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Do you consider yourself a polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| casamata Senior Member Joined 4260 days ago 237 posts - 377 votes  Studies: Portuguese | Message 73 of 89 30 July 2013 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Snarky" is fair game. I bet that 97% of native English speakers will know that in the US. Conversely, I estimate that 0.5% of American English natives would know "internecine." I have a fairly high vocabulary in English and I was like, "wtf, mate?" when I saw it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 74 of 89 31 July 2013 at 1:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Getting back to Serpent's orginal post for a moment, my answers are:
1. Do you consider yourself a polyglot? No. 2. Are you planning to become one? Yes. 3. If you are, what are you planning to achieve before you can call yourself a polyglot? Ah, an open question...now you've asked for it! ;) I've nibbled on numerous small slivers taken from a rich smörgåsbord of languages over the years, but am far from reaching what Professor Arguelles would call a "decent level" (somewhere in the continuum of a low B2 to a low C1 on the CEFR scale). Although the term "polyglot" simply refers to "knowing or using many languages", and these could essentially be at any level or depth (which is largely open to debate and difficult to assess anyway), I wouldn't personally feel comfortable calling myself a "polyglot" until I'd concurrently reached at least an honest B2 level in speaking, listening and reading in 6 non-native languages. I'm also a tough self-imposed task-master (not unknown to relegate my languages from time to time if in doubt or aware of flecks of rust), and would ideally extend my own personal definition to 6 languages taken from a variety of language families and/or their major branches. At the moment, for example, I'm working on 4 separate branches of the Indo-European family: French (Italic), German (Germanic), Russian (Slavic), and Irish (Celtic). This is alongside languages from more exotic families for a typical English native speaker, such as Japanese (Japonic, possibly Altaic?), Hawaiian (Austronesian), and Ancient Egyptian (Afro-Asiatic) - my classical "bit on the side" before bedtime. This doesn't mean I disregard someone who knows several closely related languages as a polyglot; on the contrary, I think they're amazing, and I look to these accomplished polyglots for guidance and inspiration whilst I'm still struggling with the first footholds on my language learning mountain climb! This is simply my own ideal happy vista and what I'd like to achieve before earning the right to call myself a polyglot, nothing more, nothing less. But why 6, you may well ask?! Again, it's something Professor Arguelles recommended in a post several years ago here on the Forum, and which was brought up again in a thread by Hashimi back in 2011: Arguelles’ Six Most Important Languages. I think it originally stemmed from an older discussion about how many languages you can realistically reach an advanced level in and simultaneously maintain, whilst also working, looking after your family, and maintaining an active social life. However, I like to think, or at least happily and naively fool myself into thinking, that there's no specific glass ceiling or limit here, as I'd certainly like to strive for more in my lifetime if possible. On a final note, I also meet plenty of young people in the service and tourist industry who have lived and worked around the world and can already speak up to 5 languages at a high-intermediate to advanced level anyway (*jealous, jealous*). In fact, I'm always surprised how many people are richly multilingual outside the US and UK - monolingualism is not the norm in many countries, I'm pleased to say. So saying I know half a dozen languages just ups the ante a little, requires two hands to count (depending on the hands of course), and has a slightly cooler ring to it I think. ;) Edited by Teango on 31 July 2013 at 2:04am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 75 of 89 31 July 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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If a merchant on a market in India or a servant on a restaurant on Costa del Sol can communicate in 5 or 6 languages then it would be absurd not to accept that person as a polyglot, although you could add that his or her range of subjects at closer inspection might turn out to be somewhat limited in most of the languages. And if just about everyone in a certain society can speak five languages than it doesn't mean that a random person from such a society stops being a polyglot just because he/she only knows six. And with a repertoire of Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French and maybe a bit of English as the icing on the cake few would deny that you are a polyglot.
The problem is that we tend to expect that a 'polyglot' somehow is much more multilingual than the average citizen, and in addition to this we assume that 'more' in this context can be defined in purely quantitative terms (assuming that languages and dialects can be neatly separated). But at the same time we know that it is harder to learn exotic languages and languages with few resources than it is to learn a well-equipped related language, and it is also harder to learn just one extra language if you live in a culture where nobody else cares about language learning. With all these contradictory factors in play it can't surprise that the bottom level for polyglots has been placed at many different numbers. Personally I prefer a flexible lower bottom that takes into account how much trouble it took to get there (based on the circumstances and the choice of languages). The alternative would be to choose the limit downwards as X languages and then accept that you can 'cheat' by having the right life history and choosing a bundle of easy languages. If you against the odds could get a consensus on a specific number, then you would just have to accept that some candidates more or less were born to get there, others took a shortcut and still others had to fight a heroic battle because of their background and/or linguistic preferences. But maybe that's just how the world functions. And of course I consider myself a polyglot (and maybe even a hyperpolyglot according to Erard's definition, where the limit is 11 languages), but I did take a couple of shortcuts by concentrating on Indoeuropean languages and by refusing to accept that you need to be a nearnative speaker of a language in order to put it on your list. I have never really understood why jumping the fence where it is lowest should be frowned upon - sometimes it is the sensible thing to do. The important thing is what you find on the other side of that fence, and until now the Indoeuropean pasture has been fully sufficient for me. Now I have started to glance across the slightly higher fence around the Asiatic languages, but I have decided not to make the jump at the place where the fence rests on a towering mountain of 30.000 Chinese illegible signs or at the place where the Japanese have erected a triple barbed wire defence - the alternative is Bahasa Indonesia where the learning curve seems to be fairly moderate. Edited by Iversen on 31 July 2013 at 12:26pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4251 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 76 of 89 31 July 2013 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure if it came through that way, but that is exactly my point, which you reiterated. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| wanderingbird Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4133 days ago 16 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, French, Japanese, Portuguese, German | Message 77 of 89 19 August 2013 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1) Not yet
2) Of course :D 3) I think to personally consider myself a polyglot, I need to be able to speak at least four languages at B2+, so I'm halfway there. My plan is to improve my French and then pick up either German, Italian, or Portuguese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6452 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 79 of 89 07 October 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with you. The very definition of polyglottery (if one exists?) is arbitrary and will always stay as such. However, I believe most people would agree that knowing French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (all of them at B2-C2 level) cannot be considered as great an achievement as knowing Romanian, Norwegian, Mandarin and Urdu, for example. Personally I do consider myself a polyglot. I am able to hold a conversation in several languages without too many grammatical errors, and I would rate my language skills as follows: Finnish - native speaker English - C2 Italian - C2 Spanish - C1 German - B2 Swedish - B2 Russian - A2 I am ashamed that I haven't made much progress with my Russian lately... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 80 of 89 07 October 2013 at 2:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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1. Do you consider yourself a polyglot? No.
2. Are you planning to become one? No. Mainly because I think it's an ugly word. It sounds like a lump of wet clay. 3. If you are, what are you planning to achieve before you can call yourself a polyglot? I'm a linguaphile. I'd eventually like to be fully fluent in three languages (French, English and Spanish), conversationally fluent in a fourth (tagalog), and intermediate in a fifth, as of yet undecided language. Aside from those languages, I'll probably just do short bursts of study for basic knowledge before travelling. Edited by Stelle on 07 October 2013 at 2:25am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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