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Your personal polyglot ideal | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 97 of 125 29 April 2010 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the last couple of messages the focus has not been on polyglots, neither the 'speaking (or writing) polyglot', nor the 'passive polyglot', but a third category, namely the 'linguist' in the narrow sense of this word. A linguist should know something about languages in general, but you can become a famous linguist like Chomsky without knowing more than one or two languages. And if you specialize in syntax you could conceivably be a complete novice in phonetics/phonology, even in your own language. Though a linguist can of course also be a polyglot, and personally I would be very suspicious of sweeping generalizations by linguists who haven't got at least theoretical knowledge about a lot of languages plus active command of a decent number of them.
Edited by Iversen on 29 April 2010 at 3:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| obara Newbie India subramanian-obula.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5966 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Studies: Gujarati | Message 98 of 125 29 April 2010 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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To become a polyglot, one must make use of reading material besides audio and video
discs which help to learn a foreign language, the need of which arises only when he is to visit that country either for employment or as a tourist. So IPA comes to rescue and the person is relieved of learning that particular script of that language. Though some languages can be learnt through roman script with simple diacritic marks [though not with full fledged IPA], yet many languages are taught through their own script only. Especially Japanese insist learning 'kanji' besides 'hiragana' and 'katakana'. Spoken language can be acquired by residing in that part of that country. For instance, within six months, I was able to speak 'KANNADA' which is spoken in Karnataka State of India. There was no necessity to learn that Kannada script ! Similarly, for a Linguist, who has learnt the basics of the science of language can pick up any language by residing in that area. Even script also can be learnt provided the alphabets are less in number. But in the case of Japanese, which I tried, at least 2000 kanji [ideograph] are to be memorised. This is very difficult for an adult. There is no point in go on learning a number of languages, unless there is a real necessity to speak in that language. Of Course, one can learn a number of languages to speak, or read and write, to enter in the Guinness book of World Records ! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5340 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 99 of 125 29 April 2010 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think one learns to write, read or speak a number of languages for the purpose of entering into the Guinness Book of World Record :)
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| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5340 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 100 of 125 29 April 2010 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | ||
Hmm...I don't think that the difference lies mainly in vocabulary. I believe that tonal languages such as Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai and most of Sub-Saharan African languages pose an often additional but crucial layer of linguistic challenge for someone who speaks only non-tonal languages.... Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 29 April 2010 at 4:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kidshomestunner Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6405 days ago 239 posts - 285 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 101 of 125 02 May 2010 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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My personal definition of fluency: 'Being able to do in a second language what you can do in your first'.
I would call myself a polyglot-Linguist although currently I only speak Japanese: Reasons being: I can communicate in Arabic, Hebrew, French, and Spanish and also have a serious interest in linguistics and scripts in particular which has led to me being offered the chance to do a PhD ETC. Personally I have four categories: 1: Speaker of two or three languages 2: polyglots: IE those who are proficient in five or more languages 3: Polyglot-linguists: Those who are linguists and know a bit about many languages 4: Linguists: The likes of Chomsky who study linguistics but not languages: Chomsky supposedly only speaks Hebrew and English... (Having written this I do quite like him as a speaker.) I do think too many people call themselves polyglots. I also think Foreign speakers of English are almost always better than English speakers of Foreign. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 102 of 125 05 May 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
Oh, but why not? The Kannada script is awesome--possibly my favorite that I've run into so far. Looks fantastic, really flexible, and fits the language like a glove. My biggest linguistic triumph was reading one Kannada word out of a newspaper headline -- "raungeena" (colorful). I have to commend you on learning spoken Kannada in six months, though. I barely got past the pleasantries after four months--though to be fair I had no background with *any* Indian languages, no teachers, no books, and no really serious study, so. . . Anyway, shuba ratri! Chennadegira? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| obara Newbie India subramanian-obula.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5966 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Studies: Gujarati | Message 103 of 125 05 May 2010 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I learnt Telugu Script to learn Telugu. The Telugu Script and Kannada script are mostly identical with few alphabets changing the style of writing.
So I was able to read Kannada also ! Kannada is a Dravidian Language like Tamil. I hail from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India, where Tamil is the State Language. I can read,write and speak fluently in Tamil. Being a Linguist, I could easily pick up Kannada. Though I did study Telugu, I could not acquire fluency in speaking Telugu, whereas I could speak Kannada with ease ! And my mother tongue is Sourashtra ! an Indo Aryan Language derived from Sauraseni Prakrit. I have resided in Bangalore for five years and in Hyderabad (India) for five years. Yet I could speak Kannada fluently than Telugu. It is all due to one's exposure to a particular language and the need to practice speaking in that language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 104 of 125 06 April 2011 at 10:08am | IP Logged | ||
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This thread seems to have been raised from the dead several times, so I have no qualms about doing it again. Partly because I haven't written in it and partly because I feel a lot of the posts have been about other things than the subject of the thread. So here's my own interpretation of my "ideal polyglot":
To me, the ideal polyglot (not to confuse with the definition of a polyglot, thankyouverymuch) is one who has not only language skills, but cultural ones, too, and there's a sort of lifestyle component to this, too. I imagine someone whom you'll find one weekend reading Le Monde at a quaint café in Paris, stopping to chat for a while with the waiter, while the next week you'll find her happily engaged in Yum Cha with friends in a cozy restaurant in the New Territories of Hong Kong. Yet a few weeks later we find her negotiating a business deal in Moscow (but she has to hurry, because she wants to get to Rio in time for the Carnival!). Unfortunately it seems my ideal polyglot has a rather large carbon footprint, what with all that flying. The places mentioned are of course just examples, but someone who moves effortlessly between cultures and is a sort of "citizen of the world", feeling at home in many places around the world; that's my ideal polyglot. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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