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Your personal polyglot ideal | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4988 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 113 of 125 22 February 2012 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually I confused "did" with "didn't" in my sentence. When it comes to ideal, well, I don't have such a thing. I think there are worse and better people at languages. but if we think about it, well, someone who knows at least 10 languages from different language families (not every lnguage has to be from different family, but the person should not learn only 10 languages from the very same language family. Let's say at least 3 shall be from different family than the rest. They shall know them both in speaking and writing, no shortcuts. Unless a language has not written form. The person should know: English, Mandarin, Spanish and maybe Arabic. They try to learn all the sounds, which are to be learned, at least try to pronounce them, Going back to the A1. I think you can do a lot with it! if you are lost in Thailand with A1 Thaiyou can somewhat do there. Polyglot: me boy Italy. Thai: me girl Thailand. Polyglot: me want buy this (points at a bread) Thai: (gives the bread) 100 money items Polyglot: (pays), thank you! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 114 of 125 22 February 2012 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
So that's 45 seconds down, 28755 seconds in an 8 hour day to go. Seriously, buying bread - which is probably the only or close to only food item you know at an A1 level - is fine, but hardly "a lot". I suppose you could make the case that while you're in the store, you begin to read labels and start learning more words by association, but that's immersion, not any hard A1 level. At A1 you won't be able to maintain anybody's attention long enough to have a meaningful conversation. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 22 February 2012 at 1:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| obara Newbie India subramanian-obula.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5776 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Studies: Gujarati | Message 115 of 125 22 February 2012 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Necessity decides how many languages one is to learn.
I am a Sourashtran, speaking Sourashtra language, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in a Dravidian land. Besides my mother tongue, I am to learn Tamil, the State Language and I have to learn Hindi as India's National Language. The fourth one I am to learn is no less than English, an International Language so that I can make posting in this group! Whatever we learn they should be put to use. Otherwise, we are bound to forget ! This is my cannotation of Polyglot. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4988 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 116 of 125 22 February 2012 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, it depends. I am not good at understanding the language levels. but A1 in at least 3 languagesfor me is "a chap with the lowest ever possible ability to be a polyglot, but still a polyglot". Nothing is more discouraging than people saying: "for me knowing a language, means to know 50 000 words, having perfect pronuntiation, and being handsome, if you are not like this in any language you are learning, then you suck". learning languages is supposed to be fun. So I don't have high expectations towards others. In modern world even knowing a language even at a very low level is an achievement. Therefore I am learning all the languages of the world (at least one official language of every single country in the world) at least to A1 level. I am tired of learning languages to perfection, my progress in my best langs is going slower and slower. I still want to continue learning them, they can give me a job, unlike half-baked langs at A1 or B1 level (to translate you need to know a lang at least on C1 or C2 level) but language learning is my hobby, so why not to pay a little with other langs? The feeling of obligation does not work for me "you should learn Klingon, because everybody learns Klingon", is the best way to put me off of the Klingon language. Therefore I don't like putting high expectations to myself. I prefer "if I will learn Chinese to C2 I will be super cool", than "I should learn Chinese to C2 level, because everybody says so". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 117 of 125 22 February 2012 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's not at all what I said. I said knowing how to ask for bread and nothing else is not "a lot", as you stated. It's a start, but it's not a lot. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4712 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French | Message 118 of 125 20 March 2012 at 4:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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My goal is to be fluent (C2 or above) in seven languages besides my mother tongue. In
addition to that, I have a list of 20 or so others that I would like to at least know to a varying degree, but I have not plans or desires to really study them until they are B1. Fluent Cherokee and Albanian? Maybe just conversational... Fluent in Spanish, now just have to get my French, German, Arabic, Turkish, Croatian, and Portuguese down. Piece of cake, right? This goal is not for the sake of the goal itself, nor to be able to christen myself a polyglot, it is just doable list of languages I'm interested in being able to converse in . 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6428 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 119 of 125 24 March 2012 at 4:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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One simple answer: I won't even entertain the idea of anybody being a polyglot unless that person has spent a
good 20 years learning foreign languages. Sure, that would exclude a lot of people on this bulletin board who have 5 or 10 languages in their profile, but that's life aint it? But onto the "ideal polyglot." While speaking 5 western european languages fluently is impressive in itself, there are some things that would be even cooler yet. Once in a while, I sometimes wonder where my own language learning journey could have taken me if the economy was better and I had been cut out for the ESL business. Imagine this: teaching English in Korea for a few years, then doing the same thing in Japan, China, Mongolia, and then the Middle East. In addition to the exotic places, just think of all the beautiful babes a single man could meet. If not speaking fluently in 4 of the world's hardest languages, just imagine the wow factor when people see you at the library reading the Hebrew Old Testament or the Secret History of the Mongols in the Mongolian classical script. Being able to read the classics in their original language is an impressive accomplishment in itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4513 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 120 of 125 24 March 2012 at 5:02am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm curious - why the 20 years? Is it perhaps about your ideal polyglot possessing the kind of perspective that only comes with time? Because, on the face of it, it seems pretty self-evident that one can learn 2+ tongues in addition to their native language in less than two decades. I hope this doesn't come off as anything less than respectful; I'm genuinely wondering. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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