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Claims of 50+ languages | ||
Tags: Hyperglot | Number of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5309 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French | Message 9 of 57 29 May 2011 at 8:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have occasionally said that I speak 7 languages, but the level on wich I speak most of them isn't that great. To
say such a thing didn't come from seeking attention but from pure joy of having opened a door to yet another language, to have reached a level where the language isn't just incomprehensible bable and to be able to think simple thoughts and imagine/manage simple conversation (I don't have that many chances of actually speaking these languages...). But a couple of years ago something changed and I suddenly felt to need to actually be able to live up to my claim. I realized that I'm not actually speaking anything but Finnish and English and I set a goal for myself to learn the others too. The ones that I'd claimed to be speaking. I'm doing this one ot two at the time so at the moment I only list Swedish and French as languages I want to learn. Also I think that listing the number of languages just comes from a set of mind where one is used to counting things and making numeral categories. I keep track of my doings by counting: the time I have for each task, how many tasks I want to do per day, how many pages I have read/need to read, how many stiches there are in a row to be knit... So counting languages is just another expression of that. This mindset is rather stressing and tends to drain the joy of the things I'm doing so I'm trying to unlearn it. Maybe the change in my attitude to languages reflects that desire. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 57 29 May 2011 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My first question goes to Torbyrne:
You quoted a You Tube video in your post showing a TV interview. This is a broadcast of "Face TV" and I would like to know in which country this is broadcasted and what is the main language of the interview? Secondly, I would differentiate between people who themselves produce You Tube videos in which they claim to speak 50+ languages and interviews made by the media (radio, TV, newspaper) because the media have the aim to present a polyglot as a sensation and therefore the interviewer wants to have a figure as large as possible of how many languages a polyglot speaks. Every polyglot who is realisitic would hesitate of presenting very high figures of languages because also polyglots have their languages on different levels. I agree with Cainntear that it makes a huge difference of how many languages somebody has studied or how many languages somebody can speak. If the media count the languages a polyglot has studied of course they can enumerate high numbers of languages but then they should point out that somebody is not fluent in all of them. I for example studied Ancient Greek, Portuguese and Russian many years ago, but I don't even mention them on my profile, because I don't have any knowledge of these languages any more. So such languages don't count! Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 30 May 2011 at 7:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 57 29 May 2011 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! I thought something similar, but I wasn't sure. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 13 of 57 29 May 2011 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't believe extravagant claims about fluency in 50+ languages. I am inclined to
believe the upper limit is something like 15-20 languages, and very few people are genuinely capable of even that. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 14 of 57 29 May 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I find it hard to believe anyone can be fluent in more than a dozen simultaneously. You can have studied more, and I'm sure you can "reactivate" them, but it's very difficult to maintain so many languages well enough to hold a conversation at the drop of a hat*....
* At the drop of a hat -- idiom, at a moment's notice. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 15 of 57 30 May 2011 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The newer languages learned would tend to drive out the languages learned long ago. I believe that would be true even with someone like Mezzofanti.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 16 of 57 30 May 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not to mention that speaking 12 related languages fluently is a very different claim than speaking several unrelated Cat. III and Cat. IV languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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