POLYGLOT - TESL-EJ
P O LYG L O T
HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
KAT? LOMB
P O LYG LOT
How I Learn Languages
KAT? LOMB
TRANSLATED FROM THE HUNGARIAN BY ?D?M SZEGI
KORNELIA DEKORNE EDITED BY SCOTT ALKIRE
TESL-EJ Berkeley Kyoto
Thank you to Elizabeth Collison Elena Smolinsk?
Sylvia Rucker Professor Thom Huebner for their help with this project.
The review comments of Dr. Larissa Chiriaeva, Maria ?omsa, MA, and Dr. Stefan Frazier were invaluable in the preparation of the manuscript.
--Scott Alkire
Translated by ?d?m Szegi The first two Forewords, Introduction, and Chapter 20 were translated by Kornelia DeKorne.
Publisher's Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lomb, Kat? , 1909?2003.
Polyglot : how I learn languages / Kat? Lomb. -- 1st English ed. p. cm.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008907032 ISBN 978-1-60643-706-3
Copyright ? 2008 by Scott Alkire. All rights reserved.
1. Language learning. I. Title
Cover: The Tower of Babel Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)
TESL-EJ Berkeley Kyoto
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
Preface
vii
Foreword to the First Edition
xvii
Foreword to the Second Edition
xix
Foreword to the Fourth Edition
xxi
Introduction
23
What Is Language?
35
Why Do We and Why Should We Study Languages? 37
The Type of Language to Study
39
"Easy" and "Difficult" Languages
41
How to Study Languages
49
Who This Book Is and Isn't For
51
Let's Read!
67
Why and What We Should Read
73
How We Should Read
85
Reading and Pronunciation
89
What Sort of Languages Do People Study?
97
Language and Vocabulary
103
Vocabulary and Context
107
How to Learn Words
113
Age and Language Learning
121
Dictionaries: Crutches or Helpful Tools?
127
Textbooks
131
How We Converse in a Foreign Language
133
How We Should Converse in a Foreign Language 139
How I Learn Languages
147
Grading Our Linguistic Mastery
165
The Linguistic Gift
173
Language Careers
183
The Interpreting Career
187
Reminiscences from My Travels
199
What's Around the Linguistic Corner?
209
Epilogue
215
Preface
IF multilingualism is indeed one of the "great achievements of the human mind," as Vildomec (1963, p. 240) claims, it is regrettable that few linguists have studied polyglots and what it is they know about language learning.1 For their part, polyglots have not provided us with much information either; in the 20th century, texts by polyglots on language learning, in particular texts that relate how they actually learned their languages, are rare.
One text that relates personal language-learning experience is Dr. Kat? Lomb's Polyglot: How I Learn Languages (2008; Hungarian: ?gy tanulok nyelveket [1995, 4th ed.]). A collection of anecdotes and reflections on language and language learning, it frequently recalls the pragmatism of similar texts by polyglot linguists such as Bloomfield (Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages, 1942), Pei (How to Learn Languages and What Languages to Learn, 1973), and Pimsleur (How to Learn a Foreign Language, 1980). The text is further distinguished by the fact that it is the document of a learner who acquired most of her languages as an adult. But the most remarkable aspect of Polyglot: How I Learn Languages may be its rich, wide-ranging meditations on ideas about and related to language learning, in writing ranging from the warmly personal to the high-culture style of a Central European polymath.
1. Linguistic definitions of multilingualism/polyglot vary. Nation, in a study of "good" language learners, defines a multilingual person as being fluent in four or more languages (1983, p. 1).
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"The most multilingual woman"
Dr. Kat? Lomb (1909?2003) has been called "possibly the most accomplished polyglot in the world" (Krashen, 1997, p. 15) and "the most multilingual woman" (Parkvall, 2006, p. 119). Unlike most polyglots, Lomb came to language learning relatively late. Indifferent to foreign languages in secondary school and university (her PhD was in chemistry), she began to acquire English on her own in 1933 to find work as a teacher. She began learning Russian in 1941, and by the end of World War II was interpreting and translating for the Budapest City Hall. She continued to learn languages, and at her peak was interpreting and/or translating 16 for state and business concerns. In the 1950s she became one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, and by the 1960s her reputation was such that, according to an interview in Hetek newspaper (14 November 1998), she and her colleagues in the Hungarian interpreting delegation were known as "the Lomb team" (p. 16).
Her accomplishments did not alter her essential modesty: "It is not possible [to know 16 languages]--at least not at the same level of ability," she wrote in the foreword to the first edition of ?gy tanulok nyelveket (1970). "I only have one mother tongue: Hungarian. Russian, English, French, and German live inside me simultaneously with Hungarian. I can switch between any of these languages with great ease, from one word to the next.
"Translating texts in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Polish generally requires me to spend about half a day brushing up on my language skills and perusing the material to be translated.
"The other six languages [Bulgarian, Danish, Latin, Romanian, Czech, Ukrainian] I know only through translating literature and technical material."
Interest in Lomb's book remained steady in Hungary for several years; subsequent editions were published in 1972, 1990, and 1995. In addition, translations were published
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