What is the criteria for being a polyglot?

So guys I speak arabic english and I wanted to learn a new language and don’t know what to choose french or italian. I studied french for many years in school but my problem with it is that sometimes when the speak it too fast I could hardly keep up, but If you give me a text written in french I could probably understand 80% of it. I helped my class win some competitions in french as well but I never masterd the language. It is so hard, and I am also afraid of being criticized by the french when I try to speak it because of course I am not perfect. I really want to master french because it is sophisticated, beautifull and classy, and I already know a lot of french, on the other hand, I love italian as well. I love italy so much, it also helps that the italian people won’t judge me whenever I try to speak it So which language to choose? Or can I learn both at the same time

Nobody understand my jokes. Do ya’ll have polyglot friends? Like well I can talk to people from different countries but

I'm learning languages abroad and decided to finally stop putting off learning the international phonetic alphabet (IPA).
Before I was using my own series op dipthong approximations.

Here's the issue: I think that the English descriptions of what the vowels in the IPA are supposed to sound like were designed for 'the queen's english' because when people think english, they think england. This is making it really difficult to tell the difference between some sounds.

I cant hear the difference between the vowel in purse and nurse because my California accent makes both of those words rhyme. There's a lot of words sounds that I just cannot hear the difference between and it's because the "english approximations" (I'm guessing) were not made with any American accents in mind.

maybe it's because I'm a bit tonedeaf/hard of hearing (determined to not let that stop me) but the sound files don't seem to help much and I'm not an expert on how my vocal cords work yet.

I can only imagine how much more difficult this would be if I had a deep southern accent or a northeast accent. I would say my voice sounds like a lot of American movies. My classmates growing up always told me that I don't have an accent because they "watch tv" if that gives any context. my dialect may be a touch on the surfer side, despite never really picking up surfing.

anybody have any advice, or similar experience trying to learn IPA with a non-british accent?

TL;DR: IPA seems to be built for the British accent

Name seven types of trees, five types of fish, five berries and four grains in each language you claim to be fluent in.

Words that are used in almost every language like tuna, maize or palm don't count.

I read autobiographies on the regular. Any suggestions, written by polyglots?

Also, I thought I'd ask directly. I'm genuinely interested to know what your day to day experience is like with speaking different languages. What does it emotionally feel like?

When has speaking another language made it all worth it in your eyes?

How do you manage to maintain and speak multiple languages? Reginald (Reggie) Hefner speaks more than ten languages. In this article, he describes his daily language revision routine and shared his routines and tips.

Full article

Hi, everyone! I got a Super Duolingo family plan together with my friend and we have 4 spots available. I can give a spot for $16 USD/ €15 euro for the entire year. I accept many payment methods including Revolut/ PayPal/ wise/ Apple Pay or bank transfer whichever is easier for you; also I am open to new payment methods.

Account based in Belgium, but you can join from anywhere, because the link works internationally, no matter where you join from.

Firstly, I will send you the invitation link and you can pay after accepting and joining the family. I will politely and respectfully ask any ill-intentioned people to not message me or reply to this post, because I won’t respond to you.

The best way to contact me is through the reddit chat/ messages or reply to this post. Sometimes I don’t get all the reddit messages, so if you see I don’t respond try to send me an inbox message. I will give you all the details in chat/ private messages.

Happy learning!

hello i want to learn a language which is german anybody can help me to do this or give me tips and advice

I live in the southern United States but grew up speaking French and Hebrew much more than English.

Today at my job I completely forgot the word "window" and just had to describe what I was talking about until someone understood. I know I shouldn't feel embarrassed but I really did. 🫠🫠🫠

I

Hello, a few months ago I got bored and took up using Duolingo as a good way to pass time since it's fun and educational. What I didn't expect is how muc2h I enjoyed it.

When I was young I remember I would watch Japanese Family YouTube channels and I would easily pick up the language; after a few months of watching I could speak phrases near perfect for a kid. That part of me got lost growing up and I forgot about it and I've only got in touch with it now.

I'm currently learning Swedish, Spanish, and Italian as they are the easier languages to begin with seeing that I'm fluent in English and Filipino and the similarities within the languages makes it easier to learn. However I've stumbled upon a wall in learning.

I want to officially learn the three languages but I don't don't know where to start.

Are there better Apps to commit to instead of Duolingo? Any Websites or Sources I could use to learn the languages? How can I offically start learning?

I wanted to learn a language from the Polynesian language family and I was wondering which one is the easiest in terms of being able to find learning materials and native speakers to practice with.

Hi, everyone! I got a Super Duolingo family plan together with my friend and we have 4 spots available. He already give me much more, so I can give a spot for $16 USD/ €15 euro for the entire year. I accept many payment methods including Revolut/ PayPal/ wise/ Apple Pay or bank transfer whichever is easier for you; also I am open to new payment methods.

Account based in Belgium, but you can join from anywhere, because the link works internationally, no matter where you join from.

Firstly, I will send you the invitation link and you can pay after accepting and joining the family. I will politely and respectfully ask any ill-intentioned people to not message me or reply to this post, because I won’t respond to you.

The best way to contact me is through the reddit chat/ messages or reply to this post. Sometimes I don’t get all the reddit messages, so if you see I don’t respond try to send me an inbox message. I will give you all the details in chat/ private messages.

Happy learning!

I’ve been thinking about this for a long while. For example, I read 希望 as xīwàng and not きぼう. I’ll read numbers in Mandarin before Japanese. 風 is fēng but 月 is つき. I can’t really think of any reason as to why my brain automatically reads certain characters in certain languages besides MAYBE that I’d learn one first but I learned かぜ before fēng and I’d see 风 way more than the traditional character when I see Chinese online. But for some reason, my brain automatically just thinks in certain languages. It’ll (most of the time) go to the correct language when the characters are in sentences so this is mostly just a stand alone character occurrence. I know a few other people have experienced this so I was wondering if there’s any psychological reasoning behind this 🤔

Im a young aspiring polyglot and have quite an important question; WHAT DOES ONE EVEN DO IF THERES ONLY ONE SOURCE???

For context: im trying to learn lele (papua new guinea) and the only source i could find is someones phd work from 2013. pls help are there methods or tips, anything really i could do? im also not able to travel there.

if you have any way of helping please say it!!

I am currently dealing with a situation to where I have had some difficulty in learning and acquiring new languages and I am in need of some help. Currently I am learning Spanish and I have read countless book after book but can't seem to get all the way through it and I do not feel that they are helpful as much as they should be. In regards to what I do know , I understand the alphabet pretty well and I can count to 100 alongside many words to where I can piece together what other people are saying but in the sense to where I can communicate back, I end up becoming confused and saying the wrong words or if I don't do that and I only can say a few words but not many to where i can fully communicate. Is there any advice from a polyglot perspective of what vocabulary to start with or what would be best for me to try in order to be able to retain the knowledge more without having to make of the mistake of wasting my time with countless resources that are not as reliable as they should be?

Any help you give to me is greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance.

I don't really know how to explain it but if you speak the person NL and TL you'll see that they speak their TL in their NL. For example someone with French as their NL and English as TL, you'll notice they speak English in French like translate French literally into English.

If anyone's interested in learning Zulu, we have started a community r/knowzulunow :)

I've got some money saved up and desperately need a break from my job.

I like the idea of taking a "language learning sabbatical" where I'd do something like spend x months in Spain learning Spanish, y months in France learning French, and z months in Germany learning German (maybe subbing Portuguese in for one of the romance languages).

I'm trying to understand how good an idea this will be. Is there going to be an issue learning so many languages in short order?

Am I going to realistically retain everything I learn? I'm not entirely certain I'm going to end up spending a ton of time in all 3 countries, but you never know.

I accidentally told the waiter, "Merci." Does anyone else have this problem with keeping up with multiple languages?

Hi! I just started getting interested in the whole speaking different languages thing, and due to my upbringing I can speak fluently in 3 languages (English, Spanish and Catalan). Recently I have really got interested in trying to learn a fourth. In high school I took Latin so I have a very general understanding of things like French, Portuguese or Italian, where even though I can't speak them, I can piece sort of together what is being said.

My question is do you think that as someone who has never really "learned" a language in their adult life, I should opt for something easier like those previously mentioned or go for something completely balls to the wall like Thai or Japanese or something?

Thanks in advance guys

So, I am a girl in my twenties, I love learning new languages (I speak 4 so far) my native language is not English, but I started learning English since I was 9 with Nickelodeon and Disney shows, and fell straight in love with it! Ever since, I started consuming content in English non-stop, I literally rarely ever watch or read anything in my native language. Then I majored in English linguistics in college, and developed a habit of reading, and as you can guess, most of the books I read are also in English, and I read A LOT, both fiction and non fiction, I’d devour any book you throw my way in a couple days. Through the years, I started to notice that the voice inside my brain, AKA my thinking voice (I am not crazy lol) has shifted to English ! I rarely ever think in my mother tongue, although I haven’t migrated to an English speaking country. I am kind of an INTJ ambivert, and a very curious avid learner, I spend most of my time learning stuff, either through books, podcasts, documentaries, or YouTube videos.

Now the problem is, when I come to discuss certain intellectual topics (not everyday jargon cuz ofc I use that all the time with my family and friends) with people around me who don’t understand English, I find myself struggling to translate my thoughts from English to my mother tongue (not the opposite bare with me 😅), and end up giving up on the conversation as a whole. I know it seems illogical, but I swear it’s been haunting me, I am 10x more fluent and smart in English than I am in my mother tongue because I don’t have the vocabulary to translate the ideas in my head that I’d learnt before in English. I’ve read a bit about this but the only info I found was in regards to people being more smart in a language than another because of the diversified vocabulary (usually language learners struggle to translate from their native language to their second language but what’s happening to me is the opposite), but it was scarce info and lacked detailed description and solutions for the subject to be able to communicate all their ideas learnt in another lge in their MOTHER TONGUE !!

Has anyone experienced this or has an idea about this phenomenon? I’d love tips about how I can ease the communication of the ideas in English in my head to other people through my mother tongue !

Hi all,

I’m learning Spanish and lost my motivation for about 6 months. I’m around an A2, and would love to hear what resources helped you to get myself back on track. Any recs?

I run a Discord server for all languages, but the most dominant has been Louisiana Creole. I got a group together to learn the language via the server & ended up adding channels for other French Creoles & Louisiana French. We also have space for English Creoles, Spanish Creoles, Portuguese Creoles, German Creoles, and Dutch Creoles. Recently added a channel for Gallo-Romance languages!

French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Japanese, and Korean chats are slowly growing. Russian, Hindi, Malayalam, Romani, Greek, Náhuatl, Zulu, German Sign Language, Arabic, and Hebraic Languages risk being archived due to inactivity, if we don't get more interest soon. I'm tempted to learn a bit of Mi'kmaq or Yoruba myself and would love to see more people interested in Indigenous American, African, Ebonic, or Sign languages!

We do one VC event for Louisiana Creole, another for all French Creoles, and another for French. I've also done German & might restart soon. I have a chronic illness, so I welcome people with energy willing to lead events/activities in other languages!

We don't censor profanity, politics or history. Lot of discussion about colonization, orthographies, revitalization of endangered, minoritized languages, the nuances of complex terminology, history, and geopolitical situations..

Everyone is required to get on VC to verify.

https://discord.gg/Ts2c6jfnvY

Hello once again everyone, I have decided to start to learn Russian as my fourth language. However, I encountered this question. Should I only focus on learning Russian or is it ok to practice the other languages I know like German while I learn Russian? Also, how do you practice your speaking in any language. What I do is I often speak with myself but that isn’t very helpful as I cannot correct any mistake I make. Well, thank you all for your responses and I wish you a nice day.

Hello, I have a weird question but speaking French, Arabic, and some other dialects each having its gender for words is a bit weird so far I've managed since I've spoken them for over 10 years, but own the issues started appearing when I learned English a few years back (does this word have double letters? is there a silent H, is it C or K, etc...) and I'm currently learning German.

The thing is that I need to learn German and idk but keeping track of genders is a bit weird and I don't have the luxury of speaking it for 10 years or being around natives since a word already has 4 different languages in my mind....

So how do you guys keep tracking the genders of new languages?

Hello everyone I hope you guys could help me decide. I currently speak three languages Spanish (native speaker), English, and German. I want to learn Russian, Italian, and others in the future; however, I don’t know which one should I learn first. Russian I have kind of a General idea of the alphabet and some words. Italian is easy for me to relate to Spanish, but I have little knowledge about it. What do you think? Any recommendations, tips, suggestions for any of these languages?