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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7080 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes  3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 17 of 18 22 July 2005 at 1:21am | IP Logged |
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He started learning Japanese at university in the early 80's, and then moved to Japan before he had finished studying. He lived there for about 9 years before coming back to Australia. He now has a Japanese wife and is living in Japan again.
When he returned to Australia he started studying again and took up Mandarin and Korean. He picked them both up very fast - faster than me anyway, haha. I think the grammar similarities between Japanese and Korean helped a lot, as did his Kanji knowledge for Mandarin. And the amount of words of Chinese origin in both Korean and Japanese helped also I believe. But all the same - he is a fanatic at studying language! And he definitely retains most of what he learns - unlike me ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| trachina Diglot Newbie China Joined 6325 days ago 12 posts - 10 votes Speaks: EnglishC1, Japanese Studies: French | Message 18 of 18 05 August 2007 at 4:05am | IP Logged |
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Some thoughts about the articles written in board of Polyglots
Here, I will give some of the comments about the articles here, and as I cannot find the original URL, so when you find some symbols just like /* */ and the materials in the symbols /* */ are be quoted, I will give the author's ID for further reference, I am sorry for many critical reviews. /*I too have been wondering who Enigma is and have been wanting to hear from them on the board. */ Ok, pay attention to your language study, not just pay for the phone bills. /*I have contacted him when I first saw the rather impressive list of languages. The man wants to remain anonymous - hence the nickname - but he accepted to list some details about his specific language skills as a proof of good faith. */ I think most of the linguists want to lead a life of monk like. However, they never lose their faith. /*wouldn’t that be amazing, though, to travel the world, and being able talk to almost everyone? */ I think it is the dream or aim to learn foreign languages. /*I am much more cynical than all you are. My guess is this: he is an expatriate Who has lived in all these countries as an English teacher, learned survival Phrases in all the above languages which enabled to indeed survive there, And hence became overconfident and deemed himself as being "basically Fluent." Bottom line, he is a fake. */ My native language is not English, thanks God. /*There also seems to be very little information about this person in general, even in Japanese. The site I linked to above seems to have the most extensive information. Everything else seemed to be just people briefly mentioning his book. */ No book, No life. /*I hope someday we will see a Japanese native speaker coming to this forum and talk with us and share with us his/her discovery. */ It is late, we Chinese come first. Nevertheless, do not worry, there must be some room be left to our Korean brothers. /*I will say, though, I have only had limited experience with Japanese people, but with only a few exceptions from my experience, most of them seemed to really struggle with languages. */ You are exactly right. /*You can find hundreds of textbooks in Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, etc in Chinese bookstores. */ It's real, in Beijing, all these waste books will fill full your eyes, but any one really think about a language just like English? /*Polyglots: How fluent to be a Polyglot? */ As fluent as you like. Until one day all, the people in that language speaking country listen to your speech instead of their president's. /*It reminds me of the story I heard while I was working in Germany. A German spy landed in England during the war and made his way to a pub. He put his money on the counter and said to the barman, "A martini, please." The barman said, "Dry?" "If I Vant three I will ask for them!" */ A Chinese joke about the phone company: when you dial your phone company call center service, there must be a automatic responding:” speak Chinese, press1, speak English, press 2...” but for almost 2 years long, there is no english calling in at all.finally, they found out that the scentencs above are spoken all in chinese. /*Real native speakers may speak much faster, have a wider vocabulary, use cultural references, vocal reductions, etc. */ Good, when I write articles in Japanese or Russian, many of my friends said that:” there are too many grammar mistakes, but keep on moving, you will be great". /*my guess is no. I would grant polyglot status on anyone who could speak 5+ languages at the level of conversational proficiency. */ As I know that, in central Asia area, there are many polyglots living there. They can speak Mongolian, Kazak, Uigur, Chinese, Russian language and so on, and they of course could communicate with the others without any difficult. In fact, it is necessary to achieve that level; I do not think you are as capable as the Kazak people are. Great Kazak and Uzbek, long live Soviet Union. /*by geeky I am referring strictly to university studies, which, as I have learned, is by no means an indicator of proficiency level. When it comes to foreign languages, I regard myself as a rather self-taught person meaning that I never received any serious linguistic education (except for basic public school courses in English 15 years ago). */ School education and linguistic self-taught are not on the opposite side. You need the environments of university or college to help you have a clear review of your self. /*If you look at the list of polyglots at Wikipedia, quite a few of them just have a reading knowledge (with or without dictionaries) of some of the languages they are credited with learning. Does this make their efforts any less admirable? I personally do not think so. */ History should be rewritten. /*The thing is, if I've spent thousands of hours studying (say) French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Romanian, and find that because of all that effort I can read fluently another 30-odd Romance languages, then I'm going to have the lunch without paying, so there :-) */ You do not know the real meaning of a language. /*And if you know Swedish, you wouldn't need 10 years to become fluent on Danish or Norwegian, but you could still study them and call yourself a "Northern Germanic specialist", maybe not a polyglot... */ "Northern Germanic Polyglot" is an attractive title (honor). /*perhaps a helpful term might be "functional polyglot”. */ I agree with you, sometime I think about of language engineering, it is possible and it is real. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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