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Do you consider yourself a polyglot?

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
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hribecek
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5108 days ago

1243 posts - 1458 votes 
Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish
Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian

 
 Message 65 of 89
24 March 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
C2 English means you know words like snarky or internecine.

So I'm not C2 level in my own native language then, because I didn't know 'internecine'.
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Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
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946 posts - 1110 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German
Studies: Sign Language

 
 Message 66 of 89
24 March 2013 at 5:56pm | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
C2 English means you know words like snarky or internecine.


I've spoken English for 27 years and don't know what "internecine" means. I just asked my sister in grad school and my mom who's a teacher; my sister was ignorant of both words, my mom just knew what "snarky" meant.

That said, I think word lists are a good tool, even if they are compiled by someone else. They probably shouldn't be your vocabulary bible, but at least word listed organized thematically can be great STEPPING STONES to get you pointed in a good direction to real world language usage.
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Zundung
Newbie
Belize
Joined 4027 days ago

10 posts - 28 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 67 of 89
24 March 2013 at 6:18pm | IP Logged 
I don't know that word either. Note that not all native English speakers have university degrees. C2 is simply a very high level in the target language. It doesn't equal a walking encyclopedia Britannica. :D

And Sterogyl made a great point. A B2 speaker can learn words like razzmatazz and a C2 speaker may never hear of it.
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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4410 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 68 of 89
24 March 2013 at 8:02pm | IP Logged 
Heh. The tricky question... The basic definition of polyglot differs so much depending on who you ask.

My answer is:
1. Do you consider yourself a polyglot?

No. Maybe I qualify, but I don't care.

2. Are you planning to become one?

No.

Quote:
To meet the requirements of the 'basic fluency' level on this forum, I just about make the grade with Mandarin and no others yet.


What are those?
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Spolszczyc
Newbie
Canada
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Turkish, Polish, Serbo-Croatian

 
 Message 69 of 89
25 March 2013 at 12:38am | IP Logged 
I don't consider myself a polyglot right now, but if everything goes well, in the future, maybe I will consider myself one.
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Mithrandir
Triglot
Newbie
United States
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3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, Korean, Russian

 
 Message 70 of 89
18 June 2013 at 6:43pm | IP Logged 
I wonder if at this point in time it would be at all helpful to have more specific
terms for the different types of linguistic abilities out there? It's been brought up
more than once that in it's most simple definition a polyglot is just a person who is
capable in more than one language.

However there seems to be a number of people (myself included) who feel you can only be
a true polyglot if you're fluent in more than about 5 languages... there seems to be a
lot of needless semantic arguments that appear to me to be rectifiable by maybe coming
up with some new words.

I feel like this is probably the right forum for that haha.

Oh and no, I don't consider myself a polyglot yet. Always wanted to be one but only
learned about the actual term and historical occurrences of polyglots till recently.
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Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
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544 posts - 1141 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 71 of 89
30 July 2013 at 8:15pm | IP Logged 
To me "polyglot" is just another arbitrary box to cram people in. I don't know if I am a polyglot or will be and I most certainly do not care. The semantics surrounding the words "polyglot", "fluency" and such are something I have not the faintest interest in partaking, so I detain from using those words. I have a list of languages I want to learn and levels I want to achieve, so if that constitutes with wanting to become a polyglot then so be it.

To the people who think C2 means having thesauri for lunch and knowing every word that pops up once or less in ten million instances then to you I say that that idea is plain ridiculous and only fit for defenestration. But I knew "snarky" and I'm not native, woop, I'm probably like B1 then eh?

Oh you had to look that up? Pity, you must not be C2 in English then.


Somewhat of a serious post scriptum. If we really wanted the term "polyglot" to have any sort of value it should be based on merit rather than just the amount of languages an individual speaks. Something like
A person who can claim proficient command of
1. a total of three languages all of which are from different language families
2. a total of four languages which are from two different language families, yet not from the same subdivisions (slavic, romance, Germanic...)
3. a total of five languages from the same family, yet not all of them from the same subgroup,
is by definition a "polyglot".

Of course, this is arbitrary and useless too but maybe a little less useless than what is currently in effect. Who knows.
1 person has voted this message useful



I'm With Stupid
Senior Member
Vietnam
Joined 3932 days ago

165 posts - 349 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Vietnamese

 
 Message 72 of 89
30 July 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged 
Henkkles wrote:
To the people who think C2 means having thesauri for lunch and knowing every word that pops up once or less in ten million instances then to you I say that that idea is plain ridiculous and only fit for defenestration. But I knew "snarky" and I'm not native, woop, I'm probably like B1 then eh?


I'd say that knowledge of collocations and idioms would be a far better indicator of someone's level than knowledge of obscure vocabulary.


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