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Panglottery and Language Choice | ||
Tags: Polyglottery | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4887 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French | Message 9 of 34 16 March 2012 at 1:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I love this concept, and adhere to it I suppose, just without naming it. I'm trying to
be panglottic for a certain regions. I plan on travelling/focusing my career in both Latin America and the Mediterranean Basin. The Americas: English Spanish Portuguese French Med Basin: Spanish French Arabic Turkish Croatian Everyone will have their own list even for the same regions, but I tried to think about not having overlap, and if I did, such in the case of Arabic and French (Levante/N. Africa) it's more of an advantage. Like said before, staying clear of Italian because lack of geography it covers. Most likely will be able to communicate with someone in a related Romance language like Spanish. And with focusing on certain areas you are interested in going, you also get the benefit of many of the languages being useful other places. Areas outside these regions where languages could be of use: French: Sub Saharan Africa, various Pacific Islands Arabic: Muslim countries - as many religous/educated people in non-Arab countries have some knowledge of Classic or MSA. Turkish: Opens you up to the Turkic states. Croatian: Balkans (former Yugoslavia) also other Slavic states b/c speaking Croatian with a Pole is going to be more useful then tying to speak Spanish with them. And then you get your "fun" languages. I'm interested in Amharic, Irish, Cherokee, Catalan, Basque just for the pleasure of learning and experiencing their respective cultures. They aren't useful from a # of speakers or wide-spread criteria, but they are kind of like baking an intrecit dessert; you don't do it as often as eating chicken breast, but you don't eat it because it's healthy, rather cause it tastes good! Edited by Gallo1801 on 16 March 2012 at 1:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6567 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 10 of 34 16 March 2012 at 8:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I think a case can be made that the panglot who only knows large international languages and no small, local ones lacks a dimension of understanding human language and culture. Adding one or two languages like these is, I think, necessary for rounding off one's knowledge and avoiding too strong a selection bias. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5945 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 11 of 34 16 March 2012 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Yeah, this is basically the central barrier that stands in the way of panglottery. As far as Latin and Ancient Greek go, I think it all depends on how much you value ancient, dead languages and their cultures.
I would argue that Russia's vast geography basically guarantees that it will cover a lot of culture. It might take time, but the culture in Vladivostok is bound to take on interesting contours that are absent from Muscovite culture. And then of course we have the cultures of the Russophone Central Asian countries.
A language of 200 million people and a rising power is too much for me to forego. And Brazilian culture is sufficiently distinct and vibrant that you are sure to get a lot out of it even if you already know Spanish.
An incredibly tough choice, but I can sympathize with it.
The more I think about it, the less willing I am to forego a Dravidian language (but even less ready to forego the behemoth Hindi). Dravidian is unique among the 11 major language families of the world in that there is no allstar of the family (as Thai is to Tai-Kadai, or Mandarin is to Sino-Tibetan). I think I'll just wait and see how the situation there develops. Perhaps one of the Dravidian languages will eventually become the lingua franca of South India. That would make the decision a lot easier for us.
After considering this further, I completely agree.
Why not? If we can get both a great cultural legacy and further linguistic diversity in one package, it's all the better.
This would be a great enterprise for a religion scholar with a linguistic bent. Who knows what sort of knowledge could be gained by people who go down that road. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5163 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 12 of 34 13 April 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hmm, I would go with:
Americas: Quechua and Guarani, Haitian Creole. Maybe Inuktitut. Africa: Zulu, Tswana, Malagasy, Shona, Lingala, Swahili, Tigrinya, Amharic, Somali, Hausa, Yoruba (or Igbo), Fula, Wolof, Tuareg (Tamasheq), Chewa, Kirundi. Middle East: Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Azeri. Caucasus: Georgian, Abkhaz, Armenian. South Asia (UN definition): Hindi, Tamil (it's the most learned Dravidian language, espite the fact that it has not the biggest number of speakers). Bengali Urdu (part of Hindi), Persian, Pashto, Nepali, Tibetan. SEA: Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, Indonesian. East Asia: Chinese, Korean, Japanese... Europe: Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, Russian, Greek, Albanian, Jugoslavian, Bulgarian, Romanian.Czech, Polish, Dutch. Catalan. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4636 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 13 of 34 14 April 2012 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I think if you want to be a panglot with the least languages necessary, you could be pretty much set with English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese/Japanese.
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| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5303 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 14 of 34 23 April 2012 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Luckily, the colonial powers of past centuries and today haven't managed to take over the world, per se. Or maybe they have, but they're not micromanagers. I digress. The corollary is that English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic and Chinese (or insert your favorite linguas franca) get you reeeally far for just six languages, but they don't get you the whole world. Which is cool.
If you want to be able to speak to everyone on the planet, good luck. If you want the most efficient way to cover tons of ground, I think the six I mentioned (which happen to be the official U.N. languages) are where it's at. If you're seeking a more philologically playful panglottery, you might want something interesting and useful from every corner, like Chinese, English, Tamil, Navajo, Quechua, and Swahili. Anyway, my point is, under the constraints of a human brain and lifespan, I don't think we're talking about pulling off Clumsy's bucket list. It looked fun; I'm just sayin'... you've got to pick your battles. edit: Alexander86 also mentioned the U.N. languages... right on. Edited by Ygangerg on 23 April 2012 at 7:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6810 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 15 of 34 10 April 2013 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting topic. I've often thought about how to get maximum diversity with the minimal number of languages. With this in mind, I agree with Iversen's idea of dropping all European languages except for English. The others are important of course, so I feel bad right off the bat, but I have to do it in order to keep my list short and not so Western-biased. 1. English The next place that comes to my mind is the Middle East - the cradle of civilization. Arabic will come to most people's minds first, because it's the most spoken languages in the Middle East. But since since I'm going for maximum cultural diversity and not speaking to the most number of people, I'll argue for Hebrew instead. There are two reasons: 1) I'm biased because I study Hebrew, and 2) Hebrew is the language of Judaism, the parent religion of the three major Abrahamic religions; Modern Hebrew gives you Biblical Hebrew for free (like a Brit reading Shakespeare); Israel is the economic and technological powerhouse of the Middle East. Turkish and Persian are also very reasonable choices. But for me, 2. Hebrew (Arabic, Turkish, or Persian would also do nicely) China and Japan have amazing histories and interesting futures. Which to choose? I think this one will be 50/50 if you take a poll. And of course what about Korean? Unfortunately for them, China and Japan dominate overall. For me, due to their huge influence now, in the past, and likely in the future, I'll choose Mandarin. 3. Mandarin As for Africa and their languages, I agree with Ari's above-stated reasoning for Swahili... 4. Swahili ...and I agree with Iversen, again, regarding Indonesian. 5. Indonesian Finally, I think it's important, for diversity's sake, to choose a native American language. There are hundreds, though. How to choose? For this language, I pick Guarani, because it's spoken by both indigenous and non-indigenous people. And it still has a very active culture, as it's spoken by the majority of an entire country in South America! Kind of amazing actually, for this day and age. 6. Guarani So there you are: English, Hebrew, Mandarin, Swahili, Indonesian, and Guarani I'm sure this list is "wrong" for many of you, but this is probably how I would personally tackle panglottery if I wanted to access maximum language diversity with a minimal number of languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4239 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 16 of 34 21 April 2013 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I like this idea a lot, particularly since I'm trying to study languages from several different groups.
I don't have a lot of language learning experience, but I wonder if you could gain a more global experience if you give up on becoming "fluent" in all the languages you're discussing. I think even if you learn a major language from each group, you'd still be missing out on a lot of important cultures. I think you're also losing the benefit of studying related languages. Maybe it would be a good strategy to become fluent in several key languages, then pick 2-4 related languages where you study just enough to understand the culture. Once you become fluent in a language I'd think you'd be able to get a lot more global perspective by learning enough of the related languages to understand them. So for example, learning to speak Japanese to a high level, and understanding some Korean, or being able to speak Russian well and understanding enough to experience Polish and Czech. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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