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Status of leading polyglots | ||
Tags: Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes  Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 9 of 15 12 May 2015 at 2:07am | IP Logged | |||||
That's precisely the point of this thread. I want to take, as a starting point, the list of people who have been cited as extreme polyglots, and then compile and examine what's known about what they can or could do. I seek this information so that we can move beyond the unproductive talk about numbers of languages and think more clearly about the upper reaches of what polyglots have been able to do. I think what we'd see is that the upper estimates have little correlation with the overall level of accomplishment, but, as a starting point, they serve to identify the individuals whose skills are worth finding out about. Most of what I can find is in similar, confusing terms. I couldn't find language-by-language ability estimates for anyone other than Arguelles. That said, the "can translate" versus "speak" distinction is probably just another mostly-harmless example of stupid vagueness. Speak how well? Translate how well? Presumably whoever made that statement considers "speak" to mean something like B1 or B2, and "translate" to mean produce professional level translations. That would explain why a polyglot's core languages meet the "translate" standard, but his long tail of incompletely mastered languages meets only "speak." Of course, a philologist could easily end up with the opposite distinction, an ability to produce translations in his/her professional practice in 65 languages, but to speak at B2 level in only 20 of them! Edited by robarb on 12 May 2015 at 2:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 15 12 May 2015 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This got me thinking of the long-time-ago recurring record holder (in the Swedish edition of the Guinness book of records, that is) - UN interpreter George Henri Schmidt, who was said to speak 12 languages fluently and translate to and from 66 languages. To this date, I haven't seen a list of which those languages (even the twelve spoken ones) might be.
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| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 11 of 15 13 May 2015 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This numbers game is misleading. Someone who was proficient in English, Russian, Persian,
Hindi, Greek, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, and Indonesian would almost certainly be the greatest polyglot in the world, despite knowing "only" 10 languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LangOfChildren Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 5426 days ago 82 posts - 141 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Swedish Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai, Russian | Message 12 of 15 14 May 2015 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||
Why those languages specifically? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 13 of 15 14 May 2015 at 2:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not a contest though. Edited by Serpent on 14 May 2015 at 2:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 14 of 15 14 May 2015 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I just randomly picked 10 common languages from a wide variety of language families. I didn't want discussions about availability of learning resources to get in the way of my point. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 15 15 May 2015 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For me polyglottery has never been and is still not a competition! If I like to have a competition I would rather take part in a chess tournament (and end up on the back ranks at the end of the list of participants). In chess everything is ranked with rating numbers, that's pretty normal, but in polyglottery? - No, thank you!
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 15 May 2015 at 12:27pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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