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OK, so just what is a polyglot? | ||
Tags: Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| sonsenfrancais Groupie United Kingdom sonsenfrancais. Joined 5775 days ago 75 posts - 85 votes  Speaks: FrenchC2 | Message 1 of 38 16 October 2009 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Having read various topics on native fluency etc, I am minded to ask this question.
I am English, my passion is French. I speak much better French than 99.9% of my fellow citizens who go to France on holiday. I've done all the exams I can find. And I am still a beginner in French. The only anglo-saxons (to use the French expression) I've ever met who spoke French well have lived in France for the last 25 years. Or they're bilingual - British born but with one parent French. So what do polyglots think being a polyglot means? Having a smattering of ten languages ? Or speaking them all so well you wouldn't know they weren't native speakers ? Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean to be critical. Anyone who manages to learn more than one foreign language has my total admiration - the work involved must be immense. So immense that I wonder how many lifetimes you must need to achieve fluency in three or four languages other than your own. But it's rather like playing a musical instrument. If someone tells me that he plays the trumpet, the violin, the piano, the harp, the drums AND the tin whistle, I sort of think that he probably doesn't play any of them well. Or perhaps just one of them. And a tiny gripe, since we're using English here. In English one can be a polyglot, bilingual, or multilingual. Trilingual exists, I think. But these barbarisms - Hexaglot, Diglot etc, are not English words Edited by Fasulye on 16 July 2011 at 8:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6499 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 38 16 October 2009 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you call yourself a beginner in French, what then would you call those 99.9% of your compatriots? You may feel that your knowledge of French is minimal compared to that of a native speaker, but it is not a reason for 'hijacking' the word that we need to describe those that really have problems asking for the bill in French or reading Saint-John Perse. There may be people who know a few languages extremely well (though only one or maybe two as a native speaker), and who suck at anything else. But my languages are not lumped together like that: instead there is a ladder all the way from something like Tagalog where I just know some grammar but can't say anything, up to my native Danish, and there are languages scattered at all levels in between. But I would not describe my knowledge of the top ten as just a smattering, even though I'm not in the same league as the native speakers. If you can read just about everything that a native educated reader can deal with, understand most TV programs, live for days or weeks without having to resort to your native language (or English) then "smattering" is not the right word. Personally I don't care about achieving near-native active competence. If I had enough actual exposure then maybe it could be achieved, but that would probably mean that I had to settle for months or years in several other countries (one after the other), and that is not foreseen in my plans for the future. I can achieve excellent passive skills and fair to good active skills (depending on the amount of exposure I can get), and that's enough. If you put the bar too high then you just get depressed. Edited by Iversen on 16 October 2009 at 1:04pm 12 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Saif Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5408 days ago 122 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French | Message 3 of 38 16 October 2009 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Achieving native fluency is overrated. I'd much rather use the time required to reach such a goal on learning new languages. The idea is to effectively communicate, not to sound exactly like the native speakers in your target language.
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| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5830 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 4 of 38 16 October 2009 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
My definition for a polyglot is a person who is conversational in at least 5 different languages, at least across two language families. There's much controversy about the exact number of languages and level of proficiency. I think one should be able to read novels and communicate with ease on a wide variety of day-to-day topics. When the language becomes a useful tool for communication, rather than an obstacle, then you've "learned" it. The truth is one can never completely learn a language, it's a lifelong quest. How much effort you spend on a single language is entirely up to you. I also love French and feel so clumsy when speaking that sometimes it's quite discouraging. There's also the constant temptation to start a new language - and barely enough time even for French.
The titles are not English but rather international words drawing on Greek and Latin - like pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon, decagon. There was an interesting topic some time ago... even though the -glot words are artificial people get the idea and for lack of a better alternative we're stuck with them. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6058 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 38 16 October 2009 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I like Sennin's description of what a true polyglot is. We could debate on the number of languages one needs to know but I definitely agree (at least) one must be from a different language family. Not that a person who speaks French Spanish Italian and Portuguese isn't a good polyglot on my list, I'm learning all those languages too, but I'm much more proud of myself when I can manage a simple conversation in my terrible Arabic than even a difficult one in Portuguese, simply because I already speak Italian as a native.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5720 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 6 of 38 16 October 2009 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by mick33 on 16 October 2009 at 8:32pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| wyndhamfan Triglot Newbie Malaysia imaginarylands.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4683 days ago 5 posts - 16 votes Studies: Mandarin, English*, Malay, Hokkien | Message 7 of 38 13 July 2011 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Isn't polyglot = multilingual? I think anyone who can speak more than one language is
considered a polyglot. I'm wondering why are people debating whether one is a polyglot or not - I think the fact that you can speak more than one language is a great achievement and don't be modest - just say, yup, I'm a polyglot and not fuss about it ;) I speak Malay (or Bahasa Malaysia), English, Mandarin and Hokkien. I suppose they're mostly from different language families? Interestingly, the Chinese will say that I speak 3 languages while Westerners will say four. An American friend of mine asked me, "Why don't Chinese people ever count their dialects as another language?" And the answer is, "Because that'd be presumptuous!" Funny, huh? We Malaysians don't really think about whether we're polyglots or not - I would say a large percentage of us are. We'd think that being monolingual in Malaysia is odd... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5465 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 38 13 July 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
I used to be a pretty serious runner. One season my coach told me that I was in the best condition of my life, since I was averaging under 4:25 for the mile. Yet I heard him shout at one of my team mates for being unfit even though that team mate had run the mile in 4:01 that very day. The reason? The coach was using different points of reference for the two of us. No matter how good you are, you can always be criticised for not being good enough. It comes down to what you compare yourself to. You are most likely correct that you are still a beginner, in comparison to the lofty levels that others have reached. However, compared to those who know nothing, or to yourself when you knew nothing, you are presumably quite an expert. Returning to the sports analogy, I knew several decathletes who were fine all round sportsmen, yet were clearly never going to win the gold medal in any individual event. That, however, was never their expectation. They are still decathletes all the same. 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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