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Your first impression of a typical polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Bill_Sage667 Groupie United States Joined 5015 days ago 62 posts - 71 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 8 08 September 2010 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Most of the threads about polyglots were focused on what OTHER people think about them. But how about YOU? What was your first impression (which in most cases is not necessarily all true) of polyglots and also of language-learning?
My first impression was that they were highly educated, bourgeois, extremely yet eccentrically gifted (my first impression of Luca when I saw his video), wouldn't be surprised if they were good at maths or physics as well (since I perceived languages to be like speed physics, wherein you have to constantly have the correct grammar, pronounciation, and at the same time correct usage of every word when one's speaking, so there's no time for pausing), rare creatures, ambitious, yet snobs, and very critical if you made the slightest mistake in whatever you're language you're using, an Ivy League person would be less snobbier. Most of my first impressions were based on assumptions, and the moment I registered and stepped into this site, I assumed the people here to be harboring at least some of the characteristics listed down. I'm quite surprised at how fast my perception of polyglots and language learning have changed only after several weeks of being acqainted with language-learning forums, techniques, videos, etc. Edited by Bill_Sage667 on 08 September 2010 at 11:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5145 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 8 08 September 2010 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't really remember how I felt about polyglots before I joined this forum. I remember reading about some famous polyglots on Wikipedia a couple of years ago and I was in complete awe of these people but I didn't make any assumptions about their personalities. I only assumed they must be extremely quick learners or hard workers to be able to learn so many languages in one lifetime. (I read about one guy who claimed to speak 68 languages which completely blew my mind at the time. Now I'm inclined to think he was probably exaggerating.) I think becoming more familiar with learning strategies and realising it's not so simple to say you "speak" a language has diminished the almost magical quality these people had in my mind a little and at the same time it has made me respect them even more than I did before.
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| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5487 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 3 of 8 08 September 2010 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Your first impression is similar to the one I had. My first experience was with Steve
Kaufmann, who, although accomplished, isn't fluent in as many languages as some other polyglots. I know it seems silly now, but I remember noticing and attributing all sorts of positive traits to him (ex. he's got a pretty house, he dresses well, he has a nice accent, his political views are insightful, etc.). That's not to say that each of those things is or is not true, but I probably wouldn't have picked up, or thought of, those traits if it wasn't for my notion of him being some sort of cosmopolitan polyglot. Edited by Paskwc on 08 September 2010 at 11:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5395 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 4 of 8 20 September 2010 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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My first impression was that it wasn't possible. My first polyglot was a Swiss doctor who
I met while studying Spanish. She spoke English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. I was in awe. So my impression was that it was something posh. Now I'm a semi polyglot myself so my impression of them has changed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5844 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 5 of 8 21 September 2010 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||
They tend to be a bit nerdy, or the exact opposite - very extroverted. In any case I don't share your "Ivy league" impression ;-). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6513 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 6 of 8 21 September 2010 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't remember my first concept about polyglots, but I do remember my first thoughts about scientists - and that's a whole little tale in itself.
I was around 7 or 8 years old and had got a flu. My mother brought me a lexicon from the local library to keep me entertained, and there was a page with extinct animals. I was sceptical about the time sequence in that picture, and as soon as I could get down to the library myself I made a more thorough investigation which proved that said animals certainly didn't all live at the same time. From that point on I have believed that (most) scientists are smart, but you can't trust everything they say - or rather: which they are quoted for by science writers. At the same time the Danish edition of Donald Duck ('Anders And') introduced a scientist figure called "Laptus von Land" - so my first impression of an omniscient scientist was that of a distracted semibald white duck in a worn and too big frock. Somehow the murky waters of unreliable reporting of facts and this figure in combination gave me the impression that I could do just as well as them - so I started out learning paleontology and zoological nomenclature, and my intention was to continue through all the sciences one by one. I really didn't think much about polyglotism before I was around 10-12 years old. Until then English was just something Fred Flintstone spoke, and German was something my aunt and uncle had on their television set. But then we got English and later German in school, and I discovered Latin, Italian and Spanish. From that time on I had the distinct idea that you could learn languages in the same way you studied paleontology - by learning all the names and the animals they stood for by heart. And I still have that impression. I noticed that the same couple (2 x Kirchheiner) had written both my Italian and my Spanish text book, and I vaguely remember being impressed by that. But I didn't think about which kind of persons they where. People who knew several languages were just ordinary people who had spent time learning them, and they didn't have to have any special reason for doing it. And I still have that impression. Edited by Iversen on 21 September 2010 at 11:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5657 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 8 21 September 2010 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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The fist time in life I was confronted with a polyglot, I was rather confused with this. He was my teacher of Ancient Greek and I started learning this language at age 16 in school. I noticed that, when he was explaining Greek grammar or vocabulary, he made comparisons with lot of different languages, which were not taught at school. As a pupil I did not understand why he presented this language knowledge to us pupils who had no relationship with such languages. So it more disturbed me than that it woke my curiosity to know more about other languages.
AS internet did not exist in the 70s, 80s and I had never contact with polyglots nor did I get the idea to become one myself. Only when I was already over 30 years old studying Romance Languages in the 90s I noticed that my own interest in foreign languages was more general than those of my fellow students, who were specialized on one or two languages at the same time and nothing more than that. So their attitude was different from mine, but at that time I didn't have a word for myself like "aspiring polyglot" or "polyglot". Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 21 September 2010 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6753 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 8 21 September 2010 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even though I grew up monolingual, my parents were both bilingual, so simply knowing another language has never been associated with a particular personality in my mind. Of course, that is not how polyglots are defined anyway.
I don't remember being all that conscious of true polyglots until I read Barry Farber's book, and he came across as a fairly normal human being, so for a while I thought that polyglots are regular people who happen to like languages and have some degree of talent for them. Kato Lomb's and Spivak's books made me realize that normality was a somewhat relative term when it came to polyglots, and that being a true polyglot was a lifestyle choice. This forum has expanded on that image by making me aware of the phenomenon of ego-driven polyglottery, which I find less and less pleasant as time goes by, although this is mitigated by the fact that such cases do not appear to be a large fraction of the total. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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