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What does it feel like to be a polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Maecenas23 Triglot Newbie Ukraine Joined 4393 days ago 21 posts - 56 votes  Speaks: Ukrainian*, Russian, English Studies: German | Message 1 of 12 22 December 2012 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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If somebody has the precious experience,please share it. What does it feel like to know a dozen of languages? What qualitative changes the mastery of many languages gives to your mind? Do you develop some special sense of language, some talent? I've heard several times that polyglottery is some sort of transcendent experience which transforms your conscience.
It would be very interesting to hear anyone who can describe this feeling! Edited by Maecenas23 on 22 December 2012 at 11:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5116 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 12 23 December 2012 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I cannot tell you what it is like to speak a dozen languages, because I do not speak that many. And I am
afraid that I am much too down to earth to use big words about my languages. They are a skill I have, like playing instruments, or knowing how to repair a dozen different sort of vehicles. But I can tell you what I cherish the most about them, which is the possibility to communicate with people with whom I could otherwise not have talked. I have visited your country four times, because I have friends there that I love like my own family. They are forgetting their French, which I used to talk with them, and I am trying to learn Russian to be able to talk to them. The first time I went there, almost three years ago, I met my friend's father, who only spoke Russian and Ukrainian. I could hardly say more than 50 words in Russian at the time, but I tried as best as I could to communicate, and we discovered that we both loved The Beatles, so we sat the rest of the evening singing The Beatles. The next time I came, I knew a little bit more Russian, and I brought a book of Beatles songs, so we sang some more, and had a rudimentary conversation. The next time I came, he had passed away, and I sat with my arms around his widow, crying, she because she had lost him, I because in that same year I had lost both my parents and my only remaining aunt. It had been the year of death for all of us. And I was so happy, that although my Russian was horribly bad, I still could understand the main parts of what she said, and I could tell her a bit of my own grief. So languages for me are not a matter of transcendent experiences. They are about understanding people, and connecting with people, and that s why I love languages. 18 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4650 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 3 of 12 23 December 2012 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||
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No polyglot here, but it's an interesting topic, so I'll give my perfectly unqualified reply :)
Learning Korean has been something of a transcendental experience so far. I like to think that the very different language structure and culture (compared with what I'm used to) have made my thinking more flexible. Learning Korean has been much more profound than learning English, although I remember the magic and excitement I used to feel for English when I was still studying it. Maybe the process of studying is the most profound experience - going from understanding nothing to understanding everything, making your thoughts run in new directions. I do suspect that one day (if I ever get there) Korean will feel as everyday to me as English does. It has already started to become part of who I am and part of what I think. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5548 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 12 23 December 2012 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Ah, but there is this quirky bit in our human brains that tends to compare the status quo of today to the status quo of yesterday. That means if there is some kind of radical, but slow change regarding how we perceive the world or ourselves, we're not supposed to notice it - and mastering several languages takes a long time. And if we do notice, it's mostly through feedback from other people, or interaction with them.
The only thing I can imagine that might make people feel like they reached a deeper kind of consciousness is that in different languages, you have to provide different kinds of information to convey the same meaning. I read about research that compared speakers of languages with dummy subject, like English or German with speakers of languages that could drop the subject, like Spanish or Japanese. The setting was one where the test subjects could watch somebody do something intentionally, or unintentionally (like dropping a vase on purpose or accidentally) - and the speakers of languages with (gendered) dummy subjects usually remembered the gender of that person, speakers of subject dropping languages only when the action was done on purpose. I'd hazard a guess that there are little bits of information like that that somebody who speaks several languages well tends to remember regardless of language context, because they might always need them to talk about an event in a different language. Feeling you have access to such information when other people discard it as irrelevant might make you feel like you're more aware of your surroundings. But those differences are minor, nothing that should create the illusion of being enlightened. So, I agree with Cristina. It's about how you use your skills. Still, languages don't teach you about other humans by themselves, and it's also perfectly possible to have such experiences by venturing out of your own social circle and age group in your own culture. Edited by Bao on 23 December 2012 at 11:11pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5514 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 5 of 12 23 December 2012 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Maecenas,
I don't consider myself a polyglot (yet :)), so unfortunately I can't answer your question, but I thought you might want a few friendly corrections of your English. "a dozen of languages" should be "a dozen languages", or "dozens of languages". Always use "of" with the latter, never with the former. Either would work, but "dozens" sounds a little better in your sentence, because "a dozen" implies precisely that amount, or close to it, whereas "dozens" often just means "a lot". Also, I think you mean "consciousness" rather than "conscience". The two words are similar and even native speakers sometimes mix them up, but "consciousness" means awareness and the ability to think, and "conscience" is moral sense and the feeling of right and wrong. These aren't big mistakes but correcting them will help you sound much better :) Good luck with language learning! 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mahasiswa Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 4214 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Malay Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Persian, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi | Message 6 of 12 23 December 2012 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I notice this all the time. For instance, French not being my mother tongue and despite studying Russian via Le russe sans peine, sometimes I remember translations only in French, sometimes only in English, it depends whether my mnemonic device plays with the grammar or cognates of the one language or the other. Last night for instance I made the acquaintance of a Russian girl and told her that, yes, the sounds are hard sometimes. For instance, the word 'Хмурый' [xmɨri], which I only learned a day before as 'renfrogné', not having the English equivalent 'sullen'. Had I known it, would a not-native speaker of English even have the equivalent Russian word in mind? It's only possible, that is, there's a chance that even had I known the English word she would still be unsure due to my developing Russian accent what word I really meant! I find the phenomenon of memory so fascinating and at the same time so intangible that by studying languages I am doing something I enjoy, and at the same time, witnessing the beautiful inner workings of memory without actually knowing the technical jargon that neurologists and psychologists use to describe it, although to do so would be just the same as learning another language I'm sure! :P I find that the more new languages I begin to study in earnest, the more confident I am when speaking a new language. I didn't speak French for years studying since elementary school and eventually I mounted a wall that stopped me from trying to speak it, and it probably had little to do with the amount of grammar exercises I completed, rather, with my own perception of how to learn a language, which almost always seem easier to do by speaking, now that I have experience in doing it in so many different languages! It's always interesting to feel how one language can slip away when you don't study it for an extended period of time and how in a few days most of it can come rushing back! Again, this is less specific to any particular language and rather is more of an observation on the phenomenon of human memory. I can't speak anything but English fluently, although my French and German are rather up to scratch I'd like to think, but it's lovely to study so many languages and the fascination with memory is definitely a component, whether conscious or subconscious, in every polyglot's mind. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 12 23 December 2012 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just like it feels not being a polyglot.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4560 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 8 of 12 24 December 2012 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Many of the polyglots here seem to be almost "accidental" polyglots because they are from heavily multilingual areas like Northern Europe, so they have a built-in advantage over many other wanna-be polyglots.
So probably many of them take it for granted that they have this remarkable ability. But as accomplished as they are, I doubt that their rate of divorce, depression, or suicide is any different than that of non-polyglots. However, they do have the benefit of knowing that if they are ever kidnapped by foreigners they will have a better chance of understanding what their kidnappers are saying. Edited by tanya b on 24 December 2012 at 3:33am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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