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IQ needed to be a hyperglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| 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 105 of 164 18 July 2006 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
All that work, and he couldn't get what he wanted! Anything less than Harvard was considered failure by him. That is the point. Just like someone with an IQ of 70 trying to learn Mandarin probably won't get very far. You're advocating that someone should stop living and become frustrated trying to achieve something out of their reach.
I like what Germany does, they split the student population in two groups- one preparing for university study and the rest preparing for ordinary work. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6856 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 106 of 164 18 July 2006 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would hope that you would invest in a quality teacher who would observe your abilities as an individual. Now, if this teacher said, "You are white. Don't even try! It's too hard and you'll get depressed!" I think you'd be wasting your money. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6856 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 107 of 164 18 July 2006 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Suffering comes from expectations, sure.
What are you advocating. You're saying not all races are equal. Therefore, what. What are you saying. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7314 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 108 of 164 18 July 2006 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are probably very, very few people who aren't smart enough to learn a foreign language. Language learning is a skill that gets developed through practice; it is not some kind of high-level academic discipline that is only accessible to the few. This is demonstrated by the fact that classrooms rarely produce competent speakers.
I think Magnum's examples only apply to competetive fields like professional sports and post-secondary education where one's performance is compared with everyone else's, and only a certain number of individuals can succeed. With language learning, there's really no competition; you simply learn a language at your own pace, then you learn another. It doesn't matter if your pace is faster or slower than someone else's because there's no competition. How many people do you know who actually want to become polyglots or hyperpolyglots? Most people don't like studying languages and would never dream of trying to learn ten or twenty. The few who do decide to learn so many are usually addicted to language study and have already learned a language or two, so they have proven that they have what it takes. In my opinion, failure to learn a language almost always has to do with the method being used and the student's motivation. A friend of mine used to keep telling me that she wasn't good at languages because she had a "bad memory". This was based on her previous studies of Japanese and Spanish at school. A few months ago, I managed to get her highly motivated to learn Spanish with Pimsleur and Platiquemos. She's now finished Pimsleur and is a quarter of the way through Platiquemos, and she can create some pretty impressive sentences without even thinking about it. She is certainly progressing faster than I did when I started Spanish, but I didn't have Platiquemos back then. The only way I'll be convinced that someone isn't good at learning languages is if they are highly motivated to learn the language, have good materials and know how to use them, and study regularly, yet still can't manage to learn it. This rare indivual would be bad at language learning and should probably try some other field. For everyone else, polyglottery, or at least fluency in one or two other languages, is a possibility. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7182 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 109 of 164 19 July 2006 at 3:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Ears can actually be trained. I happen to have a pretty good ear for languages but I have been playing the piano for almost 17 years. I have also spent many hours copying Jazz solos from records. This requires a much more acute ear than you need for studying languages. So when I hear a sentence in Cantonese I can produce a fair imitation of it almost instantly because I can hear the melody and the rythm of it. I believe everyone can train his or her hears to hear the intonation of a foreign language. You just need to listen and listen a lot. Just listening once or twice to a short dialouge simply isn't enough. You should listen in the order of 50-100 times. Sure most people will probably never get a truly native accent but the sad thing is that some don't even try. Furhtermore I agree with the above posters that language learning doesn't have much to do with IQ. People who learn through the "dumb" method by listening and imitating will progress a lot further than the people with an high IQ who overanalyze everything. However an high IQ can be useful in that it helps you to find an efficient way to learn a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Coovertown Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6728 days ago 57 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Korean, English* Studies: French | Message 110 of 164 19 July 2006 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Hmm...look harder into the American school system. :) I mean, dig real deep. That is IF you have the cognitive skills that go along with this high IQ stuff. If you still can't figure it out, I suggest you listen to George Carlin, and Chris Rock. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6856 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 111 of 164 20 July 2006 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The original question was connecting hyperglottism and IQ. I think it takes an abnormal brain to yearn to speak twenty languages. I don't know if it takes being a certain race, but I think your mental make up is going to be rather bizarre. But in a good way. :)
I taught English in the Czech Republic which has a similar system to Germany's. None of these fourteen to eighteen year olds were going to a university, but they could all at least speak three languages by the time they graduated. But I actually thought they were pretty bright. I wasn't so fond of this system. By the time you're fourteen, you've already figured out your life's path. On the other hand, the kids had a real respect for authority, at least until I walked into the room. Let's say I wasn't the scariest of teachers and they ran me into the ground. It was awful. Even the kids working at McDonald's could speak at least three or four languages. But there's a difference between learning this in school because you have to and having some obsessive compulsive nature that fuels you to keep trying into your 80s. Does it take a certain kind of intelligence to do this? Does it matter? 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 112 of 164 20 July 2006 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Perhaps my question strays a bit off topic, but motivated people tend to have a bit of an obsession with whatever it is they are after, and with high IQ people or geniuses, kick it up to the nth degree: Is addiction to language study bad? I think this was discussed a bit in another thread, but I wanted to bring it up here as well. Addiction can refer to the nessesary passion to strive, or an addiction that has real negative effects. I would certainly not want the latter...However at the time being my passion is there, but my motivation needs to be stoked a bit. It's been a couple of weeks and I still haven't "found" time to get back to my studies; I'll probably have to do a short review first. Edited by Journeyer on 20 July 2006 at 6:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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