, etc. I think the new context threw me.
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 5 of 9 22 February 2012 at 2:20pm | IP Logged |
If cult means that there is a great interest in language learning in the population at large then I can't see it - not even in my own country, where it is common to know at least two languages and often three or four. Let's face it, polyglotism is never going to become a big sport or musical fad which will earn the top players lots of money.
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 6 of 9 22 February 2012 at 2:45pm | IP Logged |
Iversen wrote:
Let's face it, polyglotism is never going to become a big sport or musical fad which will earn the top players lots of money. |
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I agree with this statement and my own life experience fits in well.
Fasulye
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vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4771 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish
| Message 7 of 9 22 February 2012 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
Iversen wrote:
If cult means that there is a great interest in language learning in the population at large then I can't see it - not even in my own country, where it is common to know at least two languages and often three or four. Let's face it, polyglotism is never going to become a big sport or musical fad which will earn the top players lots of money. |
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I'm pretty sure that something having a cult following means precisely that there isn't a great interest in it among the population at large - it's something that's ignored, despised or not considered a big deal by the mainstream but beloved and ardently followed by a relatively small fandom.
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 8 of 9 24 February 2012 at 7:47am | IP Logged |
I was slightly dissappointed by the article because, as Kanewai said, the headline is
just trying to make it sexier than it is. Yes, those people mentioned are great, I don't
want to underestimate their achievements, but I expected something more general added to
it. Not news about mass interest in learning languages but news about "the cult". Such as
interesting rise in sells of courses for self-teaching learners, a language con being
held somewhere, publication of a new guide for learning several languages etc.
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