Zwlth Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 5225 days ago 154 posts - 320 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, French, Persian, Greek
| Message 1 of 6 04 August 2010 at 5:44am | IP Logged |
Hello, I’ve been a lurker on this site for a very long time. I’ve finally decided to sign up so that I could write this post because I noticed that the Wikipedia article about Alexander Arguelles has been flagged as having numerous issues and so it might be deleted.
There was a post on this forum not long ago about how language learning was like the mental version of getting into good physical shape and maintaining it. So, being a polyglot would be like being a competitive athlete. Athletes are considered notable for their achievements, so shouldn’t polyglots be considered notable too?
I don’t know how to address this myself, and I don’t know how to address the links issues either because I’ve never written anything for Wikipedia. But, I figured there might be some people here who do know and who also feel that there should be more articles about polyglots, not fewer, and so they might want to help clean up the article. Actually, they seem to want it to be written from different points of view, so maybe working on this article could be a starting point for getting more articles up about other polyglots as well.
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5804 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 6 04 August 2010 at 1:55pm | IP Logged |
Here is the link. Wiki. Prof
A.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6918 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 3 of 6 04 August 2010 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
I think turning polyglots into pseudo-celebrities is kind of silly. Real polyglots are too busy studying to be worried about being famous.
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6202 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French
| Message 4 of 6 04 August 2010 at 5:17pm | IP Logged |
I have to say, reading that article, that I think it should be deleted. I guess if you really want it to stay, then you could focus on putting more stuff about his accomplishments, rather than his "monastic lifestyle", what languages he has studied, etc. Those things are not achievements, and if you read a Wikipedia article about a notable person, you will find that information about their personal life probably does not overshadow their accomplishments in that way. However, I know nothing about this person nor about what else he has achieved.
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5592 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French
| Message 5 of 6 04 August 2010 at 7:37pm | IP Logged |
I agree with anamsc. As for the professor's shadowing technique, it is not even
referred to in the main body of the article and only in the reference section as a link
to youtube. Although wikipedia is not the most reliable source of information by any
means, this particular entry does look like a kind of second rate blog that we might see
here on this site. Having that, just to be clear, I am talking about the article
itself, it's style of writing and overall lack of sbstantial content rather than anything
about the professor himself.
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 6 of 6 04 August 2010 at 11:05pm | IP Logged |
In my opinion the article should not be deleted, - there are articles about lots of other scholars and scientists, and I can't see why those who have chosen polyglottery should be less important than people who sing a songs other have written for them (just to mention one group of celebrities).
However it is a problem that the article isn't more specific about the methods he has proposed.
6 persons have voted this message useful
|