Dear Language Professionals: How do you become a Polyglot?

General discussion about learning languages
Speakeasy
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Re: Dear Language Professionals: How do you become a Polyglot?

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Feb 08, 2019 4:58 pm

David1917 wrote: ... Also bear in mind, at least with the Germans, that you might encounter such absurdly outdated terms like Fraulein...
Not at my age, I wouldn't! That is, at my age, the use of "Fraulein" would be neither outdated nor absurd. ;)
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reineke
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Re: Dear Language Professionals: How do you become a Polyglot?

Postby reineke » Fri Feb 08, 2019 5:11 pm

"Polyglot" and "erudite" are best left for obituaries.
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Cèid Donn
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Re: Dear Language Professionals: How do you become a Polyglot?

Postby Cèid Donn » Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:35 pm

Inst wrote:One big question for me is that I'm pretty pretentious and well, my goal is to be able to read important texts in their original language (although Latin and Greek are rather down the list). How proficient do you have to be in a given language to say, do Hegel, Durkheim, Voltaire, and so on?


Once upon a time I was a theo/phil grad student and while my French at the time wasn't good enough to read original texts with ease, my German was, more or less. I read Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and far too much Heidegger, among so others. I used to joke about philosophical German being it's own ring of hell. German is a very precise language in many ways, and philosophy is a very abstract intellectual endeavor. The intersection this creates, linguistically, is fascinating--lots of really big ideas crammed into really big German words--but not easy for a non-native Germans speaker. I wouldn't suggest any German learner subjecting themselves to that until their reading skills are solidly B2 or higher. And to get there from a complete beginner stage (for a native English speaker) would take you at least 2 years for very extensive work, in my opinion. By the time I started grad school, I had 4 years of German in school plus a number of years of general use of German with casual reading and interaction with German speakers in the US, mostly in academia, music or the arts. And all of these philosophers that I was reading then were figures I had already studied in English so I was already very familiar with their thinking and ideas. It was still hellish. Rewarding, but hellish.

As for Voltaire, I think much of his work is easily accessible to B1-B2 level students of French, but he does use some archaic words and phrases as well as bits of humor that require some historical background knowledge. But this is why annotated editions are your friend. I haven't done a lot of phil or other so-called "soft science" reading in French because since leaving grad school, as I would need to be paid very handsomely to afflict myself so, but I have read some political writings by Camus and found them easy enough for my B2-range reading skills, albeit boring and dreadfully dated.

Now, if you want a language that can fast track you into reading original philosophical texts and the like, try Latin. Granted, it'll all be older, pre-Enlightenment stuff, but most Latin learning methods are geared toward reading proficiency and most Latin texts printed today are heavily annotated, so you could be reading philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Boethius, as well as some of 17th century philosophers who were still writing in Latin, relatively quickly if you put in the work.
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Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Re: Dear Language Professionals: How do you become a Polyglot?

Postby AML » Fri Feb 08, 2019 9:05 pm

Inst wrote:In general, do stepping stone strategies work? Say, if I wanted to learn Arabic, I'd try to learn the more European-friendly Hebrew first, then move on into Arabic?


Don't learn Hebrew just because you think it will make learning Arabic easier. If you're super interested in Arabic, but not Hebrew, then just go straight to Arabic. Many of the concepts are the same, so you may as well learn those concepts in your true target language. Stepping stone strategy works only if you plan to learn both languages to fluency anyway. For example, if you KNOW that you are going to learn both Dutch and German, then go ahead and learn Dutch first. It will be easier if you're a native English speaker. If you KNOW that you're going to learn both Hebrew and Arabic, then, sure, go ahead and learn Hebrew first. It's painful in its own right but not as painful as Arabic. And so on...
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Re: Dear Language Professionals: How do you become a Polyglot?

Postby Skynet » Fri Feb 08, 2019 11:22 pm

Inst wrote: In general, do stepping stone strategies work? Say, if I wanted to learn Arabic, I'd try to learn the more European-friendly Hebrew first, then move on into Arabic? In the case of Chinese -> Japanese, the skill pick-up is that Chinese forces you to systematically learn Sinograms and you pick up a lot of cognates (including false cognates) in the process. For decent Chinese fluency, you basically know way more kanji than Japanese speakers do, so when you go down to the Kanji, it's just a problem of Shinjitai and traditional character forms, as well as characters not seen in modern Chinese (old characters, characters invented by the Japanese). The hour time for Chinese is 4400, if you treat Japanese as 6600 for English speakers, then Chinese to Japanese, with Chinese fluency, is actually faster than learning Japanese on its own.

The biggest application I can think of, given that I'm already dead set on doing Japanese eventually, is for the Hebrew -> Arabic shift. Hebrew is a Level 3 language by FSI. Arabic is a Level 4 language by FSI. They are related Semitic languages, albeit with huge differences, and I have no estimate for how long it'd take to pick up Arabic from Hebrew.


I would consider myself an overzealous neophyte concerning language learning, but I would hazard a guess that your 'learn language A to transition into language B' technique is a guaranteed way to waste copious amounts of time and money. To put it more succinctly, if you want to learn Arabic, then learn Arabic. Do not learn Hebrew to 'get a discount on Arabic' or vice versa. Having said that, there is an exception: learning a language family. If you want to learn Afro-Asiatic languages, you would start with the relatively easier languages Hausa, Oromo, Hebrew and Ahmaric before attempting Arabic.
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