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How do you become fluent in 11 languages?

Get yourself immersed in the communities where the languages are spoken:

quote:

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. Entrants in the competition run by the publishers Collins had to be aged between 16 and 22 and conversant in multiple languages. Alex drew on all his skills to tell BBC News about his passion for learning languages and how he came to speak so many.

[Source (w/ video!)]

Quite awesome. This guy had the opportunity to live in different countries and learn loads of different languages (though I'm surprised he never mastered Japanese, which I'd say is quite easy). Although he obviously benefited from learning only languages that are related (with the notable exception of Hebrew), this is still quite a feat.

Pretty cool. Though Afrikaans and Dutch are very similar.

Russian? Не шути, Маз.

This guy learned eight without ever leaving Italy:



He has since added Mandarin I think...

Re: How do you become fluent in 11 languages?

quote:

Originally posted by Lira ...though I'm surprised he never mastered Japanese...

Your opinion of Japanese's ease is not widely shared among people trying to learn languages, at least from the reading I have done on language learning forums.

Re: Re: How do you become fluent in 11 languages?

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A Your opinion of Japanese's ease is not widely shared among people trying to learn languages, at least from the reading I have done on language learning forums.

Japanese is incredibly simple, the completely different vocabulary notwithstanding. The writing is a bit complex, I give you that, but:

• It's got just 5 vowels, none of which should pose a problem to the average speaker of European languages (the "u" is a bit different, but pronouncing it the way you already do is fine);
  
  
• No consonant should pose a problem to European language learners. Even the "f", which isn't really an "f", shouldn't be much of a problem if you never get the distinction right. Oh, and the "r/l";
  
  
• The language is extremely regular - if you know how to conjugate one verb, you pretty much know how to conjugate every other verb... with the sole exception of two odd members, which aren't THAT different to begin with;
  
  
• Case marking is pathetically simple: Just put a morpheme after each word and you're done. There are no exceptions that I can think of. "Inu" is dog. "Inuga" means "Dog as subject", "Inuwo" means "Dog as object", "Inuwa" means "Dog as topic"; "Burayanga" means "Brian as subject", "Burayanwo" means "Brian as object" (kinky!), and "Burayanwa" means that Brian is the topic. See? No surprises.
  
  
• There aren't many verb tenses. At least, not to me (Portuguese is the Romance language with the most tenses, as I recall it). Verb agreement is non-existent.
  
  
• No plural (except for a few reduplications and special pronoun forms). No gender.

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A This guy learned eight without ever leaving Italy: He has since added Mandarin I think...

Nice. I could speak quite a few languages back in the day (and although I'm still ashamed of my pronunciation in English, I'd say it's quite good for someone who's spent just 3 days in London during his life ). Then I decided to study philosophy/linguistics and neglected them for a while, gotta pick them up again now that I've finally become a linguist

I'm (re)learning German (which is currently awful, as Meat can tell) and I'm getting started with Chinese and Vietnamese.

Vietnamese gave me some headache in the beginning. Bloody tones

Never tried to learn it myself, but just saying. The U.S. government institute that trains diplomats puts Japanese in the hardest category for native English speakers, along with Mandarin, Korean, and Arabic, requiring more than twice as much training as the non-Slavic Indo-European languages.

Conversational Japanese is not that hard to pick up with a little bit of training. I took four years of Japanese in HS, but only payed attention for two years really and then I didn't really do anything with Japanese for 7 years before I went to Japan. I was only there for 10 days but by the end I could understand basic conversations, enough to know what was going on. I could format basic replies, but anything that had to go into descriptive speech was not really that possible.

Writing is a whole other ball game. Hiragana and Katakana are easy, but the list of kanji needed to be very proficient is pretty long...

Speaking of Japanese, my brother just found out he passed the level 2 proficiency exam.

Btw the only thing I remember being really hard regarding verb tenses was the combination of tenses between formal and normal Japanese... And unlike a lot of languages its very much required to learn both the formal and normal ways of speaking.

quote:

Originally posted by Joss Weatherby Speaking of Japanese, my brother just found out he passed the level 2 proficiency exam.

Tell him I said Omedetou!

I think wussy Indo-European languages will be more than enough of a challenge. No Japanese or Arabic for me.

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A I think wussy Indo-European languages will be more than enough of a challenge. No Japanese or Arabic for me.

Weren't you going to study French?

Yep. Easiest of the easy, supposedly.

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A Yep. Easiest of the easy, supposedly.

Dutch shouldn't be much of a challenge either, I believe.

I dunno, one thing at a time. I would rather be quite good at one second language than mediocre at a few.

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A I dunno, one thing at a time. I would rather be quite good at one second language than mediocre at a few.

I wholeheartedly agree. I just meant to say that, if you want to begin studying an easy language, Dutch is also an alternative.

I'd be happy to see you studying one language already, I wouldn't be so cruel as to swamp you with more

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I wholeheartedly agree. I just meant to say that, if you want to begin studying an easy language, Dutch is also an alternative.

Dutch ain't that easy. It's full of weird rules and exceptions. That's what I hear anyone say that's trying to learn Dutch.

Also, who speaks Dutch anyway? No other countries speak Dutch (except for a bit of Belgium and a couple of islands no one ever really goes to ) and when you're in Holland, you can just speak English and everyone will understand you.

Then again, it would be cool to meet or speak to an American who'd converse in Dutch with me

quote:

Originally posted by Frenkieee Also, who speaks Dutch anyway?

Afrikaaners? Fair few of them

quote:

Originally posted by Sushipunk Afrikaaners? Fair few of them

quote:

Originally posted by Sushipunk Pretty cool. Though Afrikaans and Dutch are very similar.

I thought they speak Afrikaans

Although you can easily tell Afrikaans descended from Dutch, there's quite a lot of difference between the two.

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A Yep. Easiest of the easy, supposedly.

French isn't that easy to learn, its full of little rules. For example: usually to say something in the plural form you have to add an ''s'' at the end of the word (ex: des choses (things) une chose (a thing).

But with words that end with ''al'' (ex: cheval (horse) or journal, you dont add an ''s'' you have to replace the ''al'' with ''aux'' so it becomes ''chevaux'' (horses).

You have to refer to things in the masculine or feminine form, in english you say ''a hamburger'' in french its ''un hamburger'' (''un'' is like ''a'' in masculine form) in english you would say ''a frie'', in french its ''une frite'' (une is the feminine form of ''a'')

^ this one is the one common rule that gives the most trouble to english speakers id say

Re: Re: Re: How do you become fluent in 11 languages?

quote:

Originally posted by Lira Japanese is incredibly simple, the completely different vocabulary notwithstanding. The writing is a bit complex, I give you that, but: It's got just 5 vowels, none of which should pose a problem to the average speaker of European languages (the "u" is a bit different, but pronouncing it the way you already do is fine); No consonant should pose a problem to European language learners. Even the "f", which isn't really an "f", shouldn't be much of a problem if you never get the distinction right. Oh, and the "r/l"; The language is extremely regular - if you know how to conjugate one verb, you pretty much know how to conjugate every other verb... with the sole exception of two odd members, which aren't THAT different to begin with; Case marking is pathetically simple: Just put a morpheme after each word and you're done. There are no exceptions that I can think of. "Inu" is dog. "Inuga" means "Dog as subject", "Inuwo" means "Dog as object", "Inuwa" means "Dog as topic"; "Burayanga" means "Brian as subject", "Burayanwo" means "Brian as object" (kinky!), and "Burayanwa" means that Brian is the topic. See? No surprises. There aren't many verb tenses. At least, not to me (Portuguese is the Romance language with the most tenses, as I recall it). Verb agreement is non-existent. No plural (except for a few reduplications and special pronoun forms). No gender. See? Not that hard, is it? Haha, ya uzhe zabyl to, stho ya uchil'sya 10 let nazad. Mne nado uchit'sya russkiy yazyk esche raz True.

Japanese for Dummies by Lira


I would buy that book

Rawlings speaks 10 languages, since mother tongue doesn't count, at least not according to me.

Currently, I can speak English and a wee bit German. Not much more. However, I do want to know more languages, such as Japanese, Korean, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Arabic. Maybe Danish as well, since Danes talk like they've got oatmeal down their throats

Also, if you want to try a language with a really fucked up grammar system, try Swedish. Here, the tenses aren't decided by rules or regularities, but what sounds the most sensible. We also have our own weird way pronouncing our 9 vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y, �, � and �).

quote:

Originally posted by mathieu French isn't that easy to learn, its full of little rules.

So are most other languages.

I've taken classical Greek so I know all about grammatical gender (it has three genders rather than two) and weird pluralizations. So far French does not really seem so complicated compared to that...

Yeah don't listen to Mathieu. French is easy. It's easy because the rules make sense, imo.

quote:

Originally posted by Frenkieee Dutch ain't that easy. It's full of weird rules and exceptions. That's what I hear anyone say that's trying to learn Dutch.

I can't think of a single European language that isn't quirky, to be honest - It's like a family of body-builders with hunchbacks for grandparents

quote:

Originally posted by mathieu French isn't that easy to learn, its full of little rules. For example: usually to say something in the plural form you have to add an ''s'' at the end of the word (ex: des choses (things) une chose (a thing). But with words that end with ''al'' (ex: cheval (horse) or journal, you dont add an ''s'' you have to replace the ''al'' with ''aux'' so it becomes ''chevaux'' (horses).

Words ending with -l are usually irregular in Romance languages. Same happens in Portuguese, with one extra problem - although words ending with "-al", "-el", "-il" and "-ol" sound exactly the same as words ending with "-au", "-éu", "-iu" and "-óu", their plural forms are quite different (you need to drop the "l" and add "-is" in the former; and all you've got to do is add the "s" in the latter case, with no extra vowels). So you have words that rhyme, such as "mel" (honey) and "céu" (sky) with different plural forms: "méis" and "céus". Even native speakers tend to mix them up (including yours truly depending on how sleepy he is). Besides, Vector A speaks English... I'd say he's quite used to languages with irregular plurals

It's quite hard to find a European language that is as neat as foreigners could wish.

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