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Claims of 50+ languages | ||
Tags: Hyperglot | Number of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Torbyrne Super Polyglot Senior Member Macedonia SpeakingFluently.com Joined 5891 days ago 126 posts - 721 votes  Speaks: French, English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Catalan, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian Studies: Sign Language, Toki Pona, Albanian, Polish, Bulgarian, TurkishA1, Esperanto, Romanian, Danish, Mandarin, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Latvian, Estonian | Message 1 of 57 28 May 2011 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was sent yet another link of someone else claiming to speak over 50 languages and I can't help but wonder when I see/hear such claims.
Since finding the language community on the Internet, I am intrigued by the fascination with a total figure of languages someone claims to speak. My experience tells me never to say anything too crazy as it comes back to bite you on the behind. I therefore try to play down things as much as I can to avoid issues. This is not the case for some people. Perhaps it is a cultural thing...I don't know...perhaps there are other motivations too, I am simply not sure. But something drives people to make claims publicly of ability in a large number of languages (at one point in time...I am not talking a lifetime's worth of study where a number of languages have faded into the background noise - these people do tend to preface their abilities anyway). Recently I was asked in an interview for the Nth time, "so...how many languages do you speak?". My answer, as ever, was "Tough question, it depends on whom you ask. I have studied or had contact with over 30 so far probably, but I would never say I speak that many. I usually let the individual listener judge for him/herself". Studying and speaking are simply not the same thing. Then there is the problem also of keeping up multiple languages. I get to this point in my thinking and then I try to imagine someone really able to speak over 30 or 40, let alone 50 languages (I must emphasise that when people into languages say "speak a language", I usually expect them to have able to have a fairly dynamic conversation at least). There has been the obvious story of Ziad Fazah (which has been discussed to death and I am not too keen on dragging up again) and then discussion of how fluent people really are in any language too. Recently I have read about other people making public claims of large numbers of languages. Even our own forum member, Moses McCormick, writes on the front of his website, "I speak between 45 and 50 languages". Personally I see little value in claiming I speak X number of languages, so I don't make such claims. My competition is with myself and no one else. But what do you think motivates people to make such lofty claims? Fame? Fortune? Both? Or something else? 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6715 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 57 28 May 2011 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have recently been contacted again by a person (I keep blocking him and he keeps making a new profile) claiming to speak 68 languages (17 fluently) at the ripe old age of 19. When I try to reason with him or point out his very basic mistakes, he just gets angry and starts calling me a liar or accusing me of trying to deter him from his "passion of languages". I told him that I do not care how many languages he speaks, knows or studies; I am not trying to dissuade him from doing what he loves, I just don't care to hear about it or see his face and bragging comments on every single language site/channel/forum I go to. It seems as though all he wants is praise and attention.
For me, I like studying languages and I really do not care if someone else knows it or not. To others, it seems as though the primary "reward" is not learning the language itself, but the recognition from others at having done so. In other words, it's like, if no one else knows what a "genius" they are, what is the point. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5756 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 3 of 57 28 May 2011 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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It all comes back to how you define "speaking a language". If someone defines it as being able to exchange pleasantries, then there is nothing strange about them claiming to speak 50 languages or whatever. They probably just think they are stating a simple fact. What I don't like about these claims is that they more or less invite people to misunderstand their language abilities. They usually aren't being deceitful, but the claims are nevertheless the source of considerable misunderstanding. Edited by lichtrausch on 28 May 2011 at 11:43pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4926 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 4 of 57 29 May 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
The need for attention. I've not seen a single case that it's been brought up where the person wasn't seeking attention. Are they getting any fame from it? Most likely they'll get infamy. Are they getting any fortune from it? Never heard of anyone getting rich from being a polyglot, hyper or other. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5465 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 57 29 May 2011 at 12:05am | IP Logged | ||
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One of my friends is an avid musician. He plays dozens of different musical
instruments, yet never feels the need to boast about it. Probably nobody would even care. They may even think him weird. I am sure nobody looked down on Andres Segovia for "only" playing the guitar. The number of instruments you play doesn't seem to be a big deal in the music world. Likewise, during my teenage years, I had some modest ability in athletics, and had the fortune to train for a while with the world record holder at the 800 and 1500 meters. People who took part in the decathlon never boasted of being able to do more sports than him. There were never videos of people claiming "I can do 50 sports, and mastered each of them in a week". I really cannot understand why this need for a high numeric count seems so prevalent in language learning. In fact, as a reaction to it, I now find myself very reluctant to talk about languages other than Czech and English - since I don't want to raise my head and been seen as trying to score any points by mentioning any ability (no matter how limited) in any other languages. Despite this, I still receive comments on my own videos asking "How many languages do you speak?". The question makes me cringe every time. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7017 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 6 of 57 29 May 2011 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
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IMHO it is just about trophy numbers. Just like how many friends someone can have on Facebook, how many hotdogs were eaten in a short period of time, how many women a man has been with. Quantity over quality. If it were genuine, then I personally would like to learn the techniques. Unfortunately, there are too many attention seekers out there. I think members in the forum will know who they are, as the attention seekers toot their own horn to the point of annoyance. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6499 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 8 of 57 29 May 2011 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||
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There are certainly people who have dealt with 50 or even 100 languages, but speaking them is quite another thing. I have made videos in something like 20 languages and written something in my log thread in even more than that, but of course I don't speak twenty languages - maybe a dozen on a good day, depending on the level you ask for.
So I'm willing to believe that people like Freire, Pei, Hale and the great Mezzofanti could speak two or three times as many languages as me, but not that they learnt them to absolute fluency before they reached the ripe age of 20. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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