Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

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lichtrausch
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby lichtrausch » Tue Dec 28, 2021 7:53 pm

I changed my mind on this one. Language, however fascinating it may be, is at the end of the day a tool. In terms of becoming well educated, what matters is whether the languages you know give you adequate access to knowledge. So quantity is not important.
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby Herodotean » Tue Dec 28, 2021 8:40 pm

sirgregory wrote:And here is a post from an American historian arguing against foreign language requirements in graduate programs in history. (It is typical for PhD history programs to require you to demonstrate some ability in at least one foreign language. Usually they give you a couple of passages and you have to translate them into English within a given time limit with a dictionary.)
https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2014/august/against-language-requirements/

Wow, that's quite the screed. Of course it would be an American Americanist making that argument . . . the ancient, medieval, and early modern historians would disagree, since they need to read anywhere between 3 and 6 languages just to access their primary sources and read secondary literature. (To be fair, though, the venue is a publication specifically for Americanists.)

Besides, if it's true that language requirements exist in order to ensure that graduates can read historical materials in languages other than English, then most departmental exams are an ineffectual farce. Typically, these exams give students an allotted amount of time (say, two hours) to translate a short passage (sometimes just a paragraph) with the help of a dictionary. But students who labor to decipher a short piece of foreign writing are unlikely to ever wade through an entire book or article in that language. In other words, graduate students routinely satisfy their language requirements without ever acquiring a practical skill. They still have not learned, in any meaningful or practical sense of the word, how to "read" another language. No wonder students tend to regard these exams as hoops to jump through, and nothing more.

Graduate students who regard the exam as a hoop to jump through are missing the point. These exams are designed to be achievable while doing all the other things you have to do as a graduate student. Once you've passed the exam, you're supposed to continue developing your reading ability by reading books and articles in the language (shocking!). The exam forces you to jump-start your language learning; it's the beginning, not the end. But I suppose if you work on postwar America you might well see it as a nuisance. I worry more about people in my own field who see German as a nuisance and neglect German scholarship because it takes too much time to read.

From his faculty bio at Georgia State:
Currently he is writing a book on crime, policing, and the crime debate in New York City from 1963-2001.

Is there nothing in Spanish or Italian, say, that would be useful to that project? Perhaps not; but he'll never know.
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jan 03, 2022 9:21 pm

1. Classical languages of one’s own culture.
2. Major living languages of one’s broader culture.
3. The international language.
4. Exotic languages.


I certainly thought a bit like this for a long time. It’s a particularly problematic point of view even with Pr. A. caveats and introduction.

Are we talking about classical languages of the dominant 7 for most people?
Is Classical Nahuatl an “exotic language”?

Why do we even need to classify or codify what an “educated” person should be learning, if they just continue to learn?

I grew up in México among an economic/social class that speaks multiple languages and all (not some, all!) my high school friends spoke English and French. It happens that I needed both in life but certainly some of the motivation was elitist snobbery. I would have liked to see more attention to the minority languages around me - Nahuatl, Wixárika, Zapotec and others that were definitely present but socially undervalued. Still, today, it’s hard to find material in some of these.

Where do we place these in that list? As “exotics”? Do you see the problem with the terms used?

My daughter is moving to Mayotte - part of her continuing education will be to learn to communicate in what the local people use (40-70% is “not French”). Is the “educated” person someone who brings along their 6 languages or the one that has learned to use language to communicate with other community languages?

It certainly isn’t the person that calls these languages just patois, pidgin or creole.
Last edited by zenmonkey on Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:07 am

Is it also a list of valuable languages or just a box-ticking exercise?

At one time Turkish was seen as a language educated people should probably know. Nietszche was a speaker and classed it as 'oriental'. The trends shift around. Russian is popular, but in the 50s-70s it was seen as an essential language for the worldly and widely taught in UK universities. Since the change from USSR to Russia, not so much. Yet the language is still major and useful.

Quis iudicat?
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby einzelne » Tue Jan 04, 2022 1:19 am

Le Baron wrote:Nietszche was a speaker and classed it as 'oriental'.


I beg my pardon? Where did you get it?
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby verdastelo » Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:52 am

1. Classical languages of one’s own culture: Pending
2. Major living languages of one’s broader culture: Done (Hindi and Urdu on top of my native Punjabi)
3. The international language: Done (English)
4. Exotic languages: Learning (Russian, French, and Chinese)

Almost there. I believe I'm now ready expand my orbis disciplinarum and focus on Landau's 10-volume Course of Theoretical Physics, Smirnov's six-volume Course of Higher Mathematics, and probably Donald Knuth's four-volume The Art of Computer Programming. I shouldn't forget Bourbaki's Éléments de mathématique. It would be interesting to learn Classical Japanese and get into the minds of the authors of 洋算, which I have heard is mathematics built on a different set of axioms than Euclid's.

Oops! I believe I should stop now because Dio Chrysostom is whispering in a corner of my room: "Thus, whereas the thoughts and desires of the soul of a man in private station and without influence are wind-begotten and ineffectual, and no difficulty arises from them, but just as real dreams are gone at once when the dreamers rise from their beds, and no part of them can endure the sun or the day, as the saying is, so it is with desires and hopes of this kind..." :D :D (Dio Chrysostom, Discourse 20. Sur la retraite - traduction anglaise)

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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby einzelne » Tue Jan 04, 2022 3:56 am

verdastelo wrote:Almost there. I believe I'm now ready expand my orbis disciplinarum and focus on Landau's 10-volume Course of Theoretical Physics


Oh Lanlifshitz! Lots of anecdotes about this famous (or should I say infamous) textbook. The most famous one:
— Look, Landau, it looks like I've lost four pages of calculations!
— Nevermind, Lifshitz, we'll just write as usual: 'It naturally follows that'...
Last edited by einzelne on Tue Jan 04, 2022 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby Dragon27 » Tue Jan 04, 2022 8:57 am

Ландафшиц is quite hardcore. It is very valuable in its content, but at the same time very challenging, terse and concise, and certainly not suitable for somebody who is learning these ideas for the first (or even the second) time. So whether you're going to appreciate these books or not depends on your background, which I don't know (and, of course, how smart you are).

BTW, why only nine volumes on the photo? Where is "Теория поля"?
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby BeaP » Tue Jan 04, 2022 1:32 pm

In my opinion an educated person should:
1. speak and write their mother tongue very well: People usually take this for granted, but the vast majority is sadly incapable of writing an essay or even a formal letter with proper grammar, style and spelling. I know that it's pretty hard to develop these skills when you've already left school. You can read a lot to see a good model, but no-one will correct your stylistic mistakes.
2. speak English fluently, and be able to read articles and academic texts in English
3. be interested in other cultures, choose one, and at least dabble in its language
And for me basically that's it. From that point on everything is optional.
4. If you can achieve better results in your profession with the help of a foreign language, you should learn to use that language for your specific goals (it can be only reading or only speaking).
5. If your family has strong connections with another culture, you should be open to that culture, and learn at least some basic expressions.
6. If you move to another country for a long time (meaning years), you should learn the country's language at least to a B1 level.
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Re: Six languages an educated person should know (Prof. Argüelles)

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jan 04, 2022 5:05 pm

einzelne wrote:
Le Baron wrote:Nietszche was a speaker and classed it as 'oriental'.


I beg my pardon? Where did you get it?

Monograph by either R.J. Hollingdale or Gerald Kaufman.
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