daniel the linguist

[Thoth]

I supposed Daniel's character is only as far-fetched as Sam's.-tera'ngan

How is Sam's character far-fetched?

I reckon if you were only studying let's say 3 languages at time, it would take you about 5 years to get close to fluent. so, for Daniel we'll say about one language for every year...OMG It would take him about 23 years to get all those languages! And that's after school when he'd have to learn all the other subjects.

[tera'ngan]

Hhhmmm . . . .

Methinks I hit a nerve . . . .

I stand by my original assertion that there is a BIG difference between "speaking" and "being familiar" with a language. Ten years ago, I "spoke" Russian. Unfortunately, I would now only consider myself to be "familiar" with it. Alas, same with German. However, I am also "familiar" with Czech, Slovak, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Ukranian, BeloRussian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish. This means that I am comfortable navigating the syntax, morphology, and alphabets of these languages enough that I could easily translate them in their written state given a good enough dictionary, in a reasonable amount of time. I have also dabbled in French, Spanish, Old Church Slavonic, Medieval English, Choctaw, and Lakotah. In those cases, I would need a really good dictionary and a little more time , but still doable. I would NEVER claim to "speak" these languages, because in my mind this implies a certain degree of fluency. I suppose that it all boils down to me being nitpicky about semantics.

So, I'm just saying, In My Humble Opinion, that an archaeologist who "speaks" 23 languages seems a bit far-fetched to me. I will ALSO say, however, that his characters is the one that drew me to the show initially, because archaeology is another armchair hobby of mine. How often does a girl get linguist, archaeologist and science fiction in one package?

-tera'ngan

[Sue_Jackson]

I think Unas would make 24. I'm not sure, but I think Ancient may be 25. But, that may be already counted since that episode was after The Fifth Race.

[epiphany]

Daniel can read it Ancient and understand and most likely speak it if he needs to. He hasn't needed to.

terangan, I'm not sure why it seems so far fetched. The reason Daniel is there is because he's special, he's got a gift. So yes it may be incredibly rare the someone can know 23 languages fluently but that is what makes him special. It's not impossible, it's very rare and Daniel is one of those rare few. It's why he was brought into the program. It's why he could see things others couldn't. They weren't stupid, they were good at what they did but Daniel was just heads and shoulders above them, in a totally different league.

Unfortunately it's harder to the writers to portray something like that than throwing in the odd scientific sounding technobabble for Sam but Daniel's a gifted linguist. He's supposed to be one of the best there is.

[tera'ngan]

Alright, epiphany, if it will help you sleep better at night, I will rescind my use of the term "far-fetched" in regards to the Daniel character being able to "speak" 23 languages. I will do this based on the following website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingual

Although Ace's website was interesting (so, Ace, do you know Spidra?), I think we can all agree that Mr. Fazah is an extreme exception to the rule. And I suppose it is not so unbelievable that Dr. Daniel Jackson is one of only about 10 people in recorded history over the last 3,000 or so years who can speak more than 20 languages.

What are the chances, do you think, that he speaks Klingon?

-tera'ngan

[epiphany]

Hey if Charles Berlitz could do it why not Daniel Jackson. Berlitz wrote all those books on Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis(in fact I have a couple that I bought when I was kid when the "bookmobile" came through, so I have a long history with weird phenomena and "fringe theories" ). Anyway he supposedly could speak around 25 languages. He just died this year, age 90. He knew 4 languages by the time he was 3 years old.

It would be funny if Daniel spoke Klingon. Of course it would be even funnier(or once upon it would have been before Stargate started homaging other shows left and right all the time) if they came across a world where Klingon came in handy. I can just see Daniel sitting there "Wait, I know this....It...can't be, can it?" "What Daniel? What is it?" "I think they're...I think the're speaking a form of...Klingon?!?!"

I'd prefer to think of Daniel knowing Elvish or something like that from Tolkein, seeing as Tolkein was a linguist himself, creating his own languages. That would be cool. He wouldn't even need the subtitles during the movie.

Imagine the scene:

The team sits down to watch the DVD's(they've been too busy fighting bad guys to see the films in the theatres) and Daniel and Sam are bringing in the snacks. Sam says "Oh hurry I want to see what they're saying" and Daniel says "Oh they're saying....[translates as they go along]" She looks at him suspiciously and vaguely annoyed...."How do you know that? I thought you said you hadn't seen this before?"

Daniel looks sheepish and says "Um...I read the books and uh...well, I learned Elvish...I was only ten! I thought it was cool the way he'd invented his own languages". To which Sam replies "God, you really ARE a geek!"

[Madeleine]

I don't get why anyone thinks that 23 languages is so implausible. Is it because most people only know two or three? Most people can't compose sonatas, walk the tightrope or paint realistic looking portraits either, but there's plenty of evidence that each is not just possible but frequently done

A gifted enough linguist can pick up a language from scratch in under a month. Daniel would have had plenty of time to learn two dozen and still study archaeology.

[Ali888]

Someone did ask Michael Shanks this question at a convention within the last year

That was me!. At FCC in Paris last Autumn.

Ali P

[Jprime]

Another thing: Daniels pronounciation of Abydos. When he speaks to Jack or another SG-1 member he quickly says "Ab-a-dos" (in much the same way most people substitute "GOOLD" for "Go-a-oold"). However close to the episode were he descended, he was spotted pronouncing it the long way (ab-ie-dos).

[Jprime]

Out of curiosity, is there anybody here who speaks multiple languages? I myself speak English, French, Klingon, Vulcan (historical and modern), and I'm learning Esperanto. I can read and write loads of comp languages (VB, basic, COBAL, FORTRAN, LISP, PASCAL, ASSEMBLER, SCI, ect.) but they dont really count. This isnt technically a language, but I'm also fluent in Geek-ese (grok it?)

[epiphany]

Actually linguistics also is concerned with "technical languages". This particular area of study is called computational linguistics and it works on design and analysis of natural language processing systems.

[Bast]

He is like Hoshi on enterprise they know Giberish!

[tera'ngan]

Someone did ask Michael Shanks this question at a convention within the last year

That was me!. At FCC in Paris last Autumn.

Ali P

And his answer was . . . ?

-tera'ngan

[Nolamom]

As someone who has absolutely NO facility for languages...I admire anyone who is bilingual or more!
Nmom

[shinyredpants]

Out of curiosity, is there anybody here who speaks multiple languages? I myself speak English, French, Klingon, Vulcan (historical and modern), and I'm learning Esperanto. I can read and write loads of comp languages (VB, basic, COBAL, FORTRAN, LISP, PASCAL, ASSEMBLER, SCI, ect.) but they dont really count. This isnt technically a language, but I'm also fluent in Geek-ese (grok it?)

I speak English and Japanese...though i know a little spanish, french, thai, korean, chinese *very little chinese*