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I speak 8 languages, 4 super fluently, 2 sufficient for daily communication and 2 so-so for special occasions only, and learning continuously. They are all from

by bitL 11y ago

I speak 8 languages, 4 super fluently, 2 sufficient for daily communication and 2 so-so for special occasions only, and learning continuously. They are all from different groups without many commonalities (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Sino-Japanese). For Sino-Japanese there is the odd disparity between the ability to read and ability to write that doesn't exist in the other groups, as well as a single character having different sound depending on context. Slavic languages are crazy because they can form sentences in any order and the order changes meaning substantially, something that doesn't exist in orderly Germanic languages. Romance languages often add terms related to feelings that do not have any corresponding term in another languages. I would disagree that learning one language helps you with another unless they are from some kind of language continuum - languages are so vastly different (especially depending on geographic distance) when you try to really master them, often full of idiomatic expressions and expressions you can't understand unless you grow in the historical context the language developed, and accurate translations are basically impossible. Some even use completely different causal logic (like Aymara), or miss elements considered basic in other languages (directions absent in Hawaiian) etc. Learning languages is driven by curiosity, was handy a bit while traveling around the world and it helps to be near some language school, attend parties with people from all around the world and just have fun trying to chat together natively ;-)

Retric 11y ago
A lot of this centers around what proficiency means. With a few weeks of training you can be a tourist in a foreign city just fine. Getting to the proficiency of a native 10 year old is vastly harder. Another huge jump is having the language skills to get a job more complex than dishwasher in another language. Not to mention being a poet. IMO, basic proficiency is simply the ability to communicate unaided with effort on both parties. Which really only takes the language skills of ~5-7 year old native child.
- stank345 11y ago
  > A lot of this centers around what proficiency means. This is very true and this is what bothers me when reading about these supposed polyglots/hyperglots. As a Portuguese speaker, I get Spanish "for free" as in I'm able to read Spanish, follow a Mexican soap opera on TV, and stumble through an order at a Mexican restaurant. Does that mean I can add Spanish to the list of languages that I speak? > IMO, basic proficiency is simply the ability to communicate unaided with effort on both parties. Which really only takes the language skills of ~5-7 year old native child. A 5-7 year old child with normal language development will be fluent, as in mastery of the grammar. There's no comparison between an adult who can get by in a language and a native speaker. For example, a child who is a native speaker of a language with grammatical gender will never mess up gender agreement whereas an adult learner might struggle mightily with that.
emodendroket 11y ago
Why group Sinitic and Japonic languages together? It's true that Japanese (and the other minor Japonic languages) borrows a lot of Chinese vocabulary but grammatically and phonetically they have practically nothing in common.
- kazinator 11y ago
  Indeed, there is no "Sino-Japanese" language. This is an adjective which is used to describe words of Chinese origin in Japanese (and has other uses): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese
- bitL 11y ago
  This way I could express that the majority of the speakers struggle with reading/writing asymmetry, whether they are Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese speakers, in Taiwan or speak another related language.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    Koreans manage to avoid that via Hangul, at least. I understand that they once had a written language based on Chinese characters, though.
    - emodendroket 11y ago
      They still do, even though in typical writing they are used quite sparingly.
- titanix2 11y ago
  Because a large part of Japanese language (and Korean and Vietnamese for that matter) is made of loanwords of Chinese origin (漢語) it made some sense to bring them together (albeit I suspect it is often done because Japanese use Chinese characters too). So while the grammar vastly differ, learning one is really useful to learn another because a lot of words are roughly the same. As a side note I was reading in a book[1] the rather extreme view that the "corrupt" Japanese or Korean readings of characters maybe seen as a dialect of Chinese. [1] Élémens de la grammaire chinoise. Abel Rémusat (1822) https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=rJAUAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PP5 https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&out...
smchang 11y ago
There is also the possibility that it does help, but not strictly with the grammar or the mechanics of the actual language. I can imagine that learning a foreign language with any proficiency is as much about learning how to teach your brain to break free of the constraints of knowing only your first language. For most people, thoughts are directly connected to language and sentence structure. Perhaps learning another language teaches you to think more in the concepts and be more flexible with your thought structure than thinking simply within the natural constraints of your first language. For instance, if you can't wrap your head around why a language may be missing 'basic' elements, you would never really master that language.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
When you learn a language, you're not only learning the language itself. You're also learning how to learn languages. It's not the language that helps, but having the experience of learning it.

by bitL 11y ago

Retric 11y ago

A lot of this centers around what proficiency means. With a few weeks of training you can be a tourist in a foreign city just fine. Getting to the proficiency of a native 10 year old is vastly harder. Another huge jump is having the language skills to get a job more complex than dishwasher in another language. Not to mention being a poet. IMO, basic proficiency is simply the ability to communicate unaided with effort on both parties. Which really only takes the language skills of ~5-7 year old native child.

stank345 11y ago
> A lot of this centers around what proficiency means. This is very true and this is what bothers me when reading about these supposed polyglots/hyperglots. As a Portuguese speaker, I get Spanish "for free" as in I'm able to read Spanish, follow a Mexican soap opera on TV, and stumble through an order at a Mexican restaurant. Does that mean I can add Spanish to the list of languages that I speak? > IMO, basic proficiency is simply the ability to communicate unaided with effort on both parties. Which really only takes the language skills of ~5-7 year old native child. A 5-7 year old child with normal language development will be fluent, as in mastery of the grammar. There's no comparison between an adult who can get by in a language and a native speaker. For example, a child who is a native speaker of a language with grammatical gender will never mess up gender agreement whereas an adult learner might struggle mightily with that.

emodendroket 11y ago

Why group Sinitic and Japonic languages together? It's true that Japanese (and the other minor Japonic languages) borrows a lot of Chinese vocabulary but grammatically and phonetically they have practically nothing in common.

kazinator 11y ago
Indeed, there is no "Sino-Japanese" language. This is an adjective which is used to describe words of Chinese origin in Japanese (and has other uses): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese
bitL 11y ago
This way I could express that the majority of the speakers struggle with reading/writing asymmetry, whether they are Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese speakers, in Taiwan or speak another related language.
- Natsu 11y ago
  Koreans manage to avoid that via Hangul, at least. I understand that they once had a written language based on Chinese characters, though.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    They still do, even though in typical writing they are used quite sparingly.
titanix2 11y ago
Because a large part of Japanese language (and Korean and Vietnamese for that matter) is made of loanwords of Chinese origin (漢語) it made some sense to bring them together (albeit I suspect it is often done because Japanese use Chinese characters too). So while the grammar vastly differ, learning one is really useful to learn another because a lot of words are roughly the same. As a side note I was reading in a book[1] the rather extreme view that the "corrupt" Japanese or Korean readings of characters maybe seen as a dialect of Chinese. [1] Élémens de la grammaire chinoise. Abel Rémusat (1822) https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=rJAUAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PP5 https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&out...

smchang 11y ago

There is also the possibility that it does help, but not strictly with the grammar or the mechanics of the actual language. I can imagine that learning a foreign language with any proficiency is as much about learning how to teach your brain to break free of the constraints of knowing only your first language. For most people, thoughts are directly connected to language and sentence structure. Perhaps learning another language teaches you to think more in the concepts and be more flexible with your thought structure than thinking simply within the natural constraints of your first language. For instance, if you can't wrap your head around why a language may be missing 'basic' elements, you would never really master that language.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

When you learn a language, you're not only learning the language itself. You're also learning how to learn languages. It's not the language that helps, but having the experience of learning it.