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geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4673 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian
| Message 9 of 42 22 February 2012 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
Arekkusu wrote:
He's excellent, but he's obviously reciting a text he's learned by heart. |
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Right. I don't think there's much we can judge from the video if we're inclined to real skepticism, as we have no idea where the words he's reciting came from, how he practiced for the video, etc.
I'm inclined to assume that we're talking about someone with real skills, though, given that the accent and delivery are pretty good across the board, and he doesn't appear to be selling anything (key, in my mind). He also presents a completely believable story of how he acquired his languages and his self-described skill levels.
FWIW, the German text sounds reasonably sophisticated and well-delivered to my ears, though I tend to assume that European polyglots will be better at French and German than their other languages.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5131 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese*
| Message 10 of 42 22 February 2012 at 12:46pm | IP Logged |
WHY DIDNĀ“T HE LEARN OUR PRETTY LANGUAGE????
5 persons have voted this message useful
| Huliganov Octoglot Senior Member Poland huliganov.tvRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5340 days ago 91 posts - 304 votes Speaks: English*, Polish, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Esperanto, Czech Studies: Romanian, Turkish, Mandarin, Japanese, Hungarian
| Message 11 of 42 22 February 2012 at 2:33pm | IP Logged |
Thanks to Alex Rawlings and the BBC coverage of this, polyglotism is back on the mass media menu. I got called by Polish Radio Three today and the journalist swung round about noon and interviewed me about my method for about twenty minutes, of which unfortunately only 5 minutes can possibly make the show, which for any folk from Poland following the thread is apparently the breakfast show. For them just hearing a British person speaking Polish is already evidence of polyglotism - I didn't get asked to do the performing seal bit in a bunch of languages, which is fine by me as I only keep about 5 or 6 that active at any one time anyhow and in the rest I'd be umming and ahing for he first hour or so, but I have to say that when Polyglots do that performing seal thing one does indeed never know the extent to which they simply prepared each bit and rehearsed beforehand.
I have no idea whether Alex Rawlings would have looked so fluent in a situation where the interviewer would have asked him random questions, but I will say this, he has a very good accent in most of his languages. I noticed a few things I would have changed in the Russian, (one wrong stress and one wrong case choice) but even there his imitation of the Russian sound and accent was admirable, for a fairly short time of study.
But thanks to him anyway, for me getting some National Radio exposure piggybacking on his BBC story!
7 persons have voted this message useful
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6582 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 12 of 42 22 February 2012 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
The Russian text was certainly not corrected by a native speaker and he probably wrote it himself. The morphology is all correct and that's impressive, but the syntax is mostly odd (and I count CHOOSING the case as syntax).
3 persons have voted this message useful
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4692 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 13 of 42 23 February 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
His accent in Dutch is relatively strong though.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4897 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 14 of 42 27 February 2012 at 5:10am | IP Logged |
I'm always amazed at how harsh the criticism is here towards polyglots!
This guy seems very talented to me, although his Italian accent doesn't seem super impressive,
his Spanish accent seems good though.
I honestly don't believe he is "fluent" in all those languages though, just considering the quantity of time it takes to
get fluent, and considering his age, it just doesn't seem feasible, I doubt he would lie, but as we all know mass
media tends to exaggerate quite often.
I would love to see if he had any contact info so we could get n touch with him and learn from this guy!
6 persons have voted this message useful
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6582 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 15 of 42 27 February 2012 at 4:15pm | IP Logged |
Harsh criticism, where? We're just trying to figure out how good he really is. He doesn't state that he has C1 in X, B2 in Y and doesn't really describe his level anyhow, apart from saying he HOPES to be fluent in Russian soon.
5 persons have voted this message useful
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Mae Trilingual Octoglot Pro Member Germany Joined 4976 days ago 299 posts - 499 votes Speaks: German*, SpanishC2*, Swiss-German*, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, ItalianB2, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Swedish Personal Language Map
| Message 16 of 42 29 December 2012 at 6:37pm | IP Logged |
Alex Rawlings has now a Blog "RawLangs" and a Twitter account.
Have fun reading! :-)
4 persons have voted this message useful
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