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How do polyglots do it? | ||
Tags: Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3786 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes  Speaks: Spanish | Message 17 of 159 06 January 2014 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dude, it actually isn't that hard. Seriously, somebody just practice a short video with 20 seconds with each language and 10 languages and watch the showering of compliments commence. I'm NOT saying that the people that post these videos do NOT have a high level, but it would be relatively easy to trick people if that was your goal. Besides, most posters on youtube do not know 10 languages and will just think you are amazing--because they don't know what you are saying! Myself, I don't know what a good accent in Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, or any of the roughly 6,998 living languages that I don't speak.
Edit: you wouldn't need a year and a half of study. You just would have to memorize a few lines really well and practice them. I recall one time my relative told me something in our family language and I repeated it to another relative. Without even knowing the language I got the message passed by with adequate accent. And it was an adequate accent because I was understood. What do you know, huh. Edited by culebrilla on 06 January 2014 at 5:22pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3910 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 18 of 159 06 January 2014 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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If the goal is just to produce a youtube video, one could speak some smalltalk
by studying Pimsleur only, I guess 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5219 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 19 of 159 07 January 2014 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||
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In all fairness to Tim, I think he has done more than just memorized some lines for the camera. Some of his
languages are better learned than others, but he put a lot of work into all this. At the same time, I think that even Tim does not claim to "speak" 20 languages. The word speak is very elastic indeed. What is true is that the media go hog wild over this kind of story, especially in North America where multilingualism is so rare. When you add the cuteness factor of young age, this makes for a great story. There're also a couple of Youtube videos of a little child learning seven languages simultaneously. On the other hand, I'm not sure that there would be the same interest in a retired person claiming to speak 20 languages. But I may be wrong because there's a lot of press about learning languages to ward off Alzheimer's. Edited by s_allard on 07 January 2014 at 1:55am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4128 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 20 of 159 07 January 2014 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
http://youtu.be/cKlWBKhe2rs I feel that this is the only good interview with Tim. The interviewer actually seems to have done a little research before going into it and asks questions that don't make Tim seem like a super genius. The little interviews in Chinese, French and Russian seem pretty basic, but, not to beat a dead horse, an interview that short isn't really a good judge of his skill anyway. In this video he says that he only speaks English, has 4 or 5 languages he's very comfortable in (he doesn't say fluent or proficient, just comfortable) and 2 3 or 4 more that he's very serious about. Honestly though, he's only been studying languages since he was 13 (about 4 years total). By the time he's in his mid 20, he'll definitely speak a few of those languages at a very high level and then he'll also know a bit of a bunch of other languages, which he will probably not use professionally, but what ever floats his boat. He seems to enjoy himself. I believe he's said elsewhere that sometimes he spends up to 8 hours a day studying languages (keep in mind he does have regular school on top of this), and that's all I'm really jealous of. Most days I only get around 2-6 hours of French if I can. 2 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 21 of 159 07 January 2014 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5219 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 22 of 159 07 January 2014 at 7:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I really love those videos where we see the polyglots speaking to real people. This is when we get to see them really
communicating and interacting. For me this is the essence of speaking a language. There are many of these videos. Here is one of my favourites with the masters Luca and Richard. Luca and Richard in Moscow 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4798 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 23 of 159 07 January 2014 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would like to add one more thought that came to me during reading the first page. A valid and inspirtional point raised there: It is harder to maintain more languages.
It is very true, especially if some of your target languages are not among the major large four or five ones. This can easily happen even if you choose to learn "only" two or three languages but you are sure to encounter this sort of issue if you want to become a polyglot. When it comes to the middle and smaller sized languages, there are fewer tools for learners and it is harder to get the native input unless you go to the country (and for most learners and speakers of ten or so languages, I don't think it is possible to visit a country for each of it every two or three years). You don't have a Swedish library in ever larger city, it is harder to get Dutch DVDs, you don't have practice conversational clubs of Hungarian learners. So, one of the important pieces of advice by prof.Arguelles was to learn the trio English,French and German first (yeah, those who have already got some of those as natives are at advantage) to get access to many more learning sources. And from my experience, it can help with finding the other things as well (for example, there are Swedish media eshops in Germany which are much more foreign customer friendly than the shops located in Sweden). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 24 of 159 08 January 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Polyglots do it with a French tickler and Spanish fly. Edited by luke on 08 January 2014 at 3:08am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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