Polyglot Writing
December 30th, 2009Prof. Argüelles critizes the term “polyglot” for its sound and often misleading implications. While I personally like the pronunciation (but I have been a fan of harsh, guttural languages ever since, with a special fondness for /k/), I never really got the rest of his criticism until today. I mean, polyglottery is really only about learning 4+ languages. You only do what everyone else does to learn your second language, then do the same thing a few more times. At best, you use a few techniques to organize the whole effort, but fundamentally, it’s just more of the same.
But when I looked at my notebook (the paper one, that is), I realized what he really meant. The languages start to merge and the families and cultures start to develop new patterns. It’s the difference between a single switch and millions of them that make up a computer. You begin to understand people not in one particular mindset that your first language (and its culture) imposed on you, but soon develop alternatives (the second or third language) and then begin to see general patterns. You go from the perspective of the Romans, who realized that Greek had something to do with Latin, but they couldn’t quite figure out what exactly, to a more general view that understands the development of the Indo-European language as a whole, to maybe a global perspective.
Anyway, enough “make me one with everything”, I actually just realized I used German (using both the modern and old German Kurrent writing), English, Japanese, Ouwi and some ad-hoc pictograms on the same page in a coherent manner. You know you are a polyglot once you run out of space for all the languages to use.