Second Language

[fromabove]

Shakespeare was a demigod in English language,but this could not prove he had learned English completely.
Many scientist also could invent a lot of things without entirely learn the whole science.

[perplexity]

Originally Posted by fromabove

Shakespeare was a demigod in English language,but this could not prove he had learned English completely.
Many scientist also could invent a lot of things without entirely learn the whole science.

Within the field of study an enormous amount of work has been done on this and with modern electronic information systems the estimation is scientifically achieved by counting the instances of particular words that turn up in the works of Shakespere, as compared with the instances of words found in all the recorded works before him:

List of English words invented by Shakespeare - Wikipedia, the ...

--- RH.

[Aristoddler]

Dr. Seuss invented almost as many words as Shakespeare.

Almost.

[perplexity]

Originally Posted by Aristoddler

Dr. Seuss invented almost as many words...

Is there a complete list of these somewhere?

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is the way that so many of his words and phrases are now the common currency of everyday speech, but with no usual awareness of their particular origin.

-- RH.

[can't sit still]

Language is absolutely fascinating. It is a definition of a culture and a reflection at the same time. Word meanings change from 1 area to another. Inflection and body language change meanings. Personal history changes meanings.

One has to tailor one's vocabulary to one's listeners. You have to keep in mind country of origin, profession, and education. I don't believe that one can learn a language perfectly because one's command of a language will always be relative to one's listeners.

I went to a play about Christ in Mexico. All the actors spoke Andalusian Spanish but Christ spoke Castillian. I'm sure that it was supposed to imply something but, it was lost on me. I speak both.

English is comprised of about 23 languages. It is the black sheep of the Germanic family but Londinium was founded by the Romans. We adopt whatever we need. Then, we butcher as needed. We went from gay and carefree to gay pride,,, from the holocaust at the fire-bombing of Tokyo to the holocaust at Dachau.

We decimated the trees until they were all gone. We all know that moot means unimportant. We learned to deplane irregardless of the problem. We invented CB radio jargon and ebonics. We lrnd to txt r frnds. weevenlearnedtoreadwithoutspaces. We tried Esperanto.

What does the future hold for language? Who knows? Josephson at Cambridge proved quantum tunneling in sapient species. Maybe direct mind contact will be augmented to usefullness. Rupert Sheldrake's work shows great possibilities for learning without language.

They've even taught Gorillas to "sign". They in turn have taught their offspring.

I think the next big step will be to straighten out the alphabet. The oriental pictographs are just too cumbersome. Maybe we'll get a fusion of the Greek and Cryllic. I'm sure that the kids will pick it up in a couple of weeks.
Dan

[mythster]

Originally Posted by amenotatsujin

Is it possible to completely learn two languages without becoming slightly deficient in one or both?

Interesting question and one I've been thinking about for along time. I was exposed to my second language for the first time when I was five. I attended a nursery school run by French nuns ("the sisters of Merci" Just kidding) Anyway when I got to Paris 15 years later it was like "I know that", it was all very familiar and I became quite fluent in a fairly short time. I married a French woman and we raised two girls who are both bi-lingual. We eventually moved to Italy and the girls and I picked up Italian quickly and the three of us became tri-lingual. In fact, the girls had a linguistic system of their own, they played in Italian, studied in French and used that language for arguments and used English for everything else. The older girl has a slight British accent but it's mostly an affectation.
I still use all three languages frequently and since I am a Chef I think about food and cooking in French but most of the rest of my thought processes are in English. My younger daughter still thinks in English even though she lives in France and is married to a Frenchman but her sister is French dominant. My younger children from a second wife (also French) speak French but not nearly as well as their older half-siblings and they do not know any italian to speak of (or should I say "speak in"?) I have studied a number of languages including Latin, Spanish, Sanskrit, German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese but I can only make myself understood in English, French, Italian and Spanish (und ein bissen deutsche)
The answer to your question is "Yes, if you learn at least one supplementary language before you are nine or ten"