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Time to tune-out public static? | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6436 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 13 07 August 2012 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I wouldn't call myself truly bilingual, but that happens to me sometimes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4685 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 10 of 13 07 August 2012 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, as emk said, I at least frequently forget what language I heard/spoke something in. I've also found myself not realizing what language I'm listening to at the moment, even though I understand it. I can't say as I've had any issues knowing what I was speaking, while I was speaking, however. I listen to lectures that may be in Yiddish, discussing a text that was written partially in Hebrew and partially in Aramaic, and various words are similar or identical across two or three of these languages. The lecturer will rapidly switch back and forth, translating words or phrases on the fly, launching without warning into commentary in Yiddish or a quote in Hebrew, using certain words without translating them, etc. After a while, I get tuned in, but I think I have to tune my brain to a special "frequency" that isn't really any one disctinct language but includes all of the above, to some extent. That's when I'll find myself listening to something and realizing that I'm understanding, but without any current sense of exactly what language is being spoken at any one time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 11 of 13 07 August 2012 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4044 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 12 of 13 28 January 2014 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Last summer, I took a flight to go to Italy and go to the mountain to snowboarding (yes, summer! more than
3000mt). In the morning I woke up and I went to the lunch room to have breakfast. I was quite tired for the travel... so I was not 100% awake let's say :D So, I entered the room and I heard the people talking a language but I was not able to recognise which language it was... after few seconds I realised that it was Italian and I was trying to tune my ears to English! Today I mixed Italian, English, French and Dutch in a single sentence, but I didn't notice it in first instance. It happens often, between Italian colleagues, specially in presence of non-italian speakers, that we totally mix Italian and English, like: someone says something in English but the other one answer in Italian, than it happens that he uses some English words and switches to English. But most of the time who is talking is not even aware of the fact. It just happens. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 13 of 13 29 January 2014 at 10:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I wouldn't say that I forget which language I'm speaking, but sometimes I don't think about it, and sometimes I forget which languages others know (or don't know). Like when I travelled around in South Africa last year with a group where at least half the members were Germans - they even had a German-speaking guide. Out main guide understood a host of African languages plus English, but not German. And at least once I forgot to switch to English after a conversation in German with the Germans.
But this has preciously little to do with the other claims: 1)that polyglots need time to identify a language spoken in their vicinity because they know too many, 2) that polyglots and other language learners sometime spend time on evaluating preposterous theories about the languages they hear around them instad of just recognizing that the thing they hear is something they know. My answer would be that even if either 1 or 2 or both were true it wouldn't matter, because you become more adept at understanding semi-comprehensible stuff when you have been through the learning process with a number of languages. The only case where a monolingual speaker would have an advantage would be if (s)he decided to eavesdrop on people speaking the same language - and maybe even the same dialect. Edited by Iversen on 29 January 2014 at 4:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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