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How many languages to be a polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 4894 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 97 of 123 10 September 2012 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say 4 or more, seeing as you have monolingual, bilingual and trilingual so that the amount of languages that a person speaks being four or more would make said person a 'polyglot' then if you speak a certain number you could then be named a hyperpolyglot or superpolyglot ...
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6497 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 98 of 123 10 September 2012 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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If six languages makes you a "hyperpolyglot", then you shouldn't use that word.
Erard chose the number eleven because his enquiry showed that there are relative few persons who claim that many languages, but even this isn't an absolute limit, just some kind of rule of thumb based on practical considerations. Edited by Iversen on 10 September 2012 at 8:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leonidus Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6120 days ago 113 posts - 123 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 99 of 123 10 September 2012 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say, 5 languages (including your native tongue) with no less than B2 level in all of them makes you a polyglot. There should not be more than 2 languages from the closely related language families (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese bunch, for example), so no discounts here.
10 languages makes you a hyperpolyglot, again no less than B2 level. Having said that, I am still working on my Mandarin and German to upgrade their B1 status to something more meaningful, thus can't wear the badge of polyglot just yet :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6703 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 100 of 123 10 September 2012 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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While I agree that a polyglot should have working knowledge in a "handful" languages (and more languages for a "hyperpolyglot", if the term is important), it's still not an easy question to answer.
Is the person who has worked hard to learn half a dozen Romance languages really less of a polyglot than someone who has picked up half a dozen unrelated languages during childhood? Not everyone will find related languages transparent enough to fully benefit from them during the learning process. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 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 101 of 123 10 September 2012 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||
And I myself never considered words like "brother" and "brat" (Russian, same meaning) similar, not before I started learning Finnish:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leonidus Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6120 days ago 113 posts - 123 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 102 of 123 11 September 2012 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
Wow, I'd like to see someone like that, someone who has at least B2 level in half a dozen languages just by hearing them as a child, without any of the hard work that any adult learner has to do. But unrelated is unrelated, of course, this is all relative too, like the example from Serpent's post above, and everyone has their own standards of what is a true polyglot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6703 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 103 of 123 11 September 2012 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, considering how (relatively) common it is to speak several languages in certain parts of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who have learned several semi-official languages in their town without even realizing it would be a difficult task for us other mortals.
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| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4459 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 104 of 123 12 September 2012 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
If I spoke language A at home, B with the locals and C in the office I expect that I'd be trilingual with little effort. Given the same circumstances, the rest of us mortals would probably manage it too. I suspect that language learning later on is tougher because we have so many other things to do with our time *and* we expect rapid results *and* we already know how to say pretty much everything in languages A, B and C which highlights our lack of proficiency in language D every time we try to speak. Kids have it easy: time on their hands and not bright enough to know their own limitations :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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