Midnight Diglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4638 days ago 54 posts - 111 votes Speaks: Czech*, English
| Message 1 of 19 24 March 2012 at 9:20am | IP Logged |
Hi all. I'd like to start with a question so I won't bother people in unrelated topics (anymore). I created this thread yesterday and somebody deleted.I´m curious why?
Here I go again. I saw a hyperpolyglot on another language forum (maybe advertising was the prob?) and his name was Cesare Monteleone. He is a 19 years old Canadian and claims to speak 34 languages fluently (C2) and studies 90 languages in total. I saw this guy's profile even here, so I'm just curious if you know him, what are you opinions about him and how reliable is the fact he speaks so many languages. I also wrote yesterday he reminded me of Z. Fazah who also exaggerated a little bit in his statements.
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manish Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5545 days ago 88 posts - 136 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, German Studies: Spanish
| Message 2 of 19 24 March 2012 at 11:44am | IP Logged |
I haven't been active here for long, but from what I gather, Cesare seems to have a rather bad reputation.
He claims to be fluent even though he isn't, he even admitted to this practice here, but yet he continues to do it in that very thread, see here: Cesare thread
In that thread he claimed to only speak 8 languages fluently (and even some of those were disputed) - can I infer from your post that he's back up to 34?
IMHO someone who makes tons of mistakes in his own native language, and whose mistakes in other languages have been pointed out here, can't possibly be fluent in 34 languages (and he can't possibly learn 3-4 languages a day - I've seen this claim in another thread).
Ziad Fazah makes some equally dubious claims (59 languages in 3 years? yeah, right), but apparently he hasn't been opening up threads on here just to get people to acknowledge that he's a genius or just to prove to everyone how fluent he is when in reality he isn't - so that would a (big) difference between him and Cesare, among others.
There are a lot of threads on/with Cesare, so you can just look through those. I guess that's why your topic was deleted.
Edited by manish on 24 March 2012 at 11:54am
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Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4956 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish
| Message 3 of 19 24 March 2012 at 12:37pm | IP Logged |
From what I gathered, Cesare was a big fraud but he deleted his youtube channel so I
can't see his videos to find out for myself.
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Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5728 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto
| Message 4 of 19 24 March 2012 at 1:15pm | IP Logged |
If you want to watch some of his videos, 5 of them are mirrored at idislikechezrocksall. If you know German, Burmese, Spanish, or Hungarian you can judge his ability by these videos. He used to have dozens of them on his chezrocksall channel (or as some smart alecks put it, google-translate-doesnt-rockall).
I've talked to him on YouTube and Facebook. He seems like a nice guy, but I think he's full of it when it comes to his knowledge of languages. He wants to be a translator, so one way or another he's going to find out he isn't as good as he thinks he is. He seems quite adamant that he knows his languages, though, which seems a little delusional to me.
He has autism, so I think he doesn't fully appreciate how offensive his behavior is.
I was glad when he said he was going to the Latvian Cultural Center and that he was going to the Polyglot Club in his city. He also told me he practices by going to ethnic restaurants, which I thought was good because I think he should practice with people in real life and not just on Skype.
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Midnight Diglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4638 days ago 54 posts - 111 votes Speaks: Czech*, English
| Message 5 of 19 24 March 2012 at 1:37pm | IP Logged |
A friend of mine tested his Czech which he said he spoke on C2 level, but he mixed in a lot of Slovak and Russian words and even make a lots of mistakes in conjugation and noun declension. He then tried German (Cesare -Intermediate)and he couldnt answer a really easy questions like - Wie heisst du? Accordin to my friend he spoke Czech very fast, but anyone with Google Translate and the right pronunciation can do it. On the other hand when my friend asked him a simple questions in Czech and he tried to fight his way through by saying stuff like (Nice.Ok. Thats good) He even mispelled the Welsh word ci (dog) as ky even though he wa "fluent" in Welsh. I just wanted to see more opinions. But to me every language even the relatively easy ones (Spanish) takes a lot time to become fully immersed in. Maybe due to his autism thing he may think he speaks fluent language XY after completing the Teach Yourself XY or something.
My opinion is he chooses less common langs too. How can we judge his Manx Gaelic or Tatar or Chechen if we aren't speakers of these? I'll look through some of the topics, thanks for the tip.
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Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5668 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin
| Message 6 of 19 24 March 2012 at 2:51pm | IP Logged |
The issue is that a few people whose names pop up on this forum (Cesare is one, Benny the Irish Polyglot is another) always lead to threads that descend into personal attacks. As a result, there is a tacit agreement to avoid bringing them up.
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schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5559 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 7 of 19 24 March 2012 at 3:22pm | IP Logged |
Wiki: Narcissistic Personality Disorder wrote:
Symptoms of this disorder include, but are not limited to:
Reacts to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation
May take advantage of others to reach his or her own goal
Tends to exaggerate their own importance, achievements, and talents
Imagines unrealistic fantasies of success, beauty, power, intelligence, or romance
Requires constant attention and positive reinforcement from others
Easily becomes jealous
Lacks empathy and disregards the feelings of others
Obsessed with oneself
Mainly pursues selfish goals
Trouble keeping healthy relationships
Is easily hurt and rejected
Sets unrealistic goals
Wants "the best" of everything
Appears as tough-minded or unemotional [3]
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Midnight Diglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4638 days ago 54 posts - 111 votes Speaks: Czech*, English
| Message 8 of 19 24 March 2012 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
Benny? From what I've seen, he can speak really well his languages, altough they are really close (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Esperanto) he speaks them with ease and his efforts shall not be diminished. Well I guess you must mean his site (fluent in 3 months) then. I´m not launching any personal attacks at anyone, but anyone who comes up with the claim that they speak 50 or 120 languages should be put to the test.
One of Cesare´s feature was also that when he wrote a bad paragraph and was corrected, he reposted the corrected version and told he DID correct, because he was fluent. The fact that he doesn´t speak or at least not so well his languages is not harmful. But the idea he would teach it with mistakes is.
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