Re: language maximum number?

From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sun Dec 22 2002 - 18:56:17 MST


Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>
>>>Does anyone know about the maximum number of languages that can be learnt?
>>
>>I seem to remember that the record is on the order of 20 or 30 or
>>so. Some guy at a UN translation office. The main problem being
>>to get enough practice to stay fluent in them.
>
> That might feasible. The figure I recall seeing was with respect to
> a prodigy in the late 1800's that had mastered all of the major European
> languages and several Asian languages as well.

However this still begs the question of why it is done.
Why learn multiple languages? We have demonstrated that
computers can both recognize and generate speech. Computers
have arbitrarily much memory, they do not forget, they can
be "trained" in seconds a task which takes a human genius
years to master. Using a biobrain to master a language
may have some benefits, but in general it seems like a
misuse of the technology.

I can forsee where every human language will soon have
a form or subset with a standardized structure and grammar,
so that a carbon unit can understand as well as a computer.
I am told that as many as a third of all human languages
will disappear in the next 50 years. Clearly, all
languages in order to have a chance of surviving will
need a standardized form or subset which can be understood
by a computer.

> As I type this, I decided to get off my lazy butt (similar to Spike's
> presumably) and see if I could look it up...

No way! My butt is far lazier.

But my brain is used to do only that which brains do
so very well. I find it so very bizarre that universities
still require languages, when we are at the point where
machine translation is upon us. Next they will be
requiring arithmetic. spike



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