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Feelings about being a polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6893 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 25 of 36 19 December 2006 at 9:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I also know very few monolinguals as the average person in Gibraltar can speak both English and Spanish (although not everyone is fluent in either or both). Most of the people I met at university had also studied at least one foreign language (I knew a few people that spoke at least 4 fluently!) and the people I worked with in Oxford had studied at least one foreign language at school so I guess they don't qualify entirely as monolingual, even if their fluency in French and/or German was limited to what they studied at GCSE/A Level. The only truly monolingual people I know are my grandmother (who's a native Spanish speaker and from a very poor background) and my partner's parents (who left school at an early age and at a time when foreign language learning was not a priority). Edited by lady_skywalker on 19 December 2006 at 9:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6771 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 26 of 36 20 December 2006 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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^^^
Wow. :) In Canada, probably 90% of the people I knew outside my family were monolingual. Among the people I know in Japan, nearly all the Japanese are monolingual, half of the English-speaking Westerners are monolingual, and three-quarters of the Brazillians are monolingual. I've met a number of Turks, though, and they all seem to speak 3 or 4 languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6683 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes | Message 27 of 36 20 December 2006 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I actually had some bad experiences as being a polyglot. One day I went to a bookstore to buy some Korean textbooks. Yet the guy next to me discovered that I wanted to buy many of them. He started speaking to me and tested my Korean level, which I hated. I didn't feel bad to speak Korean, but I went to the bookstore to buy books instead of having a "language test" by him.
He kept asking me stupid questions like "how to put X in Korean?", and when I answered him, he just gave me useless explanation of little relevance to his questions. I already knew all the things he talked, and he just said the same thing to me again and kept answering stupid “how to put X in Korean?” type of questions. It was obvious that his aim was to demonstrate that I couldn’t say something in Korean and discourage me. And when I left him to the Japanese corner to start looking for books on Japanese translation, he followed me all the way round and wondered if I could speak Japanese. He even tested my Japanese by asking “how to put X in Japanese?”. I felt really offended because I didn’t come to the bookstore to test my Japanese and Korean skills. If he talked with me in Korean in a friendly manner instead of having his focus on “testing” my ability, I would feel much better off. There are way too many men of this kind who just wanted to “test” our ability as being polyglots. I really lose my temper to demonstrate my ability in languages to a stranger like him in a bookstore. Edited by japkorengchi on 20 December 2006 at 4:41am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6871 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 28 of 36 20 December 2006 at 7:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Very interesting. For most of my life growing up every person I ever met was a monolingual, with only a few exceptions.
Which kind of reminds me of another point I want to bring up: Back before and also when I had just started studying languages, whenever I met someone who could speak one or more foreign languages fluently, I was always very impressed and inspired. Now that I've found a few people who can do that, though, and have been studying languages for the past several years, that mystified feeling isn't there anymore. I still of course have respect for them, and am still working on my goals of becoming an accomplished linguist, but the original awe I was had is now lacking, and I've sometimes wondered if that's a good thing or not, or if it's merely the natural process of it all (I suspect it to be the latter, but I still ask myself from time to time). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6893 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 29 of 36 20 December 2006 at 9:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Journeyer, I think it's a fairly normal way to feel. Once something is demystified and you've seen how things really are, all that mystery and magic vanishes. It happened with me and Chinese. At first, you get a real buzz about being able to read a script that none of your friends and family understand. As you dig deeper and the years go by, that magic is lost and you end up being as bored with it as you would with the Roman alphabet. If you spend hours a week translating from Chinese into English, you will even begin to hate the darn script. ;)
The similar feeling can happen when you travel to a country that always seemed exotic and mysterious and then realise that it is also a country with its own problems and that much of the exotic appeal is either very superficial or was a stereotype propagated by TV/movies/books. I must say that my visit to Japan was quite the opposite and that I felt even more interested in its culture and language after visiting but I suppose this attraction would also be lost if I decided to go live there on a long-term basis. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7018 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 36 20 December 2006 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You should have told him to "f*** off" in Korean and Japanese. That might have shut him up! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7321 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 36 20 December 2006 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think asking him how to say something in Korean and Japanese should solve the problem. I think he continued with his "tests" partly because you were continuing the "conversation". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nhk9 Senior Member Canada Joined 6807 days ago 290 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English* | Message 32 of 36 21 December 2006 at 1:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have learned languages for several years and I haven't really met persons like that. True polygots normally know what kind of perseverance and hard work is required to learn a foreign language, so unless a beginner tries to show off (and often using incorrect grammar in the process) his skills to those who have absolutely no knowledge, the polygot normally wouldn't try to put somebody down. If I were you, probably I would just use another language to respond to him, instead of answering his silly questions. Just ask him something in another language, and see what kind of response you'd get. Afterall the best defence is offence. And going back to this topic, I'd rather be asked "can you say something in y", instead of being asked "how can you say x in y". I study languages that are not all that common here in Canada namely Korean and Swedish. Usually I wouldn't tell to people whom I am not familiar with that I am studying them, since obviously there are going to be those who are jealous and might want to put you down just for their own sake. When I am asked "can you say something/anything in y", in the case of Swedish, for example, I'd just say "I do not know y" in Swedish (Jag talar inte svenska). This sort of satisfies the listener's curiosity about how Swedish sounds (since most people here in western Canada pretty much don't know anything about Sweden aside from IKEA), and also makes the listner feel that you are not all that superior to them linguistically. This would also allow me to dodge questions like "how to say x in y". Normally I wouldn't try to answer those questions, but instead just counter in return, using something like "why don't you tell me?". Answering such questions like "how to say x in y" is pretty much a lose-lose situation, since if you do in fact give a very accurate rendering of that sentence in the foreign language, the jealous ones are not going to feel comfortable, and so you are going to encounter things like "I don't even know if what you said was Swedish". On the other hand if you can't come up with it, they'd just think that you like to show off and now that you are exposed, you should be ashamed of yourself. The one pet peeve that I have is that people tell me that the best job for a polygot is to join the church and become a missionary. No offence to missionaries, I think they should know that there are more opportunities for the polygot than that. It just makes me think that afterall we live in a world with handsome number of ignorant dudes. Edited by nhk9 on 21 December 2006 at 1:07am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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