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Locations fostering "native polyglots" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 42 of 46 02 November 2007 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I studied German at Trier University, a short distance from Luxembourg. There were some students from there. Apparently, Luxembourg has or had no higher education facilities and its citizens go elsewhere to study at university level, usually France, Germany or Belgium.
I was speaking French in Belgium years ago and was asked if I was from Luxembourg. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| trapzilla2002 Newbie United States Joined 6021 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Portuguese | Message 43 of 46 15 November 2007 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Moroccans!
I went to Tangier when on vacation in Spain and I saw them all speaking to the tourists in every language. They need to know various dialects as they make money from tourism. Most Moroccan business people in Tangier speak: Arabic, French, English, and Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6241 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 44 of 46 16 November 2007 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | ||
A lot of Moroccan vendors speak at least a few useful phrases of other languages as well. Italian wasn't that uncommon, and when a discussion turned to languages, the three merchants at a rug shop I visited with about half a dozen other students managed phrases in quite a few (including every language any of us spoke any of, even Japanese) - perhaps over a dozen, but I don't remember at this point. The levels of various languages voiced by various vendors varied drastically though - from a few stock phrases, accompanied by some communication difficulty, to a slightly choppy fluency. No one I remember sounded near-native in English or Italian. Still, while some are unarguably polyglots, I don't think many of them are native polyglots. One possible exception - I remember one kid in morocco, perhaps 8-10 years old, who claimed to be from the former Yugoslavia; he'd forgotten how to speak his native language, and I think he couldn't even understand it well when one person I was traveling with, also from the region, spoke it, but he spoke English quite well, and knew reasonable smatterings of over half a dozen other languages, which he was quite happy to show off. 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 45 of 46 19 November 2007 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know about modern Egypt, but polyglot vendors and merchants were very much part of the scene in pre-WW2 Alexandria.
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| guto2005br Tetraglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5941 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, GermanC2, Spanish Studies: Swedish, Italian | Message 46 of 46 06 February 2008 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||
Not at all, my friend! It would appear so, but that is totally misleading. It makes no sense to compare exposure with inherent gift and arrive at such contradictions. You can be exposed to a lot of languages and have no real command of them and you can be isolated in a mono-lingual environment and yet later become fluent in 5 languages while your friends still struggle with elementary grammar. I have spent less than 1% of my life outside Brazil and I learned three different languages just because I wanted to. I know however people who have spent over 10% of their lifes in Germany and still make gross mistakes. I am no neuroscientist, but as far as I can tell, some people were reported to have exceptional language skills (for example Emil Krebs). People are born with inate habilities, others fight their way to achieve the same skills. That is why some succeed where others fail. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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