Quote: (03-19-2013 04:13 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:
I remember reading Nietszche talking about how polyglottism is degenerate. His argument was that if you are good at many languages, you will never learn to be excellent at one of them.
He further mentioned that cultures that generate the most 'classics' are those that refused to learn other languages, eg. the ancient Greeks, because they spend time refining their language to literary perfection instead of learning other languages.
Not to say I'm personally against learning other languages, but it's worth a thought.
Learning languages in this sense is not really practical in my opinion. Although the kid in the video seems to have a great command of them.
If you devote time to one foreign language. Then in turn learning another becomes a simpler task. It actually helps you to master another.
The Greek language and culture was dominant in the Mediterranean, and Greek was used as a lingua franca in trade. Perhaps a similar comparison could be made with English today. But then the Greeks didn't live in the age of globalisation, where the world is at your fingertips.
Seems to be a rationalisation not to learn languages from Nietszche.