The Study of Polyglottery.avi

Alexander Arguelles discusses the study of polyglottery in light of Michael Erard's book: Babel No More - The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• polyglottery
• polyglots
• Babel
• No
• More
• book
• review
• polylitteracy
• language
• learning
• acquisition
• multiliteracy
• study
• foreign
• languages

[vinayaka70]

Dear Professor, your sheer presence and online contributions are providing many of us language learners with so much information, help and motivation that a polyglot institute could only add to it, but never replace it. Even if your professional aims should never materialize the way intended, there are hundreds of people who will never forget your generosity and eagerly await your latest uploads. The sum of your posts on YT, HTLAL and your homepage IS in fact a virtual institute. - Good luck!

[ProfASAr]

@vinayaka70 Thank you all so much for these kind words of appreciation. I am very pleased that the information and inspiration I am able to impart in virtual form is of value to many, and I will never stop providing it. That said, though, I really do yearn for the opportunity to assist others, live and in person, in their foreign language learning…

[qigonjin]

Professor Arguelles,

You look thinner than usual. Did you lose weight?

I reallly admire your work and I hope that you are ok!

[ProfASAr]

@qigonjin Thank you all very much for the expressions of concern. Indeed, I have lost weight, but this is not because I am ill, but rather because I have begun to substitute high intensity interval training (HIIT) sprinting for many of my long distance runs.

[QKlilx]

Two quick inquiries, Professor. Have you heard of Alex Rawlings? He is a 20-year-old who was recently voted as the UK's most multi-lingual student, speaking 11 languages. Second, have you thought about updating your fans and followers from HTLAL with a video about your children's linguistic ability? I'm sure it could be an informational segway into raising multilingual children as a video topic. Keep up the high quality work and I await your next upload.

[Gina1fan]

Secondly, thank you for the book recommendation. I immediately found it in the Apple iBooks store and downloaded it. Nowadays, about 95% of my reading is done digitally, and publishers have released a ton of digitally distributed material since the iBooks and Kindle became available a couple of years ago. What is your view on digital learning in general?

[Gina1fan]

Professor, first, thank you for the channel.

[MrNoexcuses]

Dear Professor. I am currently atempting to learn latvian because my girlfriend of a very long time is a native latvian speaker. Currently i do the Teach yourself book combined with audio thirty minutes a day. And afterwords i use a dictionary and read from a latvian childrens book. I wanted to ask your opinion and the opinion of the other fellow language learners here. What could i do to improve my practical latvian better? I'm looking to be able to converse about things that concern me and her

[nilfmonkey]

@babelnomore Thank you for your reply sir. I'm sure a non-polyglot perspective is interesting, and the book definitely sounds like a good read. I majored in Linguistics, so I'm definitely interested. I would say that a book by a polyglot is not illegitimate but has different strengths than a book by a non-polyglot. I think everyone would agree that a non-polyglot carries certain assumptions that a polyglot would not have. On the other a polyglot perspective has weaknesses too.

[nilfmonkey]

@Imyirtshashem I completely agree, because I am a native English speaker living in Japan. I've learned 4 Asian languages so far which is why I can relate to what the professor is saying. I was speaking of English speakers in general. If you go to Asia, you'll find that knowing at least 2-3 languages is the norm. You cannot say the same for English-speaking countries.

[babelnomore]

@QKlilx I hope you read it and enjoy!

[babelnomore]

@nilfmonkey I'm the author of the book, and I'm going to respond and argue that only a non-polyglot could have written this book. Can you imagine the sort of backlash and questions that would be raised about the conclusions of a book that was written by someone who had a perceived bias? I suggest you read the book and draw your own conclusions.

[pansitkantonify]

Polyglottery would be my ultimate dream in life. As soon as I can fluently speak at least 5 foreign languages, I might say exaggeratingly that I can die.