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Only gifted polyglots can learn 10+langs? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| anothername Triglot Groupie Brazil Joined 4849 days ago 96 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English | Message 17 of 53 27 February 2011 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Relax, I have nothing against you. But I do believe that you should adopt a much less aggressive approach in this thread. You did an accusative reply that someone who happens to be a respected member on this forum is not a polyglot, and he answered you personally. And that was not even the main topic. Think about it. About me: if I were you, I would not trust what my language profile says. I don't dare to say I speak a new language before I trully master it. My native language is portuguese, and we are communicating in English, just as I did when I was in US. But you prefer, we can communicate also in Spanish, just as I did when I was in Argentina and Spain. Or Italian. I study some other languages besides those, but, as I said, I don't dare to state that I speak a new language before I trully master it. And off course, I don't consider myself an expert on languages or a polyglot, PolyglHot. Far from that. So, let's please turn that page definitely and remain on topic. On topic: I do feel that is perfectly possible to speak more than 10 languages IF they are close enough. So, the question is: which are the 10 languages? Polyglots like Torbyrne and Luca get my attention because they choosed mostly to learn languages not so distant, and that sounds like a really wise choice. I feel a normal person, with average language skills, could learn, let's say, portuguese/spanish/italian/catalan/romanian/french/english/d utch/danish/swedish/greek without sweating too much, because the basic structures really doesn't differ that much, but learning, let's say, German/russian/turkish/amharic/yoruba/marathi/tamil/arabic/t hai/cantonese/korean would certainly be a huge deed. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5545 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 18 of 53 27 February 2011 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hi Torbyrne, could you recommend any Albanian resources for a complete beginner? How have you learnt the language? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 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 19 of 53 27 February 2011 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you want to see an example of truly polyglot conversation then try the video where Luca is interviewed by Torbyrne. I have absolutely no doubt about the capabilities of those two. And I can imagine that the Skype discussions which Fasulye has referred to run somewhat along the same lines.
I do think that giftedness is relevant for language learning, but there are ways to compensate if you aren't an alround supergenius. For instance my memory is somewhat erratic, but I have compensated by making up techniques for systematic memorization. I don't meet many foreigners at home, but compensate for this by travelling and - in between - by studying in ways that emphasize written materials. And as suggested by Anothername I have chosen primarily to study languages that are related, in my case Indoeuropean languages. There are polyglots like Moses McCormick who have chosen to study a wide range of language families, but they probably have a different blend of capabilities which makes that natural for them. For me building each new language on top of the previous ones is the way to go. At least it was like that until I decided to learn Bahasa Indonesia (and later Malaysian), but even here I constantly think about parallels and differences between that language and those that I already know. Professor Arguelles once wrote something about learning language families rather than single languages, and that is close to the way I study my languages - not as isolated entities, but as something that is interconnected in a lot of ways. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4854 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 20 of 53 28 February 2011 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So if I want to become a true "polyglot" I am required to brag a lot and make videos?
I was just asking what made you the expert because you seem to have been a member for only a month. I've been on this forum for several years, but I've had two accounts because I was denied access one time so I had to change my name. Yes in that video Luca speaks well and switches between languages, but the other guy is simply asking questions. How do we know it's not rehearsed? And why did they use English and Italian, aren't those their native languages? So they spoke, English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian? So, all Romance and Germanic languages, and a tiny bit of a Slavic one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5799 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 21 of 53 28 February 2011 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There's a competing theory that says that similarities to a known language is useful in the early stages of learning, but becomes a source of interference that prevents full mastery later on. One of the complications that may prove hard to master is the rules of past participal agreement in perfect aspect in the Romance languages. I hope this is right, because this is what I've been told in the past. It may be wrong, so consider it indicative, not definitive... Spanish: one auxiliary (have), no agreement Catalan: one auxiliary (have), agreement with weak pronoun direct objects Italian: two auxiliaries (have, be), agreement with subject in "be", agreement with weak pronoun direct objects in "have" French: two auxiliaries (have, be), agreement with subject in "be" but not "have", indirect reflexive object breaks "be" agreement in absence of direct object (participle becomes masculine singlar), and agreement with weak pronoun direct object or relative pronoun before verb overrides all of the above. The series of minor variations is thought to be hard to resolve, resulting in imperfect performance as the form from one language bleeds into another. It's a theory, and I don't know or even care if it's true or not. I have no personal opinion on the matter and I don't chose my languages based on it. That said, I do think there's sufficient doubt to say that we can't immediately judge polyglots based on the similarity of their spoken languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| anothername Triglot Groupie Brazil Joined 4849 days ago 96 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English | Message 22 of 53 28 February 2011 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Please take it lightly, but I will paraphrase you: "so I need to be a member of this forum for several years to be considered an expert?" :) I'm not an expert but let's face it, with all respect for you and other older members: language learning was not invented here (or anywhere else). But even if you have a good point about the possibility of all those videos being rehearsed, aren't you being too suspicious? I think it's a bit improbable that we are having a vast world conspiracy of actors pretending to be polyglots and supporting themselves, just for fun. I'm also not impressed with the vast majority of the so-called Youtube polyglots. Not even with some very hyped ones. But Luca and Torbyrne are perhaps the only convincing ones to my taste, along with that vietnamese girl, Wendy Vo. That's exactly because they are not claiming to speak dozens of super-exotic languages, nor pretending to teach them to the world, creating their own "revolutionary" methods/theories or claiming to be language experts (I bet you know what I'm talking about). These two/three seem to have just learned a bunch of languages and wanted to share it. Bragging or not, I can't deny it's very good to see their results can be accomplished.
You are correct. I have experienced it with Italian and Spanish (not with french, that gives me a different feeling). On the other side, with very exotic languages even the basic level may require a large effort. Perhaps I'm too ambitious, but I would like to achieve basic proficiency or more on some 3 or 4 difficult non-indoeuropean languages, but I really don't know what to expect, since I haven't learned any of them yet. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| RogerK Triglot Groupie Austria Joined 4863 days ago 92 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian Studies: Portuguese | Message 24 of 53 28 February 2011 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Gee, if I enforced the same guidelines on myself I would have to delete English from my languages. I still make plenty of mistakes today, both in speaking and writing and there are thousands of words I don't know the meaning of. On a serious note, I don't think switching is very difficult. Once you make a decision to converse in a particular language the brain uses words just from that particular language. If the conversation (and I've experienced this many times) changes from one language to another it may take one second, your says "okay now I must speak language 2' and away you go. It would be fun to have a conversation where you switch constantly from L1 to L2 to L3 etc. I just need to learn another 5 or 6 languages and I'll fit in nicely. It's not likely to happen though. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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