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You are not a real polyglot if... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5440 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 129 of 299 20 October 2013 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As somewhat of a serious amateur musician myself on piano and guitar, I was quite amused by the analogies
between playing multiple instruments and polyglottery. The funny thing about this debate is that we all fundamentally agree that certain combinations of skill sets are easier to acquire than others. So, we can safely assume that if you play the piano, you have a head start with the organ and the harpsichord. And if you play the alto sacophone, you have a leg up on the tenor and the baritone saxophones. Now, if you can play the piano and the alto saxophone equally well, this requires more effort to learn than playing the piano and the harpsichord. That we all agree. My position is that if you play four related instruments, you are a still multi-instrumentalist because a) they are different instruments and b) they require specific skills. The fact that you play the violin does not mean that you also play the viola just as well. It means that learning the viola is not as challenging technically as if you were a drummer. And then there are questions of style and repertoire. Does being a guitar player mean that you are equally at home in flamenco, heavy metal and bebop jazz? Frankly, I would be more impressed by a guitarist who could do that than someone who could get by on three very different instruments. But let's come back to our languages. It seems that we've resolved the issue of distinguishing in the case of the the former Yugoslavia between the labels for official languages and the linguistic reality of basically identitcal languages. So, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian are different official languages but linguistically the same language. The problem seems to be the issue how to describe a person who "speaks" these different official languages. I say that for official purposes, the person is a polyglot. I understand perfectly well that that person has a much easier time that someone who speaks Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French, but the fact remains that we are speaking about four official languages. When Croatia became a member of the EU this year, Croatian was adopted as an official language of the EU. The EU did not call it Serbo-Croatian. What will happen when Serbia and Bosnia join? I suspect that Serbian and Bosnian will be recognized as official languages as well. For the translators and interpreters, the differences will be minimal but administratively there will be a new reality. As other people have pointed out, this discussion here opens the possibility of people making all kinds of claims about their language ability. Why can't I be a polyglot if I speak four regional varieties of Spanish that are further apart than our ex-Yugoslav languages? I personally don't have a problem using the term polyglot for the ability to master distinct dialects. We tend to poohpooh this idea of mastering dialects but in my observation, it is very rare to see people who can really consistently use mutliple dialects. For example, many Québécois can imitate briefly someone from France - usually some stereotypical fake accent - but I have never met anybody who can sustain a conversation while sounding like anyone from a specific region in France. But since we have to draw the line somewhere, we usually restrict the term polyglot to recognized languages. And even then, why get uptight about the whole thing? We have debated endlessly here about what it means to speak a language. And let's not even mention the word fluency. Much ado about nothing or as they say in Spanish mucho ruido y pocas nueces. Edited by s_allard on 22 October 2013 at 3:01pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5914 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 130 of 299 21 October 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Still, what constitutes a separate language is open to debate... If I compare West Flemish to Standard Dutch (which is the official language in Flanders, not Flemish) it would be as different as isiXhosa and isiZulu. Similarly, Shona as a language is somewhat artificial, as within that language are completely mutually unintelligible dialects. I find that it is really subjective as to when it would constitute "puffery"... Most people I know (that is, most black people) are triglots at the least: my partner speaks fluent English, isiZulu, and Setswana... actually also siSwati, isiNdebele, and isiXhosa... somehow that isn't considered an achievement, while everyone goes all "ooohhh" and "awwwwh" when I say I speak Dutch and English professionally, and reasonable French... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7166 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 131 of 299 21 October 2013 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My understanding is that !Xhosa, Ndebele (which one?), Zulu and Swati are mutually intelligible along the lines of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish as based on my understanding of this and this.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4717 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 132 of 299 21 October 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course it is... but I speak Dutch as in almost standard Dutch, since I hail from South Holland, not Limburg, Zealand, Groningen, or West Flanders. I don't know anything about African languages, so I'll rely on other people's judgement here. I'll talk to you again when I speak Swahili and Zulu :) Edited by tarvos on 21 October 2013 at 5:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4379 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 133 of 299 21 October 2013 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I do happen to play multiple instruments from the same family (flute piccolo oboe and I guess sometimes you could count the tiny recorders you see people playing). The flute -> piccolo change was pretty manageable except for a few fingerings; the real difficultly was in learning how to breathe in a different way, especially when you upgrade to the ones without a lip piece. At that point, it didn't feel like much of an advantage! Moving to oboe was much more challenging; again, breathing differences. The pianist -> organist change is actually a very funny one to observe; a lot of pianists think it will be a great advantage (and it is, considering they're already used to reading multiple lines of music), but the lack of movement in organ technique is quite a challenge for pianists to overcome...and it's quite amusing to see what the reaction is when they realize they have to start learning the pedals as well! Actually, it's interesting in the musical world. Most musicians who perform professionally don't describe themselves as playing multiple instruments, and the ones who do, play related instruments (piano and organ is probably the most common one, as is flute and piccolo).
But getting back on topic! I've seen it before that people aren't considered "real" polyglots if they speak languages from the same family (which interestingly tends to be Romance languages--you don't normally see that comment referring to people who speak multiple Slavic languages, although at the same time, that combination doesn't seem to occur as often). I suppose I can see where this has possibly come from, as many have said that the real skills are in only one of the languages, and the others are functional only due to knowledge of the other one. To speak four languages at a C level though--and actually, I would even say an upper B level-- requires a lot of determination, even if it's in something as seemingly basic as not allowing yourself to just passively hear/see the similarities and assume you'll be able to actively reproduce it. My opinion of a polyglot doesn't change solely because the languages tend to come from the same family. I'm still undecided about dialects, mostly because I don't know how they all function culturally. For example, I grew up in an area where I actually do have a pretty decent passive command over a particular type of American vernacular. However, it will remain passive knowledge only, because it would be seen as extremely inappropriate for me to actually speak that way with others. So I guess that's always been my perspective--that it's not appropriate to use dialects because it's typically very clear that it's not your "natural" dialect. It might be different in other countries and cultures though. I do have to admit I get a little envious when I hear somebody has been able to manage standard Hochdeutsch and Swiss-German! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7166 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 134 of 299 21 October 2013 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It seems that everyone who's responded here agrees with Solfrid Cristin's idea that one can be a polyglot even with languages from the same family (e.g. vilas is a pentaglot by speaking English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, never mind that the last 4 are Romance languages. Solfrid Cristin is a polyglot by speaking English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish, and not a diglot by speaking "Germanic" (English, German, Norwegian, Swedish) and "Romance" (French, Italian, Spanish)). The most heated arguments about what counts occur when dealing entities that are highly mutually intelligible or variants of pluricentric languages. Are these languages (i.e. communicative codes that are less than highly mutually intelligible) or official or standard languages which need not diverge (or diverge so little that not even the affected speech communities can reliably judge that what the other communities use is "wrong" or ungrammatical based on their native speech or what they've learned in school?) that are includable in establishing a tally?
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5440 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 135 of 299 22 October 2013 at 5:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't want to prolong a debate that has pretty much run its course but I think there is room for difference of
opinion over what constitues mutually intelligible and what is the ability to speak mutually intelligible languages. For example, I have questioned how much the European French can understand Québécois speaking among themselves and vice versa. Even something as simple as reading a newspaper has its challenges. Just today I was watching a video on the British newspaper the Guardian's website about stop-and-search politce tactics in Britain. I had considerable difficulty understanding some of the speech. Actually, some of the speech was subtitled - possibly due to poor audio quality. When we talk about polyglottery, I think we usually take that to mean the ability to speak the various languages or dialects, i.e. to be able to reproduce them actively. Just within American English, how many people other than trained Hollywood actors such as Meryl Streep can speak multiple dialects. How many people can speak like Sarah Palin and Michele Obama consistently? But the other aspect of the debate is really how important is this whole question. As I said, in the world of Balkan politics, one has to choose these language labels carefully. It may not be a good thing to claim that one is a polyglot in certain languages. But outside of the world of polarized politics is there much of a problem of people making false claims of polyglottery in related languages? Not here at HTLAL? I may be wrong, but I can't recall people making claims about various dialects of any language. I think we have much bigger problem with defining what we mean by speaking a language. When I see that people "speak" French or Spanish or any language, for that matter, I really wonder what that means. I an usually not very impressed by what I see in the polyglot videos. But I admit that the concept of speaking a language is very elastic. Edited by s_allard on 22 October 2013 at 2:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4263 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 136 of 299 22 October 2013 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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The biggest misconception with what gets called a language seems to be that you're supposed to understand perfectly all of the dialectal variants it has, which is simply not true. Knowing a language doesn't mean that you understand all dialects perfectly if you haven't gotten used to them. The thing with Quebec French is that a French speaker (and many others) can look at French from France and French from Quebec and make note of what makes them French; what makes them two dialects of the same language rather than two separate languages. One good indicator whether two people are speaking the same language is whether code-switching occurs. Do Quebecois French speakers and French speakers from France understand each other after getting used to each other's vernacular for, say, one day, or do they need to use a different code for the conduct? Individual words being weird doesn't count.
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