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So You Want to Learn 5... | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Crimson_King Newbie United States Joined 6318 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 81 of 580 11 January 2007 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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German
Russian Arabic Mandarin Spanish 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lily Newbie Philippines Joined 6315 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: English, Tagalog* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 82 of 580 13 January 2007 at 11:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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German
Spanish Mandarin Russian Arabic Like Crimson_King, only a different order. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sumabeast Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6716 days ago 212 posts - 220 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 83 of 580 16 January 2007 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm still doubtful that it's humanly possible to attain native or near-native fluency in any more than 3 three languages. I think there are limits to how much the human brain can contain in these regards.
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| Kwame Newbie United States myspace.com/njmaveri Joined 6332 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Studies: English* | Message 84 of 580 16 January 2007 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I refuse to believe that! Besides, there are already people who prove such thinking to be incorrect. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6558 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 85 of 580 17 January 2007 at 3:43am | IP Logged | |||||
It's certainly unusual but not at all impossible. People like our own Iversen are proof of that, and I've met several people in real life who had accomplished that feat or were close to it. Edited by Captain Haddock on 17 January 2007 at 3:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6408 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 86 of 580 17 January 2007 at 4:05am | IP Logged | |||||
The only real limit is time, not how much the human brain can contain. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6455 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 87 of 580 17 January 2007 at 6:47am | IP Logged | |||||
It really depends on what you call 'near-native level'. Personally, I've met many people who are fluent in up to 5 or 6 languages, but hardly anybody who is 'near-native like' in more than one foreign language, as for me 'near-native level' includes being able to understand and make puns, understand literary allusions, having a broad knowledge of the culture of that language, being able to switch between registers (slang, colloquial, formal or literary), understanding rarely used words (especially things that any 10-year old native speaker knows: words for rare animals, plants, types of food, etc. Can you really consider someone to be at a near-native level who doesn't know what a platypus is?), almost never making grammar mistakes. Of course, this is a rather strict definition which many native speakers don't comply to, but since those are things that I am capable of in my native language, I wouldn't consider my level near-native-like unless I can do them in my target language too. I think it is close to impossible to master a language up to this level without having been immersed in it for an extended period of time (and among the people I know one year hasn't been sufficient for almost all of them, even for 'easy languages' such as English or French). I've never met anyone with native-like fluency in a foreign language who hadn't lived abroad for a long time. For example, I've studied French for 6 years at school and have been living in France for 2 years and I'm still not quite near-native, although people often think that I'm French or at least French-Canadian. Edited by Marc Frisch on 17 January 2007 at 7:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6455 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 88 of 580 17 January 2007 at 7:20am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, in his profile Iversen has only labelled three languages with 'Advanced fluency' and we'd have to ask him which of the three (if any) he considers to speak at a near-native level. Me too, I labelled two of my languages with 'Advanced fluency', but I'd be reluctant to say I'm near-native. Even people such as Ardaschir who know incredibly many languages, don't seem to speak many of them at a native-like level. What I gather from this thread is that he might have a native-like level in English, Korean, German, French, and Spanish, but even for those it's not sure... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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