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Tim from the US (PolyglotPal) on YouTube | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 169 of 204 24 October 2012 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Who cares what his definition or Amir's is. Amir doesn't care so why should you? Furthermore, he spent more than 3 months speaking Mandarin and being immersed in it, if he can converse then he can converse. Furthermore Moses has never claimed to be fluent in anything except maybe Mandarin (which he has experience in). Maybe you should get off your high horse and accept that people put effort into their languages in different ways and that if their definition works for them (and it certainly works for Benny who definitely has high levels of French, Spanish, Portuguese and I believe his Italian is also good), and stop nitpicking. Do yourself a favour and accept that learning so much quickly is a challenge and not a promise. He CHALLENGES himself to improve quickly. If he doesn't succeed (and he doesn't succeed often) then that's okay. Maybe you should also read his blog and the explanation for the title. If you are seriously bothered by such claims, then you are either a pedantic nitpick with nothing better to do or jealous that someone can put in more effort than you and succeed. Numbers are just numbers. For the record: if you work very hard, you can achieve a lot in four months. I myself have learned a LOT of Swedish in four months and even though I won't claim fluency I definitely have quite a substantial ability to understand, read and communicate. And I simply did it by applying myself. EDIT: There have been Danish football players that emigrated to the Netherlands and spoke practically flawless Dutch within half a year. If you want, I can show you the videos of the player speaking Dutch in an interview after 9, 12, 15 months. In the last interview I saw he is almost indistuinguishable from a Dutchman. Is he supremely intelligent? Probably not. But he is motivated as hell to succeed, and he will stop at nothing to achieve it. So he learned Dutch in record tempo and integrated. That's a quality to admire! Edited by tarvos on 24 October 2012 at 3:31pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5378 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 170 of 204 24 October 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually... I'd be really interested in hearing from Tim on this matter. There is no doubt that this is a great exercise... but doing it while you are being interviewed on TV? I was very skeptical when I heard him say that. Not to mention that being interviewed by Carolyn is enough to make you lose your concentration ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 171 of 204 24 October 2012 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't lose concentration over that, she is way too plastic for me, hahaha...
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5378 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 172 of 204 24 October 2012 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
She is very warm and friendly in person. But fair enough ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 173 of 204 24 October 2012 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm sure she is, it's just totally not my thing.
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| Midnatt Triglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 4425 days ago 10 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English | Message 174 of 204 24 October 2012 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well for me an Irishman who doesn't drink is already proof enough he's a phony :) Nah. Obviously I'm only joking, but I just don't like it. I mean. Do what you wanna do. If you're skilled , then you can be either modest or a showoff, but Benny is not fluent in Mandarin by any measures. Also you learning Swedish from the viewpoint of a Dutchman is completely incomparable to this. I've learned a lot of Swedish in a month and I feel like the main reason why I was so successful so far would be me being fluent in English and having a good command of German. But can I compare it to someone that takes and example here and there and says Hungarian, Mandarin, Czech are easy languages? Like the noun declension? Of course there is pattern, but just showing that on his blog doesn't make him able to remember what gender and what paradigm either word is. For some people fluency is to know excessive quantities of vocabulary, the grammar as whole and be able to read Shakespeare-like literature. For some people fluency means to be able to communicate at ease without looking for the right word too long. But even if Benny was superhuman, it would take him 6-7 months to reach basic fluency. So what can I say. Some people are just gullible. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 175 of 204 24 October 2012 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hungarian, Mandarin and Czech are easy languages. I don't think Russian is hard either.
I don't think Breton, the next language I am going to learn, is hard. I don't think any language is hard. My Swedish teacher asked me about that a few days ago and asked "do you think Russian is hard" and my answer was "no, I don't. And it's not the right attitude to have, if you think everything is torture you will learn absolutely nothing." Do I speak fluent Russian? Probably, according to your definitions, no. But do I have contact in Russian? Can I do things with it? For sure I can. The Russians I talk to are very happy with my Russian and very happy to converse. Russian shop owners have offered me coffee and talked to me at length and even tried to show me off to their customers. If you don't consider it fluent, be my guest, but he's doing what he can, and that's more than you do. If you then have the guts to challenge someone pushing himself to the limit (he could just as easy be lazy as hell) then you seriously need a check. "But he doesn't speak with the perfect intonation and bla bla bla" - no, but he's doing a hell of a lot better than you are by applying himself and setting tight deadlines. Even if he is not half as good as someone who learned double his level in 3, 6 months half of amazing is still pretty damn good. Appreciate what you have. To be terribly critical of someone who is actually pushing himself to achieve things, even if he falls short a lot, is just being a horrible human being. If you're going to criticise language learners, criticise the lazy slacker who isn't making an effort to improve and lives in his English bubble. Don't criticise the people trying to change that status quo.
Yeah, the WRITTEN language. But Swedish prosody is VERY different from Dutch. And still I would say that I am able to communicate in Swedish. Do I make mistakes in Swedish? Have foreigners learned more than I have? For sure. But I'm still doing good and positive that I am doing well with it. And if you claim that it's not perfect Swedish, then I will perfectly well claim that you can eff off. And I will do this over and over again. In Breton, in Mandarin, in Hebrew, in Icelandic, and in all the other languages I will attempt to succeed (and inevitably fail) at. Edited by tarvos on 24 October 2012 at 4:18pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Midnatt Triglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 4425 days ago 10 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English | Message 176 of 204 24 October 2012 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay. Be my guest at defending that person at all cost. But I'll take some context out of the post you've written now.
It really is bad to take the attitude of thinking those languages are impossible to learn. But he? He oversimplifies it. After reading his article pertaining to Mandarin, you'd think it's the easiest languages ever. And still. So many people fail at it, regardless of their attitude. I have been learning Swedish now and I know that the melody of the languages is very important, but the melody of Chinese is even worse. And some people just repeat after they have listened to the audio tracks and yet they can't pronounce it well. Or they pronounce the consonants and vowels well, but don't care about the tones and if the context is not super obvious, they fail at using the language. The characters? He pinpoints a few and make you thing it's easy to build words like (elementary school, high school, university) and it's true. Still you have to learn thousands of these and it's not quite easy, especially to write them down. I would agree that Russian in some aspects is more difficult than Czech. Not the alphabet, more the nuances in pronunciation and stress, but Czech is not easy. And Hungarian. I don't know. Haven't looked deep into it, but don't think it's easy. I guess the Slovak polyglot Vladimir could tell us more. Have a nice day 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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