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Gregg Cox "Greatest Living Linguist" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7147 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes  Studies: Uzbek | Message 9 of 34 23 November 2007 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I as well detected a strong whiff of self-promotion both on the website and in the bio materials. The books cited on Amazon (as written by Gregg M. Cox) also seemed to be rather simplistic phrasebooks of various types, suggesting more a spirit of entrepreneurship than of scholarship. (Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that.) In any event, until evidence to the contrary appears, I'll continue to think that, in this case as well as with most other "hyper-polyglots", the Law of Strawberry Jam applies...
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| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6653 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 10 of 34 23 November 2007 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Oh, there's no question it's a matter of money and self-promotion. I certainly don't think he's what he's made himself out to be. He obviously has a lot of self-esteem invested in being the "Greatest Living Linguist" (who puts that at the top of their page, anyway? How crass!)
As for the alphabet, I just found this stuff on Google and can make no claims towards its worth. I thought I'd provide grist for the mill and let more educated people do the analysis. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6843 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 11 of 34 23 November 2007 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I like this one ;) He managed to do both a BA and MA in the same year (1993), a bit too amazing this... I was intrigued by his 225 languages dictionary project. Whilst my search engine could identify some contributors to this project, it appears that there are 8000 words in each of the languages... and a web-site where you can order the lot (225 Languages). I was wondering what the benefit was of arranging words this way over having 225 bilingual dictionaries. For serious comparative work it doesn't seem to help; sounds more like a pet project by someone interested in languages (thus also the bitterness that no-one was really interested; I also note that he didn't seem to have found a publisher for this one). Oddly enough, most of his many (more than 400 apparently) books seem unavailable. Just checked WorldCat for this. However, I actually believe that his claims may be true. He has taken formal exams in 64 different languages - nowhere does it say whether he passed. I suspect it is for this fact that he was recognized by Guinness? Numerous (lectures etc.) can mean anything more than 2... Almost all of the books on WorldCat seem to be self-published... as for awards - being cynical - you can order them over the web, as you can for degrees and honorary degrees. He also seems to aim to document over 1000 languages. Having said all this, I think Gregg would make a good addition to this forum - seemingly obsessed with language learning -, if only there wasn't the apparent need to inflate his own importance :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6653 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 12 of 34 23 November 2007 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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On a positive note, the contact page of the 225 Languages website uses the same picture of Babel as this website (albeit modified with a stack of books). ;)
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| Scott Horne Newbie Canada Joined 6228 days ago 34 posts - 38 votes | Message 13 of 34 24 November 2007 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I was wondering about that, too. Did he simply compile a list of 8000 words in English and hire people to produce "translations" of questionable value? As if the lexica of different languages matched in one-to-one correspondence?
The ones listed at Amazon bear an imprint that seems not to exist anymore. Very likely it's his own imprint, used at a vanity press.
Nor does it say anything about the level of skill attained. A student in an introductory language course might take a "formal exam" after just a few days, but that wouldn't mean that the student spoke the language. He appears to be obsessed with credentials. His biography states that he abandoned some courses on African languages because no one would give him a transcript showing successful completion. Simple arithmetic shows that no one can make significant contributions to each of 1000 languages. A sixty-year career divided up among 1000 languages would allow for about three weeks per language. That is not enough time to acquire advanced competence in the language and study its cultural heritage, let alone do any scholarly work to speak of. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6843 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 14 of 34 24 November 2007 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Apparently so. Here's a sample entry of the dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mcjon77 Senior Member United States Joined 6614 days ago 193 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), French | Message 15 of 34 24 November 2007 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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One interesting thing to note is that, unlike others who simply say they speak X number of languages, he is actually claiming to have 64 seperate certifications in languages. Since he was in the military, I would assume that several of his certifications would be the result of DLPT scores. I would be very much interested in finding out from him what languages he took the DLPT in and what was his rating (scale is 0-5, although military tests only went up to 3 until recently).
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| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6653 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 16 of 34 24 November 2007 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If you're interested, you can try the contact page on that 225 Languages website. Maybe he'd respond. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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