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Your personal polyglot ideal | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7103 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes  2 sounds | Message 25 of 125 20 February 2006 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are just so many accent varients in the UK. Who knows, you could speak Cockney, Brummie, Estuary or Received Pronunciation and that's not covering the accents that come from Wales and Scotland.
About the original topic, my ideal personal polygot ideal would be speaking at least three languages to near native fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| duffdude Groupie United Kingdom Joined 7192 days ago 75 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 26 of 125 05 March 2006 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a friend from Dudley. When I first met him I said something about his brummie(Birmingham) accent. He was not very happy at all! Apparently there's quite a rivalry, even though Dudley is only 10 miles away.
He took it upon himself to show me how there is a big difference between a Birmingham accent and a Dudley accent. Basically it is similar, however "Brummies" speak in a much more (annoying) higher pitch. I now know exactly what he means, and can distinguish between the two myself! Pretty amazing as these places are only 10 miles apart! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gary24 Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6882 days ago 42 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 27 of 125 25 March 2006 at 2:35am | IP Logged | ||
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This has slightly been mentioned already but in the Jewish community you have 100s of words in other Jewish lanauges (hebrew & yiddish) which Jewish people say without thinking to each other.
The funny thing is with Yiddish that nobody speaks it but every Jewish person knows a few hundred words and often will just think they are english words when they are not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6829 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 28 of 125 30 March 2006 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I TOTALLY agree! I think a polyglot shoud be able to read and speak at least two languages (in addition to his native) at a very good level. the other languages can be spoken at lower levels but i think very good reading skills are indispensable because a Polyglot should also be a person interested in how the world and the society evolve and evolved and reading articles,books etc from different parts of the world and in many different languages is a wonderful experience that can't be missed. Heavy accents are not nice to hear and personally i hate them, but until you pronounce correctly and without a too heavy accent it is ok.And sometimes it is not a disadvantage!I already said that Italian spoken by a French is very charming,but i could also say that when Italian singer Alexia hit the UK top ten British found her slight Italian accent very hot.:) Edited by easyboy82 on 30 March 2006 at 1:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7375 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 125 31 March 2006 at 5:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Gentlemen, this thread is about your own personal polyglot ideal. Anything goes, it's your own preference. If you want to have a discussion about the definition of the world 'Polyglot' there is another thread where this has been hotly debated. Thanks!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6866 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 30 of 125 04 June 2006 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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My personal polyglottery aim is to have a sufficient understanding of the 10 largest languages to be able to acquire everyday fluency in less than a year if moving to a country where the language is essential. So far, I'm behind schedule for Bengali (not much, though), Japanese and Wu (how far would Mandarin help?), but could add three more from the top 20.
I used numbers of speakers above, which is more important to me; counting BNP size (and using a slightly different definition of 'language', counting Arabic and Chinese as one each), I'm at 12 out of 14 (Korean and Japanese missing). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tjerk Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6756 days ago 54 posts - 59 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Swedish | Message 31 of 125 04 June 2006 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I want to add something about the 'accent-discussion'
If you can't have an accent to master a language completely, I'm very sorry to admit that I don't speak any language at all... because even in my mother tongue dutch I have a heavy accent due to the fact that I was raised in a very heavy dialect of it, coastal western flemish, according to linguistics it should be close to medieval dutch. But if I speak it nobody from central Flanders or Holland can understand me, unless they're used to hear it. So I have to switch to proper dutch, but because I learned this at age six in school everybody knows after two sentences I'm from the Belgian Coast. So I make myself no illusions, if I speak English I have an accent common to all flemish people, if I speak French it's between the dialect of Calais and Wallonie, and also in Spanish and Swedish I speak with accents (formerly described as Italian and Norwegian, don't ask me how that's possible :-) I try to obtain a good, correct and clear pronounciation in every language, but I don't do the effort to kill the accent, for the simple reason that I'm not even able to do it in my mother tongue. Actually there are schools in Flanders where you can study the Dutch accent (necessary for people obtaining to work for television or national radio) this takes about five years !!! So for the five language I speak now, it will take me 25 years purely accentual training with expensive logopedians native of the correct accent. So my definition of a polyglot would be : Somebody who is able to live, build social networks, read literature, watch TV AND able to manage a full time job (at similar intellectual level) in countries where his languages are spoken without 'dropping out' of the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tjerk Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6756 days ago 54 posts - 59 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Swedish | Message 32 of 125 04 June 2006 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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or what about these definitions I heard about mastering a language :
- if your first thoughts in the morning are in a foreign language you can be sure you mastered it. - same if you start dreaming in the language - if you can build up a similar life in a country where they speak it as you had in your home country 1 person has voted this message useful |
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