It hurt me being multi-lingual (Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages) Language Learning Forum

It hurt me being multi-lingual
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Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages

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Merv
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5273 days ago
414 posts - 749 votes

Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian*
Studies: Spanish, French

Message 17 of 49

26 September 2010 at 2:46am | IP Logged

Mr. Kowalski, if you want to expand your vocabulary in English and French, you must read more literature in those
languages. Scientific and technical literature is largely universal across Europe, so you have to go for English and
French novels and.....poetry. ;) I suggest reading Dickens. His works will expand your English vocabulary for sure.
1 person has voted this message useful

tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5453 days ago
1349 posts - 2292 votes

Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

Message 18 of 49

26 September 2010 at 11:24am | IP Logged

Cainntear wrote:

Personally, I find that most native speakers are handicapped by English being an international
language.

Only a very small percentage of non-natives achieve a native-like model of English, and this percentage is
decreasing because most non-natives use it primarily for talking to other non-natives.

This can make it very difficult for a native speaker to understand non-natives or to be understood by them. But
because we already "know English", we can't go out and learn the language that they're speaking.

Broken English can be very difficult for non-natives to understand as well.
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Goethe_girl
Newbie
United States
Joined 5184 days ago
39 posts - 44 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

Message 19 of 49

26 September 2010 at 11:35am | IP Logged

OP, you claim that it hurt you to be 'multilingual'

but if you don't achieve fluency in a language, why would it impact a determination of multilingualism?

also, your statement about native English speakers (it's not just) is rather silly
1 person has voted this message useful

Juаn
Senior Member
Colombia
Joined 5345 days ago
727 posts - 1830 votes

Speaks: Spanish*

Message 20 of 49

26 September 2010 at 5:36pm | IP Logged

kowalskil wrote:

And going to a dictionary, each time an unfamiliar word is encountered, is a burden. It interrupts the process in
which we are engaged. Fortunately, as you confirm, we often can guess from the context.

I think here lies the root of your woes. Given that you already possess a basic vocabulary and a grammatical command of them, reading with a dictionary by your side would relatively quickly take each of your languages to as high a level as you wish.

And as far as it being a burden, it really shouldn't be. When reading anything of value one should always have ready access to reference sources anyway, not only to look up unknown words, but to clarify terms or look up references to unknown concepts, people, places, events, etc. With the advent of the internet this task is rendered so effortless, taking but a few seconds to type in a word and get the results, there is really no excuse anymore to make do with guessing. Just three pages, Wikipedia, Answers.com and Google Images enable me to find 99% of what I'm looking for, be it the date of a battle or the doctrine of small Indian sect, unknown words and expressions, or what a particular plant or Turkish costume looks like.

For many years I read without a dictionary, glossing over unknowns; now that I read with the computer by my side to look things up I realize not only my command of the language has improved dramatically, but specially also my degree of comprehension and enjoyment of what I read.

Cainntear wrote:

The vast majority of the population don't like poetry.

The vast majority of the population don't read or listen to anything of worth. That doesn't mean one is not missing out on things very special by sharing in their ordinariness.

Faraday wrote:

"Does being multilingual help or hinder our intellectual development?"

You make a very good point. The hundreds, or thousands, of hours spent learning a language, could well be spent
in pursuing a more intellectual endeavor.

I would take issue with the assertion that learning a language is lacking in intellectual content. First, we give shape to our thoughts through language, so to learn a new one is to acquire a whole new perspective, in the case of very foreign languages even a new intellectual architecture. Second, to really learn a language one needs to read its literature and thought, and through this to become acquainted with its society, religion, philosophy, art, science, scholarship... a more intellectual task being hard to conceive.
4 persons have voted this message useful

shmjay
Newbie
United States
Joined 5362 days ago
12 posts - 19 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, German, Spanish

Message 21 of 49

26 September 2010 at 6:49pm | IP Logged

There are books for English-speakers on how to improve one’s vocabulary, and I presume there are similar books for French-speakers, so why not read a few of those first, and then try a novel? You can always try something light, like Agatha Christie.
1 person has voted this message useful

reineke
Senior Member
United States
https://learnalangua
Joined 6447 days ago
851 posts - 1008 votes

Studies: German

Message 22 of 49

26 September 2010 at 7:30pm | IP Logged

kowalskil wrote:

Does being multilingual help or hinder our intellectual development? I met many people who believe that
learning foreign languages helped them. But that has not been my experience.

My first language was Polish--my father and mother spoke Polish at home. That was in Moscow, before my
father was arrested in 1938, when I was 7 years old. After that it became Russian, even with my mother. In 1944
it became Polish again-- in a Polish orphanage near Moscow, and in Warsaw, where I lived between 1946 and
1957. Then it became French, for seven years. And it has been English, since 1964.

Language and thinking are interconnected; they are probably part of the same thing. I rarely have a chance to
speak other languages I know; my wife and daughter are American born. But several days ago I started reading
something in Polish, for about two hours. After that I started making spelling mistakes, such as "jes" instead of
"yes," "Moskow" instead of "Moscow," and "Wladimir" instead of "Vladimir."

I am fluent in French and English but my vocabulary, in each of these languages, is limited. What I know was
100% sufficient in my professional work (to teach and to conduct research in physics). But it is not sufficient to
appreciate poetry, or to read some books. Limited vocabulary means limited thinking ability. That is what I think,
on the basis of my experience.

Ludwik Kowalski,

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/intro.html

I think it is fair to mention that you've plasterd several websites with this identical post. I don't think your problem is related to multilingualism. It is about being yanked away from the language after several years and never coming back to it. Nothing prevented you from expanding your vocabulary and enjoying literature in several languages. You observations are based on a two hour reading experiment. Joseph Conrad was able to create masterpieces in a language he learned as an adult.
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Faraday
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6118 days ago
129 posts - 256 votes

Speaks: German*

Message 23 of 49

26 September 2010 at 8:49pm | IP Logged

Juаn wrote:

I would take issue with the assertion that learning a language is lacking in intellectual content. First, we give
shape
to our thoughts through language, so to learn a new one is to acquire a whole new perspective, in the case of
very
foreign languages even a new intellectual architecture. Second, to really learn a language one needs to read its
literature and thought, and through this to become acquainted with its society, religion, philosophy, art, science,
scholarship... a more intellectual task being hard to conceive.

In learning any language, many hours are spent on reading, listening to, and parroting mundane phrases of little
intrinsic value. To me, at least, that's a distinct opportunity cost. It's time that could be spent learning maths,
studying music, or exploring literature in one's native language. Obviously I find the tradeoff worthwhile, and I
wouldn't be posting here if I didn't think so. But it is nevertheless a tradeoff.

I know that posting this in a language forum will irk some people, but I do think that we have to be vigilant
about our prejudices and blindspots.

Edited by Faraday on 26 September 2010 at 8:52pm
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fireflies
Senior Member
Joined 5181 days ago
172 posts - 234 votes

Speaks: English*

Message 24 of 49

26 September 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged

It all depends on what you value doing. I can see where a scientist would find learning a bunch of languages a waste of time and a distraction from science.

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