POLYGLOT - 京都産業大学
[Pages:216]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
Acknowledgments
ank you to Elizabeth Collison Elena Smolinska
Sylvia Rucker Professor om Huebner
for their help with this project.
e 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 e first two Forewords, Introduction, and Chapter 20 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: [forthcoming] ISBN 978-1-60643-706-3
1. Language learning. I. Title
Copyright ? 2008 by Scott Alkire. All rights reserved.
Cover: e Tower of Babel Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)
TESL-EJ Berkeley Kyoto
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
e Type of Language to Study
39
"Easy" and "Difficult" Languages
41
How to Study Languages
49
Who is 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
e Linguistic Gift
173
Language Careers
183
e 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) asserts, it is regrettable that few linguists have studied polyglots1 and what it is they know about language learning. 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 languages and language learning, it belongs to a select group 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), Pimsleur (How to Learn a Foreign Language, 1980), and Stevick (Success with Foreign Languages, 1989). e text is further distinguished by the fact that it is the document of a learner who acquired most of her languages (16 in all) as an adult. But the most remarkable aspect of Polyglot: How I Learn Languages may be that few other books relate as authentically the experience of learning and using a foreign language in the real world.
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).
vii
viii / POLYGLOT: HOW I LE A R N L A NGUAGES
" e 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 for economic reasons: to find work as a teacher. She learned Russian in 1941, and by 1945 was interpreting and translating for the Budapest City Hall. She continued to learn languages and at her peak was interpreting and/ or translating 16 different languages for state and business concerns. In the 1950s she became one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, and her international reputation became 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).
Lomb wrote ?gy tanulok nyelveket in 1970. Subsequent editions were published in 1972, 1990, and 1995, and translations were published in Japan, Latvia, and Russia. As her fame grew, Lomb wrote additional books on languages, interpreting, and polyglots, and continued learning languages into her eighties. In 1995 she was interviewed by Stephen Krashen, who brought her achievements to the attention of the West.
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. "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,
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