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Polyglots mimic talking parrots

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
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Fasulye
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 Message 9 of 65
03 June 2010 at 6:58pm | IP Logged 
Splog wrote:
One well known Youtube polyglot is currently in Prague, and I have had the good fortune of spending quite a lot of time with him.

He mentioned how frustrating it is to hear people asking what his "secret" is, as if there is some trick that can turn us all into polyglots.

As far as I can gather, he appears to rely on two "secrets":

- Devoting many years to learning languages
- Loving the process of learning just as much as the end result


Yes, this is well said. Polyglots are normally life-long language learners, so if you add up all the quantity of hard language learning work (which they enjoy!!!) then you get a polyglot.

I know that this special polyglot mentioned here spends many hours of regular language learning, most people wouldn't be willing or have no time to invest such an amount of input.

Polyglottery has nothing to do with miracles or abrakadabra and there are only very few exeptions of people who have the ability of learning languages without studying them.

No, polyglots have no "secret", so if you have a special hobby and you invest a lot of time and work in it, what's your secret then???

Fasulye



Edited by Fasulye on 03 June 2010 at 10:51pm

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goosefrabbas
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 Message 10 of 65
03 June 2010 at 7:08pm | IP Logged 
Splog wrote:
John Smith wrote:

I'm just trying to understand what makes youtube polyglots so good. It's more than hard work. It's a gift.


Instead of me having to guess who you are talking about, could you please be more specific about which people you mean? I only know of a very tiny number of polyglots on youtube, and none of them have shown the basis of their approach is mimicking as far as I can remember.


Perhaps this is in reference to Moses?
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Splog
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 Message 11 of 65
03 June 2010 at 7:50pm | IP Logged 
goosefrabbas wrote:
Splog wrote:
John Smith wrote:

I'm just trying to understand what makes youtube polyglots so good. It's more than hard work. It's a gift.


Instead of me having to guess who you are talking about, could you please be more specific about which people you mean? I only know of a very tiny number of polyglots on youtube, and none of them have shown the basis of their approach is mimicking as far as I can remember.


Perhaps this is in reference to Moses?



Maybe, but the OP said that he felt most polyglots were doing this parroting, not just one person. Moses is doing something quite different from most. Other than in Chinese (and to some extent Japanese) he is going for a great deal of breadth, touching on an impressive range of languages quite briefly, rather than going for greater depth in a smaller number of languages.

It may indeed be possible to do the "parrot like mimicry" of lots of phrases ffor a language you only visit briefly, but the deeper assimilation that most other polyglots seem to be going for is a very different process (primarily of hard work, over a very long time, and letting things sink in at their own pace rather than rushing for results).

Edited by Splog on 03 June 2010 at 7:53pm

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Volte
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 Message 12 of 65
03 June 2010 at 8:13pm | IP Logged 
Splog wrote:

It may indeed be possible to do the "parrot like mimicry" of lots of phrases ffor a language you only visit briefly, but the deeper assimilation that most other polyglots seem to be going for is a very different process (primarily of hard work, over a very long time, and letting things sink in at their own pace rather than rushing for results).


For people who can mimic well, they seem to be complimentary. One of my friends is amazing at parroting, and a fairly accomplished polyglot, but hard work and lots of time are still the core of what he does, despite his ability to perfectly repeat sentences in languages he's hearing for the first time, and his high recall rate (not perfect) of those sentences even months later.
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Fasulye
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 Message 13 of 65
03 June 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged 
Splog wrote:

Maybe, but the OP said that he felt most polyglots were doing this parroting, not just one person. Moses is doing something quite different from most. Other than in Chinese (and to some extent Japanese) he is going for a great deal of breadth, touching on an impressive range of languages quite briefly, rather than going for greater depth in a smaller number of languages.


Yes, Moses has a very different approach from those (You Tube) polyglots I am familiar with (including myself). I have the impression that he - besides in his key languages Mandarin, Taiwanese and Japanese - wants to get an overview over a wide range of languages. So he studies a new language very intensively (many hours a day) for a rather short period of time, makes a video about it and gets some language practise by using the new language in chatrooms. And then he moves on to the next language.

He could not do "polyglot skyping" on Skype with other polyglots.

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 03 June 2010 at 10:29pm

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Derian
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 Message 14 of 65
03 June 2010 at 9:07pm | IP Logged 
I think the thread starter just wanted to say that there are SOME people who MAKE YOUTUBE VIDEOS where they CLAIM to be polyglots, BUT AREN'T really, because they DON'T KNOW the languages they claim to know WELL ENOUGH, and they can be exposed when they're made to say something in a given language SPONTANEOUSLY, which reveals their LACK OF COMPETENCE in that language.


Otherwise, the threadstarter would claim that people in general don't have the capacity to be polilingual and are only capable of parrotting sentences learned by heart. This is obviously nonsense.

Edited by Derian on 04 June 2010 at 11:45am

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Fasulye
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 Message 15 of 65
03 June 2010 at 9:19pm | IP Logged 
John Smith wrote:
They aren't flawless though. I was wondering has anyone else noticed that they sound perfect for a few seconds at a time only?????

I should get to my point. lol. It seems to me that most of the polyglots who post videos of themselves are people who can perfectly repeat stuff that they have heard once before. When surprised or placed in a situation that requires them to actually use the language. Not mimic what they have heard before... but actually construct a sentence out of thin air... they stumble..


I have spoken with three You Tube polyglots on Skype. Like normal people they have different language levels in different languages. But we have fluent conversations on Skype - which are a lot of fun, by the way. No one of those I talked with, speaks unnaturally or presents only phrases learned by heart.

So, I see no evidence of this phenomenon, which you describe.

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 03 June 2010 at 9:32pm

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Splog
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 Message 16 of 65
03 June 2010 at 9:54pm | IP Logged 
Derian wrote:
I think the thread starter just wanted to say that there are SOME people who MAKE YOUTUBE VIDEOS where they CLAIM to be polyglots, BUT AREN'T really, because they DON'T KNOW the languages they claim to know WELL ENOUGH, and they can be exposed when they're made to say something in a given language SPONTANEOUSLY, which reveals their LACK OF COMPETENCE in that language.


I don't see how you got any of that from the OP's original post. Quite the opposite, I would say. The OP seems to be praising these youtube polyglots for remarkable achievements and feels the "secret" to those achievements may be a facility with mimicry. I, on the other hand, believe it comes down to passion and hard work.

Your own interpretation seems to be focused on trying to expose potentially unfounded claims of competence, which is an entirely different matter.


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