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Arguelles’ Six Most Important Languages | ||
Tags: Hit List | Alexander Arguelles | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6330 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 9 of 44 25 January 2011 at 2:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Him suggesting that to people like me is like me suggesting this to people like him: e. a language spoken by a women you like to improve your social life 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4910 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 10 of 44 25 January 2011 at 2:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I know my grandparents or great-grandparents couldn't either. They were immigrants that, at BEST, had a high school education. I know that some went on to college here in the US, but none knew enough of a classic language to be able to read a "scholarly tome" in Latin or Greek or French. A couple were German, so that was their native language. He doesn't seem to be referring to a native language though, does he? R. == Edited by hrhenry on 25 January 2011 at 2:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6936 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 44 25 January 2011 at 2:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is the problem when dealing with anyone who is a specialist of any academic endeavour. Whether they like it or not, specialists often lose sight of the big picture and develop a sort of intellectual myopia basically putting their field of interest on a tall pedestal.
Prof. Arguelles is just going par for the course with his speciality, but it's not fair to single him out as he does have a lot of company. I remember some of my professors who liked to pat themselves on the back by showing how "universal" their respective fields of academic endeavour or interests were. The implication was that those who don't study the same things are somehow missing out but would do themselves a favour by coming around into sharing those academic interests. The trick is to realize that fields of human endeavour have their place among mankind. It's arrogant to lose sight of that and develop this form of intellectual myopia. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5125 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 12 of 44 25 January 2011 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It is late and I am sleepy so I shouldn't be writing anything, but couldn't resist simply stating that of course the Professor is correct. It is only that the standard for erudition today is much lower than the one that used to exist.
Formerly it was indeed not infrequent that books in history, philosophy or sociology -to reference fields I am familiar with- featured quotations -not just isolated terms or words- in foreign languages that the reader was expected to understand without a translation, particularly from English, French, German, Latin and Greek. This wasn't a product of snobbery either, but plainly suitable to the curious and ambitious minds which made up its audience, thoroughly engaged in study and discovery, and taking part of an international community of kindred spirits bejeweled with flourishing centers generously spread across Western Europe that fostered them. This, plus the time and leisure allowed to a privileged class, none of which exist anymore either. Even in faraway nations like India it was not unheard of that educated men could read at least their native vernacular, Persian, Sanskrit, perhaps Arabic or Pali, plus English, French, German or Russian. You encounter mention of such individuals throughout Indian writing of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nowadays we are told in the preface of a standard selection of Buddhist texts that unlike in former times, it is increasingly rare, verging on extinction, to encounter a scholar who can muster a combination of Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Classical Chinese and Japanese, not even the editor of the work in mention himself. A distinction needs to be drawn thus between a scholar and simply a professional. The latter, of which our civilization abounds, is little more than a glorified peon, someone qualified to do a job well and nothing more; a scholar was the product of a bygone era that the age of the internet struggles to reproduce. It is of a scholar whom we talk about when we reference "educated men", not an engineer or an accountant or a computer programmer or a thieving banker, expert on his or her field but ignorant of the world of the mind, no matter what collection of degrees and abbreviations hang on his wall and follow his or her name. 24 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6729 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 13 of 44 25 January 2011 at 4:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Excellent thread!
I consider myself educated, and, like Professor Arguelles, an academic and a philologist at heart. However, after reading some of the Professor's posts as well as Juan's post above, I'm forced to conclude that I'm not a "scholar" in their sense of the word. I'm fascinated by ancient civilizations, but only insofar as they help me understand the modern world; ultimately, my highest goal in studying foreign languages is to know as much about different cultures as possible, to discover the universalities of humankind and the peculiarities that arise as byproducts of belonging to a certain group. In order to satisfy my specific academic interests, I'd rather learn Arabic, Zulu, Navajo, Javanese, and literary Chinese than German, French, Italian, Latin, and Ancient Greek. I think the notion of exploring the roots and development of one's own culture and its relationship to the world is a praiseworthy one, but I question the claim that this is an ideal toward which every educated person should strive. Should the 18th-19th centuries be held up as a golden age of academia from which our society has fallen? Or is this specific portrait of the ideal scholar no longer relevant to today's world? I think that both are the case, in some ways. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6936 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 44 25 January 2011 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Excellent point, Lucky Charms. Why should we unduly glorify or elevate norms from the 18th or 19th centuries? If I remember correctly, I can think of some controversial (some would say negative) aspects of the human experience which had their origin from that period (e.g. nationalism, the "White man's burden", robber-baron capitalism, communism etc.)
What I find is that the Professor seems to also be doing what we all do from time to time That is look at the past, thinking "Oh, but things were so much better then!". You simply don't meet many people these days who study languages to fluency for the hell of it or even for intellectual purposes. In a certain way we can attribute this to the rise of English, but even starting in the Renaissance, the "dead languages" started to become "really dead" through the elevation of vernaculars thus calling into question whether those "dead languages" were really the only "proper" vehicles to describe or express hallowed wisdom or new ideas. We can see this in comparing how many languages Einstein and Newton spoke or knew. As far as I can tell, Einstein was fluent in English and German, but had trouble with English spelling, and possibly had some passive ability in Greek and/or Latin (this is only my guess). Newton as far as I could figure was fluent in Early Modern English and very likely had a strong command of Latin (he did write his findings in Latin). He probably also knew some Ancient Greek and Ancient Hebrew since he was supposedly a biblical scholar. Right away this should illustrate how the world has changed. The number of languages used by educated folk has shrunk. Any scholar in Newton's day or earlier, had to learn at least 2 other languages to go with the native tongue. This wasn't to show off how educated one was compared to the peons, but to be able to communicate or exchange ideas with like-minded scholars from other lands. By Einstein's day things had changed, and Einstein's apparent lack of fluency in anything other than English and German didn't bar him from acheiving scientific greatness, seeing that public education created a growing pool of people with the right amount of knowledge to begin understanding his theories, not to mention being literate in standard English or standard German. Now, it's changed a bit more, and it's quite common for educated people in the English-speaking world to get by on just English (with translations into English as required). Noam Chomsky is an example of this since with the exception of not being a polyglot in the mold of those scholars of yore who were fluent in several dead languages, he's still considered a scholar (in addition to being a rabble-rouser, but I digress...) One thing is that there can sometimes be a bit of snobbery between what Juan calls "scholars" and "professionals" both of whom are often educated. I remember in my undergraduate days how some of my classmates studying humanities or even social sciences took pot shots at the engineers calling them plumbers or bemoaned how those studying mathematics had it easy, since students of the humanities had to write essays which were open-ended and while those dealing with a problem in mathematics could count on things leading to one answer. It goes back to my point where it's arrogant to ascribe undue importance to one's own field of study or academic interest. Everything has its place and the trick (which is often lost on many people) is not to lose sight of the big picture. Edited by Chung on 25 January 2011 at 4:31am 19 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 5898 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 15 of 44 25 January 2011 at 5:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There is no "should" in this business of educating oneself.
Then there is the question: how many languages did Aeschylus, Plato, Confucius, Mencius, Vergil, Horace etc. themselves know? Are they uneducated men? I'm pretty sure that none of them spoke even three. Shakespeare at best had a smattering of several languages. There is much more to life, and being educated, than obsessively absorbing languages. The following are words from a fellow poster here that I think are worth repeating: "And I think somebody who studies too many languages will eventually feel like a stage monkey. Or worse, others will see him like that, mixed with admiration of course, and blinded in his world he will feel very proud." http://how- to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7171&PN= 12&TPN=7 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6096 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 16 of 44 25 January 2011 at 5:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is a very presumptuous statement. Have you ever actually read any of his posts? It's worth bearing in mind that he has lived on a good four continents, traveled extensively and learned to converse in a staggering number of languages with people as culturally diverse as Koreans, Arabs and Germans. He could only have achieved what he has, precisely by spending time with people in the rest of "the real world"! I also think your overall argument is something of an ad hominem (in the strictly informally logical sense). That's to say, even presuming this "hyper-language-centricity" you speak of, in itself this doesn't say anything about the validity of the argument in question. It would be rather like denying the truth of the claims of a chain smoker when he/she says to another smoker "Smoking is bad for you, you should stop." My point, simply, is that his own occupation with languages, while perhaps very well having influenced his viewpoint, doesn't thereby render it incorrect. I also think there is a disanalogy between the idea of knowing six languages, and knowing six branches of engineering: languages are what unite and divide people, they are fundamental products of humanity. We live in a world heavily populated with other people; being able to understand and communicate with people from both similar and very different cultural traditions and backgrounds is not only a wonderful, interesting and enriching thing to be able to do, it's also a necessity. Such skills to me are what I would describe as "basic", engineering skills "specialist". As it stands, I agree with Juan in drawing a distinction between scholars and professionals. Professor Arguelles is the only person I have ever met or known of who genuinely upholds the ideal of a well-rounded education. This includes not just languages - although certainly languages - but also a knowledge of the hard sciences and mathematics. In sum, a balance between words and numbers. The professor has stated several times, both on this forum and on his site that his career and studies have been "lopsided in favour of the humanities" (to quote him exactly) but he has continually endorsed over the years the Rennaissance Ideal that did proliferate in the past. Furthermore (I'm starting to feel like his spokesperson here), it might be worth re-reading the first paragraph of that piece I quoted, in particular:
In any case, to concretize this all a bit: it's certainly true most people will never achieve this goal, and it may well be the case that the professor's love of languages has influenced his outlook on education. But so what? Does this mean we should discourage that tiny percentage of people who do really want to know as much about the world as possible and who are genuinely willing to work for it, to strive for it? Surely not. And call me biased (which perhaps I am, being an enthusiastic member of a language forum), but I think in terms of an ideal, well-rounded, balanced, healthy, enriching and continually rewarding education, a knowledge of six languages should be fundamental. How could one claim to have such an education without being able to participate and communicate with those cultural and historical traditions of which one is inextricably a part? 13 persons have voted this message useful |
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