

Twenty-year-old Alex Rawlings speaks 11 languages - Thibaut
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17107435

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jballanc
Rather than the raw number, what amazed me was the variety of language
families that he was proficient with. Just like you might be less impressed
with someone who can program in Java, C and C++ than someone who can program
in C, Lisp, and Haskell, I know many people who can speak French, Italian, and
Spanish...but does that even really count?

Here's the breakdown by my count:

* Spanish, French, Catalan, Italian -- pretty "core" Romance languages

* Dutch, Afrikaans, German, English -- closely related Germanic (even I, knowing English and a bit of German can understand some Dutch)

* Greek -- unique (and very impressive; I've been told by many multilingual individuals that Greek is unlike any other language and therefore a pain to learn)

* Russian -- shares a few characters with Greek, but that's it

* Hebrew -- a Semitic language, related to Arabic but distinct from the others he knows

About all he is missing is an agglutinative language (the "Lisp"s of human
languages) such as Turkish, Korean, Finnish, or Japanese, or something tonal
like Mandarin. Still, a very impressive accomplishment!

~~~
blacksmythe

      >> speak French, Italian, and Spanish...but does that even really count?
    

For an English speaker, French and Spanish probably should each count for
about half of a language compared to learning a truly foreign language.

Adding Italian to Spanish should count for less than a half (maybe a
quarter?). However, trying to maintain Italian and Spanish simultaneously is
very confusing due to the strong similarity.

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ghshephard
I was impressed at how many people I met in Luxembourg spoke French,
Portugese, English, German, and Luxembourgish. Almost 100% of the native
population speaks Luxembourgish (which they learn in dedicated kindergarten
years, and then never again), French, German and English. Luxembourgish is
like their secret language - spoken universally by the native population, but
by almost nobody who didn't grow up in the country. It's useful for them in
business meetings, when they want to discuss something among themselves,
without being concerned that the visitor actually speaks german/french.

I wonder if there is another country where the vast majority of the native
population speaks four languages?

~~~
wwwhizz
In the Netherlands children in higher secondary education learn English,
French and German, besides Dutch. Many schools also offer courses in either
Spanish or Italian. When going to the 'highest' secondary education form
(gymnasium) you can also learn ancient Greek or Latin.

~~~
stingraycharles
Yes, but bear in mind that many Dutch people, while having had a few years of
education in highschool, struggle when confronted with a conversation in
French or German, and it's a long stretch to claim they are fluent.

It's not comparable with the way people from Luxembourg speak French and
German.

(Disclaimer: my roots are in Luxembourg I live in The Netherlands).

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bwarp
Much as this sounds amazing, languages are pretty uniform once you know the
basics much as once you get the basics of programming, your knowledge is
portable across other languages. The majority of a language is working out how
the basic structures apply and learning local variations and nuances.

I'd be more impressed if he had some eastern languages which don't follow the
usual structures. The languages he has learned are all similarly structured.
Hebrew is possibly an exception.

The BBC are also notoriously impressed with anything that people can do if
it's a slow news day.

~~~
heyitsnick
It is impressive; he won the prize for for most prolific young polyglot in the
country. There are very few in the world at this age who can speak 10+
languages.

Are you speaking from authority as a polyglot yourself? Because I haven't
heard this opinion before. The uniformity does ease the burden slightly of
learning a language but it's a small role in achieving fluency.

I think you could go from zero to having full command of the Spanish grammar
in a couple of weeks. I did it self taught in a month or two with a Michel
Thomas CDs in a single grammar thin book. If you have the mind for it,
learning language structure of a Romance or Germanic language is not too much
of a challenge.

What then takes _years_ is vocabulary acquisition, comprehension,
pronunciation, idiomatic usage, and the fast application of the grammar you've
learned. For me, what took a long time was training my brain to think fast
enough that I could decode the target language fast enough to hold fluent
conversation and, later, get my brain fast enough thinking in the target
language. This is hardly "learning local variations and nuances", it is what
takes up 90%+ of reaching a "fluency" and it's something every language
learner must go through, whether they already speak 1 or 8 languages.

I am starting learning German, and i'm going through the same process as with
Spanish. It's really not hard to laern the principals of the language, the
sentence structure and verbal agreement, gender etc. But _using it at a
natural speed_ so you can conversion in German - that's a mammoth job and
takes months or years.

Perhaps your programming anology holds, but reaching a "fluency" means you can
go hours or days of coding without ever reaching for a reference document.
Sure took me a long time to get there.

~~~
bwarp
It does take years. The brain is very pliable and easy to teach the younger
you are so it depends on when you start.

I'm not much of a polyglot myself: English, French, Swiss-German, Afrikaans
(mainly the insults!) but my sister can speak 8 languages fluently (she's a
professional translator) and the basis of my comment is on her observations of
language.

------
modernerd
I was hoping he'd offer some advice for those who struggle with language
learning.

Can anyone share an opinion about the best way to learn a new language (or
several)?

~~~
swombat
Disclaimer: Pure opinion. I only speak 3 languages reasonably fluently, and
have a basic to moderate understanding of a few others. It's not like there's
any scientific backing for this method, though.

Step 1: bootstrap. Before you can really learn the language, you need to set
up some basic structures in your mind for that language. You need a basic
understanding of grammar, a few useful sentence patterns, etc. You need those
to be wired in so that they can be called upon in conversation, so just
reading is no good - you have to both listen and speak. I've found the
Pimsleur courses to be excellent for this bootstrapping, especially those that
have 3 sets of lessons (3x30 half-hour lessons = pretty solid bootstrapping),
but even with just one you get some solid basics like simple sentences,
numbers, basic grammar, etc.

Step 2: grow basic vocabulary. Even after bootstrapping, you'll still have a
vocabulary that's way too limited to engage in meaningful conversation (though
at least you can have uber-simple conversations like asking for prices,
directions, and being polite). At this point you need vocabulary - a lot of
it. The best way I've found to build this is to read, with a good dictionary
and (if the language needs it) verb conjugation book handy so that you can
actually understand things. Basically, take beginner-level reading materials,
and, with a pencil in hand, read, paragraph by paragraph. While you read the
paragraph, underline words you're not 100% sure about (but don't stop reading
until you get to the end of the paragraph). Once you're finished with a
paragraph, look things up and write the definitions in the margins. By the
time you've read 2-3 beginner books like this, you can probably handle a
simple conversation about a topic other than the price of a train ticket.

Step 3: total immersion. This is the key step, and you can even skip the
previous two if you're in a rush, and go straight for that, but then it'll be
very hard and you'll waste a lot of "prime time" (i.e. time spent surrounded
exclusively by native speakers) learning the basics you could have learned at
home. In this step, you need to speak only that language for at least a few
weeks, ideally three months or so. Stay away from people who speak your native
language (i.e. don't hang around with exchange students or whatever, however
"safe" that may seem, since it will destroy the main benefit of this). Speak
only the target language, and within a few weeks something magical will
happen: you'll switch from thinking in english and translating, to thinking
directly in the target language. This is the holy grail. At this point, you
can speak. You may still have a LOT to learn (depending on the language...
e.g. with Chinese, well done, you can speak - now you can learn to read
ideograms, which is twice as hard), but you've got enough of the building
blocks that you don't need a deliberate system other than speaking to people
in that language and reading stuff in that language. The more you speak/read,
the better you'll get.

Have fun!

~~~
bravura
Advice please.

I have "party French". In social circumstances where someone is willing to be
gracious to me, and talk slowly, and explain what certain words mean, I can
carry on a conversation.

So I believe I have reached and done Step 3.

I now want to develop "adversarial French", i.e. a command of the language
that I can use in circumstances where people don't actually care if I
understand them.

However, I feel like I hit a plateau. Perhaps it was because I didn't do
complete immersion, and switched back to English? Would that be the solution
to me advancing further, or is there another technique to use?

~~~
jballanc
I've been told that you cannot consider to have mastered a language until you
dream in that language. Total immersion is likely the only thing that will get
you over that plateau.

~~~
heyitsnick
I dreamt in Spanish (and spoke Spanish in my sleep) way before I had mastered
it. Hell, I haven't "mastered" it now after four years and doubt I ever will.
It's not a particularly useful barometer for language domination; I dreamt in
it just because I was immersed in the language and went to sleep reading or
thinking about it.

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agumonkey
Interesting his idea to learn similar languages to observe the derivation
process.

I don't speak more than 2 languages, but spend a lot of times on etymology
websites, the more words history you see, the easier it gets to decode
languages.

    
    
      - phonetic transformation
      - semantic 'slip'
      - multidimensional denotation/connotation projection
    

At the end you kinda build a core set of ideas used in all languages, either
for lexicon or speech structure. Then the learning feels a lot more gradual.

btw : his french accent is almost there, he feels comfortable using common
idioms, which is a good point.

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wwwhizz
His Afrikaans sounds a lot better than his Dutch. With a little bit of work
he'll be able to speak Flemish too, as that is about as similar to Dutch as
Afrikaans.

------
downx3
I wonder how fluent (in terms of vocab) he can become in each? And if he'll
remember them.

Richard Francis Burton, supposedly learned almost thirty languages - and from
what I've read - he would study a new language - while throwing out another.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton>

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xtrimsky_
I try "learning" spanish while commuting using this Android app:
[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pervychine.spanish...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pervychine.spanishincar)

I love this way of learning

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SimonB86
This is an interesting link: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17101370>

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humanfromearth
Wow, and I thought I'm cool for being fluent in 4 languages.

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Tichy
Nice hobby, but to me learning many languages sounds a bit like a waste of
time. Unless you want to become a translator, but where is the appeal? It
seems to be a very passive, uncreative job.

Also I wonder how hard it really is to learn a language, with the proper
memorization techniques.

Edit: To the downvoters: I was expressing my personal opinion, that for me it
seems like a waste of time. If you enjoy learning languages, more power to
you. But be tolerant of other people's opinions, if you can.

~~~
SimonB86
Knowing languages other than your native language can be really useful if you
work for a multi-national company.

I'm a software developer. My previous gig was at European aerospace company,
and my current gig is at international financial institution. At both of these
companies there's a wide range of languages spoken, and being able to converse
in other colleagues' native language can indeed be useful. Both of these
employers see languages as a desirable, but not essential, skill.

~~~
VBprogrammer
I'm not sure about at other businesses but the Software Development company I
work for has native speakers of what must be nearly every major language (the
only one I haven't come across is Portuguese, and I'm sure that is just
because I haven't meet that person yet). For example, the bank of desks I'm
sitting at this moment has Greek, Bulgarian, Punjabi, Sri Lankan, Hindi and
Russian. It would be quite difficult for me to pick up any of the languages to
a standard that could compete with that!

