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13 languages in 3 years | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 25 of 33 24 November 2011 at 10:29am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I stand corrected. I mistook the article for her blog. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 26 of 33 24 November 2011 at 11:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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We have a tendency on the forum to be very critical towards people who make grandiose claims. Perhaps we should focus more on what people acheive, or have acheived, rather than on what they say they want to acheive or what they have claimed to acheive, if those claims do not meet our individual standards.
I admit that I got a bit sceptical when I read her goals. I am no better than anyone else, and my first thought was, yeah, right, keep trying, honey. My second thought, however was: Brilliant!!! This is someone who is incredibly dedicated to languages, and she focuses 100% on the task at hand. I am a bit jealous of her, to be quite frank. Both because she is in a position to do this and because she has the self discipline to do it. I think she can inspire a lot of people to learn more languages, and I think she would have been a big hit on this forum, as long as she had not made any unreasonable claims that she could not back up. I suspect that the parts of the story that some may react against, are mostly made up by journalists who need a story. I know from personal experience, that you can qualify your knowledge as much as you want in the conversation with the journalist, but once it gets in the paper you sound like you think you are God almighty. You are devestated to know that this will be read by people who know you, who must think that you are the one who has said you are an expert of X or your country's most clever Y. Based on her acheivement and writing skills I think she is well worth reading. Let us not knock her because of what other people say about her. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5300 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 27 of 33 24 November 2011 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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She writes:
"Without Pimsleur, I tend not to do well (this was a big issue with Polish, which also had only 30 lessons). Studying on my own, I find that my progress in a language is highly correlated to the availability of Pimsleur lessons, ..." I am still looking for the most diplomatic way how to find this ... not interesting? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 28 of 33 24 November 2011 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
you callin' 1970 modern now?
After reading this, I had to see if it was true. I found out it's not - she doesn't study all day. I read a couple of her entries, and the impression I get is 2 or 3 hours average. Maybe she talks about that somewhere, but I didn't see it.
Ok, I'll evaluate her original learning plan. She studies a new language for 2 months, then reviews old languages for 1 month. She's been doing it since July of 2009, and will finish August 2012. She will have covered 15 languages. Numbers don't add up exactly, but close enough. I don't know what her purpose for this plan is. If it's to eventually to become fluent, then this plan is not good. At the conclusion of her plan, she won't be anywhere near fluent. She has already forgotten the majority of what she learned. There aren't enough hours in the day to maintain them. And if she continues her studies after that, the original plan will contribute little if any to her future language learning. But maybe she was just dabbling. She chose the rout of Moses McCormick instead of Alexander Arguelles. It's a shame that she burned about 2000 hours with little or no remnants, but such is the life of a dabbler. Now that she's decided to change her plan to learning as much French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Portuguese by the end of June 2012 by studying them simultaneously, I'll comment on that. Given her background, 9 months is not enough time to get all these languages to the point where she is able to maintain them by usage alone. Considering what languages they are, if she continues her studies after the deadline, at least they will not have gone to waste like her previous plan's. She'd be much better off getting one language up to speed, then moving onto the next, like most polyglots on this forum do. To me, the dabbling was just a waste of time and not interesting. But this simultaneous thing is somewhat interesting. Combine that with the fact that she is a pretty good writer, and it might be worth reading her blog. I never would have looked at it if it was in our language blog forum, as I generally find other people's blogs incredibly boring. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 29 of 33 24 November 2011 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Just to clarify: I did not mean that she studies all day - or a 100% of all available time. She said somewhere in her blog that she was running some sort of business, which I assume takes up some of her time. I just meant that she is a 100% focused on what she is doing. We may have varying opinions on which levels the different "famous polyglots" have, but I think there is no doubt that they inspire people. Do I inspire people? No, because I do not have the guts to put myself out there and make videos or have public blogs. (Though perhaps I should. It might be good to have more people like Fasulye out there, with a realistic amount of languages that new learners can acheive, given the right determination, in stead of all the "Look at my 24-language video of languages noone can speak" cases). In any event, it takes a lot of courage to go public, and I think we should respect that courage, even if we are not always impressed of the actual output. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6071 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 30 of 33 24 November 2011 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
it's much more than just a tendency I'm afraid 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5562 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 31 of 33 24 November 2011 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I've only read a handful of articles, but my impression is that she is learning these languages to honour/celebrate the linguistic diversity and history of New York. She acknowledges that she is forgetting much of what she learns. The process of learning is an end in itself as well as a means to interact with the relevant communities. I think it is an absolitely delightful idea. The only aspect I can criticise is her willful neglect of Dutch.
Of course, I may have completely misunderstood. She has adapted the plan [and now intends to] actually become "fluent" in several [of the easier] languages. I think she [was previously] already reasonably "conversational" in Spanish and German. [...] = edits Edited by schoenewaelder on 24 November 2011 at 9:50pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 32 of 33 30 November 2011 at 1:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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New York City is my home town, and on any street corner, you can hear several different languages all at the same time.
Hell, if you take the 7 train from Times Square to Main Street, Flushing, Queens, on any given morning, you will hear English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Italian, Yiddish, and God Knows What Else! The city has a rich, linguistic history, and it's fun to hear that someone is actually documenting and celebrating it. I will say this much, don't judge the author's effort based upon the likely result. In the end, she may never reach what you may consider a high standard in languages you enjoy studying, but she should be commended for the effort as a fellow lover of languages. The journey is the reward, as Jobs would say... 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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