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> However they differ, the hyperpolyglots whom I met all winced at the question “How many languages do you speak?” As Rojas-Berscia explained it, the issue is p
by willprice89 1y ago
> However they differ, the hyperpolyglots whom I met all winced at the question “How many languages do you speak?” As Rojas-Berscia explained it, the issue is partly semantic: What does the verb “to speak” mean?
When hearing about hyperpolyglots I always have some doubt. Some people believe they know a language when they have a vocabulary of a few dozen words. That might be enough to order food at a restaurant but I don't think is what most people would consider "speaking a language". How many of the 22 languages Rojas-Berscia "has command of" can he speak at a highly-proficient level like CEFR C2? I'm guessing not many.
The question of linguistic distance is also rarely touched upon in these articles despite being of critical importance. It's far easier to learn Italian when you already speak French, Spanish, and Portuguese. A quantitative analysis of hyperpolyglots ought to have some sort of "linguistic range" measure to capture the distance between the different languages you speak proficiently.
- watwut 1y agoC2 is about much more then language itself. It is a lot more about presentation skills, writing specific kind of formal text and such. It is truly an unreasonable expectation for someone saying they "speak a language".
- willprice89 1y agoB1 then. The point is that there should be some sort of objective measure other than simply "Hey how many languages do you speak?"
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y agoThis is what I always wonder in the back of my head as well. Take passive vocabulary size - it should be fairly easy to show people who claim to speak a given language a random selection of words in various frequency bands, and ask them either what they mean or what other words out of a list are closest to it semantically, to estimate their actual vocabulary size. If you don't think showing isolated words is an adequate metric of someone's true gloss skill, you can show words embedded in sentences. But we never even hear about these kinds of estimates in these stories, let alone anything more in depth.