Posted on 05/31/2015 8:01:33 PM PDT by Cronos
Out on a sunny Berlin balcony, Tim Keeley and Daniel Krasa are firing words like bullets at each other. First German, then Hindi, Nepali, Polish, Croatian, Mandarin and Thai – they’ve barely spoken one language before the conversation seamlessly melds into another. Together, they pass through about 20 different languages or so in total.
It can be difficult enough to learn one foreign tongue. Yet I’m here in Berlin for the Polyglot Gathering, a meeting of 350 or so people who speak multiple languages – some as diverse as Manx, Klingon and Saami, the language of reindeer herders in Scandinavia. Indeed, a surprising proportion of them are “hyperglots”, like Keeley and Krasa, who can speak at least 10 languages. One of the most proficient linguists I meet here, Richard Simcott, leads a team of polyglots at a company called eModeration – and he uses about 30 languages himself.
..Numerous studies have shown that being multilingual can improve attention and memory, and that this can provide a “cognitive reserve” that delays the onset of dementia. Looking at the experiences of immigrants, Ellen Bialystok at York University in Canada has found that speaking two languages delayed dementia diagnosis by five years. Those who knew three languages, however, were diagnosed 6.4 years later than monolinguals, while for those fluent in four or more languages, enjoyed an extra nine years of healthy cognition...
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I’d like to learn French. I took it in middle and high school and did well in it, but I don’t remember much now. Spanish would be the thing to know in my part of the country, but I don’t have that much interest in it.
Klingon? I'd learn it if an alien visit me.
i know latin, greek, and can understand spanish, italian, french, and a little german.
but that won’t help me with dementia because i have 3 boys
I enjoyed learning Russian. One thing that helped is I didn’t study any other foreign languages first.
I think Russian would be very difficult. I know Dennis Prager said he speaks it. I heard the Chinese languages, to speak, read, and write are extremely difficult.
I worked with a flight attendant who spoke 14 languages. His brother spoke 22. Their parents were Swiss and I think they worked for the UN, so they grew up all over the world.
He was absolutely amazing. He spoke Swahili, Turkish, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian- just unbelievable! He actually got furloughed and I don’t know where he is now. I can’t believe my company let him go!
Chinese and Japanese are difficult because you have to memorize what characters mean. It’s not extremely formulaic.
Russian was pretty good for me. I didn’t have any other prior foreign languages to get me confused on things like gender of words. I still remember that being an issue for some folks in the class.
You’d think he’d be an asset in any multinational company, banking, finance, shipping, trading, translating.
Did you learn Russian for a specific reason or just something you desired?
English, French, Spanish, Italian, and a little Greek and Yiddish, plus fluency in several American dialects such as Alabama, Georgia, Tidewater and east coast Ebonics. Guess I’m good to go past my sell-by date.
Have you tried an online course like supermemo.com that will help you get back to basic A1/A2 level?
Mostly desire. I have some Russian in my background.
wow — Welsh is hard enough (how do you get your head around putting verbs at the start of a sentence?), but native American languages I’ve not even tried to learn a single word. What are your experiences with both?
I have a 4 year old son — I think I know what you mean by that :-P
Very neat. I have some distant Frog in my background so maybe that’s why I enjoyed it.
My problem was I got to the point where I could understand the language, and then never got to the point of actually expressing myself completely.
Maybe one day...
What about Sindarin?
30 years ago I took 4 years of high school Spanish. I didn’t think I learned a thing, but then, a few years ago I had an epiphany. I had accidentally turned on a Spanish speaking TV show. I wasn’t really paying attention but suddenly I realized that I understood every word! If I try to really listen then I can’t get it. But if I let a Spanish speaking show run in the background, I understand everything! Amazing! Still can’t speak it though. Lol.
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