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Use of word "Polyglot" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| 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 9 of 11 29 March 2005 at 3:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Ardaschir, this is a good point. To ensure that everybody understands us I suggest we use the expression 'native speakers of 2 languages' and so on instead of words like bilingual, as their extension differs from one speaker to another and people would be bound to wonder whether we mean that or just somebody who has learned two or more languages.
People who speak are native speakers of several languages always attract envy, since they are perceived as 'heirs' who received by birth valuable skills which take years of study for other people to acquire. I have myself met several such people when I was a child and was always admirative. Now that years have passed I realized that few of these kids have capitalized on their native advantage and many actually left their skills to rot or never really developped it. My own idea at present is that it's a great thing for these kids to speak those languages at home (for instance) but that it is no less a gift to be able to learn languages you choose on your own. After all, a polyglot is able to choose which language he wishes to learn, and learn them to the order which he specifies, rather than being dependent on the circumstances of his life. I am very pleased to see that some young members of this forum are capitalizing on their native advantage and work to add by work to what nature has provided! Edited by administrator on 29 March 2005 at 4:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zack Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 7212 days ago 122 posts - 127 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 11 30 March 2005 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
That's a really useful distinction though it's not so cut and dry as it may appear at first for there is a large grey zone between and around these two. Consider the kid who is immersed in a language 'til age 5 (or 7, 10, 12 or even later) and then looses contact with the language so that her skills fade away. Or the kid who starts being immersed in a language not right from birth but from some later age somewhere before or after the mythical cut-off age from which on it is allegedly much harder to absorb a language up to native speaker ability. Or the kid brought up by her parents in the parent's native language, living in an environment in which another language is spoken (here, the kid may develop native-speaker abilities in that other language through schooling or frequent extended interaction with peers who only speak that language). Etc. What about the 50-year old who was raised bilingually but let one language seriously fade? His pronounciation may still be that of a native speaker, but otherwise he may sound rather awkward. Does the label `bilingual' properly apply to him? The distinction certainly serves to classify language-skills into those obtained for free at mother's knee and those the person had to work for. The real question, however, is how well it serves in assessing people's language skills. Hearing that someone is n-lingual, you'd expect a high level of competency (an expectation that may not be met - see above). But I think that from being told that someone is not a native speaker, you cannot conclude that she does not have native speaker fluency (I mean the same level of fluency a person raised in the language would have). It should be entirely possible for someone to learn a foreign language as an adult (to make it easy, say in one's 20s), immerse oneself in the language-community and achieve native-like fluency. (Most people don't but that seems to be because they are not serious in ironing out the flaws in their foreign language skills, being content with merely adequate communication skills). I think that the -lingual/-glot distinction is a fairly reliable rule of thumb for a rough classification of language-skills, but the distinction is no entirely sharp. Edited by zack on 30 March 2005 at 5:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zack Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 7212 days ago 122 posts - 127 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 11 of 11 30 March 2005 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||
I think the same applies to other terms like `polyglot' and `hyper-polyglot'. Here, we need to distinguish two questions: (i) What do these terms actually refer to? And (ii) what should we use it, for the purpose of this forum, to refer to? As far as (i) is concerned I think it's rather fruitless to pursue this since (as others have pointed out before) people use the term differently depending on a variety of factors. There is simply no unique extension which you univocally convey when you say `x is a poliglot'. `Hyper-polyglot' on the other hand, is a term of art, so whoever coined it is free to attach whatever meaning he likes to it. If we prefer a different meaning, we just coin a homonym with that new meaning. But of course, what matters in the end is that we all use our technical terms in the same way so we don't talk past each other. What, then, should we use the terms to refer to? To what extent should we regulate its use? I think precise nummerical cut-offs make little sense (and I know that Francois has sensibly suggested some ranges). We just use `polyglot' as a handy label for someone who knows many languages. Rather than rely on everyone sharing the same sense of what `knowing many languages' amounts to, I think it would be better to just say roughly how many languages the person in question speaks when that really matters. If someone tells me `I'm a polyglot' and when asked how many languages she speaks she replies `3', I'd just smile and nod rather than getting into a fruitless discussion about how `polyglot' is properly applied (`fruitless' because there is no correct answer to it (though certainly incorrect ones)). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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