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Were YouTube polyglots a fad?

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
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albysky
Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4170 days ago
287 posts - 393 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English, German

 
 Message 25 of 58
09 September 2014 at 3:12pm | IP Logged 
I also think that Tim Donner was just a huge marketing success story . He may have known some of his
languages well but he has been above all very skilled at selling himself to the media . 20 languages in 3 or
4 years , that s a nonsense to everyone who has even the vaguest idea of what learning a language means
, yet this is also what "laymen"are impressed by . Luca , Richard and Steve are for sure the real deal.
4 persons have voted this message useful



Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4035 days ago
544 posts - 1141 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 26 of 58
09 September 2014 at 6:21pm | IP Logged 
albysky wrote:
I also think that Tim Donner was just a huge marketing success story . He may have known some of his
languages well but he has been above all very skilled at selling himself to the media . 20 languages in 3 or
4 years , that s a nonsense to everyone who has even the vaguest idea of what learning a language means
, yet this is also what "laymen"are impressed by . Luca , Richard and Steve are for sure the real deal.

Marketing? His video title says 'practicing' and in the video he says that he knows the languages to 'varying degrees', I doubt he had the faintest idea about marketing or even trying to make the video as popular as it is.
4 persons have voted this message useful



sillygoose1
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4418 days ago
566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 27 of 58
09 September 2014 at 6:57pm | IP Logged 
Henkkles wrote:
albysky wrote:
I also think that Tim Donner was just a huge marketing success story . He may have known some of his
languages well but he has been above all very skilled at selling himself to the media . 20 languages in 3 or
4 years , that s a nonsense to everyone who has even the vaguest idea of what learning a language means
, yet this is also what "laymen"are impressed by . Luca , Richard and Steve are for sure the real deal.

Marketing? His video title says 'practicing' and in the video he says that he knows the languages to 'varying degrees', I doubt he had the faintest idea about marketing or even trying to make the video as popular as it is.


Not to nitpick, but when he first released the video it was "speaks" and he changed it to "practices" after his interviews.

1 person has voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 4912 days ago
1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 28 of 58
09 September 2014 at 7:16pm | IP Logged 
sillygoose1 wrote:

Not to nitpick, but when he first released the video it was "speaks" and he changed it to "practices" after his interviews.

You say that like it's a bad thing. I think whatever backlash there's been towards him has grounded him more and he's learned to carefully measure his words when it comes to describing his abilities. That's a good thing, IMO.

R.
==
6 persons have voted this message useful



Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4035 days ago
544 posts - 1141 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 29 of 58
09 September 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged 
sillygoose1 wrote:
Henkkles wrote:
albysky wrote:
I also think that Tim Donner was just a huge marketing success story . He may have known some of his
languages well but he has been above all very skilled at selling himself to the media . 20 languages in 3 or
4 years , that s a nonsense to everyone who has even the vaguest idea of what learning a language means
, yet this is also what "laymen"are impressed by . Luca , Richard and Steve are for sure the real deal.

Marketing? His video title says 'practicing' and in the video he says that he knows the languages to 'varying degrees', I doubt he had the faintest idea about marketing or even trying to make the video as popular as it is.


Not to nitpick, but when he first released the video it was "speaks" and he changed it to "practices" after his interviews.

Well technically he wasn't incorrect in saying that since he did speak them in the video, and even had the decency to edit it when he noticed people were taking it the wrong way. I don't know about you others but I can't smell any marketing in there, doing so seems sort of cynical to me.

Or it could be that I'm wrong and he's a marketing genius.
5 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6379 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 30 of 58
10 September 2014 at 1:10am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
Looking at talking heads is in itself a poor way of using a visual medium, and for learning purposes I prefer written materials rather than something sequential where you have to watch a talking head for ten minutes to get the information a graphical representation with written comments could have given you in thirty seconds.

I totally agree, but it does seem that many prefer watching videos to reading, maybe especially when it's in one's native language.
1 person has voted this message useful



YnEoS
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4036 days ago
472 posts - 893 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 31 of 58
10 September 2014 at 2:23am | IP Logged 
Generally my tolerance for talking head videos is usually no longer than 5 minutes, and only if I really enjoy the personality of the person talking. Longer than that and some sort of additional visuals are necessary to be a useful resource.

I always thought Professor Arguelles's course reviews where he narrated while turning through the course to show what it was like were a nice example of making more useful language videos, though he probably could've used some editing as well.

Edited by YnEoS on 10 September 2014 at 2:24am
1 person has voted this message useful



Wulfgar
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4453 days ago
404 posts - 791 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 32 of 58
10 September 2014 at 6:14am | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
That's because they are real. Excellent in fact.

All of them?


2 persons have voted this message useful



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