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Polyglot Historic Ranking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6657 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 9 of 17 14 December 2010 at 2:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with Fasulye and Solfrid Cristin; it doesn't seem necessary or desirable to rank polyglots. Moreover, I agree with Iversen that the information about polyglots--specifically polyglots no longer alive--is incomplete or inconclusive.
At the same time, I understand the appeal of such a list. Such a list would have to consider how unrelated a person's languages are. Consider a hypothetical speaker of Italian who learns Romance languages and nothing else but Romance languages: Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, and Romanian. Compare that to a native speaker of Hungarian who is comparably fluent in English, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Basque and Navajo. I don't think the first one is a slacker, but the second one ought to get points for tackling some ostensibly more challenging languages. These are rather contrived examples, but I think the difficulty of comparison is clear. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 10 of 17 14 December 2010 at 7:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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Once upon a time we had a discussion about how many languages you needed to be called a polyglot. In that thread I refused to give a specific number precisely because the level and relative difficulty of the languages should be taken in account - though of course two or three languages wouldn't be enough. However I found myself outnumbered by those who wanted a clear definition with a specific number as the criterion - and to this day I still don't understand why.
Using SamdD's examples I would personally be closer to the specialist in Romance languages than to his Hungarian collector of exotica. But this still doesn't take into account the level to which you have learnt a language. And without that any ranking based on pure numbers is bound to be unfair. That being said, I find it very interesting to read about those who have attained high numbers, but only with biographical contexts where those numbers are put in perspective - such as in the thread about Krebs or those about Hale or Burton (not to speak about the complete book about Mezzofanti) Edited by Iversen on 14 December 2010 at 7:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5954 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 11 of 17 14 December 2010 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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On the flip side, I am tied with a great many others for second worst polyglot in history. As I have just the one language so far, the only person that I am ranked higher than (in the whole world of a current estimated population of 6,890,667,000) is the small feral child being raised by coyotes down by the river.
As far as we can tell from the occasional times we visit to throw rocks at him, he has no language at all, not even a basic fluency (or proficiency if you prefer) in the coyote manner of communication. Edited by Spanky on 14 December 2010 at 5:34pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5954 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 13 of 17 14 December 2010 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Rest easy, it was just a joke. We do not actually allow children to be raised by coyotes as far as I know, and even the most mean-spirited of us here in Canada try to discourage adults from throwing rocks at children. The only person I have ever laughed at as a result of his misfortune, shortcomings or odd personal circumstances is myself. Edited by Spanky on 14 December 2010 at 9:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6548 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 15 of 17 15 December 2010 at 1:15am | IP Logged | |||||
Speak for yourself, fancy guy. You probably live in a house and use a flush toilet too. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5128 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 16 of 17 15 December 2010 at 3:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Totally. Trying to find internet access in the middle of the woods while evading bullets and arrows is exhausting. At least I've got my pack mates to watch my back while I learn another language. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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