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Different Kinds of Polyglots | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 25 of 28 23 October 2009 at 11:33am | IP Logged | ||
It would either take an insane amount of exposure OR be limited to languages close to those you already know. I have for instance not studied Galician, Corsican, Sardinian or Faroese, but because they are close to things I already know I can generally make sense of things I read, - and under favorable conditions also of things I hear. But I don't list such languages in my profile because I basically understand them via some other language (or combination of languages), not as independent entities. On the other hand I would list passive languages - for instance the 'rusty' languages mentioned by Xenoguy or my Latin while I was learning it in the 70s. But one major limitation of the system for indicating levels in this forum is that it doesn't make that distinction, and such languages could therefore never rise above the beginners' level on my list, no matter how well I understood them - I allways categorize my languages after my weakest skill, which generally is speaking. Others can judge things differently, but this is my position. Edited by Iversen on 23 October 2009 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| janababe Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5513 days ago 102 posts - 115 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German | Message 26 of 28 23 October 2009 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for that, Iversen. Are there any languages you don't speak? ;)
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| vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6959 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese | Message 27 of 28 23 October 2009 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
An Italian gentleman ,Riccardo Bertani,knows 100 languages ,some of them are: Russian,Ukrainian,Serbo-Croatian,Basque,Etrurian, Ajunu,Samojedian,Persian ,Tungusian,Mongolian, Siberian,Lapponian,Jugakirian,Orochian,Longobardian, Rutulian.... He translates, writes dictionaries and grammars but he never moved from his village and don't speaks most of the languages he knows.... To know more about hime you have just to go to google and search for "Riccardo Bertani un poliglotta sedentario" (in Italian) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5566 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 28 of 28 26 October 2009 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||
Well, I personally have spent a lot of time studying phonetics and the phonologies of the world's major languages. The only alphabets I can read are Latin, Cyrillic and Greek (Japanese kana too, but strictly speaking that's not an alphabet). I can make an attempt at reading any language written in those alphabets, and at least for well-known languages (e.g. Portuguese, Finnish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Swahili, Indonesian, etc.), I can read words slowly and not completely butcher the pronunciation, though I'm sure I still have a very strong accent, and I obviously won't be able to tell things like where the stress is in a language where stress isn't regular. Also, of course, I can't understand any language unless it's closely related to one I'm already familiar with. Of the languages I haven't studied, I can only understand written Scots, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan and to a certain extent other minor languages like Corsican and Luxembourgish. Edited by Levi on 26 October 2009 at 12:42am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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