|
 |
Is there a limit? | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | Polyglot | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| yawn Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5425 days ago 141 posts - 209 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, FrenchC2, SpanishC2 Studies: GermanB1 | Message 1 of 11 25 April 2010 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||
|
So I was reading up a little on several well-known polyglots on Wikipedia, and came across this man named Ziad
Fazah who claims to speak 58 (or was it 59?) languages. He was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for speaking the most languages. I did, however, read that in the French version of the Book, they had a disclaimer that stated that no human being can become fluent in more than 20-25 languages in his/her lifetime. What do you all think of this? Do you believe this is true, that there is a limit of some sort? It seems that their definition of "fluent" must be a really high standard, perhaps something like the C1/C2 levels of the Common European Framework, because I know there are people on this site who have knowledge of more than 20-25 and probably even more out there in the world who haven't joined us yet :) Feel free to share your thoughts! :D Edited by yawn on 25 April 2010 at 5:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5338 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 2 of 11 25 April 2010 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||
|
Personally, the theoretical limit is knowledge of 100.
Absolute fluency (native or advanced) in more than about 25, it near impossible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yawn Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5425 days ago 141 posts - 209 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, FrenchC2, SpanishC2 Studies: GermanB1 | Message 3 of 11 25 April 2010 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||
|
^ I'm inclined to agree with you (and thus the French Guinness Book as well :P) on the part about it being an
impossibility to fully master over 25 languages in one's lifetime. Speaking from personal experience, one of my proudest accomplishments thus far has been mastering French to the C2 level, despite it not being a language that any of my family members speak, and - believe me - it took what seemed like ages for me to attain this level. Can you be more specific about what you mean by "theoretical knowledge"? Does this have to do with the unique aspects of a language, i.e. syntax, grammar, etc.? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| marvolo Tetraglot Newbie Finland Joined 5705 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: Finnish*, French, English, Spanish | Message 4 of 11 25 April 2010 at 7:53am | IP Logged | ||
|
About the question of limits, here's my two points to this:
- Of course there's some sort of limit. One obviously cannot learn 500 languages in a lifetime. - However we cannot exactly set the limit. If we say "one can master 20 languages and that's it", there's always someone who masters 21. So are these points contradictory? Personally though, I don't consider the question of limits really important or even interesting. Let's just keep learning and find out our own personal limits! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yawn Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5425 days ago 141 posts - 209 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, FrenchC2, SpanishC2 Studies: GermanB1 | Message 5 of 11 25 April 2010 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
|
^ Excellent response. I guess it really depends on the individual...
Then again, mastering 25 different languages to the point of native level fluency is practically unimaginable, at least to me. I know I'm still very young and have a long way to go (I'm currently two months short of my 16th birthday), but I doubt I'll be able to master more than about 15 languages to native level fluency in my lifetime :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5584 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 6 of 11 25 April 2010 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd be happy to learn two to native-like fluency :D I've made my goals clear and simple, 5 languages (maybe 6 if I learn the others) to a good fluency in my lifetime. Not too difficult, yet not to easy. I just didn't want to give myself a goal that I wouldn't be able to reach. You're probably one of the youngest members on the boards here, it's good to see other kids with a constructive hobby :D (I'm 18) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5384 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 25 April 2010 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Who cares about the number? Ziad Fazah is an interesting character, but I don't really want to be him.
The only thing that matters is what languages you want to learn, why you want to learn them, and how much time, blood, sweat, and tears you want to pour into them over the course of however much time you've got left on this Earth. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 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 8 of 11 25 April 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I started out writing about this topic, and as usual the messsage just grew and grew. OK, goodby message, try to write a shorter one...
The short version is that we simply don't know how many languages a person can learn, partly because almost all our knowledge about hyperpolyglots is anecdotical, partly because the idea of counting languages is fraught with theoretical and practical problems. We have in another thread discussed Spivak's observation that even accomplished polyglots normally don't claim to have really good knowledge of more than 5-9 languages (with a mean of 7 => the socalled 'rule of seven'). But there isn't simply seven excellent languages and a lot of junk, - there is a scale of more or less good languages. My guess is that a gifted person with a suitable biography and a deep interest in learning languages might be able to reach advanced fluency in maybe a dozen languages (including some with near-native fluency), but I would be deeply sceptical about claims of 30 or 40 advanced or even near-native languages. On the other hand basic fluency can be attained in a far larger number of languages. I have collected around a dozen in spite of a long 'drought' and a full time job that only demands Danish and English. I can't say where the limit is, but ultimately the limiting factor must be whether you need more time to keep your languages alive than you can possibly find. Up to 40-50 languages at basic fluency should be possible, but above that I think that you must have a special kind of memory for languages (and of course I can't exclude that a few persons have got precisely that). But basic fluency is not the bottom level for 'knowing' a language. You can have passive skills in an enormous number of 'language variants' if you count dialects and related languages, and you can also have theoretical knowledge about a lot of languages. For instance I know a lot about verbal morphology of Tagalog, but I can't say even the simplest sentences - that's what theoretical knowledge is. If you count those things then the sky is the limit. Edited by Iversen on 25 April 2010 at 11:04pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
