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Were YouTube polyglots a fad? | ||
Tags: Youtube Polyglot | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4307 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 33 of 58 10 September 2014 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've previously posted it, but maybe excellent lecture by polyglot and literature professor, Wes Cecil "The Future of Language," will interest you and Iverson. He suggests that we're revolving from a printed literary culture back to an oral one. I realize the irony of giving you this lecture in recorded form. He argues that, given the choice, and with the technology making it feasible, we now prefer to take in the words of a wise man / funny man / story teller in an audible / visible way rather than in print. Audiobooks are booming. Youtube is full of Vblogs which only show a person's face. TED talks are a huge hit for people who don't have the patience for the 300 page popular science book which they promote. Publishers like Penguin are releasing more and more very slim books like the "Great Ideas" series and "Penguin 60s" and "Mini Modern Classics." Oxford University Press even has its "Very Short Introductions to..." series. 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 34 of 58 10 September 2014 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
All that I have seen. And I see no reason to doubt them. Tim Doner included. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4843 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 35 of 58 10 September 2014 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yeah, because you're not allowed to state you "speak" a language until you can discuss rocket science in it with an at least (!) native accent... While Tim Doner might not be able to do this in all of his 20 languages, he nevertheless has an amazingly good grip on most of them. He obviously is also a rather self-critical person, because he deleted his first Russian video which was recorded when he still made a lot of grammatical mistakes. I think he got into this whole YouTube polyglottery business rather carelessly (How shouldn't he? He's only a teenager!) and only later discovered how anal some persons can be over pronunciation and grammar mistakes, because - see above - you're not allowed to say you "speak" a language until... yeah! However, I follow him on YouTube and Facebook and he seems to be a very intelligent, even intellectual person. He doesn't stop at learning how to speak a language, he actually studies the literature, linguistic features, and etymology. When did Luca, Richard, or (ha ha!) Benny do anything like that? Last but not least, Tim got into Harvard (or was it Yale), so he can't be that bad. Really, to my mind, this guy is the real deal! His pronunciation or grammar may not be as perfect as Richard's or Luca's, but did you ever compare the languages they study? Richard and Luca concentrate on mainstream European languages with some Mandarin and Japanese interspersed. Tim, however, studies European, Oriental, African, Indian, East Asian, and even Native American languages. I've never seen such a diversity in language families (with the possible exception of Moses McCormick)! He also criticizes the way the media coined him as the wunderkind speaking 20 languages and the sensationalism behind that (see this video). He tries to promote serious language learning and I suspect he might go into academic linguistics or something similar. You're right, he's different from Richard and Luca, but not in a bad way! I'd rather compare him to Alex Rawlings or Professor Arguelles. But, yeah, go on deprecating a very gifted person because he doesn't match your standards! You could at least have the decency to do what he has done before going on and criticizing him like that. Edited by Josquin on 10 September 2014 at 5:07pm 14 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 36 of 58 10 September 2014 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I am pretty sure Richard did languages at university and has studied similar things
during the course of his Life. He can correct me if I am wrong. Luca I don't know about. What people need to understand about Benny is that he is a traveller in the first place and a polyglot second. I think he may have opened a book on linguistics, but his skills focus in the first place on his needs as a traveller and those languages that he has used professionally as French and Spanish (as a translator/engineer) I can vouch for being good. I am at least very certain about his French. For being a polyglot, a linguistic and etymological knowledge is certainly helpful, but patently not necessary. I am as much impressed by Benny who uses languages for social ends as I am by Tim or Richard. I don't understand why you can't sort them as polyglots who simply come from very different backgrounds. As for me, my backgrounds are similar to Luca and Benny, I'm not a linguist either. My motives equal theirs. If I were to make more videos (and mine are crap and poorly edited anyways), it would certainly focus on the social aspects of learning. Because my criteria for success are measured in my social use of these languages. Nothing beyond that to me counts even remotely heavily compared to that. Edited by tarvos on 10 September 2014 at 2:40pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4843 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 37 of 58 10 September 2014 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I never said that. I just said I was more willing to admire what Tim does than what most other polyglots do. For me, learning a language is more than learning vocabulary and grammar. I'm also interested in the linguistics and the cultures of the languages I study. If you study languages for social reasons, that's fine by me. However, I have different reasons and I don't like it if those reasons aren't acknowledged by other people. I suspect Tim has similar reasons as I do, so I can identify with him more than with other polyglots. However, that does not mean Richard and Luca aren't polyglots. It just means I like Tim's approach better than theirs. I wasn't the one who said certain persons weren't polyglots. It was the guy I replied to. Edited by Josquin on 10 September 2014 at 2:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4638 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 38 of 58 10 September 2014 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This may be true, but personally I think it is rather sad. I am probably an old-fashioned dinosaur most of the time, but I do prefer the printed word to video and audio, and if something interests me, I rather read a thorough book about it than watching a Youtube clip of some guy giving a 20-minutes lecture on the topic. As for Youtube polyglots, well, I've never really been into it. Watching a clip of someone speaking 8 or 10 different languages has a certain entertainment value, but little else as far as I am concerned. And too many of the clips don't have any interesting content, often they just seem to talk about how they learnt that particular language, for how long they have studied it, why they learnt it etc. Surely this can be inspiring for young people with the ambition to learn languages, but it doesn't do the trick for me. A well written book by a great polyglot on the other hand, that might inspire me to study more and better. Just to make it clear, I have great respect for the likes of Tim, Luca and Richard, and I appreciate what they do, but I just don't feel like spending a lot of time watching videos of them speaking their languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6551 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 39 of 58 10 September 2014 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And this is why I should stay away from here... there is always something interesting to suck my time away! Thanks for sharing those, excellent! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4253 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 40 of 58 10 September 2014 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't think it's an either/or doomsday scenario. I get a lot of my information by reading books, but I'm also a huge consumer of podcasts which allow me to keep learning about things in spaces of time where I normally am unable to read. Just because one listens to podcasts and watches informational videos doesn't mean its that person's only source of information. Also Oxford's Very Short Introduction series, many of which are very high quality works, I believe was conceived to encourage inter-disciplinary study rather than to be a "dumbed downed version". When I'm interested in learning about a new field, but don't know where to start, introductions are a good way to survey the terrain, familiarize myself with topic-specific vocabulary and build a wide map of the topic in my head to better contextualize more detailed study at a later time. Also audio/video doesn't necessitate a short/introductory format, for example, The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps Podcast. Now one could argue that this is just an abridged version of actually reading through all the major philosophers themselves, but I bet it's also way more thorough than any introductory philosophy course would be, and has the advantage of being an ongoing creation. Audio/Video formats can also be much better suited for studying certain fields like music and video. And there are a number of highly intelligent people who have never written or published anything, but have begun to share their knowledge and insight through other mediums like podcasting or videos. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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