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Donald Kenrick | ||
Tags: Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 1 of 7 26 March 2005 at 10:52pm | IP Logged |
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Gunnemark credits an Englishman named Donald Kenrick with knowing over 70 languages and thus being the world's greatest living polyglot, but he says nothing more about him and I have never been able to find any references. Does anybody have anything more?
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| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 7 27 March 2005 at 6:28am | IP Logged |
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He is involved with the study and protection of gypsies in the UK. This article tells more about him.
He is a consultant for domresearchcenter.com, you can probably ask for his details at drc@domresearchcenter.com. Edited by administrator on 27 March 2005 at 6:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ElComadreja Senior Member Philippines bibletranslatio Joined 7241 days ago 683 posts - 757 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog | Message 3 of 7 27 March 2005 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
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"The most striking fact he claimed to discover was that most of these polyglots agreed that they did not know more than about seven foreign languages ‘completely’, in the sense of being able to speak them fluently and read new and differing texts without any difficulty. He presented this as ‘The Law of Seven.’"
I've never heard of this before. I think I'm going to do a little more research. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| David Hallgren Triglot Groupie Sweden davidhallgren.se Joined 6998 days ago 40 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 7 01 October 2005 at 9:04am | IP Logged |
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I'm not trying to brag or anything but just want to confirm that he exists and really is an amazing person. He is my grandmothers brother. Her current name is Linda Hallgren and moved to Sweden when she met my grandfather (dad's side). Unfortunately Donald has not been here in Sweden for quite a long time now so I haven't met him since I became interested in learning languages so I haven't spoken much about that with him. But I could try to find out more about which languages and how fluent etc. from Linda if anyone is interested.
As a new member I would also like to say thank you for a great forum, I'm sure I will find a lots of interesting threads here. Edited by David Hallgren on 01 October 2005 at 9:07am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 01 October 2005 at 9:18am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the forum David!
We would be very interested to read specifics about your great-uncle Donald Kenrick's linguistic achievements. Do you think you could ask your grand-mother about her brother and post some details? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| David Hallgren Triglot Groupie Sweden davidhallgren.se Joined 6998 days ago 40 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 7 29 December 2005 at 6:47pm | IP Logged |
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Hi again, I would just like to say that I'm sorry for this taking so long. But I wrote the first entry on October 1 and left for my year in Japan October 2 so I just forgot about it. But yesterday I got his e-mail and will see what I can find out. My grandfather said that Donald has studied about 60 languages but didn't know much about his knowledge in them. He is obiously not fluent in most of them but instead of posting any estimates or trying to guess how many he acutally does speak quite fluently I'll just wait until I've talked to him myself. Sorry to keep you waiting.
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| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6870 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 7 of 7 05 February 2006 at 10:34am | IP Logged |
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In a letter from 1980, Erik Gunnemark informs me that DK knows at least 44 languages. Obviously, DK has been busy since then.
Erik gives a breakdown, on a weathered, originally typewritten page, as DK Speaks 22 languages well or rather well, in addition to English. Reads, speaks on at least a "crawling level" (Erik's term) 22 (with 5 more added as some kind of afterthought). Erik claims a max. of some 40: as above, 24 + 16. (To speak those latter languages, Erik says he first wants a month of rehearsal.) On these lists, none of them claim any East Asian languages. (Erik complains of poor visual memory.) Only DK lists some Indo-Iranian and Semitic languages. They cover Europe fairly completely, both of them including for example Galician and Catalan. On a lucky day, using dictionaries, I might be able to decipher not too comlicated newspaper items in some 11 foreign languages. I speak three of them with a fair fluency, translate professionally from 6, and have studied with less success more than I care to remember. Not at all a sign of acheivement, any dummy can buy books, but of my interest in languages, is that I own dictionaries and/or other learning material in more than 100 languages. Living on the Swedish Westcoast, I find it almost cheating to include Norwegian and Danish for understanding. But as one poster from across the Baltic remarked, many people from the East coast of Sweden would be lost, language-wise, in Denmark. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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