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How Fluent Are Polyglots? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4596 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes  Speaks: Russian | Message 1 of 19 09 February 2012 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Happy Valentines Everyone!
I'm having trouble trying to wrap my mind around the idea of someone speaking 6-12 languages fluently (OK, I'm jealous). What exactly is the skill level of a true polyglot? Can they tell jokes in some obscure dialect in all of their languages? Can they understand a documentary on quantum physics or electric eels in these languages? If they can do this, even imperfectly, more power to them. But for me this would be difficult in any language, way over my head. When I hear that someone can play a lot of musical instruments, I wonder how they can find the time to learn to play all of them well. Would it be better to devote yourself fully to 3 or 4? Maybe a more realistic goal for me would be to be like Ivetta, an immigrant to Western Europe who speaks Kurdish, Armenian, Georgian and Russian fluently without any trace of an accent. She's not even a linguist or translator. I also admire the Iranian woman who speaks perfect Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and works as a translator. They are my role models. I wish I was like those of you out there who seem to collect languages like seashells. But that's not me. No way. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6400 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 19 09 February 2012 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is another of these "been discussed to death" topics around here. Some people get to a conversational level in lots of languages, which is really impressive and really useful (believe it or not, the vast majority of discussions are not about quantum physics or electric eels). Other people get to a really high (native-like) level in one or a few foreign languages. This is also really impressive. Yet others get to a high level in one or two languages and learn many others to a lower level. As the saying goes, a language is one of few things that's worth knowing badly.
All of these combinations are common amongst polyglots and you'll have to ask each individual one which applies to them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6727 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 19 09 February 2012 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Instruments are a lot closer to each other than languages. It's not uncommon for wind instrument musicians to play saxophone(s), clarinet(s), maybe flute/oboe/bassoon... Guitarists can often manage the bass guitar, maybe ukulele, mandolin (tenor banjo, mandola, bouzouki etc.). There are dozens of instruments that work (roughly) the same way, they just sound different. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Northernlights Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4493 days ago 73 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 4 of 19 09 February 2012 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Some of us are new around here and haven't discussed it yet ;-)
I see what you mean and it's possibly sometimes the case but I don't necessarily agree with you, Jeff. I also disagree about people playing a lot of instruments well: in my experience people who play well only play just the one or possibly two. Yes, some instruments are similar and there are traditional combinations like the clarinet and saxophone, but it's highly unusual to find a proficient violinist who can play anything else up to standard, or pianist for that matter. I studied at the RAM in London and from all my time there I can't think of anyone who played more than two instruments well. I suppose we'd now be looking at what is 'well', when playing an instrument, as a parallel to the same question when looking at someone's knowledge of a language. Some will be more demanding than others, obviously, so you can't pin it down really and trying to would get you nowhere other than going round and round in circles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6415 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 19 09 February 2012 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And as Barry Farber put it, no matter how many languages you know, you'll be judged by your French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6521 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 6 of 19 09 February 2012 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm one of those 'language collectors' who can point to a fairly high number of languages, so I am also one of those people who might be blamed for spreading myself too much instead of concentrating myself on a few languages which I then could learn to perfection ... or at least that is the theory (which in its most extreme and most stupid version would prevent people from even becoming bilingual). However the thrill of discovering a new language like Irish is completely different from anything you get from working with an old one - you can't just transfer the hours from new projects to 'more of the same kind' in an old one. And even if I could (or had to) it wouldn't help much - the "Law of diminishing returns" also applies to language learning.
The same thing seen from another angle: are those who advocate restricting oneself to 2-3 languages really so much better in those 2-3 languages than the polyglots are in their best 2-3 languages? Are the most stubborn monoglots really better in their only (sad and lonely) language than polyglots are in their native language? Personally my weak spot is speaking and in particular pronunciation - simply because I hardly ever speak in those languages at home. But during my travels I have had long and complicated discussions about things like quantum physics and electric eels and my hotel bill in languages which I hardly ever speak at home. Maybe it would help to speak more, but those languages that would benefit most are precisely those which I would have to drop if I listened to the supporters of the 'few-but-good-languages' theory. On the other hand I would probably not benefit much in my best languages where I already get a lot of passive exposure. So all in all I can't see any reason to restrict myself to just a few languages - I would lose more than I would gain.
My jokes in Catalan, Greek and Esperanto are probably not very good. But I know that I can read about quantum physics and electric eels because that I have based my studies precisely on scientific texts from magazines and the internet. And I would be more than happy if I also could get TV channels with documentaries in all my languages. Edited by Iversen on 09 February 2012 at 1:34pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4567 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 7 of 19 09 February 2012 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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At least they are more fluent than most (comparative) linguists.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6400 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 19 09 February 2012 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh yes, I certainly didn't mean that to shut down the thread, just to warn you guys about it. Anyway, here's my two cents, for what it's worth. No matter how many years I spend dedicating myself to getting my Mandarin as good as possible, there will still be about 800 million people who speak it better than me. The fact that I learned it as an adult doesn't mean I've got some kind of edge on all those speakers -- quite the opposite! As such, learning one language to perfection might be very impressive, but you'll never be amongst the elite (unless it's a dead language). Studying multiple languages, however, places you in a small group of people and you skills are certainly more unique, if not as impressive to some. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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