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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 57 of 65 06 June 2010 at 10:24am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think it takes much guessing, given the way this thread has rolled out. Yes, Torbyrne is in Prague at the moment. After spending many hours with him, I am impressed with both his abilities and his humility. Most importantly, it has become even more clear to me that polyglots do not have any "secret sauce" they apply to language learning, other than passion and hard work sustained over many years. Edited by Splog on 06 June 2010 at 12:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Torbyrne Super Polyglot Senior Member Macedonia SpeakingFluently.com Joined 5905 days ago 126 posts - 721 votes Speaks: French, English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Catalan, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian Studies: Sign Language, Toki Pona, Albanian, Polish, Bulgarian, TurkishA1, Esperanto, Romanian, Danish, Mandarin, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Latvian, Estonian | Message 58 of 65 06 June 2010 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is quite separate from the discussion at hand and your points are an over simplification of what is a big topic. We tend to use the term "near native level" speaker to describe people with advanced fluency and "native-like abilities" in a language. This means that the non-native has a level in the language whereby he/she can sound almost native. Therein lies the difference. I have already pointed out that natives and non-natives use patterns to speak anyway. This is how we learn language at any stage of development, so I fail to see your point. The question is simply the amount of patterns a native or non-native knows and how they can be manipulated. If you look into native language acquisition you will see that there are definitely shades of grey there too. It is certainly not as clear cut as you appear to believe. Equally the ability of someone to get into the "soul" of a language (even natives...shock horror!) is definitely also a lot more complex than you describe. You are certainly muddying the waters of this discussion with these additional points. What you are now discussing is something people spend years researching. We are talking about first language acquisition here as opposed to foreign language acquisition. This is most definitely a different subject and does not belong in a thread discussing YouTube polyglots and their ability to "fake" language fluency (which is in effect what you posted under the guise of your original title). You are therefore making the subject matter too broad for sensible and meaningful discussion. 5 persons have 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 59 of 65 06 June 2010 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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^^ No I'm not. The thread discussion is about how YouTube polyglots "fake" native like fluency! How is it that they manage to sound like a native for extended periods of time?
Maybe I am confusing polyglots with savants??? I always thought that a polyglot was someone who was able to learn a language to native like fluency. Not a person who has an average knowledge of lots of languages. I asked the question after watching luka. For extended periods of time in his youtube video I mistook him for a native speaker of English!!! Clearly he has something "ordinary" language learners lack. An ability to sound like a native. 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 60 of 65 06 June 2010 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The reason I want to find out luka's "secret" is because I want to be tri lingual. I want Spanish to give me the same feeling I get when I speak English and Czech. I want to be a native speaker of Spanish.
However... No matter how much I study Spanish it still feels like a foreign language... I continue to make mistakes a native speaker would never make.... I don't feel what a native speakers feels when they say something. The nuances and subtleties of the language are beyond my reach. Being bilingual has allowed me to see what real knowledge of a language feels like. At the moment I feel as though I'm chasing my shadow. A dream I will never catch. Edited by John Smith on 06 June 2010 at 12:44pm 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 61 of 65 06 June 2010 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Luca says in his own videos there isn't a single secret, it just comes down to lots of varied work over a long period. In his latest video he reveals that he starts with Assimil, after which every day he does output (writing and speaking) in the mornings, followed by input (listening and reading) later in the day. After two years of doing this for German he felt he was fluent, but Chinese is taking longer. Luca does have the advantage of already being able to speak many languages, and we hear often that the more languages you know the easier it gets. So, maybe most of us would need to put in more effort on each language. Alternatively, there could be the possibility that polyglots are genetically different from mere humans, in which case there would be no point in asking what their secret is, since we could never replicate it. This leaves is with two options: 1: Give up all hope, because we have different genetics and so could never achieve their lofty heights 2: Believe them that it is simply a matter of passion and years of hard work, and so put in a few hours a day for a few years. Remember, absolute mastery of anything takes 10,000 hours of hard work according to some authorities. In short, three hours a day of focused input and output in Spanish, every day for 10 years would, I am sure, give you excellent results. I expect that as you get more languages under your belt that 10,000 hours requirement would reduce. 4 persons have 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 62 of 65 07 June 2010 at 2:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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I disagree. You can never become a native speaker once you have passed a certain age. I will never be a native speaker of Spanish. Even if I spend twelve hours a day using Spanish for the next ten years...
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 63 of 65 07 June 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged | |||||
It is debatable what this thread is about. John Smith's first post has at least been read in such a way that a number of 'Youtube polyglots' came under suspicion of being parrots who didn't really know their languages - and that has been refuted in the cases we have discussed. The passage I have quoted about is much less controversial. Now the focus seems to be on finding out what distinguishes some polyglots with nearnative skills from other language learners, including polyglots, who haven't been able to achieve nearnative skills. The ugly word 'parroting' now becomes the ability to absorb the language of native speakers quickly and precisely so that you become almost indistinguishable from such speakers. In other words the suspicion that the Youtube polyglots might use their imitative skills to cover a certain lack of competence in improvised speech has been dropped. And we can start speculating about the nature and limits of these imitative powers. And here I must admit that I haven't quite arrived at any rockbottom solid conclusion yet. It is clear that some persons are expert at remembering and applying the pronunciation of native speakers, and that others (or the same) persons also remember phrase patterns and idioms. Unless you find out what native speakers do you can't get to sound like them, that's simple logic. But this doesn't mean that you are limited to saying things that you have heard natives say. So the question is whether the last step towards near-nativeness is achieved by storing a lot of quotes WITH their pronunciation or by finetuning your own inbuilt speech machine. If this is the case then imitative prowess isn't the same thing as the eidetic memory of some savants (and maybe small children). Eidetic memory (insofar it exists) is a type of memory that gives extremely detailed recollections precisely because it isn't hampered by our normal incessant summarizing, commenting and associative thought processes. My guess is that the gradual polishing of your own speech producing mechanism is the better explanation, but I can't exclude number one, the store of memories which somehow influence every utterance from the person. Edited by Iversen on 07 June 2010 at 1:33pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mcjon77 Senior Member United States Joined 6421 days ago 193 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), French | Message 64 of 65 09 June 2010 at 4:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Other than random posts on this forum, I have NEVER seen a requirement for a polyglot to speak languages at a "native like fluency". I have certainly never seen that definition used in any scholarly text. Here is another way to consider it. You have said that no one can learn a language as an adult to native like fluency. SOME (but not all) linguists agree with you. If you are correct, and no one can learn a language as an adult to "native like fluency", and a polyglot (by your definition) is a person who is able to speak multiple languages at a "native like fluency", then by your own definition polyglots do not exist! It seems highly unlikely that someone would create this term to describe people that do not exist. No, polyglots are not necessarily folks who speak a language with a "native like fluency". At the same time, they are (in my opinion) not simply people who have "average knowledge of lots of languages", as you put it. Besides, what is "average knowledge" of a language? There is a HUGE (and somewhat quantafiable) gap between my idea of "average knowledge" of a language and "native like fluency". Edited by mcjon77 on 09 June 2010 at 4:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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