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Sebastian Heine | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6059 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 9 of 32 08 November 2007 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||
Even many Zaza do not speak Zazaki. Like Kurdish, it is discouraged by the Turkish authorities and the Zaza have been subjected to Turkification campaigns. Their part of Turkey, known for rebellions, is hard to visit and practically a military base. Edited by William Camden on 08 November 2007 at 10:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6029 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 10 of 32 08 November 2007 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting article. I found his 'list' on a site. The article says:
Es sind...Altpersisch, Avestisch, Pahlavi, Baktrisch, Sogdisch, Sakisch, Pashto, Parachi, Ormuri, Wakhi, Yaghnobi, Sanglichi, Ishkahmi, Ossetisch, Yidgha-Munji, Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, Panjabi, Sindhi, Kurmandschi-Kurdisch, Baluchi, Sanskrit, Pali, Gandhari, Latein, Griechisch, Altirisch, Mittelkymrisch, Gotisch, Usbekisch, Aramäisch, Arabisch, Französisch, Englisch. Pretty impressive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6059 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 11 of 32 08 November 2007 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
This was apparently the view of those who implemented simultaneous translation at the Nuremberg Trials (1945-6). Interpreters who spoke two languages, their native one and one foreign, were better at it than those who knew a number of languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| castiwo Newbie Joined 6057 days ago 2 posts - 4 votes | Message 12 of 32 09 November 2007 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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The list above doesn't mention 'Italianische', he told me he speaks very fluent Italian.
It makes a total of 36 languages then.... awesome! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scott Horne Newbie Canada Joined 6012 days ago 34 posts - 38 votes | Message 13 of 32 09 November 2007 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Without wishing to detract from Heine's purported accomplishments, I must caution against the credulity with which accounts of this kind are too often received.
My first impression is that "spricht 35 Sprachen" is a considerable distortion: a lot of those languages are classical ones with no tradition of active use in modern times (unlike Latin, Sanskrit, and even Classical Greek), and it's very unlikely that anyone speaks them or even does a significant amount of writing in them. Heine's knowledge of these is probably limited to reading. Someone sent me a link to an article in which Heine posed for a photo in a library. It's funny that the book visible in the photo is a Pashto-Russian dictionary even though Heine is not reported as knowing Russian. And that dictionary may well be one of the most important reference works on the Pashto language, Heine's favourite. There seems to be an attempt to puff the number up by counting lots of very similar Indic and Iranian languages. Most of the languages claimed are on one of two closely related dialect continua: one covering a large group of Indic languages spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India; the other covering many Iranian languages spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. I once saw a claim of a few dozen "languages" by someone who was obviously eager to drive the number up by any means at all. As I recall, the list included a handful of major Western European languages--and a heap of dialects thereof. Whenever I see a long laundry list of languages that someone allegedly "speaks", I suspect that the claim is exaggerated--not necessarily by the person himself. Just this week I heard someone claim that I know "eleven or twelve" languages. I have never said anything of the kind myself. When asked how many languages I know, I never give a bald number; instead, I say that there are five (English, Mandarin, French, Spanish, and Latin) that I speak with near-native skill, another three or so (Portuguese, Japanese, American Sign Language) that I speak pretty well but not fluently, various others in which I can function for general purposes, some in which I would have to revive my skill, some that I can only read, some of which I have a very fragmented knowledge.... Often the listener counts these languages off on his fingers, heedless of my comments about my level of skill. But anyone can "speak" a large number of languages if the bar is set low enough. A tenuous claim to a dozen languages may reflect less of an achievement than a solid grasp of two. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6437 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 14 of 32 09 November 2007 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the forum, Scott.
I agree with what you're saying. Many times people with little experience in learning languages will insist on a 'count' and someone who claims fluency in five languages is thereby 'better' than a person who claims four. Bald numbers cannot possibly cover the complexity that is a language, anyway. If you've been around the site before signing-up, I'm sure you've seen Professor Arguelles' lengthy explication of how much he knows of the many languages he has studied. His explanation is much like yours. It's very much a continuum, is it not? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6490 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 32 10 November 2007 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Ideally you should be allowed to specify your level in reading, writing, thinking, listening and speaking, with the option of specifying your fluency, error-level and robustness for each skill. Plus those areas where you 'know all the words'and those where you are abysmally ignorant. The number of languages of a certain person is a fuzzy notion, and we probably have drawn up our language lists from very different criteria. Or worse: others have made the calculation without taking into consideration the level of each language on the list.
I have described my own criteria in other threads. I prefer using performance oriented criteria, and in my opinion it must be the least developed skill that set the level, unless otherwise indicated. For me that is speaking ability, so my criterion for claiming at least basic fluency is that I would be able to stay a couple of weeks somewhere, speaking only the target language while sticking more or less to my normal range of conversation topics and to my normal reading habits. However I would not expect to know all the names of the local plants and animals, and I would certainly not promise to speak without errors here and there. Purely passive languages should either not figure at all on a list of languages of languages spoken or just at the lowest level (after all being able to read a language is an excellent starting point for learning the active skills later). I think it is possible to learn to speak even extinct languages - after all I had a teacher once who could speak Ancient French, and some people apparently learn to speak Latin - but it must be hard to do without audio sources. Dialects and very close languages should only count if you can express yourself consistently in them (and for me it means that I can't rely on just exposure, I have to study them actively). Languages that are too 'rusty' to be used should not be dismissed out of hand, but an hour or so with a book or TV should be enough to call them back into service, - otherwise they can't count as active languages. I have no idea how many languages Heine or Gippert or others know according these principles (but probably quite a lot). However I know where I am on the scale, and if I could get there despite a mediocre memory, lack of concentration, unorganized study habits, a long pause (1982-2006) and no external pressure, then I'm sure that there must be people out there who are way beyond me in linguistical prowess. It is just a matter of finding them. Maybe the true world masters just prefer to stay anonymous in order not to get their merits discussed publicly. Edited by Iversen on 10 November 2007 at 4:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6452 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 16 of 32 10 November 2007 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I doubt that he speaks more than 5 or 6 of those fluently. I mean, how can you possible learn to speak languages such as Gothic fluently? There aren't many original texts in Gothic (IIRC only some translations of passages from the Bible), so probably it's impossible to learn to speak Gothic fluently due to the lack of Gothic words known. I'm pretty sure he's studied all of those, but most likely for purely philological reasons. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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