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IQ needed to be a hyperglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6778 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek | Message 1 of 164 04 May 2006 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi everyone,
I'm new here, so before anything else, sincere congrats to the administrator for a fantastic job. Brillian site! Now, gonna come up here with something new, Im afraid; hope some of you don't get upset...dreaded territory for many I suppose...As far as I know, nobody ever as talked about this as bluntly as I am to. The thing is I have been following for years now the scientific study of intelligence as much as I am in the polyglot front; right, not as a pro but believe me, when you spend virtually decades thinking about something you ve got an insight into it that it is difficult for a newcomer to come to terms with at first. And cant help to feel that there's something here to be said once and for all, for the mental hygiene of everyone.Because I am just tired of sites like this spoiled over and over again by the soft types going like this: "I forgot..." "I tried to learnd chinese, and I failed. ERGO: learning Chinese is impossible". "How can possibly Ziad Fazah know soooo many languages?" Now, believe it or not, that there are variation of cognitive abilities between people, that it can be reasonably properly evaluated, that this is of far-reaching relevancy, is something about what scientific evidence is approaching the level of "smoking is bad for your health" Now, there are so a fantastic number of correlations found, and so significant for a social science, that I feel researchers are even a trifle scared about the magnitude and the social consecuences of this study. Relevant for our business: g correlates highly with all things conected with language to the highest degree, things such as vocabulary power, semantic distinction, verbal fluidity...even phonetic encoding! In fact, it has been known for a long time that the verbal part of tests such as the WAIS have the higher degree of correlation with total IQ score... so that in daily life you can have an instant idea of someone's wits just from the appropriateness they use words with. Now guys: doesn't it make sense that this abilities are transfered into all subsequent languages you learn? That's what I say. On te other hand, a wide vocabulary has always been a revealing trace to uncover gifted children. For example, I have taken the Cambridge Proficiency exam and believe me, if you look at it with the eyes of an Iq or "g" researcher, you see is a test heavily "g loaded". That is to say, a good chunk of any given population is simply inherently unable to pass, no matter how much English they study. I remember a guy taking the exam with me who said about a particular text-comprehension question: "I wouldn't be able to answer this in my native language" Spot on! They try to test your language to the extreme by means of asking you to make a fine distinction, but they are actually asking you to summon all your "g" horse power. I in all honesty think this is how the truth goes: IQ 70 and less (mental retardation): inability to master fully their native language IQ 70-85: reasonable command of native language; if in a multilingual environment, show great dificulty in avoiding interferences, may slide into a state of virtual "don't know any language properly" like that character in Umberto Eco novel, remember? IQ 85-100: normal comand of native language, can have a smatering of others if forced by situation, passive understanding etc, kind of india or africa situation IQ 100-112: good command of native language, know all idioms, if litterate can write with minor mistakes -depending on language, fair enough-, only lacks the most peripheral levels of language, not very sharp for sublte semantic distinctions, can handle well second languages with proper training, exposure, or motivation IQ 112-125: some degree of brilliancy: if circunstances needed are present, feasability of a happy more than litterate bilingual life, but some difficulty to go beyond totally unrelated three, or related five, and keeping them sharp IQ 125-140: (specially if Verbal IQ is higher than general IQ, kind of verbally orientated type, with a knack for the crucial phonological encoding faculty) Hyperpoliglots area! IQ 140 and more: Mezzofanti, Fazah, monsters of nature area Edited by sigiloso on 21 September 2009 at 9:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vinz Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 6882 days ago 55 posts - 56 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Vietnamese, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 164 04 May 2006 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I found your post very unfounded and just lacking logical flow. Your point is that cognitive abilities have to do with how many languages and what kind of proficiency a learner can attain. I don't think you can think in a linear fashion just like you described it. There are many more factors which have to be taken into account for each learner in each language.
I am speaking from an anthropologist's point of view. Environmental cues and stimuli account a lot for a leaner in addition to his 'innate intelligence'. I don't think the IQ of a person is fixed and determined genetically. To me, while it does have genetic basis, the expression of the 'intelligence factor' is majorly varied by the environment in which one grows up. There are experiments with identical twins being separated at birth and raised in different environments. While they have all of their genetic material in common, this does not imply that both twins will be exactly the same once they grow up. Secondly, does a learner like Ziad or Mezzofanti speak exactly like a native from the target language's country? No. From the moment they speak you can tell they are not from there. There are always clues that give them away. Accent, strange idioms, bizarre tense uses. I spoke to Ziad many times in French. He has a slight accent and strange idiom uses. I am not taking away credit from him in any way, but merely pointing out that one can never pass for native. According to your theory, an extension of consequences of cognitive abilities would be the ability to pass for native speaker. After all, if language learning was only determined by pure cognitive abilities, then so must be the accent, idiomatic usage, sentence pacing, etc... However, a high level of literary mastery in the language does not necessarily imply a high level of spoken abilities. Finally, some statements seemed random and unfounded, especially this one at the end: "the white race excell in verbal intelligence". And what do you refer to as "g"? vinz. PS: Your post contains many spelling mistakes that you could correct as well. Is this a direct expression of your IQ? I think not. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Magnum Bilingual Triglot Retired Moderator Pro Member United States Joined 7116 days ago 359 posts - 353 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian*, French Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 164 04 May 2006 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'll chime in with my two cents...
IQ is irrelevant. Life it to be lived and enjoyed, and a number is meaningless. I believe that different people learn in different ways. It would be more productive to find ways to get the most return for our effort. I worked very hard to learn French. It did not come easily, and there were times I wanted to give up because it was so frustrating. But I worked at it and learned, and I'm proud of myself for the effort and not quitting. Your theory does not take into account so many variables. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| arnz Newbie United States Joined 7204 days ago 38 posts - 44 votes | Message 4 of 164 04 May 2006 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My cousin is developmentally disabled, he speaks two languages, his native one and he learned English as well. He speaks them both well, although his topics are usually of a childlike nature
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| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7103 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 5 of 164 04 May 2006 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Whether IQ has anything to do with being able to learn languages or not, so many other factors have to be considered.
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 6 of 164 04 May 2006 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Dreaded? Naa - the forum has generally attracted high-IQ individuals, so all an IQ-based second language acquisition theory can do is stoke the egos of the participants.
The fact that some are born with the potential to be very smart and some with only average innate abilities is common-sense self-evident.
Language, properly defined, is a medium of thought, and there is indeed no reason to expect that one's mental powers would be revealed to be substantially different when expressed in a foreign language than in one's own. This is also completely self-evident. So, we have several self-evident statements. What, then, is the punchline? That some are better at picking up languages than others, given the same motivation level and the same learning opportunities and tools? Was this ever seriously in doubt? Edited by frenkeld on 04 May 2006 at 8:12pm 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 7 of 164 04 May 2006 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Based on the title, I think his reasoning is more about the IQ needed to be a hyperpolyglot. And I can't really tell which cognitive ability or feat is the most important for language learning, but surely the hyperpolyglots (+10 languages) have something that the others don't, or at least something much more developed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 164 04 May 2006 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is very much the commonly-held view, which is why I asked the original poster why he expected anyone to be shocked by this type of statement. In fact, the only possible shocker would be if this were actually not true. Most likely, like in many other fields, if you exclude the truly exceptional cases, the remaining "merely" good ones can be more or less gifted, compensating up to a point with motivation and hard work. Which is also sort of self-evident. So, all-around, not enough of a shocker, except the Bell curve stuff. Duh. Edited by frenkeld on 05 May 2006 at 12:58am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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