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Benny Lewis

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply
164 messages over 21 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 7 ... 20 21 Next >>
tmp011007
Diglot
Senior Member
Congo
Joined 6074 days ago

199 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese

 
 Message 49 of 164
14 April 2012 at 6:47pm | IP Logged 
NewLanguageGuy wrote:
Having lurked on this forum for a while, I am bemused at some of the pissing contests being played out (not only here, but also with certain video responses), as to "who is best".

Christophe Clugston's video? Benny is one thing but Clugston? I mean, are you any serious? xD


christopheclugston wrote:

You want to post on my channel--follow the standards.Again no names, no credentials=no credibilty or valed opinion.




p.s. "Who is the best Polyglot? I bet you don't know. Christophe Clugston tells you, based on scientific criteria.".. come again? "SCIENTIFIC criteria".. hahahahaha

Edited by tmp011007 on 14 April 2012 at 7:45pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Michael K.
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5734 days ago

568 posts - 886 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto

 
 Message 50 of 164
14 April 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged 
Oh, no, not Christophe Clugston, he's definitely the most unpleasant and egotistical of the YouTube polyglots. He told this one guy he'd never get a native Spanish accent if he never left the states.

His response:

You can kiss my accent!

As far as Benny is concerned, I don't like the way he treats people who disagree with him, although I do think he makes good videos and is a good language learner. I don't care to follow him on YouTube or elsewhere.

I wrote about this back in January, but I thought he treated Sprachprofi horribly when she was just trying to help him, and they had met each other in Berlin. That's when I decided I could do without listening to Benny.

Edited by Michael K. on 15 April 2012 at 7:54pm

13 persons have voted this message useful



NewLanguageGuy
Groupie
France
youtube.com/NewLangu
Joined 4612 days ago

74 posts - 134 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 51 of 164
15 April 2012 at 12:14am | IP Logged 
People in any kind of specific hobby can be eccentric and occasionally come across as unpleasant in their
behaviour. Most of the time it is not intentional, but just their "way".

They are just people sitting behind a computer with a camera. This confers no superhuman status, and is
certainly no reason to get worked up.

When I created my Youtube channel, I knowingly opened myself up to comments about my language skills,
both positive and negative. It's the nature of being in the public domain. Why would I care either way? I'm just
here to have fun!
2 persons have voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 5135 days ago

1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 52 of 164
15 April 2012 at 12:44am | IP Logged 
tmp011007 wrote:

Christophe Clugston's video? Benny is one thing but Clugston? I mean, are you any serious? xD

p.s. "Who is the best Polyglot? I bet you don't know. Christophe Clugston tells you, based on scientific criteria.".. come again? "SCIENTIFIC criteria".. hahahahaha

The best thing you can do with his videos (or anybody else's, for that matter) is take it as one person's opinion. Learn something from it if you can, discard it if you can't.

Personally, I've never learned anything from Clugston's videos, but I admit I do find them entertaining. Life's too short to get worked up over one person's opinion.

R.
==
4 persons have voted this message useful



Wulfgar
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4676 days ago

404 posts - 791 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 53 of 164
15 April 2012 at 9:38am | IP Logged 
fabriciocarraro wrote:
Benny has posted today a new video, for the 3 months and 1 week of Chinese learning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=pffLh3all3w&feature=g-u-u&con text=G2b9ff93FUAAAAAAAAAA

It's unfortunate that he was speaking with a non-native speaker, but this was a descent improvement over his 2.5 month video. He went from not
quite A2 to a strong A2 in 3 weeks. Not bad. For a 3 month 1 week effort, this is very impressive. For 1000 hours, less so. But maybe he didn't
spend that much time - I just remember speculation that he was studying 10 hours per day.

I hope he works on his accent right away, now that he's gotten that pesky video out of the way. 很 is not pronounced like a female chicken. There
were several really common phrases with glaring tone mistakes. I recommend he crank up his tone awareness. If he doesn't, I predict this will be a
problem during his travels.

There were several grammar errors and misunderstandings in this short, edited video. The video was almost completely about language, which I
assume is the most familiar material he knows. That's why I couldn't imagine someone at this level in a european language being evaluated as B1 by
a language teacher familiar with the scale. Could someone at this level in a european language study for and pass a B1 test? Sure; it happens all the
time. But imo, the level shown in this video is A2.
11 persons have voted this message useful



translator2
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6924 days ago

848 posts - 1862 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 54 of 164
15 April 2012 at 4:49pm | IP Logged 
All of the YouTube videos are about learning languages. How about some videos with two people discussing topics other than how they learn languages. "Global Warming: Is it Real?", "How has the financial crisis affected your country?", "Describe the last book you read/movie you saw and why you liked it". I could easily do this in all five of my languages. I don't care about grammatical mistakes or a non-native accent. I'm looking for the ability to really think, express yourself and use the language for purposes other than introductory chit chat of the "How did you learn Chinese?, "Arabic is hard.", "Where is the Bahnhof?", I can speak 29 languages" parrot language variety.

If your goal is to just be able to exchange brief pleasantries with people in 50 languages, that's fine, but then don't pretend that that makes you in any way a language expert.

Again, we are not talking about people claiming to speak numerous languages. We are talking about people claiming to speak numerous languages AND having done so in an impossible period of time and then presenting themselves on-line and in the media perpetuating the myth that language-learning is easy or something you can do in your sleep, at lightning speed, in no time, in a flash, in ten seconds, or any one of the various adjectives used by publishers of language courses designed for the unwashed masses.


Edited by translator2 on 15 April 2012 at 7:51pm

19 persons have voted this message useful



Hampie
Diglot
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6664 days ago

625 posts - 1009 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin

 
 Message 55 of 164
15 April 2012 at 5:49pm | IP Logged 
NewLanguageGuy wrote:
I enjoy watching Benny's videos, as I enjoy watching the videos of many other
language enthusiasts on Youtube.

Having lurked on this forum for a while, I am bemused at some of the pissing contests being played out (not only
here, but also with certain video responses), as to "who is best".

Is being a linguist supposed to be competitive? :-)

I'm not sure he's a linguist... They study how languages works rather than the languages themselves...
3 persons have voted this message useful



translator2
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6924 days ago

848 posts - 1862 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 56 of 164
15 April 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged 
That depends on whether you are a prescriptivist or a descriptivist.

In academic circles, a linguist is someone (usually with an academic degree) who studies the structure and history of languages, but may or may not speak a foreign language. In standard colloquial speech, a linguist may also refer to someone who is interested in or who speaks (I would say 3 or more) languages (and who could care less about bilabial fricatives, dialectical sound shifts, etc.). In addition, in the translation world, translators are sometimes referred to as linguists (even though some were born bi-lingual and never actually studied a foreign language).

Hampie wrote:
   
I'm not sure he's a linguist... They study how languages works rather than the languages themselves...


Edited by translator2 on 15 April 2012 at 8:08pm



6 persons have voted this message useful



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