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Daniel Tammit and Icelandic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6721 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 14 01 March 2007 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Video clip of Daniel Tammit learning Icelandic (after a short commercial) Unfortunately, doesn't show a lot of detail about how much he actually learned:
Learning Icelandic in a week Edited by translator2 on 01 March 2007 at 8:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6505 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 2 of 14 02 March 2007 at 3:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have seen a more comprehensive version of the program about Daniel Tammit earlier (and also commented briefly on it on this forum). For us who are interested in languages it is a pity that the program doesn't go into more details about this Icelandic experiment, but it seems that the main factor in Daniel's learning process - besides staying in Iceland - has been his unlimited and one-to-one access to a native speaker. The short clip does show that he used notes, but unfortunately not which kind of notes. To me it does invoke the memory of the great Mezzofanti, who also learnt his languages from people around him rather from books.
I had a short stab at Icelandic last fall, but had to put it aside for other projects (Portuguese and Greek). But as far as I could judge his effort in the interview it did sound like Icelandic, and even though his few sentences in the clip are fairly uncomplicated we have the word of the Icelandic hosts that his grammar was OK. In the more complete version I remember that he compared his grip on Icelandic as breathing for a person with asthma, - possible, but not quite unproblematic. For those who don't know Icelandic I will just say that the morphology ressembles the German one (more than those of the other Scandinavian languages), - it's just worse. There is no doubt that Daniel's one week learning session is a remarkable feat, but it was not analyzed in the program how he did it. My guess is that it probably is a combination of an efficient memory and the ability to concentrate that follow with his autism, but in this rare case spent on something that even the world around him can appreciate. Edited by Iversen on 02 March 2007 at 7:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 6948 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 3 of 14 24 April 2007 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I just finished reading his book, Born on a Blue Day, where he explains his achievement in more detail but, sadly, not as much detail as I would like.
He says the television people decided the language for him and gave him some newspapers and a small dictionary, two grammar books and a children's book for him to learn the language. They shortened the time in Iceland to 4 days where he would have access to a private teacher. He said he wasn't able to achieve much with just a dictionary and the newspapers (and, I think, some other literature.) He took the lessons in Iceland and he was travelling a lot of the time. His teacher got car sick and he said the distractions around him prevented him from doing as well as he would have liked. He does say in his book that he learnt several languages in three days. He worked as an English language teacher in Lithuania. He says it took him several weeks to speak comfortably in Lithuanian. He says in his book that he currently knows ten languages: English, Finnish, French, German, Lithuanian, Esperanto, Spanish, Romanian, Icelandic and Welsh. He has a website where he offers language instruction. You can find it at http://www.optimnem.co.uk/ I found the book fascinating. I borrowed it from the library but I have already ordered my own copy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| IbanezFire Senior Member United States Joined 6496 days ago 119 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Russian | Message 4 of 14 26 April 2007 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I saw this program on the Discovery channel or TLC, one of those. His native teacher was some chick and then he went on a television show and two hosts talked to him. Also had another guy that could do huge mathematical equations in his head and tell if they are odd or even or something like that, quite impressive.
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| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6642 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 5 of 14 03 May 2007 at 4:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm just in the process of reading Tammet's book, but here some comments...
I have no doubts that Daniel Tammet has talent in learning languages; but even with perfect memory there's only so much you can learn in three days. We must remember that he cannot concentrate for long periods of time and is easily distracted. This further cuts in the time available... It of course all comes down to when you consider yourself speaking a language. However, given the limited number of words a person speaks in a day; even with access to a tutor all the time, you won't be able to learn what I consider a reasonable working knowledge of vocabulary. There are only a certain number of situations a teacher and student can cover in three days... These claims somehow remind me of claims of people having learnt Esperanto in an evening. Well, it turns out that you can learn the grammar and quite a few words in an evening... To my understanding you don't speak the language at that stage. He seems to remember very well by associating new things to known things...as such not an unusual thing. What is perhaps unusual is that associations appear to come naturally and instantly to him, whereas most of us have to actively seek such associations.
Apparently, he identifies as gay, so this wouldn't have increased the motivation... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6241 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 14 03 May 2007 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What are you basing the idea that he cannot concentrate for long periods of time and is easily distracted on? I'm not saying it's not true, but I don't remember having heard it, plus, he's autistic, which is associated with hyperfocusing for extended periods of time.
Well - my personal experience with Esperanto, back in 2004, was that I learned enough, while only fluent in English and with perhaps intermediate Italian, entirely by myself, to chat online (albeit with the aid of a dictionary) within a few days, which were far from focused study, and in which I had a bad cold. My grammar was admittedly atrocious, and my vocabulary tiny, but I managed to actually -communicate- in Esperanto and hold extended conversations. (I then neglected Esperanto, and have only recently started studying it seriously, which is why I'm still far from fluent in it.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6642 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 14 03 May 2007 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
He mentions this in the book... In one of the chapters he writes how he used to play chess, but found it hard to concentrate throughout the game (and thus sometimes make silly moves and lose despite a very strong position), or that in the same context a person walking in the room could distract him. He also mentions that if a conversation is uninteresting to him, he sort of switches off very quickly.
Funnily enough I have had exactly the same experience than you. Maybe the difference is what we consider speaking (or in this case writing) a language. As I wrote before, I by no means mean to belittle his or your achievement. Perhaps my original post wasn't so much about Daniel's learning, but about how I wouldn't consider this level actually speaking a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6241 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 14 03 May 2007 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ah, interesting. Thanks for explaining that; I haven't read his book, unfortunately.
I don't consider it that much of an achievement (the Esperanto - the Icelandic is, in my opinion), as it's a language designed to have a minimal amount of rules and a lot of flexibility, and where many words are imported from European roots, if not nearly unchanged. Like you, I definitely don't consider it speaking a language - as my language profile shows, I consider myself at most intermediate in Esperanto at present, and I know it quite a bit better now than I did then. I think we're strongly agreeing with each other. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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