

Polyglots Are Out To Change The Way You Think - clarehopping
http://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/2014/06/02/polyglots/

======
LeadingQuestion
Ployglot.... why would people choose to call themselves that... "multilingual"
sounds so much better... as would almost anything. For now, I'll go with
OMNIPHONIC.BE ("sometimes word-order matters") I would very much like an
ECMAScripter [will consider other languages no worse viz. UNICODEishness] to
build the ultimate "Rosetta stone killer" (anybody seriously interested in
learning Japanese (or [other natlang]) to fluency gets to do so as part of
their job cofounding this with me... I'm probably the best coder-optimised
language tutor out there, and I'll be a good trainee-coder, too.)

I'm technical, have a great domain-expert resume, and am not the person I want
to have as the sole architect and coder on the truly-new products I've been
working so hard on. Other roles/cofounderships also worth asking about, it
you're truly interested. Basically, I want to build it and run it by and for
and with other language-and-dialect enthusiasts. A company run by the the
people who do language-learning best, for themselves and the future of
their/my/our ilk.

~~~
bambalapitiya
Multi lingual sounds sexier - tongues FTW... but it definitely doesn't
communicate the idea that you can speak 6 to 12 languages. Multi lingual
people usually implies people who are naturally competent in language learning
and may have a mother and father tongue plus another one or two learned
languages. Polyglot on the other hand implies someone who has made it their
life's work to speak many many more languages and take all their language
beyond a high school level of proficiency at that. And making sense and being
understood, in a very specific way, is the art of speaking a language, so I'd
argue it's fitting that these type of people have deliberately identified
another word to describe them. Also the syllables of "poly" and "glot" allude
to a much deeper, almost poetic, and definitely masterful level of
understanding of language. Polloi being the the greek root of many and also
glotta being an adjoining word for "having a tongue". The sound glot is
onomatopeic too as you have to use your tongue to successfully sound it... and
simply the conjugation and associated meanings thus imply a mastery of
pronunciation and not just meaning.

So, to counter your mild objection to the sound, I would say it does
communicate more. (Honestly, I find myself surprised that I had so much to say
about the difference too!)

Re: your idea... I like the idea of it being run by language teachers for
language learners ... but do you think people learn languages best from
RosettaStone type products? I think they are like gyms - they make money from
everyone's intention to speak a language / get fit, rather than support
people's actual learning and development. I learned french for years at school
but any passion for learning it never really sunk in until I was actually in
France. And I've learned portuguese through one to one lessons in person, over
skype and by travelling. And I've done audiobooks and apps to keep it alive in
my mind when I'm not able to learn first hand... but I don't think I could
actually learn a new language without speaking to an actual speaker person.
Point is, I think you learn a language faster with a stronger need to be
understood.

~~~
LeadingQuestion
Totally agree they needed a term, or at least _I_ would have wanted one myself
as the community formed (although I do like "enthusiast"). >The sound glot is
onomatopeic too as you have to use your tongue to successfully sound it...
Yes, but the tongue is key to almost all sounds and "poetic"??! To those who
primarily know the greek, perhaps, but it's really a gloppy plop of a sound in
Amerenglish, in particular. "Polyglossians" would not have been an issue.
Plurilinguals. Multiphonauts. Anything but "glot" as it is pronounced in any
of my dialects, would give more euphony.

\------------------------------------------------------

> but do you think people learn languages best from RosettaStone type
> products? No!!!! A thousand times no. Nothing at all like that. That seems
> mainly to be a Gym membership, as you say. (Benny the Irish polyglot's
> review is among the least negative ones I can respect). My platform and
> tools are NOTHING Rosetta-like.

\------------------------------------------------------

J'aimerais bien aussi savoir ce que vous voulez dire par "beyond a high school
level of proficiency" puisque, eh... I know nothing of that consensus. Nor
whether you mean the level non-natives are taught if they learn a foreign
language in high school, or the level of language mastery high-schoolers in
the US have over US English. Personally, I go depth first (I want to
write/explain/discuss technical things with technical people, and speak the
other registers too. I start from production (writing and speaking). And I
have tools for both the art and the science. How's your syntax vs your accent
and intonation mimicry?

I am on my way to musical fluency in all of the sounds the pulmino-voco-nasal
wood/meatwind can produce, as a side project (I am a recently self-identified
musician) and am bent to master as many idiolects (mimicry) and dialects and
languages as I come across, in multiple different voice characters. I figure
it's the right thing to do, since I know of no other people doing so. I am a
member of the "polyglot community" but I choose not to use the consensus name.
I'm glad you know French. Francophonie is among the words I built "Omniphonic"
around. So yeah...

Really, I think everyone should try to be sesquilingual, at least.

I'm an aspiring omniphonist: an omniphonic enthusiast, anyway, building some
delicious dogfood to eat for us all.

RE "high-school level"... my minimum comfort level in a new language would be
"can explain what you've done and why, and what you've learned doing it so far
in life, in twenty minutes, and why that's led to what you're choosing to
do/learn now. Then, asking follow-up questions as necessary/interested, can
get the same level of detail on those things from the person you're talking
with, trying to imagine things as if you'd grown up in their shoes."

~~~
cafard
I offer you free of charge the term Champolyglot for one who has signed up for
Rosetta Stone and never followed through.

~~~
LeadingQuestion
Uh... OK. Thanks! Etymology = as in "you're a champ for not wasting time on a
kluge that would delay your real acquisition" or....? Not sure I've got it.

