The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I have heard some people carry on conversations in two or three languages simultaneously, and I am in awe of Mezzofanti.
> "On one occasion, Pope Gregory XVI (1765-1846), a friend of Mezzofanti, arranged for dozens of international students to surprise him. When the signal was given, the students knelt before Mezzofanti and then rose quickly, talking to him 'each in his own tongue, with such an abundance of words and such a volubility of tone, that, in the jargon of dialects, it was almost impossible to hear, much less to understand them.' Mezzofanti didn't flinch but 'took them up singly, and replied to each in his own language.' The pope declared the cardinal to be victorious. Mezzofanti could not be bested."
> It just takes time and effort
My uncle (a native English speaker) spoke about a dozen languages. Not one of them was a cinch. Although he loved learning new languages, he acquired them through relentless hard work.
However, he got himself in trouble with German / Dutch. Trying to practice his Dutch in the Netherlands, he ordered an ice cream using Dutch grammar but German words. This was in the late '60s, and the ice cream vendor, who was old enough to remember the occupation, mistook him for German. My uncle made things worse by saying, in German, "we must have misunderstood each other," at which point the ice cream vendor started mock goose-stepping around behind his stand. My uncle did not receive his ice cream.
This is the norm here in Morocco: Lots of people speak a Berber dialect as their primary language, followed by Arab and French (both compulsory in education). Not only are most able to participate in 3 communications in their 3 languages, they also practice code-switching a lot - it's not uncommon to have all 3 languages in a single sentence.
> Just throw away all concept of deadlines for progress and fluency and enjoy the failure and process.
The second part is, IMHO, the most important: Fail, fail, fail - and laugh about it. One does walk away from "talks", both parties laughing and "agreeing", with both parties being aware that communication failed completely.
One not only needs a tolerance for failure, but a tolerance for humiliation. Some native speakers will treat people with a poor grasp of their language as if they were children or idiots.
I've definitely acquired a lot more empathy for people who struggle with English once I tried my own rudimentary language skills in other countries. These people who have difficulty putting together a few words in English might actually be far more intelligent and educated than the native speakers they're trying to communicate with, yet they're often looked down upon.
In France during a gig in the linguists' world I heard that Claude Hagège, a local authority, has a fair command of 80 languages. WP EN credits him with "about 50" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Hag%C3%A8ge
Now, for example, Martina Hingis, a former tennis player for those who are too young or too nerdy to know, speaks five languages according to Wikipedia. Well, she actually has interviews on Youtube showing impressive fluency in English, German, Swiss German, French, and Czech. I am absolutely fascinated by this.
- Czech parents (and lived there till ~7) - moved to (German-part of) Switzerland: the local language is Swiss German, but school is in German (i.e., everyone speaks both of those) - everyone in Switzerland is taught one of the other official languages, usually German in the non-German speaking areas, and French in the German speaking areas (fluency will vary, but for instance I had 7 years of German by the end of high school) - everyone learns English these days ;)
I would expect that most children who moved to German-speaking Switzerland at a youngish age would be fluent in at least 4 languages...
It is ironic that I know better French than some Swiss German and Swiss Italian friends, and better German than some Swiss Romande friends.
It seems like it's far easier with early exposure to languages. I speak six languages, and don't find languages too difficult, which I attribute largely to having grown up speaking two languages from two different language families, and being exposed to a third one fairly early. Thanks to that, it's completely natural to me that ideas are expressed differently in different languages. When I encounter people who speak/write a foreign language poorly, it usually looks like they think of a sentence in their own language, and then replace the words individually with words in their target language. It's not so much a difference of skill level as it is a difference in the basic way of thinking.
I've also watched some videos along the lines of "see me speak 10 languages", and those are almost always less impressive than the title. They usually show a person fluent in 3-5 languages, and then saying introductory basic things in the others. That's very respectable and I don't want to play that down, but it's also not "wow, s/he's fluent in 10 languages!" like people might think from the title.
One more thing that keeps me wondering is the practical limit of how many languages you can maintain. Personally, with six languages, I already feel I'm pushing it. I use four languages in day-to-day life. If I don't read/speak either of my other two for a while, I feel my skills deteriorating. Personally it seems like maintaining seven languages would take a deliberate, considerable time investment, and more than that wouldn't work.
I think it's more along the lines of: Your first/native language isn't a problem, your second language is difficult, and with each beyond that it becomes easier to change how you think to fit the next language. It's just, being exposed young breaks that second-language hurdle early enough you don't really remember it being extra difficult.
I'm not fluent in anything besides English (though know a small bit of Spanish and Japanese), so take that above with a grain of salt. But the difficulty curve seems similar to programing languages, where the more you learn, the more you recognize underlying concepts across languages, making further ones easier to understand.
I don't think so - I rather think this is exactly what early exposure gets around. Growing up with two languages, you understand and speak two even before understanding concepts like language learning, or there being more than those two languages. The second language isn't difficult at all, it's just the same as your native language. Or it's like having two native languages. But there's no second-language hurdle in that case (though it moves to the third one).
I suspect that's what's happening with a lot of people who cultivate a reputation as hyper-polyglots: When they say "fluent", they mean, "about on par with a 4-year-old, only more literate". When everyone else hears fluent, they think they mean, "masters of the language".
(edit: I pick 4 years old because that's about on par with the benchmark Wyner is using - in his book, he seems to be using 1,500 words as the benchmark for a working vocabulary. I believe that's about average for a native English-speaking 4-year-old.)
I can, however, make small talk without embarrassing myself too much in three additional ones - Portuguese, Russian and Monokotuba. (Funny, that last one - a result of being stuck in the Congo for work...)
I don't put the last three ones on my CV, though - while I do make myself understood, to a fluent speaker it is probably a lot like conversing a four year old (with rather particular interests for a four year old!)
He then goes on to describe other benchmarks you might go for. But the minimum bar he's advocating is very low compared to what I think most people would expect.
I've had much better luck with this system than with what I was forced to use in school to learn French, which was basically slowly build up all of the skills at once(learn a little grammar, a few words, at a time).
* learn pronunciation/spelling first
* learn the top words using images and space repetition
* study every single day
I think this method is by far superior to anything taught in high schools in the US, which is very sad given a large portion of our population speaks Spanish and I think they could change the curriculum a bit an a lot more students would leave school bi-lingual
When someone asks me "Are you fluent in Spanish?", I take that almost always as an indication that they have no idea what it takes to learn a language and try my best to educate them about what it really takes (The 1500 words frequency-based vocabulary, for example).
1) Even in languages that I've studied for a long time and know a lot more than 1500 words, I struggle to carry on small talk. Here again, maybe we have a different definition of small talk. Sure I can navigate the world, but I can't talk politics, economics, or current events without struggling or feeling stunted.
2) I recall being a student in Germany and having a 5 year old host sister. Sure her grammar was not fully developed and her range of specialized vocabulary was limited, but she most definitely knew more than 1500 words and had a more working understanding of that language than a typical non-native speaker would even after many years of study.
In his video on https://fluent-forever.com/getting-started/ at 2:50 he claims there's a subtle pronunciation difference between German "biete" (offer) and "bete" (pray).
The problem is, the difference in pronunciation isn't subtle. It's huge. The difference in the real pronunciation of those words.
But when he demonstrates the supposed difference, I – as a native German speaker – hear the same word, "biete", both times.
His "bete" is so very wrong that no German speaker would ever consider it "bete" on its own. It's 100% "biete".
Only if you know typical English pronunciation and you have context you might draw the conclusion that "bete" is what he means.
I fully concede that hearing pronunciation differences in non-native languages is very hard. Probably more so for some people than for others. Unfortunately, I'm in the very very hard camp.
I will never hear the difference between hard and soft consonants in Russian. I listened to audio CDs, I listened to a native speaker who assured me the difference was as night and day. To no avail.
And I seem to hear something very different from a Swedish native speaker when a sj sound is spoken (the sj sound has wildly different phonetics throughout Sweden). There seem to be some Swedish dialects where I hear a very clear [x] (velar frivative) sound, but native speakers assure me it's far from it.
So he's certainly no dummy, but maybe not as successful in learning languages as he thinks.
I think the secret is to expose the person to multiple languages at a very early age.
Its like having kids: the first is an impossible leap, the second is much harder than anticipated, the third gets easier and after the fourth its just a big mass.
I remember reading the intro to a Berlitz language course written by Charles Berlitz himself (a polyglot master of a dozen or more languages, if I remember correctly). He made the statement that speaking two or more languages is seen as evidence of higher intellect. They went on to assert that it is actually quite easy to learn a language. In fact, anyone who is not an imbecile can do so, but learning a second language -- ah, now there is the rub. It's difficult, typically, because of the incorrect approach and the lack of integration. In order to learn a language, one must speak and hear it. It is insufficient to merely read it or "speak" it silently, in one's mind.
getting back to your analogy: I will quibble with a fine point. It is unfortunately incredibly simply to have a child. Even those imbeciles from the former example seem capable (even rather proficient!) at having many. The difficulty comes in raising a child well. And I think that was what you were getting at. :) That is no simple task. But after one or two the parents learn the necessary skills.
Berlitz also makes the observation that learning a third language is easier than the second, as one is now finding patterns and building on those similarities rather than focusing on differences.
Your logic is in good company.
I will point out that children who are exposed to two languages quite naturally learn both of them with only a slight delay over learning a single one.
What I find sad is that though over the years I have learned and used languages with reasonable fluency, nowadays I pick up a book or hear something on the radio and I struggle to understand it. I'm stuck to the same languages I use every day. Those languages have still influenced my view of the world and understanding of the languages I do use but it still feels like a loss.
I have 2 kids. Everyone I've spoke to who has 3 or more has said that the jump from 2 to 3 is as big as the jump from 0 to 1.
But note that the question is not if 3 kids are harder. They're obviously harder than 2.
The question is (for the sake of the analogy), if going from 2 to 3 is harder than going from 1 to 2 or 0 to 1.
We are talking strictly about incremental difficulty here.
Without providing any hard research to back my thoughts, I'd also surmise that it is difficult to transfer this onto the difficulty of learning a language. My thinking on this is that if for example you are learning another language within the same family, that is a different level of difficulty than learning a language in a new-to-you language family. As a German speaker, there are other Germanic languages that look very familiar to me, where I could take a reasonable guess at the meaning. On the other hand if I were to learn Mandarin or Russian, it would be a significantly larger task.
But all pretense of democratic rule must be jettisoned once the kids outnumber the parents.
From 2 to >2 was the biggest hurdle and the reason is simple: you have 2 hands with which you can totally control 2 kids. With >2 you need to master a different technic to control (read: keep 'm safe) under the most unexpected circumstances.
Edit: and we speak 2 native languages, our kids have grownup in 2 different countries. Sofar they pick up languages pretty easy and I attribute that mainly to not being afraid to learn & make mistakes.
The answer is IQ. I knew that before even reading the article. Same for speed reading, memorization, etc. anything that is cognitive has a large IQ component. I dunno why it's so hard for researchers to get this. Instead we hook subjects to machines to look for brain patterns or we try to look for any other explanation besides the most obvious one, IQ.
Could they understand a complex news story about economics and finance in all those languages? Read a novel? Write an essay on a complex topic?
I'm skeptical.
You could be mistaken as a native in six languages if you just make small talk with a perfect accent and intonation.
Someone who really knows a language has a (passive) vocabulary of some 25,000 words. A proper hyperpolyglot should have 11X then, once per each language. Yeah, sure!
I've done travelled in various areas of Spain, China and Russia (and had studied Japanese years back), and have been able to do rough communication with all of them to some level, but ... when you are doing it, you realize how much you don't know. No, I can't just read any level of book I want, can't understand all the news programs (or the local ramifications), couldn't go see a theatrical play, couldn't conduct business, etc. BUT... the few phrases and words I know, apparently I sound good enough that people have mistaken me (for perhaps 30 seconds, until I keep going) for a native speaker. (well, not in china!)
I remember feeling quite humbled that the 4 year old at a mcdonalds in China was still more 'fluent' than I was as an adult. That gave me a lasting impression, and deep respect for people who move to other countries, develop new lives, and learn a foreign language and culture. I'm not saying I could never do it, but... it's immensely difficult.
Those skills can't even be assumed in native speakers.
For example: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/
These hyperpolyglots are supposed to be high IQ.
If you have a high IQ, but look like a low IQ illiterate in a dozen additional languages, then I'm afraid you're a phonyglot. This is because there are ideas that you can think but cannot say in those non-native languages; and if someone else were to say those things for you, you wouldn't understand what they are saying.
You can be writing a program in a new language that may not be totally idiomatic but works in a few days. You can't carry on a conversation in a new language that fast.
On the other hand I can speak Spanish, English. I can "converse" in French (formally studied), Portuguese and some Italian. I'm learning Mandarin right now. I studied Latin for several years. Human languages are so much harder because (among many other factors) their grammars are so much complicated, also languages evolve in time. Computer languages they are all very similar and their grammars and orders of magnitude more simple (they have to be in order to fulfill their goal of being mapped to instructions on a Turing Machine). I could confidently say that no matter how much I try, I probably would not understand any human language unless I dedicated a non-trivial amount of time and effort to learn it. And that just for getting to a colloquial level of dialogue. If I ever wanted to be productive professionally reading/writing it would be way more hard.
If you only had to learn basic grammar and fifty words you could be fluent in a hundred languages in a month.
Also, for these polyglot programmers, are they truly writing code in, say Python, in the Pythonic way?
The best language learning program would be one which listens to you speak (or write), points out critical errors, and doesn't let you progress until you find ways around them (or choose an easier/different thing to express).
If we had one of those, language learning would be much, much easier.