Talk:List of polyglots

Lead section

This edit added some discussion of the difficulty of defining who is a polyglot. At the same time, though, it removed a source and mention of Richard Hudson's notion of "hyperpolyglot". User:LeemanBros and I have communicated on my talk page, but others may wish to contribute to discussion of the lead as well. Cnilep (talk) 03:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Cnilep. Im reverting my edits for the matter of the conversaton. I suggest there be a clearer distinction between "mastering" a language (would that encompass just literally "Speaking" or all of the major 4 areas of Speaking, Writing, Listening, Reading and what exactly?). That term is as controversial as the use of the word "fluent". Earlier versions of the article removed some valid persons from the list who indeed "speak many languages". A detailed expanse upon the polyglot with specific would be useful to assist in those who could be described as a polyglot. Some of the listed persons on the list are second language acquisitors who have admitted that they cant speak well in the foreign language or even read/write at all. Should one included in the list have been documented or tested? Or can the person self-scribe themself as polyglot on the honor system with lack of vetting or instituionally recognized certificate? If that's so, one can make cases for Viggo Mortensen (one of the ones actually listed in an earlier revision), Sarah Chalke, and Dolph Lundgren being included. I also wonder the case of the persons listed on the page have only learned the equivalent of business travel or the niceties of communication in the language. Perhaps the list would serve better for those who have a body of work in all their claimed languages or with certifications? I dont know, but I think starting with a clearer definition would be a start on subsiding many of the above questions and not elucidating users.

As for Richard Hudson and hyperpolyglot, I didnt mean to delete that. Although, hyperpolyglot is indeed covered by "polyglot" technically and should fall on it's own line, if not it better being in the main polyglottism article being enough.

Cheers! LeemanBros (talk) 16:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

The definition of the list (not of polyglot as such) is currently, "people who have been noted in news media, historical texts, or academic work as speaking six or more languages fluently". That can obviously be changed if anyone wants to suggest other criteria. Per various Wikipedia policies, though, I think some reference to outside, published sources should be included in whatever criteria are selected. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists and Wikipedia:No original research, among other policies. Cnilep (talk) 04:42, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

This page should be deleted

This is a strange idea for a page, and should be deleted. How can you have a list of Polygots on Wikipedia. A polyglot is someone who speaks three languages or more. There are millions of people who do that!!!! Deathlibrarian (talk) 11:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of noted polyglots and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 September 24. You are free to nominate the page for deletion, but may want to bear in mind the arguments made at the earlier discussions. Cnilep (talk) 02:26, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Request edit

Hi! I am mentioned in this article and the title of one of my books is written incorrectly.

Please change the title of Susanna Zaraysky's book to "Travel Happy, Budget Low". It was mistakenly written as "Travel Happy, Budget Law". If you need the Amazon links to my books, here they are:

Language is Music: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Is-Music-Foreign-Languages/dp/0982018991

Travel Happy, Budget Low: http://www.amazon.com/Travel-Happy-Budget-Low-Saving/dp/0982018983/ref=la_B003M95PHO_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397106876&sr=1-2

Sincerely, Susanna (nisamsuzi@yahoo.com) 76.237.2.186 (talk) 05:17, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Done. Sam Sailor ^Sing 17:59, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Translation represented as direct quotation

The quote attributed to João Guimarães Rosa ("I speak: Portuguese, German, French" etc.) is in fact a translation from Portuguese ("VI – Falo: português, alemão, francês," etc.). The translation doesn't misrepresent the sense of the quote the blogger attributes to Guimarães Rosa, but it is not his exact words, either. Unfortunately Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register#Foreign-language quotations is currently an empty section, so I'm not sure how such issues are generally handled. My personal advice would be to paraphrase rather than quote the source. Do others have thoughts on styling this? Cnilep (talk) 02:21, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

 Done. Hearing no objections, I changed the pronouns, removed the quotation marks, and made other similar changes. Cnilep (talk) 01:53, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Unreliable or questionable sources

The section "Notable living polyglots" cites a number of primary sources, user-generated web content, or other possibly unreliable material.Self-published or user-generated material such as YouTube or blogs is not considered reliable except in cases where the user is recognized as an established expert in the field. User-generated content generally should not be used to verify self-serving or exceptional claims such as speaking an unusual number of languages. Specifically:

• YouTube videos, six of which are cited here, are user-generated and therefore less reliable.
• Two TED talks by Benny Lewis about himself are likewise self-generated and self-serving.
• A story about Steve Kaufmann is published by LingQ, Kaufmann's own company. It may be considered as a primary source, though its content may be self-serving.
• The other two sources about Kaufmann are Kaufmann's own comments on Twitter or blogs, which are clearly unreliable for purposes of verification.
• The bloggers "Ryan" and "sgendreau" may be experts in their fields, but since we don't know their full names, it is best not to assume so.
• The article about Alexander Arguelles is in a publication with a reputation for reliability (The Guardian), but is attributed to Alexander Arguelles. It should therefore be treated as only slightly more reliable than user-generated sources.

Please find better sources to replace these questionable ones. Cnilep (talk) 02:04, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

What's the point of this list if there are no good sources?

I listened to a couple of people on Youtube who are mentioned here as polyglots and who claim to speak German and Russian. Their ability according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages could be best described as something between A1 and A2 level. One example: someone here was speaking Russian with more than half the declension endings wrong. His German syntax was also pretty wrong and he was using a rather basic vocabulary, almost always talking about the same things he says in other languages.

And yet: even sites as The Economist say the person speaks Russian and German. Well: if A1 or A2 levels are enough for a given language, there are many more polyglots on Earth. What is the point to list these?

You can as well create a list of people who "know mathematics" based on the fact they know a little bit of arithmetic, a little bit of algebra and so on.

--Periergeia (talk) 15:01, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Languages by family

I'm surprised that the polyglots arn't listed the langauge family group they know rather than the geography 75.61.129.158 (talk) 23:02, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Some polyglots speak in multiple language group families, so it's not practical to group them that way. SageGreenRider (talk) 00:25, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

How is this list determined?

It only mentions Richard Simcott (25+ languages) and Alex Rawlings (12+ languages) in passing, even though these were publicly recognized to be the most multilingual people in Britain (Alex as the "most multilingual student), and then mentions a whole lot of other people who don't even pass the "hyperpolyglot" criteria of speaking 11 languages, just because they're famous for something else entirely, like that Armenian football player.

Wouldn't it make more sense to list more people who speak 11+ or 25+ languages? Speaking 11+ languages still gives you a very long list of people; I am the head organizer of the Polyglot Gathering, where at least 80 participants spoke that many languages. If we can agree on what makes a person notable for this list, I am happy to contribute any number of names with citations of newspaper articles and similar.

Do keep in mind that other in the case of Alex Rawlings, Johan Vandewalle and similar, few polyglots have undergone an official examination, simply because it wasn't offered, and newspapers like to cite inflated numbers. For example, Timothy Doner himself said in an interview with the Economist that he is only fluent in 3-4 languages and speaks another 3-4 languages well, so nowhere near the 20+ that some journalists like to stick on him. However, polyglots are generally aware of each other and will test each other if someone makes an unlikely claim. Such was the case for Emanuele Marini, who showed up to the Polyglot Conference as an unknown with a name tag claiming 30+ languages: he got drafted into an impromptu on-camera demonstration of his skills, at least in the 16 languages for which native speakers were present. The result was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deu-ayVcT-k , becoming an overnight sensation. Do such videos count if they involve more people than just the person himself? Otherwise it should be possible to find references to him in Polish news, he got interviewed on Polish national TV after they heard his flawless Polish...

So: what are the criteria for this list?

Junesun (talk) 18:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Where is Emil Krebs?

He knew 68 languages! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Krebs 84.112.151.27 (talk) 18:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Swiss German is not a language

Swiss German is listed as one of the languages two (or possibly more) people on the list speak. But Swiss German is not a language. There are two reasons for that: Firstly, there is no (single) language called Swiss German. Swiss German is the expression used for (all the) German dialects spoken in Switzerland. There is no Standard Swiss German language. I am from Berne, Switzerland and a native Bernise German speaker. Most of the time I refer to myself as a native German speaker, since calling myself a native Bernise German speaker would hardly make sense. But to call myself a native Swiss German speaker would not make sense at all. There is no such language. Secondly, as already mentioned, the term Swiss German is used to refer to all German DIALECTS spoken in Switzerland. They are just dialects. So no langauges of their own. Learning (Standard) German as a Swiss toddler from the German speaking part of Switzerland does not mean the same as learning another language like for example Dutch or French. It just means to learn a different version of your native language. I speak the German dialect spoken in Berne, the German used in print media, English and French. This makes me a person who speaks three languages, not four.178.197.236.9 (talk) 18:41, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

It might be a "dialect" but neurologically speaking, they can be just a hard to learn.--Prisencolin (talk) 23:34, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Are you serious? If you know the language, the dialect are not ""just as hard to learn". Let's be scientific, languages are languages, dialects are dialects. If you want to mention a dialect, mention it, but call it a dialect.

Rosetta Stone

This sounds like advertising. And this following sentence doesn't make sense at all: "It is difficult to judge which individuals are polyglots, as there is no uncontroversial definition for what it means to "master" a language, and because it is not always clear where to distinguish a dialect from a language."

These two things have nothing to do with each other. Mastering a language does not mean knowing all its dialects. It doesn't even apply to native speakers. So there are no native speakers who have mastered their native tongues? --2.245.113.233 (talk) 12:50, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

You misunderstand. The two points don't relate to one another, but both relate to the parent comment, ‘it is difficult to judge which individuals are polyglots’. The use of two explanatory conjunctions, one for each point, makes clear that they are intended to be distinct. The dialect point is referring to the idea that one could be fluent in two distinct dialects which are commonly thought as part of the same language, but which in reality have the same lack of mutual intelligibility as some other recognised distinct languages. Therefore the number of languages you could count someone as speaking could vary based on whether you consider the matter linguistically, or socio-politically. 2A00:23C4:9F81:6600:4852:DB15:C80B:9B20 (talk) 20:11, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it was really advertising. I removed this part. You don't have to mention a software if you don't mention other, and if you mention Rosetta Stone, we will be happy to mention why it's not efficient, so stop your ads.

Threshold for inclusion

Shouldn't there be some kind of threshold for inclusion? E.g. being bilingual and apart from that fluent in 3 additional languages doesn't really sound like being a polyglot.--Fennomaani (talk) 20:42, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

This article is mainly an essay about the author's opinion

This article is really mainly a bunch of ininteresting blablablah with no academic source, and the authors giving his opinion about what is fluency or mastering language. Without sourcing, it's only opinion and is really not interesting to have on Wikipedia.

I removed the Rosetta Stone part, as it's not the purpose of this site. If you mention a software, mention other ones too. Anyway, Rosetta Stone has not really proved to be efficient. And everyone has a different opinon or different sources about it. Don't mention a software unless you mention the other ones, and research papers. Thanks.