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Polyglot linguists | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| etracher Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 5333 days ago 92 posts - 180 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Modern Hebrew, Russian, Latvian | Message 9 of 18 24 March 2011 at 9:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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As a side note, I'm not sure that I have read anything in which Chomsky has said he only speaks English. I believe I have heard him sidestep the question of "How many languages do you speak?", but I think that should mostly be attributed to the fact that it is irrelevant to his work in linguistics (he usually tries to avoid answering irrelevant personal questions, I think). As Declan1991 has pointed out, polyglottery and linguistics do not necessarily go hand in hand and perhaps Chomsky does not desire to contribute to the general impression that they do.
That said, if I remember correctly, the introduction to the published text of the Chomsky-Foucault debate states that they decided to speak French and English respectively in order to express themselves as precisely as possible. The third person was not an interpreter, but rather the presenter - I think he is a Dutch philosopher or some other sort of intellectural figure. I know that Foucault spoke English, but I am not sure how well he did so in 1971. I have read of other situations where Chomsky answered French journalists' French language questions in English (once again, I believe for questions of accuracy), but I don't know if he actually speaks French. His passive ability must have been very high if there was no interpreter in that debate. Chomsky's father was a very important Hebrew scholar, William Chomsky, and Chomsky learned Hebrew very well from a young age, both modern and Biblical. He did undergraduate work in Modern Hebrew and studied Arabic at that time as well. His B.A. thesis was entitled "Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew" (revised to become his M.A. thesis). I'm quite sure that he even worked as a Hebrew teacher when he was young. Does that mean that he speaks Hebrew now? Not necessarily, but he did grow up in an environment where people spoke Hebrew, studied it throughout his youth and remains very involved in Israeli-Palestinian questions. I believe that he also used to hang out at the offices of the Freie Arbeiter Stimme, a Yiddish language anarchist newspaper, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Although Yiddish was definitely very commonly spoken in early twentieth century New York and Philadelphia. . . Perhaps Chomsky is a closet polyglot? Edited by etracher on 24 March 2011 at 1:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5271 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 10 of 18 25 March 2011 at 2:59am | IP Logged | |||||
I bet chomsky has the original الف ليل و ليل somewhere in his secret underground polyglot layer XD It's possible that he thinks that the languages he knows isn't worth bragging about. Either way, no one can deny Chomsky as an intellectual symbol of our time regardless. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Adamdm Groupie Australia Joined 5436 days ago 62 posts - 89 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Dari, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 18 25 March 2011 at 4:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Please explain! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6867 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 12 of 18 25 March 2011 at 5:00am | IP Logged | |||||
The collection of tales "One Thousand and One Nights." Edited by Journeyer on 25 March 2011 at 5:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5271 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 13 of 18 26 March 2011 at 4:18am | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry about not clarifying this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 18 29 March 2011 at 2:14am | IP Logged | |||||
Here are some linguists among presumably many who would probably fit the bill (per their CVs): Lyle Campbell (SPANISH (excellent), FINNISH (excellent), German (good); FRENCH (read well, poor speaking); PORTUGUESE (read well, speak limited); Italian (read), SWEDISH (read, limited speaking), DANISH (read); CLASSICAL GREEK (Attic, Homeric), SANSKRIT, RUSSIAN (studied, no speaking competency); NAHUATL (good, field research language); K’ICHE’ (good, field research language); QUECHA (fair, field research language); MAORI (structure, poor reading knowledge); SAMOAN (course taken)) Robert DeLossa (Russian and Ukrainian (reading: near native; speaking: excellent); Spanish (reading: near native; speaking: good); French (reading: near native; speaking: fair); Polish and Serbian (reading: good; speaking: fair); Church Slavonic, German, Italian, Latin (reading ability at different levels)) Marc Greenberg (4+: Slovenian; 3+: BCMS/SC, Russian; 2+ Czech; some structural knowledge and skill in speaking and reading: Albanian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, all other modern Slavonic languages, Yiddish; some structural knowledge and skill in reading: Finnish, Greek, Lithuanian, Mari, Sanskrit) (I presume that 2+, 3+ and 4+ refer to the ACTFL/ILR proficiency scale) Robert Greenberg (fluent in BCMS/SC, Bulgarian, French, Hebrew, Macedonian, Russian; proficient in German and Slovenian; reading knowledge of Czech, Italian, Old Church Slavonic, Polish, Ukrainian) Stephanie Harves (ADVANCED READING/SPEAKING/WRITING: Russian; ADVANCED SPEAKING, FAIR SPEAKING/WRITING: Czech; GOOD READING, FAIR WRITING: Slovak; GOOD READING, FAIR SPEAKING/WRITING: Bulgarian, German; GOOD READING/SPEAKING/WRITING: French) Laura Janda (Spoken fluency in Czech and Russian; Speaking and reading ability in BCMS/SC, Bulgarian, French, German, Polish, Slovak) György Kara (FLUENT: Khalkha; WELL-VERSED: Written/Classical Mongolian; READING: Buryat, Chinese, Daur, Ewenki, Kalmyk, Manchu, Oirat, Tibetan, Old Uygur, SPEAKING: English, German, Russian; WRITING: French) (N.B. I corresponded briefly with Prof. Kara via e-mail some time ago and he can write in English without a problem). Beáta Wagner-Nagy (NATIVE: Hungarian; PROFICIENT: German, Russian; GOOD: Finnish; BASIC: English; GOOD READING ABILITY, BASIC SPEAKING ABILITY: Nganasan; STRUCTURAL KNOWLEDGE: Enets, Mator, Nenets, Selkup) 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dragonfly Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6478 days ago 204 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, Mandarin | Message 15 of 18 31 March 2011 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If we turn to the field of applied lingustics, many English teachers and materials designers for EFL who originally come from Britain or the US are at least at a conversational level in a number of languages, as they have the opportunity to work in different parts of the world. Michael Swan or Keith Folse are the examples, but there are quite a few who are not so famous as those.
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| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5339 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 16 of 18 18 April 2011 at 8:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sorry to interrupt the discussion here, as I do not know where else to best place what I would like to write.
Lately, I have been searching on the Internet for some university courses on linguistics, and came across books written by university professors on subjects such as "a critical perspective on multilingualism" or simply "multilingualism". When I look further at the background or CV of the professors who wrote these books (or even the academic background of the professors who supposedly teach multilingualism or head up multilingualism department at some universities), I am surprised that most of these professors are either effectively monolingual (ie. English), or at most bilingual.... Isn't that somehow not really...matching? I would think that some members in this forum are more 'suitable' to teach multilingualism to others... Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 18 April 2011 at 11:05am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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