How do polyglots do it? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

How do polyglots do it?
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4042 days ago
544 posts - 1141 votes

Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

Message 57 of 159

09 January 2014 at 1:42pm | IP Logged

Oh, good that that is set straight then. I think it is relatively (and even deceivingly) intuitive to think that no matter what language is in question, the gap between these arbitrary C1 and C2 would stay more or less constant. If you're already "C1" I would say you're "fluent" and if one is "fluent" in a language it should erase all novelty and hindrances from learning and making the language a part of your system. Now whether that goes all the way or not, I think not. At that point the friction should mostly be gone, but that doesn't mean all languages are created equal.

To ponder on about this a bit more, let's say one spends 1,000 magical fairytale-land hours on Swedish, which (in this mindgame setting) according to FSI would correspond to 8,000 fairytale-land hours in Japanese. Now the students' Swedish and Japanese are on par; however, the magical "C2" is shimmering in the distance. Both are confident about their abilities, but I think both are at an advantage and disadvantage;

1. Swedish is rather inarguably (sic) easier than Japanese, but does the student have to compensate for the extra familiarity and knowledge of resources and so on and so on to reach that magical C2?
2. The Japanese student is at a disadvantage to the Swedish student; he/she has still some grammar to go and vocabulary that is not transparent whereas the Swedish student is at the upper hand here; however, is it so that because of his iron hard grip of the basics of the language due to much much more studying (even to only attain an equal level) that they will just breeze through the "remaining" parts?

I'd like to see what people can come up with this.

Edited by Henkkles on 09 January 2014 at 1:49pm
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culebrilla
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3786 days ago
246 posts - 436 votes

Speaks: Spanish

Message 58 of 159

09 January 2014 at 1:56pm | IP Logged

patrickwilken wrote:

Henkkles wrote:

It depends on the definition; if C2 is not the ultimate plateau, then reaching C2 will take a lot less time. But if we define C2 (mind you these are NOT to be taken at face value) to be the point where one is at after ten thousand hours, then it is a tautology by definition.

Just as an aside re: 10000 hour rule: This is one these slightly annoying "psycho facts" that gets passed around in the popular media, that has little to do with the original study it supposedly came from.

The original paper on skill acquisition showed that for a particular elite music academy in Berlin, the defining difference between the top third of students vs the middle and bottom thirds was hours of practice. Innate ability seemed to make no significant difference; which was surprising given the cult of genius that was/is associated with top musicians and was why the study got so much press.

These studies have since been replicated multiple times now across various fields for skill acquisition (e.g., chess, sport) and generally support the notion that the critically determining factor in skill acquisition is hours spent learning NOT some other innate factors. These results are now so well established in sports that it is the ground for all professional sports training (obviously things like height also play a role in some sports like basketball).

The authors of the original paper observed that the top third of students when entering the school had already done about 10000 hours of practice (music students were picked precisely because a reasonably accurate estimate of hours of practice could be made). The authors certainly didn't think that the students were now expert musicians and no further practice would be required for them to become soloists. They explicitly state that the more competitive the enterprise the more time will be required to master the skill. So (from memory) they suggest that you may need 30 years to become a world expert in some fields like chess.

They certainly did not say that all skills are equivalent in terms of hours of practice needed.

Really the main point of these studies is to undermine the idea of innate ability as a critical factor in skill acquisition and then look at the sorts of factors that seem important to becoming experts (e.g., specialized coaching identifying specific problems that can be resolved via short-term intensive practice etc.).

Since I don't know of any of these studies looked at language acquisition it's really up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Let's be clear, in the studies they looked at "skill" sports like archery, correct? In non-skill sports (and in some skill sports also like tennis and basketball) like cycling and running genetics play by far the greatest role. These are assertions not made by me, but very prominent PhD exercise physiologists in the sports. Check out "Daniels Running Formula" written by PhD Jack Daniels; he actually has an olympic medal from the 50s or 60s when the competition wasn't that bad in the modern pentathlon.

If basketball wasn't dependent on skill we'd see an almost equal representation of all heights at the pro level. Or, unlikely, only tall people are somehow interested in the game. In pro tennis the best players are overwhelmingly 6'1"; it is the best mix between power and being close to the court for low balls/mobility. There are a few exceptions, but aside from Juan Martín Potro (6'6"), none of the exceptions are top players and are more drifters.

I could see hard work having a much bigger role in sports like archery or golf, but definitely not ones that have little skill involved. There is a reason that elite distance runners are much faster than the average Division 1 college runner after a few months of light training. Genetics. And a reason why normal humans like me can train for years, very intelligently, following established training regimes, and not come within shouting distance of college runners.

Edit: You can't "teach" a good vertical leap. If you are 5'5", you better have a 35 inch vertical leap and massive quickness or else you're not going to make even a good varsity high school team. There are literally only a handful of good sub 6 foot basketball players in the NBA: Muggsy Bogues, Spud Webb, and a few that I can't remember that were 5'11". The vast, vast, majority are usually 6' at the shortest. You can do dedicated training to improve your vertical leap, but nothing drastic like going from 20 inches to 40 inches.

I used to have "The art of shooting baskets" by a man who had the world record for consecutive free throws. He was VERY skilled. I think the record was 3,000 or 4,000 consecutive shots. Impressive. However, he was 5'9" (1,75m), couldn't jump, and was unathletic. Thus, he was a crappy high school player. All that skill won't help you if you can't get your shot off, contest shots, or if you can't keep people from driving past you at will.

Edited by culebrilla on 09 January 2014 at 2:01pm
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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4322 days ago
1546 posts - 3200 votes

Studies: German

Message 59 of 159

09 January 2014 at 2:03pm | IP Logged

culebrilla wrote:

I could see hard work having a much bigger role in sports like archery or golf, but definitely not ones that have little skill involved. There is a reason that elite distance runners are much faster than the average Division 1 college runner after a few months of light training. Genetics. And a reason why normal humans like me can train for years, very intelligently, following established training regimes, and not come within shouting distance of college runners.

I am not an expert on sports, but I believe this research to be the basis for professional training in say football, basketball etc. Yes, genetics plays a role (e.g., height in basketball and perhaps running), but much less than is popularly assumed.

But I am not an expert in this area. Have a look at this relatively old review to get an idea: http://www.mockingbirdeducation.net/uploads/5/4/0/7/5407628/ ericsson_1993.pdf. As far as I can tell the main findings are still supported 20 years on. If you do a search for "K. Anders Ericsson" on Google Scholar you should find lots of other papers.

Note: the emphasis the authors place on what they call "deliberate practice" which is micro-goal directed practice aimed at improving over short-time scales certain skills and seems very hard to achieve by oneself, at least until you reach a very high level of skilled performance. This is where the self-learner really has trouble getting past a certain point, and why, for instance, weekend golfers seem to plateau, say, in performance after 500 hours (i.e., this plateau is not a genetic but a result of not getting proper feedback to enable goal directed practice).

EDIT: Here is a more recent review: http://www.skillteam.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Ericsson_ delib_pract.pdf.

Edited by patrickwilken on 09 January 2014 at 2:24pm
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beano
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4411 days ago
1049 posts - 2152 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian

Message 60 of 159

09 January 2014 at 2:27pm | IP Logged

Is Japanese intrinsically harder than Swedish or does it just seem that way to learners coming from a Germanic or Romance background? Is it possible that certain groups of people in Asia would regard Japanese as the easier of the two languages?

Say we take a monolingual Hungarian (to rule out obvious cognates with the Swedish) and a person who speaks only an Asian language (but one suitably disasocciated from Japanese) and teach them both Japanese and Swedish, Michael-Thomas style with no alphabet/script issues ramping up the early stages of the learning curve, just oral coaching. Assuming the two candidates are willing participants and have equal levels of intelligence, would there be any noticable difference in progress?
4 persons have voted this message useful

tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4496 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 61 of 159

09 January 2014 at 2:36pm | IP Logged

patrickwilken wrote:

FSI (say) says it takes x4 longer to learn Japanese than German at least to C1ish. Do
people think that this continues to hold as you go from C1 to C2? I could imagine that
once you are at C1-level the relative difficulty between languages narrows considerably.
Does anyone know from practical experience whether this is true?

If you are an English speaker, yes. With probably no prior knowledge of Asian languages.

Ceteris paribus situations are very, very rare.
1 person has voted this message useful

patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4322 days ago
1546 posts - 3200 votes

Studies: German

Message 62 of 159

09 January 2014 at 2:45pm | IP Logged

beano wrote:

That's an interesting, but different question from what I asked. :)

I take it for granted that as a native English speaker, it will take much longer for me to get to C1 in Japanese than German.

My question was will it take much longer to get to C2 in Japanese than German, once I get to C1 in both languages?

I could imagine that once you've got the grammar etc down, it's mostly exposure to new vocabulary etc. In which case I can imagine that the relative difficulty between the languages narrows significantly, but I have no idea whether that is really true or not. I was hoping amongst all the language experts here that someone might have some practical experience they could share.

Edited by patrickwilken on 09 January 2014 at 2:46pm
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4496 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 63 of 159

09 January 2014 at 2:51pm | IP Logged

patrickwilken wrote:

beano wrote:

That's an interesting, but different question from what I asked. :)

I take it for granted that as a native English speaker, it will take much longer for me
to get to C1 in Japanese than German.

My question was will it take much longer to get to C2 in Japanese than German, once I
get to C1 in both languages?

I could imagine that once you've got the grammar etc down, it's mostly exposure to new
vocabulary etc. In which case I can imagine that the relative difficulty between the
languages narrows significantly, but I have no idea whether that is really true or not.
I was hoping amongst all the language experts here that someone might have some
practical experience they could share.

Vocabulary is a much bigger stumbling block at higher levels than grammar is in my
experience.
3 persons have voted this message useful

Hungringo
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 3777 days ago
168 posts - 329 votes

Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish
Studies: French

Message 64 of 159

09 January 2014 at 3:30pm | IP Logged

beano wrote:

As a native Hungarian and also as someone who's spent some time with Japanese I can tell you the following:

For a Hungarian speaker Japanese grammar is more logical and easier than say German or even English grammar. (Sorry, I am not familiar enough with Swedish.) There are 2 things however, that Hungarian and Indo-European speakers alike would have to face: writing system and very complex levels of social registers. My overall conclusion is that if the Japanese adopted the Latin alphabet it would be easier for Hungarians to learn Japanese than e. g. German.

Edited by Hungringo on 09 January 2014 at 3:33pm

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