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How fluent to be a Polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6832 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes  Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 17 of 49 30 March 2006 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
I totally agree with you.I have a higher skill in reading than in speaking,for exemple i can read academic books in English but i wouldn't fell so much confident conversinge in English with a scholar! I think reading skills are important because they allow you to read articles,newspapers,books from all over the world ant this only is already a great achievement. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cp Triglot Newbie Greece info-resources-pasti Joined 6816 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Greek*, EnglishC2, FrenchB2 Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin | Message 18 of 49 30 March 2006 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've never met someone without an accent or whose grammar was impeccable. Not even the average native speaker can manage that.
My reading skills are better than my conversation ones, but this is because I don't practice in speaking the language. People who live in the country where their target language is spoken must find it easier to do both. I think if native speakers can understand you, you can read books and newspapers and can catch most of what you listen to the TV or radio, your level is quite good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6869 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 19 of 49 04 June 2006 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Thnaks, but not quite. Allowing use of the dictionaries I own, I could decipher for example front-page newspaper articles in several more languages if I have a lucky day. At the other end of the scale, I often find it difficult to understand sung Swedish. Give me a dictionary (no, I've got a few) and I'd be more happy with Sung Chinese. Like the ladies' tea party, "Have another cookie!" "No thanks, I've already had two." "Actually three, but who counts?" Anyway, the EU scale of language proficiency just sucks. It presupposes a parallel development of reading, writing and speaking skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7320 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 49 04 June 2006 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm just glad the Council of Europe has at least provided a scale. Not like here where the government employees' definition of high proficency can range anywhere from B1+ to C2. And for the education system, there is no scale.
The Swiss have developed a chart to evaluate your skills according to levels, so I guess in theory you can give yourself different levels for your different skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 21 of 49 20 July 2006 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm sceptical about accepting read-only or even understand-only languages when we discuss polyglotism. As you can see in several threads about the Scandinavian languages we can more or less understand each other. I as a Dane can read and understand Swedish and Norwegian quite well, and (if I take care to speak clearly) Swedes and Norwegians can also understand me. But I didn't put either of those two languages on my language list because it's just a side effect of being Danish, - I didn't actively study those languages.
On the other hand I have put Icelandic and Latin on the list (albeit at a low level), even though I don't speak those languages and have much less ability to read them than I have with Swedish or Norwegian texts. That's because my limited knowledge of these languages came by through hard work. Another example: I can read newspapers in Afrikaans, but that's because I can read Dutch, I never studied Afrikaans, only Dutch. For me languages only count if you can use them actively (speaking, writing) OR if the fact that you at least have passive abilities (reading, understanding orally) is a result of hard work on precisely the language in question. No free lunch here. EDIT: since I wrote this I have put Norwegian and Swedish on the list, but at the lowest possible level. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2006 at 10:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6746 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 49 20 July 2006 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
That's your prerogative, of course; but there are no 'rules' giving a precise definition of polyglottism, and if there were, it's unlikely yours would be used! The thing is, if I've spent thousands of hours studying (say) French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Romanian, and find that because of all that effort I can read fluently another 30-odd Romance languages, then I'm going to have the lunch without paying, so there :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 23 of 49 20 July 2006 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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To Sinfonia:
Apologies, I didn't express myself clearly enough. There is indeed a free lunch in the sense that you may be able read 30-odd Romance languages (and dialects) if you invest enough time in learning the main languages in the group. I have no problems with that argument. In fact when I registered with this forum I had to state which languages I could read or understand, and that list was of course longer than the list in my profile. But in this context where the question is how many languages it takes to make a polyglot, I would find it grossly misleading in my case to claim 30 Romance languages and dialects. So I stick to my personal rule that only active languages count, except for those passive languages and dialects that I understand because and only because I studied them (such as Latin). Edited by Iversen on 20 July 2006 at 8:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rafaelrbp Pentaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 7015 days ago 181 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian Studies: German | Message 24 of 49 20 July 2006 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Iversen, you can't claim that you really KNOW a lot of languages, if you haven't made any effort to learn them, even passively.
Here in Brazil a lot of people say that they understand Spanish, it's very easy, etc. But they can't be considered to be "fluent" (not even close to that) in that language, just because they know Portuguese! But one problem that arises with this "polyglot metric": if you know Danish, and then study Norwegian and Swedish (actively), then you could claim you know 3 languages, but the effort needed to learn them is not that big. This would fall in the language/dialect problem. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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