Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5660 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto
| Message 1 of 22 14 January 2012 at 3:50pm | IP Logged |
I'm sure a lot of people here have heard of the YouTube polyglot community and some probably have channels.
I want to know if anyone has benefitted from posting videos and getting feedback on their skills in their language.
One concern I have is the trolling, since YouTube is unmoderated and people on the Internet are usually not as friendly as people on this forum. There are ways around this, I'm sure.
I'm mainly interested in using it as a learning tool, but I'd be interested in the perspectives of people who have used it to teach or discuss languages.
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nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5346 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean
| Message 2 of 22 14 January 2012 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
I wouldn't be concerned about "trolling"—it's often a consequence of perception rather than intent. Besides, as the uploader of any video, you have the ability to delete any of the comments you wish. You even have the right to prevent comments from being posted until you approve them, if you're really paranoid about it.
The most important thing to remember is to constantly and explicitly stress that you consider yourself a learner of these languages. That way, you'll be able to avoid the passionate wrath of those who will pounce upon what they consider to be a false facade of polyglotery. As on this forum, there are people who hate people who pretend to know languages they don't actually know.
But be prepared for over-earnest native speakers crushing your spirit by offering a deluge of "helpful" constructive comments. Again, they aren't trolling—they just don't like to see their language mangled. :)
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Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5660 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto
| Message 3 of 22 15 January 2012 at 1:13pm | IP Logged |
Thanks, nway. I sort of figured some trolling was a result of intent and not actual skill in a video, but you never know.
I've seen plenty of language users on YouTube complain about trolling, even Iversen and Glossika complained about it, so you never know.
Of course, if I get 50 views just starting out, I'd consider it good. There may not be that many comments, either.
Edited by Michael K. on 15 January 2012 at 1:18pm
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6634 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 4 of 22 16 January 2012 at 1:48pm | IP Logged |
Personally I have only had one really bad case of trolling (where I had to block one person from my channel), but I'm in the lucky situation that I have quite few listerners, and most comments seem to come from people who actually are interested in languages. Those criticisms I have received are generally wellfounded. For instance it is a simple fact that my Portuguese video is mumbled rather than spoken, and that my accent in languages I normally never speak and rarely hear can't be top notch.
However I have seen lots of grotesquely insulting comments to videos in other channels, and 'polyglots' are not even the area that has been hardest hit by trolls - music videos sometimes are commented in terms that ought to put the perpetrators permanently behind bars at a psychiatric institution.
So why make those videos in the first place? Actually I waited for a long time, but then bowed to concrete wishes for a demonstration of my word list method. After the first series about language learning methods I decided to make and publish videos in all my target languages as some sort of pledge of allegiance to those languages, and also to mark how far I had got in each language. In the case of Latin with the added intention of doing my share to mark that this can be a spoken language, not something only used for reading, and in the case of Scots and Platt to mark that they aren't by law reserved for native speakers.
As I said I'm glad that my channel is viewed by relatively few people because I then have less risk of attracting trolls who just want to pour out their venomous comments about something - nevermind what. Their comments will be read by far more people if they publish them as unwanted appendices to popular videos.
Edited by Iversen on 17 January 2012 at 12:59am
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translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6850 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 5 of 22 16 January 2012 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
There is a LOT of good language-learning stuff on YouTube, but sometimes you have to sort through a lot of garbage to get there.
Check out my YouTube page (link on the left) where I have favorited a lot of good videos and I have over 100 channels that I subscribe to and recommend.
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Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5813 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin
| Message 6 of 22 16 January 2012 at 3:11pm | IP Logged |
There is an option in Youtube to allow comment publication only after your approval.
As far as I remember, you must set it for each video individually.
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slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6606 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English
| Message 7 of 22 16 January 2012 at 9:59pm | IP Logged |
I have two channels and I only had one message insulting to me. I deleted it and blocked the user. I do not show my face and I think is less interesting for this kind of people, but you get less traffic.
As far as I know, you can have problems like trolling, insults or more extreme situations if you have a huge success. I mean channels with thousands and thousands of subscribers.
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Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5660 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto
| Message 8 of 22 17 January 2012 at 2:58am | IP Logged |
Great, thanks, everyone. I subscribed to slucido & translator2's channels and look forward to looking at their content.
I guess one thing that I'm worried about if I make a video showing my face is that I'm fat. I used to weigh 190 lbs. but due to medicine I was taking I gained well over 100 lbs. I'm pretty self-conscious about it, like a lot of fat people are about their weight, and that is probably the one thing trolls would use to pick on me. So far no one in real life has made fun for my weight.
Insulting people on the Internet is pretty lame, though. I'm glad to hear YouTube isn't swarming with trolls like I thought.
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