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Are we being too hard on the polyglots? | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| portunhol Triglot Senior Member United States thelinguistblogger.w Joined 6251 days ago 198 posts - 299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (classical) | Message 33 of 72 22 February 2011 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I know that I'm arriving late but I'd like to add my two cents all the same. My answer to Solfrid's original question is yes. Yes, in general we are too critical of internet polyglots. One of the reasons I have spent much less time here as I once did is because these forums have become a place for unproductive bickering.
The term polyglot leaves a lot open to interpretation. I think it is good for us to talk about how we all interpret the word differently. What I find revolting is how so many people here express their inevitable disagreements. I have had the displeasure of reading many racist, elitist and generally toxic words in these forums. It is no sin to disagree but I know we can disagree without childish insults, racial slurs and venomous remarks. My hope is that we can critique without losing our humanity or denying other people theirs. If you do not like what someone has done with their language study or what they claim to be then I believe quite fully that you should be able to say so. Can you not also exercise that right with caution and care for the person receiving your critique? I believe that our criticism of people's language skills should be no less vigorous than our encouragement and support of their development of them. Surely this is a more productive way for us to promote multilingualism. Edited by portunhol on 22 February 2011 at 10:59pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| birthdaysuit Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4816 days ago 48 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Swedish | Message 34 of 72 26 December 2011 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm arriving even later. All I can say here is that if it hadn't been for all those
polyglot videos on youtube (fake or not) I wouldn't have been half as determined to "get in to" languages. Put simply, when I saw them my immediate reaction was, "Wow! Now I'm going to go do that." So if you are one of those people who is thinking about making language videos, just remember that for every 10 people who make unhelpful, hurtful comments, there's always (at least) one person who is inspired. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 35 of 72 26 December 2011 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If that's the top tip, I'd hate to see the bottom tip. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 36 of 72 26 December 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If someone makes a ridiculous claim, it is not only our right, but our responsibility as members of the best language learning forum on the internet to refute it.
Lying does plenty of harm, if that's what they are doing, and we don't want others to be inspired by such people. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5033 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 37 of 72 26 December 2011 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There was a passing mention on page 2 or 3 about someone saying a simple greeting in Thai and being told s/he could speak it well. That is the flipside of too much criticism.
When I tell people about my ability level with Finnish (my best other than English), I say that I am "good enough to be bad." That is usually met with quizzical expressions until I explain what I mean by that. Beginners are disproportionately praised for not knowing all that much. It's the encouragement to keep going. That stream of praise goes down to a trickle the more people learn and the better they are. By then it's just seen as something they do. So when I am good enough to be bad, it means that all the praise for just making the attempt has stopped and I can actually get constructive criticism about what I want to achieve. As for videos, I've been thinking of using my YouTube account in 2012 to document my music and language. It's nice to keep a record, and perhaps there will be a few nuggets in it all. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 38 of 72 04 January 2012 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with you, that if someone is making a ridiculous claim, we should refute it. But there are a 100 different ways of saying it. We can say it as constructive criticism, letting that person keep his dignity, or we can tell him in front of the 30 000 users of this forum that he is an idiot and a fraud. And it is a matter of definition whether these people are actually lying, or whether they are just overrating their own abilities. In Norwegian there is an expression which says "He is such a good liar that he believes it himself". Some of these learners have not had any real world comments. They may have met a couple of native speakers, who are over the moon that they know anything at all, and immediately say that they are fluent. I have had that happen to me repeatedly in situations where I was a 1000 miles from being fluent. And as an experienced learner, you realize that the praize you are receiving is unjustified. But as an inexperienced learner, you may not know that, or you may crave the positive feed back so much, that you silence those little voices in your head which say that you may not be as good as they say. Also, in some cases, other people exaggerate your abilities. Moses McCormick for instance, strikes me as someone who is genuinely in love with languages. He may not be at C2 level in all of them, but neither does he claim to be. Other people put him on a pedestal, and tear him down from it. I do think however that there is no doubt that he has inspired a lot of people. So refute false claims, certainly. But there is no reason to be uncivil about it. We may keep in mind that we do not know anything about the state of mind of those who write in an internet forum. When we can see people, we can often see if they have a bad day, or if they are fragile in any way and can back down if we need to. On an internet forum, we do not know. In principle that should make us very careful, but on the contrary it looks like a lot of people feel that on an internet forum everything is allowed. On this forum we have very sharp moderators, who keep us on our toes, but that does not mean that we do not have an individual responsibility for what we say. For myself, 99% of the time, I could handle criticism, or take a fight, I am a big girl and can take care of myself. But on the 1% of days, where the stress level around me is at heart attack inducing levels, and I crawl up in the sofa and log on here for comfort, I would probably take it quite badly if I was treated with disrespect. I have been lucky in that this has never happened. For those who are 18 and log on here with all the enthusiasm of a puppy, and get a bucket of virtual cold water thrown over them, the experience may be traumatic. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 04 January 2012 at 9:59am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6867 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 39 of 72 04 January 2012 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well said Cristin. Couldn't have said it more eloquently myself.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6918 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 40 of 72 04 January 2012 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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With regard to a specific polyglot who has been banned here and who claimed to speak 80+ languages, for those of you who may not be aware, it has been proven now without a shadow of a doubt that this person is a fake. On another language site, this person continually posts paragraphs in multiple languages (along with the English) of the type (Please correct my Chinese, Please correct my Hebrew, Please correct my Latvian, etc.). First of all, no one seems to question how he is able to type all of these languages/characters/alphabets using his computer (answer: he is not) and even he evades this question.
Secondly, several people on the site have concluded that if you enter his English text (150-200 words) into Google Translate and translate it into the corresponding languages, the result is 100% identical to what he claims to have typed for people to correct. He has recently become a little more clever and changes a few random things and letters here or there (random because the changes make no sense). Some people spend a great deal of time correcting his/the computer's mistakes, but of course, since he is relying solely on the system, he continues to make the same ones. Those people who call users attention to the fact that his "translations" are identical to Google have their posts deleted and in some cases they are banned from the site. He then proceeds to delete all of his posts of his responses to them in order to remove any evidence of his past transgressions. The icing on the cake was when a user in the Latvian forum, instead of correcting his machine-generated text, asked him to translate a simple sentence into Latvian (something along the lines of "A white goat eats grass." in which the noun and adjective apparently require inflection based on the definiteness/indefiniteness, gender and case (accusative). Long story, after almost 20 unsuccessful attempts (even after people told him the gender, gave him hints, ex.: The black goat eats apples, or in Latvian a goat is x gender, or you have to use the accusative case here, etc.), he gave up in frustration and claimed he would just go back to writing things in the language and having people correct them because that is how he "learns" best. When questioned, he seemed to know what an indefinite noun is, know what the accusative case means and about plurals and inflections, but even when he had all the parts (words and endings), he was utterly incapable of putting the whole thing together. Most have completely given up on him and just let him claim anything he wants if it makes him happy. Many have stated that when speaking, he just rambles a bunch of incoherent things with no grammar and hopes that something will make sense (and of course he publicly admitted (on more than one ocassion) that on his former youtube channel that he would have things translated using Google and then read them off the computer screen). I used to think that he was interested in languages, but was just really bad at it. However, after seeing hundreds and hundreds of examples of him using a machine translation and passing it off as his own (which he will VEHEMENTLY deny of course and rant and rave to the site's administrator and claim discrimination until that person is removed), it is my firm believe that he has no real interest in learning anything and somehow gets some kind of satisfaction with making people believe he is writing in Russian, Czech, Chinese, etc. or perhaps he even, somehow, believes it himself. His is truly a bizarre situation, but to call him a polyglot is a disgrace. In conclusion, I do not believe it is ok to be hard on polyglots, but it is ok to be hard on those who are pretending to be polyglots (for fame, fortune and everything that goes with it...) Edited by translator2 on 04 January 2012 at 4:23pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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