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Are we being too hard on the polyglots? | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5114 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 41 of 72 04 January 2012 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm curious as to why that would be a question. Isn't it pretty easy to type in any language by setting up the keyboard layouts on your computer? That's how I type Esperanto and French characters, and I assume other languages would be the same (languages like Chinese, obviously, having a somewhat more difficult system, but still doable). I think I know who you're talking about, and if I'm right, I've always been more fascinated than annoyed by him. Fascinated because I really wonder what he could possibly be thinking. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 42 of 72 04 January 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
That's pretty much my philosophy, although I might let the person know (publicly, even) that I got a good chuckle out of it. Conmen always get caught in the end. Always. It might take some time, but they always fall, and usually hard. R. == 2 persons have 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 43 of 72 04 January 2012 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Hehe. Fame? Yes, maybe. Fortune? I've yet to hear of someone who made a fortune out of just languages. Once they realize that, conmen might kick themselves without anyone's help. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5414 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 44 of 72 04 January 2012 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm personally of the opinion that, for the average person, achieving authentic hyperpolyglottery (which I'll define here as maintaining genuine adult-level fluency in each of more than five languages) is actually impossible.
Languages aren't like Pokémon cards that can be collected after a year or so of investment and then thrown into the back pocket for later use. Every single distinct language is an entire identity to be constructed and mindset to be internalized, requiring a study of more or less all the non-specialized and non-jargon terms that its entire linguistic community has, over the span of centuries, developed in order to frame their entire worldview—be it cooking utensils, biological terms, intangible conceptual ideas, or the names of hundreds upon hundreds of contemporary, historical, and cultural figures—both local and foreign alike. Most native speakers underestimate the fact that they've literally spent their entire lives learning their own languages. For those of us who are native English speakers, we didn't just learn English in our writing, grammar, and literature classes at school. We learned it in our math, history, science, and music classes. We learned it at church. We learned it while watching hundreds of movies and listening to thousands of songs. We learned it while chatting with our friends on AIM and later Facebook. We learned it while watching TV and reading magazines. We even learned it while studying foreign languages (who here knew what fricatives, inflection, agglutination, or isolating languages were before studying foreign languages?). For most people, learning their native language(s) is a lifelong endeavor. Those who decide to forge a new life at the age of 20 or 30 by pursuing an entirely new repertoire of grammatical conceptualizations and lexical frameworks truly fight an uphill battle. And finally, most individuals shoulder an entire mountain of obligations—education, career, health, friends, family, and even other hobbies—which, without actively traveling abroad, typically all occur in their native languages. This is why most people don't make (and seriously commit to) a hobby of learning foreign languages. Balancing a single foreign language with a normal multifaceted life of a multitude of non-related obligations is difficult enough. But successfully pursuing polyglottery in this context is outright impossible. In short, time spent doing something is time not spent doing something else. I believe it's possible to achieve hyperpolyglottery at the expense of all other optional pursuits, but this is an unreasonable sacrifice to expect of any poor soul. ...except, of course, those who claim to know (not study, but know) dozens of languages, without being able to validate their claims. I'm not mad at them, as their lies don't hurt anyone at all, but I also don't think it's uncalled for to call them out on their BS. I hate to end my post on that last negative paragraph, but I felt I had to tie it into the current stream of discussion. :) Edited by nway on 04 January 2012 at 6:34pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5114 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 45 of 72 04 January 2012 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Haha, I'm not sure that last paragraph was any more negative than the rest of your post. :) I'm going to go read something encouraging now... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 46 of 72 04 January 2012 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with the genuine fluency remark. I'll be interested in reading the soon-to-be-released book "Babel No More". From some of the pre-release marketing of the book, he makes a distinction between multilingual and hyperpolyglot - the hyperpolyglot being the type that treats languages as Pokemon cards to an extent. There seem to be quite a few of them out there. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 47 of 72 04 January 2012 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with everything you say, as long as when they are "called out on their BS" it is done without stripping them of their dignity. There is an ocean of difference between saying "I cannot see that you are as good as you believe, you need to work more on this", and "You are a liar and a fraud". 2 persons have 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 48 of 72 05 January 2012 at 2:55am | IP Logged | ||
If you had written "(near)native fluency" in more than five languages I might have accepted this, but it is unclear to me what you mean by "genuine adult-level fluency". So I'll just repeat what I wrote in the thread My story, what’s yours? # of languages: "Roughly speaking I would say that there are around 10-12 languages which I can speak with little or no warning, and around the same number in which I can write, but you wouldn't want to hear me speak without preparation. On top of that there are at least thirty languages in/about which I know 'something', but at a level where I can't claim that I know the language - not even as a beginner." Please notice that I write "with little or no warning", not "perfectly". The point here is not as much the level as the time it takes to start speaking a certain language. Of course it becomes more and more difficult to find time to do something in your languages when the number rises, but if you have learnt a language well enough you don't have to spend hours on end daily on keeping it alive - I keep my 'basic fluency' languages alive mainly by watching TV, surfing, thinking and writing in those languages, rather than by studying them. I know of course that my French isn't at the level it was when I left university, but it is still as readily available as it was back then. The 'rusty' feeling occurs mainly with languages which you haven't learnt well enough in the first place and don't spend enough time on here and now. I think Erard has a point when he distinguishes between multilingual persons and (hyper)polyglots, but not so much because of the distinction between those who keep all their languages functional and those who have old languages stored away somewhere. For me the two groups are different because they represent different attitudes to language learning - with a noticeable overlap. The multilinguals have learnt their languages because of their situation in life or for utilitaristic purposes. The hyperpolyglots are collectors who aren't particularly interested in the practical uses of their languages. And this then has the secondary consequence that they may include languages in their collections which they don't have time to learn well and rarely use - and then you get those pokemon cards on the shelf. Edited by Iversen on 05 January 2012 at 3:14am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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