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Do Polyglots’ Returns Have to Diminish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 9 of 55 17 October 2014 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@s_allard: For polyglots, it's even more common to have a large difference between the active and passive level than for other people. What you call a small set generally applies only to the active skills (assuming you mean 2-4 strongest languages). Most also have quite a few more languages in the B2-C1 range (and maybe active B1 with decent passive skills). That's not exactly what we typically consider the intermediate level.
I know you don't like the term basic fluency, and I see where you are coming from. But please don't ignore the concept/level described by it. When I first joined HTLAL, I found the distinction very powerful. I had been constantly comparing my Finnish to my English, and it was a relief to realize that I don't need to be a mere intermediate throughout my way to C1/C2. Edited by Serpent on 17 October 2014 at 4:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 10 of 55 17 October 2014 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It would indeed be pointless to learn 30 languages just so you could say you knew 30 languages, and then waste an hour and a half every day maintaining them. That's not what I'm suggesting here, though. I'm suggesting one could learn 30 languages, spend an hour and a half every day efficiently maintaining them, and then use the other 14 waking hours of the day using some subset of those languages, which may change from month to month or year to year, doing whatever you want. That could be reading Korean literature for 2 hours, watching French movies, talking with overseas friends, traveling the world, anything! The hour and a half of maintenance could be done while cleaning the house, walking to work, jogging, etc. if it's a passive activity. The whole point is to make it not conflict with doing meaningful things with the rest of your time, whether that's using your languages or non-language-related stuff. And, maybe you think learning 30+ languages is folly. In that case, treat it as an extreme example, but the maintenance burden may still apply for those who know 4-10 languages.
Why do you believe the demands placed on a language increases exponentially as you add more? Certainly the burden of maintenance increases as you have more languages, but without any further evidence I would guess it increases approximately linearly: Twice as many languages, twice the maintenance burden. But I'm wondering if anyone here has insight as to whether that's too optimistic (as you're claiming, but why?) or whether there are efficient ways to do better. If you run out of time you actually have three options: Increase time, decrease number of languages, or improve efficiency. I am not convinced that the last option is impossible. Of course there is some limit, but if one could improve efficiency, the time/number of language tradeoff could be made less demanding (for example: you have time for no more than fifty languages, unless you're willing to spend over two hours every day). As it is, most people have to limit languages to make time for a balanced life. But are there any success stories of maintaining 30+ without it being a full-time occupation?
You are correct. I mentioned briefly that I'm concerned mostly with comprehension in the "maintenance" languages, assuming that whichever languages are in active use at a given time will be reactivated. I'm imagining maintaining 30+ languages at C1-C2 level comprehension, but production allowed to drop as low as you want for dormant languages, provided you can get it back up to B2-C2 level after a reactivation period (say, 2-48 hours of immersion). Edited by robarb on 17 October 2014 at 4:10am 2 persons have 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 11 of 55 17 October 2014 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Let me humbly thank you for your post. This is such an excellent idea! Reminds me on a member who, being bilingual in English and Spanish, decided to choose an expertise area for each language, mastering all the obscure verb tenses/forms in Spanish and uncommon vocabulary in English. Obviously this shouldn't be the only thing you do in the language, but I can imagine how it must be very useful to find an exciting advanced topic. How often do you change them, btw? I also totally agree that daily maintenance for the sake of maintenance is pointless. What does maintenance by pulse imply exactly? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 12 of 55 17 October 2014 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The focus of this discussion is maintenance activities for the sake of maintenance. I consider it an a priori assumption that someone who knows a lot of languages might want to maintain them, despite not having occasion to use them often enough in their natural activities. Obviously if you have meaningful things to do in all your languages often enough that you won't forget them, then you don't need this discussion. When you say daily maintenance for the sake of maintenance is pointless, do you mean that maintenance- oriented activity is a waste of time, and one should always instead try to do something meaningful/learn something new in each language often enough so as not to forget it? If so, I'm interested in what specific things one could do to meaningfully engage with many languages without investing much time. Or do you mean that daily maintenance is a waste of time, and one only needs to spend enough time with each language at a longer interval? This might be something like what cpnlsn88 means by "pulse" maintenance: maybe you spend an hour or two with a dormant language over the course of 2-3 days, but then you can go several days without using it at all. If so, why do you think that strategy is better? I think of maintenance a bit like exercise. If your everyday activities require you to be physically active enough to maintain your health, then awesome! But some people's don't, and they need to exercise often for the sake of maintaining their physical fitness. Doing so efficiently can sometimes involve activities that are otherwise "pointless." Maybe people wouldn't be as negative about the idea of maintenance if I instead cast it as, "What little things can I do to learn new things in languages I'm not currently studying intensively without investing much time?" In particular, little enough time that I can do them for 30 languages, while still having time to study new ones, and still having time to have something like a life outside of language? My current language learning practice already involves a lot of this, mostly listening to podcasts and reading a few news articles, probably averaging an hour per day, plus the sporadic book or movie in a language I'm not actively studying. This approach works, and has allowed me to survive wanderlust and be a successful polyglot. I only wonder if it could be made more systematic and efficient, but the responses so far suggest that systematic brief review of multiple languages is not popular. P.S. Where do those tags come from? If that's automatic, I'm impressed. Edited by robarb on 17 October 2014 at 7:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 13 of 55 17 October 2014 at 8:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm surprised nobody has objected to the premise of the question. Who are these "normal people" who can "learn" a language in one year? Of course something is achievable in a year, but if you set out to "learn" a language, is this really enough? This is what I think s_allard is getting at in his post:
A and B levels are possible in a year, although I would say, while they might pass a B level test, their B skills would be shaky at best. Nevertheless why would a polyglot want to stop there? For some languages at least, they want to get to an advanced level, and that actually takes a lot more time than a year. EDIT: Robarb clarified the level he was talking about a few posts above mine:
I don't believe C1-C2 is possible in a year for a "normal person". FSI gives something like C levels in a year of full-time study, but Robarb specifically said that what he's talking about is not full-time. I'd be skeptical about general claims for B1 in a year of part-time study (but I acknowledge that some people are amazing learners, and if they are well-immersed, a solid B1 in a year is attainable). Edited by Jeffers on 17 October 2014 at 8:38am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 14 of 55 17 October 2014 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
At least in English vocabulary for advanced speakers growth doesn't plateau until the mid-30s, with people learning approximately a third of the words they know AFTER 16. I don't know of any good data on grammar learning, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that its growth paralleled vocabulary acquisition and continued to grow as well until your mid-30s. That's not to say you can't "learn" a language in 3-6-12 months, and then maintain it. Still given it takes the normal English speaker 35 (!!!) years to fully learn their language, I do wonder what we mean when we say we can learn a language in one or two years, whether we call this level B1 or B2 or even C1. Edited by patrickwilken on 17 October 2014 at 10:26am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 15 of 55 17 October 2014 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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OK, point taken, "learning a language in a year" is probably too much for "normal" part-time learners. I'm pretty
sure comprehension to the point of reading books and production to the point of reasonable conversation and survival (C1?) is achievable by extremely talented learners or full-time professional learners, but probably not be regular folks. Then again, I wasn't referring to the average learner, but to the highly talented, experienced, motivated learner who is nevertheless still a "normal" person with no superpowers. We have several of these as active members here. Can those people get C1 in one year? I've never gone zero-to-C1 in a single language in one year, but that's because I never concentrate on one at a time. I'm pretty sure during some years when I spent lots of time with a few languages that were easy for me, I improved by the same aggregate amount (e.g. zero-to- A2 in one language, A1-to-B2 in another, B2 to C1 in another, marginal improvements in a few others). For someone who's already a polyglot, you can quickly achieve good comprehension in a language within a family you know well. That definitely takes less than a year. About half of my languages were like that for me when I learned them, and it was much, much faster than the ones in unfamiliar families, which took me multiple years on average. The basic question wasn't about how long it takes to learn a language, however, but about what happens to that time when you increase the number of languages. Maybe the normal part-time learner (once you filter out the dropouts and the people who learned only because their school made them) takes 3-6 years to achieve the kind of levels I'm talking about. Would it take them 15- 30 years to do the same thing in five languages? My intuition is no, that would be harder because they'd forget the older ones unless they were really motivated to incorporate the languages into their lives for basic maintenance (e.g. replacing a portion of mother-tongue news reading, TV watching, podcasting, chatting with friends). I actually don't know what the answer is to the scalability question. My intuitions could be wrong, maybe it is linear and there is no phenomenon. Even in that case, low-time-cost review methods would still be interesting. Edited by robarb on 17 October 2014 at 9:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 16 of 55 17 October 2014 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So here's an idea: If spaced repetition is gernerally considered to be the most efficient way of maintining knowledge of facts/words, could one apply the same logic to entire languages? That is, study a language intensely, then not work on it for a week. Then spend another week reviewing and improving, next time lay off the language for two weeks, etc. Thus slowly increasing the time spent "off" the language (and hence focussing on other languages). The great discovery behind SRS is that the most effective review is one that happens just before you're about to forget. Maybe "Do something in your language every day" is a bad strategy?
Or maybe it just doesn't translate to entire languages, since two minutes a day still means a lot of words will have long gaps between repetitions. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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