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This brings to mind the childhood of John Stuart Mill: - Learned Greek starting age three. - Was studying Plato at age six. - Studied Latin starting at age e

• karmakurtisaani 8mo ago
  And imagine what he could have done if he had done something useful at such a young age!
  • piekvorst 8mo ago
    Knowing Greek, Latin, and Plato is very useful for a philosopher of his times. I’m far from being a fan of Mill’s contributions but he aligned himself well with the western history of philosophy. But if you imply that philosophy as such isn’t useful, it’s simply wrong, if not arrogant. Everyone needs philosophy.
• stevage 8mo ago
  Learning three languages at an early age is completely unremarkable for millions of people around the world. It's just notable which ones his were.
  • lordnacho 8mo ago
    It's notable if he learned Greek and Latin from books. Being classical languages, it sounds that way. Most people who learn three languages as a kid are surrounded by other speakers, not books.
    • simonh 8mo ago
      His father who oversaw his education and possibly both parents, and Bentham that played a role in his education as well, would have known either Greek, or Latin or both as they were considered essential to a rounded education at the time.
  • zoeysmithe 8mo ago
    I learned two languages growing up and was speaking both as soon as I could speak and could write in both not long after. This is typical for nearly every kid in the world outside of countries with strong language monocultures. I certainly think Mills was a very talented person, but there's this weird cult of being impressed by "speaks 7 languages" hagoigraphies which aren't helpful. People bring up it as some acid test of intelligence and its just not very accurate. Especially when you actually know the language these kinds of people claim to speak and you realize they actually don't speak 7 languages but maybe know 2 or 3 fluently and know 'kitchen' versions of all the others. I'm not going to name names because I don't want an argument and don't have the spoons for it, but lots of these international luminaries and leaders and such with "speaks 7 language" are often little more than conmen or simply enjoy building their own little hagiographies for their own PR goals. There's this wonderful deep-dive on youtube on Feynman's high-questionable personal mythology that is a great example of this kind of self-promotion and how easy it is to sell one's self, especially in academic and techie circles, if you have a certain amount of charisma and drive. Also as a lefty, I'm also not impressed by breathless ambidextrous tales either as most lefties are forced to be ambidextrous and its not actually exceptional at all. I can write with both hands, play musical instruments either way, play sports either way, etc. The left hand is better at these things, but my right-hand is okay-ish at almost all these things and I use a right-hand dominant near everything in my life anyway. I even like to switch it up to keep wear and tear down. At work the mouse is on the left, but at home for gaming its on the right. This is all boring everyday stuff for lefties. There's a toxic 'great man' mythology that humanity still can't get over and its weird seeing it taken seriously when so many 'great men' have been debunked or seen as recipients of the system they were under (Mills' father pushing him so hard and being in the privileged class that would allow all this instead of back-breaking farm labor all day). Personal talent is important but its vastly played up in dishonest ways for dishonest gains. We probably pass many highly talented people a day on the street, but only some had the opportunity to grow those gifts into something they can use. The famous quote comes to mind. "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
• xamuel 8mo ago
  J.S. Mill's autobiography is a fascinating read. He spends quite a lot of it discussing his early childhood, explaining that in his opinion he was not particularly special, rather, it was his father who pushed him to all those accomplishments. His father sheltered him from other kids so he was not aware that his accomplishments were unusual!
• _s_a_m_ 8mo ago
  Didnt he went through a major burnout and depression because of that? I remember reading something like that.
• FL33TW00D 8mo ago
  This was mostly down to enormous pressure from his father, causing him to have a breakdown in his early twenties. Not to say the results weren't incredible, but certainly required sacrifice. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10378/10378-h/10378-h.htm#link2HCH0005 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10378/10378-h/10378-h.htm#li...
• stevoski 8mo ago
  My daughter spoke four languages at age 3. Not because she is gifted, but because she grew up in an immigrant environment. One language with me, another with my partner who speaks a different mother tongue than I do, and the two local languages where we live. And this is utterly unremarkable where I live. When we visit my family (who are all monolingual), they think she is a prodigy. She’s not. She’s just a normal kid.
  • Sharlin 8mo ago
    Learning by immersion is a completely different process from learning by being tutored, never mind learning by oneself from books.
  • exceptione 8mo ago
    Latin and Greek are classical, 'dead' languages.
    • SiempreViernes 8mo ago
      That there are no native speakers doesn't mean there are no tutors that speak it.
      • Sharlin 8mo ago
        Learning by immersion is still a very different process from learning by being tutored. One is something that young childrens' brains do almost entirely subconsciously, the other is conscious academic work.
    • defrost 8mo ago
      In the time of J.S.M. they were languages used by academics and upper classes regularly enough that in his circles he and many of his peers had early exposure. Hence that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian. Still fun today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mip30YF1iuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mip30YF1iuo
    • toraway 8mo ago
• nephihaha 8mo ago
  Unusual to study Latin before Greek. It's usually the other way round.
  • vixen99 8mo ago
    Tangential but am reminded of Churchill's comments" "And when in after years my school-fellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage." and "“However, by being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell—a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great—was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing—namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis." Even better if you can do both!
    • nephihaha 8mo ago
      Latin was a lot more common than Greek in schools in the UK. But even that tended to be private schools after the sixties and seventies. Greek was a subset of that. I was lucky, I had two or three excellent English teachers. Very inspiring and helpful. I wish I could say the same about mathematics (most of my teachers were terrible and one didn't even teach us how to do the problems)... Or my French teacher. I think we spoke better French than he did at the end. Since I spent a lot of my childhood in rural Scotland I was effectively bilingual anyway.
    • quietbritishjim 8mo ago
      Great quote! Your final sentence seems a bit odd in that context though: Churchill's point is that Latin and Greek actually isn't useful at all, so it would follow that it isn't better to do both (i.e. study the classics as well as English), especially as time to learn them would have a huge opportunity cost, e.g. you could use that time to study more English composition instead. (If you think they're worth learning just for their own sake then that's another matter, but the quote seems to imply that Churchill wouldn't agree.)
• vbezhenar 8mo ago
  I learned to read at age three or four, I think and I consumed every book I could find, including various math books, old chemistry books, etc. I didn't really understand anything there, but it was just fascinating to me to even touch that knowledge. So I'm a bit skeptic about these stories of children studying Plato.
  • mkoubaa 8mo ago
    Talk to an average college freshman that studies plato and you might be similarly disappointed
• ooloncoloophid 8mo ago
  His book 'On Liberty' is the subject of a recent In Our Time episode (BBC Radio Four series on the history of ideas) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002pqnc https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002pqnc]. They discuss his childhood and his (apparently very warm) relationship with his father. (Sidenote: first proper In Our Time episode with the new host; he seems fine, but I miss Melvyn Bragg.)