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Mezzofanti judged today | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Nguyen Senior Member Vietnam Joined 5096 days ago 109 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: Vietnamese | Message 17 of 19 20 January 2012 at 7:06am | IP Logged |
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I think that we may be underestimating the resources available at the time and in the case of Mezzofanti the learning environment that he lived in. I recently watched a program about the translation of the King James Bible. It was on the Austrailia network but I can't remember the name. At any rate, the show focused on the 47 translators. They took languages VERY seriously, in their minds peoples' souls depended on their translation. The typically discussed topics in Hebrew, Greek and Latin; often all three. These men had a high level of proficiency indeed.
In the case of both Mezzofant and Krebs, they grew up in regions that would have exposed them to multiple languages since early childhood. In the case of Mezzofanti, he would have an enviable amount of resources at his disposal (consider the Vatican, how many languages has the Bible been translated into?), in addition to exposure to native speakers, missionaries and translators. Mezzofanti was the director of the goeverning body for missionary activities. No modern comercially available course could duplicate this environment. The closest we would have today would be courses used by governments for Military or Diplomatic applications. I think it would be a mistake to assume that these gentlemen studied alone in a small room reading dictionaries. Both held high positions and would need to use various languages on a daily basis. I think the exploits of a typical you tube polyglot who learned through a Pimsleur course would pale by comparison. Edited by Nguyen on 20 January 2012 at 7:07am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4625 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 18 of 19 30 March 2012 at 9:16pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with Nguyen. Especially Krebs would have had a lot of contact with very many languages and the opportunity or need to use them. Of course all these claims about knowing dozens of languages have to be taken with a pinch of salt.
As for the question of how polyglots are judged, I think it's odd to make learning languages into a competitive sport. Often it's the people who 'grandstand' with how many languages they know who 'start it'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5384 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 19 of 19 30 March 2012 at 10:19pm | IP Logged |
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In a world where no recordings existed, and where people were not very mobile, to leave home and find anyone speaking your language at any degree must have been incredibly impressive. Even if the accent were awful. We can also imagine how an attack on a Cardinal could have been understood as an attack on the Church. I’m not sure many people would have been willing to take that risk, so it would have been better to just take the few sentences you heard him say and tell everyone how great he was. In a room full a people with various languages, it’s not unconceivable that his prowess seemed more impressive to those who couldn’t understand him, thinking he might be doing better in the other languages than in the one they understood.
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