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"Rule of Seven" | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5409 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes  | Message 57 of 78 26 March 2010 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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My (subjective) definition of fluency: Experiencing "stream of consciouness" in the target language.
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| rapp Senior Member United States Joined 5731 days ago 129 posts - 204 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 58 of 78 02 April 2010 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if this 7 language conjecture is just a restatement of Miller's Law:
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_o r_Minus_Two And as for slucido's syllogism from way back at the start of this thread: -Human being is limited. -Human brain is part of human being. -ergo human brain is limited. I agree with this conclusion, but would suggest that it is valuable to pretend that this is not the case. As others have pointed out, it is very hard to quantify this limit, so any guess you make about it is very likely to be wrong. There is no downside to guessing that the limit is higher than it really is, but guessing too low (and acting on that guess) would mean that you would not reach your maximum potential. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 59 of 78 02 April 2010 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Seven is really stretching it, I think.
Personally I would go for quality rather than quantity. And what constitutes "speaking" a language? You only "speak" languages that you can have unhindered conversations in, about any topic that you are able to discuss in your own language. For example: I can communicate reasonably in French but I cannot have a serious conversation about anything complicated so in my view I do not "speak" it. Plus; are you counting similar languages? I mean; I could learn to "speak" Norwegian very fast indeed - I mean, I already understand it fully. It is technically a different language; but the effort for me would be minimal in light of the fact that I am Swedish. I could also add Danish pretty fast if I wanted. Then there are the Russian/Belarussian/Ukrainian similarities. Then there are the similar Romance languages... If your sole purpose was getting to 7 -- it wouldn't be that hard if you were already bilingual and then learn languages that are a good springing board into other languages. But if somebody's seven languages were; for example: English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Malay and Swahili --- then he'd be nothing short of a genius (assuming the level was high). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 60 of 78 02 April 2010 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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So what we've learned in this thread:
-You can't easily quantify or agree on what counts "fluency." -You can't easily quantify or agree on what counts as a "language" (i.e. Spanish speaker learning French vs. English speaker learning Mandarin) -You can't easily quantify or agree on what counts as an "average person." So the statement "the average person can only achieve fluency in seven languages" is perhaps the most meaningless statement one can make. And yet here we all are on page 8. . . 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 61 of 78 02 April 2010 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Let's face it: This is an unending debate. My own position is that it is pointless and useless. The fundamental problem is that it is impossible to agree on what "speaking" a language means. At one extreme, there is a maximal definition that requires native-like performance. At the other extreme, a minimal definition says that all you have to do is get by in the language.
Frankly, I think one language is more than enough to keep most people busy. Most of us have other things to do besides studying grammar books and dictionaries. Language is a tool, not an end in and onto itself. Like most people here I assume, I'm interested in foreign languages because they open doors to other parts of the world. I'm not interested in acquiring trophy languages so that I can brag at parties. When I think about all the work required to become even minimally at ease in a foreign language and then to maintain that level, I always laugh when I read the packaging of the many language methods and books. "Become fluent in 3 months". "Speak like a native now", Does anybody believe this? Can some people really speak 7 or more languages? Maybe, it all depends on the definition. My question is: what's the purpose? Edited by s_allard on 03 April 2010 at 5:46am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6447 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 62 of 78 03 April 2010 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||
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"So the statement the average person can only achieve fluency in seven languages..."
The rule states that most people can learn between five and nine languages at a very high level, and this includes nearly all the average people you mention and many (if not most) of the very gifted people. This was originally described as a "rule" among polyglots and scholars. No need to play with definitions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5408 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 63 of 78 03 April 2010 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, it doesn't seem anyone's tried some math yet, so let me throw some things out there as food for thought ...
Obviously some sort of language "decay" rate must exist from non-use, as well as some amount of time required to gain proficiency in a language. Just as a very rough baseline ... 3 years of full-time hardcore study to "get" a language. Maybe 6-9 years (dunno, just throwing something out there) of complete non-use to lose most of a language. Something like that would suggest the ability to only maintain 3 languages at a high level. This might be low due to some true minimums that might be needed to keep your language, like using it once a week or something ... I really don't know ... but there must be some sort of normal decay rate we could probably estimate. For the 7 language "speed limit" just think of what it would take to get 7 languages ... when you were at 6 languages, you'd have to maintain all 6 at their same level while adding the 7th language. How much time do you have to put into a language to keep it at the same level? If it's any more than 1 day a week, or an hour or two a day, then learning over 7 to a sufficient level might indeed be near impossible (excepting cases where the languages are extremely close to each other obviously). The decay on the other 6 languages, or more if you're trying to go over 7, in order to add another language might simply be too much to make up. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 64 of 78 05 April 2010 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
That's the point. You can make it practically impossible to pass the line by asking for near-native fluency. Or you can make it absolutely possible by asking for a lower degree of fluency. My personal definition of basic (spoken) fluency is that I should be able to take a flight and stay somewhere for a week or so without speaking other languages, even thinking in the local language for most of the time. And since I restarted my language learning in 2006 I have made such 'monolingual' trips to countries that spoke Portuguese, English, German, Spanish, French, Romanian, Italian and Catalan (and I count on doing a similar trip in Dutch later this year). That's already more than seven. But I wouldn't claim that I could discuss as freely in all of them as in my native Danish, just that I actually have discussed a lot of things in them without having to resort to other languages. A language that has became 'stable' just need a gentle prodding once in a while, and watching TV or reading a couple of pages in that language may be enough to keep it alive (though progress will then be slow). It is not like there is a hard core of seven 'superlanguages' and a number of mere 'study languages' below it. All the languages form a ladder stretching from my native Danish down to languages which can't speak or write properly yet, and there is every possible skill level represented in between. Edited by Iversen on 05 April 2010 at 8:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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