Multilingualism | Or the polyglot thread

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Gæmleflodland
That doesn't mean that Swahili isn't an interesting language. I don't think you could accuse Pacifica of a similar motivation.

Languages I speak, to some degree, in rough order of competence:

- English (9)
- Latin (6)
- Attic Greek (6)
- Japanese (3)
- French (3)
- Hittite (2)
- German (2)
- Modern Greek (1)
- Sanskrit (1)
- Sumerian (1)
- Ugaritic (1)
- Hebrew (1)

Languages on the 'to learn' list:

Italian (have to learn it this summer)
Akkadian
Old Irish (?)
Arabic
Tocharian
Chinese
Russian
Czech
... and countless others I guess.
Yeah, we have strikingly similar language taste.
 

Issacus Divus

H₃rḗǵs h₁n̥dʰéri diwsú

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Gæmleflodland
Hard to say. I guess it's just that I like the sound of it and am mildly fascinated by the culture.
Arabic knowledge gives you a lot of good info for Afro-Asiatic inference.
 
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Terry S.

Aedilis

  • Aedilis

  • Patronus

Location:
Hibernia

Clemens

Aedilis

  • Aedilis

Location:
Maine, United States.
Mine are:
English: 10 (native speaker) and I grew up with a very non-standard dialect so I guess I have diglossia there.
French: 9 if you mean the formal language, somewhat less in the colloquial. I can understand everything said by tv presenters and such, but slangy conversation sometimes not everything.
Latin: 5. I understand Christian Latin (the Vulgate, the Mass) much better than Classical or Classicizing texts.
Arabic: It's a mess of Classical and Najdi dialect with elements of others thrown in so I don't know how to rate myself. Not higher than 5 or 6.
Japanese: Again, a mess because I haven't used it in almost 20 years. 3?
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Languages I might possibly consider learning at some point:

Arabic
(more) German
(more) ancient Greek
Italian
Anglo-Norman French
Something exotic like Swahili
Well, I did end up starting the first one on the list a few months later...
 

interprete

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

I'm not a polyglot. I have a list of languages I would like to learn, but I'm not quite on my way. However, I'm pretty excited with what that goldlist method may do to my Latin, so, if it does work (which will happen, I confidently believe), I will apply it to other languages (list below). Not that I'm a fan of the method.
Interesting, I applied this 'goldlist method' intuitively for years without ever suspecting it had a name... Then I switched to Anki and would never go back. Have you tried it?



I imagine that for languages like German, Welsh, Czech, it will take me from 4 to 5 years to get somewhere. Chinese will probably demand a longer time of me. Italian and possibly Romanian will take me less time, from 3 to 4 years... As for Turkish, I have no idea...
I think the difficulty of Chinese is vastly exaggerated, it's a common misconception and that's too bad. Chinese has basically no grammar, the syntax is minimal, which means after 3 to 4 lessons you can already have a simple conversation. Compare this with Russian, which personally I've been learning for over 5 years, and I still can't make basic sentences without getting the grammar wrong. Same with Turkish, I found it much harder than Chinese.[/QUOTE]

Let us know! Give us your lists, and stories. (What were the first ones, what methods you use, at which point you considered or decided or realized you were a polyglot, or don't you care about that?)
Languages I know/have known
French (mother tongue)
English (8)
Spanish (7)
Arabic (7)
Russian (5)
Chinese (5)
Latin (2)
Turkish (1 now, used to be more)
Pali (1)
Ancient greek (0.1, started yesterday ::):)

Languages I'd like to learn: NONE!!! And here I'd like to ask if anyone else has, like me, experienced this language-learning fatigue? 15 years ago I couldn't resist the urge to buy all sorts of language manuals and had a huge list of candidate languages I'd learn next. Now I just want to improve the languages I've started, especially the weaker ones, and I almost feel like puking when someone suggests learning yet another language. That might also be an age thing, I'm closing in on 40 and I do feel memorizing vocab is not as easy as it used to be. When I was 20, I could memorize 50 new words per day (that's what I did when I learned English), today if I reach 10 words/day and still know them the next day I'm happy...

If I may ask, why are you interested in Arabic? Actually, I’m halfway through Assimil’s L’arabe sans peine. Also, I got a bamboo pen to practice the ruq’a script. :) But I’m not sure why I would be doing that if not for fun. I don’t even know a single Arabic writer.
How are you learning the ruq'a script? I've been meaning to do this for a while, but all I found was the blue textbook by Mitchell which really isn't very good. It reads more like a reference than a method. Any suggestions? Thanks!
 

interprete

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Arabic: It's a mess of Classical and Najdi dialect with elements of others thrown in so I don't know how to rate myself.
That's an unusual mix, unless your family is from there originally? I'd be interested to know how you learned Najdi...
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Languages I speak or "know" to some extent:

French (9.5)
Modern English (9)
Latin (8)
Old English (6)
Attic Greek (3)
Spanish (3)
German (1)

I suppose I could add languages I've never studied at all but can read to some extent, like Italian and Portuguese.
I can now add:

Dutch (5?)
Arabic (3?)
Swahili (1?)
 

Clemens

Aedilis

  • Aedilis

Location:
Maine, United States.
That's an unusual mix, unless your family is from there originally? I'd be interested to know how you learned Najdi...
I am by no means competent in Arabic, but what spoken Arabic I learned to understand and speak was mostly Najdi, from living in Riyadh.
 

interprete

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

I am by no means competent in Arabic, but what spoken Arabic I learned to understand and speak was mostly Najdi, from living in Riyadh.
Lucky you! I don't think it's quite possible to learn Najdi without living in the area, unfortunately. At least I've never come across any textbook or other learning ressource.
 
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