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Polyglots mimic talking parrots | ||
Tags: Youtube Polyglot | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5479 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 33 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
I am going on what I hear every day on the streets of Prague. As a result, this is going to go on forever, since I disagree with you. We should continue PMing until we reach an agreement or (at least) agree to disagree, otherwise this thread will get very long with our back-and-forth debates. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5852 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 34 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
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O.K. This is my last post in this thread for now.
I will not agree to disagree. If you are in the Czech Rep. at this very moment ask someone!!! "Mi se líbí to“ is incorrect The only people who say the above in Prague are foreigners. No native speaker would ever make a mistake like that.
Remember you are the one who claimed that I was not a native speaker. Or at least challenged my fluency. Edited by John Smith on 04 June 2010 at 11:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5479 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 35 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
I didn't challenge your origin or fluency, I said I was surprised you used "me", which you now agree was a mistake. Now that you have explained what you meant I fully understand it, and fully accept your heritage and your spoken fluency. Having said that, it shows that mistakes are easily made even by native speakers, so it should make it less surprising that a polyglot such as Torbyrne would make small mistakes too. It is only natural, and does not detract from his hard-won achievements as an impressive speaker of many languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5852 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 36 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||
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That's true. His achievements are remarkable.
I'm just trying to figure out the youtube polyglot secret formula. I think I'm close. Showmanship (talking fast, dazzling the audience) + Hard work (hours and hours of studying) + The God given ability to mimic (another person's pronunciation, intonation) = A genuine polyglot 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6513 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 37 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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For me the central point of this discussion is whether you can make other people believe that you know to speak a language just by learning 1) some phrases 2) a whole long passage in the language by heart. The fact that we are speaking about polyglots here is not central, because the same discussion is relevant for first time language learners. And one element in this discussion is what happens when you stray outside your store of prelearnt messages.
As Torbyrne rightly points out everybody has to use prelearned phrases. Even those who invent their own private languages have to quote themselves. The question is how big chunks people learn by heart and whether you can fool people by recording prelearned texts. And my answer is that precisely with polyglots this stunt would be extremely difficult to pull off - parroting for 10 minutes in X languages which you don't know must be a tremendous feat - and people who in other situations have proved that they can speak a language at any level from basic to good native fluency would not need to do it. They might have a plan for what they want to say, and that may include that they plan to say certain things. But you would be extremely vulnerable if you didn't ALSO speak the language in question. I doubt that an actor from Avatar or Lord of the Rings would be able to continue a conversation in an invented language beyond the readymade sentences in the manuscript. So it would be immediately obvious when that treshold had been crossed. The same with a tourist who has learnt to ask for a pivo or the toilet in a Slavic language. A simple supplementary question would throw that tourist totally off his or her feet. But some degree of confusion would be natural if you have a plan and that plan is disturbed, - not all people are born improvisors (otherwise we could all do standup comedy). So you simply can't conclude from a few errors that a person making a video can't speak a certain language. If you really had an impostor then you would either have an almost perfect performance OR a totally breakdown at the slightest disturbance. Edited by Iversen on 04 June 2010 at 11:53am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5479 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 38 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:48am | IP Logged | ||
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OK, that is back on topic now, which is good.
If we look at Luca and Torbyrne they both do have native-like accents in some of their languages. This may be a result of their hard work, but there may be something to the fact that some people can pick up accents well and some others never manage to at all. The showmanship "secret" of talking fast is something I am less convinced of. I don't think it is showmanship. It is very hard to speak a language quickly unless you know that language well. Simply put, the more comfortable you become with a language the quicker it can flow from your lips. So, I see their speed of speech not as a secret trick, but rather as an outcome of their mastery of their languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5479 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 39 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
I think that is a great point. It is the fact that people make natural errors and stumble a little that convinces us they are talking free-flow rather than just repeating a well rehearsed script. In fact, a few weeks ago I made a video where I spoke only in Czech, and I was very nervous and stumbling, and made lots of mistakes. So, it was a surprise to receive some PMs from a couple of native Czech speakers saying they were impressed BECAUSE of the mistakes (it showed I was free-flowing). Overall, I think we can all tell when somebody is reading from a script, or quoting a long speech from memory. The rhythm and intonation is just different. And as Iversen says here, there would be suspiciously few mistakes resulting from their polished rehersal. Edited by Splog on 04 June 2010 at 11:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5852 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 40 of 65 04 June 2010 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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You are right. This thread is not really about polyglots. It's about people who can almost achieve native like fluency. Be it in one languague or more.
What I was trying to point out was that these "savants" are almost excactly the same as "ordinary" language learners. What sets them appart is their amazing ability to mimic. When they are repeating something they sound like native speakers. When I said that they stumble when they have to make up a unique sentence I was trying to show that when these "savants" can't rely on what they have heard before they make mistakes just like "ordinary" language learners. I am not saying that they are fakes. I believe that they have the ability to remember thousands and thousands of phrases!!!!
Edited by John Smith on 04 June 2010 at 12:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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