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Moses McCormick hate? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5429 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 33 of 41 30 July 2010 at 12:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I had the pleasure to talk to Moses several times and he definitely doesn't deserve this abuse, especially since he gives such encouragement and is a genuinely nice guy.
But being in the public light will always get you negativity. It's how you know you've made it :) If I pasted in some messages people spam me with (since all manners of whackos end up on my site / youtube channel), it would remind Moses that he's not alone! Khatzumoto also tells me that he gets silly messages from people. I've definitely learned to grow thick skin in the last year. Random e-mails and stupid comments on my blog don't even make me flinch any more. I am actually at the stage now where I thoroughly enjoy being torn to pieces by the commenters on Steve Kaufmann's blog as well as in his LingQ forum. When you learn to go with the flow it can actually be entertaining! Posts on this forum and on sites I genuinely care about however still get on my nerves. If I ever see something said against Moses or any other respectable language learner, you can bet I'll jump in to defend them. Any defence someone else has given on my behalf has made me feel twice as good as the original insult ever could make me feel bad. So in future, if you see these messages said against him - give him encouragement to balance it out :) But try not to respond to the crappy comments. That's what they want. I have found my stress levels go down dramatically when I apply a "don't feed the trolls" policy! I am sure Moses knows that negative messages like that just means that he really is reaching a wide audience. If it includes complete gobshites, then it will also include more people that need to hear his message. "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby 11 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6745 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 34 of 41 30 July 2010 at 2:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think Moses was ever really trying to get famous on You Tube. If his original motivation for posting his videos was to say 'Hey, look, everyone! I can speak X languages! Isn't it great?' then I could understand losing some respect for him or calling him a fraud or whatever. But my understanding is that at first he just wanted to get feedback on his languages in order to improve. It was part of his language learning strategy, along with chat rooms and seeking native speakers and all that. He was humble about his abilities from the beginning. Then, people who saw his videos started asking him how he accomplished that, so he took a lot of his time to respond generously to people's questions. Even on this forum, in the thread dedicated to him, he took the time to write a detailed and friendly reply to every single post. It was his generosity, not his desire to be seen as some kind of authority, that prompted him to share his learning methods on YouTube upon request. Sure, he may not be the most eloquent and concise speaker, his ways of learning might not be suited to other people, and his level in each of his languages might not qualify him as a polyglot (although I really can't see how anyone can make this argument!) - but these are moot points, because he never even made these claims in the first place. He himself is hesitant to say 'I can speak X languages', he is always completely honest about his abilities, and he's just sharing (upon request) the methods that worked for HIM rather than taking it upon himself to be the purveyor of some 'Moses McCormick Method'.
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| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5169 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 35 of 41 31 July 2010 at 12:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Regarding his video quality putting people off, I personally think I would ramble nearly as much as he can on his more personal videos (ones about opinions and experiences, not lessons) if not for me noticeably constantly forgetting what I'm going to say and pausing. Therefore in my videos I practise and record them several times, with at least two completed run-throughs, before selecting the best segments to put into the videos. I do this: 1) because I don't like the pauses I make and I don't like to show them to the world, 2) because it makes my videos run smoother.
A massive downside is that this does mean that a 9-minute long video can take upwards of an hour to make and edit. Moses has made well over 500 videos with a job and time already set aside to learn his languages and trawl through comments each day. He's therefore not going to put the time in to edit each video and prepare, except obviously with his teaching videos. I don't know if other video uploaders (I'm thinking in particular of Richard, Anthony, Cody and Professor Arguelles) also use notes and prepare rigorously for each video like I do. I suspect that to be the case on varying levels. Edited by PaulLambeth on 31 July 2010 at 12:52am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| bramsterdam Bilingual Hexaglot Senior Member NetherlandsRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5223 days ago 106 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Dutch, French*, English*, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 36 of 41 02 August 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree here, I don´t see how speaking a few sentences qualifies you as being able to speak the language. Like you, for me quality is better than quantity. If you are fluent in 2 languages that´s much better than being able to "speak" or in his case say 5-6 sentences in 12 languages.
Also agree. From what I´ve seen it also seems like in his videos he does reviews about books or methods, or sometimes advice, way more than actually ever speaking a language or studying one, (or like you said trying to teach one)... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cesare M. Senior Member Canada youtube.com/user/CheRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4966 days ago 99 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English* | Message 37 of 41 28 November 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Moses is repeating himself because he is PRACTICING. You are being a hater writing what you have wrote so stop being one and all of us in this forum will be happy. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6168 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 38 of 41 28 November 2010 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you're totally flabbergasted by anything other than praise, I can enlighten you
somewhat. It's because: A) Mostly bad accents and pronunciation in most of his languages. (Due of course to lack of time to be able to learn them due to lack of wanting to). Having some accent is expected but plain old bad pronunciation is not. (At least amongst language enthusiast to strive for good pronunciation) B) Almost all his languages he knows to a low intermediate level which comes out sounding bad whenever he speaks them by way of lack of knowledge of syntax, grammar, idiomatics and vocabulary and he speaks them in a strange whispery voice, repeating sentences, and using simple vocabulary and phrases. He has no interest in ever pursuing the individual language to a high level where speaking becomes pleasant and easy. C) Lots of people who have never learnt a language think he's a genius in every language and shower him with praise. (Not his fault of course) D) He teaches languages that he doesn't know well. (If people learn from him, great, but some people think it's silly to learn from someone not much better than you) E) He often rambles in videos and makes low quality videos without much real content and value. F) To put it metaphorically: People feel that it is better and more valuable to play three or four instruments expertly and beautifully than to play twenty instruments badly. No one wants to listen to bad playing. Even if the second man puts in many hours, it would be ludicrous to people who respect the fine art of each instrument if people praised him for his instrument playing abilities. Especially if he made a little money out of it on the side and taught other people to play instruments. G) Anything other than praise is labelled as bashing and hating which is simply not the case. (Not his fault of course) I personally think he's a good guy but that he is showered with a ridiculous amount of praise from language newbies who have no respect for the depth and width of an individual language. He takes it nonchalantly though which is cool. Peace and respect to him for having such a passion. If he wants to take the path he is taking, that's totally fine. I don't agree with the harsh and mean comments some people throw at him like in your examples, just for doing what he likes to do. I don't think such comments are of any use for anyone. Finally, for anyone who puts themselves out there, I am reminded of this quote. "To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing" Edited by zerothinking on 28 November 2010 at 7:45pm 29 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| slymie Tetraglot Groupie China Joined 5024 days ago 81 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English, Macedonian Studies: French, Mandarin, Greek Studies: Shanghainese, Uyghur, Russian | Message 39 of 41 06 December 2010 at 11:06am | IP Logged | |||||
I think a big reason why people hate him is as you said above, people who see the videos and have no idea how bad his accent and grammar is (no offense Moses), praise him and say things like 'wow you sound just like a native Russian' when really he is nowhere near a native accent, at least in any of our languages that cross over. I think a good number of us, are aiming for fluency with exceptional accents in x target languages, and to see someone studying xx languages but only to reach the point they can introduce themselves and answer the most commonly asked questions, yet getting so much publicity and praise annoying. Thus the hate. The English polyglot with the shaved head who's name escapes me, for comparison, is really amazing. My first language is Macedonian and when I heard him speak it, it was creepy he could get the accent so well for someone who speaks so many languages. Luca also is very good and is gifted with accents. Others, or even most other youtube polyglots I've heard sound very far from native accent when they speak. Its gimic to speak like this anyways, most will not want to continue a conversation with you if they have to strain to understand you and listen to a horrible accent and grammar. To add to the above metaphor, its like learning to play one song on 20 instruments. You will impress the average child with your talent, but you will not gain the respect of other musicians and no conductor will ask you to join his orchestra. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6471 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 40 of 41 07 December 2010 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
WHY should he make their messages clear and concise? As far as I know, Moses videos are FREE and LEGAL. If you like them, watch them. If you don't like them, don't watch them. It's that easy. 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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