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Interesting documentary about hyperglots | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 9 of 12 19 September 2014 at 8:20pm | IP Logged |
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It looks like there are a couple of "Bobby Fischer" polyglots out there to me.
They chess playing Bobby Fischer started playing very young. One of these days a gifted five year old will develop a passion for language learning and he will take it to the next level. In the meantime, there are plenty of Bobby Fischer's here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 10 of 12 19 September 2014 at 11:20pm | IP Logged |
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Many start to play chess at 5, I learnt at 5 and am barely semi-professional despite
having played for my country an international event before. Others are now within the top 20 of the world.Just like languages, one can become very good if one starts from a young age, but this is no prerequisite, nor is being young. The World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, is 23 years old, and the #2 is 22, but some in the world Top 50 learnt at ages 11 or 12, or older. Same with languages, one could probably be a polyglot o hyper-, even if one started at 15 or older or whatever. But a 40 year old could easily be better at languages than someone who started at 10. I have acquaintances that started at 10 and are much better than I, and those who started at 5 who are worse than I. Also Carlsen's challenger, a former consecutive World Champion, is something like 45 years old. Then there are people like this who would always be at a higher level than many who started young, just like languages. Edited by 1e4e6 on 20 September 2014 at 2:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5061 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 11 of 12 20 September 2014 at 2:49am | IP Logged |
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Chess is different from polyglottery, though. At the highest levels, chess players are probably limited by the
ability to find a way--any way--to improve. They already know how to make the correct move in most situations, so any marginal improvement might give them the edge to rise in the rankings. It might be the case that starting young raises your skill ceiling in chess, but if so it requires a complex explanation involving brain development and how people improve at chess. Hyperpolyglots, on the other other hand, can always improve with time, because (to oversimplify things) you can always add another language- you're never going to hit a wall where you can't improve any more. So it seems clear that to achieve the absolute peak of human excellence in hyperpolyglottery, you need to start early, just so that you have more time before you die/slow down because of aging. If there's something special about the way children can rewire parts of their brain for language learning, then the effect would be even stronger--but even without that, the very best polyglots should be early starters. If this isn't the case right now, it suggests that not enough people are trying their absolute hardest possible, and the high end of the distribution is muddied by various factors other than the limit of what people can do. Edited by robarb on 20 September 2014 at 2:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 12 of 12 20 September 2014 at 8:04am | IP Logged |
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I recently came across a French polyglot Hugues Baudrillart online. He has quite an impressive list of
languages although his fluency isn't at the native level in some of them. His seemed to have no problem getting his point across. Here is the link to his video: A French polyglot practicing 24 languages. 1 thing that is common with polyglots and those who are into languages is that when they meet someone who speaks a different language as a mother tongue, instead of expecting him/her to speak their language (English, French or whatever), they would make an effort to learn to communicate in that person's native language. Picking up new words & phrases constantly is a tedious process and requires a lot of time and effort. Polyglots tend to build language learning into a daily routine so that they are picking up new words even when they are not in class. As a polyglot with an interest in French: he takes a walk outside. Every object he encounters he'd say it in his head in French. He walks by a tree (c'est un arbre), then a bicycle (c'est un vélo), cars (ce sont les voitures), traffic light (c'est le feu de signalisation). Then he looks up the sky and it is sunny (il fait du soleil) and he sees birds (je vois les oiseaux). The languages that have a very high native fluency (in most cases) the language learner had travelled to specific countries and even attended classes locally. The other languages that are understandable but less fluent the learner had met people from another country and had taken an interest in picking up words & phrases from that language. He/she may/may not have travelled to the country where the language is spoken. Edited by shk00design on 20 September 2014 at 8:07am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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