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Benny Lewis’ journey with Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4470 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 65 of 79 25 March 2013 at 5:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Not really, in the passage I quoted, he said that mandarin was hard - and that every single language is hard - and he found it to be a draining experience. I think you added the "if you are not motivated enough" part or maybe he said it elsewhere.
He expressed that he believes that in real life, circumstances are never the same so a comparison of whether mandarin would be more difficult than Spanish in the same circumstances is of no interest for him (being interested in practical applications rather than in purely theoretical situations). But I think his main points were really that people exaggerate how much more difficult Chinese is compared to other languages ("orders of magnitude harder"), that it should not deter you from learning the language if you are motivated by it and above all, that you should not let it discourage you. His second paragraph makes it quite clear that this article is mostly in reaction to the fact that he felt that he received a lot of unsolicited and uselessly discouraging comments about the difficulty of mandarin when he decided to go on his mission. 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 66 of 79 25 March 2013 at 5:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm afraid it's more than a theoretical situation. do you believe mandarin would be easier than Spanish having exactly the same circumstances: motivation, exposure, approach, materials?. to me this isn't a convo about technical stuff, it's about things in common and contact between our native language and the language we're about to learn I feel he wrote that just for the sake of not letting his arm to be twisted. so in his post mandarin is hard only cause every single language is hard, not for some specific reason I agree with his main points but once again I reckon he did exaggerate too, oversimplifying things he received loads and loads of unsolicited and useless comments, true. but not all of them were unsolicited nor useless. he was quite active in some forums, trying to give his "mission" some more attention -the way he did with all the previous ones, and maybe you haven't follow him for a long time but he's got his own and unique temper tantrum 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 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 67 of 79 25 March 2013 at 8:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No. It's not. You would like to enforce a ceteris paribus on an argument by force because it suits you, but he's right; circumstances are NEVER the same. Pretty much the only way would be to mimic two babies learning Chinese as a foreign language from scratch after they've been raised in England for x amount of years and even then you will see differences in development purely based on personal character. It's just never a valid comparison. As for your other statements, really? Back it up. Edited by tarvos on 25 March 2013 at 8:40am 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 68 of 79 25 March 2013 at 9:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
we're not talking about babies learning his native language, but people trying to learn a foreign language (not necessarily adults but in this case deffo not babies) for an Italian speaker french tends to be easier than let's say German. for a portuguese one, Spanish. I believe some people call it "transparency" level. native Spanish speakers without previous training are able to understand a huge amount of formal written portuguese, and I gather native portuguese speakers could understand even more of written Spanish. same with a lot of languages.. now, what are the "transparency levels" of mandarin for an English speaker?. what about the cultural issues?.. I understand some people find french difficult cause they're not really interested in learning it, but the common basis, the relations, between English and french are huge I've asked this question a lot of times but, once again, let me ask you, you: do you personally believe, you, if you'd have the same interest/exposure/approach in mandarin you'd learn it as fast as a more related language like french or Spanish?. I'm just kinda curious. don't tell me it's impossible for you to try and imagine this "impossible" situation 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 69 of 79 25 March 2013 at 9:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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oh wait, in your case isn't french and Spanish but German and, dunno, afrikaans? :P
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| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4366 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 70 of 79 25 March 2013 at 9:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
As I said, I only criticize him because he's selling a product. I think I have the right to do so, because he's out in public and selling his books. If he wasn't ready to face criticism, he wouldn't make a blog showing how many languages he speaks and selling things and he wouldn't upload 1000 videos on youtube. He can do whatever he wants. But I don't see the point in his language learning approach. Don't I have the right to speak my mind? For example, he says that it is vital to go out and practice speaking to people from day one. I don't think this is suitable for everyone. He is not a linguist. There are experts who conduct research on how to learn a language. And he is to tell us the ultimate truth? Let me quote him:
Source: http://www.fluentin3months.com/resources/language-learning/ Some linguists say you shouldn't speak in the beginning.
(Same source) Yes, but HIS language guide is the solution for all fluency problems. Of course. Good try. He's selling his books not to help others or to maintain his website, but to finance his lavish lifestyle. That's okay, we all have to make a living, but don't we have the right to criticize his products? I cannot understand why some people here are not willing to accept this. Again, I have nothing against him personally, and I even like his articles. But it's a pity he leaves the country just when he just starts to be able to speak... doesn't he learn all the languages to communicate? (And what about the rumour that he actually wants to be a travel writer?) _____ To Chinese: Those who say that Chinese grammar is easy don't have the faintest idea. Only complete beginners would say this. Please, try to learn Chinese for some time. You will see. It has nothing to do with 'scare tactics', Chinese is not evil, but it is harder than, say, French, for a Westerner. It's a fact. Just to illustrate: Westerners who have a master's degree in Chinese (FIVE YEARS of Chinese studies) often don't have more than a rock solid B1 - low B2 level in the language. That is pretty much the norm. C1 or better are exceptions. And he manages to attain nearly the same level within 3 months? 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 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 71 of 79 25 March 2013 at 9:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I learned French and German at school, and English as a young boy. There is no ceterus
paribus because I don't really have a choice and consider all these languages as part of my obligatory education (and I thus speak all three, although at what level of proficiency is debatable). Afrikaans I don't need to study to understand (only to actively speak Afrikaans as opposed to Dutch), because they are mutually intelligible. The only relevant comparison I could draw here was when I studied Swedish and when I studied Russian, and indeed Swedish was faster. But the reason isn't that Swedish is easier than Russian, it just had the advantage that a) I already knew how to do self-study and b) my methods for Russian were quite inefficient and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to study languages on my own. You do get some cognates bonus for Swedish and the grammar is much more comparable to that of Dutch, so if I was immersing myself full-time I guess that in my case (being motivated for both languages), it might differ by a month or so when I reached fluency, but it wouldn't really matter all that much. But I'm a motivated dedicated learner so it again sets me apart from somebody else. I could probably attempt to learn Amharic and speak fairly well rather quickly. Could I learn Spanish more quickly than Mandarin if I was more interested? Probably. The point is I want to learn Mandarin and if I learn Spanish it's a nice bonus. It depends on what I am trying to do. There are a few hurdles I'd need to overcome for Mandarin but nothing would really grind my gears except the alphabet and maybe dealing with tones. I think that in the end, if I would immerse myself full-time, the initial steps in a more related language would be easier (aka it's somewhat more efficient to hit B1-B2) but after that it doesn't matter.
Does that prove anything? Really, for all you know their methods are horribly inefficient. And any language learning methodology studies suffer from bad research methodology anyways. By the way, he was B1 after three months. Edited by tarvos on 25 March 2013 at 9:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Zundung Newbie Belize Joined 4267 days ago 10 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* | Message 72 of 79 25 March 2013 at 10:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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@tarvos
First off. Tmp asked you if you'd learn it faster with the same resources and MOTIVATION. We all know that if we're more motivated for X, the progress is going to be faster than Y. Relatively. Now of course it's easier to learn the big European languages for us. And it would be much easier for me to learn Polish than Japanese. For any Slavic speaker really. Unless they would have no interest in Polish, but huge one in Japanese. Then they would probably never learn to speak Polish due to lack of motivation and learned Japanese earlier. Earlier still means years. And again you fail to understand that the grammar is a bigger problem than the characters... (especially nowadays with all the modern technologies, we can just learn how recognize (read) the characters with handwriting only a few dozens of them) ......................... Now we can discuss the Arabic too. It's also a helluva language. And this is not scare tactics. What are "scare tactics" in the first place. Why would we and many other language aficionados discourage people from languages they love. I can talk about how complex Finnish may be here, but those who are truly interested will learn it nonetheless. Those who are not. They'll make it their excuse for giving up. The fact is. Once you reach the intermediate level in a language. It may start getting boring and the faster you go at the beginning, the more possible is a BURNOUT. Language learning is not a dash, it's a marathon. There are no shortcuts in Mandarin and it's almost impossible to learn it without immersion (just classes + self study). That's why people can get bored with it soon (3 months in Benny's case) and blame it on the difficulty. In fact these people just weren't motivated enough or they lost it. This can happen for any language when you try to rush it. The thing is. After a year of Italian. You can have meaningful conversations and function in the language. You won't see these results in languages like Mandarin. The key is to go on and not getting frustrated. But no articles like Benny's will help you fasttrack it. Edited by Zundung on 25 March 2013 at 10:19am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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