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Were YouTube polyglots a fad? | ||
Tags: Youtube Polyglot | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 41 of 58 10 September 2014 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've never keenly followed those videos so I can't say whether they're becoming more or less popular, but the ones I've seen I've very much enjoyed and found extremely motivating. Especially since the people often have good accents in the languages they speak, which to me is at least as impressive as being able to talk about various subjects spontaneously or whatever other standards you want to measure them by. It's also interesting to see them explain how and why they learnt their languages.
I'm a big fan of Luca for example, who's not only made some impressive video demonstrating his abilities but has also produced a good number of videos and articles explaining his learning ideas and methods. For me, the demonstration videos aren't just showing off, they're proof that these ideas and methods are effective. I don't feel that such videos unrealistically represent their makers' skills. Even if they are somewhat rehearsed or done with the aid of notes or a text, speaking smoothly and with a good accent requires quite substantial knowledge of the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 42 of 58 10 September 2014 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
The contents are sometimes very good, although the Penguin Pelicans did the same job, better imo, a couple of generations earlier for a general audience and at a normal length. You do need to ask what new purpose these super-slim books serve, since there have always been approachable books for readers who want a general introduction.
Agreed. Indeed, unpublished intelligent people like Wes Cecil. Also many lectures from top universities on YouTube, and great documentaries and monologues from clever oddballs like Arguelles. It's not so much that if you use audio/video channels to take in information that you're wasting your time... rather Cecil argues that this is a trend that probably points to the future: people like to look at pictures, and to listen to someone's voice, and to see their face. Which is natural if you think about it. It's the written page which is the stranger method. Edited by Retinend on 10 September 2014 at 6:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4387 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 43 of 58 10 September 2014 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hey , I do think that Tim Donner is talented and I do not want to play down his achievements , I simply don't happen to like his format , I also think that it was just more a sort of "showing off" . In my view you don't make a video speaking in 20 languages if in most of them you can say barely a few sentences and probably understand near to nothing , some people could really end up thinkg you do speak those languages for real and get a distorted idea ( as I did myself before doing quite a bit of researching ) of what learning 20 languages is like by getting to hear :" I habe studied arabic for 4 months , German for 2 and so forth . 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 44 of 58 10 September 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, first of all, he says in his video that he is on different levels in all of his languages. Second of all, he surely doesn't "barely speak a few sentences" in most of the languages he presents. Third of all, you realize he is still a teenager who may not be aware of the unspoken rules of the polyglot community? I don't know about you, but when I was a teenager I would also show off in things I was good at. It's quite natural for his age. Edited by Josquin on 10 September 2014 at 8:23pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4387 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 45 of 58 10 September 2014 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
how well he knew them , I doubt we will get to know . I may be a bit too pessimist . Yes , he was a teen ager , we can forgive him :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 58 11 September 2014 at 11:20am | IP Logged | |||||
I do not frown upon documentaries - actually I spend hours daily watching such programs on TV. Talking heads may be a necessary evil in documentaries, but seeing a face with a mouth that does periodical movements doesn't add anything to the real content - if people like such rubber faces it must be because they remind them about social interactions (which they like), not because they expect to learn a lot of hard facts (which they may not like). The real problem is that people equate a 50 minute TED talk with a 300 pages thick book. OK, there are thick books with very little content out there, but it would take much more than 50 minutes to read a 300 pages thick book. Maybe the content in one of the ultra slim booklets corresponds to the amount of speech you can produce in 50 minutes, but then the content on the remaining (300 - x) pages has disappeared from this world. The same reasoning applies to news broadcasts: they may be valuable for the films and pictures and for being up to date (I hope), but if you wrote all the babble produced by the talking heads in such a program down on paper it would fill max. one page in a standard oldfashioned newspaper. O tempora o mores. Edited by Iversen on 11 September 2014 at 12:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 47 of 58 11 September 2014 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
On the whole, I think there is a time and place for all these media, including good old fashioned thick books and serious newpapers with actual content and words of more than two syllables. But on the subject of the broadcast media, (in the context of news, comment and even serious documentaries), unfortunately, there is so much "stage management" that to me it feels a rather false medium. I say this based partly on my own experience occasionally talking to local radio and TV. Because of the way the programme has to work, they will often ask you to do things you wouldn't normally do, because it fits into their programme format, or, more worryingly, their agenda. Those familiar with British TV and the set-piece interview (political or otherwise) will know about the "noddy" - where the interviewer films some minutes of himself nodding, in supposed agreement with, or encouragement for, the interviewee. This just seems so laughably false, that I wonder anyone takes the TV interview seriously at all. Radio is a more honest medium in many respects, although even there, things can also get a bit stage managed. Having said that, I do like documentaries with a serious intent, and where decent research has been done, and not too much "stage management" is on display. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 48 of 58 11 September 2014 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I sympathize if you have been misrepresented by people in the TV world, Montmorency, but how can you single it out as a particularly "false medium"? The
"noddy" is exactly analogous to missing things out in a quoted text, and of course "the noddy" isn't even necessary in radio - you only need to cut. So all three have the potential to be misleading in exactly the same way. Edited by Retinend on 11 September 2014 at 3:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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