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Meet UK’s most multi-lingual student. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5116 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 33 of 42 28 January 2013 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think what some find a bit frustrating is that you can spend x thousand hours on perfecting three languages,
and become absolutely amazing at them, and nobody cares. And then they see someone who spends half that time on learning 15 languages to A2, and they are considered super heroes. For most people outside our little nest of hard core language maniacs, " I speak a language" can be anything from A2 to C2, and the public at large simply count who has the highest number. And I am not commenting on this guy, who seems really good, I am just making a general observation. Nobody at home is impressed over the fact that my Spanish is really good (C2), but they are deeply in awe over the fact that I can speak a few random sentences (A2) in Russian. The world is an unfair place :-) I have no problem with this, there are a lot of things that are more unfair, but if someone feels it is not fair to not have acknowledgement for their work, I would learn a couple of the tougher languages (Russian, Japanese, Mandarin) to A2 and add it to the mix. You might find that learning them even just to A2 is also an achievement, thus increasing your respect for those who make a career out of it, and you will get some of the praise that you might not get for the one(s) you do study. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 28 January 2013 at 1:46pm 14 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 34 of 42 28 January 2013 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sounds quite common actually; in Israel there are many people that speak Russian along with Hebrew and English.
Sounds like a dancing-monkey reason to learn a language. I learned Russian because I like Russian. If I had only ever learned Germanic and Romance languges, would that not be an achievement? I just learn what I like. Edited by tarvos on 28 January 2013 at 5:30pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5510 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 35 of 42 07 June 2013 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Alex uploaded an interesting video on his channel all in Yiddish (with subtitles).
How to learn Yiddish 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4026 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 36 of 42 07 June 2013 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oxford University Mentioned: Heart swells with pride.
Joking aside, I think he's very impressive and his blog is great. Though his accent in Greek really is really good but doesn't quite...click. Also the language courses are tough so I'm not surprised he's great in those he is studying formally. Good for him. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 418brian Newbie Austria dageniuslab.com Joined 4114 days ago 9 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English | Message 37 of 42 08 June 2013 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Alex is great and legit, I met him at the Polyglot Conference in Budapest, also made a few videos with him too.
Maybe i should invite him to come on here to have a chat :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cod2 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4336 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes | Message 38 of 42 01 April 2015 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The main problem with these videos is that they don't show a person in a completely unscripted situation where they have no control over where the conversation goes.
Because that's what happens in real life. An old lady at the train station may just turn towards you and ask you if you could help her with the ticket machine. A checkout lady may start telling you about the latest promotion. A hotel receptionist may tell you that your room charge is going to be higher than expected because there is a 2% local tax levied by the government. A ticket collector may start berating you because your ticket is not valid in the train you have boarded. Only when you can handle situations such as these like a native adult (i.e. without just mumbling yes/no/thank you/sorry, and without asking the speaker to repeat what they said) are you fluent in a language. Edited by cod2 on 01 April 2015 at 10:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6485 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 39 of 42 02 April 2015 at 4:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Those three situations are actually not particularly taxing. If you are staying in hotels or taking trains in a country where one of your target languages spoken you will have probably had learnt the relevant vocabulary. The really disturbing about them is not the topics, but the fact that somebody is speaking to you and expect an answer - especially if it is a person who speaks at a native level and expects you to do the same. And a videotaped conversation with such a person will have one additional inbuilt stress factor, namely the fact that a camera is recording everything you say.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4489 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 40 of 42 02 April 2015 at 6:58am | IP Logged | |||||
Actually I would expect this sort of thing to come up on language exams much earlier, at say, A2/B1 level. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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