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Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 - 1890) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 9 of 30 29 March 2005 at 2:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Wright's biography does make for interesting reading. In it, Burton is specifically quoted as saying he knows 28 or 29 languages at various points in his life. There can be no doubt that he knew a great many hard exotic tongues so well that he could pass as a native, and in the context, it is truly fascinating that he was never able to get the hang of either German or Russian.
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| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7093 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 30 21 February 2007 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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There has been some talk on the forum about not using prepackaged courses, and how to go about getting to the core of a language quickly. I remembered the “Burton Method” and thought I would give the topic a bump.
John
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 11 of 30 23 February 2007 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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One interesting aspect of his method is rote memorization - instead of going for some type of natural acquisition of vocabulary, he opts for conscious memorization at least in the early beginner stage described in the quote above.
Also, I have an impression that in the old days the word "grammar" was also used for what nowadays we would think of as more of a grammar-translation textbook - it didn't always mean just a reference grammar. Edited by frenkeld on 25 February 2007 at 2:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Topsiderunner Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6919 days ago 215 posts - 218 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Arabic (Written) | Message 12 of 30 01 October 2007 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just got an excellent biography of Burton entitled "The Devil Drives" by Fawn Brodie with some further bits about his polyglot career. Apparently he only dove into Arabic after he failed to win a fellowship in a Greek and Latin exam at Oxford:
"Along with his biterness against the language examiners, Burton had developed too a raging contempt for their teaching methods...(Burton's own description posted earlier in the thread is here)...Burton readily admitted the distinction between "learning" a language and mastery of it. And he pointed out, too, that he would forget the most recently learned language when attacking a new one. The Arabic begun at Oxford certainly did not have its neck broken in two months." After being expelled from Oxford he joined the army in India: "'I threw myself with a kind of frenzy upon my studies,' he wrote. 'I kept up the little stock of Arabic that I had acquired at Oxford, and gave some twelve hours a day to a desperate tussle with Hindustani.'" Burton passes an exam first out of twelve in Hindi in April 1843 and becomes a regimental interpreter: "Immediately he plunged into the study of Gujarti, which was spoken by the local Parsees, and began elementary lessons in Sanscrit...In the next year he passed first in Marathi...Late in 1844 he took up Persian, and eventually went on to Sindi, Punjabi, Telugu, Pashto, Multani, Armenian and Turkish...Burton was not a pedant with languages but a libertine - mastering, using, abandoning." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 13 of 30 05 October 2007 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I like the "Screw Unto Others" and "Techniques and Tricks to Secure Evidence". I'm surprised there is no "How to use human body parts as furniture". More seriously, I posted on another thread about South Korean troops in the Vietnam War learning pidgin Vietnamese as a matter of routine so they could do without Vietnamese interpreters, who they did not trust and sometimes killed. Probably they learned Vietnamese in much the same "tactical" way favoured by Hawke and perhaps Burton. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mcjon77 Senior Member United States Joined 6612 days ago 193 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), French | Message 14 of 30 07 October 2007 at 8:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Because one of the primary jobs of U.S. Army Special Forces is to train foreign nationals (either Foreign soldiers fighting guerrillas, or foreign guerrillas fighting soldiers) all Army Special Forces trainees and soldiers are required to take foreign language training and maintain proficiency in that language. So it would make sense that at least a few of them would come up with their own method for learning the basics quickly.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 15 of 30 08 October 2007 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||
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His book interests me, and I am thinking of ordering it. Learning the basics of a foreign language quickly (not real fluency - that would take much more time) might be something it could help with. At the same time, I have no burning desire to meet the guy socially, or for that matter, any employee of Blackwater.
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| manny Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6359 days ago 248 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Tagalog Studies: French, German | Message 16 of 30 08 October 2007 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
Yep, you are right - language and culture. U.S. Army Special Forces is divided into five Active Duty Special Forces Groups. Each Active Duty SFG has a specific regional focus. The Special Forces soldiers assigned to these groups receive intensive language and cultural training for countries within their regional area of responsibility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Special_Forc es#Training_and_selection 1 person has voted this message useful |
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