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Polyglots on this Forum | ||
Tags: Polyglottery | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7155 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes  7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 1 of 18 29 June 2005 at 10:48am | IP Logged | ||
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May I request that every forum member who speaks six or more languages with proficiency posts a post (:S) into this thread, with a list of the languages you know? Thanks very much.
EDIT AFTER NEPHILIM'S FOLLOWING QUESTION: I chose the number of six languages according to Wikipedia's definition of polyglot. (That made me think that many of the forum members here could be in that list :P). Anyway, technically, someone who speaks two languages is a Polyglot. Perhaps six languages is a good definition after all, considering most of the people in the world are way far from that mark, so six languages isn't such a common accomplishment. Edited by Raistlin Majere on 29 June 2005 at 11:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7148 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 2 of 18 29 June 2005 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Isn't the definition of a polyglot someone who knows 10 languages. This may be wrong, but I'm sure I read it somewhere - strictly speaking though, poly means many not 10. Anyone shed any light on the definition?
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| ducr Newbie Canada Joined 7097 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: French | Message 3 of 18 29 June 2005 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
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POLY
[Greek polu-, from polus = much, polloi = many.] Used in words adopted from Greek and in English words modelled on these, and as a freely productive prefix, mainly in scientific and technical use, in senses 'many, much', 'having, involving, containing, etc., many' (many variously connoting 'two or more', 'three or more', 'several', or 'a large number' in different contexts); in Chemistry signifying the presence of several or many atoms, radicals, etc., of a particular kind in a molecule etc.; spec. forming names of polymers. POLYGLOT [French polyglotte from Greek polugottos, formed as POLY- + gotta = tongue.] A. adjective. 1. That speaks, writes, or understands many or several languages. 2. Of or relating to many languages; written in many or several languages; characterized by the use of (elements derived from) a plurality of languages. B. noun. 1. A person who knows several languages. 2. a. A book (esp. a bible) in several languages. b. A mixture of several languages. (rare). • poly"glottal adjective • poly"glottic adjective. • polyglottism noun polyglot character; use of or acquaintance with many languages. • poly"glottous adjective. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7148 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 4 of 18 29 June 2005 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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ok - I guess six sounds about right - it certainly qualifies as 'many' - certainly an achievable amount.
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| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 5 of 18 29 June 2005 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Your questions about numbers blur an important distinction in the way the languages are learned. Bilingual, trilingual, or even more multilingual people who know languages because they grew up with them do not qualify as polyglots. Polyglottery is the art of learning languages consciously and well. Numbers alone don't mean very much to me. Someone who grew up with three related languages and who then gained a somewhat superficial though still perfectly adequate functional knowledge of three more genetically related languages can say "6," whereas someone who grew up monolingual but then acquired an in-depth mastery of two quite different tongues can only say "3," but the latter is clearly more of a polyglot to my ears.
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| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7155 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 6 of 18 30 June 2005 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||
I always thought polyglottery was the capability of speaking many languages with fluency or at least proficiency. Technically, the word itself means that. So according to the ethimology of "polyglot", somebody who had learnt Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic would be more of a polyglot than someone who had "only" learnt Cantonese, Navajo and Finnish. Somehow, this doesn't see to work out to me. Perhaps the best way to "count" polyglots would be to give a numerical difficulty ratio to the languages he or she has learnt, and sum them all up. For example, in a scale from 1 to 5, a German person would have one "polyglot point" for learning a closely related language like Dutch, and five points for learning a very different language like Arabic. In between, there would be other languages graded by difficulty. I would count mother tongues as well (after all, they are languages too), but would only give them one point whatever languages they were and whatever is their difficulty. Edited by Raistlin Majere on 30 June 2005 at 12:17am 1 person has 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 7 of 18 30 June 2005 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Gentlemen, I don't want to have a religious war about the definition of the word 'poylgot' on this forum. We already had this discussion. The etymology of words does not bring much into what we should agree it means here.
Those who wish to participate in Raistlin's little contest can do so by listing the number of languages they speak fluently. Then anybody who cares to can choose who he wants to call 'a polyglot'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7155 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 8 of 18 30 June 2005 at 3:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Contest?
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