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You are not a real polyglot if... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4780 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes  Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 89 of 299 17 October 2013 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Also, while I'm still in Douchy McNitpick mode:
You left out the navy ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7164 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 90 of 299 17 October 2013 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
D'oh! Well, I walked right into that one, didn't I? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4696 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 91 of 299 17 October 2013 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Beat me to it. ... So what is Mongolian a dialect of, BTW? ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4715 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 92 of 299 17 October 2013 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
I couldn't understand them if I wanted to, that is true, but Flemish is used colloquially to mean any Belgian dialect, whether it's a standardized Belgian way of writing or any other dialect. If you say that you are a speaker of that dialect, you must add West Flemish (similarly to how I would accept Limbourgish, Zealandic or a Low Saxon dialect in the Netherlands as separate). Flemish is understood to mean all Belgian dialects, the West-Flemish dialects are related to Zealandic variants in the Netherlands. There's also East Flemish, Antwerp, Brabantian, Limbourgian etc. in Belgium. The point is that those are not as politicised so I think that no one would actually list Limbourgian on their CV. Or maybe they do. But I can't see why. The other problem is that these languages don't really have very uniform written standards, and most people will write standard Dutch anyway, even if they speak dialect. Belgians do too. The differences in writing between any Belgian dialect and any dialect spoken in the Netherlands are marginalised by the fact there is one coherent orthography for all of it, and the only differences exist in vocabulary (similar to sidewalk/pavement issues). I don't know anyone who writes dialect. Edited by tarvos on 17 October 2013 at 8:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7164 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 93 of 299 18 October 2013 at 12:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I suspect strongly that to anyone who's serious, sober or honest, stating or treating Portuguese and Spanish as different languages is uncontroversial regardless of the obvious similarities. They're different regardless of the feelings and historical consciousness are of the native speakers or whether there are well-defined geographical or political boundaries that define the speech territories or not. I also suspect that it's only an ignoramus who would earnestly state that Portuguese and Spanish are that close to the point of overstating the mutual intelligibility of the two. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5438 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 94 of 299 18 October 2013 at 3:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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I won't repeat my arguments. As I have said, there are two schools of thought here, and we'll just have to
agree to disagree. As I have said repeatedly, if the people of a country tell me that the official language of their country is Bosnian, that's good enough for me. I'm not going to fight with them, in the name of linguistic correctness, and tell them that that such a language does not really exist and that it is just a dialect of a pluricentric language called Serbo-Croatian. On a lighter note, I have to say that some years ago at a film festival I saw a docufiction on the life of the great Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun. Here is what Wikipedia says about the film: "Hamsun is a 1996 Danish-Swedish-Norwegian-German drama directed by Jan Troell, about the later life of the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun (Max von Sydow), who together with his wife Marie Hamsun (Ghita Nørby), went from being national saints to national traitors after supporting Nazi Germany during their occupation of Norway during World War II. The film is notable for its use of language. Sydow and Nørby speak throughout the film in their native Swedish and Danish respectively, while the rest of the cast speak Norwegian or German." The director of the film told us that this was a quintessentially Scandinavian film because nobody objected on the grounds of language. I couldn't believe my ears that a Swedish actor would be cast to play a Norwegian writer while speaking Swedish. Only in Scandinavia. And those are distinct languages. This would never happen in a pluricentric language like French. Hell will freeze over before we see a Québécois actor playing a French writer like Jean-Paul Sartre speaking Québécois. And with his wife Simone de Beauvoir played by an actress with a strong Belgian accent. Never, never. Edited by s_allard on 18 October 2013 at 5:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5438 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 95 of 299 18 October 2013 at 4:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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If a person says that they speak Parisian French, Québec French, Belgian French and Acadian French, should we
say that they are not a polyglot and that they are deceiving us? Let me say that as a native speaker of Québécois French, I would be extremely impressed by anyone who could speak French like a Parisian, a Québécois, a Belgian and an Acadian respectively. I have never met or heard of anyone who can do this. I know many native Quebec French speakers who can speak excellent Spanish and English, but to master four varieties of French. Truth be told, I find that more impressive than speaking four diverse languages because it is so difficult to keep the varieties separate. This person is a polyglot in my book. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5342 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 96 of 299 18 October 2013 at 6:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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One of the things I love about this forum, it that I am always pushed into learning about new things. S allard's
mentioning of Acadian made me curious to learn more about it. The Wikipedia article led me to an article about Chiac (a mixture of Acadian and English) which in turn led me to an article about Russenorsk which is an extinct pidgin language made up of Norwegian and Russian words, mostly dealing with fishing and trade. Acadian and Quebecois possibly would qualify as different enough from standard French to be considered different languages. I am more hesitant about Belgian French. In the three months I lived in Brussels I only noticed a few words which differed, and the pronunciation is also almost identical. There may of course be rural dialects that are more different, but the Belgian French I heard there was extremely similar to standard French. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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