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You are not a real polyglot if...

  Tags: Polyglot
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
299 messages over 38 pages: 1 2 3 46 7 ... 5 ... 37 38 Next >>
Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5094 days ago

4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 33 of 299
11 October 2013 at 7:01pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
I just meant that in Finland speaking Swedish absolutely doesn't imply a passive
understanding of Norwegian and especially Danish. It might be like that with Danish speakers in Greenland
too?

As for BCSM, that's basically one of the arguments for them being separate languages: that they are less
similar than the Scandinavian ones.


I have never met someone who was Finnish-Swedish, or even Finnish speaking Swedish as a foreign
language who did not understand me, or whom I did not understand. Danish of course is a whole other kettle
of fish, as they hardly understand themselves :-) I was told today that Danish children use 6 months longer to
learn to speak than Swedish and Norwegian children, because it is so difficult to learn the pronunciation.

Who is making the arguments about BCSM? Linguists or people who for political reasons want every nation
to have their own distinct language?
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4467 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 34 of 299
11 October 2013 at 7:03pm | IP Logged 
Linguists who for political reasons want the languages to be separate (these exist
too...)
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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6916 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 35 of 299
11 October 2013 at 7:10pm | IP Logged 
Not to mention politicians and ordinary people who subscribe to the thought that linguistic divergence or linguistic division corresponds well with ethnic delineations...
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beano
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4382 days ago

1049 posts - 2152 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian

 
 Message 36 of 299
11 October 2013 at 7:14pm | IP Logged 
Wasn't it all just called Serbocroat back in the days of Yugoslavia? A Serbian told me they can understand
Croatian easily but apparently Slovenian is rather different.

Swiss German is probably further away from standard German than what is the case with some languages
that have been politically rebadged.
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tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5213 days ago

1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 37 of 299
11 October 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
They will speak their respective languages knowing (hoping) that they will be understood.
Swedes are one of the largest groups of foreigners working in Norway, and I have yet to hear a single one of them
make any attempt to speak Norwegian. You can hardly buy a beer in Oslo without hearing Swedish.

True enough, but some of the Swedes living and working here do at least use some Norwegian words and
expressions. I also know a couple of Swedes who sound more Norwegian than Swedish after living here for decades.
However, it is not much different from Norwegians moving to another town or another part of the country and then
gradually lose their original dialect. In fact, it is actually hard to think of Swedes as foreigners.

Edited by tractor on 11 October 2013 at 7:25pm

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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6916 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 38 of 299
11 October 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
Wasn't it all just called Serbocroat back in the days of Yugoslavia? A Serbian told me they can understand
Croatian easily but apparently Slovenian is rather different.

Swiss German is probably further away from standard German than what is the case with some languages
that have been politically rebadged.


Yes. Techincally it was called Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski) or Croato-Serbian (hrvatskosrpski). The sequence of the elements took on undue importance because the former placed "Serbo" first which Serbs liked while Croats preferred the latter arrangement.

In any case when it comes to dealing with multilingualism on a resume I discount those who list parts of something pluricentric even if on the surface, the number of names thrown about could impress the uninformed.

E.g.

- Candidate 1: American English, British English, Canadian English, Indian English (for real buddy? Get lost)
- Candidate 2: English, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian (bilingual to me, not pentalingual)
- Candidate 3: English, Serbo-Croatian (same as candidate 2 but doesn't try to puff up the resume - I like that)
- Candidate 4: English, Czech, Slovak (trilingual - Czech and Slovak are close but not as close as sometimes thought or presented)
- Candidate 5: English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin (tetralingual - despite being called "dialects" by Chinese, being called as such can be misleading and overstate the mutual intelligibility which I think Mike Campbell (glossika) has likened to the mutual intelligibility of Italian and Spanish)
- Candidate 6a: English, Hindi, Urdu (bilingual but tricky because Hindu and Urdu colloquially are very similar to the point where native speakers may not always conclude that the other speaker is speaking a "different" language. In formal registers, Hindi and Urdu are more divergent especially in vocabulary and then there's the trickiness with script since Hindi uses only Devanagari while Urdu uses only modified Perso-Arabic script)
- Candidate 6b: English, Hindustani (see 6a)
4 persons have voted this message useful



sctroyenne
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5151 days ago

739 posts - 1312 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Irish

 
 Message 39 of 299
11 October 2013 at 8:18pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:

- Candidate 1: American English, British English, Canadian English, Indian English (for
real buddy? Get lost)


Something like this could be legit for someone applying to, say, an international
call center that would like its reps to be able to make callers believe they're calling
in-country or for espionage/acting/etc. The standard in accent and word choice would need
to be quite high to be able to list it as a skill. But yeah, otherwise taking advantage
of a potential employer's ignorance of the intricacies of language is ethically not
sound.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Oheao
Diglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 3928 days ago

31 posts - 33 votes
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Mandarin, Greek

 
 Message 40 of 299
11 October 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged 
I think that the standards of Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are all based
on the exact same dialect, so I would say that they're more similar than the Scandinavian
languages.


1 person has voted this message useful



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