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Do you know any polyglots?

Ubbquittious

Or perhaps you are one yourself.
I met a Turkish woman one time who said all those damn Romance languages are the same and claimed to speak 6 or 7 languages. I had to take her word for it because I dont speak that many languages myself. I know plenty of people who speak 2 or 3 languages but any more than that is unusual.

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Signore Fancy Pants

Been studying Arabic for the last 5 years. Its complex enough, speaking and writing came easier to me than listening.

The differing dialects is a killer, plus the speed at which they talk.

Your Face

I'm fluent in English and GAA speak.

As the fella says.

amcalester

I speak tourist, it’s very similar to English only much louder and spoken at a slower pace.

Witchie

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.

Bannasidhe

Alessandro Magnificent Typesetter wrote: »

I got on well at languages - French, German and Irish at leaving cert, then Spanish in first year of college, getting from beginner to leaving cert level in one year. Wish to god I hadn't been lazy and had pursued them further. They came very easily to me - what a waste, and what an idiot I was!

I'm terrible at languages but I'm also a parrot so the bits I do know are usually said in a perfect example of the accent where I learned the phrase.
I order a few beers in Spanish for example and locals start chatting away to me and I'm like nope - that's all I have. Ordering beer and ham sammiches like a native. Complete with lisp in the appropriate places.

I have also been told - with much amusement on their part - by Parisians that I have a flawless Swiss accent when I use my few French phrases.

Does anyone else find when trying to communicate in 'not English' that they get one role of the word dice and could end up with the Irish word?

Happens me all the time. I once ended up trying to mime 'dress' in a Swiss dry cleaners as the only word my brain presented was 'gúna'. I thought it was very funny - the Swiss less so...

The other thing that happens me is as soon as I realise I am speaking 'not-English' I immediately lose the ability to do so. One time in Geneva I saw a note (in French) that a book I was interested in was available in English - so I asked - in my flawless Swiss accented French :pac: - for a copy of the book in English. The sales assistant asked me why when it was right there in French. I replied - in my flawless Swiss accented French - because I don't speak French. She looked confused and said but you are speaking French. And from that moment on I was incapable of speaking anything but English.

:D

Brother has the opposite problem - he switches from language to language with ease to such an extent that he doesn't know which language he is speaking at any given moment. He either understands it or he doesn't.
If you ask him what language he thinks in he has to think about it.

Gimme A Pound

Love it.

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

Alf Veedersane

Alessandro Magnificent Typesetter wrote: »

Love it.

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

Ron?

locum-motion

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)

locum-motion

Alessandro Magnificent Typesetter wrote: »

Love it.

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

"L'accent du Sud Ouest" in my case.

But since that's where I visited when I was a kid, that's hardly surprising.

Alf Veedersane

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

dermo888

Your definitely a polyglot.

In my case - I speak English and Spanish - Though my Spanish is getting rusty, it 'returns' within 2 to 3 days of landing in a Spanish speaking country or conversing with Spanish speakers. I'm reasonably conversant in Malay and Indonesian, and know enough Cantonese. As for Irish, it wrecked my head as a child, although I think if I went back to learn it, it would be much more fun.

OneArt

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.

Gimme A Pound

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!

OneArt

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.

Iwouldinmesack

meeeeh wrote: »

What is so special about Russian? It's Slavic language and part of Indo European languages. Among European languages I would consider Hungarian and Finnish the most unlike any other. Although I know people who find Hungarian language fairly easy to learn.

Estonian too, it's from the same language family as Finnish.

Gimme A Pound

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?"

Grayson

Tacklebox wrote: »

He's one lucky guy, able to what he loves, and enough money to do what he wants.

I admire people with rare sense.

Weirdly I have a list of college courses in my head that I'd do if I won the lottery.

Grayson

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)

Alf Veedersane

Anyone speak the lingo of North Sentinel Island?

I hear there's a job going in Trailfinders...

Ipso

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.

El Tarangu

I live in Belgium; nearly all Dutch speakers can speak flawless English and fairly good French, whereas many French speakers can't speak English, and in five years I don't think I have met a single Francophone who can converse easily in Dutch.

I speak English, Irish and French, can get by to certain extent in Spanish. I will try and learn Dutch at some stage; there are lots of Eurobubble-types who learn obscure languages for the craic, but I can't imagine going to the effort to learn a language unless there was a burning need to.

Jessie Belle

gifted wrote: »

I Speak Cork....you know like.

Do I speak more languages...I do ya.

Not fluently though obviously or you would include boy.

feargale

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

Is it necessary to learn all these languages?

If you speak more slowly and a bit louder and point a lot, you can still get your point across to the natives.

Better still, you could get a job with the Spice Girls. They say all Posh ever did in the band was point.

feargale

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?

yerwanthere123

I work with a lot of Eastern Europeans, and usually there's a lot of mutual intelligibility between the languages they speak. Most impressive was a Slovak guy who speak six languages. Slovak (his mother tongue), Czech (similar to Slovak and lived in Prague for a few years), Polish (similar to Slovak and Czech), Russian (learnt in school as a child), Italian (Italian grandparent and lived in Rome for four years) and English (learnt in school and living and working in Ireland). Impressive!

Ipso

El Tarangu wrote: »

I live in Belgium; nearly all Dutch speakers can speak flawless English and fairly good French, whereas many French speakers can't speak English, and in five years I don't think I have met a single Francophone who can converse easily in Dutch.

I speak English, Irish and French, can get by to certain extent in Spanish. I will try and learn Dutch at some stage; there are lots of Eurobubble-types who learn obscure languages for the craic, but I can't imagine going to the effort to learn a language unless there was a burning need to.

Supposedly at one point the closest language to English was Frisian, which was a dialect of Durch.

Ubbquittious

Ipso wrote: »

Supposedly at one point the closest language to English was Frisian, which was a dialect of Durch.

Interesting. I know someone who speaks Frisian. Will get to see her in the next few weeks. Dieing to see the similarities

Ipso

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Interesting. I know someone who speaks Frisian. Will get to see her in the next few weeks. Dieing to see the similarities

It diverged a good while ago, though.

meeeeh

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.

English grammar is very simple in comparison to some other languages. (I'm not saying I am great at it). German is much harder for me but pronunciation and spelling of German words would be easier to learn. Similar with Italian.

Iwouldinmesack

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.