Lawyer/Polyglot/Fifty plus languages
http://muhamedmesic.com/english/about.htm
I don't know much about him, but I saw him on youtube (in Bosnian, I think-I could only catch a few words) and there was some mention of him on other sites.
I really enjoy learning about polyglots-especially polyglots who work in another field. I can't judge the validity of this large claim, but since it's a large number, I thought I'd add it here for discussion.
I heard that Muhamed Mesic could fly too.I am serious.He could fly,not just levitate.Hehehe.
Muhamed Mesic may be a hoax of international proportion.Where is the proof he speaks more than 50 languages?Talk is cheap.Claim is cheaper.
Read the FAQ and you will see he does not claim to speak 50 languages. He claims to speak about 12 fluently I think.
I offer it here for discussion like any big claim. The question is always this: "What is knowing a language?"
How high is the bar? Or how low is the bar?
Yes, I like to hear polyglots showing off. It isn't showing off to me, it's proof, proof that the critics are wrong. It's possible to learn more than seven languages fluently.
Okay, the claim is that he can "communicate" in 56 languages.
Lie,hoax,fake.I doubt if he can even speak Bosnian properly.Muhamed Mesic may be one of the many delusional guys on this earth who think they are supermen.There was a guy in my apartment building who believed he could fly after smoking something.He decided one day to silence his critics by demonstrating his flying skill by jumping the window.His death was the talk of the town for a long time.We are language learners so we know how hard it is to learn even to communicate at a basic level.If somebody claims he or she can speak or communicate in more than 10 languages without any proof,it is almost certain that person is a lying attention seeker.
Muhamed Mesic is nothing compared to this man:Giuseppe Mezzofanti.He spoke 72 languages.You want proof?Sorry.He was long dead.The "greatest" living polyglot is Farah Ziad who claims to speak 58 languages but when he was tested on a TV show in Chile,he didn't understand even simple sentences in Mandarn,Russian and Farsi.That is the sad truth about polyglots.They are like Big Foot or UFO.They may be out there but so far all we see is big hoaxes,like Muhamed Mesic and Farah Ziad.
Only God if it exists is really polyglot.
My recent favourite lines: (HIGGINS.) He can learn a language in a fortnight -knows dozens of them. A sure mark of a fool. As a phonetician, no good whatever.
Polyglottery is good for individuals (what a shame I can't be a "judge" this time). Well, everyone has their own aspirations. "I"'m not so much amazed by a polyglot who doesn't work on languages (I still revere our professor for being a real professional of this subject), because I'd sound like a human phrase book if I were like that. I'd already consider myself a polyglot if I can speak German, French and Russian as well in the foreseeable future.
There are many facets of polyglottery, and it's up to people to claim. Definitely, I'd say you speak one only when you are fairly proficient with the whole grammar with a large vocabulary base, in which case my English is certainly beyond a "usable" level. But then, what else can you do with this funny language you can speak? I bet my English is already enough for me to stay in the US forever, but there are so many vocab gaps that I still think my English sucks, and this doesn't mean high enough fluency by my own standard.
In fact, when I have read about our professor's story, while I still find him to a great role model (sort of, since his advice at least works for himself and somewhat for me too), I certainly have rather different aspirations. I'm fascinated by his own confession that his use of his "repertoire" is limited to, AFAIK, his academic career and some high culture stuff (namely novels), and he for obvious reasons isn't a person who has to deal with people from everywhere everyday, and he doesn't, AFAIK, watch much foreign TV, either. This is natural, since everyone only has 24 hours a day, and this is what I think to be his own valid reason of just focusing on his career. As a mere mortal, I think I'd already be very glad to be able to just read novels (or in our webmasters' words, receive input only), when I'm familiar enough with _____ grammar (ok, let me say English here). I couldn't expect to meet 24 foreigners to speak in my 24 languages every day, so why bother? Then, I think it's still fun to know just 24 grammars to read novels of 24 languages, maybe one per week or two, with some round-up revision on Sundays.
Besides, thus, I wouldn't be so picky as to say a polyglot's language X sucks when s/he misses a syllable or a word or makes some silly mistakes. I think it's already great to just read novels of 24 languages without even speaking at least a few of them regularly, even just to yourself. There must be some individuals who like foreign sounds per se, but I'm quite into it - when I can still read X today, I'd go ahead; when I can't, I'd just pick up my primers (and possibly courses), pick up X again in an hour and read a novel in it again. I'm an enthusiast myself, but I don't see the point of getting obsessed with word endings or dictionaries or something like that. All I want is context or... well, fascinating stuff as a novel or a film, even if I have to rely on translations all the time, even if an average Joe would pick on my language ability.
I am not sure I am good at my mother tongue.There are a lot of words in literature and science I don't know.There are a lot of local variations of my language that sound so "foreign".That is why it is ridiculous when somebody,like Muhamed Mesic claims to "speak" so many languages.Yet there are people who believe him.
I was sceptical about polyglots too, but then I realised that it shouldn't be impossible for someone to be a language 'genius'. I mean, you get them in music and maths all the time so why not languages? People can remember pi to hundreds of thousands of decimal places and do huge calculations in their heads in seconds, so why couldn't they memorise hundreds of thousands of words? It wouldn't be normal, but it's possible.
It should be noted though, that these musical and mathematical geniuses usually shine their brightest when young, the rest of us can catch up eventually but with a lot of hard work. I wonder if it'd be the same for languages...
Of course there are language geniuses but for sure it is not Muhamed Mesic because there is absolutely no proof he can communicate in the 50+ languages he claimed.It would be interesting to know if he even passed the TOEFL.