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Polyglot linguists

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
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joan.carles
Bilingual Pentaglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6093 days ago

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Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin
Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian

 
 Message 1 of 18
15 October 2007 at 1:36pm | IP Logged 
Under polyglots there are lists of actors, politicians, fashion people, but what about linguists themselves. Not in the sense of polyglots but the people dedicated to linguistics. It is not that obvious that all of them are or should be polyglots. We have a very well known case in Noam Chomsky, who claims that speaks only English although having changed the theory of language since the last century.

Instead, there are cases of linguists that have written books on many languages that they knew themselves. For example, Rasmus Rask, who at a certain point in his life mastered more than 20 languages and worked on a Spanish, a Frisic, an Italian...grammars.

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FSI
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6119 days ago

550 posts - 590 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 2 of 18
15 October 2007 at 1:57pm | IP Logged 
Kenneth Hale for sure. There are numerous accounts of him speaking dozens of languages with people throughout his life and career as a linguist. Here's his biography at wikipedia, and here are many letters written by friends and colleagues upon his retirement. There's a good thread about him here.

Recently, I had fun reading about Daniel Everett in the "world's toughest language" thread. He lists the languages he's studied in his CV. Like Ken, he also seems to be a guy driven by a passion to discover more about languages of indigenous people; he traveled to Brazil, learned Portuguese to near-native fluency, and obtained a PhD in the language to enable him to study Pirahã (the people and the language) in depth.

Besides these two, I'd also be curious to learn more about Claude Piron. I haven't been able to find out anything about how he learned his languages, and I'm sure his story must be an interesting one. In addition to being one of the very rare UN translators who worked in more than three languages, there's a page here with articles he's written in over a dozen languages.

Edited by FSI on 15 October 2007 at 2:00pm

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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6463 days ago

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Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
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 Message 3 of 18
15 October 2007 at 4:20pm | IP Logged 
I think that essentially monolinguistic linguists like Chomsky are more an exception than the rule. At least in Europe every linguist would be required to learn several languages already as a student, and most would probably want to add a few languages more along the way. However few apparently get beyond 10-12, maybe because they have to be real experts on at least some of them to keep their jobs (and their self-esteem), and that is bound to take time from the more leisurely language accumulation that some people permit themselves to indulge in. Among the professional linguists that I have met in person the one with the most languages under his belt was probably the late professor Martinet, and as far as I know he didn't claim fluency in more than about a dozen languages. In the US the dominant movement among linguists before Chomsky was the socalled structuralism, which was basically a method to collect languages, - so many of these people probably also knew a fair number of languages. I hope that this tradition hasn't been totally lost through the Chomsky revolution, but maybe some of our American members know more about that.   


Edited by Iversen on 15 October 2007 at 4:51pm

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Captain Haddock
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
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Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek

 
 Message 4 of 18
15 October 2007 at 9:03pm | IP Logged 
I provide no solid data, but it was always my impression that most American linguists, ironically enough, speak no language other than English.

For example, there's a foremost expert on Semitic and Middle Eastern languages who often takes part in heated Internet discussions on Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and various dead languages. And yet, it appears he speaks none of them.

Likewise, I've read the odd academic paper on Japanese written by linguists who appeared not to actually speak Japanese.

Edited by Captain Haddock on 15 October 2007 at 9:05pm

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Renaçido
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 4844 days ago

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Speaks: Spanish*, English, French
Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin

 
 Message 5 of 18
03 February 2011 at 6:34am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
I think that essentially monolinguistic linguists like Chomsky are more an exception than the rule. At least in Europe every linguist would be required to learn several languages already as a student, and most would probably want to add a few languages more along the way. However few apparently get beyond 10-12, maybe because they have to be real experts on at least some of them to keep their jobs (and their self-esteem), and that is bound to take time from the more leisurely language accumulation that some people permit themselves to indulge in. Among the professional linguists that I have met in person the one with the most languages under his belt was probably the late professor Martinet, and as far as I know he didn't claim fluency in more than about a dozen languages. In the US the dominant movement among linguists before Chomsky was the socalled structuralism, which was basically a method to collect languages, - so many of these people probably also knew a fair number of languages. I hope that this tradition hasn't been totally lost through the Chomsky revolution, but maybe some of our American members know more about that.   
Chomsky, a monoglot? Really?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WveI_vgmPz8
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Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*, Spanish, German
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 Message 6 of 18
03 February 2011 at 8:50am | IP Logged 
I think in that video the third person there was probably the interpreter, but they edited out the interpretation because the subtitles are there.

EDIT: I watched more of the video and actually he does seem to reply immediately without need of interpretation. So I guess I'm not sure what to think. Maybe if Chomsky states himself to be monolingual it's that the cannot function in conversational French that doesn't pertain to his subject matter, but I'm purely speculating here, since one would obviously need to have pretty advanced skills for that conversation.

Edited by Journeyer on 03 February 2011 at 8:54am

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Declan1991
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Ireland
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 Message 7 of 18
03 February 2011 at 1:23pm | IP Logged 
Linguistics does not mean learning lots of languages. While the two often go hand in hand, there is no reason why you would have to speak lots of languages fluently to analyze them. Indeed, some field linguistics requires that you learn and analyze a language without being able to speak the language or have any communication with the native speakers before hand. Knowing another language, unless related, would be absolutely useless in that regard.
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Keilan
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4846 days ago

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Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 8 of 18
24 March 2011 at 8:19am | IP Logged 
I would echo what Declan is saying here. You don't need to speak multiple languages to be a linguist. In fact you could quite comfortably carry out sociolinguistic studies for your whole life in English speaking communities without ever feeling a call to speak another language.

That being said, most of the linguists or future linguists (which I most likely am) very much like language, and have a desire to learn more about it, whether that be playing with a language for an afternoon or putting in years to become fluent.


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