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Benny Lewis’ journey with Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Zundung Newbie Belize Joined 4267 days ago 10 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* | Message 57 of 79 24 March 2013 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@tarvos
I'm sorry but I don't see any negative side of languages. I prefer calling it a challenge. The only negativity comes from the learner. "I don't understand this!!! ARRRGGH. When to use imperfect and when preterite? Bloody Spanish. Languages are stupid." Sure you can get stressed out when you can't get a certain concept into your head, but all you need is a different source. Some books or people just explain stuff in a manner that'll make your head spin. @Serpent Hmm. I'm not sure. Cantonese may have more tones which leads to less homonyms. And the the Cantonese consonants are easier to produce too. An interesting fact is that many speakers of tonal languages don't even know their languages are tonal. Yet they speak it. Usually they learn it at school that is if they go there. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 58 of 79 25 March 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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Arabic ≠ Chinese
I think Benny's Challenges are interesting, and worth discussing and analyzing. And even arguing over ... I'm not saying he's always right, and I love a good debate. But it's frustrating to watch every thread veer off into silly bickering. Seriously --- this is a thread about Arabic. Why the arguments over Chinese homonyms? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6068 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 59 of 79 25 March 2013 at 2:23am | IP Logged | |||||
I guess some people here wanted to give a proper context, that's all 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4714 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 60 of 79 25 March 2013 at 2:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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After watching Benny's mission and 2 seasons of Homeland, I became very interested in studying Arabic someday. I still can't imagine how I'd get used to the lacking vowels though.
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| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4470 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 61 of 79 25 March 2013 at 3:02am | IP Logged | |||||
How judgmental! I fear I repeat myself but I find it really sad that people can not accept that not everyone have the same goal in life. No one is asking you to do what he does and he is not judging your goals ans lifestyle so why don't you respect his choices?
It would be the same if he claimed that mandarin is easy, which he does not do. He also makes it very clear that mastering Chinese (or any language for that matter) will take a long time - much like beating Anand in chess. His claim is that learning some mandarin to a useful conversational level is within reach with hard work - much like you could start playing chess and having fun after a 30 minute lesson - and that people should not let themselves be deterred from that language by the discouraging and scary assertion that people make about how tremendously difficult this language is. As for the rest of your message I quoted, I do not know who Laoshu is but what is wrong with "Quantity over quality. The opposite of Richard, Luca or Amir."? Are those people gurus that every one on the planet is supposed to follow? Or can each person decide of their own priorities depending on their own lifestyle, needs and desires? Edited by Tsopivo on 25 March 2013 at 3:03am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6068 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 62 of 79 25 March 2013 at 3:19am | IP Logged | |||||
are you sure? ("The fallacy of saying European languages are always easier")
http://www.youtube.com/user/laoshu505000 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4470 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 63 of 79 25 March 2013 at 3:59am | IP Logged | |||||
are you sure? ("The fallacy of saying European languages are always easier") Yes, I am positive. There’s something I want to be clear from the start: learning any language (except something like Esperanto) is hard work. It takes serious dedication, sacrifices, countless hours of hard work, feeling embarrassed, getting out of your comfort zone, studying dull grammar and seemingly endless amounts of vocab and much more. Sadly there is no magic pill to get around this. I’ve found that with an efficient learning strategy it can certainly be a manageable task, even for us mere mortals who did poorly in languages in school, but (unless you have some natural knack for it) it’s definitely hard work, no matter what language you learn. So the point of this post isn’t to tell you that learning Chinese is a walk in the park – hell, anyone who has read the blog over the last few months has seen that it’s been a draining experience for me. Many people will feel the need to retort this post saying that they found Chinese to be very hard, and I agree with you! Of course it was hard, but that’s because learning a language is hard. Saying that X is not always easier than Y does not equal to saying that Y is easy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6068 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 64 of 79 25 March 2013 at 5:11am | IP Logged | |||||
you are right. I find really interesting he didn't use the word "difficult" for mandarin. he just wrote something like "every single language is hard if you are not motivated enough". I agree. until certain scope, even those languages labeled as easy are not that easy (esperanto could be a pain in the neck too), much more if you are not really interested in learning them but still he was comparing apples and oranges under the same circumstances (being in the country + having enough motivation + a decent approach), does anybody believe mandarin would be easier than, let's say like he did, Spanish? does he believe it?.. he wrote "Why Chinese isn’t as hard as you think" in a way I really don't understand very much. I feel it's good he's somehow encouraging people to learn no matter how difficult is, but I find some of his statements hard to believe, specially from a guy who just struggled with the language for nothing but 3 months. I find his apples vs oranges comparison even more disappointing coming from a very experienced language learner like him, but that's me once again, I believe mandarin isn't as hard as some people say it is, however going to the other extreme and saying mandarin (having the same motivation, exposure, approach, and so on) would or could be easier than the "big" european ones sounds a lil bit funny to my ears his egyptian arabic "mission" was a really good one: good results, no weird statements. the only part I didn't and don't understand is why he chose MSA materials being pretty much useless for his purposes. I really don't get it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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