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Ideal systematic training in polyglottery | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7255 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 33 of 43 06 April 2008 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time flies and I am amazed that I have not revised this proposal in over a month. It is increasingly apparent to me that Sundays alone are not sufficient to handle the volume of this room. I will look at my schedule to see if I cannot begin budgeting another day each week so that I can do this forum justice.
For right now, I do not want to leave the last two comments to this thread hanging, so I will attempt to answer them fleetingly right here and now and then try to incorporate those answers into a general revision, hopefully in the next few days. So, on the economy of Korean followed by Japanese versus vice versa: the point is certainly moot if you have an inherently greater interest in Japanese. In that case, by all means you should learn it first, as it will also be of great assistance in any subsequent studies of Korean. However, if you do not have that greater interest and you are strategically planning a course of studies such that each stage will facilitate the next to the greatest degree possible, it would indeed be wiser and more efficient to begin with Korean. As to what target students of this kind of academy should do in the meantime, I only wish I had a good answer, but unfortunately I do not. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rNajera Triglot Groupie Canada rafaelnajera.com Joined 6136 days ago 45 posts - 60 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Latin, German, Korean | Message 34 of 43 08 April 2008 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Before I interject for the first time in this topic, let me just say that I find the idea of a Liberal Arts, polyglot academy extremely attractive and would have liked to receive that kind of education.
Also, as many people here, this forum has given me a good deal of encouragement and useful advice in learning languages. I have learned a lot specially from Dr. Argüelles and I want to thank him publicly for that.
As I see it, the idea is to have a well rounded education, which opens many doors to you in all walks of life. If you happen to live in a wealthy society it should not be that difficult to find a more than decent job just because of the fact that you are well educated, most probably very articulate and, of course, a speaker of many languages. If you don't live in a wealthy country it will probably be harder. Not impossible, of course, but much harder. In fact I can't see how an academy like the one proposed here would be feasible in developing countries like my native Costa Rica, where people are understandably more worried about their material futures than about their education. As Aristotle said, wisdom, and the Polyglot Academy should strive for wisdom if it is to be worth the trouble, is the mark of free man, the one who is liberated from most material constraints. Only if you have some (financial) freedom you can enter the virtuous circle of wisdom needing freedom to produce more freedom. Regards, Rafael. Edited by rNajera on 08 April 2008 at 10:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7255 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 35 of 43 10 April 2008 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have updated the first post. After not seeing it for a month, I did a fair amount of tweaking, most of it minor, but enough throughout that the entirety might be worthy of perusal if you find the whole idea very interesting. At any rate, the most important change was at the end, and I will put those few paragraphs here again lest they be missed. Before that, let me say that it did not seem relevant to discuss the whole Korean/Japanese issue in this context and that I will open a new thread for it. Thanks also to Rafael for weighing in, and apologies again to Ruan for not having a good answer. Now to repeat those two new last paragraphs from the original long post:
Taking steps to found an academy of Polyglottery: Stage 1: an intensive language school As it clearly makes the most sense to attempt to actualize these dreams by creating a core or nucleus that can grow into a full scale academy, I have decided to do just that. Utilizing normal forms of publicity plus my alumni connections, I will soon begin advertising an intensive month-long course in foreign language study techniques. I will offer this not to compete with but rather to complement the existing intensive study options available at places like the Defense Language Institute/Monterey Institute of International Studies and Middlebury College. Those are the places in the USA where one can go to be taught a specific language intensively. I will offer, instead, intensive instruction in study skills so that students can better teach themselves. If enough of the most serious and dedicated type of student, the type who would consider going to this other kind of institute, will consider studying with me instead or in addition, then this will signal the success of stage 1. Pending that success, stage 2 will involve the acquisition of some type of retreat center or campus-like grounds so that the resource center could be installed and so that students who have taken the month-long introductory course could stay on for more advanced supplementary apprenticeship as they continue studying languages on their own in this conducive environment. When and if this kind of student forms a large enough contingent interested not only in intensive language study but also in great books education and the other ideals of Polyglottery, stage 3 will be to expand in terms of faculty, accreditation, and implementation of the overall study plans described above. My thanks to all of those who have had the patience to read through these various revisions as I have developed my ideas (and I am certainly not done yet!) and not think that this was merely an idle fantasy. Objectively speaking, there is always a niche group of people who seriously need and want to succeed in learning foreign languages, even if they do not do it with the passion, interest, and love of subject matter that the members of this forum exhibit. My task now is to connect with these people so that a venue and a locus for really hard-core language study can take root, and from that, the tree of Polyglottery can grow. I have the credentials, the experience, and the expertise to do this, as well as a real product to deliver, this I know, but I also know that I am clueless about marketing, publicity, and all that kind of thing. So, if those of you who have a stake in the successful emergence of this discipline, of this academy, have any practical suggestions to make, now is the time to make them, as I would be very happy to receive them. Edited by ProfArguelles on 10 April 2008 at 3:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| parasitius Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5997 days ago 220 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, Polish, Spanish, French | Message 36 of 43 09 October 2008 at 3:14am | IP Logged | ||
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This thread is undoubtedly one of the most exciting on the whole of the forum. Sadly,
even if the academy had already existed when I was 18, there is no chance I would have attended as my interest or obsession in language was not so developed by that time. I wonder how many others would miss the chance for the same reason. Anyway, if the plan eventually does come to fruit, I seriously hope that one day I can be involved either as a grad student or a great great many years later, if I succeed in concentrating the energies of my obsession, as faculty. You've previously mentioned the immense number of years and lifetime of effort needed to obtain proficiency in exotics such as Korean, Chinese, and Arabic. This makes me very curious about the value of merely "documenting" and "learning" a Class D to "save" it. If it is as exotic as Korean or Arabic, and I dare say the value of a class D is corollary to the degree which it differs from widely know languages, then surely whatever the linguist learns of it will never approach a native knowledge. If he helps to pass it on to another linguist after all native speakers have passed on, surely the "photocopy of a photocopy" will result in an even less perfect knowledge of the true original language being passed on. Eventually, even if there was a community of people interesting in learning and using the language, the best that they could achieve is to learn a certain subset of the external "face" of the language and fill in the gaps of their knowledge of the innate grammar of the original language with whatever language was most familiar to them. Thus it seems to me language "death" is more-or-less an absolute and permanent thing. The main preservation "value" that one might seek to achieve, if anything, would be to discover and document all aspects of the language that are truly unique or unparalleled in other known languages. Creating an Assimil course could only preserve a certain portion of a language that, to be resurrected to such a degree that the grammar was completely regular and could be a native tongue, would need to be cross- bred with the logic or ideas of a language of the living. To me one of the most compelling things about dying languages is this: if humanity had no morals of any kind or sort and could experiment as any mad scientist wished, it would be possible to create an infinite number of 'languages' by raising groups of babies together and teaching them no language, and allowing their grunts and cries to be morphed into a regular language after some generations. This is definitely not the case, however, and so we will only see an occasional new language when something very perverse has happened. (To my knowledge this has happened only once, for a sign language.) Thus, for the entire rest of the history of mankind, out of the infinite number of languages which would have arisen were humans to roam the earth as tribes for millions more years, these 6,000-10,000 are all we have and all we ever will have. Even endangered animals are not so scarce—for surely if we gained sufficient technology to travel beyond earth, there would be no moral issue with leaving earth creatures on another planet to 'evolve' into a whole variety of new creatures. Edited by parasitius on 09 October 2008 at 3:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| will72694 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5703 days ago 59 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 43 19 July 2009 at 1:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I do not have the time to read this full thread, so I am sorry if this has been mentioned before. What if you could
"sell" this idea to Columbia University as its separate school or college, such as the Hard Kennedy School of Government and so on? I would love to study at that school, but it would be very difficult to bring something like that to fruition without a major partnership from a University. Anyway, there's my two cents worth on a very old thread. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ninja Bunny Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5791 days ago 42 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Dutch, Danish, Mandarin, Afrikaans, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French | Message 38 of 43 23 July 2009 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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If it does somehow get accepted at a university somewhere, please let me know. I will sign up for classes immediately.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ocius Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5589 days ago 48 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English*, German, Ancient Greek Studies: French, Latin, Sanskrit | Message 39 of 43 16 August 2009 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just stumbled across this thread, and -- as a student (sophomore) at St. John's College in Santa Fe (the school based on the "Great Books" education mentioned in his original post) I'd like to say a few things regarding my experience with their curriculum. Perhaps an account of their system from someone currently enrolled in it will be of use to you in developing your own curriculum.
The language curriculum is structured as follows: Freshman and Sophomore year are dedicated primarily to Ancient Greek. Junior and Senior years are dedicated to French. I have no experience with this curriculum as yet, so I'll refrain from commenting. Now, in my opinion, the language curriculum offers a very good opportunity to become well-acquainted with Ancient Greek (and I assume French), however one does need enough motivation to continue with the study outside of the minimum requirements for the course (I imagine this is true for any university language course). The St. John's library, however, gives you all the materials you could possibly need for this: they have many copies of the original language texts for all of the great books as well as many different translations from different eras. I assume that your proposed course would aim to have such a library. Strictly from an aspiring polyglot's perspective, only having access to two languages academically is disappointing. They also don't really teach methodology for learning languages unless you explicitly seek out one of the polyglot professors, which is, again, very disappointing. However, to be fair, the school's goal is a great books education, not a detailed study of languages (the reading list for their great books curriculum is available freely at their website, if you'd like to take a look and compare to yours). Despite that, the community of learners that such a school attracts brings about a ton of opportunities for extra-curricular study. Last year there were Sanskrit (the graduate institute here is in Eastern Classics) and German study groups going on that I was aware of, and probably others that I was not informed of. There is also a weekly French discussion group (i.e. a 1.5 hour long session in which you can only speak French) to supplement the class-room learning of French. This coming year, I'll be taking part in an Arabic study group and am looking into a German discussion group and possibly a Russian group. If a polyglot institute were to be opened up, I'd hope that such a community of learning would be the goal -- perhaps even more explicitly than at St. John's, since they cater more to a younger crowd (I myself am only 19). Having the constant companionship of other scholars who are passionate about their work and study creates a highly motivating atmosphere. More on the topic of the great books education: St John's bases its great books curriculum around two, two-hour classes per week (called the "Seminar"). We're given a reading to do, then we show up and the teacher presents an opening question to begin a discussion about the text. This format can be both very rewarding for some nights or very frustrating for others. As much as I love group discussions, the major lack that I am beginning to feel at St John's is the lack of a real lecture course: sometimes, just having an experienced scholar explain his opinions and experience with an author, an idea, etc., is much more rewarding and insightful than struggling through a text with a handful of students who didn't read closely enough, didn't think hard enough, etc... That said, I believe any Great Books curriculum should have a strong core of classes that make use of both group discussions (that heavily involve the students) AND lectures from a knowledgeable professor on, perhaps, topics such as general learning methodology, etc... -Chris Edited by Ocius on 17 August 2009 at 2:50am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7144 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 40 of 43 17 August 2009 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Administrator,
The previous post does seem to be drifting somewhat off topic, apart from, that is, the rather tenuous link with the Professors great books ideas. Is this post in any way relevant? It seems ot be to be more of a school promotion. kind regards Nephilim 1 person has voted this message useful |
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