[ExI] Languages (Was: Gifted Children)

[Stefano Vaj]

On 24 November 2012 10:24, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> Learning by immersion is apparently the best way to really learn a
> language. This is also likely why educated Europeans are so multilingual:
> they move around in environments where people actually speak several
> languages.
>

At least in southern Europe, polyglottism used to be a trademark of
academia and of cultivated gentry/bourgeosie.

My grandmother took for granted that an educated young lady should have at
least "some" command of Latin, French, English, perhaps German or Ancient
Greek or Spanish, piano, painting, tennis, ski, protocol, bridge, interior
design, etc. If her husband was not, such brutish habits could only be
justified by the odious demands of trade and of his possible lower birth.
Study of languages was however emphatically NOT of the immersive kind,
especially for dead languages.

Then, some of that spread across broader social environments. One wonders
if the pendulum is not swinging back, with the notable exception of English
omnipresence.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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