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Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

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Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#101

Post by ipqk »

yau8edq12i wrote: post #5

I must say, I'm really skeptical of all these apps. I've tried pretty much all of them (well, not literally all of them, but a lot). I've had to move/travel quite a lot in my life, and I tried to get a "head start" on learning the language, with a different app. Every time, going to the country, I quickly realized that I could not speak the language. At best I could read it and produce with effort some sentences that…

Don't discount the utility of reading, though maybe it's less useful these days with smartphone camera translation.

Back before widespread internet, I spent two weeks in Korea, and by the end I could basically read & pronounce it (without really understanding anything) because it was that critical to getting around.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#102

Post by scooke »

Learning the alphabet is key for me. That opens up more native-langauge resources, for one. If you happen to be in a country where the language is used, you have instant Always-On practice. I've learned languages using Cyrillic, RtL, Chinese characters, and and will be tackling Thai soon. Interestingly, it's been a challenge to find resources to learn the Thai alphabet. Another thing I've found is that the dialogues in language books rarely actually happen that same way, but tend to be truncated and shortened. So that's why getting out there among a populace is essential.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#103

Post by deanc »

ipqk wrote: post #100
deanc wrote: post #22

> Learn only 4 tenses. Past for one time events, past continuous, present, future. These are enough to go by and explain yourself. There is no future tense in Finnish. Or gendered personal pronouns. Oh and there’s about a gazillion words for snow. And god help you if you need to articulate that your spruce is returning.

English also doesn't have a (proper) future tense, but you would still need to learn how to talk about the future using the modal 'will'.

In English there is at least the means grammatically to express you're referring to the future (I'm going to the store, I will go to the store, I'm going to go to the store). In Finnish, it's entirely contextual and you can throw in timing words to help.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#104

Post by micah94 »

vasco wrote: post #99
tsimionescu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is one of the languages on earth with by far the most words, and with some of the most extraordinary writers. You can give as much nuance as you want. The problem is that, as a non-native speaker, the words carry less emotional weight somehow than my native language. This is not specific to English, and it's not because of a lack of familiarity. It's most visible in swear words - I have no problem saying any…

Exactly! Swear words are a great example, "I love you" another. "I love you" is just something "people say in movies and books", whereas the one in my language is what my mom told me. Big difference!

This is a profound statement.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#105

Post by xboxnolifes »

aspenmayer wrote: post #41
xboxnolifes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a geo restriction problem. It's a distribution rights problem. This is the same thing.

It’s not the same cause but the effect is the same. It’s a distinction with a difference, not to be confused with the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_differen...

It's a distinction without a meaningful difference. It's geo-locked because non-global rights exist, and non-global rights exist because geo-locking (implemented technically or not) is possible.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#106

Post by aspenmayer »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #105
aspenmayer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the same cause but the effect is the same. It’s a distinction with a difference, not to be confused with the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_differen...

It's a distinction without a meaningful difference. It's geo-locked because non-global rights exist, and non-global rights exist because geo-locking (implemented technically or not) is possible.

The context matters very little to the users who can’t access content, but it gets somewhat interesting when it comes to things like geo-locking. I can imagine a situation where User X can normally access content from their home country Y, but can’t access that same content on the same service when working abroad in country Z without using a VPN. The service detects they are using a VPN, but doesn’t care because the IP matches the county of the billing address of their payment method and thus complies with the content provider’s contractual obligations with respect to streaming rights. It’s frustrating when a different person using a VPN to that same country can’t access the content simply because their account is not in the same country as the VPN exit point.

But I agree with what you said, I just think it is an interesting topic and so the distinction matters to me more than it may to you.

Things like the above are infuriating to me as someone who appreciates the position content creators and licensees are in, I just don’t have much patience with the failure modes of copyright.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#107

Post by pard68 »

arisAlexis wrote: post #94
pard68 wrote: post #45

Barring English, I only speak "dead" languages. Am I a polyglot still? Latin, Koine & Classic Greek, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and am at "coffee" level in a few ANE/Semitic languages.

Yes you are a polyglot. The fascinating thing is that soon you will be able to chat with an AI in these languages (have you even tried speaking to chatgpt on latin?)

I hadn't even considered it

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#108

Post by pard68 »

emporas wrote: post #65
pard68 wrote: post #45

Barring English, I only speak "dead" languages. Am I a polyglot still? Latin, Koine & Classic Greek, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and am at "coffee" level in a few ANE/Semitic languages.

Sanskrit is an important one IMO. I have tried to learn sanskrit in the past, didn't manage to do so, too few resources. Dead languages, might not be dead for very long, machines do better in grammar and syntax nowadays.

Sanskrit and a few others are very difficult. We talked about it in an ANE Langs course but never even got to "coffee" level?

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#109

Post by pard68 »

richwater wrote: post #47
pard68 wrote: post #45

Barring English, I only speak "dead" languages. Am I a polyglot still? Latin, Koine & Classic Greek, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and am at "coffee" level in a few ANE/Semitic languages.

No offense, but what is the "point" in this?

In dead languages? Loads of important documents are written in dead languages. I can read them for myself without the interpretation of another.

The point in asking? I only know a single language that is spoken outside of schools, I'm curious if those dead languages still qualify for "polyglot" status. Seems the definition is nebulous.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#110

Post by rvnx »

micah94 wrote: post #104
vasco wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! Swear words are a great example, "I love you" another. "I love you" is just something "people say in movies and books", whereas the one in my language is what my mom told me. Big difference!

This is a profound statement.

Yet a comment “I work at OpenAI” gets more upvotes :/
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