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Why not Spanish as essential? | ||
Tags: Polyglot Academy | Language Importance | L3 via L2 | Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | Choosing a Language | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| BOLIO Senior Member United States Joined 4658 days ago 253 posts - 366 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 113 of 115 11 April 2014 at 8:59pm | IP Logged |
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I have read 14 pages and understand what the Prof A was saying. I also understand that because of work, family, life, etc. that I will never be able to live in the world of Academia that he lives in. However, I would like to speak, read and write 5 languages before I die. Is that a Polyglot? To me it is but I understand that that would be just the tip of the iceberg for many of you.
Spanish is my L2. French or Russian will be my L3. The other will be my L4. Arabic or Persian sounds exciting. In my 20's I spent 13 glorious months in Korea and can still order food, beer and fun in the language...maybe. Or maybe I will meet someone from a tribe in central america who speaks a language I don't yet know exists. I am in Love with Spanish. I hope to fall in Love with three more before I go. To James' point, at what number of languages does it make a difference? If I am part of Academia and I speak English, learn Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic vs German, French, Russian and Arabic, how much have I hamstrung or limited myself because I mastered Spanish instead of German? Is it measurable? It is just very hard for a poor boy who only graduated from a State University in the USA to relate. But it has been very interesting to watch the responses of those that it greatly matters. It is just one more reason why I love this place. Carry on. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5130 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 114 of 115 11 April 2014 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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This whole discussion is based on the premise that language learning has to rely on translation, and that you therefore need study materials in some other language. It’s a false premise. Maybe it’s true for the study of Old Norse etc., or study without access to native speakers whatsoever, or for the study of linguistic aspects of a certain language without actually aspiring to learn the language itself, and maybe some other niche and scholarly fields of study, but for living languages with an actual speaker base which is accessible to some degree it is clearly not necessary to rely on language learning materials.
I know people here love their language learning materials, but it strikes me as a ludicrous idea to insist on the necessity of language learning materials for learning languages and becoming a polyglot. Not long ago most people on this planet were illiterate, but multilingualism was and still is the norm in many regions of the world. Even today most of the world’s languages have no written form but are being learned. In my travels, I’ve met many multilingual people who haven’t learned their second languages using textbooks in some other language. They invariably have learned their languages through exposure, necessity (e.g., to trade in the market), or instruction in the second language (e.g., government schools in areas where minority languages are spoken). Now I understand that if you want to read through a certain list of great works of literature as fast as possible, then maybe you should learn English, French and German first, buy heaps of dictionaries and then cram your Assimil or Teach Yourself or what-have-you. But if you want to learn living languages and want to get to know the people and their culture, you don’t necessarily need textbooks. It has been asserted that those materials in English, French and German are ‘of the highest quality’, but I’ve yet to see a solid trustworthy scientific study that proves the superiority of the textbook-translation-dictionary approach when compared against a well-designed monolingual one (in the target language). My point is: Alexander Arguelles is probably right about not including Spanish in his must-learn list of bridge languages, but he has a very narrow view of language learning irrelevant to most multilingual people on this planet. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 115 of 115 12 April 2014 at 12:56am | IP Logged |
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I think an important factor is that there are various kinds of translations in language learning. My main issue with the "natural method" resources is that they just lump everything together and abolish all translations.
For a learner, the biggest problem with translating is dependency, not being able to stop. Many translate things instead of thinking in the language, some are lured by a false sense of security provided by parallel texts and dictionaries. There's a medical expression that everything given by nature can be a cure or a poison. You just need to use it wisely, and I think it definitely applies to translations as well. I myself usually avoid translation exercises, but I find L2-L3 dictionaries and L2-L3 listening-reading very useful. I find that connections between words etc are important, but they should be weak enough that you can ignore them. To me the alternative to this is learning a language by immersion, to the point of excluding other languages you know. This doesn't seem like a good path to polyglottery though, given the need to maintain your "old" languages even if you learn more or less one language at a time. This reminds me on Cristina's experience with Italian. She learned it through immersion and native materials, and her Spanish was temporarily gone. It can certainly be avoided, but it's a case of limits giving you freedom. Most "natural polyglots" don't choose it, don't have the myriad of options that an aspiring polyglot has. They learn what life forces on them, without the luxury of being able to choose whether they like German, French or Spanish more. We doubt our choice so much exactly because we have it. Edited by Serpent on 12 April 2014 at 12:57am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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