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+--- Thread: polyglot dream list (/thread-3785.html)
polyglot dream list - mezbup - 2009-12-10
I'd be really interested to do a 1 year challenge in a romance language (leaning towards italian). See from how effing much I could learn from scratch in just twelve months.
polyglot dream list - xingji - 2009-12-10
the polyglot dream list, eh?
well I read too much about hyperpolyglots (Sir John Bowring, Mezzofanti, Krebs, Ziad Fazah) Those monster who could or can speak fluently over 50 different languages - Mezzofanti did that without ever leaving Italy, or having access to a computer (in the 18th -19th century) I mean here we are struggling to merely remember a few thousand characters...
well anyway, there are quite a few more "normal" polyglots at +10 or +20 languages. I don't think i'll ever make it that far... i'm 28, i'm fluent in 2 (French, English), more or less competant in 3 other (Japanese, Russian, Mandarin), I can read Spanish (but I guess most French people can without too much efforts), I have basic knowledge of Korean, Cantonese, and i'm not ashamed to admit i spent 4 months of my life trying to learn Quenya (by the way,Tolkien was an amazing polygot too, spoke 13, knew 12 others, without counting Sindarin and Quenya and all the other languages he invented).
The list after that,
Tibetan (this one looks cool, I've no idea how it sounds though)
Hungarian; Finnish and Basque (the non Indo-European and yet found in Europe)
then there will be some African languages
Moroccan Arabic, Eastern Arabic, Zulu and Xhosa (love those clicking sounds as a concept, can't wait to work my tongue arround them ^^, and I've always loved how the Lion King song at the beginning sound)
and if i'm still alive once i've mastered all that, i'll start learning German.
Don't ask me why, but I know German is going to be the last.
polyglot dream list - Rina - 2009-12-10
Montrealer Wrote:Ah! É bom saberjondesousa Wrote:Mais um aqui que gostaria de melhorar a fluência! Lembra que há mais lusófonos só no Brasil do que francófonos no mundo inteiro...CarolinaCG Wrote:Only one person wants to learn portuguese, |:Não é verdade. Eu tambem gosto de falar e ler portoguês mais melhor do que eu faço agora.
Another over here who would like to improve his fluency! Remember that there are more Portuguese speakers just in Brazil than there are French speakers in the whole world...
I think that portuguese is a good language to invest in the near future, not only because Brazil speaks it, but also because a few african countries speak it too, namely Angola.
polyglot dream list - Squintox - 2009-12-10
English
Hindi/Urdu
Korean <-- Here
Japanese
What? 4 languages is polygot, no?
polyglot dream list - jajaaan - 2009-12-10
xingji Wrote:(by the way,Tolkien was an amazing polygot too, spoke 13, knew 12 others, without counting Sindarin and Quenya and all the other languages he invented).People say Tolkein spoke 13 languages, but I think that number is a little misleading. Here are the languages counted in that number: Latin, Spanish, Italian, French; Old English, Middle English, German, Old Norse, Gothic; Welsh, Medieval Welsh; Finnish, and Greek.
To me, it doesn't look like 13, but rather 5 basic groups, of which all but Finnish are Indo-European languages, and almost half are dead languages. Gothic, for instance, doesn't even have a surviving corpus large enough to attain fluency with (unless you know how to apply your knowledge of other old Germanic languages and invent a bunch of neologisms--which Tolkein probably did know how to do, given the breadth of his studies, but that's not speaking Gothic).
Being familiar with a language isn't speaking it, but they say he was familiar with 12 others. However, this number is also misleading as it counts more dead languages, mostly Germanic. Of the living languages counted only two are non-Germanic, and all, again, are Indo-European.
There's no denying that Tolkein was an incredible linguist, a hell of a polyglot, and a great writer. I just think people exaggerate his polyglottery way too much when over half the languages he spoke were directly aided 60-90% from prior knowledge of closely related languages.
polyglot dream list - Blahah - 2009-12-11
My list looks similar to many others:
1. Japanese
2. Mandarin
3. Spanish (I already understand a lot of spoken spanish just from having a huge english vocabulary and knowing some latin)
4. French (already speak it quite well). Italian I'll learn along with this since it's so easy.
5. German (already speak some)
6. Hindi
7. Russian
I plan to achieve excellence in japanese, mandarin, french, italian and spanish by the age of 30 (I'm 24 now). The others will come gradually.
xingji Wrote:Don't ask me why, but I know German is going to be the last.Priceless!
polyglot dream list - vinniram - 2009-12-17
1. Nihongo
2. Mandarin
3. Telugu (my mother tongue... don't know if I'll ever get around to it though)
polyglot dream list - zohar - 2009-12-21
*English (native & educated up to college-level; not sure I can do much more here)
*Spanish (native but not educated in school, so "proper" grammar blows...)
*Hebrew (semi-native but limited to reading, telling stories, and praying; want full proficiency for conversating)
*Ladino/Judeo-Spanish (semi-native, if you can call a "dialect" that... beautiful language full of Old Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Greek, etc. Never want to see it die out completely...)
*Japanese (maybe about JLPT2 plus extras; settled down here in Japan so needs to be 完ぺき)
**Oita-ben (coming along pretty well, want to sound like any other jiichan in Oita prefecture)
*Arabic Script (most poetic writing language in existence, IMHO)
*Moroccan Arabic (want to expand my abilities beyond just listening to songs)
*Mandarin Chinese (hello, it's right there! Plus will be good for business opportunities in almost any field soon)
*Korean (it's also right there! Tired of guessing whether the Korean Air attendant or Incheon airport staff will understand English or Japanese before uttering one of them- I want to thank them in their own language...)
polyglot dream list - vonPeterhof - 2010-12-04
I had some time to kill at 3 AM, so I thought "Why don't I necro an interesting thread?"
So, here is my hyper-unrealistic polyglot dream list, starting from my native language:1. Russian
2. English
3. Kazakh (learned it at school when growing up in a Russian-speaking area of Kazakhstan, never really conversed in it outside the class, so it pretty much slipped away by now; hoping to pick it up again at some point)
4. German (started learning it at school because I am 1/4 German and have relatives in Germany; even though I am planning to take a semester abroad in Austria or Germany, the biggest reason why I am still studying German is the easy A)
5. Japanese (duh)
6. Esperanto (wanted to get the basics of it down before I start SRSing Japanese sentences; no real interest in the movement, chose it for the same reasons as some of the people above - extreme easiness and Pasporta Servo)
7. Korean (I am 1/2 Korean, so yeah)
8. Mandarin (I am a business major, gotta hop on the bandwagon
Plus, I don't wanna stop at just one Kanji-using language)9. Cantonese (I♥HK)
10. Latin (Just to be pretentious. Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur)
11. Spanish (Kinda always wanted to travel through all of Latin America)
12. French (beautiful language, sexy accent, see Paris and die and all the other clichés)
13. Arabic (rounds up the official languages of the UN list, plus ever since learning Kazakh I like languages full of harsh consonants)
14. Ancient Greek (wanna read Πολιτεία and Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια in the original language)
15. Classical Chinese (wanna read 道德經 and 論語 in the original language)
16. Finnish (the country is right next door to my hometown, so I feel kinda bad about not knowing more than a handful of Finnish words - although I do know the first verse of "Ievan Polkka"
)17. Hebrew (I always found Jewish cultures to be quite fascinating, and the language sounds pretty badass)
18. Swahili (it sounds like a fairly easy language to learn, and I would really like to travel to East Africa)
19. Navajo (pure linguistic challenge - as someone on tvtropes put it, "It combines some of the "hard" elements of Chinese (tone), Zulu (more than a dozen categories that affect inflections), and Basque (ergative grammar), while also having the same phonics as Tlingit... which was chosen as the basis for Klingon because most human languages don't have those sounds. Oh, and it's also got politeness-elements, like some East Asian languages, and a very complicated tense/aspect system" Now, if only we could convince the Navajo people to adopt the Kanji
)
polyglot dream list - gyuujuice - 2010-12-04
Why not just learn them all then?
"Now, if only we could convince the Navajo people to adopt the Kanji" XD
English
--Woot one language down.
日本語
My first FL
中文
I want to go into foreign language acquisition and...
台灣語
My favorite language. It uses traditional characters, it has a softer feel to it, and it has some of my favorite music pop stars. XD
粵語
Well If I am going to learn both Mandarin and Taiwanese [dialect] then I might as well learn Cantonese. I would much prefer visit Hong Kong than Mainland and they have good movies.
한국어
I really like Korean food, my favorite singer is 윤하, 한굴 is awesome and my nerdy side beckons me.
All of these languages use kanji/hanzi/hanja in some form so that's a major plus for me. I wanted to keep the amount of languages to 6 so I could study an alternative dialect like 関西弁 or Northern Korean. Plus I think that since they are so similar but entirely look/sound-alikes it will be easier to pick up. XD
polyglot dream list - EratiK - 2010-12-05
I thought this was a thread about the multinlingual dreams you get in the morning...
:lol: But more seriously:
I really like to learn Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian, since they're from the same group, the task might be manageable. They all got cool (though different) cultures (and Japanese has a nice literature).
Then I remember as a teen, I always wanted to learn German to read Nietzsche and Freud in the original script (and maybe Kant and Schopenhauer, why not?). Same thing for ancient Greek with Herakleitos and Empedokles.
I did five years of Latin, but since we didn't insist on communicative abilities, I feel I suck pretty much. But with my new insight on languages (thanks to you guys!
), I feel I can finish it in a couple of years. Will do if I have the time. Same thing for Spanish. I'd like to learn Yolngu so I can play didgeridoo properly (so many dialects).
And maybe Chinese (Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese), since I already know some kanji.
Then there are languages I really don't feel I'll be completing in my lifetime: Italian and Portugese and Czech (for the way they sound and the girls), Russian and ancient Egyptian (for the alphabet), Indonesian (it's supposed to be easy), then Sanskrit (for Mahayana texts), Tibetan (to go there and chant). Then Arabic, Hebrew, Maori, other weird Polynesian languages, Hindi, Tamoul, Thai, Quechua, Maya...
polyglot dream list - KanjiDevourer - 2010-12-05
Nice read. Let's keep up the high goals and we might all become so polyglot that there will be no more wars!
I'd like to spread out my language acquisition over different types of languages. Only since starting Japanese study I realise what great insights you can have from the way other languages put their description of the world and its relations. Why look at the world from just your native language's inescapably biased way of describing, thinking, reciting, writing?
On top of that, since having read a terrible translation I definitely prefer to read books in their original language, if possible. And when traveling, it would be nice if there was at least a very high chance you can communicate in a common language with the natives.
My list that will probably grow and never be completely fullfilled):
1. English (not my native language), inevitably will only improve by the constant, natural practice on the internet and by reading books, watching tv, talking with international students, being abroad, et cetera.
1a. Deutsch. Know some, but to be able to read with some speed would be amazing. Enough interesting material to read, as many others already noted.
2. Español, I consider this my first new foreign language since I did not grow up with it, but learned it in some courses at the university. A major language, and not too difficult, but fun to use and read. Marvellous cinema as well. Also made me think of:
2a. Português, I have heard the brazilian variant and that is the best sounding language I know to day. Yummy, nasals! I'd like to be able to speak this!
2b. Francais, know some, could improve much. Great language family, those Romance languages. Also a large amount of movies, books.
3. 日本語, amazing blend of syllabary/characters/foreign words! Might just later on instigate interest in:
3a. (standard mainland) Chinese, would be good for business wouldn't it.. at the moment I just don't think I'll want to put in the required effort for learning the tones. Being able to read it would be nice, though.
4. Hungarian (magyar), I don't think I saw this language already. Very likeable country, interesting language with its suffixes, sounds good. One of the Finno-Ugric languages, so quite isolated and unrelated to others. Would be perfect to sharpen the mind with, I guess. I would definitely use this when on vacation there.
5. Arabic, writing from right-to-left, with beautiful calligraphy (take that nihon!) and also a major language.
6. Russian, a very interesting country with very strange but sometimes understandable attitudes. If I would learn a Slavic language (and alphabet) this would be it.
7. On minor sidequests, Latin would be nice for reading (luckily had 6 years of latin at high school), and a language like Swedish is interesting (many series and good cinema there). I don't know anything about (sub-Saharan) African languages yet, but I feel one is lacking in my list. I read about Swahili in this thread, perhaps that would be interesting.
polyglot dream list - raz789 - 2010-12-05
Hmm for me it would be :
Japanese(of course, otherwise why would I be on this site
)Russian(like the looks of this)
Korean(Hangul is awesome)
Greek(greek mythology is interesting)
Not a fan of learning Romance Languages. Find them kinda boring.
As for those who said Gaelic Irish, good luck
I've been learning it for 11 years here(the system sucks)
And the best I know is sentence structure, some grammar points and a handful of verbs and vocab.
Oh well.
polyglot dream list - breakies - 2010-12-05
My list is very modest compared to others =P :
-French (native language)
-English: Good level, but I wish I could improve a little more
-Spanish: I happened to have a intermediate level after two years of hard study, but I need to drawn into it again
-German: never studied, but would be pretty convenient for my work.
-Italian: same as German language. Maybe an easier goal, since french and spanish looks like this one.
-Japanese: Just because it's japanese.
I don't even dare to add Arabic which happens to be the other language which would be convenient to talk for my work ;_;
polyglot dream list - vonPeterhof - 2010-12-05
raz789 Wrote:As for those who said Gaelic Irish, good luckYeah, I am in the exact same situation with respect to Kazakh. While Kazakh fares a lot better than Irish (about half of the population speaks it fluently), it still loses to Russian which is spoken by everyone in the country. Kazakh education in Russian-speaking schools really sucks - it is based predominately on rote memorisation and translation, and the approach to grammar is quite Russocentric. So, even though I always had perfect scores in the class, I could never hold an actual conversation beyond one or two introductory sentences.
I've been learning it for 11 years here(the system sucks)
And the best I know is sentence structure, some grammar points and a handful of verbs and vocab.
Oh well.
It looks like the only situation where a language-revival project can work is where the people have no other common language to fall back on. If Israel was being created today, rather than in the 1940s, I wonder if Hebrew could survive the competition with English.
polyglot dream list - raz789 - 2010-12-05
vonPeterhof Wrote:Yeah, I am in the exact same situation with respect to Kazakh. While Kazakh fares a lot better than Irish (about half of the population speaks it fluently), it still loses to Russian which is spoken by everyone in the country. Kazakh education in Russian-speaking schools really sucks - it is based predominately on rote memorisation and translation, and the approach to grammar is quite Russocentric. So, even though I always had perfect scores in the class, I could never hold an actual conversation beyond one or two introductory sentences.Exactly it, rote memorization and translation. Honestly, Irish is just spoken in a few places in Ireland(called Gaeltacht areas), but even then people speak fluent English there. Irish too had it's own language revival during the early 1900s, cause of this it's compulsory in schools, but even then if we had a choice, there'd be few who would do it. The method of learning is boring. The revival was really for historic purposes, and for something the Irish have as their own compared to the British.
It looks like the only situation where a language-revival project can work is where the people have no other common language to fall back on. If Israel was being created today, rather than in the 1940s, I wonder if Hebrew could survive the competition with English.
I don't know much about Kazakh, but half the population being able to speak it is better than the 40000 to 100000 speakers of a population of 4 million here. There's no way I could have a decent conversation with a native speaker of Irish. You should see the tests here for it, they are pretty much the same as English tests, most people pass from guessing/matching words in the passage with words from the questions. Thats what I did and I got a C. Comprehension are pretty much impossible to understand for me, there's grammar points and vocab I've never studied. Our teacher has gone over a few comprehensions and everytime she does there's at least 10 words she has to explain. And then there's verbs that need explaining. She usually just explains them in the tense it's in without giving us the verb in other tenses.
Irish would be on my list if there was a good method. I'd probably be fluent in it after 11 years if it was taught at least decently.
polyglot dream list - jorrebenst - 2010-12-05
Dutch is my native language, and a fluent English speaker. I also speak french, though not as good as I would like, but I study some french from time to time.
Then I'm learning Japanese and Mathematics right now. Those two would definitely give me the seal of awesomeness, and if I can master those two, I think I will have proven to be able to handle anything ; ) Also recently started doing classical piano, so I am hoping to master music too.
Once my french is near-fluent I'll take a good look at German, to master all of my country's national languages, gain access to the huge body of literature and philosophy, as well as simply practical reasons: It's used a lot where I live.
Then I should take a look at Limburgish (even though it's not really a language, but more like a *very* divergent dialect), to get more in touch with my roots. My mother grew up in a monolingual limburgish environment, and only learned dutch in the classroom. My mother actually raised me in her L2 language :| Plus it's actually really cool: it's kind of a tonal language!
I should squeeze in some Haskell too.
So that gives:
-Dutch
-English
-French
-Japanese
-German
-Limburgish
For the spoken languages, plus:
-Mathematics
-Music
-Haskell (and I also know some java)
for non-spoken languages.
That should settle my language learning desires for the next few years. After that I'll probably do mandarin Chinese and/or Arabic. Both are a completely new language family, and Arabic has a new, unique script. And both are interesting for travel-related reasons.
And perhaps a second romance language.
Here I thought my plans were ridiculously ambitious, but seeing some of your lists, haha. Are you actually planning on learning all of those? lol.
polyglot dream list - Raschaverak - 2010-12-05
I definitely need to learn more hungarian. I'm studying the good old C language, and the book is in hungarian and I've aleready lost track on page 232... (It's about functions...). My vocab is probably too low for it
polyglot dream list - vonPeterhof - 2010-12-05
jorrebenst Wrote:Here I thought my plans were ridiculously ambitious, but seeing some of your lists, haha. Are you actually planning on learning all of those? lol.I believe the topic was about dreams, not plans or ambitions
I also dream of the day when Russia can finally be described as a free, safe and prosperous society, but that has nothing to do with whether or not I believe that it will ever happen (the longer I live here the more convinced I become that it is impossible). As for my list, I certainly intend to keep learning languages after Japanese and I would like to have a realistic language study schedule, but I will probably do it after a few more months of studying Japanese, when I will have a better idea of my ability.raz789 Wrote:Irish would be on my list if there was a good method. I'd probably be fluent in it after 11 years if it was taught at least decently.Well, I can certainly think of nothing better than immersion. Depending on your level of commitment, you could move to a Gaeltacht for about six months to volunteer or something, or go for an "All Irish All The Time" self-immersion, provided that there are Irish-language media that you would be interested in.
polyglot dream list - ta12121 - 2010-12-05
For me it's
1.Japanese(complete fluency)
2. Mandarin Chinese (complete fluency)
3. Read/understand arabic in it's modern/ancient forms
I don't think I'll learn any more languages. Due to maintaining them will take a lot of time
polyglot dream list - captal - 2010-12-05
Once I get good enough at Japanese, I want to learn Spanish using Japanese- I haven't thought much beyond being tri-lingual
polyglot dream list - Korvar - 2010-12-05
Japanese (ongoing - finished RTK1, looking to start core6k soonish)
Then Mandarin or Cantonese (assuming learning Hanzi is like learning Kanji). Both?
Spanish.
I do have a nagging feeling I should know a little French.
polyglot dream list - zigmonty - 2010-12-05
For me it's:
1) Japanese - for work, plus fun language. Already started this one.
2) Mandarin - Meh, gotta get some value for money out of this kanji knowledge. Probably a pretty useful language in coming decades. Don't know anything beyond extremely basic grammar.
3) Italian - Half my family tree is Italian. Just want to be able to communicate. Did it at school and took a subject at uni... like 5-10 years ago... Will probably have to start from scratch.
4) German - because it's just plain cool. Also another useful business language. Did it in high school, remember none of it. Start from scratch.
No idea what my order will be after japanese though. Or when i'll stop actively studying japanese. It's definitely the most useful language for me at present.
polyglot dream list - wulfgar - 2010-12-05
My dream laungues
日本語： It's my fun language, started 2 years ago and I am not letting this one go.
french: it's one of the official languages here In Canada and I figure If ever get serious in politics it never hurts to know the 2 official languages XD. Mr prime minister here i come
.So yeah, 2 languages is good enough for me b/c I have other wild ambitions that also take up a gross amount of time XD.