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Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

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Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#81

Post by troad »

jll29 wrote: post #2

I would suggest to drop "Amateur" from the title in the sense that languages are useful both professionally and privately - you never know in what language your next deal will be signed, your next networking acqaintance bumps into you to make you the next job offer etc. Besides, as a professional (computational) linguist, I have met many trained/professional linguists that know only one language - typically English -…

> Besides, as a professional (computational) linguist, I have met many trained/professional linguists that know only one language - typically English - well - I think that is professionally totally unacceptable when your mission is to study language (in abstract, intentionally without article here => linguistics); the way a language structures the world for you in the way its vocab influences the way you think in concepts (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, AKA linguistic relativity => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity ) is something that you should at least occasionally step out of, so that you don't take it for granted, and for that, you need to master a second language.

As a trained (and formerly professional) linguist, I vehemently disagree.

(1) Linguistics, as you seem to allude to, is the study of language as a phenomenon, not the study of languages. It includes fields like the study of acoustics (the intersection of the physics of sound and the biology of the ear / vocal cords), and neurolinguistics (the neuroscience of language) that have nothing to do with sociolinguistics or second language acquisition. [0]

(2) The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its strong formulation is pseudoscience, and is rejected as such by the academic mainstream of linguistics. Journalists love it because it flatters them in their role as word-smiths, so there is sadly no end to the ink being spilled over it.

(3) Most crucially, any linguist worth their salt can work in multiple languages without necessarily speaking them. I can understand the sandhi phenomenon in Vedic Sanskrit without speaking Sanskrit, because that's sort of the job of a linguist? People can talk about 'sun and moon letters' in Arabic, and I can go - cool, assimilation of coronal consonants. I don't need to weep over Arabic poetry before realising this, this is just the basic tradecraft of a linguist. Same as I can understand lambda functions as a concept, without needing to know how they're implemented in .

In my experience, linguists enjoy other languages and often speak them, as I do, but it's rather ignorant to assert it's "professionally totally unacceptable" for, say, a neurolinguist to be monolingual. It suggests an exceedingly narrow view of the field.

[0] Here's a fun example of neurolinguistics. Consider the sentence 'I drinks a tall.' Approx 100-200 ms after reading this, an electrical signal (simplifying for clarity) fired off in your left frontal lobe, near the section of your brain called Broca's area. That signal, the Early Left Anterior Negativity (ELAN), is associated with syntactic violations (in this case, the use of 'tall' without an accompanying noun). Approx. 300-500 ms after reading this sentence, a second impulse, the Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) fired off in the same area of your brain. This impulse is associated with morphological violations (in this case, the use of 'I drinks' rather than the expected 'I drink'). If I said 'He drinks a tall', you'd just get the ELAN, but no LAN. If I said 'I drinks a tall glass of water.', you'd get the LAN but no ELAN. Fascinatingly, you haven't actually parsed the meaning of the sentence at the time either of these fired - that comes later, at around 600 ms (the P600 signal, in a different part of the brain). This kind of work is very much the domain of linguistics, and clearly not contingent on learning lots and lots of languages. (Enjoyable though that may be!)

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#82

Post by Tor3 »

felsokning wrote: post #40
simlevesque wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a geo restriction problem. It's a distribution rights problem. NRK doesn't own the right to distribute what they have worldwide, they bought limited local distribution rights. Why would local broadcasters buy the worldwide license ? It's the producers of the tv shows which need to license their product to a worldwide broadcaster. NRK is only georestricting because the licenses forbids them from not doing it.…

> NRK is only georestricting because the licenses forbids them from not doing it. I would be more inclined to say that they're doing it to be "safe". For example, their immediate neighbour, Sweden, has a selection "Kan ses utomlands"[2] -- which, roughly, means can see outside of the country. Presumably, like elsewhere in the world, not everything NRK is showing is licensed only for Norway. To the original point: The…

>"Presumably, like elsewhere in the world, not everything NRK is showing is licensed only for Norway."

NRK doesn't buy world-wide licenses, even if the same show/program is available everywhere. They still can't distribute that. What they can distribute is what's 100% produced by NRK. If there are collaborators, they can't.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#83

Post by Tor3 »

rvnx wrote: post #46
vasco wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may find yourself having to learn to think in a new way literally. I've said for a few years now my personality is slightly different when I speak English. I have a partner of several years that doesn't speak my language nor me hers and we communicate in English and even simple things like expressing affection feel different even after a decade. At some point since I speak more English every day than my own lan…

With English you get to lose nuances and to simplify your thoughts. As a result, you cannot put exact words on your emotions or your thoughts and you start to think and feel differently (and not in a nicer way).

Hm.. I feel no difference there between my native language and English. I use the latter every day, and everything I read (and I read a lot) is in English - I've only read two books in my native language the last thirty years or so. I don't feel any difference in how I can express myself.

However: I am kind of a different person when I speak English. My personality changes. Not for the worse though (and that's where I don't agree with the "and not in a nicer way", that's not how it is for me).

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#84

Post by Tor3 »

felsokning wrote: post #58
birktj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Norway so I don't really know how it looks like from abroad, but I am pretty sure a lot of NRK content is available globally. Under the Vikingane show you listed it clearly says "available in Norway". However the first show on the homepage "Nytt på nytt-quiz" [1], a type of game-show, says that it is available globally. I am not sure there is a clear overview over what is available globally though like SVT has…

Thanks! Wasn't aware of the Archive link. Even so, it is hit and miss with what's available. For example, the most popular show I've heard of, Skram[1], requires a login -- but Storst av alt (another I've heard of) does not. [1] - https://tv.nrk.no/serie/skam/sesong/1 [2] - https://tv.nrk.no/serie/stoerst-av-alt

"Skam" is a bit different because even though it's produced by NRK it got so popular elsewhere that NRK is licensing it to other countries. So they aren't free to just dump it freely worldwide.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#85

Post by makeset »

betaby wrote: post #14
Havoc wrote: post #4

Easy head start is to learn multiple as a kid. Finding it incredibly hard to learn a 4th as adult

It's mostly input. Kids have more time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

I was pretty sure myself that must be the case, until I raised kids in a trilingual household, and it's not even close. Children's natural ability for retention and adaptivity with language is truly mindboggling to witness. A child can overhear a new word once in passing, no explanation but context, and use it in conversation out of nowhere six months later, correctly. It's far from just more time.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#86

Post by Tor3 »

__experiment__ wrote: post #15
Havoc wrote: post #4

Easy head start is to learn multiple as a kid. Finding it incredibly hard to learn a 4th as adult

you probably just lack time

In my studying (no, acquiring) Japanese I notice a huge difference when I can do 1.5 hours (or more) a day instead of 20-30 minutes. It's almost like the latter is useless. (Edit: The latter is more than enough to learn grammar etc. But that doesn't teach you the language, unlike what they believed in school way back then)

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#87

Post by troad »

makeset wrote: post #85
betaby wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly input. Kids have more time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

I was pretty sure myself that must be the case, until I raised kids in a trilingual household, and it's not even close. Children's natural ability for retention and adaptivity with language is truly mindboggling to witness. A child can overhear a new word once in passing, no explanation but context, and use it in conversation out of nowhere six months later, correctly. It's far from just more time.

In linguistics, this is called the 'poverty of the stimulus' argument, and is used to argue that there must be some kind of soft blueprint for language - whether in the brain (certain areas appear to be highly associated with language - Broca's, Wernicke's, etc) or in logic itself.

"The speed and precision of vocabulary acquisition leaves no real alternative to the conclusion that the child somehow has the concepts available before experience with language and is basically learning labels for concepts that are already a part of his or her conceptual apparatus" -- Noam Chomsky

It's a question that is hotly contended, however.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#88

Post by atseajournal »

vasco wrote: post #32
zerof1l wrote: post #21

I'm currently actively learning my 5th language and passively learning the 6th one. There's no universal way to learn a new language. What works for one doesn't work for another. Also, a big factor in how hard it will be to learn a new language are the languages you know already. If the new language is similar to the one you know already, i.e. is in the same language family, you will have a much easier time learning…

> You may find yourself having to learn to think in a new way literally. I've said for a few years now my personality is slightly different when I speak English. I have a partner of several years that doesn't speak my language nor me hers and we communicate in English and even simple things like expressing affection feel different even after a decade. At some point since I speak more English every day than my own lan…

Javier Bardem recently said the exact same thing, in terms of English being an easier language for him to perform in because it's not as real to him as Spanish.

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#89

Post by xandrius »

cicloid wrote: post #23

I speak Spanish and English, but then I moved on to Japanese and now find myself stuck. I'm not confident in any scenario involving Japanese. Perhaps I should explore other languages (likely French, Portuguese, or another Romance language), then revisit Japanese. From there, I might transition to Mandarin and Korean. Either the path I chose is too complex, or age is beginning to impact my cognitive speed. Has anyone…

I unstuck myself by moving to working with a tutor (on Preply). That paired with anki cards (of the words I would try to use during a normal conversation but didn't know them) boosted my skills tremendously.

I went from just knowing how to read hira/katakana and say a few sentences (after studying it on my own for many years) to being able to hold a conversation for 1 hour after just a couple of years.

Now I'm moving onto playing easier games for kids which seem fun to me too in Japanese (e.g. some pokemon games). I pick up a lot from animes already but they can be tough, depending on the target audience.

頑張って！

Re: Becoming an Amateur Polyglot

#90

Post by yau8edq12i »

arisAlexis wrote: post #20
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…

I'm OP. I am not communicating mostly in writing. I think that most people memorize the sound of the word. Ecole is the first word I learned in French and to this day I forget is it's a grave or aigu. What I realized with your comment and thank you is that I didn't mean intonation! I got confused because and I meant the type of accents and I meant spelling. Thank you

Really? Try to pronounce "ecole" (I'm omitting the accent on purpose). Does it sound like the end of "café" or the first sound in "mère"? It's impossible to confuse the two. I'm really curious as to how you manage not to distinguish them while claiming to speak the language. That's what I meant when I said I thought you are mostly communicating in writing - if you actually speak the word, you'll never be confused about it...
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