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Price of Polyglottery - New Prof | ||
Tags: Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Sibsil Triglot Newbie China Joined 4813 days ago 9 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Korean, English | Message 17 of 90 21 September 2013 at 10:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I find this article by Alexander
Rawlings about going to conference and meeting professor. Maybe some of you also think it interesting. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 18 of 90 22 September 2013 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the heads up. I've read Alex before, seen the video, and find him to be a nice guy, modest with it. Interesting that he finds his conventional degree studies almost to be more of a burden than a help. Perhaps that's not a 100% fair assessment, but it seemed he was doing it because he couldn't think of anything else to do. And of course, he will probably have some form of academic career, and for that, you need a degree, and (especially from Oxford), it's going to be a traditional degree. If he just wanted to learn languages, however, he could so this himself, with very little help from a conventional university (except perhaps, for finding immersion placements, and there are other ways of doing that these days). If he just wants to know a language, there's no need to go off and learn about obscure 18th century playwrights, although, of course, I would defend to the death the right of anyone to study that if they liked, or anything else, even if it were completely "useless. In fact, especially if it were completely "useless". Is six a magic number? I wonder. Having watched the Arguelles keynote speech, I suppose I'm used to the idea. I got to counting the number of languages I'd had exposure to, in addition to English: In order of appearance: [English] French Latin Italian Welsh Biblical Hebrew New Testament Greek German Spanish Norwegian Danish hmmm....eleven, including English. Three of those are "dead" languages. However, the only ones I've really taken seriously are: French German Spanish Recently: Welsh Possibly: Danish So I'm kind of teetering on the 5-6 boundary. I don't think it's given me any special gifts or superpowers yet. But watch this space. Perhaps. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4243 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 19 of 90 22 September 2013 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I find it interesting that Rawlings comments such on his degree, I don't know how I
feel about mine and languages. If I'm being honest, some of the languages I've learnt...well I would never have honestly ever bothered to pick up Italian or German were it not for my degree. French is a different matter simply because I've always liked the idea. That that I'm brilliant in these languages. However, they were needed in order to read academic articles and books for my main subject (Classics) so in that sense my degree improved what I would otherwise have learned. I suspect for someone like Rawlings the insane Oxford system (and it really is horrible sometime!) held him back due to the amount of depth in each language versus breath. In my case I'd probably pick up even more ancient languages. I suffered a mini intervention last year when I skipped some German reading Classics for an intensive Phoenician seminar. I don't know why, I just...do these things. :( Joining this forum has forced me to modernise a bit and go out and speak. On the other hand there are many, many, many, many academics with a phenomenal grasp of several foreign languages, just never publicised. Leofranc Holford Streven's is a perfect example. Trained as a Classicist, ended up working in Publishing, can read some high double digit languages to a ridiculous level. Intimidating but charming. See here: http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/features/9029836.The_last_ of_the_Romans/ 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 20 of 90 22 September 2013 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's a reason I studied engineering and natural sciences :)
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4307 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 21 of 90 24 September 2013 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I really enjoyed the talk.
Re: his "dry" delivery... well yes, it's very dry. He doesn't crack a smile. But on the other hand I think that there are too many TED-style talks where each fact has to be undercut with a joke. Yes, Stephen Pinker is easier to listen to than Noam Chomsky regarding linguistics, but that's because they serve different audiences. I think that Arguelles's thought are engaging without him having to crack anecdotes or throw out dazzling facts. He's a serious person... and the context of his talk is also serious. Probably 33% concerns, 33% analysis and 33% proposals. If he was talking about the joys of polyglottery then he should show some emotion, but it's a serious subject and a serious assembly, so I think he should be able to expect to be listened to without the burden of being entertaining. I expected him to go more into his dislike of modern linguistics, but instead he just leaves it as roughly "people who love facts about language but oddly aren't drawn to learn them." It could equally be asked of him, "if you love learning languages, why aren't you interested in the scientific theories about what they objectively are?" (If you're reading this, incidentally, I would very much be interested in your answer.) It would certainly be a better world if one institution of higher education focused on traditional humanistic learning still existed. Arguelles's speculative curriculum, posted on this forum, sounds like it would have been challenging even for an early modern humanist student, but the idea behind it is only what those historical people DID manage to do. The major problem is that modern education in the richest countries barely prepares students for their single-subject BA education. There's just not the same expectation of intensity in education that the early modern world took for granted. Dr. Johnson, for example, recommended: "A young man should read five hours in a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge." It made me think when Arguelles says that polyglottery must be done "on the sly" and almost "illegitimately," when compared with "legitimate" goals such as getting a high paying job in finance or following an ordinary academic career path. This is something clearly close to Arguelles's heart, since he lucked out in Korea and could follow his "illegitimate" desire, almost as a secret. Why should it have been a secret project that he only managed to embark on through the indifference of his department? For me this is exactly why polyglottery should be recognised as an area of study in its own right. As he says - there are many existing departments in Linguistics which serve very small niches and manage to survive. It certainly seems that Arguelles is not at home in any department, and someone of his dedication really should. Why? Because someone who devoted as many hours to reading English literature as he has to "Languages with a capital L" would certainly have a tenured post in a university Literature department somewhere. And would be giving valuable knowledge to students of that subject. Whyever not for the subject of "Learning Languages"? 7 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 22 of 90 25 September 2013 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Retinend asks: It could equally be asked of him, "if you love learning languages, why aren't you interested in the scientific theories about what they objectively are?" (If you're reading this, incidentally, I would very much be interested in your answer.)"
It is not very likely that you get an answer from ProfArguelles. My own humble answer is that I constantly use my training in linguistics when I study languages. In an old thread I have described myself as a rebellious language student because I try to reformulate and concentrate and personalise not only the methods I use, but even grammar itself. However my general feeling is that much current linguistic research has become an empty formalistic exercise, and precisely because I concurrently think in language learning terms that kind of research is of little interest to me. I once studied "Modern and comparative Literature" at Århus Universitet and became utterly disgusted with the predominantly communist atmosphere at the institute. For practical reasons the language selection was basically limited to the major European languages (including translations into those languages), but nevertheless it was a step in the direction of the multilingual literature institut which prof.Arguelles wants to create. The irony is of course that this institute played an important part in my loss of interest in fiction of any kind. Linguistics didn't play an important part in the studies there, but I got that later when I studied French (and other Romance languages) afterwards - and this time without hard feelings. And I suppose the professor would encourage language studies and especially studies of more exotic languages in his ideal institute, so that institute would have a totally different and more tempting profile than the politically biased sandpit I have experienced. The main risk would be that his institute would become too serious. Edited by Iversen on 25 September 2013 at 12:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 23 of 90 25 September 2013 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||
That would be wonderful if six were the magic number - it would mean that a lot of us are close! Though in my case it would have to include languages that I once spoke well and haven't touched in ten years. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 24 of 90 25 September 2013 at 3:53am | IP Logged | ||
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A thank you to the OP for bringing this new video to my attention; it was riveting. I can't believe anyone would find it dull, much less members of this forum. The Professor is the only "Youtube polyglot" whom I don't find crushingly boring. Perhaps that is because he is the only one who actually knows and has something to say.
About linguistics, acquiring a collection of facts about a language -or language, plainly- and actually learning a few of them are two very distinct things. And regarding the pretensions to "objectivity" of linguistics, it is but an illusion when not a conceit. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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