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How do polyglots do it?

  Tags: Polyglot
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
159 messages over 20 pages: 13 4 5 6 7 ... 2 ... 19 20 Next >>
Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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 Message 9 of 159
06 January 2014 at 2:26am | IP Logged 
And why assume that "Youtube polyglots" are incapable of having conversations? Yeah, many of them show only the best, but just think of how much any painter/writer/musician throws away. Think of how the best athletes can fail at a crucial moment (and how many non-crucial failures are forgiven and forgotten). Humans are not robots. This would be boring, really.

Not to mention that you don't need to be C1 to have meaningful conversations, that related languages give you a discount and that speaking is just one of the many great things you can do in your language.
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s_allard
Triglot
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Canada
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 Message 10 of 159
06 January 2014 at 6:11am | IP Logged 
Those who have watched the video may have noticed that in the French part, the young man mentions that he had
spent two or three weeks in France speaking French. (I should mention in passing that the French in itself is not
bad but it's not a demonstration of conversational French). I mention this detail about practicing the language in
the country because it is a basic fact of language learning that massive exposure, best of all by immersion, is
necessary to achieve high proficiency. There is no wonder that most of the well-known polyglots live in Europe
where one can drive a few hours and be in a different language or even practice the language easily in one's city.
One need only look at the real polyglots like Luca, Richard and even Steve Kaufmann who have demonstrated
conversational skills for all to see. They have all "lived" in their best languges. And then the ultimate immersion
polyglot has to be Benny.
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s_allard
Triglot
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Canada
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Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
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 Message 11 of 159
06 January 2014 at 7:54am | IP Logged 
Lest I be called the eternal partypooper, here is a multilingual telephone intervew with polyglot Suzanna Zaraysky
Interview
Here's a real polyglot doing a great job and I raise my hat to her. As for the talking heads, maybe they have great
conversational skills in all those languages; I just don't see them.
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 12 of 159
06 January 2014 at 10:19am | IP Logged 
I am glad we can all judge so well on short snippets of video. By the way, there is a
video of Richard and Tim speaking French together. There are many languages you could
doubt Tim in, but French is the last of them.

I resent it when people think I'm a showoff because I have videos on Youtube talking in
language XYZ because that is basically one minor aspect of the whole polyglot thing.

Edited by tarvos on 06 January 2014 at 10:20am

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s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
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2704 posts - 5425 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 13 of 159
06 January 2014 at 3:57pm | IP Logged 
It's funny how people who claim to master English like a native consistently misundertand what I write. I try to
write clearly but sometimes I doubt whether my written English is good enough. Is my grammar that bad or my
vocabulary so esoteric?

Did I speak of anybody being a showoff or of doubting anybody's skills? Let me try to restate in simple terms
what I said.

It seems to me that if a video does not show a polyglot having a conversation, we cannot judge that person's
conversational skills. In the video in question, do we see Tim having a conversation in any of the 20 languages?
No. Well, how are we supposed to assess his conversational skills?

It's not a question of doubting Tim's skills in French. Quite the contrary, here is what I said: "(I should mention in
passing that the French in itself is not bad but it's not a demonstration of conversational French)." Plus I
explicitly referred to the fact that Tim had spent a few weeks practicing French in France. I'm sure that
did wonders for his conversational French. I'm not doubting Tim's French. It's good for what it is, but it's not
conversational French in the video. But, of course, if there is a video of Tim having a conversation in French, we
can then make a better assessment. Are there such videos of Tim in Hausa, Wolof or any of the other languages?

But let's look at the big picture. Can we make a CEFR assessment of a person's language skills based on a "few
snippets of video." ? Can we judge Tim's oral comprehension, writing or reading skills from what we see? I think
not.

As I said in my very first post, I do not wish to diminish the impressive achievements of this young man. But let's
recognize the video for what it is: 20 tiny examples of a young man talking in various languages to a camera.
Nothing more, nothing less.

So, what's the problem, other than my faulty English? If you want us to judge your conversational skills, show us
a conversation. Is it that complicated?

Edited by s_allard on 06 January 2014 at 4:25pm

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4467 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 14 of 159
06 January 2014 at 4:25pm | IP Logged 
"let's not judge him, but then implicitly hand out sneers anyway".

Who cares what we should take it as? I thought that was my prerogative to decide?



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culebrilla
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United States
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 Message 15 of 159
06 January 2014 at 4:46pm | IP Logged 
And you are not the only person who has the prerogative to decide what you think. You form your options, I form my opinions, Allard forms his, and so on.

It seems that you are judging Allard's posts to be "sneering" when I didn't see anything of the sort. If you don't shower anybody with a short video in any language with adoration it seems that you get beat down. Not everybody is so easily impressed.

Chill out dude.

Edit: to decide what *they* think.

Edited by culebrilla on 06 January 2014 at 4:55pm

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s_allard
Triglot
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Canada
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Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 16 of 159
06 January 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged 
After rereading the OP carefully, I've come to the conclusion that the goal is really to be able to make a video
similar to the one mentioned and not to actually speak many languages. This is actually an interesting challenge
that I find quite intriguing.

Like many of the regulars here at HTLAL, I tend to emphasize the enormous undertaking that is learning a new
language. We tend to measure learning a language in thousands of hours.

But suppose all we want to do is speak for 30 seconds in the language. No reading, no writing, no oral
comprehension, no conversation, just talking with decent accent to a camera.

I'm not being facetious and I'm certainly not sneering at anybody. I kind of like the idea of just learning the strict
minimum not even to get by in real life but just to broadcast to the world.

The reason I find this idea interesting is that I have always been intrigued by question of what is the minimum
number of words that one needs to speak a language. I've said in the past that for languages like English, French
and Spanish, something in the area of 300-500 words is all you need to get going. The poop usually hits the fan
when I say this but let's assume that this is true. So, we set out to learn the very core elements of 10 languages.
That would be around 5000 words. That doesn't seem like a huge number. How long would it take to learn that?

This may resemble what Benny the Irish Polyglot is doing, but I think it is even simpler. You wouldn't have to do
any galavanting around the world. Someone who has lots of time and a good ear could probably learn enough of
a language in 6-8 weeks, if not less for related languages. So you could probably make that video after a year
and a half of systematic study. Not bad. I might even have a go at it myself in a TAC.

Edited by s_allard on 06 January 2014 at 5:21pm



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