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Price of Polyglottery - New Prof | ||
Tags: Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4671 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 65 of 90 04 October 2013 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
erenko, you don't appear to be reading any of the responses people have given you. From the links posted, I see that Prof. Arguelles studied "in the great books tradition" at Columbia and the University of Chicago, and built and led a great books program in Lebanon. Of course he's read the books. 12 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4149 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 66 of 90 05 October 2013 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Mh, maybe you're right, especially seeing that the institute presumably leads to nothing more than a Bachelor's degree, the then acquired knowledge of at least German or French might well suffice, yes. In order to become a language teacher, a translator or an interpreter, further studies in terms of e.g. postgraduate studies are advisable or necessary, anyway. I hereby revoke what I've said about the inapplicability of the curriculum and now deem the institute an interesting alternative to existing degrees in philology as well as good preparation for further (more specialized) language studies. There's another thing that struck me in his speech. He said something like the skills of polyglots can't be measured by means of normal language proficiency tests. Why? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 67 of 90 05 October 2013 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Furthermore, not everyone is going to attend the studies full-time - it is also
intended to do summer courses, function as a retreat, etc. So it will also serve different functions. I would probably use it for shorter stints to self-study one of my weaker languages (I would love to go there to benefit from some time studying, for example, Korean or Modern Hebrew). I think the last thing is because once you start getting over five or six languages, you start feeling synergistic effects between languages everywhere. I have never studied Spanish or Portuguese but I can go in and probably read and understand fairly large amounts, because of a background in French, Romanian and Latin. At that point it thus becomes hard to measure what you know and don't know. I could probably improvise a bit of simple Portuguese on the spot (and I have done so, actually!) but I would need to study Portuguese concertedly for three or four months to achieve a functional level and get a handle on grammar and all, because right now I don't know any of that. I wouldn't be native-level speaker fluent, but related languages bonus each other up. I'm not sure how that works for languages that are more or less isolated like Korean or Japanese (I think Japanese knows some dialects that you may call separate languages - the same for the Jeju dialect of Korean) but even there the appearance of Chinese characters and the large amount of Sino-Korean vocabulary for example will aid you in learning (especially if you already know Chinese - but I am approaching Korean as the first language of East Asia). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6221 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 68 of 90 05 October 2013 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Perhaps because so much becomes transparent, and so much can quickly be activated. I've read books (clumsily, but while understanding the key points and many details) in languages I'd fail an A1 test in. He's written about listening to a language for a week where he's in a country where it's spoken, with strong passive skills already, and coming out conversational - for instance, with Swedish. I've also noticed that my polyglot friends can study for language tests and game them, to some extent. A lot of the higher-level tests are as much about the ability to structure your thoughts academically as about language knowledge, and this skill also is something that you carry from language to language. Are these enough reasons? There are surely more. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5742 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 69 of 90 05 October 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A polyliteracy degree program would have to set far lower standards for a concentration in East Asian languages than for one in Western languages. Someone focusing on English, German, and the big five Romance languages can get a LOT farther in a given time frame that someone doing Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Classical Chinese.
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| Sibsil Triglot Newbie China Joined 4596 days ago 9 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Korean, English | Message 70 of 90 06 October 2013 at 7:09am | IP Logged | |||||
That really depend where you come from. I can get farther with Classical Chinese, Korean, Japanese than I ever get with European languages or Arabic. And this is supposed to be international program. I think professor mention two tracks for each civilization - one for people from there, one for other people. So there do not need to be lower standards, just different ones. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4149 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 71 of 90 06 October 2013 at 9:40am | IP Logged | |||||
@tarvos, volte: Of course I know what you mean, but being able to read and understand a good amount of Italian due to my prior knowledge of French doesn't make me functional in Italian, let alone proficient. If I decided to study Italian, however, my progress would be much quicker then if I didn't speak one single Romance language in advance. It would nevertheless take years to reach C1 or C2.
I did that, too, but only being able to (more or less) read doesn't make me proficient, either. For example, I can understand a whole lot of Dutch while reading it, but it would take a long time until I would be able to actually produce the language. It can't be done in a week. If I can only read, I am not at all proficient and thus cannot pass a "normal" proficiency test. If that's what the professor means, well... On the other hand, if I was able to speak, read, write and understand the language at the required level, I would be able to pass such a test. My knowledge of other languages wouldn't interfere (and if it did, it would diminish my proficiency in that language). But it's still not quite clear to me what the professor meant by "can't be measured with a normal language proficiency test". Maybe he didn't mean the language skills themselves, but the "polyglot skills" in terms of the ability to effecively acquire knowledge of a given language by autodicactic study. Hm.. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 72 of 90 06 October 2013 at 11:02am | IP Logged | |||||
No, but it makes adequate comparison impossible, since you are not a beginner. C1 or C2 isn't the point. The point is you can't really be reliably said to have no knowledge of the language because related languages give you enough input to understand. It will take effort to become a functional speaker of the language, that is definitely true. I also didn't say I could manage C1 in 3 months. But I could definitely become a good allround B-level speaker of Spanish, Portuguese or Italian in a couple of months. Much quicker than anyone who doesn't have the same background. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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