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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4891 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 9 of 21 24 March 2015 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was listening to a linguist speak recently, and he said the normal maximum (I'm paraphrasing) for a polyglot
is around five: three that one can speak well, and two with limited proficiency. Plus maybe two or three that one can use at a very basic and simple level. Actually knowing seven languages, he said, was very rare. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 10 of 21 24 March 2015 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
While this statement is largely correct, it is a narrow view of what language learning is. Not everyone learns a language to have conversations. Here on HTLAL we have many learners of ancient languages (Ancient Greek, Egyptian, Latin, Sanskrit, etc) who have no intention to use them conversationally, and even if they wanted to would be unlikely to find another enthusiast to converse with in a social setting. And as Cavesa mentioned, someone can learn a language just to enjoy the media and culture it offers. It is quite possible for someone to learn a modern spoken language with no intention of actually speaking with anyone. To answer Tristano's post, first of all it is a great thing and impressive thing to know five languages as you do. Whether you have one foreign language or four, the same choice presents itself: do I cut back on improving my known languages to add another one? I suppose for me it has usually come down mainly to my feelings and a bit to opportunity. I've focused on French for the past 3 years, but now that I have an upcoming trip to India Hindi has become a priority once again. Others may have to make their choice due to necessity, I've been fortunate enough to be able to do what I like with my language hobby. You mentioned that you "need a C1 level" in three of your languages. Is this because of work or career advancement? Or is this an internal compusion? Knowing this would help us to understand your situation. One final point, there's nothing wrong with dabbling in a language you never intend to get to basic fluency. One of the things I will be doing in India will be taking lessons in Sanskrit. I want to study Sanskrit out of curiosity, not because I plan to spend a lot of time working on it or studying Sanskrit literature. There's no harm in doing a few levels of Turkish on Duolingo just for the sake of trying it out. Edited by Jeffers on 24 March 2015 at 10:50pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 11 of 21 25 March 2015 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||
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According to Slijngaard & Doth (1993), "there's no limit"...
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4951 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 12 of 21 26 March 2015 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think there is theoretically no limit in how many languages one can speak fluently, there is a limit in time. Everywhere on this planet, and in all of history, there have only been 24 hours in a day. That is a limiting factor in language learning.
I think for people passionate about languages like us, 5-6 is generally the limit in terms of a normal "life schedule" to upkeep, if anything because one has only so much time to converse, or to read. Beyond that number, it takes more and more of a lifestyle choice to maintain fluency in more languages, beyond 10 languages it probably takes a greater portion of one's schedule. I have noticed that such superpolyglots have a significant routine to maintain. My goal is 7 or 8 languages to C1 in my lifetime, with 6 of them achieved before 2020. We shall see if I can have the discipline and effort to make it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 21 26 March 2015 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think there is a huge difference depending on what languages we are speaking of. I'd say the limit is
different if your languages are a heterogenous mix with languages difficult as hell (mandarin, latin, swahili, arabic and quechua) or you ar striving for something more "reasonable" where the languages support each other (french, Spanish,italian, German, swedish). Unless you make large lifestyle adjustements and are as devoted, talented and hard working as prof. arguelles, i don't think ten or fifteen languages from various families are a realistic expectation. However, among educated people of our days or the past, knowing 3-5 foreign european languages wasn't that rare. Even in times of no internet, no video/audio and limited amount of books (that were really expensive), well educated people in central europe knew latin, french, German as a minimum (including those with czech or polish as a native language), with some knowing as well ancient greek/italian/other language. Each area had a combination not only scholars knew. There were diplomats, traders... And neither of them had a google translator available I think it is therefore possible for anyone of at least average iq to learn two or three foreign languages, given our means today. The population is just lazy and English got too much marketing for europe's own good. A dedicated learner can surely learn a few more. But it is as well far too easy to compare ourselves with the exceptional individuals these days and sometimes, we need to remind ourselves we are just not likely to all become benny's or iversen's equals, in my opinion. Edited by Cavesa on 26 March 2015 at 3:39pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 14 of 21 26 March 2015 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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A lady who lived in Curaçao in the southern Caribbean spoke 5 languages. Many people in that part of the
world managed to learn at least 3. The local economy relies heavily on tourism from Latin America (Mexico especially) so by default school children would learn Spanish. The others include English & French to serve N. American tourists from the US & Canada. The other 2 languages has to do with the island's history as a Dutch colony. Dutch is recognized as the language of government along with Papiamento (the local language based on a mixture of Portuguese, English, French, Dutch & Spanish). The lady has a teaching certificate for Spanish & French. The languages she acquired isn't just for interest. They are all put into practical use. Edited by shk00design on 26 March 2015 at 5:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4951 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 15 of 21 27 March 2015 at 4:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, just based on personal experience meeting people that speak several languages, whether they merely through life circumstance (geographical location, family diversity, constant relocation), or people that learn languages, as well as just looking at the profiles here at HTLAL, 4-5 languages is a significant "speed limit" I often see. One can certainly surpass it, but it just keeps repeating that many people speak "4 languages", and some "5", relatively fluently, but 6 and beyond becomes far more rare.
Cavesa, I would mostly agree with you. I would caveat between "speaking fluency" and "linguistic readiness & competence". Between related languages (the closer related, the more effectively obviously), keeping this "linguistic readiness & competence" can be very efficient. As you said, if you learned French, Italian, English, German, Dutch, and Spanish, just using one of each on a rotation or whatever will allow you to be exposed to many of the grammar, syntactic, and vocabulary features of the others at all times. That means you are in fact maintaining the other languages without even doing anything. So the mix of languages you have learned, and how close they are to each other, can play a huge role in this maintaining of readiness and competence (as it did when you first learned them, the famous "discount".) But I honestly do believe that "speaking fluency" is far more independent of the above. That is, if I know Spanish and Portuguese, but I don't practice speaking Portuguese, my output skills will deteriorate steadily, even though my speaking Spanish is nonetheless keeping my "readiness and competence" for Portuguese at a very high level. Pronunciation, cadence, and intonation particularly suffer in my view, and right now for example my Portuguese pronunciation is deplorable. My French and German ones are far better, but not as good as when I spoke regularly. Speaking English and Spanish more often has not prevented that degradation, even though my readiness to "recover" French and German are probably maintained. Also the word nuance and usage for each language suffers, as does idiomatics. To keep pronunciation, idiomatics, and correct word selection (certainly slang) up, the only way is through speaking. 1 person has 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 16 of 21 27 March 2015 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
This answer is too simplistic, and it rests on some assumptions which may not be correct. First, what do you mean by "well" (C1, C2?), and what do you mean by "with limited proficiency" (B1, B2?)? Let's assume that you can define the levels according to that scale, but then you have to look at thinking, speaking, writing, reading and writing separately. It is not likely that you would have skills at the same level in all of these - and not even sure that a direct comparison is possible. For me speaking is more difficult than writing for the simple reason that I do almost all my study based on the written language so I might be happy about a lower level in speaking than I would demand for writing, but for others speaking might be their strongest skill (or listening). I can read and write in more languages than those in which I can listen and speak for the simple reason that I have easy access to interesting written sources and tools in more languages than those in which I can listen to something worthwhile or meet native speakers on a daily basis. If I were surrounded by people who wanted to communicate with me in ten languages all day long all year long then I might become less biased towards the written languages, but that is not how it is in my world. So not only the time at your disposal, but also your chances of actual exposure is a limiting factor. Apart from that I doubt that the number of languages in the first category for any polyglot would be higher than the number of languages in the second and - especially - the third category. In my case there is one language which is my native language, and from there my skills spiral downwards from a usable level in English to languages where I only know a few words (like Swahili or Finnish). And the lower the level the more languages. I have done monolingual travels in a dozen languages (meaning languages where I can have basically the same conversations which I would have using a language like English or French), but maybe with more errors and more circumlocations to avoid potholes along the way. And this number is definitely higher than the number of languages in which having holes in my vocabulary has ceased to be a problem. If we return to the question of different channels I wouldn't include languages in the B1,B2 bracket where I couldn't have a normal conversation, but in many cases I have been dealing with languages where I have been able to read everything I have seen at sight and where I could understand ordinary clear speech at those few occasions where I have heard it. For example I have recently had the pleasure of reading a number of printouts in contemporary Occitan, and I didn't even need a dictionary. But I have only studied Old Occitan, and I have never even tried to speak it. And there are more languages in this situation than languages which I can speak at some basic level, and more languages where I can ask the way to the loo than languages where I can discuss the recent find of a crocodile that could run on its hindlegs (Carnufex carolensis). And for that matter also more languages where I an able to discuss things like astronomy, paleontology and language learning than languages in which I can succesfully eavesdrop on native speakers. Edited by Iversen on 27 March 2015 at 11:54am 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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