Multilinguals/Polyglots/Linguists/Bilinguals
>>I cut Wendy Vo a lot of slack because of her age. I can only judge the languages that I know and because I have never seen a recital of SO many languages. If a native speaker of Arabic says that her Arabic is wonderful, I can't dispute it. I only know a tiny bit of Arabic. Then there was the big thing: I couldn't do this at her age.
This isn't at all surprising. I could raise my own child like this, considering my huge fixation with languages, though not as strong as the true polyglots we recognize, with all the little phrasebooks I can fill in my would-be child's brain. lol
>>What struck me was how few of the HTLAL "polyglots" were able to judge her languages. Are they bluffing with their claims of nine languages?
I still think Farber's book is a series of myths. I just think I simply couldn't conceivably live a life like his, even if I were allowed to live ten times again. I'm not joking - how could you meet Nationalist troops, Hungarian refugees, Yugoslavian athletes, Indonesian sailors and so on? Since polyglots are essentially people in their own right, I can't help thinking about bluffs, or to take everything with a huge grain of salt.
In the deep inner-me, I think I'm and I shall remain a happy man for being a monolingual blunt Chinese. I don't have much contact with the outside world anyway, so what's the point of claiming? That's more like a question about life in general. My (ex-)teachers still wondered whether and why I didn't travel. That was more like a literature question I could ask with a lot of rant. I'm not entitled to choose my own birth, and while I have the freedom to be asked and to have free choice, there's exactly no absolute freedom that allows me to visit you tomorrow. So, here I am, I'd just stay, sit down peacefully, open my little phrasebook/manual and read it happily for the rest of my afternoon today.
I think if one can speak at least 3 foreign languages he has to have practice all the time and not just in everyday talk but also in different fields economic, politic, music and so on. and if one achieves this success with these language he has to find all the time possibility to practise it with different people... so far i know no person who is able to keep all foreign languages conserved in his mind without loosing fluency if he does not speak it for a long time. so this so named 'level of fluency' can soon be lost. what do you think? or maybe there is someone who can keep language in its fluency without practising it?
"I still think Farber's book is a series of myths. I just think I simply couldn't conceivably live a life like his, even if I were allowed to live ten times again. I'm not joking - how could you meet Nationalist troops, Hungarian refugees, Yugoslavian athletes, Indonesian sailors and so on? Since polyglots are essentially people in their own right, I can't help thinking about bluffs, or to take everything with a huge grain of salt."
Farber was a boy during WWII and the world situation was different. I was surprised by his book too, but I'm not going to say he's bluffing. I was thinking about his languages tonight. I imagine that English, Norwegian and Mandarin are his best languages along with French and Spanish. LOL. Maybe he'll stop in here and tell me no, he's better at other languages! It's certainly possible to maintain five languages. It's when we get into big numbers that I have big doubts.
I'm FAMILIAR with languages that I never claim to speak. I think it's funny when someone completes a TY course, then claims to "know" the language. Maybe they do, but I'm not sure I would go there.
Uno habría de vivir de manera muy extraña para hablar tantos idiomas. Yo prefiero una vida más o menos normal. Me alegro de que no tenga el síndrome de obsesión compulsiva, pues me parece que lo tienen aquellos señores que aprenden 20 idiomas.
"Me alegro de que no tenga el síndrome de obsesión compulsiva, pues me parece que lo tienen aquellos señores que aprenden 20 idiomas."
If one studies the languages like one reads a book, then I see no harm in it for people who can retain the information. How many people read junk novels? At least there is some benefit in language learning. It's different from the person who checks doorknobs or a germaphobe. LOL. Well, I hope so anyway. Prof. A. of HTLAL indicates that he listens to languages in the background like others listen to music. I think Charles Berlitz also did that.
"manera muy extraña para hablar tantos idiomas."
This is a fair observation.
>>Farber was a boy during WWII and the world situation was different.
That might be more than an issue about celebrities in general, for _who_ they have become in our eyes... it is ultimately just a viewpoint. We have observed celebrities, ordinary individuals who are either claimed to be great polyglots or simply frauds, and scholars who both learn and study multiple languages beyond your imagination... but after all, ordinary people would simply boil down the whole issue to, just, that whether you can speak a tongue at all.
I am working on a drug to give eternal life, or at least life longer than 16-18 times that which we now have. This will enable people to really reach a new level of poliglottery. People will on average speak up to 30 languages (2 for each extra lifetime). But that's just ordinary people. People who like languages will be able to speak up to 150-200 languages no problem! I am looking forward to these days of linguistic prosperity.
"That might be more than an issue about celebrities in general, for _who_ they have become in our eyes... it is ultimately just a viewpoint."
I guess I am willing to believe that Farber met Chinese military members in the South during WWII. From what I've read, Europe was a big mess after WWII, orphans, wandering souls, black markets, etc., so I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Farber had some of those experiences. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if they were exaggerated, either.
I think Farber-like, Steve K.-like polyglots are quite possible with a bit of enthusiasm and discipline-it's not the "James Bond" polyglot, but it's possible to acheive this level. It helps to be outgoing.
<<Xie pwns!>>
I too, enjoy reading Xie's posts.
I'm not saying, that Barry Farber IS fabricating, btw. Like many things, it's impossible to know many things about the language levels of polyglots without throughly examining them in person-but who would be qualified?
K.T., you have an unhealthy obsession with false polyglots. Just relax a little and breathe easily.
I'd say most polyglots do it for personal satisfaction anyway, so it doesn't matter whether other people think they're qualified or not. They don't have to prove anything to anyone. It isn't a sport where the winner gets a million dollars. If someone is exaggerating, well what of it? Who doesn't exaggerate from time to time. Better an exaggerator than one of those eternally modest people who'd rather die than admit they did something good.
>>I guess I am willing to believe that Farber met Chinese military members in the South during WWII.
So I'd say it's more like a question of personal fortunes. Prof. A would definitely "concur" with common (but little heard) opinions that people tend not to learn as many languages as their ancestors (esp. your Western counterparts) did. Very few people really get through the stage of ineffective language education... it might have been the same story in America in 1945, but conceivably learning foreign tongues, except people like the US military personnels and, maybe, subject peoples who have to learn colonial tongues to earn a living... or whatnot... is rather futile in the common mindset.
But I'd take this view with a huge grain of salt. First, I don't think Europeans before the WWI (or WWII, whatever you like) knew more languages than their descendants now. The free flow of info. may have made English even more prevalent, but it also encourages learning *some* others in some ways. Kaufmann did point out this. He simply didn't, naturally, have the privilege to use mp3 players, the internet, and so on in the 60s. (My whole family were either living under Mao or the trauma of the Vietnam War, ... and all of them simply had similar linguistic experiences as everybody in those days)
You may well say materials have been dumbed down substantially...even with the most obvious evidence through comparing different courses... but the reality still remains that, to be fluent in (now, I add the conditions) a _popular_ language with a _rich_ literary tradition, such as any language you can name with your monolingual countrymen without getting them bewildered, you have to read a lot (e.g.) anyway. Does the coming of new eras necessarily mean dumbing down, just like how inflection is said to be destined to "decline" in the course of known history?
I can't deny that certain stuff is really getting dumbed down, but it sounds sort of too pessimistic, while ignoring the merits of new small talks. Those who support this theory aren't certainly proposing to fix grammatical rules, vocab, and content and design of courses like commandants, but I think they _are_ very possibly those who say, for example, the western canon is über alles. Yeah, I do think reading a few classics is a darn good job to do, but as they would also say, with some reservations, we do learn for different reasons, don't we?
"I'd say most polyglots do it for personal satisfaction anyway, so it doesn't matter whether other people think they're qualified or not."
Agree.
"Better an exaggerator than one of those eternally modest people who'd rather die than admit they did something good."
I'd rather see some sort of accuracy. It would be better for the big-number polyglots (hyperpolyglots) to say something like this:
'I've studied thirty languages because I enjoy them, but I can only speak six really well and ten others more or less. The others I only read.' That's what I what to know-the truth, not the fish tale.
"Very few people really get through the stage of ineffective language education... " -Xie
K. T.: Agree.
"Kaufmann did point out this. He simply didn't, naturally, have the privilege to use mp3 players, the internet, and so on in the 60s."-Xie
K. T.: Yes, but I'll bet that people of his generation had access to record players and Living Language was producing records in the sixties, maybe before that-wait I saw "1958" on one course. During the time of wind-up players, there were also recorded language lessons. This is mentioned in the book "Cheaper by the Dozen."
(My whole family were either living under Mao or the trauma of the Vietnam War, ... and all of them simply had similar linguistic experiences as everybody in those days)-Xie
K. T.: Hmmm. Does this mean subjugating one's feelings for one's language and learning Mandarin or Cantonese to get along or something like studying Russian in Mainland China?
"Does the coming of new eras necessarily mean dumbing down, just like how inflection is said to be destined to "decline" in the course of known history?"-Xie
K. T.: I don't know, but I think people want things faster and are lazier.