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Who is your favourite polyglot? | ||
Tags: Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Matteo Diglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5579 days ago 88 posts - 85 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: ItalianB1, German | Message 25 of 30 01 October 2009 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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my favorite polyglot is loki2504 from you tube.
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| Sandy Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5627 days ago 37 posts - 61 votes | Message 26 of 30 01 October 2009 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don’t know if George Borrow has been mentioned on this site. He was a very interesting and unusual man who claimed to be able to learn languages very easily. But, like many great writers, he was also a bit of a liar so no one is sure about his language ability. From what I remember of his books I know he claimed to speak French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German, Irish and Welsh. There might been other languages as well.
He became famous for his travel books not for his linguistic ability. His books were very popular and you will still find them in any second hand bookshop. My favourite is Wild Wales in which he walks all around Wales sometime in the 1840s. In some parts the book is very funny. He liked to surprise the locals by speaking Welsh especially when he’d heard them talking unfavourably about him. For an Englishman to speak Welsh in those days was very unusual. Another book worth reading is The Bible in Spain in which he wanders around Spain trying to sell Protestant bibles. That book gives you a fascinating view of Spain in the 1830s. His travels seemed to involve one hardship after another and I think he must have been the model for the Paul Theroux School of travel writing where you write in a funny way about how much you hate all the places you visit. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rggg Heptaglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 6324 days ago 373 posts - 426 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Malay Studies: Romanian, Catalan, Greek, German, Swedish | Message 27 of 30 02 October 2009 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
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My favorite is Stuart Jay Raj.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 28 of 30 21 November 2009 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some polyglots have interesting holes in their language repertoire. I think it is simply because some languages don't interest them for one reason or other.
Nabokov, for example, lived in Berlin for a long time but never really got anywhere with German, according to a book about Weimar I once read. Presumably he just hung around other expatriate Russians. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 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 29 of 30 21 November 2009 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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To develop my own polyglottery further I don't need any polyglot as a good example, because I have my own strengths and weaknesses and I go my very individual way with my language projects.
What I find helpful and inspiring is interaction with real polyglots. I appreciate poylgot contacts very much, so I am always eager to do polyglot networking. So far I had some very interesting dicussions about polyglottery with Iversen in his Multiconfused Log and I have Skype contacts with Amir and Torbyne as well as quite some video comments exchange with Loki and partly also with Laoshu on You Tube. I read biographies of famous polyglots with some interest and it's nice to know, but the real communication among polyglots is most valuable for me. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 21 November 2009 at 10:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 30 of 30 26 November 2009 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
The Spanish Inquisition had only been abolished 20 or so years earlier. I would have thought selling Protestant bibles was still rather risky. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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