The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/the-mystery-of-people-who-speak-dozens-of-languages

by jeffreyrogers • 8 years ago

94 67 8 years ago

newyorker.com

aloisdg• 8 years ago

Glad to see that Esperanto count as living language.

BillChapman• 8 years ago

Of course Esperanto is a living language.How could anyone doubt that.

projectramo3• 8 years ago

It gets easier with each one.

I think the secret is to expose the person to multiple languages at a very early age.

Its like having kids: the first is an impossible leap, the second is much harder than anticipated, the third gets easier and after the fourth its just a big mass.

jackhack• 8 years ago

That's a curious analogy.

I remember reading the intro to a Berlitz language course written by Charles Berlitz himself (a polyglot master of a dozen or more languages, if I remember correctly). He made the statement that speaking two or more languages is seen as evidence of higher intellect. They went on to assert that it is actually quite easy to learn a language. In fact, anyone who is not an imbecile can do so, but learning a second language -- ah, now there is the rub. It's difficult, typically, because of the incorrect approach and the lack of integration. In order to learn a language, one must speak and hear it. It is insufficient to merely read it or "speak" it silently, in one's mind.

getting back to your analogy: I will quibble with a fine point. It is unfortunately incredibly simply to have a child. Even those imbeciles from the former example seem capable (even rather proficient!) at having many. The difficulty comes in raising a child well. And I think that was what you were getting at. :) That is no simple task. But after one or two the parents learn the necessary skills.

Berlitz also makes the observation that learning a third language is easier than the second, as one is now finding patterns and building on those similarities rather than focusing on differences.

Your logic is in good company.

projectramo3• 8 years ago

You are right about the analogy, I guess I should have said raising kids.

I will point out that children who are exposed to two languages quite naturally learn both of them with only a slight delay over learning a single one.

gumby• 8 years ago

In case this statement sounds absurd, my mother grew up speaking five languages concurrently and learned her last, English, starting at 12. Even now in her 80s she retains and uses multiple languages. But she grew up in an environment, Malaya of the 1930s and 1940s where being such a polyglot was not only unremarkable but would not have been considered any sort of achievement worth mentioning. I have one uncle there whose FB posts always mix two or three languages (one he learned after marriage, in his late 20s), as do his friends when commenting.

What I find sad is that though over the years I have learned and used languages with reasonable fluency, nowadays I pick up a book or hear something on the radio and I struggle to understand it. I'm stuck to the same languages I use every day. Those languages have still influenced my view of the world and understanding of the languages I do use but it still feels like a loss.

soperj2• 8 years ago

Its like having kids

I have 2 kids. Everyone I've spoke to who has 3 or more has said that the jump from 2 to 3 is as big as the jump from 0 to 1.

poulsbohemian5• 8 years ago

I have three kids. When I am working one on one or even one on two, it's noticeably easier than when I have all three with me and am trying to assist them all with their needs. You play zone defense rather than man on man and as a result you are always stretched a little thin.

projectileboy• 8 years ago

Huh, interesting. This is tangential to the main thread, but I had the exact opposite experience - 0 to 1 was impossible, 1 to 2 was overwhelming, and 2 to 3 was merely difficult.

YouKnowBetter• 8 years ago

I have 4. Less then 5 years between the first and fourth.

From 2 to >2 was the biggest hurdle and the reason is simple: you have 2 hands with which you can totally control 2 kids. With >2 you need to master a different technic to control (read: keep 'm safe) under the most unexpected circumstances.

Edit: and we speak 2 native languages, our kids have grownup in 2 different countries. Sofar they pick up languages pretty easy and I attribute that mainly to not being afraid to learn & make mistakes.

jameskegel• 8 years ago

I've always admired these people, and secretly suspected that people who speak more than a few languages have a superlinguist genetic trait that makes them more likely to pick up a new dialect or language. The common denominator seems to be the rapid introduction of new languages at a very young age.

natmaka2• 8 years ago

Why, in such a context, a language is counted just as any another one? Mastering a small set of very different languages (let's say Chinese Mandarin, Arabic, and Hungarian) seems far more impressive to me than mastering more languages all pertaining to the same family (let's say 20 Romance languages).

In France during a gig in the linguists' world I heard that Claude Hagège, a local authority, has a fair command of 80 languages. WP EN credits him with "about 50" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Hag%C3%A8ge

beeforpork• 8 years ago

Every time there is an anecdote of someone speaking so many languages, there is no evidence on Youtube or anywhere else. I mean spontaeous fluency, not reading a story or telling two jokes. Like in this case, he speaks only French fluently on Youtube.

Now, for example, Martina Hingis, a former tennis player for those who are too young or too nerdy to know, speaks five languages according to Wikipedia. Well, she actually has interviews on Youtube showing impressive fluency in English, German, Swiss German, French, and Czech. I am absolutely fascinated by this.

davidgay• 8 years ago

Well for Martina Hingis that's not too surprising:

- Czech parents (and lived there till ~7) - moved to (German-part of) Switzerland: the local language is Swiss German, but school is in German (i.e., everyone speaks both of those) - everyone in Switzerland is taught one of the other official languages, usually German in the non-German speaking areas, and French in the German speaking areas (fluency will vary, but for instance I had 7 years of German by the end of high school) - everyone learns English these days ;)

I would expect that most children who moved to German-speaking Switzerland at a youngish age would be fluent in at least 4 languages...

avip• 8 years ago

Fairly common for a Swiss to be fluent in 3 languages.

natmaka2• 8 years ago

On the same vein the lack of an adequate and simple way to assess proficiency let way to very different interpretations of what "speaking a language" implies. According to many being able to talk is sufficient, but IMHO (and AFAIK according to most linguists(?)) it implies to be able to read a (generic) newspaper and to write like the average native. French is my mother tongue, and it seems to me that learning to talk in 20 different Romance languages would be more easy for me than commanding (including the written form) Mandarin, Arabic and Hungarian.

pluc• 8 years ago

I believe this applies to programming as well. One programming language is about equivalent in terms of mental effort to learn as a new language - actually they're called languages too. There are polyglots in our world today, who know C, C++, Java and C# as well as French, English and whatever else, who I think deserve as much accolades as those linguistic hyperpolyglots.

emodendroket5• 8 years ago

Learning a new programming language is nowhere near as hard as learning a new human language. That's true even if it's a different paradigm but especially when you're talking about languages which have similar paradigms. The real slayer in picking up a new language is that the list of vocabulary you need to learn is endless.

You can be writing a program in a new language that may not be totally idiomatic but works in a few days. You can't carry on a conversation in a new language that fast.

funkaster• 8 years ago

Not at all. Learning a new programming language (let's say being able to "converse" in a new programming language) is not even close to the difficulty of being able to converse in a new human language. I know (I've coded professionally) C, C++, C#, JavaScript, typescript, Ruby, python, scheme. I can read and understand Rust, any c-like language, Scala, brainfuck and many others. I could confidently say that I could understand pretty much any programming language.

On the other hand I can speak Spanish, English. I can "converse" in French (formally studied), Portuguese and some Italian. I'm learning Mandarin right now. I studied Latin for several years. Human languages are so much harder because (among many other factors) their grammars are so much complicated, also languages evolve in time. Computer languages they are all very similar and their grammars and orders of magnitude more simple (they have to be in order to fulfill their goal of being mapped to instructions on a Turing Machine). I could confidently say that no matter how much I try, I probably would not understand any human language unless I dedicated a non-trivial amount of time and effort to learn it. And that just for getting to a colloquial level of dialogue. If I ever wanted to be productive professionally reading/writing it would be way more hard.

astrodust2• 8 years ago

That's probably because in computer languages we invent our own dialects as the core is pretty feeble: "Jane get ball, ball is red. Red ball goes down hill." So that becomes "getBall()", "dropBall()" and so on where with a heavy helping of English, or whatever human language you prefer, you can slather on top a lot of semantic meaning that isn't there otherwise.

If you only had to learn basic grammar and fifty words you could be fluent in a hundred languages in a month.

wallflower5• 8 years ago

Human languages are harder because you are speaking and listening to humans. Do you get embarrassed typing in a line of code into your editor?

Also, for these polyglot programmers, are they truly writing code in, say Python, in the Pythonic way?

irrational• 8 years ago

I don't know. I can't just pick up and start reading text in Chinese, French, Arabic, Russian, German, etc. But I've rarely had any trouble looking at code in a programming language I've never been exposed to and being able to understand it quite readily.

poulsbohemian5• 8 years ago

Agree with the basic gist that languages follow patterns, and once you learn these patterns it gets easier to learn new languages. The challenge is that programming languages are really not that different from each other; they are mostly syntactic differences to express the same logic concepts. Human languages express far greater variability because they are also embodying history, culture, politics, as well as creating symbolism for human thought.

newsbinator• 8 years ago

Human languages are harder because there's no compiler to test variations against for hours, days and weeks.

The best language learning program would be one which listens to you speak (or write), points out critical errors, and doesn't let you progress until you find ways around them (or choose an easier/different thing to express).

If we had one of those, language learning would be much, much easier.

wallflower5• 8 years ago

I don't mean this sarcastically but your description of the best language learning program is almost how all parents teach their kids their native language(s).

misiti37803• 8 years ago

Learning human languages is harder, because of grammar. Think about it this way, the US government says you can learn speak Spanish/Italian/French in 600 hours of practice. I'd argue you could be effective in Golang in < 40 hours of practice. Harder languages like Haskell would be a lot more hours but much less than 600.

emodendroket5• 8 years ago

I have seen a lot of people who claim to be masters of a gazillion languages on YouTube or whatever but if I watch them in a language I know their skills are much more elementary than advertised. So I'm kind of skeptical here.

astrodust2• 8 years ago

Tip: People who claim to be masters of anything rarely are. True mastery is not common, and those that do achieve mastery often suffer badly from impostor syndrome or realize they have so much more to learn, so stay humble.

bunderbunder3• 8 years ago

So, this is one thing I like about Gabirel Wyner -- in his book, "Fluent Forever", he's got a section in the first chapter where he talks about how he defines fluency, and he fairly openly acknowledges that he personally sets a very low bar. It's basically just being able to engage in small talk without too much hesitation, with no expectations placed on developing a large vocabulary, or mastering every verb tense, or any of that.

I suspect that's what's happening with a lot of people who cultivate a reputation as hyper-polyglots: When they say "fluent", they mean, "about on par with a 4-year-old, only more literate". When everyone else hears fluent, they think they mean, "masters of the language".

(edit: I pick 4 years old because that's about on par with the benchmark Wyner is using - in his book, he seems to be using 1,500 words as the benchmark for a working vocabulary. I believe that's about average for a native English-speaking 4-year-old.)

lb1lf• 8 years ago

That makes sense - I consider myself reasonably fluent in three languages - my native Norwegian, English and German.

I can, however, make small talk without embarrassing myself too much in three additional ones - Portuguese, Russian and Monokotuba. (Funny, that last one - a result of being stuck in the Congo for work...)

I don't put the last three ones on my CV, though - while I do make myself understood, to a fluent speaker it is probably a lot like conversing a four year old (with rather particular interests for a four year old!)

misiti37803• 8 years ago

I didn't really get that from his book -- I thought he was saying you pick the top 1500 words (actually I think its 600 in his book) and learn how to pronounce / spell / and memorize them using Anki, and then start speaking with someone on iTalki etc and go from there. I have used this method to learn Italian and now I am doing it with French. I think the method works. Fluency is a loaded term in my opinion - from this article it seems to be defined as C1/C2, but in reality you can get by with a lot less, you need a handful for verbs and a large amount of nouns

wallflower5• 8 years ago

I think fluency is a bastardized term, kind of like what Facebook did to "friends". I don't like the term either. I like "proficient" better.

When someone asks me "Are you fluent in Spanish?", I take that almost always as an indication that they have no idea what it takes to learn a language and try my best to educate them about what it really takes (The 1500 words frequency-based vocabulary, for example).

poulsbohemian5• 8 years ago

I've heard this definition of fluent elsewhere, but I find it challenging to accept for two reasons.

1) Even in languages that I've studied for a long time and know a lot more than 1500 words, I struggle to carry on small talk. Here again, maybe we have a different definition of small talk. Sure I can navigate the world, but I can't talk politics, economics, or current events without struggling or feeling stunted.

2) I recall being a student in Germany and having a 5 year old host sister. Sure her grammar was not fully developed and her range of specialized vocabulary was limited, but she most definitely knew more than 1500 words and had a more working understanding of that language than a typical non-native speaker would even after many years of study.

Tomte• 8 years ago

I'm not terribly convinced. The point I'm about to make may be a minor one, but... what else is he misunderstanding that I cannot judge?

In his video on https://fluent-forever.com/getting-started/ at 2:50 he claims there's a subtle pronunciation difference between German "biete" (offer) and "bete" (pray).

The problem is, the difference in pronunciation isn't subtle. It's huge. The difference in the real pronunciation of those words.

But when he demonstrates the supposed difference, I – as a native German speaker – hear the same word, "biete", both times.

His "bete" is so very wrong that no German speaker would ever consider it "bete" on its own. It's 100% "biete".

Only if you know typical English pronunciation and you have context you might draw the conclusion that "bete" is what he means.

I fully concede that hearing pronunciation differences in non-native languages is very hard. Probably more so for some people than for others. Unfortunately, I'm in the very very hard camp.

I will never hear the difference between hard and soft consonants in Russian. I listened to audio CDs, I listened to a native speaker who assured me the difference was as night and day. To no avail.

And I seem to hear something very different from a Swedish native speaker when a sj sound is spoken (the sj sound has wildly different phonetics throughout Sweden). There seem to be some Swedish dialects where I hear a very clear [x] (velar frivative) sound, but native speakers assure me it's far from it.

So he's certainly no dummy, but maybe not as successful in learning languages as he thinks.

wallflower5• 8 years ago

For those who were not born with the linguistic equivalent of a "silver spoon in the mouth", which is immersion and exposure to several languages in early childhood, learning another language is achievable. No need to be a polyglot (6 languages) or hyperglot (11 languages). It just takes time and effort. Just throw away all concept of deadlines for progress and fluency and enjoy the failure and process. Ignore all "fluent in X time" charlatans, there is no magic process for the standard "I took Spanish for 4 years in school" adult language learner. Just get started.

I have heard some people carry on conversations in two or three languages simultaneously, and I am in awe of Mezzofanti.

"On one occasion, Pope Gregory XVI (1765-1846), a friend of Mezzofanti, arranged for dozens of international students to surprise him. When the signal was given, the students knelt before Mezzofanti and then rose quickly, talking to him 'each in his own tongue, with such an abundance of words and such a volubility of tone, that, in the jargon of dialects, it was almost impossible to hear, much less to understand them.' Mezzofanti didn't flinch but 'took them up singly, and replied to each in his own language.' The pope declared the cardinal to be victorious. Mezzofanti could not be bested."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzofanti

sevensor• 8 years ago

His flawless German, acquired post-college, as an au pair, made Dutch a cinch.
It just takes time and effort

My uncle (a native English speaker) spoke about a dozen languages. Not one of them was a cinch. Although he loved learning new languages, he acquired them through relentless hard work.

However, he got himself in trouble with German / Dutch. Trying to practice his Dutch in the Netherlands, he ordered an ice cream using Dutch grammar but German words. This was in the late '60s, and the ice cream vendor, who was old enough to remember the occupation, mistook him for German. My uncle made things worse by saying, in German, "we must have misunderstood each other," at which point the ice cream vendor started mock goose-stepping around behind his stand. My uncle did not receive his ice cream.

jlg23• 8 years ago

I have heard some people carry on conversations in two or three languages simultaneously, and I am in awe of Mezzofanti.

This is the norm here in Morocco: Lots of people speak a Berber dialect as their primary language, followed by Arab and French (both compulsory in education). Not only are most able to participate in 3 communications in their 3 languages, they also practice code-switching a lot - it's not uncommon to have all 3 languages in a single sentence.

Just throw away all concept of deadlines for progress and fluency and enjoy the failure and process.

The second part is, IMHO, the most important: Fail, fail, fail - and laugh about it. One does walk away from "talks", both parties laughing and "agreeing", with both parties being aware that communication failed completely.

pmoriarty• 8 years ago

"Fail, fail, fail - and laugh about it."

One not only needs a tolerance for failure, but a tolerance for humiliation. Some native speakers will treat people with a poor grasp of their language as if they were children or idiots.

I've definitely acquired a lot more empathy for people who struggle with English once I tried my own rudimentary language skills in other countries. These people who have difficulty putting together a few words in English might actually be far more intelligent and educated than the native speakers they're trying to communicate with, yet they're often looked down upon.

agumonkey• 8 years ago

I believe there's a biphasic learning curve. The first 4 languages might take long, but then you'd absorb most things easily.

malpighien• 8 years ago

Though you would say Amoureux des langues and not de langues in French.

paulpauper• 8 years ago

Some four hundred respondents provided information about their gender and their orientation, among other personal details, including their I.Q.s (which were above average). Nearly half spoke at least seven languages, and seventeen qualified as hyperpolyglots. The distillation of this research, “Babel No More,” published in 2012, is an essential reference book—in its way, an ethnography of what Erard calls a “neural tribe.”

The answer is IQ. I knew that before even reading the article. Same for speed reading, memorization, etc. anything that is cognitive has a large IQ component. I dunno why it's so hard for researchers to get this. Instead we hook subjects to machines to look for brain patterns or we try to look for any other explanation besides the most obvious one, IQ.

monetus• 8 years ago

I don't think IQ tests are precise because intelligence is an abstract concept. It makes sense that they are searching for something corporeal and consistent.

kazinator3• 8 years ago

Speak and understand dozens of languages at what level?

Could they understand a complex news story about economics and finance in all those languages? Read a novel? Write an essay on a complex topic?

I'm skeptical.

You could be mistaken as a native in six languages if you just make small talk with a perfect accent and intonation.

Someone who really knows a language has a (passive) vocabulary of some 25,000 words. A proper hyperpolyglot should have 11X then, once per each language. Yeah, sure!

yjftsjthsd-h• 8 years ago

You can cheat by deduplicating, since languages evolve in families.

kazinator3• 8 years ago

I would only count the families. A hyperpolyglot in twelve languages that are from three families only knows three languages with minor variations; it's not the same as a hyperpolyglot who knows twelve deeply unrelated languages.

mgkimsal• 8 years ago

I may have a bit of a gift of mimicry for languages - I can usually pull off a passable accent in multiple languages pretty quickly. I've had natives comment that my accent was good. The first few times I considered it politeness, and that probably is a factor, but I've heard it enough over 20+ years that there's probably a kernel of truth in it.

I've done travelled in various areas of Spain, China and Russia (and had studied Japanese years back), and have been able to do rough communication with all of them to some level, but ... when you are doing it, you realize how much you don't know. No, I can't just read any level of book I want, can't understand all the news programs (or the local ramifications), couldn't go see a theatrical play, couldn't conduct business, etc. BUT... the few phrases and words I know, apparently I sound good enough that people have mistaken me (for perhaps 30 seconds, until I keep going) for a native speaker. (well, not in china!)

I remember feeling quite humbled that the 4 year old at a mcdonalds in China was still more 'fluent' than I was as an adult. That gave me a lasting impression, and deep respect for people who move to other countries, develop new lives, and learn a foreign language and culture. I'm not saying I could never do it, but... it's immensely difficult.

bunderbunder3• 8 years ago

Could they understand a complex news story about economics and finance in all those languages? Read a novel? Write an essay on a complex topic?

Those skills can't even be assumed in native speakers.

For example: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/

kazinator3• 8 years ago

They can be assumed in high IQ native speakers, though.

These hyperpolyglots are supposed to be high IQ.

If you have a high IQ, but look like a low IQ illiterate in a dozen additional languages, then I'm afraid you're a phonyglot. This is because there are ideas that you can think but cannot say in those non-native languages; and if someone else were to say those things for you, you wouldn't understand what they are saying.

ACS_Solver2• 8 years ago

Some totally anecdotal points.

It seems like it's far easier with early exposure to languages. I speak six languages, and don't find languages too difficult, which I attribute largely to having grown up speaking two languages from two different language families, and being exposed to a third one fairly early. Thanks to that, it's completely natural to me that ideas are expressed differently in different languages. When I encounter people who speak/write a foreign language poorly, it usually looks like they think of a sentence in their own language, and then replace the words individually with words in their target language. It's not so much a difference of skill level as it is a difference in the basic way of thinking.

I've also watched some videos along the lines of "see me speak 10 languages", and those are almost always less impressive than the title. They usually show a person fluent in 3-5 languages, and then saying introductory basic things in the others. That's very respectable and I don't want to play that down, but it's also not "wow, s/he's fluent in 10 languages!" like people might think from the title.

One more thing that keeps me wondering is the practical limit of how many languages you can maintain. Personally, with six languages, I already feel I'm pushing it. I use four languages in day-to-day life. If I don't read/speak either of my other two for a while, I feel my skills deteriorating. Personally it seems like maintaining seven languages would take a deliberate, considerable time investment, and more than that wouldn't work.

Izkata• 8 years ago

It seems like it's far easier with early exposure to languages. I speak six languages, and don't find languages too difficult, which I attribute largely to having grown up speaking two languages from two different language families, and being exposed to a third one fairly early.

I think it's more along the lines of: Your first/native language isn't a problem, your second language is difficult, and with each beyond that it becomes easier to change how you think to fit the next language. It's just, being exposed young breaks that second-language hurdle early enough you don't really remember it being extra difficult.

I'm not fluent in anything besides English (though know a small bit of Spanish and Japanese), so take that above with a grain of salt. But the difficulty curve seems similar to programing languages, where the more you learn, the more you recognize underlying concepts across languages, making further ones easier to understand.

ACS_Solver2• 8 years ago

Your first/native language isn't a problem, your second language is difficult

I don't think so - I rather think this is exactly what early exposure gets around. Growing up with two languages, you understand and speak two even before understanding concepts like language learning, or there being more than those two languages. The second language isn't difficult at all, it's just the same as your native language. Or it's like having two native languages. But there's no second-language hurdle in that case (though it moves to the third one).

mitchtbaum• 8 years ago

This languages teacher has good info about practicing dozens of languages: https://www.youtube.com/user/laoshu505000

fbn79• 8 years ago

I'm a web developer. I'm forced to write code in dozens of languages.

m1573rp34130dy• 8 years ago

the basic skill of language is a conservative function... if you are aware of linguistic rules [grammer syntax], you are aware of the "algorithm" and variations of said algorithm...next is the strings [words] and the variable type [accent , timbre, pause etc.] how many languages do you speak?[rhet], how many high level source versions do you know/speak? BASIC, LISP, APL, ASM are all very old digital languages that the ancients speak, and i remember my first TI sinclair 1000 and the basic source code, it was a hurdle but also a nucleus of concepts, it was shockingly easy to learn additional coding languages compared to the first one, and going further i believe this contributed to the ease, and desire of learning how a computer/object code device actually operates, then i learned ASM and hex macros, and the need/use for compilers and libraries, i was 11 by the time i was designing digital circuits...."the whole point being, spoken languages utilize the same underlying mechanisms"... if your daily dealing involve symbols , abstracts and translation of these to relay concepts you are primed to learn a "new language" easily... mathematics, schematics, stoichiometry, feynman diagrams, are all languages, as well as english french spanish etc.. Sooo..."how many languages do you speak"?...

The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages

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