My philosophy on polyglotism and my own polyglottic goals

[Lucas88]

A polyglot is a person who is well-versed in many languages. Polyglotism (or alternatively polyglottery) is the abstraction of such quality.

I am a language enthusiast and aspiring polyglot. I am in the minority here; I genuinely enjoy language learning and even view it as a reason to stay in other countries rather than as a necessary evil. One of my goals in life is to become proficient in multiple languages. This is not just for the practical purpose of transcultural communication but also as an avenue of intellectual achievement.

There are many people today who call themselves polyglots. You can find them on YouTube where they claim that they are fluent in 6, 8, 10 or some other unbelievably large number of languages and might even give us a little demonstration.

Are these people really polyglots? Are their claims realistic?

I would say that in most cases these people's claims with regard to their own language abilities are greatly exaggerated or full of half-truths. They might have studied 6, 8 or 10 languages and acquired some basic knowledge in them but they are usually by no means fluent in them all. Even the touted polyglot Ziad Fazah who claims to speak 56 languages was soon exposed as a fraud when his language abilities were put to the test on a Chilean TV program.

Many self-styled polyglots use certain strategies and ploys to inflate their own polyglottic status. They often study many languages from a single closely related language family (e.g., Romance languages with high levels of similarity such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc.) and thereby take advantage of linguistic transparency. More often than not they learn their chosen languages to merely a lower intermediate level and then attempt to misrepresent their spoken and written knowledge which they are able to get away with if nobody is willing to test them. I call this kind of practice "cheap polyglotism".

My philosophy on polyglotism is more conservative. I view as a true polyglot somebody who has learned a reasonable number of mostly dissimilar languages to an high level. I therefore value quality over quantity.

As for my own polyglottic goals, I aspire to learn one language from each of the following categories:

Native Language - English

Study plan NA

Language # 2 - A Romance language

I chose Spanish due to my interest in Spain and Latin America and my love for Latinas. Study plan complete.

Language # 3 - A Germanic language

I've dabbled in German but really couldn't get into the language or culture. The structure was simple enough to learn but German just doesn't sound too nice in my opinion and the culture just seems too serious and uptight for my tastes. I don't think I could get into Germanophone culture enough to learn the language to a substantial level and that is despite my admiration for German philosophy.

I also have some interest in Swedish which to me sounds much nicer and more melodious than German. Learning a Scandinavian language with its greater lexical purity might also be interesting from a linguistic standpoint since these have diverged considerably from lexically impure English and preserve many original Germanic words. However, I watched some movies in Swedish (with subtitles) and I found Swedish society to be really dark, gloomy, socially alienating and life-denying. Not to mention the current state of Scandinavian society with its feminism and neo-Marxism on steroids.

I'm not too impressed by Germanic societies and don't consider their spirit congruent with my warm and free-spirited Mediterranean soul. I might have to give this one a miss and study some other language instead.

Language # 4 - A Slavic language

Serbo-Croatian (aka BCSM) is the Slavic language which most appeals to me. Not only does it have a pleasant phonology and interesting grammar but it is also spoken in the most Mediterranean part of the Slavic world. I've briefly studied the basics of this language and find its grammar really intuitive and not too hard to learn. I already have the case system down for regular nouns. Verbs are eerily similar to those of Spanish. I might begin to study this language seriously in the near future.

Other Slavic languages such as Russian and Polish don't appeal to me at all. They sound a bit unpleasant, Russian with its vowel reduction and schizophrenic stress accent and Polish with its ugly "sushy-zhushy" sounds.

Language # 5 - A More Exotic and Possibly Non-Indo-European Language

I could revive my knowledge of Japanese which I studied to JLPT level 1 but then fell out with due to my disillusion with Japanese society.

Otherwise I could study another East Asian language or a more obscure European language like Hungarian but I'll probably be too burned out with language learning by then.


Btw, that's another aspect of polyglotism which many self-styled polyglots don't tell you about: burnout and maintenance. It's more difficult to maintain foreign languages than what many make out. Language attrition through lack of use is a real thing. It's better to learn a few languages that you can realistically maintain than a load of them kept in poor condition.

These are my thoughts on polyglotism and my own language learning goals. Most people here probably won't be interested but I just wanted to write down my thoughts anyway.

[Spencer]

Nice post and i add one thing

kids not capability for learn most collage subject but age 2-12 super master for language and adult cant compete
example if you move japan when adult and try hard learn japan language 15 years you will see that when you finish you still much worse and not natural against the 15 year old japan boy or girl for you still not true natural but he or she is

my isreal friend born in russia grew up in germany and for teens in some spanish areas has native hebrew russia german depth in spanish and even english can do very well cus i only talk to him in english

ladislav born ukraine so bingo russia and ukraine lingo thats related but went early to usa then as teen in porto rico so has near native for those russia ukraine spanish english by age 20 then 5 years imersion japan get very strong japan language then get tortured 3 year in thailand and can appear speak fluent thailish and for read i dont know if he read thailish or read japan but others fine and he live decades in phlipines and fluent to taglog and strong in visaya


so for these anedotes point is - kids easy to learn 3-5 language growing up can be native levels if teachers natives and see what is real polyglot
most adults canot ever be natural in language not related to his native tongue and just see in some africa country or asia country so many complete fluent in 3 language or more


adjult langage lerner copycat and after deep study many years still sound conterfeit for ask yohan and see he in japan 40 year but we bet his japan language still wit strong accent and mistakes and reading or writing worst than his english which he only so so cus his native german from Austria

kids can acheve native like level but adults usualy sound like forners no matter how long they study and how many lingist phd the obtain


another idea - be bilingual growing up then marry bilingual girl wit 2 dif language than you and then use all 4 languages for talk to your kids

[WilliamSmith]

I'm also a frustrated (but enthusiastic) aspiring polyglot, but admit up front I am definitely in the group that has enthusiastic aspirations and has made a lot of progress, yet isn't really functionally fluent yet because of spreading myself too thin.

I've actually got a pile of articles I've found from people who are in the small minority camp of thinking being a polyglot is good enough for your brain that learning multiple languages at once is actually better than one at a time, and I'll dig those up and post what they had to say about it later.

My expat research phase for the past few years has turned me temporarily into even more of a polyglot "jack of all trades and master of none" because my enthusiasm for all different countries makes me always want to start learning their language each time I learn about a new one.
For dabbling that nonetheless has some practical value, I have the "Making Out In ..." phrase books for most of the SE Asian countries, as well as Spanish.

Most people definitely tell you should focus on one language first though, and obviously intensive focus and immersion gets results faster.

I also made a priority list for myself too:


My plan right now is:

Language #1 for business and personal enthusiasm:
Japanese up to a point of functional fluency (e.g. I will stick with it at least until I can read 90%+ of any Japanese newspaper, understanding 90% of a non-specialized TV program, basic conversational fluency, that kind of thing), and hopefully have the opportunity onward to continue to where I am fully fluent and can even read Japanese literature.
I'm enough of a Japanophile for both ancient and quasi-modern (e.g. up to the 80s-early90s) Japanese culture and history that I could happily study it for life even if I never set foot in Japan, but Japanese arguably also has value as a potential business language:
China is likely to enjoy a sensational rise in the coming century if they can survive ZOG's attempt to undercut or sabotage them (or other wild cards, like if they got new leadership crazy enough to trainwreck their own course of development, but that's a whole other subject).
However, at the moment Chinese people and the Chinese government both seem to put more priority on having Chinese master English, in addition to their native fluency in their own Chinese languages. Most Japanese study English in school for years and naturally learn something from that, but are sort of known for still not necessarily reaching full fluency anyway (unless they put a lot more of their own personal effort into that), so demand for translators fully fluent in Japanese is arguably stronger.

Language #X is my "wild card" slot: I can fill it with anything based on arising opportunities without feeling like I'm being a quitter who doesn't follow through with his own goals.
If I found a sudden opportunity, for example, in Vietnam, Vietnamese could suddenly come first as my focus. Same would go for suddenly learning French and ending up anywhere from the Ivory Coast to Haiti to Dominica if a special opportunity arose.

Language #2 slot is one of my personal enthusiasms: Cantonese, which actually arguably has the most in common with "classical" Middle Chinese. The thing with Cantonese is that I don't really have any practical area to use it in "the real world," so it's more like a dream of mine to learn it and classical Chinese so I can read their old literature and poetry and look for interesting "forgotten lore," but there's no expat destination I know of where it's spoken, and Chinese leaders wisely have closed China off to avoid foreign subversives (so I can't go to Cantonese parts of China except possibly as a visitor, even if I'm not one of the anti-China subversives, LOL), and so on.

The good news is there is overlap with Japanese thanks to Kanji: The kanji and hon zi (traditional Chinese characters also used in written Cantonese) almost all have the same meanings even though the two languages have different pronunciation and grammar.
漢字 "kanji" = Chinese characters, by the way, = 漢[hon3] 字[ji6] romanized in Cantonese Jyutping, which sounds more like "hon dzee" in Cantonese, but you can hear the onyomi Chinese pronunciation "kan ji" sounding closer to Cantonese (and hence Middle Chinese) than the more modern Mandarin.
On off-chance anyone wants to hear it, by the way, Bing has a good translator into Cantonese (traditional characters) and a solid Cantonese voice synth if you press the speak button :
https://www.bing.com/translator/
More good news is that Chinese (including Cantonese) grammar is very intuitive and easy, in my opinion. Once you learn their grammar structures and words, it tends to be really easy to pick up what they're saying. (Speaking fluently is another story, since you need to at least get a grip on tones enough not to botch every sentence, and not to be self-conscious.)

Language #3 slot for me would have to be Spanish: I like it a lot because of the classiness and masculinity (not to mention the built-in emphasis on sexual dimorphism in the language).
I also like Latinas, like we've discussed quite a bit, but the ones I ended up with happened to have spoken English (some naturalized American-born Latinas who don't speak Spanish at all, others babes from Latin America or Dominican Republic who do speak it but spoke fully fluent English).
However, the Dominican Republic keeps climbing back up to the top of my list of good expat possibilities for a lot of reasons (not just wanting to chase the voluptuous mulatta women LOL), and they speak Spanish there, as well as in some of the other potentially promising Latin American countries around the Caribbean Sea.

I'm not sure if I'd learn Spanish if I didn't move to a Spanish speaking country, not because I don't like it, but just because Japanese and Cantonese (with or without Classical Chinese added) are so rich that you could devote a lifetime to them and the amazing under appreciated ancient literature and poetry written in those languages.

But another cool thing about Spanish is that a lot of Latinos tend to have similar sensibilities to guys like me: It only took me a day or so to have a small library of Spanish translations of all the original Robert E Howard Conan the Barbarian novels, and I've also got tons of Conan the Barbarian comic books translated into Spanish, LOL, so I have some very erudite source literature to focus on for study and practice if I start prioritizing Spanish.

If I had the luxury of choosing more languages on top of this:

Vietnamese would be next. Vietnamese has ancient familial relations to Cantonese because of shared heritage in the old Nam Yuet kingdoms, before the more Han-centric Chinese empires moved in and started stomping on both the old-time Cantonese and Vietnamese.

[Lucas88]

Nice post and i add one thing

kids not capability for learn most collage subject but age 2-12 super master for language and adult cant compete
example if you move japan when adult and try hard learn japan language 15 years you will see that when you finish you still much worse and not natural against the 15 year old japan boy or girl for you still not true natural but he or she is

my isreal friend born in russia grew up in germany and for teens in some spanish areas has native hebrew russia german depth in spanish and even english can do very well cus i only talk to him in english

ladislav born ukraine so bingo russia and ukraine lingo thats related but went early to usa then as teen in porto rico so has near native for those russia ukraine spanish english by age 20 then 5 years imersion japan get very strong japan language then get tortured 3 year in thailand and can appear speak fluent thailish and for read i dont know if he read thailish or read japan but others fine and he live decades in phlipines and fluent to taglog and strong in visaya

so for these anedotes point is - kids easy to learn 3-5 language growing up can be native levels if teachers natives and see what is real polyglot
most adults canot ever be natural in language not related to his native tongue and just see in some africa country or asia country so many complete fluent in 3 language or more

adjult langage lerner copycat and after deep study many years still sound conterfeit for ask yohan and see he in japan 40 year but we bet his japan language still wit strong accent and mistakes and reading or writing worst than his english which he only so so cus his native german from Austria

kids can acheve native like level but adults usualy sound like forners no matter how long they study and how many lingist phd the obtain

another idea - be bilingual growing up then marry bilingual girl wit 2 dif language than you and then use all 4 languages for talk to your kids

Thanks man!

It is possible to learn a foreign language to a high level and with perfect grammar and good pronunciation even as an adult. The key is long-term immersion. People who speak a foreign language well or to a near-native level tend to be those who have lived in the country for many years and speak the language as often as their native language. It is those people who fully integrate into the host society despite their foreigner status. Indeed this is why I say that the best polyglot approach is to learn fewer languages but to really dedicate oneself to them and seek a high level of linguistic and cultural immersion. For me it is always better to have a few sharp tools than many blunt ones.

Also language acquisition has a lot to do with innate ability. Some people have an uncanny ability to acquire foreign languages even as adults. This is why once in a while you can encounter genuine polyglots who speak an ungodly number of languages to a high level but these are quite rare. Most self-styled polyglots exaggerate their own language abilities, especially on YouTube. But if you are a person with a high level of natural ability it is quite possible to acquire a few more languages in a time period of, let's say, 5-10 years. As long as you don't study too many just for the sake of it you should be able to maintain them through regular use.

That brings us back to the topic of language attrition. If you learn too many languages some of them fall in disuse. You lose vocabulary, grammar and spoken fluency through lack of maintenance. And if you learned a language like Chinese or Japanese you start to forget how to read some of the characters. Even Ladislav who's an accomplished polyglot has spoken about this problem. He mentioned that his ability in some languages decreased through lack of use. I think that Ladislav is one of the honest polyglots. That's why he'll talk frankly about his language abilities. Others however make out that they are fluent in many languages when in reality they have no more than an intermediate level in many of them or are very rusty at some to say the least.

I too am honest and will never exaggerate my language abilities. While I do have a high level of Spanish (C1 or above) I admit that my Japanese now sucks due to language attrition and that I can't even be bothered to maintain it (in part because I now hate Japanese culture).

Maybe I'll meet a bilingual wife fluent in Spanish and Swahili, one with Latin features and a big African booty!

[flowerthief00]

Yeah polyglot claims abound with scams. Listen to this guy who has studied numerous Asian languages. He makes the point that a foreign language is pretty much the hardest thing you can ever learn. Harder arguably than learning a hard science.

I'm an aspiring polyglot myself, but the only language I can call myself fluent in now is Japanese.
Vietnamese...I made some progress but it yet eludes me. Spanish...an even longer ways to go. Would like to add Italian and Korean some day but that would be at least 5 or 10 years down the line before I even get started. This stuff takes years and years.

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[Lucas88]

My expat research phase for the past few years has turned me temporarily into even more of a polyglot "jack of all trades and master of none" because my enthusiasm for all different countries makes me always want to start learning their language each time I learn about a new one.

I am actually the opposite in that regard. I don't find many cultures attractive enough to want to immerse myself in them in the long term and so I'm usually unsure of what language to learn next for my polyglot quest. I begin to dabble in a language for a while and then decide that I can't get into the culture.

I'm a peculiar case. I'm almost exclusively attracted to Latin and Mediterranean civilization. Most cultures outside of this don't appeal much to me other than the occasional fleeting interest. Spain and Latin America are my one true love. I don't see myself ever living elsewhere and I only see myself with a Latina. No other region captures my heart like they do.

I've tried to learn German but I just don't like Germanic/Northern European culture at all. It feels so alien to my soul with its inherent coldness, its uptight attitudes, its narrow conformity and its soulless hyperrationality which is a far cry from the Dionysian free-spiritedness and unbridled joie d'vivre of Southern Europe. I don't think I could live in that kind of culture long enough to learn the language. It would just be self-imposed torture and result in the depression of my soul and the fragmentation of my psyche. I simply don't like the Germanic soul. It is the exact opposite of what I am on the inside.

I did learn Japanese to a relatively high level and even lived in the country for a year but I soon found that I'm not compatible with East Asian culture either. At first I was mesmerized by the cuisine, the remnants of traditional architecture, the brightly lit streets and the technology but before long the social alienation, the strict conformity, the lack of individual expression, the inhuman workaholic lifestyle and the soulless cities started to weigh upon my soul and suck the life out of me. Japan has a dark and melancholic vibe. I would be sat at the train station and sense the hopeless, fatalistic collective consciousness of the Japanese as they scurried around like ants and just sucked up the miseries of life. I am not an Asian soul either. The Asian mindset which is patently robotic doesn't resonate with me at all. I don't think China or Korea would be any different.

So why don't I just learn another Romance language like Portuguese, Italian or French? I do love Latin cultures, don't I? Well, like I said in my original post, I don't want to learn languages from the same family. I don't want too much similarity. I've dabbled in Brazilian Portuguese and Italian since I like those cultures too but I found them too similar to Spanish and therefore completely boring! From a linguistic standpoint I seek novelty and foreignness, that which is dissimilar. I also aspire to be a true polyglot who learns languages that are completely different, not just similar languages with a high level of transparency in the fashion of cheap polyglotism.

So that leaves me with the Slavic languages. Out of these Serbo-Croatian is one which interests me the most. Its phonology is pure and pleasant enough to seem like a relexicalized Romance language. Its geographic location consists mainly of the coast across from Italy. The culture of its speakers is arguably more Eastern Mediterranean that Slavic. When I hear its people speak they manifest a fiery passion which is similar to that of an Italian or a Latino and which reflects my own way of being. So maybe Serbo-Croatian is a language that could suit me well. Maybe this will be a successful next step in my polyglot quest.

Maybe my interests will diversify in the future and come to include more geographical locations but as of now my sphere of interest is quite Latino- and Mediterraneocentric.

[WilliamSmith]

@Lucas88
Another good reason to be a polyglot is that if you're sailing around, I've read through many dozens or reports of fighting of (or "deterring") pirate attacks, and it's often proved out that displays of aggression [edit: I should have added that I meant "displays of aggression" including weapons, not just waving one's arms around] and even basic rudimentary fluency in the language of your port of call combined with knowing the "four letter words" there have been known to send low-end pirates scurrying and looking for softer targets.
A number of the relevant cases were in Spanish, the language of your own passion.

Of course, I'm only talking about the kinds of pirates who approach in a fishing boat or something such armed with machetes, handguns, maybe an occasional shotgun or assault rifle, but not organized convoys of pirates trained like paramilitaries with automatic weapons (whose jurisdictions would be best avoided, IMO... unless you decide to take your own interest in macho stuff to a level far beyond mine and become a trained mercenary or something).

[WilliamSmith]

I've shuffled my polyglot goals around a bit, but have gone for a new therapeutic program of renouncing WMAF, and yet doubling down on wanting to become genuinely fluent in both Cantonese and "Classical Chinese," but with Vietnam as my favorite country in Asia.... yet Jamaica as my favorite country, as long as I'm actually still man enough to deal with it (which at the moment I am, but hard to say what the future will bring since I'm not getting any younger)...

So right now the list is:
Patwa (and no, I won't make an ass of myself annoying them by trying to speak it myself or acting like an early-40's Chet Hanks, but I just need to learn it to understand the people who speak it... plus it's pretty damned cool... ever seen Marked for Death? )
Vietnamese (my favorite country in Asia right now)
Cantonese (the linguistic "love of my life," but geopolitics has made Hong Kong and Macau and South China tricky)
Japanese (I've always loved it but if I go there I'll both make a mess womanizing + be completely on tilt being paranoid of homosexuals, so it's not my top destination anymore...)
And with the foundations from knowing all the traditional characters, I am ardently looking forward to classical Chinese, I really want to become fluent in it before I die and want to work out some compromise on my restlessness and sexual and alcohol addiction, and not fail to become fully fluent in classical Chinese so I can read their old literature, and (I hope) also translate some of it. Maybe I can even contribute at least something of value as a translator. (I'm going to try hard, but hey, even if I fail at that, at least I'm still the gods' gift to women, LOL).

I still like Spanish a lot, actually, but don't see it lining up with my plans at this point:
I looked a lot into the Dominican Republic (a very cool place worth considering for others, but I decided not to go there because it's got as much crime as a lot of my favorite places, yet too many jews, catholics, whites, latinos, and homosexuals, even though I do think it's a wonderful place overall despite all this flagrantly offensive talk).
Some other parts of Latin America are very cool, but not for me.
Also, there's way more PIA pirates and drug runners in a lot of those countries (Belize, Panama, and obviously far moreso Venezuela, Columbia, Honduras).
Those countries are also doing a horrible job rolling over for globohomo, vs the black nations at this time, so my decision is made............ until if/when I end up too badly injured or old and decrepit to deal with it, and then I run away to drink beer in Asia where the local men aren't as likely to try to kill me in my dotage.

[Lucas88]

I've shuffled my polyglot goals around a bit, but have gone for a new therapeutic program of renouncing WMAF, and yet doubling down on wanting to become genuinely fluent in both Cantonese and "Classical Chinese," but with Vietnam as my favorite country in Asia.... yet Jamaica as my favorite country, as long as I'm actually still man enough to deal with it (which at the moment I am, but hard to say what the future will bring since I'm not getting any younger)...

So right now the list is:
Patwa (and no, I won't make an ass of myself annoying them by trying to speak it myself or acting like an early-40's Chet Hanks, but I just need to learn it to understand the people who speak it... plus it's pretty damned cool... ever seen Marked for Death? )
Vietnamese (my favorite country in Asia right now)
Cantonese (the linguistic "love of my life," but geopolitics has made Hong Kong and Macau and South China tricky)
Japanese (I've always loved it but if I go there I'll both make a mess womanizing + be completely on tilt being paranoid of homosexuals, so it's not my top destination anymore...)
And with the foundations from knowing all the traditional characters, I am ardently looking forward to classical Chinese, I really want to become fluent in it before I die and want to work out some compromise on my restlessness and sexual and alcohol addiction, and not fail to become fully fluent in classical Chinese so I can read their old literature, and (I hope) also translate some of it. Maybe I can even contribute at least something of value as a translator. (I'm going to try hard, but hey, even if I fail at that, at least I'm still the gods' gift to women, LOL).

Spanish is still my foremost passion. The more I watch movies and read novels in the language and speak it with friends, the more I realize that it is the most perfected language in the modern age, an absolute masterpiece. The phonology is purer and more euphonious than most other languages. The grammar is absolutely perfect. By this I mean the semantic precision of inflected forms, logical formation of derivative terms through a rich system of suffixes, economy of use, etc. Well, the truth is that all Romance languages possess these features, but Spanish is in my opinion the one which really takes the prize for best constituted, being somewhat more regular than Italian, French and Portuguese.

Moreover, I feel so fortunate to be able to speak Spanish, knowing that it is spoken in so many beautiful and fascinating countries throughout South America, Central America and the Caribbean as well as in the Hispanic fatherland of Spain, which is in my opinion the most beautiful and vivacious country in Europe.

As for further polyglotism, I will probably go with Russian next since Russian is a major language spoken over vast territories throughout Russia itself, parts of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Russian doesn't seem too hard for me either since I've dabbled with Slavic languages before, already speak an inflected European language, know the Cyrillic script well, and have studied correct Russian phonology with a decent pronunciation course. Since I don't have any concrete plans for travel, I've decided to go with the objectively more important language first. I've found that I can only advance with languages if I feel that my learning will be useful - e.g., when I got fluent extremely quickly in Spanish because I was living in Spain and knew that I wanted a future in a Hispanic country and also when I reached a decent level of Japanese while living in Japan -, otherwise I just get bored and give up. So it would probably be better to go with the more important and accessible languages first.

I've developed some intellectual interest in a few other languages but I don't know if I'll ever learn them due to their lack of immediate importance.

The first one is Lithuanian, the most widely spoken language of the Baltic family (not Slavic) and possibly the most conservative Indo-European language today. I've read through some grammar books and there are obvious similarities with Sanskrit and other ancient Indo-European languages. The language is very melodious and lends itself well to music. It has seven noun cases (more than Russian) but only two genders. However, Lithuanian is spoken by only about 3 million people and Russian is still popular in the country, so unless I decide one day to relocate to Vilnius or Kaunas or elsewhere in that charming little Baltic nation with some of the best-quality women in Europe, I probably won't be studying it anytime soon.



The second one is Uzbek, a the second most widely spoken Turkic language which has its home in Central Asia. I've mentioned before that I don't particularly like Turkic languages, especially Turkish which I consider a disordered and convoluted hideous barbarian horseman language despite really liking the beautiful and architecturally rich country of Turkey which I visited in the early 2000s when I was still just a little kid, but I now believe that Uzbek is the noble exception within an otherwise ugly language family. Uzbek is actually a highly Persianized Turkic language spoken in a region which borders the Persian world, possesses a pleasant musical quality, and has even lost the quintessentially Turkic feature of vowel harmony most likely due to Persian influence. Its grammar is much smoother as well as more logical and more streamlined than that of Turkish. With Uzbek all of the agglutinative suffixes just seem to fit together much better than their Turkish counterparts and feel much easier to use. From the little that I've studied, Uzbek strikes me as having significantly better design than other languages of the same family.

Central Asia is a part of the world that interests me. It has beautiful architecture, a unique fusion of cultural elements from various civilizations, and some pretty unique female phenotypes which for the most part seem Persian with East Asian admixture. I've heard that you can get around with Russian, but if some day I do visit Tashkent or Samarkand and fall in love with the culture, I might end up learning the language. Oh, I forgot to mention: knowing Japanese makes learning a Turkic language like Uzbek considerably easier. Many of the grammatical structures are eerily similar.





I don't like the music in the video below, but that's one fine women with wide hips:



But first I need to get my ass into gear with Russian if I want to become a half-decent polyglot!

[WilliamSmith]

@Lucas88
It's interesting that you are such a passionate polyglot that you choose languages that aren't (as far as I know?) really directly connected to your personal goals, the kind of women you prefer, or where you'd like to live. Seems like you're just passionate about polyglotism for its own sake, an intellectual achievement as you put it.

[Lucas88]

@Lucas88
It's interesting that you are such a passionate polyglot that you choose languages that aren't (as far as I know?) really directly connected to your personal goals, the kind of women you prefer, or where you'd like to live. Seems like you're just passionate about polyglotism for its own sake, an intellectual achievement as you put it.

Language learning has always been a deep interest and hobby of mine. I feel fortunate in this regard because it makes integration into foreign cultures much easier. I regard the foreign language environment as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

I also subscribe to a Renaissance humanist view of man. I believe that a gifted man should aspire to cultivate various talents and gain competence in various disciplines including but not limited to languages, arts, music, philosophy and combat, in other words, to become polymathic.