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"My son knows 15 languages & he’s 20" | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Einarr Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom einarrslanguagelog.w Joined 4422 days ago 118 posts - 269 votes  Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian Studies: Swedish | Message 25 of 47 02 August 2013 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that it is important to distinguish between "knowing a language" and "speaking a language". Personally, I believe that one can never ever know a language in its entity (100% of it all). And that is speaking formally, including all specific terminologies that a language has, which are certainly not used in everyday speech. Sure, I now know some mining and IT terminologies after I've done some translation work in the topic, but that's even a tiny bit of an entire terminological section.
So, basically, what I'm trying to imply is that people very often merge both notions: "to know" and "to speak" a language nowadays, just because within the social mind, in the day to day communication one would use only a limited amount of words, most of them to be repeated again in future conversations, as fluctuations could appear due to changing environment. That being said, "speaking" another language per se, could pretty much mean any tiny tad of a dialogue in a given language. For example, I could put on, a very basic indeed, conversation on, say, Turkish, which par excellence would allow me to say that I'm "speaking" the language, as I'm actually doing so, minus the fact that besides that I cannot evolve into more complex conversation. Therefore, parents, would marvel at their children for having said some tiny tad of a language, which is, as I tried to note, not necessarily a lie, because they are "speaking" it, no matter that their actual knowledge might be 0,01% of the specific language. The problem is more within the social understanding, which proves to be challenged to understand the boundary between to know and to speak, and therefore establish the given credit for doing so. Finally, this thread reminded me of this guy, who's like 17 and speaks 20 languages. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km9-DiFaxpU P.S.: Tell me if it is just me, or someone else is also hearing the thick American accent on his Farsi. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4480 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 26 of 47 03 August 2013 at 8:02am | IP Logged | ||
The answer that helps you the most with your languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6468 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 27 of 47 03 August 2013 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would opt for number three in the sense that I would say that I am very interested in meeting the man's son.
I just take it for granted that parents will exaggerate their children's abilities to some degree, and I know that most people won't distinguish between really and truly knowing a language on one hand and dabbling or knowing only a very little bit of the language on the other. I would also take it for granted that the man's son knows at least a smattering of several languages and would quite possibly be an interesting person to talk to. My next move would be to say something along the lines of "How wonderful! You know, I've always been interested in languages myself. I'd love to sit down and chat with you son sometime." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4939 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 28 of 47 03 August 2013 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Depending on your age in comparison to the age of this person's son, that could come off as creepy, at least in the US. It doesn't have to, of course, but "protecting the children" seems to be an obsession here. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 03 August 2013 at 8:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6406 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 29 of 47 04 August 2013 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||
And really, "protecting the children" at the age of 20? would it be different after 21? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4909 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 30 of 47 04 August 2013 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I probably wouldn't say anything at all. I would assume that they a proud but likely ignorant parent and their kid probably speaks some amount of some languages but probably not enough to genuinely interest me.
Cynical, I know, but experiences have taught me not to expect much from these sort of claims. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6406 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 31 of 47 04 August 2013 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
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And how much is enough to interest you? The majority of the members here don't speak more than 2-3 languages :P
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4909 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 32 of 47 04 August 2013 at 4:41am | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, I didn't make that very clear. I meant that I might assume he could not say enough of his particular languages to interest me ie: hello, goodbye, thank you etc. Edited by Darklight1216 on 04 August 2013 at 4:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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