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Kim Ung-Yong, highest IQ & polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5695 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 9 of 23 04 February 2012 at 12:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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While it's certainly possible, a newspaper article or two is pretty scant evidence.
Articles are often exaggerated, both purposefully and accidentally. I would take these claims cum granis salis. Also, if his language acquisition skills really were that great, it would definitely be very cool to talk with him, but I doubt he'd be able to give very good advice for language learning. I'd imagine that the way he goes about it is completely different, and unless one also had his gift, not very helpful for us mere mortals. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5307 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 10 of 23 04 February 2012 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I believe everything written above, but this sounds really spooky:
> He began speaking at 2 months, could converse fluently by 6 months As spooky as how my coffee mug suddenly started talking to me yesterday. I want to know when he learned to sit and walk, and when he went off diapers and sucking thumb. ie. whether he sat there held up by cushions, on a pacifier and in a diaper, kicking his feet wildly about, and mummy holds a calculus book in front of him... or whether he was already sitting still and looking straight like a 10 year old, and flips the page himself, etc. So it seems he was learning at the rate baby animals do instead of the rate baby humans do...? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 11 of 23 04 February 2012 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Kim Ung Yong said that he showed other signs of speedy development. For example, he had a full set of teeth much earlier than other children (or that he was born with a full set of teeth - I can't remember which one). Even though he says he showed signs of developing earlier physically than other children - and I believe him - he still looks normal to me, as a kid and as an adult. He doesn't look like he has aged prematurely or physically matured faster than other children. In the photos, he looks like how a young child should look. Would probably have to look beyond the surface to see the signs of faster development.
It's not only the newspaper articles that I am relying on, it's also the fact that he went to Hanyang University at age 4 and the fact that he was asked to work at NASA at age 8. These facts can be verified and are consistent with his being one gifted individual. The stuff in the newspapers has been around for a while. He appeared on Japanese TV when he was six showing off his gifts. There was a TIME magazine article about him and various other interviews over the years, and he used to be in the Guinness Book of Records. If he was able to solve complex equations and attend university to study physics when he was just four, I believe that he was able to read Japanese, German and English when he was 2 years old. And was proficient in Korean, English, German, Japanese and perhaps several other languages when he was six years old. These achievements are all consistent with his being extremely intelligent. If any of that information was false or exaggerated, that would have surfaced by now. I myself think that's a lot of "verification". Sometimes the truth IS stranger than fiction. Edited by Balliballi on 04 February 2012 at 2:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 23 04 February 2012 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Sometimes, a healthy dose of skepticism can do one a lot of good. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5417 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 13 of 23 04 February 2012 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I get suspicious of some claims when two of the wikipedia references claim he received a Phd from Colorado State University while the chair of the physics department at the university, John Harton, says Kim was never even registered as a student there. See the comments section of that woosk article you mentioned earlier.
As for his number of languages, in his interview with the Korea Herald he says "I could speak 4 languages - French, German, Japanese and English" and makes no mention of the other languages mentioned in the woosk article. You'd think he'd have mentioned them if he had known them. It should also be noted that when he attended Hanyang University he was a guest student a.k.a. an "audit student", i.e. someone who can attend classes but can't gain credits nor have work assessed. He was evidently extremely good at mathematics but this does not require adult language skills, just the ability to deal with logical patterns at a high level. There are also people out there with a fantastic ability in mathematics but can barely communicate, such as the case with some autistic savants. His mother and father were apparently both university professors according to the 2nd and 3rd references in wikipedia, (used a translator as the former is in German and the latter in Korean) so we can assume they were a great influence and likely pushed him hard to make use of his talent to learn. Being multilingual at 4 isn't that rare either and it is not like it takes much to be considered fluent at 4 years old to be honest. As for his supposed stint at NASA, it's certainly possible and it seems that what he did while he was there was just solving assigned equations, essentially acting in a similar capacity as a calculator. - "At that time, I led my life like a machine. I woke up, solved the daily assigned equation, ate, slept, and so forth. I really didn’t know what I was doing, and I was lonely and had no friends." Considering there is outright misinformation about him, you can't trust everything written about him and just because some information can be reasonably verified, such as his appearance on Japanese TV and attendance at Hanyang University that doesn't mean everything else claimed is. Extraordinary people can often have their already extraordinary talents exaggerated and certain claims made up about them. Claims like he started speaking at 2 months and was fluent at 6 months seems like stretching the truth a bit, especially considering the co-ordination of motor skills required for speech while few babies even learn to roll over at 2 months. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 04 February 2012 at 3:12am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6378 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 23 04 February 2012 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Talking at 2 months and fluent at 6 months? I call COMPLETE BS!
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| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 15 of 23 04 February 2012 at 4:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
That still doesn't change the fact that he was invited by NASA at age 8 and that he was a guest student at Hanyang University at age four or that he was solving complex equations at age 5.
Maybe he forgot the others (Tagalog, Chinese, Vietnamese) through lack of needing to use them as an adult, and he mentioned only the ones he kept up with as an adult. Usually in my experience these geniuses are very modest individuals and tend to under-report their abilities. The fact that he is a polyglot is consistent with his being a genius.
That's quibbling. He might not have been allowed to attend as a normal student (earning credits and having his work assessed) because of his age but the fact that he was even admitted as a student at that young age indicates he had extraordinary gifts. How many four year olds do you know who have been invited to audit university classes in physics?
It's possible he was a savant but the evidence points to his being gifted in the verbal department and not just in the mathematics field. He did appear on Japanese TV showing his mastery of several languages. So the fact that he was able to achieve proficiency in several languages at a young age (he was good enough to appear on Japanese TV to show off his talents) supports his being fluent in Korean at a very young age (six months).
It is more likely that he was able to master these foreign languages because he was a genius rather than he was able to do so through the influence of his parents as the weight of evidence swings toward his being extraordinarily gifted in many areas. Also, no matter how much pressure parents exert, I doubt a child can be proficient in Korean, English, German and Japanese by the age of six unless he was a genius. Kim Ung Yong showed proficiency of Korean, Japanese, German and English (proficiency high enough for him to be invited to be on TV) at the age of six. In addition to this, at this age, he was able to solve very complicated physics and mathematical equations, so even if his parents pushed him to learn languages, I don't think he would have been able to do so unless he was a genius because he was learning a lot of other things besides languages.
The fact that he was assigned rote-type work does not detract from the evidence that he is a genius. Just the fact that NASA was interested in him when he was eight years old shows what a gifted individual he was. That he found this sort of machine-like work unsatisfactory leans toward his being a genius and not a savant. A savant is less likely to find this sort of work a problem.
The fact that he was attending physics classes at a university at age 4, that he was invited to work for NASA at age 8 and that he appeared on Japanese TV at age 6 are enough evidence for me that we are dealing with a genius here, a genius who was gifted in languages as well as in mathematics. In fact, I would find it hard to believe that he was NOT speaking by the age of two months and was NOT fluent by six months but was STILL able to attend university at age FOUR and was invited by NASA at age EIGHT. And those things - attending physics classes at Hanyang university between age four and seven, and being invited to work for NASA at age eight, and appearing on Japanese TV showing his proficiency in several languages at age six - are all verifiable FACTS. Achieving ONE of these things is remarkable in itself, let alone all THREE. In other words, his reaching these milestones at a very precocious age is consistent with his attending university at age FOUR and his being asked to work for NASA at age EIGHT and his appearance on Japanese TV showing his proficiency in several languages at age SIX. If you are going to reach these heights at such a young age, you had better start off as early as you can. No matter how encouraging or committed one's parents are, I do not believe it's possible to achieve all these things that he did at the young ages he did if he were not a genius, a verbal genius and a mathematics genius. (OK, he might have become multilingual at a young age through parental influence ... but also be a mathematics/physics whiz at the same time? Nope, only a genius can show these kinds of high-level abilities in so many fields. We have to remember he was also an accomplished painter and he was writing poems when a child). I do not believe he is a savant. If he was, it would have been noted by now that his mathematical abilities far out-stripped his other abilities. And I think it's easy to spot the savants. And he seemed to cope well in university and NASA (up to the point when he decided he wanted to return to Korea at age 16). If he had not been gifted verbally (at least as gifted as he was in mathematics), I doubt he, as a savant, would have been able to cope socially in these environments as long as he did. Indeed, it was his desire to live a more normal life as a well-rounded person that drove him to leave NASA, return to Korea and resume life as an ordinary student in a provincial university. Edited by Balliballi on 05 February 2012 at 3:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4700 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 16 of 23 04 February 2012 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Does it matter whether all these stories are true or not? If they aren't, we're having an amusing chat here, and if they are, we couldn't profit from this anyways, because not everyone has abnormal abilities like that.
I often thought, a photographic memory sure would be great to have while learning kanji. Edited by atama warui on 04 February 2012 at 5:29am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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