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How fluent to be a Polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6743 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 25 of 49 21 July 2006 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Well exactly -- and that doesn't really chime with your first paragraph, or Iversen's justification. If you know Danish, then Swedish and the two Norwegians are a piece of cake; if you know Russian -- Ukrainian and Belarusian likewise. There are hundreds of similar examples I could cite; in Africa you can even get 10 or 20 languages that are even closer than these examples -- yet they're considered by natives and linguists as separate languages. So effort is not really a tenable measure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rafaelrbp Pentaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 7012 days ago 181 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian Studies: German | Message 26 of 49 21 July 2006 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
We couldn't define "language", "dialect", "fluency", "to know a language", and now we can't define "polyglot" either. Is a polyglot someone who "learns" languages easily, or someone that"speaks" them or "studies" them? Or even someone who "reconstructs" old languages? As I understand (and that's my opinion after thinking for a while), a polyglot is someone dedicated to learning languages, so he needs to put at least some effort on this goal. I know this definition is not precise, but let me get my point across: If someone spends 10 years of his life studying all Romance languages, and another one spends these same years studying unrelated languages (say, Portuguese, Chinese, Persian, etc), both of them are polyglots. And if you know Swedish, you wouldn't need 10 years to become fluent on Danish or Norwegian, but you could still study them and call yourself a "Northern Germanic specialist", maybe not a polyglot... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6743 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 27 of 49 21 July 2006 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
That just about sums up the inherent 'fuzziness' of language! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6867 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 28 of 49 27 July 2006 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion, if there was someone who was raised speaking a multitude of languages fluently (say, for example both parents speak different languages, the child grows up in an environment where yet at least one other language is spoken....and heck let's say that he has a couple of rich relatives who have traveled the world and have mastered learned even more languages and teach their young nephew/niece/ or whatever), then I would consider that person a polyglot, even if he never formally studied those languages. That's a far-out example, of course, but my point is I think the title of polyglot can be acquired more or less naturally, even if the majority of us are going to have to do it slug it out a bit. Edited by Journeyer on 27 July 2006 at 3:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6743 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 29 of 49 27 July 2006 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
That's very perceptive; you're quite right! How do I know? Because my children are polyglots, having been brought up in such circumstances, and even though none has ever studied a language formally. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 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 30 of 49 27 July 2006 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have earlier written that I was wary of accepting purely passive languages in the language lists, except in the case of languages or dialects that you understand as a result of hard work and studies. On the other hand I have absolutely no qualms about active languages and dialects that are learnt in the childhood, - if you can express yourself fluently and correctly and consistently in Western Flemish or Queen's English or Papiamento or even Esperanto then fine, you have got an item on you language list. It doesn't matter where that language came from. Maybe in fifty years you can get a new language with an injection at the hospital, it's still OK with me, as long as it's active. It may be unfair to all of us who started out with only one native language that some people get three for free in the cradle, but that's just the way it is.
And the point is, wherever you put the number of languages that a polyglot has to speak (and frankly, I don't really care), there will always be some that got their languages easily and others who had to fight all the way uphill. Edited by Iversen on 27 July 2006 at 4:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7014 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 49 27 July 2006 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Now there's a medical breakthrough that I would gladly welcome! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6867 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 32 of 49 28 July 2006 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you Sinfonia. :-)
And also, I would prefer the futuristic method in the form of two pills and a glass of water on full stomach...Not too fond of needles, actually. :-P Edited by Journeyer on 28 July 2006 at 12:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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