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!