jueves, 17 de mayo de 2007
TRUE OR FALSE?
I have just read that a Frenchman called Georges Henri Schmidt is the holder of a linguistic record: he speaks (or spoke, I don´t know whether he is still alive or not) 32 languages. A question comes to my mind: what does it mean to say "he speaks 32 languages"? Can anybody be fluent in 32 languages? does he simply know some basic grammar and vocabulary?
Suscribirse a:
Enviar comentarios (Atom)
1 comentario:
32 is considerable amount... Ingmar speaks 14 languages. He used to be a teacher of mine at University, now he is also a friend. But, he doesn´t really speak them all fluently, some of them is more on a basis of reading and understanding. That is the case of catalan (while he does speak french,italian, romanian, german, english, spanish and others...) - so, does he speak the 14? He does understand, and he can read any text in them.
Probably just some exposure would trig the talking.
Still - I envy him. I would be happy really get the hold of french and german. Then I would speak 6. But, I do understand (written and talked) norweigan as well, and written danish is not a big deal.
Not so easy to say or define!
Publicar un comentario