Goodbye for Now

I love the wisdom packed nicely into the Spanish phrase that says, Quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta (Jack of all trades, master of none or literally, He who embarks on much, grasps little). Like all good sayings that stand the test of time, it’s short, easy to understand and applies to many situations. In the past few months I have studied for and taken the written test to become a state certified court interpreter; I have become a sort of a layman Sunday school teacher/youth minister and enrolled in an international labor relations course. This is all in addition to my regular job of being a translator and running my own small internet translation agency. Needless to say, I’m feeling stretched quite thin. Last month I came to the sad realization that several things in my life were going to have to be set aside for a while and this blog is one of them.

Since my first article written in December of last year to my last interview with the super linguist Carlos do Amaral Freire I have absolutely loved researching and writing for this blog. My life has been enriched by learning new things in preparation for each article. I have had the privilege to correspond via email, MSN Messenger or Skype with extraordinary linguists like Stuart Jay Raj, Steve Kaufmann, Ziad Fazah, Alexander Arguelles and Carlos do Amaral Freire, among others. I have even had the chance to visit a couple of them in their homes and peruse their libraries.

As wonderful as these experiences have been they are no more gratifying to me than your readership. Some of you have been following this blog since December and some of you just started reading it a couple of weeks ago. In this busy period of human history time is perhaps the most precious of all assets. The fact that so many of you from all over the world have taken your time to read what I have written is an honor that I do not take for granted. I even took a picture of all of you so as not to forget you.

If you bookmarked this page or included it in your RSS feeder or Googlereader page then please do not delete it. Please check back! I developed the habit of writing down any and all topics for future posts that popped into my head right when they popped into my head. Because of this I still have several dozen topics that I would like to write about. I will not be deleting this blog or any of its posts. Feel free to read any of them as much as you like and to leave comments. You may also feel free to contact me whenever you like. I do not know whether I will be reduced to only writing one post a month or whether or not this is just a hiatus from which I will return to writing once or twice a week. Time will tell. One thing is certain though: I do not intend for this to be my last post.

The Wisdom of a Man Who Knows 115 Languages

Dr. Carlos do Amaral Freire is an extraordinary human being. Aside from learning one hundred and fifteen languages, Dr. Freire has made significant contributions to the field of linguistics (discovering a phonological relationship between Georgian and Aymara being just one of them). His poetry anthology, which includes poems from sixty different languages translated into his native Portuguese, has got people over at the Guinness World Book of Records talking about including him in an upcoming addition. He would be listed for being the one person who has translated poems from more languages into his native language than any other person. This morning he gave me the opportunity to conduct and record a telephone interview with him from his home in Southern Brazil.

What do you say to a man who knows more languages than you can think of? I suppose the overly simple answer is, Anything you want. I am not a professional and had some unfortunate technical difficulties, nonetheless, I truly believe that anyone who is interested in learning foreign languages can benefit from listening to this interview.

First Part

Second Part

Third Part

Fourth Part

I’ve included a list of his languages here for all of you curious people.

 

Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian, Assyrian, Aymara, Azeri, Basque, Bengali, Belorussian, Burmese, Bislama, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Chinese (Cantonese), Corsican, Czech, Haitian Creole, Danish, Dutch, Egyptian, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finish, Franco-Provençal, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gallic (Irish), Gallic (Scottish), Galician, Georgian, German (Hochdeutsch), German (Schweizerdeutsch), Greek (Classic), Greek (Modern), Guarani, Guinea Bissau Creole, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hittite, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kaingang, Kazakh, Khmer (Cambodian), Korean, Kurdish, Ladino (Dalmatian), Ladino (Jewish Spanish), Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxemburgish, Macedonian, Mayan, Malaysian, Malagasy, Maltese, Mapuche (Mapudungun), Mongolian, Nahuatl, Nepali, Occitan, Papiamento, Papua New Guinean English Creole, Pashto, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Quechua, Romansh, Romani (Gypsy), Romanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Samoan, Sanskrit, Sardinian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Somali, Sorbian (Upper), Sorbian (Lower), Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Tartar, Thai, Tibetan, Tupi, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Wolof, Volapük, Xavante, Yidish, Yoruba, Zulu.

If you are like me these fifteen minutes with Dr. Freire will not be enough. For more information about some of these subjects I suggest you read another excellent interview conducted with him in 2003. Your can read this interview in English here and here. Portuguese speakers can read the original. He was interviewed on television in Brazil some years ago, a video of which can be seen below.

 

 

Guest Writing for Voices en Español

A couple of months ago I was approached by Eleena, from the blog Voices en Español, who asked me if I would be interested being a guest writer from time to time on her blog. I was flattered and intrigued. I try to keep the focus of this blog to language learning, languages and polyglots. Three topics that often converge. I also publish exclusively in English to reach a wider audience. Writing for Voices en Español would give me the opportunity to write in both English and Spanish and take a more sociopolitical approach to certain linguistic topics.

My first post as a guest writer for Voices en Español is in English here and in Spanish here. It deals with the immigration controversy in the USA and how monolingual America is misunderstanding the problem and misdirecting its anger. Even if you are not American, I think that you can appreciate the issue since there is a similar situation in France, all of Scandinavia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Italy, Germany, Kuwait, Thailand, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, etc. I invite you to read the post and tell me what you think on Eleena’s blog.

How Many Languages Is It Possible to Learn?

After watching the Olympics and the amazing feats of people like Michael Phelps it makes me reconsider what is possible for people to achieve. How fast can human beings swim; how fast can we run; how much weight can we lift? Similarly, it wouldn’t be strange for any linguist to wonder how many languages a human being could learn in the course of a lifetime.

It’s a Bigger Number than You Think

John Bowring was a British literary translator, economist, politician and diplomat whose service included being the fourth governor of Hong Kong. He claimed that he knew 200 languages and that he could speak 100 of them. Cardinal Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti knew more than 70 languages and could speak 38 without ever having left his homeland: Italy. In our day, the Brazilian linguist Dr. Carlos do Amaral Freire claims to know over 100 languages and the Lebanese language instructor Ziad Fazah claims 59. This article has information regarding great hyperpolyglots of the past and this article has information about the great polyglots that are still with us. You may find these numbers hard to believe but each one of these hyperpolyglots has publications or video recordings that suggest that their claims are true.

What Is Speaking a Language?

I used to naively think that this meant being able to say anything in the foreign language and in your own native language. That would mean that if you couldn’t explain how to change a carburetor, the difference between socialism and communism or the steps to buying a house in your target language, without making any obvious grammatical or pronunciation mistakes, then you couldn’t really say that you spoke it. That seems to be a bit demanding since there are many monolinguals that have a hard time doing that well in their own native language.

Even so, I get very annoyed with people who learn a dozen phrases in five languages and try to pass themselves off as cultured polyglots. I don’t think that we should claim to speak a language unless we can at least deal with native speakers well enough to say: I’m sorry. What is a wiggetybunket? I’ve never heard that word before. and then be able to understand the native speaker’s simple explanation. We should also be able to pronounce words well enough for native speakers to be able to understand almost every word we say. Lastly, we should have a good enough understanding of the grammar/structure of the language to form original sentences that are at least mostly correct. If you have a higher level of proficiency then so much the better. Qualifying the number of languages you speak is always a good idea. Statements like, I speak two fluently and am conversational in four others or, I know four and have studied eight are good examples of how to honestly portray your language abilities.

Studying, Forgetting and Remembering

Bowring and Mezzofanti died over 200 years ago but I have had the opportunity to personally deal with Freire and Fazah, as well as with a few other truly great linguists, and I imagine that the former pair were something like the latter. First of all, both Freire and Fazah have studied many languages that they have had no occasion to use in decades. They both admit that speaking them with no prior notice would be very difficult. Freire describes these languages as being deactivated. The curious thing is that they both claim that they can reactivate these languages after a few days of study. This means that if you were to drop them in Istanbul tomorrow and ask them to give a speech to an audience of locals they would probably struggle greatly with the task. If you were to give them a week’s notice they would probably receive praise for how well they spoke Turkish.

How Many Languages Is It Possible to Have a High Level of Fluency In?

That is what many people would really like to know. How many languages can you speak with near native fluency in and have an enormous vocabulary in? To date my experience has taught me that this number has everything to do with your lifestyle. If you have a life that not only gives you the opportunity but also necessitates that or greatly benefits from knowing thirteen languages well then you will probably speak thirteen languages well. If you have a very monolingual lifestyle then even maintaining one other language will most likely be quite difficult.

Limitless Possibilities

What if you studied a new language until you were proficient in it and then switched to another for ten years? Let’s say you’re not Mezzofanti and only became proficient in four languages during that time. Then life happens and you don’t touch the languages for another ten years. Your languages will have become quite deactivated but as soon as you choose to pick up an old book in one of them or spend more than a day or two in a country that speaks that language you will find that it all starts to come back to you. Will your time have been wasted all of those years ago? Only if being able to get around in a foreign country without the help of a third party is not enjoyable for you; only if reading good literature in its original form has no value; only if if learning foreign languages is not enjoyable for you.

How many languages can humans learn? They learn as many as they have time to study and practice. Scientists have yet to find any biological reason why everyone cannot learn twenty languages or even one hundred. Linguists like Bowring, Mezzofanti, Freire and Fazah suggest that our abilities are much greater than we think. As it is with so many things in life, we often become our greatest limitation or our greatest asset. Our attitudes, lifestyles, habits, practices, interests, hobbies, etc. are what usually what determine what we can achieve much more than our physical or mental capacity.

Self-Affirmations

My first contact with positive self-affirmations was with the fictional character Stuart Smalley, created by American comedian Al Franken. This fictional unlicensed therapist would look at himself in the mirror with a strangely gleeful smile and say, I’m good enough; I’m smart enough and, doggon’ it, PEOPLE LIKE ME! Needless to say, my perception of self affirmations was not very good. Later on I read Awaken the Giant Within, written by self-motivationalist Tony Robbins who taught that self-affirmations are good but only if you have a plan to achieve whatever it is you are affirming. You can tell yourself that you are handsome all you want but buying some new clothes, losing 10 pounds (or gaining 10 pounds as the case may be) and combing your hair every day isn’t such a bad idea either. That made sense and was more convincing. Lately I’ve had another contact with self-affirmations. Two very competent autodidactical linguists who I respect also use self-affirmations.

In this video you can see that Luca is trying very hard to explain his language learning methods in a way that will help others to be able to learn the languages that interest them. You’ll notice that one of the things he does is remind himself when he has to relearn a word or grammar principal multiple times over the course of several weeks that eventually these things will be very easy and that he will be surprised at how they ever seemed difficult. I think that this is very sound advice. I remember feeling like learning the Spanish language was like trying to drink a swimming pool full of apple juice with a spoon. I liked it and tried to get as much as I could but even after a month of drinking the pool still looked pretty full. Many foreign language students get stuck in between a basic knowledge of their target language and an intermediate knowledge. Instead of forging ahead they give up. It’s important to remember Luca’s advice: what is brutally difficult now will seem ridiculously easy in the future.

Steve the Linguist’s method includes a full blown self affirmation for learning foreign languages. Here it is:

Have you studied Language X for many years? Are you still afraid to speak Language X? Please study this and repeat it to yourself daily.

I can be FLUENT in Language X. My goal is to be FLUENT. My goal is not to be perfect. My goal is just to be FLUENT. I can be FLUENT and still make mistakes.

FIRST I must FORGET what I learned in school. I will make a FRESH start. I will FORGET the rules of grammar. I will FORGET the quizzes and tests. I will FORGET all the times I made mistakes. I will FORGET what my teachers taught me. I will FORGET my native language. I will FORGET who I am. I am a new person. I am a Language X speaker. I will make a FRESH start. I will have FUN! I will FOCUS on things that are FUN and interesting. I will learn.

I will LEARN how to LEARN. I will LISTEN a lot. I will LET myself go. I will LISTEN and LET Language X enter my mind. I will LISTEN often. I will LISTEN every day. I will LISTEN to the same content many times. I will LISTEN to the meaning. I will LISTEN to hear the words and phrases. I will LISTEN early in the morning. I will LISTEN late at night.

I will UNDERSTAND the language. I will UNDERSTAND what I hear and read. If I UNDERSTAND what I hear and read I will be able to speak and write. UNTIL I can UNDERSTAND what I hear and read, I will not be able to speak and write well. But there is no hurry. I will work on UNDERSTANDING. I will read a lot and especially, listen a lot. I want to UNDERSTAND the meaning of Language X. I do not want to UNDERSTAND the rules of grammar.

EVERY day is a learning day. EVERY day the language is ENTERING my brain. I ENJOY reading and listening EVERY day. I study with ENERGY and ENTHUSIASM. I study interesting things and ENJOY the language. If I ENJOY the language I will improve. Let the language ENTER my mind. There is no need to push myself. I am getting better EVERY day.

I will NEVER say that I am NO GOOD. When I read and listen I will tell myself “NICE GOING”! I will learn NATURALLY and easily. I will be NICE to myself. I will NOT BE NERVOUS. If I make a mistake I will say “NEVER MIND”. If I cannot understand something I will say “NEVER MIND.” If I forget a word I will say “NEVER MIND.” If I have trouble saying what I want to say, “NO PROBLEM”. I will continue.

I will TRUST myself. I will be confident. Confident learners improve quickly. I will TREAT myself with respect. I will TELL myself that I am doing well. I just need to keep going, no matter what. The more I listen and read using THE LINGUIST, the more I will understand. The more words and phrases I save the more I will know. Soon I will be ready to speak and write well. I will take it easy. I know I will succeed. I will TRUST myself and TRUST THE LINGUIST.

The fact that two people taught themselves over seven languages using self-affirmations, among other things, seems like more than just a simple coincidence. Do you think that these attitudes or affirmations would help you to learn a language? Have any of you tried self-affirmations before? Would you consider sharing your experiences with the rest of us?