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How rare are polyglots | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 9 of 28 24 September 2007 at 6:11am | IP Logged |
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I know someone who speaks good English, seems to have a native command of French (he is a Belgian citizen) and very good Turkish. He has some knowledge of Dutch but denied fluency in it. When I asked him what his native language was, he surprised me by saying "Arabic". His family comes from the Hatay region of Turkey, where many people speak Syrian Arabic as a home language - it is a border region close to Syria. He cannot read Arabic well as the written language deviates quite considerably from his dialect.
He's an intelligent guy but his grasp of languages is in large part due to having ethnic roots in a minority group based in a border region of Turkey, and living in western Europe now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6570 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 10 of 28 24 September 2007 at 10:13am | IP Logged |
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I know a fellow who teaches Russian and Uzbek (his native languages) part-time here in Japan. He also speaks Japanese, Turkish, and English. I don't know if he additional languages besides those five, but those are what he uses in his work and daily life. Edited by Captain Haddock on 24 September 2007 at 10:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6044 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 11 of 28 24 November 2007 at 7:30am | IP Logged |
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This reminds me of a very good friend of mine.
He's a Turkmen who grew up in Iraq, lived in Iran, Turkey, Canada and now Holland. He is, of course, fluent in Arabic and Turkmen, has a very good command of Turkish and Kurdish, as well as Farsi. His Dutch is quite good now that he's been in the Netherlands for so long, as is his English. I have found that alot of people I have known from the Middle East spoke lots of languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6046 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 12 of 28 24 November 2007 at 8:30am | IP Logged |
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I think polyglots outnumber monoglots in the world.
Here, for example, most of the have at least a very good command of English. Also, very often people know German or Italian, sometimes French and recently Spanish is becoming very popular. In our high schools(gimnazija) we are offered numerous languages, one school even offering hebrew, japanese, chinese, greek, russian, Spanish, italian, french and German. But I also, just as winters I grew up surrounded by polyglots, so I view as normal to know more languages. My maternal side (as well) is largely multilingual. My mother is fluent in German, English, Croatian and French, my aunt and uncle know English, Croatian and German fluently and have an good command of French, and my grandfather knows English, German, Croatian, Italian and French. My grandmother is effectively bilingual in German and Croatian and even knows some Czech. We actually speak a mixture of German and Croatian when together. Edited by bushwick on 24 November 2007 at 8:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 13 of 28 24 November 2007 at 9:05am | IP Logged |
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On a world scale I think the monoglots are in a minority, and there may be tens of millions of people worldwide with a command of four or five languages.
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| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6044 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 14 of 28 24 November 2007 at 10:41am | IP Logged |
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It might be interesting to research that.
You have countries with huge populations where practically everyone is multilingual (India and Indonesia spring to my mind immediately). Then again, there are some very populous monolingual countries like the United States. I know that most Latin Americans are monolingual. That's a huge part of the world population, albeit not as huge a part as the countries first mentioned. In Africa again, almost everyone is multilingual, due to the ethnic diversity. Australia and New Zealand are largely monolingual countries (by default almost all Anglo-Saxon countries), but then again, not many people do live there. I wouldn't know about the majority of Chinese people... I imagine there are quite some polyglots there, but how many Pekinese would actually know another language besides Mandarin? Might be interesting to hear about that. So yes, I guess William Camden is right. Most people on this earth are at least bilingual. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6642 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 15 of 28 24 November 2007 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
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I remember reading about this in one of David Crystal's books: being polyglot is actually the norm; monoglots are the exception. (So this is not a topic that needs further research.) Some of the previous posters here explain how this comes to be. Edited by virgule on 24 November 2007 at 6:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6688 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 28 24 November 2007 at 7:01pm | IP Logged |
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In the US and Australia monoglots are the norm. The only multilingual people I know were immigrants.
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