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Should a linguist be a polyglot?

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
29 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3
palfrey
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5032 days ago

81 posts - 180 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, French

 
 Message 25 of 29
15 October 2012 at 6:05pm | IP Logged 
Arekkusu wrote:
What you do with any degree is up to you, your determination, passion, ability, etc. With a Linguistics Honours degree, I was a teacher, a translator, an interpreter, a course designer... I work with languages, I love it, and I can't really see myself doing anything else. And I do much better than the babysitter you mention.

A bit off-topic, but one thing I've wanted to ask you about for a while: Where English and French are concerned, are you one of those fortunate natural bilinguals? That is, someone who grew up surrounded by both languages, learning them as a native speaker, without any conscious effort? From what I've heard, this seems to be fairly common in Montreal, for example.

Not that I doubt your language learning abilities -- your success with Japanese alone establishes that -- but I wonder when I see how good your English is. (And in comparison, how inept my French is.)
1 person has voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5140 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 26 of 29
15 October 2012 at 9:19pm | IP Logged 
palfrey wrote:
A bit off-topic, but one thing I've wanted to ask you about for a while: Where English and French are concerned, are you one of those fortunate natural bilinguals? That is, someone who grew up surrounded by both languages, learning them as a native speaker, without any conscious effort? From what I've heard, this seems to be fairly common in Montreal, for example.

No. I grew up in Sorel, close to Trois-Rivières, in a linguistic environment that was very monolithically French (98.5% of the population has French as a first language) and where English was never heard. My parents don't really speak English, although my dad sort of gets by. It wasn’t until I moved to Montréal at 18 that I first had access to English speakers.
2 persons have voted this message useful



palfrey
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5032 days ago

81 posts - 180 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, French

 
 Message 27 of 29
15 October 2012 at 11:03pm | IP Logged 
Well! To be honest, that wasn't the answer I had expected :) I thought for sure you must have grown up with English alongside French. That's very impressive.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5140 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 28 of 29
16 October 2012 at 12:21am | IP Logged 
palfrey wrote:
Well! To be honest, that wasn't the answer I had expected :) I thought
for sure you must have grown up with English alongside French. That's very impressive.

Out of curiosity, where have you heard me speak?
1 person has voted this message useful



palfrey
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5032 days ago

81 posts - 180 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, French

 
 Message 29 of 29
16 October 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged 
My view of your English was based purely on your writing. I had never heard your voice. But since you ask, I poked around on the web and found the piece on hyperployglots produced by "16x9 - The Bigger Picture" a few months ago:

    http://www.globalnews.ca/video/word+play/video.html?v=223130 9265#video
    http://www.mezzoguild.com/2012/05/06/hyperpolyglots-on-16x9- the-bigger-picture/

You speak English only briefly, but what was said sounded native to me.

Edited by palfrey on 16 October 2012 at 6:37pm



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