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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5337 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 161 of 204 23 October 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged |
I love this forum, but sometimes it drives me crazy. Now if you are an obnoxious brat who pester everyone,
cyber stalk people and claim to be able to learn a language in an afternoon, and claim fluency in dozens of
languages you then proceed to prove that you cannot speak at all, then I get why people get mad. What I do
not get, is the need to tear down, rip up and bully people who go about their own business learning
languages. So what if the kid was led into saying that he was fluent in more languages than would pass the
HTLAL standard. I have never been interviewed a single time without being misquoted or manipulated into
saying things I do not mean. He is 16 for crying out loud. You are supposed to mess up at that age. Jeesh,
leave him alone.
12 persons have voted this message useful
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 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 162 of 204 23 October 2012 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
You do realise it is the one guy trolling and nitpicking, right? I'm sure as a community
we know better, we can leave Wulfgar to his imagination and be a jolly happy bunch
afterwards.
8 persons have voted this message useful
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5337 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 163 of 204 24 October 2012 at 8:31am | IP Logged |
Wise words as always, tarvos :-) Yes, I have seen that towards the end of the thread there was mostly one
person who insisted on seeing the half empty cup, but I had just read through the whole thread where there
were plenty more. I am really happy that the majority are sensible enough to admire the kid for what he can
do, which regardless of how he is presented in the media is a hell of a lot better than most of us can, young
or old.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Midnatt Triglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 4431 days ago 10 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English
| Message 164 of 204 24 October 2012 at 12:34pm | IP Logged |
Here are my two cents. At first I thought Tim was full of himself, when I watched the "Hyperpolyglot" program from Canada. To me he looked like some cocky teenager who is trying to impress the interviewer. "I've been translating mentally everything you've said so far in Persian and German. I CAN DO MORE!!! " or singing along the Persian lyrics of the Iranian artist there. But later on I saw how modest he really is and started to like him more. In his latest video, he did something what I've been waiting for a long time. He was speaking in multiple languages at time, yet he talked about various matters and didn't stop at languages. No offense to people like Richard or Luca, but it can become tedious when you only talk about languages in them. Like where you've learned them, how long did it take, etc. To talk about different , interesting topics in those languages is at least for me more appealing :) I mean if you literally breathe languages, you might find it the most interesting topic of them all, but not all people like it as not all people do when it comes to postage stamp collecting.
So get your act together. Tim has become really good in a lot of languages in very short time, because he's been doing nothing but it and instead of getting drunk somewhere, he grabs his dictionary. And that's impressive. And therefore I'm not gonna sully him or his name for me being older and not speaking as many languages as he does.
Tim's just fine. He's been learning cca 20 languages for about 3 or 4 years and he's at different levels in them. He doesn't claim he learned "all the languages in the world = 59" in 3 years. There are a lot worse cases among us...
And sadly with the internet era, it seems like it has become popular to be an instant hyperpolyglot. Right, Benny?
1 person has voted this message useful
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 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 165 of 204 24 October 2012 at 1:05pm | IP Logged |
Um, Benny is not any different from the other guys in this regard. Just because you don't
agree with his definition of fluency doesn't mean he doesn't count.
7 persons have voted this message useful
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4718 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese
| Message 166 of 204 24 October 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
As for me, Benny is just as fine as Tim. I agree with @tarvos.
But this topic is not the place for that, right Midnatt?
5 persons have voted this message useful
| Midnatt Triglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 4431 days ago 10 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English
| Message 167 of 204 24 October 2012 at 2:09pm | IP Logged |
Sorry guys. Didn't and don't want to make this thread hateful, but I glanced at his blog and he claims to speak Mandarin now after 3 months of learning, making it equal with his other languages that did take a lot more than that to become "fluent" in. I think that just because not everybody is able to tackle Mandarin, anyone at A2 to B1 can claim he's fluent. If what he does is becoming fluent in 3 months, then eventually he'll end up claiming the same thing as Ziad or Laoshu and what's worse. People will pay for his lesson, thinking of him as some kind of semi-god. I just don't think it's fair to people like Amir which after 8 months of learning Mandarin per se won't claim such outrageous things. But this really is not the place, I guess.
2 persons have voted this message useful
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 168 of 204 24 October 2012 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
Midnatt (and Tim) wrote:
"I've been translating mentally everything you've said so far in Persian and German." |
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Actually this may be one of the reasons that he has come so far in a short time: trying to translate a conversation in an 'easy' language into one or more of your target languages while it is still going on is a useful technique, even if you have to skip a passage here and there because you don't know a word or stumbles over some construction. It forces you to think in fast real time and not in slow exercise time, and then you can return to your studies afterwards. And Tim uses this technique even while speaking to a reporter instead of just sticking with the language of the conversation. Kudos.
Edited by Iversen on 25 October 2012 at 1:00am
3 persons have voted this message useful
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