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Your personal polyglot ideal

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
125 messages over 16 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 10 ... 15 16 Next >>
Globox
Diglot
Newbie
Netherlands
Joined 6028 days ago

7 posts - 7 votes
Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC1
Studies: German, Spanish, French

 
 Message 73 of 125
25 May 2008 at 6:18am | IP Logged 
alang wrote:

My opinion.
Ideal speaking polyglot is someone fluent and sounds native in many languages, with the ability to switch and use regional dialects of the same language at will.

I am trying to learn the British English dialect.


...which isn't a dialect but a language from which the dialects American English and Australian derived.
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CrazyManAndy
Groupie
United States
myspace.com/bobandbiRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6115 days ago

51 posts - 50 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 74 of 125
25 May 2008 at 12:57pm | IP Logged 
It still is a dialect, with it's own sub-dialects.

CMA
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ChristopherB
Triglot
Senior Member
New Zealand
Joined 6316 days ago

851 posts - 1074 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*, German, French

 
 Message 75 of 125
26 May 2008 at 5:08am | IP Logged 
British, American and Australian English are all dialects of English.
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Erubey
Triglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 6230 days ago

82 posts - 92 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English, Japanese
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 76 of 125
03 June 2008 at 4:35pm | IP Logged 
Some of these rules or whatnot, seem ridiculous. American people can't sound british at will, or the other way around, but you wouldn't call them non fluent in English. Same with other languages. Being able to do that is beyond being a polyglot.


Anyways, I put more stress on reading and writing skills. I know plenty of people who know Spanish/english but can't write in Spanish to save their life, so I wouldn't even call them bilingual. As for accents, I don't really have the ideal of native sounding accent, that does not mean of course that bad speaking is fine, but I like foreign accents.

These questions are hard because you can always find things that people can't do. "Should be able to read everything". Well some people can't read about physics in any language, some people are just more well read than others, some people just stink at spelling, etc. It's a relativity trap, which to be honest I don't like, but its the truth.
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djb
Newbie
United States
Joined 6003 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean

 
 Message 77 of 125
21 June 2008 at 6:34pm | IP Logged 
Erubey wrote:
Some of these rules or whatnot, seem ridiculous. American people can't sound british at will, or the other way around, but you wouldn't call them non fluent in English. Same with other languages. Being able to do that is beyond being a polyglot.


I agree. I used to work with some English guys, and we would try to copy each other's accents with hilariously awful results. And even a professionally trained actor's attempt to mimic a different dialect can sound pretty bad, sometimes.
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zerothinking
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6372 days ago

528 posts - 772 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 78 of 125
21 June 2008 at 10:36pm | IP Logged 
Poly means many and to me three languages is not 'many'. Lots of people speak 3 languages. A lot of people are bilingual and speak a second language, and lots of people in Africa speak 3 or more languages. To me 'many' languages is 4. Since 3 to me is trilingual.
Each language should be very fluent, good accent, and perfectly understandable pronunciation. Rare errors in idiomatic expression are OK but need to be minimized. Grammar should be around 95-99% accurate. Broad vocabulary as well as deep, approximately 15,000 to 20,000+ lexical items.

That's me. But if you speak 10 languages with a vocab of around 6000, good grammar, easily understood, decent accent. I think that's pretty cool too. But I'd rather get really good in each language.
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obara
Newbie
India
subramanian-obula.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5966 days ago

21 posts - 22 votes
Studies: Gujarati

 
 Message 79 of 125
16 August 2008 at 11:24am | IP Logged 
One who is able to communicate with the native speaker without putting the native speaker with the difficulty of deciphering, able to read the literature and appreciates its style may be considered as a fair polyglot if he has acquired his skill in more than three languages. Monolingual, bilingual, trilingual and more than three we can term as a polyglot.For an average human being, mastering four languages of course, other than his mother tongue is a difficult task. Code switching is important.He should be able to speak one after another simultaneously not after a gap.The ability of the person and the opportunity to practice what one has learnt determines the number of language one can acquire. The degree of his competency in the languages acquired determines one as Excellent, best, better and good polyglot.
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sajro
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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129 posts - 131 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 80 of 125
17 August 2008 at 11:58am | IP Logged 
patuco wrote:
I agree entirely. For example, those who are struggling to learn just 500 Chinese characters should take heart in the fact that there are millions (billions?) of people who probably cannot even understand one character let alone 500.


That's a good way to look at it. My friend was complaining that he only understood half of this video in German,until I reminded him I (and the majority of Americans) couldn't understand even that much.

I myself can be slightly mean, though. Whenever I feel bad about my Spanish, I try to chat with someone at school in my Spanish class. I always feel better after saying something that is correct that they can't understand. It's a feeling of "These people have been learning for the same amount of time, but I know it better!"

Edited by sajro on 17 August 2008 at 12:55pm



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