|
 |
Polyglots around us - do you know one? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| SpaceCakeGirl Groupie United States Joined 6032 days ago 51 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 33 of 121 17 April 2008 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I'm an education student and for a paper I was required to find out which of my students speak more than one language.
She's not a polyglot yet, but for a 13 year old living in America, I think she's very accomplished. R speaks French, Italian, and English fluently. She's learning Spanish and is interested in Japanese in the future. Incidently she's half Persian and half Thai (born in Switzerland), but doesn't speak Farsi or Thai. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6693 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 34 of 121 30 April 2008 at 8:14am | IP Logged | |||||
UPDATE! That young girl, now 26, is also fluent in French, and has recently acquired a fair working knowledge of Spanish. People sometimes are slightly awed when I tell them that I translate professionally from English, German, French, Dutch (never had a chance to try Afrikaans, but have almost no problems in reading it), Norwegian and Danish. I also get along with Spanish, but don't translate it. So what; it's just Indo-European languages. My Arabic, Bible Hebrew and Mandarin may one day approach fluency, but so far, I find them difficult enough when reading. That girl covers three language families. BTW, she just graduated, Master of Chemistry with honours, after an impressive organic synthesis thesis (I hold a M.Chem.Eng.). Erik Gunnemark was honest and careful in his listings of the languagees he knew. His list from 1986 begins "Speaks well or rather well" (11 items), "After a week of directed rehearsal" (13), "Reads, will probably need at least a mont before speaking" another at least 15. Please note the "was". After failing to get response to phone and snail mail efforts, I last week Googled once more. From http://www.kebi.se/erikgunnemark/engindex.html: "Erik Gunnemark left us on 10th April 2007 at the age of 89." Erik had some interesting ideas for language teaching material. I hope to get some time for contacting his son on intellectual property rights. Those ideas deserve to be spread. Edited by Lugubert on 30 April 2008 at 8:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| formiko Nonaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6037 days ago 848 posts - 855 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Esperanto, Indonesian, Yoruba, Cherokee, Russian, German, French Studies: Mandarin, Ancient Greek | Message 35 of 121 01 May 2008 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Before I was stricken with Multiple Sclerosis, I was easily conversant in around 12 languages (not fluent, but small talk, directions, order from a menu, etc)
I learned my first language when I was 9. M neighbor was Russian and his sister was cute and his mother didnt speak English well, so to eat dinner at his house, I had to learn Russian. And because I lived in NYC, the lady across the way was Chinese, and because her kids couldn't care less about learning Chinese, she was thrilled when I wanted to learn. I was taught Chinese calligraphy by a Chinese teacher. (She taught at the Chinese school, sadly her kids didn't care). I also learned Turkish, Urdu, German, danish and Swahili just from my neighbors. I tried to get more structured teaching, so I was taking high school Latin classes at 13. (I tested out of Spanish and French, and Latin was the only other option). My grandmother was half Cherokee, so she taught me what she remembered and I taught myself the rest with her help. I voraciously ate up and bought every foreign language book, dictionary I could find. The public library would give me their Dewey Decimal 400 books that they were throwing away. I also found out I had excellent mimicry skills, so I sounded like a ative, even though I maybe knew 100 words.(My secret also was I would learn 150 words and memorize 14 top phrases, then move on to a new language. By the time I was 21, I had about 26 languages under my belt. It was great at cocktail parties (and I hooked up with all the foreign students),but my listening comprehension lacked. For example, by 23, I considered myself fluent in German. I was reading Karl May, and even chatted with people on Compuserve, but when I went to Germany, I was too cocky, about my skills. I could read the U-Bahn Schedule in Frankfurt, order a full meal for my impressed friends (they thought I was from Vienna..my childhood friend who first taught me was from St. Pölten oddly enough), but I needed directions to a place and I was LOST! I never had a two-way conversation before! I could mimic Linguaphone, and convice people from Germany I was from Austria, but I never spoek enough to understand the replies. I was in Untergruppenback (near Heilbron I believe), and I asked a couple where "die Eisdiele" was, they replied in such fast German my head spun. I heard geradeaus and links, but everything else was a blur. I thanked him and wandered around aimlessly for about 15 minutes. I asked another couple who were from Spain in Spanish and I only understood them because I heard Spanish almost daily so I got used to the rhythm and intonation (they thought I was from Peru!) I could speak Chinese rather well (I've been told I say my tones like a ShangHainese...my neighbor spoke the Wu dialect natively), and I could read children's books, but again I could only understand spoen Chinese if they spoke to me like a 4 year old. While I'm older and wiser nowadays, fate would have it that I got a severs attack of MS and basically lost most of my language skills. (Cognitive issues suck.) While I still remember alot of them, I forgot a good 40% of my vocabulary. So wihile I can no longer read "Es" by Stephen in King in German, I have to settle with Asterix and Tintin. It's interesting, while I never forgotr the grammar, my vocabulary was shot to hell. (Even in my OWN tongue English.If you knew how long it took me to write this post you'd be shocked.) Since I forget words in the middle of a conversation in my own language, I just have to deal with not knowing the expression "Geburtsanzeige" for a card to my German friends. While my days of impressing the ladies are over (I'm married with kids :)), I still get free stuff from my Turkish friends at the corner deli. "Bana çocuk bezi lazım bugün, lütfen" or coffee at the Korean deli "Cha, naega sagessumnida!" 자, 내가 사겠숨니다! I even got a fantastic deal on carpet from the guy who sold me carpet who was from Accra. I spoke to him in Twi "Kapęt asa so ne odan, aseda". He almost fainted when I said that. (I need the carpet installed in the bedroom and living room please) However, even though I've been speaking many languages for more than 30 years (like Russian, Spanish, Esperanto & Cherokee), Тепер мой словарний запас плохо. dekanihisdi uyo! [cherokee font]ᏕᎧᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᎤᏲ[/cherokee font] My skill of memorizing 300 words in a month is no longer a possibility. It's more like 5 a month (because I forget them the very next day now) So now I can just tell m kids (and have people vouch for me) that their Dad USED to be able to learn 6 languages at the same time and learn Khmer, Swahili and Dutch in one summer. Now they're just stories. I just gotta keep taking my Omega 3's. (My wife still loves me and remebers still) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6903 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 36 of 121 01 May 2008 at 6:17am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I suppose I should add my grandfather to the list. He's the reason I'm interested in languages. Born in Poland, he spoke Polish natively. Spoke English fluently with a flawless British accent, spoke German fluently, and from what I remember, he was also fluent in Russian and Czech. With rumors of a good level of French. He learnt virtually all of his languages during WW2, when after being wounded was posted to communications/signals analysis.
I also had a university professor at Yonsei University that was born in North Korea and was schooled in Russian, with an offer of going to Moscow to study further. Sometime during this period he also became accomplished in Japanese. He fled to the south and joined the South Korean military, later was involved with the US Military and from what I understood he gained fluency in Mandarin. He was sent to Vietnam as an attache of some description. And he also spoke English and Korean, which I don't think I needed to mention. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5935 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 37 of 121 01 May 2008 at 6:33am | IP Logged | |||||
|
My ex girlfriend is a kind of polyglot. Her language count is probably nine now. Of these, two are natives, two at a native level, one very good, and that makes five. Add to that scholastic Swedish, German, Spanish and a bit of Portuguese. She also started Arabic.
She doesn't have a special gift for languages. She just was interested one time in one language, another in another language, and she has an incredible energy in starting new projects. She passes more time abroad than in her country and has over 700 Facebook friends all over the world - that is, real friends who also happen to be in her Facebook list. Edited by Leopejo on 01 May 2008 at 6:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6410 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 38 of 121 01 May 2008 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Formiko:
You would need something more than this post to prove that by the age of 21 you had about 26 languages under your belt - more than prof. Arguelles had once stated in his profile. This post proves the exact opposite..and I apologize if I will sound too harsh. You said Russian is one of those languages, that you've been speaking for more than 30 years. How can you then write the following sentence: 'Тепер мой словарний запас плохо' ? You said you have trouble remembering vocabulary, but that your grammar is ok. Neither is ok in his simple sentence. Russian beginners in the multilingual lounge on this forum could spot where you made mistakes. If you make these kind of errors in the languages you claim to speak fluently (as you said you've been often mistaken for a native speaker) how do you speak your other languages? You have no way to prove it now given your condition, so if I should make a wild guess I believe that on this forum the standards for advanced and basic fluency are set much much higher than the ones you use. I'm sorry to sound harsh again, but even though my opinion might not be that important, those are my two cents. Edited by Vlad on 01 May 2008 at 12:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6735 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 121 01 May 2008 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
My neighbour across the street said only a few days ago that he is conversational in six languages. Knowing that he has been a teacher in French and maybe German (his wife is from Germany) he speaks Russian and Finnish. And of course Swedish and English like anybody else.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6265 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 40 of 121 01 May 2008 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think he was rather clear that by 'under his belt', he meant knowing 150 words / 14 phrases: less than you learn in 30 lessons of Pimsleur. 26 languages to that level by 21 strikes me as entirely feasible. He also mentioned not understanding the answers to his questions asking for directions even in his stronger languages at about that time - again, something easily doable with a few hours of study (I had next to no trouble doing this in Japan, back when I would have hesitated to call my Japanese even beginner level). Being mistaken for a native in restricted contexts takes even less. I was mistaken for a native (or at least fluent/competent) Serbian speaker a few weeks ago, after a Serbian friend taught me how to say 'thank you' (which I've now forgotten). Accent and a limited context can make one word, in a language one has never studied or even really looked at, enough for this type of mistake. Furyou_gaijin has written about people he knows who pass for natives for about 10 minutes based on about as much as Formiko claimed to know at 21. He made no claim as to being fluent, or having any significant proficiency, in those 26 languages: just a small amount that he used to good effect at parties. I'll leave the rest of your post, with regards to his Russian, alone, as I can't even begin to guess how he defines fluency. I suspect it has a Barry-Farber-esque element, where fluency means ability to communicate flowingly, possible with absolutely no grammatical niceties/getting basic grammar incorrect. That's a separate kettle of fish from the first issue. 1 person has 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. |
