How do you become fluent in 11 languages?

[Jukka Aho]

 

• How do you become fluent in 11 languages? (BBC News)

“Twenty-year-old Alex Rawlings has won a national competition to find the UK's most multi-lingual student. The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian.”

[onkko]

Lets tell him to learn finnish

[Rob A.]

 

• How do you become fluent in 11 languages? (BBC News)

“Twenty-year-old Alex Rawlings has won a national competition to find the UK's most multi-lingual student. The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian.”

Well...I don't know if I really see eleven "unique" languages there. But I'm impressed with these three ...and in this order....
Hebrew, Greek and Russian....

Here's the Hebrew alphabet ....and not only is it a different script you have to read it from right to left:



Greek and Russian use different alphabets, but not all that different... but as for the other languages, Well....if you already know English...meh!!.....

Now if Chinese were on his list, that would be a major accomplishment, particularly if some Chinese scholar said he was fluent...

[skandagupta]

Eleven languages whereof two are dutch and the taal? Do these two variants of "nederduits" really justify this feller to claim that he kens any more than ten lingos? How about standard british english and scouse?

[Pursuivant]

Spanish, Catalan, Italian also go a bit hand-in-hand. French on top. And after German grammar, die taal is a paradise. And after hebrew, pronouncing die taal is easy Chinese or Thai would be impressive, as they are tonal languages, so if you are tone deaf you can call someones mother a horse in some dialects.... I used to be able to get a room, a beer and chat up a girl in maybe 10 languages in my youth... but wouldn't call that "knowing" a language. Requires maybe reading the newspaper and discussing the weather with the locals as well.

[Sami-Is-Boss]

You often have to take these claims with a pinch of salt. They tested this guy who once claimed to speak loads of languages live on TV once and he didn't understand some really basic phrases. 11 is slightly more realistic though, but I'm still skeptical

[onkko]

Spanish, Catalan, Italian also go a bit hand-in-hand. French on top. And after German grammar, die taal is a paradise. And after hebrew, pronouncing die taal is easy Chinese or Thai would be impressive, as they are tonal languages, so if you are tone deaf you can call someones mother a horse in some dialects.... I used to be able to get a room, a beer and chat up a girl in maybe 10 languages in my youth... but wouldn't call that "knowing" a language. Requires maybe reading the newspaper and discussing the weather with the locals as well.

Mää puhun suomea ja savvoo hiljoo ja kovvoo, ja lappii kans! 6 kieltä heti. Osaan kans tamperetta, turkua ja helsinkiä eli 6 lisää

[Mook]

We have one friend that speaks around 11 - Thai & Finnish included. (but she was a diplomat's daughter)

[Tiwaz]

Eleven languages whereof two are dutch and the taal? Do these two variants of "nederduits" really justify this feller to claim that he kens any more than ten lingos? How about standard british english and scouse?

And Afrikaans is firmly rooted in dutch, has not had time to divert into completely different language.

[jahasjahas]

And Afrikaans is firmly rooted in dutch, has not had time to divert into completely different language.

It's been considered a language since the early 20th century. They're very similar, of course, but clearly different enough for linguists to treat them as separate languages.

[Rob A.]

And Afrikaans is firmly rooted in dutch, has not had time to divert into completely different language.

It's been considered a language since the early 20th century. They're very similar, of course, but clearly different enough for linguists to treat them as separate languages.

...but it's always debatable when languages are close....Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic... Yes, they are "languages"....But what about Faroese?...Why not??? [Edit: I decided to see what wikipedia said about Faroese...well, it seems it is actually considered a "language"... Hmmmm...but the article lead me to where the debate seems to be now among Scandinavian linguists.....Elfdalian...I'm not joking that's what it's call in English...so there really is an "Elf" language... It all seems like "tetrapyloctomy" to me...but I suppose it is important to the people who speak this language/dialect.]

It reminds me of that old linguist's joke:

Q: "What is the difference between a language and a dialect?

A: "Languages have strong armies and navies."

A few weeks ago I watched a TV show which included a lot of conversation by academic Romanians, translated with subtitles. It was a show about ...what else??? .....Vlad Tepes and Dracula... But anyway, although I could not really understand the Romanian, there were a lot of words that I could easily figure out without the subtitles and the language has a definite familiar feel to it, if I can put it that way. I simply just know that if I turned my mind to it, Romanian would not be a difficult language for an English speaker....properly motivated ...to learn....

Romanian is, of course, a language derived in grammar and in much of its vocabulary from Latin....there are a lot of Slavic words in the language but they have been "acclimatized" to the Latin foundation....

[jahasjahas]

...but it's always debatable when languages are close....Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic... Yes, they are "languages"....But what about Faroese?...Why not???

It's debatable, but in these cases the debate is pretty much over.

It reminds me of that old linguist's joke:
Q: "What is the difference between a language and a dialect?
A: "Languages have strong armies and navies."

You're thinking of "A language is a dialect with an army and navy." It should be noted, though, that the saying tells us more about the politics and social conceptions of language (see, for example, Serbo-Croatian, which is intentionally being divided into separate languages), than about the actual linguistic structures and relations between different languages and dialects.

[Rob A.]

...but it's always debatable when languages are close....Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic... Yes, they are "languages"....But what about Faroese?...Why not???

It's debatable, but in these cases the debate is pretty much over.

Yeah...I suppose to argue anything else now would be a matter of : "mission impossible"....


But which statement is more impressive?

"I'm multilingual....I speak Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and Faroese...."

Or,

"I'm mutilingual.... I speak English, Finnish, Russian, Greek and Swahili...."....

It should be noted, though, that the saying tells us more about the politics and social conceptions of language (see, for example, Serbo-Croatian, which is intentionally being divided into separate languages), than about the actual linguistic structures and relations between different languages and dialects.

Yes...I do know about that one...living in Canada, I know both Serbs and Croats, and...although I certainly keep my mouth shut about it...on other than an individual personality level, I can't really see much difference between them....but the divide between them is one of those ancient European divisions that goes back at least 1700 years...long before the Slavic peoples had even moved into the Balkans...to the time of Constantine the Great ...the division between the eastern and western Roman Empires and what became the Greek world based on Constantinople and the Latin world based on Rome....

All the logic and and all the persuasive reasoning you can muster up will not change things anytime soon. This reality can only be "managed".... Language debate always seems to move from "academic" to "political" in the blink of an eye....and for that reason not worth taking some of these so-called linguistic debates seriously...at least from an academic point of view...you might have to for other reasons.

And, hey, that same divide also moves north up between Finland and Russia and I would say that divide is not going to go away anytime soon either...been there too long...can only be "managed"....

[edit: I guess I'll be a bit nasty and add that, despite Timo Soini and the other anti-EU types, this is also why Finland will not be leaving the EU and, in fact, is the primary reason Finland joined the EU...just like Estonia....and if the EU dissolves Finland will make common cause with whatever remnants emerge.... ]

[Jukka Aho]

[edit: I guess I'll be a bit nasty and add that, despite Timo Soini and the other anti-EU types, this is also why Finland will not be leaving the EU and, in fact, is the primary reason Finland joined the EU...just like Estonia....and if the EU dissolves Finland will make common cause with whatever remnants emerge.... :wink: ]

The other great anti-EU figure, former minister of many seats, ex-MP, ex-MEP, three-time presidential candidate for the Centre Party, a strong proponent of old-school “Nordic co-operation”, and a political institution unto himself (despite never quite getting the positions he would have wanted!), Paavo Väyrynen, has allegedly already drafted up a plan for that sweet, sweet, day! I recall it comprised of forming a Northern Kingdom with the other Nordic countries and making the (Swedish?) krona our new currency.

[AldenG]

The other great anti-EU figure, former minister of many seats, ex-MP, ex-MEP, three-time presidential candidate for the Centre Party, and a political institution unto himself (despite never quite getting the positions he would have wanted!), a strong proponent of old-school Nordic co-operation, Paavo Väyrynen, has allegedly already drafted up a plan for that sweet, sweet, day! I recall it comprised of forming a Northern Kingdom with the other Nordic countries and making the (Swedish?) krona our new currency.

Better the masters we knew...

Hmmm.