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Negative aspects of being a Polygot? | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| JS-1 Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5925 days ago 144 posts - 166 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written) | Message 65 of 94 01 July 2009 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Indeed. Nobody is going to deliberately use wrong spellings. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| RBenham Triglot Groupie IndonesiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5585 days ago 60 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Indonesian | Message 66 of 94 02 July 2009 at 7:13am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I'm from Australia, and I can add a third possibility: knowing foreign languages is seen first and foremost as the preserve of migrants and their children, popularly (and inelegantly) known as "wogs". (This term varies from being strongly pejorative to quite positive, depending on who's using it, about whom, and in what tone of voice.) Generally, in Australia, where there is a strong migrant presence, speaking non-English languages in public often arouses hostility. There is an anecdote involivng Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, a television personality, who grew up speaking several languages due to his background. As a teenager, he was speaking one of them (I think Polish) to his mother in a shop, and some kid said something like "Stop talking that language, you wog!" The result was, according to him, that he never spoke any language other than English again. On the other hand, I remember a group of French tourists in a crowded bus. Because it was crowded, they were not seated in a group, but standing, and somewhat dispersed; but they kept up a steady conversation by talking fairly loudly, although not offensively so, in French. People seemed amused rather than hostile, and when they got off the bus, a man chuckled and said "Frogs!" While the general feeling was that they had perhaps been a bit arrogant, they were just being, ah, Frogs, and there was no real resentment. So we could say that, at the time, French was a high-status language, whereas Central European languages, being commonly spoken by migrants, were low-status languages. In any case, some of the prejudice against native speakers of other languages seems to rub off on those who learn other languages, although few are as extremist as the moron I saw tattoo'd with the words "Speak English or die!" Please excuse the welter of posts to this one thread. When I saw that it had become active, I read through it, and found a few things to comment on. I don't regard myself as a polyglot. I would not even consider counting a language in which my achievement were below the C2 level on the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. On that score, I am a triglot, although I feel my language learning even in those two second languages is only beginning. Anyway, this post is about the perils of speaking both German and English, at least when flying Lufthansa. The hostesses seem to have a policy of asking a question in a polite tone of voice in a random choice of German and English, and then, if an answer is not forthcoming within about a fifth of a second, abandoning all pretence of politeness and bawling the question at the top of their voice in the other language. If I am fully conscious, there is not too much of a problem, except that even a moment's reflection on whether one would prefer the beef or the chicken for one's meal is likely to result in being bawled at.... The real problem comes, however, when I am awoken by a hostess with one of these hostess-like questions. Imagine this: I am sitting there, peacefully sleeping, a state which takes many hours longer than normal to achieve on an economy-class seat, and suddenly I hear this voice addressing me. Not having a fully functioning brain, I take a while to work out that someone is actually talking to me. Then I have to work out what language she is speaking. Fortunately, I seem to have a good memory for sound, and so I can replay the utterance in my mind. Good, German. OK, switch to German mode, replay once again, and answer. The problem is that by this time she is by now shouting at me in English, and in my half-conscious state, I am trying to process the input as German. It is just as bad the other way around. Presumably, if I only spoke English (and perhaps (an)other language(s) other than German), I would just interpret anything she said in German as random noise, and wait for her to switch to English. In this scenario, I would presumably understand and respond appropriately to the English question, rather than being totally confused by both. So the net effect is that speaking both languages makes me appear less linguistically competent rather than more. And finally, some comments about dyslexia, which has been discussed in this thread. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 28; my daughter and possibly other family members have the condition. At the same time, I have well-above-average verbal abilities. I can spell about as well as anyone, in the sense of knowing how words are spelt, but sometimes I reverse the order of letters when writing or misread a word for an anagram when reading. This makes reading something of an ordeal, but my insatiable curiosity seems to make up for this to a large extent. When I write, I just need to go back and correct myself a lot, which slows me down a bit. The effect of all this on my language learning is a lot less than one might think. I learned French and German largely by reading, because I had little contact with native speakers and no opportunity to visit countries where these languages were spoken. This fact is reflected in exam results: in the DALF C2, for example, I got 96% for the written but only a mediocre 78% for the oral (although the conditions did not help). I am certain that people who are dyslexic or otherwise have trouble with the written word but are orally competent in their native language could, with a suitable program, achieve a good level of oral competence in their "target" language. Don't forget, there are native speakers in just about any linguistic community who are perfectly competent, but who, for some reason or another, are totally illiterate. There are also linguistic communities that lack a written language altogether. The last thing I wanted to say is also the most speculative. I wonder whether there is a connexion between dyslexia and the language. What I mean is that I wonder whether it is possible that a given person would grow up dyslexic in a language-A community but not in a language-B community. (I even wonder what it would be like to be dyslexic in an ideographic language.) More speculatively, I wonder whether one could be dyslexic in one's native language but not in an "second" language, or vice versa. I know this sounds weird, but bear with me. A few years ago, in Prague, I was inspired by its reputation as a "literary city" to read some Czech literature in the original language. I was learning Czech at the time, but only just beginning. But that was OK: I could read Kafka (et al) in German, and Kundera in French. I started reading La Lenteur in the bookshop, and found I couldn't put it down; so I bought it and read it all the way through that afternoon. It occurred to me later that I had never read a novel in English as quickly as that. I mentioned this to my brother's then girlfriend, a literacy educator, and she said that there there seemed to be something about English that tended to make people dyslexic, that the rate of dyslexia was higher among English speakers than those of other languages. So could escaping from dyslexia be an unexpected advantage of learning a language other than English? Could becoming dyslexic be an unexpected hazard of learning English? Are there other pro-dyslexic (or anti-dyslexic) languages? Or is it just coincidence that I read faster in French than in English? Are there also people who would be dyslexic in French but not in English...? EDIT: No multiple posts please. Edited by patuco on 02 July 2009 at 11:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| crackpot Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6243 days ago 144 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 68 of 94 03 July 2009 at 2:12am | IP Logged | |||||
My brother did this to me when I translated two similar words as being the same word in French. I tried to explain that we translate ideas not words but it seemed to not get through to him. Strange, he's an okay guitar player, not great by any standards but can't understand that people can have less than a native level of fluency and still be able to communicate effectively. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6389 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 69 of 94 03 July 2009 at 4:03am | IP Logged | |||||
Dyslexia in German manifests itself somewhat differently to dyslexia in English. The acquisition of phonological coding in word recognition is easier for German children. The risk of a serious problem in reading development is smaller for children who are learning a phonetic ortography. Dyslexia has a language barrier Dyslexia Harder on English- and French-speaking Children "Although Italian dyslexics read more accurately than French or English dyslexics, they showed the same degree of impairment" English has 40 sounds, but there are more than 1,100 different ways to spell those sounds. For instance, the words "mint" and "pint" differ by only one letter, but the pronunciation in English is completely different. "In Italian, there are 25 sounds and they are all represented by just 33 letters or spellings. Thus, when Italian dyslexics learn to read, they struggle with fewer variables." I find it interesting that you didn't have problems with French. Dyslexia and learning a foreign language: A personal experience "I no longer tell the truth about how long I have studied French because people cannot comprehend how I could have studied since 1992 and have so little proficiency." "English speakers with the reading disability typically have functional abnormalities in posterior parts of the brain associated with reading and possibly less gray matter in these areas also. In Chinese dyslexics, on the other hand, the functional and structural brain abnormalities related to reading correspond with the left middle frontal region of the brain, according to new research... The different brain networks accommodate the different features of English and Chinese. The two systems are dramatically different. Chinese is pictographic and English is more phonological, or sound-based." Dyslexia in Chinese, English speakers is different: study Edited by reineke on 03 July 2009 at 5:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6645 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 70 of 94 03 July 2009 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
There is nothing weird about this, - in fact it is probably quite common in places like Africa where people speak a bewildering array of native languages at home, but learn English or French in school. Or you might recall the situation of Catalans under Franco, where the use of Catalan in the schools was punished. If you get insufficient or no training in writing your own language at an early age, but a lot of exercise in another language then I wouldn't be surprised if tendencies to dyslexia struck harder in your native langue. Edited by Iversen on 03 July 2009 at 12:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6214 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 71 of 94 03 July 2009 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I posted about this elsewhere, but Lee Harvey Oswald seems to have been a dyslexic. It certainly shows in English writings by him. He acquired a good grasp of spoken Russian, but I don't know how well he could read or write it.
I would imagine dyslexia would hit harder in a language like English, with a rather unpredictable spelling system, than in more phonetic languages like Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5708 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 72 of 94 03 July 2009 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Please don't forget that the degree of dyslexia is different in expression, and some people learn to cope better than others.
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