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Do polygots learn languages themselves? | ||
Tags: School Education | Language School | Self-Study | College/University | Polyglot | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| ptrk7 Newbie United States Joined 6660 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 17 of 19 14 June 2009 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I do have a question about polyglots and am interest in them. I see some of you can speak
and are studying a quite a few languages so do or did you learn one at a time? or learn a couple or more at once? I'm not trying to be a polyglot, I love learning the language(s) that I want to learn but that is about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6871 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 18 of 19 19 September 2009 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||
I learn languages out of a desire to see how it feels to express myself with now sounds, to put it very broadly. I am most interested in seeing how people express themselves with unique grammars and idioms, or how similar the languages might be. Overall though, I choose ones that look "neat" for whatever reason. I am an example of a language learner (not yet what I would consider a polyglot) who prefers not to choose a language not out of practicality but out of personal interest. At least I try to. Languages a person chooses is a highly personal thing, I think. As a few have pointed out, if one is serious about learning a language, it takes so much time it is practically a way of life, especially if one is interested in pursuing polyglottery. Sometimes I am attracted to a language for it's uniqueness as with Finnish or Lakota, two languages which I hope to learn in the near future but have not yet studied in depth. That said, the languages I have learned well are biggies in the world of language, and I've learned both of them by living in places where they are spoken - for Spanish I spent a year in Mexico as an Rotary exchange student and am now working in Peru with the Peace Corps; for German I studied in Germany for a year. I personally do prefer to learn on my own though. I don't like language courses, and I've never worked with a tutor. I've always spent 90% of my language-learning life figuring out how I personally learn languages, which means a lot of time was spent learning how I don't learn. And I can't speak for other learners, but I would speculate that one is always tweaking their methods. I've been trying to learn French since I was a little kid and have never succeeded for various reasons. Not counting the gaps of years when I wasn't studying it, I've tried Muzzy (a video course for children), high school classes, visiting France (not to learn, but I spent a month with a French family so it definitely helped) and teach yourself courses. I've found that I've learned much better with the teach yourself courses because I feel I can interact with the language more, at least at a theoretical level. I think immersion helps, but I definitely don't think it's necessary. And even if one uses immersion, it's not enough. If not using some course to learn, you will at least have to do so major work to learn the given language. I learned Spanish without a course book while I was in Spanish (by the time I found a course book I already knew most of what was in it) but I had to work very diligently to learn the vocab, listen to conversations, ask people about sentence patterns, etc. In other words, you have to be a very active learner. It takes huge amounts of endurance, but thankfully, it's spread over a course of time. I often feel that language learning is an endurance sport to some degree though. I love reading reference grammars, but not straight through. It's better in small bits for me because otherwise it's overwhelming and impossible to remember everything. And besides, something that took me years to learn is that knowing a grammar backwards and forwards is not enough to know a language. My experience with Esperanto showed me that. I also wanted to speak about languages getting rusty, something every polyglot must contend with. I don't like to see my languages get rusty, especially before I have learned to the point where I am at least conversational in them. But I don't get too distressed over it. Some languages I don't want to lose function of. German is a language I feel a real connection with, so I'll work hard to maintain it. But some other languages that I want to learn I understand will get rusty. I've studied Norwegian and for all my love of it I know I won't use it very often so I know it'll get rusty and probably fall into disuse. However, the reason I'm not too irked is because I've found that brushing up on a language is generally not too hard. Maintaining all the languages I want to learn would probably cause me more stress and take the fun out of language learning. I agree with those who say that in a polyglot's mind languages are always ticking, but in my case, I want to continue branching out rather than stay with a group of languages and continue maintaining them. I figure if need a language I haven't used I can review my course book or pick up a novel or something. -> ptrk7, some people are able to learn two or three languages or even more simultaneously. I don't think I am one of them. At least not yet. I think it's also probably a skill to develop and usually I want to focus on one language, get to a level I feel comfortable enough I can use without course book study, and then move onto another language. I also wanted to touch briefly on taking breaks. I find that as much as I love languages, it takes a lot of energy and I sometimes have to step away for a brief time, sometimes a week, sometimes a month or so, depending on how tired I am. I've found exhaustion to come from diligent study or studying with methods that aren't good for you. This is where immersion has its advantages, because even if you are tired and can't actively learn, you are still flooded with a sea of language. I would like to hear others' thoughts on this. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| alena sunavska Octoglot Newbie United Kingdom londonlang Joined 5553 days ago 5 posts - 26 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, Greek, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German Studies: Hindi | Message 19 of 19 28 September 2009 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I must agree people who can be “diagnosed” as polyglots do indeed live through their languages their entire life. When people ask me where and how I learned “all those languages” and whether I get them confused I hesitate to find a concrete answer. I don't get them confused; but how did I learn them? I did certainly study some of them with external help and guidance, but the level achieved under these circumstances was never anywhere near to the level of language fluency I have achieved by self study. I studied Russian for 8 years and German for 5, age 6 to 15, but not much is left. I can understand both quite well and could speak if I had to, but it would not feel effortless. I learned Italian and English on my own and studied Spanish and Greek at university, but again, only achieved a high level of fluency once I had completely immersed myself into these, regardless on any particular lessons or guidance. I then started understanding French without any particular effort (a couple of lessons), just by being exposed to French speakers. I don’t really know how and when I became fluent or how long it took; all I know is when I was learning a language I was always completely immersed. Learning it all the time, day and night, non stop. I put all my efforts into it, and all my free time. Eventually I would dream about it or in it. I would look around me and try to describe everything I could see, or talk in the language to myself. I was projecting having dialogues with particular people and was translating those dialogues. I had a little dictionary on me wherever I went or whatever I did, and was always trying to put together sentences as I would do during the day in my own language. I noticed the more languages I knew the easier it was to understand and learn another one, and the less time it took; I plan to go to India in a month’s time, and am confident I can learn to read and speak some basic Hindi before I go so that people can understand me and I can get by. To summarise - in my opinion what most matters and what helps in achieving a rapid progress is definitely an intense immersion; trying to think in the language at all times, no matter what I do during the day. I try to translate everything I see around me (this builds my vocabulary), I try to describe it, or explain it (practice my ability to use the vocab in sentences) and I generally expose myself to the language as much as I can, by listening to news, music, people. It is not important to understand it immediately; but to listen, and then, slowly, to hear… Alena Sunavska Edited by alena sunavska on 01 October 2009 at 11:43am 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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