|
 |
Locations fostering "native polyglots" | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| jirpy100 Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 6064 days ago 31 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 33 of 46 03 October 2007 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Just today I spoke a bit to my South African-Indian colleague and though I'd share these details with you. There are about 1 million people of Indian descent in this country of 45 million people. Most speak English as their first language, Afrikaans as a second, Urdu they can understand well enough but this will fade away with the newer generations, and lastly they can all read Arabic since they are Muslim. Not too bad. If only my friend spoke Urdu he could help teach me...
As for the Afrikaners: we are a bilingual people. Many of the farmers also speak a third language, either Zulu or Xhosa, depending on the native African language of the area. Meaning, they can communicate with the farm-workers in their native tongue. The English here are lazy and are usually fluent only in English, but many can understand Afrikaans well enough, although they find German a lot harder than Afrikaners do. Many Afrikaners took German as a third language, and the older generation had to learn Latin at school. These days there are 11 official languages, so no one knows what is happening in this regard. The government maintains that English is the primary language of state, but seem to neglect mother-tongue education, which leads to very poor pass rates for non-whites. In some areas lower than 10% pass rates have been reported. There are also a couple of Afrikaner communities in the rest of Southern Africa, with as many as 100 000 living in Botswana. And there is an Afrikaans school in the Middle-East, due to 10 000's of people moving there to start a new life. In our other neighbour, Namibia, a third of the population speak German; thus they are unique in many speaking Afrikaans, English and German. I hope to continue my German studies after "mastering" Esperanto, and have miraculously maintained the bit I learned during the first two years of high school. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| morphy Bilingual Triglot Groupie France modernerasmus.com Joined 6192 days ago 68 posts - 71 votes  Speaks: French*, Arabic (Written)*, English Studies: Spanish, German | Message 34 of 46 03 October 2007 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Surprised no one mentioned Luxembourg. The few people I met who originated from this small country easily spoke 4 or 5 languages, at a near native level. Quoting Wikipedia:
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6570 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 35 of 46 04 October 2007 at 8:58am | IP Logged | ||
|
It's interesting, as well, how Luxembourgish society maintains its trilingual nature. German is used by the media, French by the government, Luxembourgish in daily society, and all three as a medium of education in schools (starting with Luxembourgish and ending with French).
Afrikaans is one of those languages (along with Icelandic) that I'd like to learn in spite of its limited geographical spread. Edited by Captain Haddock on 04 October 2007 at 9:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6467 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 36 of 46 04 October 2007 at 9:50am | IP Logged | ||
|
I grew up close to the Luxembourgish border, where the local dialect is essentially the same language as Luxembourgish. So technically, people there are bilingual as well, but they're not aware of it.
Unfortunately, I've never learned to speak it myself, because my mother came from another region, so at home we always spoke Hochdeutsch. I understand it very well though (maybe I should add it to my language list ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 37 of 46 12 October 2007 at 6:52am | IP Logged | ||
|
Luxembourg newspapers are typically in French and German, often with articles in two languages on the same page. Sometimes you might also encounter something in Letzebuergsch or Luxembourgish, which to me looks like a German dialect with some French vocabulary. Quite a few people also speak English. I suspect the linguistic level of competence varies from person to person.
As to Belgium, I knew a Belgian doctor from the Antwerpen area. Her native language was Dutch, and she spoke good English and good French, but rather poor German which leaned rather heavily on adapting her Dutch, in a manner of speaking. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 38 of 46 14 October 2007 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||
|
The best native, environmental polyglots I have met have been members of small ethnic groups who have moved away from their home territory, often to Europe or North America. I met one man in Belgium years ago who claimed to speak seven - he certainly spoke fluent, American-accented English. He was an Assyrian whose native language, he told me, was one of the modern forms of Aramaic, but he said he also spoke Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, German and Swedish. He lived in the USA at the time I spoke to him and he said he had lived in Germany and Sweden prior to that.
Edited by William Camden on 14 October 2007 at 9:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 39 of 46 16 October 2007 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
|
Vladimir Peniakoff, who was to be a British officer in World War II and was a good linguist himself, lived in Egypt before the war and commented in rather scathing terms on society there. He mentioned that books were valued, after a fashion. An Armenian merchant arranged for a library to be set up and showed it off. Peniakoff noticed that the shelves had several separate and identical collected editions of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hugo etc. When he looked closer at the books, he found that they were just empty cardboard with book labels pasted on. He ended the anecdote by noting that the merchant, who spoke eight or ten languages fluently and simultaneously, was illiterate. Edited by William Camden on 25 October 2007 at 3:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 6830 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 40 of 46 16 October 2007 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||
|
The fact that people from certain countries are often better linguists seems to contradict the idea that some people are just "born with the gift for language". It would appear that something in a certain environment, whether it be the prevailing attitude towards to language learning, or simply the exposure, is more important than any inherent gift, or personality type.
1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
