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Babel No More / Mezzofanti’s Gift | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5844 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 145 of 149 18 May 2012 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
This is what I also find the strong points of this book, that there are several polyglots portrayed which I didn't know before or as in the case of Prof. Arguelles that there is some additonal information about him. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 18 May 2012 at 8:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6467 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 146 of 149 18 May 2012 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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The problem is as follows:
There is a survey of several hundred self-selected people who believe they have linguistic talent, independent of whether they are polyglots. This survey suggests a higher than average occurence of males, left-handed people, auto-immune disorders and homosexuality. Later, this survey is narrowed down to less than 20 people with truly extraordinary language abilities. These people do not fit the above stereotype (and if they did, it would not be statistically relevant), yet that is what is implied to the media, as the media are only interested in knowing what traits extraordinary language learners have, and not what traits those people have who think they might become extraordinary one day. Problem 1: this narrowing-down is unscientific. What if all survey results veering towards left-handedness came from artists who are only interested in learning Italian and French? What if autism induces people to focus on at most 4 languages? These would be subgroups that don't have any overlap with the subgroup of hyperpolyglots, so it is not scientific to expect hyperpolyglots to share the same tendencies as the whole survey group, especially in a survey that didn't choose its participants from a random representative sample of the population. Problem 2: the claim is further simplified, raising the expectation that *every* polyglot is male, left-handed, with auto-immune disorders etc. etc., when a quick look at HTLAL's polyglots' self-descriptions shows that they have at most one of these traits and many have none. There are lies, damned lies and statistics. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4619 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 147 of 149 19 May 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it would be very difficult to do a really scientific survey of a group like polyglots; it's too hard to get a representative sample. That doesn't mean it isn't permissible to do a survey with what one's got, as long as one is careful in presenting the results.
About the Geschwind-Galaburda model (this is the same as the Geschwind-Behan-Galaburda model, right?) - I didn't pay that much attention to it when I first read the book, but now I looked at it on the Internet. It's quite interesting, and raises a lot of issues, but is quite speculative. It claims that left-handedness, autoimmune disorders, etc. and language disabilities are associated, and perhaps some kinds of giftedness such musical or artistic talent. So I don't quite see its relevance to polyglots. Edited by Pisces on 19 May 2012 at 12:23am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5258 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 148 of 149 28 May 2012 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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New podcast interview with Babel No More author Michael Erard, on Syzygy on Languages blog.
Interview conducted by Claude Cartaginese ('The Polyglot Project') and David Mansaray. Edited by Kronos on 28 May 2012 at 8:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5844 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 149 of 149 18 July 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Michael Erard's book "Babel No More" has now been launched on the UK bookmarket under the title "Mezzofanti's Gift".
Fasulye 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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