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Only gifted polyglots can learn 10+langs? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5764 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 53 27 February 2011 at 11:41am | IP Logged | |||||
Odd, I automatically assumed polyglHot made a mistake and was actually referring to him/herself. The tricks my mind plays on me ... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 11 of 53 27 February 2011 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't believe in talent. All I believe in is hard graft and focus.
Code-switching is something that you can only really learn by practice, and once you see how useful it is, it comes easily. Here's my first memory of proper codeswitching: I was visiting Paris when a group of people asked me to take their picture. As a thank you, they took me to a café for a drink. My French was reasonable, and so was their English. I would start a sentence in French, but when I got to the point where I couldn't express something, I'd switch to English -- and they understood! And they would respond in English, but find they couldn't express something and would switch to French -- and I understood! We had a full conversation about a website they were trying to launch for the tourist board (which the photo was for -- I think I still have a copy of it lying about somewhere on a New Year card I got from them the year after). I don't recall ever having a proper code-switched conversation before this. The odd word dropped in, yes; changing languages back and forth, no. This experience really kicked it off for me and got me past the first obstacle for the language learner -- the embarassment of running out of words mid-sentence. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| anothername Triglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5059 days ago 96 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English | Message 14 of 53 27 February 2011 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry to say, but this is quite a frivolous accusation. If you are not a polyglot, you are not qualified to judge one. Simple as that. Anyone who has some formal training in performing arts AND language learning knows that if someone is able to speak several languages with the accuracy Torbyrne does it, in non-edited videos, with very acceptable accent and grammar in most of them (if not all), just based on home rehearsing, he is a true polyglot OR he should win the Oscar. Mr. Torbyrne, it's a true honor to read your post. It gives me the feeling I'm on the right forum. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5064 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 53 27 February 2011 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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And what makes you the expert Mister Monolingual?
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| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5984 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 16 of 53 27 February 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, so much flaming. Relax people.
Getting back to the topic, I find that switching is dependent on how much actual speaking practice I've had with a language, and somewhat dependent on how well I understand the language, and also dependent on how recently I've used that language. When I first started Dutch, I would mix in a lot of Swedish words when I tried to say something. That seemed to be due to the fact that I just didn't know a lot of Dutch words yet. As my knowledge of Dutch words increased, I didn't need to work so hard to fill in the blanks, and the mixing problems of Swedish mostly went away. Now though, since I haven't worked on Swedish for a while, and I've been doing a lot of Dutch lately, I find that Dutch words will slip into my Swedish (but not the other way around). I think this is mainly because I was never really that good at speaking Swedish, so there's no firm ground to stand on. With German, I never mix it up with anything...it feels very firm. When I'm in German mode, only German comes out. I'd say the biggest thing is to just practice speaking and thinking of things in that language. Once you're really comfortable expressing your thoughts in it, it'll be much easier to switch in and out of. The next most important is regularly reviewing to keep things fresh. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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