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Daniel Tammit and Icelandic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6161 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes  Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 9 of 14 28 June 2007 at 10:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everyone,
This is my first post, but I thought I'd share this link which specifically feature's Daniel Tammit language learning feat. Unfortunately, the video does not explain how he did it. Note - It's the fifth part of a documentary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6161 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 10 of 14 01 September 2007 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Daniel Tammet on learning Icelandic (from his blog):
"Though some might complain about the Icelandic grammar, that isn't the point. Icelandic is not grammar, Icelandic people don't speak grammar. If you learn the language, the grammar will follow. I find that the complexity of Icelandic mirrors the complexity of human thought and nature, and the rich tension within the fabric of everyday life. When paint is cast within a portrait, it becomes something more for being part of something bigger than itself. Blue and grey becomes a sky, green and white becomes a landscape, pink and orange and black becomes a human face. So it is with words which become sentences, like raindrops which form a sea. Why shouldn't 'bók' become 'bókin' at the start of a sentence and 'bókina' at the end. Icelandic sentences are composed of more than just words." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6452 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 11 of 14 03 September 2007 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||
I like the way he puts that. It's like "just let go of it 'making sense' and consider the language a piece of art that you're continually constructing." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6161 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 12 of 14 03 September 2007 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Agreed! Given his synesthesia, I wouldn't be surprised if that metaphor might be a good depiction of how he literally learns the language.
If not, the metaphor still reveals a lot. For anyone interested, I think the book, the authors of Metaphors We Live By suggest that it is more than just linguistic. Here's an excerpt which I found on this site:
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| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6174 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 14 23 April 2008 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard his French online. You can check it out on youtube by searching daniel tammet. It is pretty good, of course he explains its been awhile. He makes a few errors here and there but he is totally comprehensible and he seems to understand everything is being said. It was interesting, he has an OK accent which is nice. His pronunciation is more or less spot on with the occasional error but no big errors
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| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5882 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 14 16 May 2008 at 8:33am | IP Logged | ||
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He is very interesting.
As for the description of the tools, then you COULD learn quite a bit in that time. A children's book will have very simple vocabulary. And using a dictionary, you could work out those words, and learn them. Perhaps he uses a memory technique, maybe not. At that point, you could infer rules from the book. As JansonChoi said "Why shouldn't 'bók' become 'bókin' at the start of a sentence and 'bókina' at the end" If you knew that all of these means the same thing, you could infer that one is at the beginning and one at the end. The newspaper is the same but a stage up, more complicated vocabulary and grammar. The Grammar book could help with verbs and other rules. With a good enough memory, and/or plenty of time on your hands, you could (perhaps anyone) learn the language in a week. TEL 1 person has voted this message useful |
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