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Optimal Conditions Allowing Polyglotism | ||
Tags: Polyglottery | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 1 of 4 03 March 2011 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learning multiple languages to a degree of fluency requires that a set of optimal conditions be in place. Some of these conditions depend entirely on the learner, while others lie almost completely outside of our control.
Any person can willingly decide to devote a sizable chunk of their free time to language acquisition. Though it's difficult for most of us, we can all decide to risk failure, to overlook the embarrassment of inevitable mistakes and to bear an excruciatingly slow investment return. However, not everyone can benefit from the conditions that allow fluency in say 7 or 8 languages, or more. These conditions are not accessible to most people, regardless of whether talent is a factor or not. Whether it’s living, working or growing up in a multilingual environment, having travelled to or lived in different countries thanks to work or family, enjoying long-term help from a dedicated spouse, family member or friend, etc., is it possible to acquire fluency in that many languages without benefiting from certain contributing factors? To all the hyperglots out there: What factors have made your achievements possible? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 2 of 4 03 March 2011 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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1) I began early - though for reasons that had little to do with languages, such as an interest in zoological nomenclature and classical music (Latin resp. Italian)
2) Living in a country with subtitles on Danish TV and TV from several countries 3) Having good libraries in Denmark 4) Losing interest in mathematics just at the right moment so that I had to study something else 5) Having access to excellent libraries and courses in several languages in addition to the one I officially was studying 6) No wife and no kids to distract me 7) Many travels abroad 8) Finding this forum, which showed me the full gamut of possible study methods 9) Living in the internet era - with search engines, translators which make bilingual texts on the fly and access to internet TV, radio and podcasts 10) having the innate ability to sit down on my bum and study hard Of course people before us could learn many languages, but it must be easier to achieve this goal today than ever before. Edited by Iversen on 03 March 2011 at 11:49pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6677 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 3 of 4 04 March 2011 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | ||
This is the most important factor for me...by far. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| polyglossia Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5406 days ago 205 posts - 255 votes Speaks: French* | Message 4 of 4 12 March 2011 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Stephen Wurm (RIP!) specialist of austronesian languages used to speak 40 languages... He was raised in 5 languages as well as his sister... Now, when he talks about her, he says:" She didnt like languages as much as I did, so she speaks only 5 languages"... His father taught himself 16 languages... and has not been raised bilingual... So I guess the motivation is the key factor, though growing in a multlingual environment does help for sure..
As for me, I "discovered" languages at the age of 15 which is a bit too late... But I really stick to them since I'm 25... and have never been raised in a multilingual environment... My family is.. french/french... and they dont really understand my love for languages except for English, the lingua franca of the world... I'm not so sure Iversen is right... Well, internet offers you a lot of material, and we cant really argue about that, but look at Mezzofanti achievements or Burton's achievements... Maybe they are exceptionnal people but when you think about it, a lot of "learned people" used to speak several languages centuries ago (think about Cleopatra) and they had no access to WWW. !! So, I vote for "motivation" as factor n°1.... though I didnt "achieve" anything according to my criteria !! :)) Edited by polyglossia on 12 March 2011 at 11:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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