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Mezzofantiesque polyglottery | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 6996 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes  Studies: English* | Message 1 of 7 30 March 2005 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
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I have one simple question about these amazing linguists.
What are their methods? I find their achievements amazing, and awing, does anyone have knowledge of how they learned so many languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7178 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 7 01 April 2005 at 11:02pm | IP Logged |
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Mezzofanti learned by this method.
Ziad Fazah seems to have a gift for tongues. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7058 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 3 of 7 04 April 2005 at 7:58am | IP Logged |
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From my study of the lives of polyglots, I believe there are three different kinds in terms of linguistic skills:
1. The language genius 2. The overall genius 3. The drudge I believe that Mezzofanti and Fazah are probably the best representatives of the first kind, the language genius, people whose gifts of hearing and miming strange sounds and extracting linguistic patterns from them are akin to those of musical prodigies. So, I do not think there are any “secrets” that you can learn from them. A good example of the second kind, the overall genius, is Thomas Young (1773 – 1829), whose epitaph in Westminster Abbey states that he was “a man alike eminent in almost every department of human learning.” He was not just a polyglot, he was a polymath who lectured on every possible subject, who made important discoveries in physics and optics, and who knew a score of languages, which helped him become a pioneering Egyptologist, disputing Champollion’s preeminence. This kind of person simply does everything easily, so again there are probably no language-learning secrets to be learned from them. A good example of the third kind, the drudge, is me. I may have some gifts, but I got wherever I am by hard work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7178 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 7 04 April 2005 at 8:04am | IP Logged |
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From the life of Mezzofanti it appears that he was gifted but spent as many hours as Ardaschir studying new languages. He did this all his life and hence would probably fall under both 1 and 3.
As for Ziad Fazah from the material I found it seems that he learned languages at an unholy speed all when he was a teenager and would certainly fall under 1. I think we should emphasize that most polyglots study foreign languages for thousands of hours to reach polyglottery. Otherwise people might just assume that they are just a buch of savants with a brain disorder and that regular people can never achieve polyglottery by normal means. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7058 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 5 of 7 05 April 2005 at 1:42am | IP Logged |
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This is exactly the point that I have been trying to make: relatively regular people can achieve polyglottery by normal means if they can conceive of five- or ten-year plans and work seriously towards their goals.
I made this point already in my separate post about Fazah. There is something about his story that I just cannot accept. I have no trouble believing that he is at the extreme end of the talent spectrum, or that he knows 58 languages quite well. What I cannot swallow is that he really learned 56 of them in a three year period, from his 14th to his 17th year. Even allowing for a maximum of all necessary talents, you still need to have resources to learn a language, and some of his are quite rare and I cannot fathom how a teenager in Beirut in the late 1960's could have accessed them. Furthemore, even supposing that he somehow did do this, that it really was so easy for him, then... why did he stop? Why has he only learned two more since he claims that he can learn all the languages on earth? No, something is exaggerated here, whether by him or by others, I don't know. Assuming that he did somehow get a foothold in them in three weeks each, he has been spending the past 30 years polishing all of them, i.e., he, too, has been putting in lots of hard work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7026 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 6 of 7 06 April 2005 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
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Number 2 is known as an "omnibus genius" in psychology.
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| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6174 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 7 25 April 2008 at 9:09am | IP Logged |
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Ziad Fizah made a complete fool out of himself on that youtube video!
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