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Benny Lewis | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Anonymouser Newbie Antarctica Joined 4712 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes | Message 81 of 164 26 April 2012 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are you sure that it's the correct link, irishpolyglot? It doesn't work for me.
EDIT: I've just noticed the problem is one missing 't' in http. Edited by Anonymouser on 26 April 2012 at 1:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5051 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 82 of 164 26 April 2012 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's a link that works: Why Fluent in 3 Months FAQ
Edited by iguanamon on 26 April 2012 at 3:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Midnight Diglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4428 days ago 54 posts - 111 votes Speaks: Czech*, English | Message 83 of 164 26 April 2012 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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"I guess Mandarin "caught" him in a way that Czech and Hungarian did not."
Now that I thought of it again. I think the easy grammar and popularity of the language caught him. He apparently hit the wall when discovering how complex the grammar in Hungarian and Czech is. http://czechmandarin.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-difficult-can- czech-get.html I'm not saying Chinese is an easy language even after you beat those characters, but getting accustomed to the tones and some really weird consonant sounds is overcompensated by the grammar etc. It's like he got scared away contrary to his claim that there's no difficult language at all. I agree it's easier for someone who has deep interest in Finnish to learn it than let's say Indonesian or Spanish, but I don't think Benny can learn Hungarian actually. I really admire Steve for struggling with Czech on one of his videos and really trying hard and not just letting it go, because it's too damn difficult. And no I don't have the "my language is the most difficult one" attitude, but he contradicts himself on that one. And it's true that I don't know how fast will I learn Mandarin and it could take years (not minutes really) to achieve fluency, because I have no magic pills to chow down on. EDIT: So I've seen your video on the 2.5 months of learning Chinese and it's really great, but not everybody can just fly to the country where the language is spoken. Right? I'll have to rely on two restaurants and one gambling room to find people to practice with since I've decided to put hanzi off and concentrate on the speaking-listening first. (It's easier to learn read words you know how to produce). Kudos Edited by Midnight on 26 April 2012 at 5:41pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5422 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 84 of 164 27 April 2012 at 2:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Re Czech: http://www.fluentin3months.com/why-czech-isnt-as-hard-to-lea rn-as-you-think/
Re Hungarian: http://www.fluentin3months.com/hungarian-is-easy/ In both cases I conclude that both languages were incredibly manageable, and the scare tactics people had built around them were mostly just ego. Despite what you say I do see a very strong "my language is the most difficult one" attitude. All I care about is if I like the culture that speaks it enough to devote many hours to maintaining that language beyond what I learned to discover some of that culture initially. As it happens I like Chinese culture, so I'll be back in this part of the world many times and plan to meet up with Chinese people in other countries. THAT's why I'm continuing my studies, not some realization about its difficulty OR its complexity. Why on earth would I care about such nonsense? Am I PASSIONATE about the language or not - that's all that truly matters. Living in Prague was interesting, but not for me, so for nothing more than cultural reasons I decided not to keep up Czech. Same with my time in Budapest. On the other hand, most will agree that Tagalog would be among the easier languages to learn compared to pretty much anything else I took on since it had so much Spanish vocab and the grammar was quite manageable. But I'm also not maintaining it, since I don't prioritise living in the Philippines as much as I do living in France or Italy again some day, as well as other factors, none of which are linguistic. Glad you liked the video, but you do realize that people in China have the Internet too, right? Log on to italki, Livemocha, or countless other sites and you could spend your entire day speaking with dozens of people. This "I can't just fly to the country" excuse is a weak one I'm sure many people in this forum confirm doesn't stop them. In the end the majority of what I did to improve my Chinese didn't require me to even be in Taiwan. I don't travel to the country to learn the language - I learn the language to travel the country :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Midnight Diglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4428 days ago 54 posts - 111 votes Speaks: Czech*, English | Message 85 of 164 27 April 2012 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, yes, yes. Still can agree only half-way. I agree that the languages who are branded as difficult are considered that way, because everybody says so. Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai people are going to tell you their language is hard, because they were told so by lazybones who couldn't get past: Hello!! Thank you!! Lack of self-confidence can be also a major factor. It is case-by-case. I've actually never seen any Arab telling me their language was difficult, quite the contrary. "Arabic is easy." " You can learn it in a month". On the other hand, did you know the genitive of Zeus is Dia? I like the way you divided the words in root, prefixes and suffixes, but It's really not that easy. If I told you kuchař was the word for a cook. You'd probably think the verb is kuchat (from the German wor kochen). Well it's not. To cook is vařit and kuchat means to disembowel.
Nevermind. I think the positive approach you suggest is the best possible. Take care 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5748 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 86 of 164 27 April 2012 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
I've been waffling about going to China at the end of this year to "immerse myself" for 3-4 weeks. Now that may not be an option given my next work assignment. Your comment makes me feel a lot better about that. Bennie, thanks for your inspiring work! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6708 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 87 of 164 27 April 2012 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Article: Do Shortcuts Exist to Becoming an Expert
I like this guy's answer: "Three simple but powerful ways to become an expert: 1) lower the bar of expertise, so you only have to be better than the general population; 2) narrow the area of expertise, so instead of knowing everything about cocktail making, you just learn to make an incredible Old Fashioned; and 3) simplify your method of doing whatever you want to do, so you don’t have to learn 100 steps, just 5." 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 88 of 164 27 April 2012 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I think this deserves a separate thread somewhere...
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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