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What’s the perfect number of languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| lengua Senior Member United States polyglottery.wordpre Joined 6487 days ago 549 posts - 595 votes  Studies: French, Italian, Spanish, German | Message 25 of 37 20 October 2006 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
Agree. There's a balance between depth and breadth - the trick is to find it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| *Aquarius* Triglot Newbie Poland Joined 6405 days ago 39 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, French | Message 26 of 37 17 November 2006 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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This discussion was somehow an incentive for me to think this "perfect-number-of languages" matter over :)
Well, personally I find language learning the most interesting, gripping my attention and challenging hobby and pursuit at general for me. In my view, the perfect number of languages doesn't exist. This number is dependent on many factors, our purpose of learning, as aforementioned. Many people learn language for work - I feel sorry for them. They're saddled with a terrible burden, burden of learning something what they aren't interested in. Some people learn because they feel they "should", since a basic knowledge of one language is almost obligatory and the language requirements will be still increasing. But if you learn a language, because you want, it's magnificent, because it's enjoyable (and profitable as well). And language passionates will learn as many language as they are capable to learn, till their enthusiasm doesn't disappear. Personally, I think about speaking fluently at least 5 languages. I am looking forward to learning these less popular languages, but I've made a decision that I'll learn them after mastering the most popular. Maybe these are just my dreams, which will never come true. But I perceive myself as determined :) Learning languages isn't easy, on the contrary, it turns out to be really toilsome and we're supposed to put a great deal of effort into it. But it's worth it, I'll wager all what I have, that it's worth it:) Especially if one is as passionate about languages as we are ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Roger Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6395 days ago 159 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Indonesian | Message 27 of 37 17 November 2006 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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[QUOTE=Iversen]
I would be happy with 12-15 languages at at least the basic fluency level (yes, I'm one of those who accept this term). At that level you can say and read and understand most things, even though you may have to check a word or two once in a while, and if I really needed a certain language it would automatically creep up into the glorious world of near native fluency. However it would be a waste of time to bring all 12-15 languages up there, - time that could be spent on dabbling in language nr. 16,17... How many words would you say is at basic fluency, 3000? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6506 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 28 of 37 17 November 2006 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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The subject has been discussed in several threads, including this one, where Malcolm proposes something like 5000 active words for basic fluency, plus a plethora of other criteria. This may seem too harsh for some forum members (and way too easy for others), but in the main I tend to agree with his estimates. Note that this is the number of words that a person could muster under the best possible circumstances, - the number of words actually used in practice would be lower.
It is fairly easy to count a person's passive vocabulary - though the result will depend on the dictionary used for the counting - but almost impossible to estimate the same person's active vocabulary. The only thing that is certain is that it is much lower than the passive vocabulary (I suppose that you are hinting at the active vocabulary when you say 3.000 words). I can tell you that my latest (passive) word counts in Romanian amounted to approximately 15.000 words in a large monolingual dictionary (60-70.000 words), but only 8000 in a small pocket dictionary with maybe 10-11.000 words in the Romanian-German section. If passive vocabulary was the only consideration I would think that these numbers should suffice for basic fluency. However there are other things to consider. The active part of the vocabulary is almost impossible to estimate, partly because it fluctuates with the situation of the speaker. If the person is sleepy and hasn't used the language in question for a while the readiness to remember words is clearly impaired, but a good nights sleep and a film or book could easily double the number of useable words. So the notion of active vocabulary is inherently elastic. My personal, VERY unreliable guess would be that in a mid-level language like Romanian at most between a third and half of my passive vocabulary is potentially active. In languages like Greek where I still struggle to learn enough new words the percentage would be lower, in English or French it would be higher, and in my native Danish I would probably be able recall almost all the words I know. I would be very interested in hearing the corresponding estimates from other board members in this area, because it is difficult to find any reliable numbers in books and on the net. Edited by Iversen on 17 November 2006 at 6:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| VityaCo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6884 days ago 79 posts - 86 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 29 of 37 24 November 2006 at 3:47am | IP Logged | ||
I agree 100%. All depends what you want to learn those languages for. If for a record then you need to learn as more as possible. But if you want to see the world differently, like, may be Japanese see it you need much deeper in the understanding of the basic structure of the language. The world has its political and language maps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World-map-2004-cia-factbo ok-large-2m.jpg http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mapsofworl d.com/images/ world-languages-map.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.mapsofworld.com / world-language-map.htm&h=612&w=965&sz=79&hl=en&start=11&tbni d=qKztfeTxNwWVJM: &tbnh=94&tbnw=148&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2B%2522language%2Bmap% 2522%26hl%3Den%26lr% 3D%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26as_qdr%3Dall You should try to make the second link as one line in your browser. Looking at these maps you will find that if you would know very well: 1. English, 2. Spanish, 3. French, 4. Arabic, 5. Portuguese, 6. Pashto, 7. Chinese, 8. Russian. You could cover a lot of the world, also for more exotic you could add a Scandinavian, and African, and Pacific Asian one or two. Edited by VityaCo on 24 November 2006 at 3:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PeDePano Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6285 days ago 23 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Turkish, Russian, Italian | Message 30 of 37 07 March 2007 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I pretty much choose my languages that im set on learning based on usefulness in the world and exactly where i may end up doing business or places im most likely to visit.
1. English (native language) 2. Spanish (most of south america, spain, central america) 3. Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal) 4. Russian (Russia of course) 5. Another romance language (maybe french) 6. German 7. Another romance language (italian or romanian) 8. Arabic (standard and a spoken dialect) 9. Turkish I figured up this plan (im about to start on Russian) because Im kind of getting tired of romance languages. Ive been studying Spanish for almost 5 years and Portuguese for 1 year (no more needed) and Im ready to do another language before learning another. I will learn French after that which opens up France and lots of countries in Africa. I will learn German after that. I will probably come back to romance languages again and learn one more but that step is a huge if because italian and romanian are only spoken in those countries and a few communities outside of them. Next would come Arabic and Turkish and by the time I get to these 2 very difficult languages I will be used to learning new languages that I should be able to tackle them both in about 5 years. I dont really plan on learning any other languages than these (no interest in asian languages) so I have plenty of time to learn them. Im only 18 right now and ive got 3 of them down so I think I can easily get them all down by the time im 40 (that is native fluency speaking and writing) My biggest humps will come at Russian, German, Arabic, and Turkish since they arent Romance languages and they arent similar to each other. Wish me luck 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6483 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes | Message 31 of 37 08 March 2007 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Just make a wish here: the perfect number is 1, that God did not give rise to so many languages. And all the peoples in the world can talk freely in the only one language available. It remains a dream forever though.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6387 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 32 of 37 08 March 2007 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
that would be very sad my friend. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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