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Tim from the US (PolyglotPal) on YouTube | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 65 of 204 03 April 2012 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Dare I suggest that the problem in this case isn't the media, nor the people featured in it and that you would be happier if you made peace with how you've decided to spend your life? Having the media be consistently accurate isn't something I think anyone here will ever see... Studying 15 hours a day, a person can do more than a 'serious' student studying an hour a day does in a year. Languages also have massively diminishing returns in terms of time invested: it's a lot quicker to get to a level where one can honestly say one speaks a language, than a level at which one can work professionally as a translator. I think people like Tim and Professor Argüelles demonstrate what a consistent amount of hard work in languages can lead to... and that this in no way diminishes people who choose to focus on a smaller number of languages for a larger number of years. 15 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rob_Austria Heptaglot Groupie Austria Joined 5005 days ago 84 posts - 293 votes Speaks: German*, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Croatian, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic (Written), Turkish | Message 66 of 204 03 April 2012 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@ translator2
First of all, I'm sure you have not wasted your life. Investing time and effort into learning even one language, trying to understand other cultures and putting that knowledge to good use NEVER should make you feel like you have wasted your life. I don't know how old you are but based on the information you provided in your own posts I guess you are more in my age group (I'm 43) than in Tim's. Let's face it, today there are many more tools available to study a language than in the past. I grew up in a small town with practically no exposure to foreign languages or even foreigners (all that has changed drastically). There was no Internet, of course, there weren't even video tapes and no DVDs with multilingual audio tracks. When I went to university to study English and Italian, we had ONE English movie per month that everybody could watch for free and discuss with professors and fellow-students, only some of which were native speakers of English. We had a well-equipped library where I spent hours EVERY DAY reading and copying articles. At home, I would stay up until late at night to watch movies in English and Italian with Slovenian subtitles. In Austria all foreign movies are dubbed while in Slovenia and Croatia (I live close to these countries so I can still watch their programs) they are broadcast in their original version with subtitles. So, I watched those movies, filled many, many notebooks with word lists and idiomatic expressions and simply enjoyed listening to the languages and getting a feeling for the countries where these languages are spoken (since there were also some really interesting BBC documentaries for example). Austria was not yet part of the EU, we had few student exchange programs (the EU has created some outstanding programs in this respect and our young people are now eligible to participate in them) and trying to practise languages was much harder than it is today. What I am trying to say here is that the learning environment has changed greatly for the better and people like Tim take advantage of these new opportunities and I congratulate them on their passion and enthusiasm. When I saw his first vid, it instantly put a smile on my face. My first reaction was not that of supposedly watching another guy trying to make me look bad because it has taken me years, if not decades to get where I am now professionally, but that of witnessing true passion for languages. With all the other things (some of them definitely more "harmful" to society than maybe helping create this hype about polyglots) he could do as a young guy, choosing to spend his spare time to learn more about other people (and he is not just learning languages, you can tell about his interest in foreign countries and other cultures and he actually talks about that in his vids) is something I really have a lot of respect for. The media will always try to "sell" what they know or think they can sell best. Of course, they try to embellish and simplify things. We all know that and to some extent it is part of an implicit agreement between the public and the media: You entertain us and we overlook your sometimes superficial, badly researched articles/TV programs etc. It goes without saying that not all media are like this. There will always be those who honestly try to do their best to inform people and it is no secret that their stories mostly don't sell as well as others. That is nothing Tim or any other polyglot can be blamed for as individual proponents of a certain group of people, if at all, the blame is ours as a society. I do not feel threatened (and I'm not suggesting that you are) in my professional standing by people like Tim. I don't see any of my clients giving him a call tomorrow to work at an international conference or asking him to translate a legal text that is crucial in the negotiations between two companies. People who are in need of the kind of services that you (based on your nickname I guess you work as a translator as well) and I offer, will not be "fooled" by some vids on youtube. Besides, I have never ever heard Tim say: Look at all those pathetic language learners spending years and years of studying while it only takes me a few weeks to totally outsmart them. Here is my super method, get it, buy it and speak all the languages you want. He is not doing any of that and even if he were, I wouldn't consider my own life a waste just because of his claims. What Tim as a young enthusiastic language learner does is that he reaches out to an age group many of us may not be connected with in the same way. Basically, age does not play that important a role if you share a passion but I do believe that it is easier for young people to get motivated by his videos than by mine for example. And that's just fine! I also checked out the comments Tim left on other people's channels. And ALL of them were nothing but well-intentioned and encouraging. He never made anybody feel bad about their own accomplishments or approaches and he never portrayed himself as somebody who knows it all and should be asked for advice. As a matter of fact, he seems kind of reluctant to talk in detail about his "method" (even though it seems clear to me that his success is mostly due to arduous work). As for the fact that the media turn him into some sort of Wunderkind and you appear to feel that it was his responsibility to stop them from doing so, please, don't let us forget he is a 16 year old boy who as far as I can tell has not had any previous experience with media and this kind of hype before. He told me about the pressure of having to sort of simplify things because the reporters want catchy phrases. Both as an ordinary citizen and a professional interpreter and translator I have seen many, many adults "crack" under that kind of pressure and maybe saying things they otherwise would not have said or seeing their words being put out of context etc. Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that Tim ever said anything I consider to be a lie or harmful to the community of language learners in any way. I am simply referring to the fact that he is still somewhat of a kid and a very likeable one I have to say. I am the adult here and it is my job to put certain of his statements into the right perspective. So, the bottom line for me is that Tim and other multilingual people or anybody else showing interest in other cultures and languages is something I'm grateful for and none of them make me feel like I have wasted my life or done something wrong, no matter how mediocre the results of my own endeavours may be compared to their achievements. I like to thrive on the success of others because they are a source of constant inspiration. And I'm sure people who know you well and who know what you have achieved thanks to hard work, will never say that you wasted your time either. Edited by Rob_Austria on 03 April 2012 at 9:21pm 19 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6922 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 67 of 204 04 April 2012 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for your post. Wow. I had not even considered that. When I was 16 growing up in my small town, I could not have studied Russian, Japanese or even German or Italian even if I had wanted to. The resources just were not available at that time (no access to books, no internet, no VHS tapes, etc.) I had to content myself with the one Spanish high school textbook and the French dictionary at the library. My parents refused to waste money on books, especially ones to learn languages. The world sure was different. I wonder if people growing up today can appreciate what an enormous wonder the internet is. I just saw this related video on YouTube: Dancing Bears and Polyglots in the Media Edited by translator2 on 04 April 2012 at 3:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5384 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 68 of 204 04 April 2012 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I second that. I studied Norwegian while writing to a penpal using a tiny Berlitz dictionary, the only one I could find in my town. For English, I was lucky enough to have access to a few English TV channels, and I would write down every new word and look them up in the dictionary during the commercials, but I didn't have anyone to talk to. This is a very different world. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5850 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 69 of 204 07 April 2012 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For all forum members interested in Tim's language studies, here is an interview with Tim in Italian:
Timothy Doner: Ho 16 anni e parlo 16 lingue Fasulye 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 70 of 204 07 April 2012 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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On April 5, there was a 15 minute interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) radio program "Q". He and the host speak Farsi at the beginning of the interview. The audio podcast is available at: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/qpodcast.xml
The specific podcast is called "Q: The Podcast 2012-04-05 Bob Newhart". It is a total of 1:00 hour. Tim's interview starts at the 45:00 mark for 15 minutes. Tim certainly comes across as a very talented and enthusiastic language learner. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Torbyrne Super Polyglot Senior Member Macedonia SpeakingFluently.com Joined 6098 days ago 126 posts - 721 votes Speaks: French, English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Catalan, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian Studies: Sign Language, Toki Pona, Albanian, Polish, Bulgarian, TurkishA1, Esperanto, Romanian, Danish, Mandarin, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Latvian, Estonian | Message 71 of 204 10 April 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Luca and Tim got to meet up in Paris not so long ago. Here is a video of them talking to each other. I hope you enjoy it! :)
11 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6922 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 72 of 204 12 April 2012 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is just me or does Luca seem genuinely uncomfortable (rolls eyes, grabs his chin, looks away) when Tim starts talking about how he can read and understand 80%-90% of Arabic and Russian newspapers after studying for just two years (along with learning 22 other languages)?
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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