Do you know any polyglots?

Nosnon wrote: »

A guy I use to work with spoke, read and wrote 7 languages. He's from Latvia and after 2 years living around Kildare improving his English he upped sticks and moved to deepest darkest Connemara to learn Irish. He achieved his goal to speak,read and write it in about 3 years.

Last time I spoke to him on Facebook he was in New Zealand trying to learn Maori and was then planning to head to America to try some Native American languages.

He is a welder by trade so can go anywhere but also his grandmother left him (only grandchild) about €5m when she passed away.

Tell him to pop by Kuala Lumpur someday and I will teach him some Bahasa Malaya. I can't speak it meself mind, but with him being rich and all, I will learn.

I have an Uncle who is Dutch and speaks, Dutch (obviously) German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. He also understands and speaks a little Bahasa Indonesia as his parents were both brought up in Indonesia and when he visited me in Malaysia he could understand a lot of what was being said.

How many languages do you need to speak, and how well do you need to be able to speak them, to be considered "polyglot"?

My first language is English.

I did Irish in school for 14 years; I could hold a very basic conversation in it now with no practice, and with a bit of practice more would come back. I consider Irish to be a very illogical & difficult language.

I did French in school for 8 years (was lucky in that my primary school offered it to 5th & 6th class pupils who's parents were willing to pay for the teacher. Did it on Sat mornings). Got an A in the Leaving. (31 years ago)

I did Spanish in school for 5 years. Found it a doddle because it was so similar to French. Got a B in the LC.

I can still speak both French & Spanish almost fluently, and regularly use both.

In the past, I have been able to hold mutually intelligible conversations with Italians and Portuguese because there was enough similarities that we could muddle through. More recently, I've picked up enough Italian that I can go through an evening in a restaurant without having to resort to asking if the waiter speaks English.

I did German for 3 days in school, before switching to Spanish class. But I've also visited Switzerland & Austria a lot, and Germany once. Like Italian, I can get by ordering drinks or from a menu, paying for it etc.

In the past, I've learned some very basics in a few other languages such as "Hello", "Goodbye", "Please", "Thank you", "I don't speak X, Do you speak English". Mostly forgotten now, but at the time of visiting the relevant countries I would have been able to say some or all of those things in Egyptian Arabic, Dutch, Croatian, Czech & Russian.

And I can say "Am pasas la llet, si us plau" in Catalan. It means "Pass me the milk, please." Really surprised the family I was staying with in Barcelona when I popped that one out (went for 3 weeks when I was 14 to improve my Spanish. Didn't realise til I got there that Spanish (Castillian) was actually their 2nd language and they were only speaking it for my benefit.)


Does that make me a polyglot?

(I myself don't think it does, BTW)

I can't help but think of this as the handiest way to get over a language barrier

Deleted User wrote: »

A friend's daughter speaks 4 fluently and she's 10. I don't know any adults who can do the same.

My girlfriend's nephew is on his way to three. Mother speaks Vietnamese to him, father speaks Danish, with each other and around most social situations, it's English.

Girlfriend has Vietnamese, very good English, good Spanish, and is learning Mandarin. Not fluent but good nonetheless.

Those are lucky children. People who grew up speaking multiple languages don't impress me much, honestly. That's how they were raised, it's totally natural for them.


I'm FAR more impressed with people who learn a foreign language to a high level of fluency as adults. Because learning a language after puberty is DAMN HARD. I'm totally fluent in German now, but over the last eight years there were so many times I just wanted to give up and thought I'd never get a real grasp of the language. Glad I stuck with it though but damn... If you ever feel you have too much confidence, learning German will put you in your place.


Interestingly, a lot of linguists find that those who grew up bi/multilingual actually have a more difficult time learning a new language as adults, since their brains are naturally used to switching between two languages. They often have to take the extra step and actually learn how to learn.

Alessandro Magnificent Typesetter wrote: »

Some aspects of German are actually quite easy in my opinion - it can be so similar in structure to English at times. E.g. "She is so... [insert adjective]" is "Sie ist so..." And usually in non English languages you'd say "the parents of Richard" for "Richard's parents" but in German (the German for parents is Eltern) "Richards Eltern". No apostrophe either. All nouns start with a capital letter, strangely.

However that's just surface stuff - dig into the more intricate stuff and it can be TOUGH! The cases - oh god the cases!

Once I got my head around the cases I actually quite enjoyed using them. Although I've read the cases in Slavic languages are worse (they often have up to 7... including the instrumental and vocative cases... ugh).


I will say German is damn difficult at the beginning. Once you hit a certain point though, it actually becomes ridiculously easy and you advance pretty quickly. With a certain level of vocab, you can literally build words to explain concepts and it'll make total sense even if no one's used that word before.



I actually think that although English and Spanish are quite easy at the start, they get more and more difficult the further you advance. Spanish grammar in particular seems like a doddle at the beginning but it can get very complicated.

Alessandro Magnificent Typesetter wrote: »

All the Spanish tenses!

Yeah my Czech friend was telling me about the cases. Mind ****, although one language that part of it reminded me of is Irish.

A lot of English must be a breeze - no genders for the subject, nowhere near the amount of cases, no formal you. But the tenses must be a headwreck. There isn't an equivalent of the "do" part in "do you go", there isn't an equivalent of "are you going" either or "are you going to go" - it's all just "go you?"

But there's words that have multiple meanings. They must be a head wreck. Imagine teaching someone to speak it and explaining taught and thought. Or teaching someone to spell it and explaining that tear is two words (Tear something or get a tear in your eye)

Alessandro Magnificent Typesetter wrote: »

Love it.

Yeah French people say I sound like I'm specifically from Burgundy when conversing in French.

That probably means you slur your words. Do you smell like Burgundy?

Ipso wrote: »

Anyone here who doesn’t have English as a first language? Was it difficult to learn, given it’s a bit of a mix of two different Indo European grouos.

Me. I'm Deaf however so its difficult anyway to learn a spoken language as I can't hear it being spoken. It would be a very different experience really coming from a Deaf persons perspective. I do know Deaf people who are fluent in multiple signed languages.