How to learn 30 languages (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By David Robson
29 May 2015

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.

Back inside, I find small groups exchanging tongue twisters. Others are gathering in threes, preparing for a rapid-fire game that involves interpreting two different languages simultaneously. It looks like the perfect recipe for a headache, but they are nonchalant. “It’s quite a common situation for us,” a woman called Alisa tells me.

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.

With a modest knowledge of Italian and some rudimentary Danish, I feel somewhat out of place among the hyperglots. But they say you should learn from the best, so I am here to try to discover their secrets.
***
That tough mental workout comes with big payoffs, however; it is arguably the best brain training you can try. 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.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150528-how-to-learn-30-languages

[MADem]

1. The film preview at the link is great!

I speak a slew of languages, though I do a poor job of most of them! This movie looks good:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Real polyglots are rare

I sort of speak several languages, but I know which ones I'm good at and which ones I just know a few words and phrases in.

Since most Americans are monolingual, it's easy to fool them. There was a guy living in the same apartment building (a large high-rise) several years ago, and people told me that he spoke several languages, including Japanese.

When I tried out my Japanese on him (I translate at a professional level and have taught the language to college students), I realized that he was just stringing random phrases together and didn't understand what I was saying. His pronunciation was excellent, but he wasn't actually saying anything.

As a teacher, I found that students over-estimated their own ability. They'd come back from a semester in Japan (after a year of class) convinced that they could examine into third year or fourth year instead of second-semester second year. But that was because they had never been in a really challenging situation beyond sightseeing and making small talk. They would even tell me that their host family "never used" certain common grammatical constructions, which is highly unlikely.

Returned AFS and Rotary students did better, because they were younger when they went and spent a whole year. But even they varied tremendously in their ability to speak Japanese when they came back.

[fasttense]

3. I admire their ability

As a young girl of 8, I came to the United States speaking only Spanish. It took me forever to learn English. But I had to forget Spanish to do it. Now I speak perfect English but not a word of Spanish. For some reason I can only keep one language in my head at a time. I really admire those who are multilingual.

[IDemo]

4. When I took college Spanish years ago

there were several native speakers in the program. I noticed that conversation between them tended toward literal bilingualism; they would change back and forth between Spanish and English mid-sentence. I have heard this with other people as well, even at times on the Spanish radio station I listened to back then.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. I used to be fluent in 4 languages.

We had a little group of us that used to lunch together and speak various languages...one would speak in Italian, Spanish (usually me), French, German, and Portuguese. The funniest was when one of us needed a translation, and the French speaker would translate the German for the Portuguese speaker. It really did help us with various language skills. I was the only one of the participants who had never been outside of the US.

[Zorro]

7. Noted polyglot Vernon Walters' autobiography is a fascinating read

His multilingual capabilities put him in the center of historic diplomatic events over decades.