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Clugston challenges polyglots to debate

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Forum Discription: Discussion about language learning for people who study languages on their own.
URL: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=36951
Printed Date: 18 August 2021 at 10:09am

Posted By: leosmith
Subject: Clugston challenges polyglots to debate
Date Posted: 26 September 2013 at 5:32pm

Christophe Clugston recently threw the gauntlet down and challenged several polyglots, among those Steve
Kaufman, Benny Lewis and Moses McCormick, to debate language learning. Would you like to see such a debate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn3uPEEffyM - Related Video

Replies:

I would like to see that debate. And it wouldn't be for the language learning wisdom.
lichtrausch on 26 September 2013

What's the point, really? He seems overly and gratuitously aggressive to me.
Juаn on 26 September 2013

I have to agree with Juan. It is one thing to request a thought provoking discussion on language learning and another to request a debate. A debate, by it's inherent definition, implies the expectation of conflict. I don't see how this would further the spirit that most of us feel for learning languages.

That being said, I would love to see video of some of these well respected polyglots discussing language learning in general.
jondesousa on 26 September 2013

Gotta agree. Clugston is a textbook example of internet troll. As interested as I would be in a debate among ploygots, I would expressly avoid one associated with him.
dmaddock1 on 26 September 2013

He seems to take this too seriously. I doubt he even has fun with languages, it just seems like that to him it's all about competition. Does he ever challenge any other polyglot? Every time I see him call someone out, it's always Benny, Steve, or Moses.
sillygoose1 on 26 September 2013

His tone is extremely negative. I don't think it would be worth anyone's time to engage in a "debate" with this guy.
Hekje on 26 September 2013

What a disrespectful douche. He insults Moses's intelligence, makes fun of Benny' s weight,
and personally attacks Steve as well. Pathetic. I may not always
agree with their methodologies, but personally insulting people for no
reason is NOT the way to do things at all. And did you read his
comments on the video? What a piece of f**king trash.

This actually pissed me off a bit.
Zarmutek on 26 September 2013

Clugston is the biggest douchebag there is on the internet. I won't watch the video just
because of him.
Maralol on 26 September 2013

There's nothing wrong with debate, there's nothing wrong with being negative if someone's ideas are wrong, and nothing wrong with being aggressively negative if someone's ideas are really wrong.

What matters in debate is whether or not someone knows what they're talking about and can follow an argument. Very few have both skills.

I'd never heard of this guy, and watching the video, I doubt he'd be capable of debating properly. What is this guy's curriculum vitae anyway?
ScottScheule on 26 September 2013

I've listened to a couple of videos now. The guy's definitely interesting, and I agree with 1. the need for empirical verification of methods, and 2. the importance of credentials.
ScottScheule on 26 September 2013

Who is that and why should I watch his video?
Bao on 26 September 2013

All of the challenged always say they don't promise it will work for everyone, they only know what works for them so I fail to see the need.
Henkkles on 26 September 2013

He might have something interesting to say if he didn't spend his whole video delivering personal attacks. I just watched one called "be fluent in foreign languages," which you'd think speaks for itself. Yet the vast majority was spent attacking others, and the only positive advice he actually offered was that you need genuine motivation and someone to speak to. Hardly ground-breaking stuff for someone with such credentials (presumably).

One funny thing I did notice is his little disclaimer at the start that says that you need to put your real name and real photo if you want to comment on his video. A rule that is seemingly relaxed if you leave a comment praising him.

But I guess the easiest way to become successful on Youtube is piggybacking on those more successful than yourself. Much harder to build a profile by simply offering useful advice. Shame, because I think he might have some interesting stuff to contribute.
I'm With Stupid on 26 September 2013

"Hardly ground-breaking stuff for someone with such credentials (presumably)."

We've yet to see his credentials... Or a video, you know, actually speaking foreign
languages. Just so we know why he is supposed to be the polyglot authority.
Maralol on 26 September 2013

By the way, what's his obsession with field linguistics? Why should a polyglot know how to make grammar and phonology sketches of unrecorded languages? That's like apples and oranges.

And his other obsession whith credentials and empirical proof: Isn't it empirical proof enough that Steve Kaufmann speaks 10 languages fluently? Why does he need a certificate proving this fact?

Sorry, Clugston is just a gigantic hyper-aggressive troll. Nothing more, nothing less.
Josquin on 26 September 2013

Oops. I voted yes before I watched that video. Then I watched it. And...no. I changed my mind. I'm not interested in
that debate. At all.
Stelle on 26 September 2013

Josquin wrote:

By the way, what's his obsession with field linguistics? Why should a polyglot know how to make grammar and phonology sketches of unrecorded languages? That's like apples and oranges.

Presumably because that's his particular field, so he likes to draw a tenuous link between that and applied linguistics, which is the field where you actually get expertise in language learning.
I'm With Stupid on 26 September 2013

Very seldom the phrase "don't feed the trolls" would be more appropriate.
Flarioca on 26 September 2013

Oh my gosh. I had never heard of this guy before this post. He is so mean! His video was
so horrible. He just spent the entire time putting down other people's language
abilities. Like, um, yeah people are going to make mistakes speaking foreign languages.
That's normal! It doesn't mean someone is unintelligent. No one knows what their 100% of
the time. I didn't realize there were people out there that were that mean spirited. He
completely turned language learning into some sort of competition. Here I was thinking
language learning was about opening your mind and experiencing new things. ._.
JiEunNinja on 27 September 2013

It had been a long time I hadn't seen such a douche. This guy is full of hate and I don't
see the point of the hate he's showing. He actually pissed me off quite a lot. I may not
totally agree much with Moses, Steve nor Benny, but it's not a reason to be so hateful.

The only thing I liked in there was Benny's 2 comments!

edit: so sad i put yes before seeing the video too...
yuhakko on 27 September 2013

Now that we've concluded that such is a debate is unwanted, I think we can stop the personal attacks too. Don't
stoop to their level guys. The negativity is kind of unnecessary on our beloved forum.
Emily96 on 27 September 2013

I thought about watching the video but after reading the comments on the forum I changed my mind. I hate negativity and personal attacks in general (I get enough of this shit working at a Courthouse), so I'm probably not even going to watch it now.
akprocks on 27 September 2013

I can't possibly be the only one thinking that Clugston's idea of a "debate" would probably take place in a MMA cage...

Regardless of whether he's knowledgeable on the subject or not, there are two reasons why I would never watch a debate involving him:
1) He's so aggresive I honestly doubt he's capable of debating for the sake of discussion, and doubt even more that he's capable of learning from other people's experiences and reflections. He wants to prove he's "right" (whatever that may be for him...), and he wants to do it in front of people so as to validate himself.
2) He takes the fun out of learning a language better than the Grinch ever could.
Lakeseayesno on 27 September 2013

Check out the comments on this page

http://www.foreverastudent.com/2011/09/interview-with-luca-l ampariello.html - http://www.foreverastudent.com/2011/09/interview-with-luca-l ampariello.html
renaissancemedi on 27 September 2013

What would the topic be?
ScottScheule on 27 September 2013

What I find most frustrating about Clugston & Lewis is they censor comments so strictly. In this sense, they are
very similar.
Although I often disagree with Kauffman, at least he is willing to let people air their opinions. Since Clugston
censors his stuff,
I'd be interested to hear what people think about his opinions on things. I think he occasionally makes some
good points.

Probably the original cause of his attacks on Kauffman is the fact that he calls himself a linguist. Is Kauffman a
linguist? The
dictionary says he is. But I believe most people think a linguist is a specialist in linguistics. In my opinion,
Kauffman is a hell of
a talented polyglot, but not a linguist. But that's just how Kauffman is - he likes to use lesser know definitions of
certain words
for some reason, for example "keen". Evidently it's not just a word that Wally said to the Beaver.

If you don't know the word for "shoelace", you aren't fluent? I agree that you're probably not C2. It's a pretty
common word in
most languages, I assume. "Fluent" doesn't really mean anything to me, so it's hard to agree or disagree with the
original
statement.

Who would do better learning a language from an isolated tribe - a linguist or a polyglot? I think a polyglot would
hands down,
but I could be wrong. Who would do better at documenting a language - a linguist almost certainly. I didn't really
understand
the hill tribe challenge, or the rules, but it seems pretty unfair that Steve would have to put up a large sum of
money, come to
Thailand and live in conditions he's not used to. Clugston would have a huge advantage, knowing Thai, and being
relatively
comfortable with his surroundings. Maybe documenting/learning a native American language would be a more
level playing
field.

Is http://code.google.com/p/fltr/ - FLTR better than http://www.lingq.com - LingQ in every
way? Not
according to a friend of mine who is trying to get Thai on LingQ right now. He told me that you have to "populate
the
dictionary" yourself in FLRT, which is a big time killer for him. Fortunately, there is a guy who might do this for
Thai, so Thai
learners might be able to just download a ready-to-go LingQ-like tool to help them read. But I don't think that's
the case for
other languages. There's probably other advantages LingQ has over FLTR, but Clugston will never know about
them due to his
censorship.
leosmith on 27 September 2013

erenko wrote:

Has Clugston written anything too? I'd be interested.

Welcome back! How many ID's does that make now? Gotta be some sort of record. Are you posting because you
miss your old buddy Zhuangzi? Those were the goog ol days.
leosmith on 27 September 2013

leosmith wrote:

renaissancemedi wrote:

Check out the comments on this page

I don't see the connection. Please start your own
thread.

Presumably the connection is that Clugston managed to get into a slanging match in the comments section of that website too.

leosmith wrote:

I looked at a few of his videos, and each one starts with the same message: you have to use your real name and real photo to comment. And then when you scroll down to the "Users comments" section, and you see him happily engaging in conversation with someone using a fake name and no photo. Apparently this rule only applies if you're going to criticise him. Stroke his ego, and he's more than happy to be flexible.

leosmith wrote:

I'd be interested to hear what people think about his opinions on things. I think he occasionally makes some good points.

The main problem is that he doesn't actually make any points. He resorts to personal attacks and claims of authority. One of the most hilarious bits is when he attempts to draw parallels between himself, and what Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris did to religion. Now I like both of those writers, but one thing they both have in common is that they had little in the way of formal credentials in the areas they were writing about, and were far from engaged in active research on the subject. Now I was under the impression that this was the sort of person who we were supposed to not listen to, but it appears he's willing to make exceptions for people who agree with him. Perhaps even more ironic given that arguments from authority are one of the key things that Harris and Hitchens argued against in their books.

I watched one of his videos that was titled in a way that would suggest an advice video. In about 8 minutes, there must've been at least 5 minutes of attacking other people, and in the end, his advice could be summed up as "successful learners need motivation," and "you need to talk with people in the language." Hardly ground-breaking stuff.

The other thing that he does is lump everyone together as if they propose the same methodology. From what I've read, Steve Kaufman proposes massive input from reading for quite a long time before you attempt any meaningful output, whereas Benny Lewis proposes output from day one. They're polar opposite of each other, and the only reason he can criticise them both together is because he's in no way criticising the methodology, he's simply arguing from authority and saying "they have no formal qualifications, therefore they must be wrong." There might be legitimate criticisms of both methods, but you won't find them in his videos.

And the final point is that you'd think a linguist would know that it is not authority that decides what words mean, it's usage. And so "linguist" is a perfectly acceptable description for someone who speaks a lot of languages. Perhaps even the most common and most understood usage. In fact, Scott Thornbury tells a story about how he had to explain that he wasn't "that kind of linguist" when asked by US customs how many languages he spoke. Anyone who speaks a lot of languages has every right to be referred to as a linguist. Perhaps this upsets Clugston with all the work it took for him to get the title (although by my reckoning, it takes far more time to become a polyglot than to get a masters degree). But it really is like doctors throwing a hissy fit that you can be called a doctor after doing a PhD in something other than medicine.
I'm With Stupid on 27 September 2013

I agree. If he was an expert in second language acquisition, and he made videos saying these other guys are preaching methods that, empirically, have little support, well, hell, that'd be something. And if he said, there are better ways, which I know as a credentialed linguist, that'd be something. But all he seems to say is these other guys don't know how to do field linguistics (true, but relevance is not clear) and they have no credentials.
ScottScheule on 27 September 2013

I will not watch Clugston debate anybody.

leosmith wrote:

I think he occasionally makes some good points.

I agree, but I quickly lost interest in trying to wade through Clugston's tough-guy posturing and repetitive ad hominem attacks to get to those few good points.

leosmith wrote:

Probably the original cause of his attacks on Kauffman is the fact that he calls himself a linguist.

IIRC Clugston's complaint was that Kauffman disagreed with Tim Ferriss regarding the http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn -but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/ - 6 sentences of gold method to get started on learning a language. According to Clugston, this is how field linguists get started learning undocumented languages and Kauffman saw no use for it. This is the crux of why Clugston strongly disagrees with, and has wanted to debate with, Kauffman for a few years. Kauffman could care less about this stuff and I don't know if he has ever directly answered Clugston on the matter.

leosmith wrote:

Is Kauffman a linguist? The
dictionary says he is. But I believe most people think a linguist is a specialist in linguistics. that' In my opinion, Kauffman is a hell of
a talented polyglot, but not a linguist.

I agree with you, but Clugston claims that only a person with a linguistics degree could have any clue about how to begin becoming a polyglot.

leosmith wrote:

If you don't know the word for "shoelace", you aren't fluent? I agree that you're probably not C2. It's a pretty common word in
most languages, I assume. "Fluent" doesn't really mean anything to me, so it's hard to agree or disagree with the original
statement.

I'm starting to agree with you on this point about the term "fluent" not really meaning anything, and anyway I can't recall if Clugston has ever stated his own criteria for determining what constitutes being fluent in a language.

leosmith wrote:

Who would do better learning a language from an isolated tribe - a linguist or a polyglot? I think a polyglot would hands down,
but I could be wrong. Who would do better at documenting a language - a linguist almost certainly. I didn't really understand
the hill tribe challenge, or the rules, but it seems pretty unfair that Steve would have to put up a large sum of money, come to
Thailand and live in conditions he's not used to. Clugston would have a huge advantage, knowing Thai, and being relatively
comfortable with his surroundings. Maybe documenting/learning a native American language would be a more level playing
field.

Kauffman has said he doesn't care about learning undocumented languages, while Clugston just mentions this stuff because he has been desperately trying to bait Kauffman, or any other polyglot, into having a discussion with him. Should this discussion ever occur, Clugston would like to ensure that he always has the upper hand. As far as I know, the only YouTube personality to ever talk with Clugston about language learning was David Mansaray and the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ81WfCU_dA - resulting interview was a disaster.

Clugston seems very anxious to establish himself as the foremost authority on becoming a polyglot by flaunting his education (although I don't think he ever specifically states what credentials he actually has), but he has no people skills and I believe that most people just don't want to deal with his obnoxious ranting.

EDIT: I corrected some typos and fixed a link.
mick33 on 28 September 2013

I have no dog in this fight, but is the guy for real? I haven't seen Steve, Benny, or
Moses attack anyone. Did he really call Steve retarded and Benny fat? That's extremely
childish.
KidRoberts on 28 September 2013

Man, this guy certainly does think a lot of himself. Does anyone know how many languages he speaks if any? I have only heard a snippet of Spanish. Every "linguist" and self-proclaimed "educator" that I have ever met has been monolingual.

While I may not be able to talk intelligently about linguistics, I can say one thing for certain and I caution everyone... do NOT use his knife defense tactics. They will get you killed.
Irish_Goon on 28 September 2013

I'm With Stupid wrote:

leosmith wrote:

renaissancemedi wrote:

Check out the comments on this
page

I don't see the connection. Please start your own
thread.

Presumably the connection is that Clugston managed to get into a slanging match in the comments section of
that website too.

Thanks - I missed that. Edited post.

I'm With Stupid wrote:

I thought he called himself "the Sam Kinneson of the polyglot world" or something like that. Didn't know about
the authors you mention, but thanks for the info.

I'm With Stupid wrote:

They're polar opposite of each other

I don't think they are polar opposites. They have differences, but they also recommend a lot of the same things to
language learners.

I'm With Stupid wrote:

And the final point is that you'd think a linguist would know that it is not authority that decides what words
mean, it's usage. And so "linguist" is a perfectly acceptable description for someone who speaks a lot of
languages.

Before Kauffman started calling himself a linguist, I never heard the word used that way. So we'll have to disagree
on that. No big deal to me, but I can imagine linguists getting their feathers ruffled by it.

mick33 wrote:

leosmith wrote:

Probably the original cause of his attacks on Kauffman is the fact that he
calls himself a linguist.

IIRC Clugston's complaint was that Kauffman disagreed with Tim Ferriss
regarding the http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn -but-not-master-any-
language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/#more-161 - 6 sentences of gold method to get started on learning a
language. According to Clugston, this is how field linguists get started learning undocumented languages and
Kauffman saw no use for it. This is the crux of why Cluugston strongly disagrees with, and has wanted to debate
with, Kauffman for a few years. Kauffman could care less about this stuff and I recall if he has ever directly
answered Clugston on the matter.

I had no idea - thanks for the info.

mick33 wrote:

I agree with you, but Clugston claims that only a person with a liguistics degree could have any
clue about how to begin becoming a polyglot.

Really? That's messed up.

mick33 wrote:

I can't recall if Clugston has ever stated his own criteria for determining what constitutes being
fluent in a language.

Me neither. Has anyone heard his criteria?

mick33 wrote:

As far as I know, the only YouTube personality to ever talk with Clugston about language
learning was David Mansaray and the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ81WfCU_dA - resulting
interview was a disaster.

Thanks for the link.
leosmith on 28 September 2013

Say what you want about Steve Kaufman, but at least he knows how to use a microphone.
I'm With Stupid on 28 September 2013

I'd never heard of Clugston before today, but I think I recognize his type. He complains about others' ad hominem attacks while making the same attacks his main weapon.

It makes me wonder about his attacks on others' lack of qualifications: does he have any qualifications or credentials himself? I personally don't think credentials are needed to set up a youtube channel or blog and simply give free advice. But if he attacks others for not having credentials, it would make sense for him to share his own.

(EDIT: having said what I said, I do agree that if a person is going to start selling books on a topic, some sort of credentials are useful. However, not always necessary. For example, a book on cycling routes in rural France doesn't require a degree in cyclistics. A book on medical advice, on the other hand, should come from someone with a degree in medicine. Books on language learning could go either way.)

EDIT2: now I've read the comments on the linked video. Well done Benny for having the guts to make a decent response. And all Clugston could do was insult him back and threaten him.
Jeffers on 28 September 2013

I watched a few of his videos and they seemed to have more attacks than advice.
KidRoberts on 28 September 2013

What languages does Clugston actually speak? He seems to spend his time criticising other people's
methods. Who cares if Steve Kaufmann and Benny Lewis are selling books? Nobody is forced to buy
them...it's a free market.

Clugston also seems to think that's it's a waste of time to learn languages that are not spoken in your
particular area of the world. Isn't that the whole point of the Internet, that you can access almost any
language from any part of the globe?
beano on 28 September 2013

beano wrote:

Which seems to directly conflict with "field linguistics."
Irish_Goon on 28 September 2013

He seems to know a bit of Spanish and French.
Maralol on 28 September 2013

He looks like he knows Thai too? He was correcting Moses on something.
KidRoberts on 28 September 2013

First, this guy is a total douche. Second, he keeps propping up his credentials about "studying a language" to try to dismiss other people's opinions since he thinks because he has "studied a language in an academic way" it makes him smarter than everyone else. No it does not. You cannot study a language. You have to experience it. Yes, that does encompass studying but up to a point but it doesn't matter when you're out there and can't to relate to the people. Also,a lot of native speakers haven't truly "studied their language" but has that made them incompetent or unsuccessful in any way in communicating in that language, do they struggle wading through the different registers of that language, all its complications,cultural inferences, and subtexts? Probably not.

Also, there are language, where ethnicity and nationality are strongly tied to each other ( Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese etc..) In these languages, I'm going to be blunt but unless you look the part, no matter how fluently you speak the language, you will always be considered an outsider and thus a huge part of the language and its social intricacies will always be excluded from you. Thus a whole linguistic field is blocked of from you while a poor illiterate farmer who is considered an insider will have more access, knowledge and experience with it even if he couldn't care less about it.

wber on 28 September 2013

As entertaining as it was to waste some time watching his videos, I think I probably wouldn't want to see the fallout of a debate!
Fuenf_Katzen on 28 September 2013

Kaufmann and Lewis might not be everyone's cup of tea but they have achieved considerable success in a
large number of languages....no mean feat whatever way you look at it. These are guys you can learn from.
beano on 28 September 2013

beano wrote:

Kaufmann and Lewis might not be everyone's cup of tea but they have
achieved considerable success in a
large number of languages....no mean feat whatever way you look at it. These are guys you
can learn from.

I don't agree with everything they say, but they're both insanely encouraging. I watched
this guy's video about language learning (or something) yesterday, and I wanted to hide
in a dimly lit room.
KidRoberts on 28 September 2013

Clugston seems to be implying that he's used his skills as a field linguist to learn at
least one undocumented language. So proving his superiority. But he never gives any
details about this rightfully impressive feat.
Retinend on 28 September 2013

Well I might as well throw in my two cents, also as someone with a language background.

Firstly, I do agree with some elements of what Clugston is saying, there is a greater
need for verified products and ideas, that these polyglots are in no real sense
linguists and that there is a real anti-intellectual trend to some of Kauffman's
vlogging. I, personally, also dislike a lot of what Kauffman says. But then I deal with
this by not watching his videos...

I feel Clugston's acerbic personality also puts me off and its hardly helping his
cause. Certainly, I find his inelegant ranting to be unwatchable.

Finally, on his comments on linguistics and philology. I find certain of his comments
somewhat...idiosyncratic? I find it odd how he'll bring up philology as if it were a
thing of the past, and then say that philologists aren't able to perform phonological
and morphological sketches, deal with particles and so on. These are all skills created
and defined by philologists...using philological terms...reflecting philological
interests.

I doubt I could, as he keeps on insisting, learn an undocumented language but that's
largely due to a lack of field work training, philology certainly has the raw skillsets
and reconstructing dead languages, identifying links, sound changes and morphological
change etc. After all, it invented them and remains a vivacious element of modern
linguistics. But this is a digression.

His whole schleck just seems really odd to me, though I think that I do agree with the
essence of some of what he says.
Lykeio on 28 September 2013

To be fair, Benny Lewis has never claimed to be a linguist. He's simply a guy who learns languages by going
to the countries where they are spoken and talking with people at every opportunity.
beano on 29 September 2013

Lykeio wrote:

I find Clugston's criticism of Kauffman as being anti-intellectual a little odd, since Kauffman openly admits this himself.
mick33 on 29 September 2013

I can't believe Clugston has the gall to tell people that speak upwards of 10 languages
that they are doing it wrong. He just seems jealous of the attention that some of the
polyglots receive online. He's just a hater.

Baracuda on 29 September 2013

I am trying to think of what the comments would have been like if a woman polyglot would have spoken so
badly about her sister polyglots. Come on Serpent, Kerrie, Fasulye, MultieMae: should we show these guys
what a real cat fight looks like?

In case anyone for a second takes me seriously, I hasten to add that the only reason why I suggested it, is
because then people would have seen how stupid this is. For some reason there is more tolerance for stupid,
aggressive people when they are men. If a woman had gone on YouTube with a rant like this she would have
been considered insane.

I agree with him though, that linguists and polyglots are two different things. A linguist has studied linguistics,
and may be fabulous at analysing languages, but a disaster at speaking them. A polyglot may speak 8
different languages but not know what a noun or a phoneme is. Neither is better than the other, but they are
two different things.

Personally I consider myself a hybrid as I have 10 years of language studies at a university under my belt,
including linguistics, and I also speak several languages. If I were to chose between the two, I would however
rather call myself polyglot than linguist, since I do in actual fact speak several languages, but if I were to give
a lecture on linguistics, the lecture would have been over before people would have gotten their overcoat off.

I give lectures on roses and tulips all over Norway, and I am quite good at it. But that does not make me a
botanist, nor would I pretend to be.I fail to understand why people would pretend to be one thing, when they
have every reason to be proud of their accomplishments without claiming credentials they do not have.

I have listened too little to the three gentlemen concerned speaking languages I know well, to make a solid
assessment of their abilities, but I can at least testify that I found Benny's blog on his experiences in China so
motivating that I went out and got three Mandarin courses.

As for the gentlemen on the video, I have not found any video of him speaking anything but English, so I
cannot tell. I'll reserve my comments on his language skills until I have actually heard him speak.

My ideal polyglot is one who speaks his or her languages fluently and with a great accent. And who does not
feel the need to bash anyone else. So far those who have impressed me the most are Luca, Torbyrne
(Richard Simcott) and MultiMae.

Whether they do or do not make money based on their qualifications is really of no importance to me. If a
person is good at teaching languages, and can offer a good product then I am fine with that. Of course if any
of the people mentioned in the video are pretending to teach something they do not know, then that is fraud,
and that I would definitely not approve of, but so far I have seen no evidence that this is the case.
Solfrid Cristin on 29 September 2013

Thank you, Solfrid, for your excellent and well-written summary.

I must confess, I'm a little bit uneasy about this thread. Clugston has a reputation for being upset about certain other polyglots. In the past, I've always chosen to ignore him, because I'm generally bored by personal conflict, and he seems to wind up involved in more conflicts than average.

But if we spend seven pages discussing Clugston in fairly negative terms, then good manners would suggest that we ought to give him a chance to defend himself. And then I imagine what such a discussion would look like, and I cringe a bit. I fear, perhaps wrongly, that such a discussion would generate more conflict than actual insight.

Speaking an ordinary forum member (with my "moderator hat" off), is there any way that we can focus the rest of this discussion on Clugston's arguments, and less on him as a person? I think that the personal issues have been pretty thoroughly discussed by now, and it might be worth moving on.
emk on 29 September 2013

Thanks for that Emk. The whole thing turns my stomach as well.

Taking us in the direction Emk is saying, I would like to reiterate my question from before: does anyone know what qualifications Clugston has? I'm sure they exist. His story must be interesting, to say the least. Moving from being a self-defence instructor to linguist? Fascinating. Leaving aside the fact that he takes a combative approach (no surprise) to languages, can anyone tell us something about the man?
Jeffers on 29 September 2013

I find it quite refreshing the way Benny Lewis and Steve Kaufman adopt somewhat layman stance. Their
arguments make language learning more accessible than what it would be if shrouded in academic terms. At
the end of the day, the most effective language learners are those who engage willingly with the language
and expose themselves to it. Academic prowess is nothing more than a contributory factor.
beano on 30 September 2013

Three years ago when I was browsing through various websites to launch my sedantic language learning project, I saw a couple videos by him, but I must confess that I have not seen adequately to properly evaluate him.
I am also in China now, so I cannot access youtube videos and thus have not seen the video in discussion yet.
Thus I will conveniently limit myself to a somewhat dried discussion of general principles relavant to the issue based on the comments written here. Focus will not be on the individuals learning a foreign language, as it will make it likely be prejudiced on the side of the language learners, but on the exchange between the amateurs and experts.

In this dicussion, I see an issue that I had tried to deal with in http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=32668&PN=17 - Why are the experts not participating? and http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=32696&PN=17 - Future of Language Learning: Cooperation , the latter of which I had deleted last year due to several reasons.

I always thought and still do think that I am not an expert on languages, linguistics, relevant fields in neuroscience and education, but just a laity and amateur.
It is my position to respect the experts in any field who has a professional or academic degree, especially if they have their final formal degrees in their respectie fields.
As an amateur who feels the need to receive quality information from the experts on language acquisition, I had felt a certain lack in this forum due to their absence and tried to figure out why this is the case. I do think that it was decisively fortunate and profitable for this forum to have had the substantial contributions from ProfArguilles, a professional expert in language acquisition and polyliteracy with full academic credentials and career background.

We may have to wait for the greater convergence of experience and knowledge, for the forum contributions of the experts from relevant fields, for professional experts like ProfArguilles in neuroscience, philology, linguistics, education and psychology to come and give us their insights and knowledge about language acquisition.

The limitation with amateurs like me is that we have acquired a measure of experience and knowledge about the field, but have not been systematically trained in its knowledge base and tools of research and do not know where we might be lacking--have blind spots and do not know that we do not know, or do not know that we are limited or wrong in our understanding of certain areas. There are exceptions, but very rare.
Therefore as an amateur, I feel that I must develop an awareness of this and respect for the professional experts in respective fields.

As to the credentials for professional experts, there is a grading system via the degree system of our universities. Putting aside professional degrees that can lead to licensing in certain fields at master's level and professional interpreters which do not require higher formal degrees, let's look at academic degrees. It is my opinion that a true authoritative expert must hold a Ph.D. degree in his respective field. One could even look at a Ph.D. degree only as a starting point, a base for building up his expertise.

Someone who holds a master's degree(Clugston's case, am I right?) is in a somewhat ambiguos middle stage. He has attained a credential that backs up an expertise recognized by society and laity as authoritative and can somewhat professionally function in his field, but is not recognized as so by the Ph.D. holders. It gives him confidence in his knowledge and skill and could make him strongly opionated, which in turn could make him liable to be blind to that fact that his professional knowledge and research skill base could be still limited and lacking. I remember hearing doctoral students who smugly ridiculed the master's students as stubbonly opionated and mutually sharing of their ignorances. The level of expertise is all relative. It all depends on from which level you are looking at things in which direction, lower or higher. It would be better for someone who holds a Ph.D. and have at least several years of professional experience and research in linguistics or other related fields to engage in a dialog with language learning community. It would be, however, better than nothing for someone who holds a master's degree in linguistics to critically engage with the amateurs, even though in the manner that might be offensive to many. I would think that it is always better to respect those who have been professionally trained in their field when they are talking about their respective field, especially if the audience do not have such level of academic training. There would be plenty of valuable information to gain, if we give him the platform and open our mind to listen to what he has to say, even though it might come in the form that is difficult to digest. We have nothing to lose, but a greater chance to gain informed information to our benefit.

Knowledge and experience must be informed and complemented by each other. Through globalization, there is a remarkable increase in the experience base and through explosion of internet, this base is actively becoming available to all. Knowledge must not hold on to its traditional theories based upon past pool of experience base, but must make the effort to reconstruct itself based on the newly increased and transformed base for its analysis and evaluation. Experience must engage with knowledge to correct and mature itself. Experience is fresh and full of creative energy that refuses to be constricted by what it feels to be the rusty net of old knowledge, resisting its attempt at pressuring it down, putting a rope around horse's muzzle, so to speak.

I see a certain dynamic of the interaction between the positions and feelings of two respective groupings in a miscrospic way in this situation. The expert side might be voicing something that could be the feeling and viewpoint representative of a bigger community. How do we bridge the gap and bring a convergence of the two? Looking at this case, it seems that it is not going to be easy, but experience and knowledge, the laity and experts must grow together. But in the end, it is the reformed experts who will always win and be our savior.

futurianus on 30 September 2013

Like many people here, I am totally turned off by Clugston's tone or style despite a few valid points. OK, polyglots may not be academic linguists but for most people a linguist is a person who speaks many languages. I wouldn't fight over it.

Most of us are language hobbyists. I have often said so myself. There is a whole world of serious academic study of language acquisition that we tend to ignore. But is that a big problem?

As some readers know, I am a stickler for definitions and have been known for flying off the handle when it comes to the use of the word fluency when we mean proficiency. But the main point I always try to make is that I want to make a debate more meaningful by clarifying the language.

What I find quite striking and sometimes laughable about all of Clugston's ranting is a) very little demonstration of actual prowess in any foreign languages and b) few hints or pointers for us amateur language learners.

I'm really not interested in hearing about the failings of the other polyglots. I can make up my mind. I'm more interested in what original contribution the author of the video can make in a debate. In this regard, I see a lot of bluster, smoke and little fire.

I really laugh when I see people attempting to make points using languages that they don't master very well. The idea seems to be most people will be suitably impressed because they do not know the languages in question. But this is risky business because some of us know the languages at hand.

Let me give a specific example. In a video with the interesting title

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMF9uAEngoc&noredirect=1 - The secrets of how your mind lies to you in learning languages all we learn basically is that the presence of an L1 interferes with our learning of L2. Nothing new. But what I found interesting was all the examples from various languages. I won't comment on Chinook that I do not know at all, but I would dispute the claims for all the other languages including English, Spanish and especially French where, in addition to some very dodgy pronunciation, Clugston is totally wrong about the example J'échange mon vin contre une bière vs J'échange mon vin pour une bière.

s_allard on 30 September 2013

s_allard wrote:

Clugston is totally wrong about the example J'échange mon vin contre une bière vs J'échange mon vin pour une bière.

Could you explain that? Where is the mistake?
Sterogyl on 30 September 2013

futurianus wrote:

I would think that it is always better to respect those who have been professionally trained in their field when they are talking about their respective field, especially if the audience do not have such level of academic training.

The issue with this is that the world is full of people using their academic credentials to offer weight to arguments made outside of their area of expertise. You quite often get a list of "doctors" who are creationists or climate change deniers, for example, and when you look into it a bit more closely, you find that their PhD is in an area that gives them no more expertise on the subject than anyone who passed high school science. For an expert to be useful on this website, they would have to be an expert in either teaching languages or second language acquisition. Since Clugston hasn't actually revealed what his precise area of expertise is, all we can go off are his arguments. And so far, there has been nothing particularly insightful there. Incidentally, on your other point, from what I can tell, it's no unique to this website. I don't think Stephen Hawking spends his time chatting on physics forums.

futurianus wrote:

There would be plenty of valuable information to gain, if we give him the platform and open our mind to listen to what he has to say, even though it might come in the form that is difficult to digest. We have nothing to lose, but a greater chance to gain informed information to our benefit.

You say we have nothing to lose, but given that one of the most difficult parts of learning language is motivation, I don't think it's positive for anyone learning a language to hear that anything short of fluency is "retarded."

The reality is that every stage of learning a language offers you something useful. You might be able to look at a menu and tell what's chicken and what's beef, but not be able to understand how they're cooked. That's still better than not being able to tell the chicken from the beef.
I'm With Stupid on 30 September 2013

I wonder what he really means by "debate". I honestly wonder.
renaissancemedi on 30 September 2013

futurianus wrote:

I always thought and still do think that I am not an expert on languages, linguistics, relevant fields in neuroscience and education, but just a laity and amateur.
It is my position to respect the experts in any field who has a professional or academic degree, especially if they have their final formal degrees in their respectie fields.
As an amateur who feels the need to receive quality information from the experts on language acquisition, I had felt a certain lack in this forum due to their absence and tried to figure out why this is the case.

I understand your desire to get an "academic" perspective. When I'm in a similar mood, I read academic papers about language acquisition. And over the last couple of years, I've reluctantly decided that most such papers fall into a few categories:

1. Papers written by language teachers working with unmotivated students. These papers are often useless to the typical HTLAL reader.

2. Papers written by ESL or other teachers trying to help students integrate into a new country. These are much better than (1), because the teachers assume that failure is not acceptable. A lot of http://www.sdkrashen.com/ - Krashen's work , for example, falls into this category.

3. Papers which study adult language acquisition in order to prove/disprove theories about the Universal Grammar or a Language Acquisition Device in the brain. These papers are surprisingly useless, because they they set very weird standards for "speaking" a language: "Sure, she's used her L2 professionally for 20 years, but she still has a slight accent and she makes a few rare mistakes. Clearly she's an example of 'failed' language acquisition." Essentially no polyglot uses this definition of "speaking" a language, because languages are enormously useful long before you reach flawlessly native perfection.

4. Papers written by language teachers for whom failure is not an option, and whose students face drastic professional consequences if they don't reach C1. The best work in this area comes from places like the US Foreign Service Institute. (Here's a http://www.govtilr.org/Publications/TESOL03ReadingFull. htm - short example .) These papers often express some frustration with the state of academic second language acquisition research.

And then, every once in a great while, I'll stumble over a paper that "gets it", that understands that adults can and do learn new languages, and that not everybody needs to be flawlessly native in all their languages. For example, Schumann's http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9922. 2012.00744.x/full - Societal Responses to Adult Difficulties in L2 Acquisition is a very interesting read. The author assumes that, yes, some adults actually do learn foreign languages, but it takes a lot of time and resources, and most people will only bother if they absolutely must, and perfection is usually not the goal.

Also, academic linguists love a good polyglot as much as anybody else. For example, MIT's Kenneth Hale was a renowned linguist and a hard core polyglot even by HTLAL standards. He claimed to "speak" two languages, English and Warlpiri, and to merely "talk in" several others. But his colleagues would often claim that he spoke 50 languages, and it's undeniable that he could internalize a phrase-book with terrifying speed. In fact, "Ken Hale stories" are http://everything2.com/title/Ken+Hale - something of a tradition in parts of academia. One story I remember reading is that Hale could read a paper about an obscure language, and months later, he could quote the example phrases back to the original author without needing to refresh his memory.
emk on 30 September 2013

I'm With Stupid wrote:

Since Clugston hasn't actually revealed what his precise area of expertise is, all we can go off are his arguments. And so far, there has been nothing particularly insightful there.

I am surprised and intrigued to hear that with this level of heated controversy, he has managed thus long to fend off giving confirmation for what he had claimed he had expertise in.

I'm With Stupid wrote:

Yes, definitely. Even just saying 'hi' or 'thank you' in local language will work wonders and open their heart.

I am again surprised to hear that he has said that anything short of fluency is "retarded."
The reason I am saying this is because I had presumed that he had spent several years in Thailand and has learned Thai language and culture, a language and culture which is quite different than his. I would think that such a person who has gone through the process, even without any academic training in linguistics, would think otherwise and basically agree with what you have just said.

emk wrote:

But if we spend seven pages discussing Clugston in fairly negative terms, then good manners would suggest that we ought to give him a chance to defend himself. And then I imagine what such a discussion would look like, and I cringe a bit. I fear, perhaps wrongly, that such a discussion would generate more conflict than actual insight.

Congratulations on having become a moderator!
Emk, I agree with you that it is indeed "good manners" and proper thing to do "to give him a chance to defend himself", regardless of what a 'conflict' it might generate. Even to the alleged mass murderers and rapists we give them the right to defend themselves in the court. Did he threat to trap those youtube polyglots inside the ring, headlock and pin them down on the floor and beat the hell out of them? Probably there will be some nasty comments back and forth, but at least he would have received a chance to defend himself and in the process we would have received some definite feedback, which may or may not satisfy many, but at least we will know what his response is. As the mood here might be threatening to him, making him reluctant to make his appearance, it might be a good idea to a announce to him that we will try out best to be fair to him. He may not believe that or for other reasons may not come here, but he will at least know and appreciate that this forum had given him a chance to explain himself.

emk wrote:

Speaking an ordinary forum member (with my "moderator hat" off), is there any way that we can focus the rest of this discussion on Clugston's arguments, and less on him as a person? I think that the personal issues have been pretty thoroughly discussed by now, and it might be worth moving on.

I had encountered a very fascinatingly gifted young man before, who was very well trained in linguistics. His mastery of several languages was unusually sturdy and precise, and in many ways had much better grasp of the languages than the natives. He was very accustomed to using IPA characters to analyze and represent many difficult and unusual sounds and used them to decode different languages with confidence and skill which had impressed me greatly. He gave me a glimpse into what a professional linguist can do were he to develop interest in mastering other languages. I never felt comfortable with IPA as it seemed too complicated for me and I did not feel a need to use them to produce works that other linguists would use. I, however, had used my own personally made characters and signs to decode the phonetic values of some languages. I remember doing so extensively when I was learning Russian. It was at a time when I could not use internet and utilize relevant audio materials. I will hear what the native will say and transcribe the phonetic values. Though I could not master IPA, I do respect those who use them effortlessly and do feel that it could be a very good tool in the hands of those who know how to use them well.

I checked into the fieldwork guideline section of Stanford Linguistics Department.

http://linguistics.stanford.edu/research/linguistic-fieldwor k/advice-for-undertaking-fieldwork/ - Advice for undertaking fieldwork

I found the linguistic fieldwork to be quite interesting and informative.
I can see some relevant methodologies and useful tools related to quickly and systematically decoding and learning a new language.
Core phonetic, vocabulary and syntactical analysis seem to form the basis of the work.
Now I think I can understand better why Clugston has brought up this matter.
I think there is a great relevance here to the core theme of this forum and would like to hear his more detailed explanations about them and how he might have used them to learn Thai or other languages.
If there are forum members who had actually done fieldwork before, it would be helpful if you would share your experiences and any insights into how that fieldwork skill can be transposed into learning a new language.

I put some portions of the content into quotation for a quick reference.

Quote:

Things to check when transcribing
1. Phonology

Consonants
- place, manner
- voicing
- breathy/creaky voice
- ejective
- implosive
- nasalization

Vowels
- height
- backness
- rounding
- nasalization
- voicelessness
- breathy/creaky articulation

Pitch
- tone?
- distinct pitch patterns?
- beware of “list intonation”, skewing of elicitation context

Stress
- prominent syllable (first, last, penultimate, other
- secondary stress (is it rhythmic
- is it pitch related (pitch pattern over word varies predictably with stressed – syllable
...
...

2. Vocabulary

Resources:

Swadesh 100 list
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Swadesh_List
http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/search/contribute/swadesh /view?ethnocode=SLO

STEDT (Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus) wordlist questionaire
http://stedt.berkeley.edu/html/questionnaires.html

Matisoff 200-word list/CALMSEA wordlist (Culturally Appropriate Lexicostatistical Model for SouthEast Asia)

Lexical Categories

Nouns
Humans
- Basic terms for people
- Kin terms (basic, then more remote)
- Occupations: farmer, butcher, priest, shaman, healer, etc.
- Neighbours
- Body parts
Animals
- Domesticated
- Wild
- Birds
- Fish
- Insects
- Body parts
Natural phenomena
- Rain, hills, rivers, etc.
- Building and implements
- Houses, temples, etc.
- Rooms in houses, etc.
- Clothing, cloth, needle, thread, etc.
- Pots, pans, bottles, ladles, etc.
- Farming implements, ropes, shovels, etc.
Religious objects
- Goddess, god, temple, etc.
- Towns and things in towns
- Roads, alleys, courtyards, markets, wells, etc.
- Other things as appropriate
- Castes, holidays, festivals, days of week, month of year, seasons)

Adjectives
Note: these may be verbs or nouns and not a separate lexical class – elicit to find out!
Human attributes
- Physical: tall, short, fat, skinny, dark, bald, etc.
- Emotional/psychological: lazy, angry, happy, sad, etc.
Consistency
- Flexible, hard, wet, soft, bumpy, etc.
Colours
...
...

futurianus on 30 September 2013

Sterogyl wrote:

s_allard wrote:

Clugston is totally wrong about the example J'échange mon vin contre une bière vs J'échange mon vin pour une bière.

Could you explain that? Where is the mistake?

In his video, Clugston tries to show, quite rightly but in a rather awkward way, that the linguistic system of L1 tends to interfere with the learner's perception and production of L2. In his French example, he claims that speakers of English would be more likely to (incorrectly) use the preposition "pour" (for) in J'échange mon vin pour une bière rather than the correct "contre" (against) as in J'échange mon vin contre une bière. "Pour" is a more direct translation of the English "for" as in I'll exchange my wine for a beer. By the same token, English-speakers tend to shy away from the proper "contre" because the translation "against" does not fit the English pattern.

The problem here is that Clugston should have chosen a better example of which there are plenty. In this particular case, J'échange mon vin pour une bière is perfectly correct French. In fact, one can use "pour" or "contre." Here are the first lines of the definition of the verb échanger in the online Littré dictionary:

"Donner et recevoir par échange. Échanger une chose pour une autre.
"Ils échangent le sacrifice pour de l'argent", [Pascal, Prov. 6]
"Sans simonie, on put contre un bien temporel Hardiment échanger un bien spirituel", [Boileau, Sat. XI]
"L'on peut sans effort Échanger la tiare avec un diadème", [Guiraud, Machab. II, 6]
"Mansfeld eût échangé sans un destin fatal Le casque du guerrier contre un bandeau royal", [Constant, Walst. IV, 6]"

As one can see, the prepositions pour, contre and avec can be used with the verb échanger.

Clugston's general idea is not wrong. It's a basic fact of language learning in adults that L1 will influence L2 to some degree. A much better example that Clugston could have used is the English-speaker saying J'attends pour un ami (I'm waiting for a friend). In French that "pour" is totally unnecessary and comes from the direct translation of "waiting for,"
s_allard on 30 September 2013

Thanks, emk. I read an introduction to second language acquisition and the editor concluded
the book by saying that, essentially, the field had well-informed answers to this problem of
accent or this problem of grammar, but no single body of theoretical knowledge. Metaphors
used by specialists could be as diverse as "building scaffolding" or "focusing a camera" when
describing the process of learning this or that element. That's how it should be too. People
who have the full design specs for a motorcycle can eventually find out what's wrong with the
motorcycle when it's not working effectively, but there's no full design spec for how human
beings work. Especially not for how language works. We just work with it and get results,
then extrapolate. And we explain our notions about it with metaphors. Arguelles says that
it's like peeling an onion, layer by layer, and some experts say it's like scaffolding.

There's a lot of knowledge in the field about why learners make mistakes, and how long it
takes to learn, but it's odd to me that the book never covered how fast it's possible
to learn a language. It always stuck to cagey estimates of the amount of time person x took
to reach level y of language proficiency. If I might speculate wildly, I imagine that the
great minds of applied linguistics always try to reach the issue of second language
acquisition with the classroom setting as their primary image of the process. And with a
classroom you can never "fly with the fastest." It seems to me like a field which closely
serves the industry rather than a field designed at studying what's effective.

Happy to be corrected, as I have only read one introduction to the subject.
Retinend on 30 September 2013

One example of English-French interference I see soooo often is "chercher pour [qqch]." Or "actuellement" for "actually" (this morning I spoke with a French person who made the opposite mistake, saying "actually" when he meant "currently").
tastyonions on 30 September 2013

Just as a quick comment to @emk's insightful post about academic writings on foreign language learning and acquisition, I would like to point out that there is very little work, if any at all, on independent learning or self-study. This is understandable because field of Second Language Acquisition is centered on the formal teaching of languages. To my knowledge there has never been any serious scientific studies of the effectiveness of any of the commercial self-study offerings. The independent learning community is pretty much seen as a collection of well-intentioned amateurs who have nothing better to do.
s_allard on 30 September 2013

Since I haven't had the time nor the courage to wade through all of Clugstone's videos, I'll ask users here. Does anyone know what degree in linguistics (a master's I believe) does this individual possess and from what institution?

My other question is: Are there videos of this individual speaking French, Spanish or Thai, especially in a conversational setting? All I've heard so far have been little individual phrases in Spanish and French that I have found quite difficult to understand.

I bring up this latter point because, in spite of all our differences of opinion about various things, the polyglots like Steve Kaufman, Moses and Benny that Clugstone denigrates continuously have put their accomplishments out there for everybody to see and judge. That to me is the proof of the pudding.
s_allard on 30 September 2013

Emk, you seem to have done quite a comprehensive research on the subject.
Your categorization of the whole field was quite neat and your links also made an interesting and profitable reading.

I found FSI's paper prepared by Frederick H. Jackson & Marsha A. Kaplan particularly illuminating.
I could not help noticing how FSI was handling the same issue of its sometimes conflictual relationship with the researchers in applied linguistics.
It offers its 'experience' to the researchers as could be providing 'useful perspective', and confirms its need to receive 'new insights' from them.

erenko wrote:

futurianus,
write more posts and I’m sure specialists in every field will join the forum some day.

Erenko, thanks for your comment.
I hope you will find the quote below interesting.

Quote:

The Foreign Service Institute was established in 1947 - more than 55 years ago-as the training arm of the State Department.
....
....
First, we hope that this talk will not be taken as yet another round in a fight between "researchers" and "practitioners." We at FSI value the results of research highly. Indeed, we wish often that we had more time and opportunity in our own programs to investigate formally certain research questions.

We have shared with you here some of what we at FSI have learned from our experience of training American government employees to go overseas and use the languages of those countries to carry out sophisticated professional tasks.
....
....
We and our Language School colleagues are constantly seeking opportunities to reflect on what we observe in our classes in the light of both current published research and of our own experience.

We hope that our experience under the special FSI conditions may offer you a useful perspective. At the same time, we will continue to look to you (researchers in applied linguistics) to help us to gain new insight into the nature of language use and into language learning and teaching.

futurianus on 30 September 2013

Not knowing what Mr. Clugston's actual credentials are, and not having time to look through all of his videos to try and find it, I can't give his arguments much greater weight than I ordinarily would. That's not to say I disagree, although a lot of it has come down to the age-old debate of when somebody is fluent/functional in a language. For example, after I watched his "shoelaces" video, I did go and try to think of how I would tell somebody to do activities such as unlock a car door, tie shoes, etc. I don't necessarily disagree that every native speaker would have some ability to do this, and that if you can't, you're not at native level fluency, or even near-native fluency. Are you really not functional though? I'm not sure I agree, and I don't know that he really presented an argument for why you couldn't still be at a very useful level in the language.

As for his arguments on the proper way to learn a language and become functional in it, again, it's not that I disagree, but I know what has worked for me, and where my skills need work. That doesn't necessarily coincide with research findings. However, he seems to be very hesitant to discuss specific points or even cite articles, so I'm really not sure which studies he's referring to in his videos.

I suppose I really don't understand the attack on Benny/Kaufmann/Moses. Really the only one who I think has tried a more "academic" approach to explaining language learning is Steve, and it's still pretty clear that generally referring to his own experiences. Maybe I haven't watched enough videos for a long enough time to understand where this threat of "polyglots pretending to be linguists" is coming from.
Fuenf_Katzen on 30 September 2013

Linguistics and language learning, though related, are distinct pursuits. Linguistics is the scientific study of language, its nature and features, conducted in a detached manner and not involving its living practice. A linguist might be able to catalog and distinguish the morphological features of different language families but not say hello in any tongue other than her or his own. Though certainly preferable, knowing multiple languages is not necessary in order to practice linguistics and in fact as professor Argüelles laments most linguists inexplicably do not feel drawn to learn them.

The reverse is true for language learning. Linguistics is no prerequisite to learning foreign languages anymore than a degree in physiology for doing bicep curls or mastery of quantum mechanics and relativity in order to build a bridge, however it can be a useful aid. Just like there is no science of good literature or art, so much that is involved in learning languages well is not subject to scientific formulas.

Regarding the insistence on credentials, it is but an attempt at disabling his "opponents" through an exercise of power and authority rather than argument and substance. And it is peculiar that such a recourse to "academics" should come from an individual who is constantly making veiled physical threats of the crudest kind. I doubt many of an intellectual disposition would regard him as their peer.
Juаn on 30 September 2013

s_allard wrote:

According to this conversation on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/116itl/has _anyone_here_heard_ofworked
_with_linguist/

"Chris's military records indicate he washed out of Arabic class and didn't complete
the full Thai class before he was discharged from the army, 10 months into his
enlistment."

"Doing a Google search for "Payap University Clugston" yields his academia.edu page.
According to that page, he's currently a graduate student there. I can't find
references to any work that Mr. Clugston has actually published, though."

And no, we've never seen a video of him speaking foreign languages in a conversational
setting.
Maralol on 30 September 2013

I would vote for a debate if it were truly multilingual. That is to say all participants could switch at will between any shared languages; let's say English, French and Spanish. Wouldn't that be the best way to for everybody to show their stuff? And to make it easy, let's say you could stay in any language if you are not uncomfortable switching.

I know that people like Richard Simcott, Alex Rawlings and Luca would have no problem with this and could talk circles around our blowhard here. But to come back to our four participants, I suspect Steve Kaufman could pull it off very well. Then Benny and finally Moses who would probably struggle a bit in other languages. Just how Clugstone would do is anybody's guess.
s_allard on 30 September 2013

Maralol wrote:

...

According to this conversation on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/116itl/has _anyone_here_heard_ofworked
_with_linguist/

"Chris's military records indicate he washed out of Arabic class and didn't complete
the full Thai class before he was discharged from the army, 10 months into his
enlistment."

"Doing a Google search for "Payap University Clugston" yields his academia.edu page.
According to that page, he's currently a graduate student there. I can't find
references to any work that Mr. Clugston has actually published, though."

And no, we've never seen a video of him speaking foreign languages in a conversational
setting.

Based on this information, it would be tempting to make all kinds of conclusions about the personality of this
individual and the propensity for anger and agressive behaviour. But, as @emk has pointed out, we should not
be discussing this individual's personality but his ideas.

In this department and in my assessment, there is nothing original and nothing of interest for us here at HTLAL.
When you peer under the layers of pseudo scientific jargon in search of substance there is none to be found. For
someone who is constantly referring to academic standards, the language is definitely unacademic and
reminiscent of a street thug. It is lightyears away from the very elegant prose of a Professor Aguelles.

Any attempts at some semblance of scientific discourse in linguistics are confusing and trite. All things
considered, there is nothing to be learned here.

In French there is a wonderful but rarely used word psittacisme that refers to the use of words without
understanding their meaning. This is what we have here. A lot of smoke and mirrors and nothing else.
s_allard on 01 October 2013

I wish to swing the pendulum back around, if I may? I've watched a few of Clugston's
more recent videos and whilst I still think his tone is off putting and not at all meet
for Youtube and the general internet environment there is still something of worth
there.

If he's right and some of these polyglots are charging $250 an hour for a private
lesson...well then that is to be castigated. You can literally, LITERALLY, get world
experts in a language for less. The price of a few lessons can get you a trip in a
target country in many cases. This is dishonorable practice. Especially because as
Erenko says above, many of these polyglots tend to overrate their own skills.

On the other hand, capitalism, free market, yadda yadda, if they want to burn money let
them etc. Here's me as an idiot teaching languages for free etc.

Secondly re: anti-intellectualism. It doesn't matter if Kaufmann admits it or not, he's
wrong. First off its offensive to suggest that those without academic training can't
understand ideas as simple as noun cases. Good for him something else seems to work for
him but in an area where motivation is a serious issue he's only putting people off.
Moreover he is deliberately misrepresenting and denigrating whole fields of
linguistics. This is not on, especially because there is a lot of interesting stuff out
there the community in large could utilise. The thing I hate the most, though, is this
attempt at forcing a dichotomy between those who study languages (linguists) and those
who speak them (polyglots). This is a typically bland example of lionising oneself by
denigrating one's "enemies". A sad attempt to accrue personal authority. I've pointed
out many times that this is not the point and even given examples of academics like
Streven's who could easily, easily, run rings around any of these people (I mean,
seriously, being a reader for OUP in just one language is DIFFICULT, let alone some 30
or whatever it is).

There is a lot more in academia than K suggests. People should explore a bit. You can't
expect everything to be given to you or laid out, after all language study is in itself
an intensely personal pursuit anyway...

There are other aspects to he's right on, like the tendency to be almost worshipful
towards certain figures.

Anyway I'll stop, I'm not really a fan of his but I don't think we should sweep him
totally under the carpet. I do think he's right on a few issues, no matter how
unpopular such an opinion inevitably will be here.

Lykeio on 01 October 2013

Benny charges $250 for A PRIVATE CONSULTATION. This isn't a private lesson - it is a
business consultation for aspiring internet bloggers. If Clugston criticises that, he
needs to learn to read.
tarvos on 01 October 2013

tarvos wrote:

Benny charges $250 for A PRIVATE CONSULTATION. This isn't a private lesson - it is a business consultation for aspiring internet bloggers.

I just went and found the buried http://www.fluentin3months.com/consultation/ - Consultation link on Benny's site

Quote:

For a few hours a month, I’m opening my schedule so you can pick my brain and get one-on-one help – whether you’re running a business or blog, or learning a language.

Would you like to use social media more effectively to get traffic and increase sales? Unsure of how to boost your blog’s readership or create viral content? Interested in having me review your marketing plan or a product you’re about to release? Maybe you’re struggling with a particular aspect of learning a language?

So he's offering a hybrid consulting service, where you can ask him about Internet marketing or language learning, and he's selling a "few hours per month". His rate is $249 for a one-hour, one-time consultation.

If you've never been self-employed, this probably sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Assuming he sells 3 consultations/month, that an extra $750, which is certainly quite nice by US/European standards. But I'm guessing he's lucky to earn even that. The problem with charging an outrageous rate is that you're only going to work a couple hours per month, and your total monthly earnings will be a lot less than you might earn working at the gas station. I guarantee that my occasional (and excellent) language tutor earns far more from teaching than Benny, even though she charges 10% of what he does, because she fills her hours.

I'm guessing Benny knew all of this before he posted the page, and decided: (1) He gets dozens of emails a day asking for advice, (2) He can't possibly answer them all, (3) He needs a polite way to say "No", and (4) Pointing people at his consulting page will either make them go away, or maybe he'll occasionally score some money. If he makes them pay in advance, and if he includes the income with his book profits when doing his taxes, then it won't even be that much extra work.

Honestly, I wouldn't pay it, because I bought a copy of Benny's book way back when, and I didn't find it especially useful. (Too much beginner stuff, with no concrete details for somebody who's already reached B1.) But there's probably somebody out there for whom it's an excellent deal. Let's imagine a working professional who's budgeted $15,000 and 6 months to move to another country and learn a foreign language for the first time, but who's still kind of clueless. I'm almost certain that spending $250 and an hour with Benny would be an excellent investment. He'd tell them to do some Skype lessons and some studying before leaving, to avoid the expatriate community at all costs, and to stop using English. And because he's a popular blogger, our hypothetical student will probably even listen. And Benny's advice could easily make the difference between success and failure for the whole $15,000 trip.

Lykeio wrote:

If he's right and some of these polyglots are charging $250 an hour for a private lesson...well then that is to be castigated. You can literally, LITERALLY, get world experts in a language for less.

Two questions: Are those world experts offering regular lessons or one-time-consultations? If they're offering regular lessons, then they'll absolutely charge a lower hourly rate, because they want to work a lot more hours. If the world experts are offering one-off consultations for, say, $50, then let me offer them some free business advice: They need to raise their rates dramatically, or they'll never even cover their grocery bills.
emk on 01 October 2013

I would just like to weigh in and add to @emk's post about @Benny's fees. As was pointed out, the $250/hour is
not for ongoing language lessons but a one-off consultation that is more oriented towards enhancing an Internet
business, That rate is in my mind quite reasonable, especially when compared to the rates charged by
professionals in many fields.

More fundamentally, the issue is whether the price of a service is worth it in terms of the results. As someone
who does a fair amount of private tutoring in French, I always chuckle at the reaction of some people to my
hourly rates, $60 to $100 an hour depending on the nature of the work involved. By the way, those rates are less
than what a mechanic charges at a major automobile garage charges where I live.

People who don't have any money find my rates prohibitive, and the story ends there. Other people look at the
potential results. If their professional success depends on passing an exam or a job interview in French, a few
hours with me or another tutor should be considered an investment.

I find that most people tend to overrate their level of proficiency in French and are taken aback when they find
themselves in a real situation where they have to perform in front of native speakers. How many people have had
the opportunity to work one on one with a professional who will tell them exactly what is wrong with their
speaking and how to improve it? Two hours of professional tutoring that seems so expensive can make the
difference between getting and not getting that job or contract.

s_allard on 01 October 2013

Oh my God. This senseless topic for 11 pages... I mean, I also take part in such discussions... sometimes... but, well.

Btw. - if it wasn't for an extremely rare language and in an extremely low price, I wouldn't spend any money for language tutors anymore.
prz_ on 01 October 2013

Although this is slightly off-topic of the OP, I think there is some relevance in questioning the value of language
tutors. Or, to look at the big picture, why use the services of a consultant or one of the language gurus or polyglots
who offer paid advice? The answer is the same whether it's a $500 / hour consultant or a $20 / hour tutor over the
Internet: you can't correct yourself. Actors and athletes have coaches, other people have mentors, authors have
editors. Most professional people strive to improve, and one of the best ways to improve is to invite and take
advantage of constructive criticism.

Who doesn't appreciate good advice? I find it hard to believe that somebody would not love to have the helping hand
of a an experienced observer who can pinpoint mistakes and weakneses and suggest areas and means of
improvement. My own experience as both a tutor and a tutoree (?) is that once you've tasted it there is no looking
back. Classes are great, so are books, CDs and the Internet, but there is nothing like working with a trained
professional if you want to make real progress.
s_allard on 01 October 2013

s_allard wrote:

Who doesn't appreciate good advice? I find it hard to believe that somebody would not love to have the helping hand
of a an experienced observer who can pinpoint mistakes and weakneses and suggest areas and means of
improvement. My own experience as both a tutor and a tutoree (?) is that once you've tasted it there is no looking
back. Classes are great, so are books, CDs and the Internet, but there is nothing like working with a trained
professional if you want to make real progress.

When I was teaching in India, a new teacher arrived at the school who said that he had taught himself Hindi. The school arranged for language teachers to come and teach Hindi for about £1 per hour, but he still refused to take part. "Why would I pay someone to teach me something I can teach myself?" A strange attitude for a teacher, and even stranger (or not) is the fact that I never once heard him speak Hindi, even when speaking with Indians.

My point is that some people want to do it their own way, regardless of evidence or outcomes. Some people call it "thinking for themselves", but that is often simply a cover for not listening to other people.
Jeffers on 01 October 2013

Based on this latest thread, I went and looked at some of Clugston's videos. I had watched some of them some months ago, and had wondered at the time, based on his rambling and repetitive attacks on some of the other YouTube polyglots, whether he was often three sheets to the wind when he decided to make his videos.

I've now listened to a few more of his videos, but frankly, there are so many and they're so repetitive that I think it would be an utter waste of time to do more than a partial sampling. I think that some of his criticisms of others are indeed valid, but that a good many of his main points, even if technically accurate, are largely irrelevant to most people interested in learning languages. Who cares, for instance, if 90 percent of the world's languages are unscripted? Steve Kaufman doesn't claim to teach these, and very few people have any interest in learning them. Field linguists may indeed have developed techniques to learn, analyze, and describe them (and no, these are not "secret technologies" as he states in at least one of his videos), but they are not the only way to learn languages, and certainly not a very feasible way to learn the languages that most people have an interest in learning.

His constant harping on the supposed "misuse" of the world "linguist" is simply silly; words, as any linguist is aware, can be used in more than one meaning, and the use of "linguist" for people skilled in languages far antedates the modern science of linguistics when differentiated from philology as he does. And the military, whose language teaching programs he does seem to value, routinely refers to translators/interpreters as "linguists."

While I agree that it makes more sense to try to focus on his points rather than his personality, his personality, at least as judged by his videos, is so obnoxious and insulting toward his interlocutors and even his viewers that it's hard to focus on anything else. (For one thing, as a minimal courtesy to those who watch his videos, he could turn off the television or radio or whatever he often has blaring in the background.)

Despite the titles of his videos, the ones I watched seldom provided any useful information on the subjects in question, but mostly involved the same attacks on other polyglots (some of whom I find a bit irritating myself). In one on the best sources to learn French, for instance, he suggested the "French in Action" series and waved some other books around in front of the camera. These were "French for Reading", a book called "Programmed French", and another book that I don't recall. On "Programmed French" he offered to send photocopies to people who send payment in advance, a cavalier attitude toward copyright that would probably be looked askance at in the academic circles he so values.

For me, the bottom line is that despite listening to probably a dozen of his videos, I never learned anything useful about learning languages or about anything else. It's easy to laugh at his foibles, such as his repeatedly saying "antidotal" when he really means "anecdotal", etc., but he doesn't seem to convey much other than anger and scorn toward those whom he sees as his "rivals".

Despite his purported respect for proven methodologies, citations, scientific approaches, high scholarly standards, etc., all the videos I've seen portray little more than barely coherent bluster. He's certainly not demonstrated, at least in his videos, any high-level ability to be "functional" (his preferred term) in languages other than English, and I suspect that most academics, in linguistics or other fields, would also find his mode of discourse pretty off-putting.

I have to wonder, though, why with all his scorn for the "cult of the YouTube amateurs", he just doesn't devote himself to academic linguistics and make a name for himself in whatever field he finds most congenial. Judged by comments above, he doesn't seem to have any academic publications to his name, and it isn't clear if he has any actual degrees in linguistics. But I think that if he DOES aspire to an academic career, the crude and noxious videos he's put up on the internet would hardly help him to get a job in a respected linguistics department.
daristani on 01 October 2013

s_allard wrote:

Classes are great, so are books, CDs and the Internet, but there is nothing like working with a trained
professional if you want to make real progress.

I know we have discussed this before, but I'll just make a quick point here. A personal tutor can be very helpful and effective for honing in your speaking skills, quickly correcting recurring mistakes and developing fluency, but in my opinion this does not constitute making "real progress". The bulk of the work involved in learning a language - grammar study, internalizing the syntax, the accumulation of a vast store of vocabulary and means of expression, is done far more efficiently through self-study methods, particularly those involving extensive and progressive readings in the target language itself.

Sole or primary reliance on a tutor achieves very modest results by comparison as the exposure to the language itself is much more limited both in terms of quantity, complexity and diversity of settings, subject matter and registers. Tutors, if engaged and accomplished, can in my opinion be a terrific aid for perfecting particular aspects of language production, but not so much for actually "learning" it.
Juаn on 02 October 2013

Juаn wrote:

s_allard wrote:

Classes are great, so are books, CDs and the Internet, but there is nothing like
working with a trained
professional if you want to make real progress.

I know we have discussed this before, but I'll just make a quick point here. A personal tutor can be very helpful
and effective for honing in your speaking skills, quickly correcting recurring mistakes and developing fluency, but
in my opinion this does not constitute making "real progress". The bulk of the work involved in learning a
language - grammar study, internalizing the syntax, the accumulation of a vast store of vocabulary and means of
expression, is done far more efficiently through self-study methods, particularly those involving extensive and
progressive readings in the target language itself.

Sole or primary reliance on a tutor achieves very modest results by comparison as the exposure to the language
itself is much more limited both in terms of quantity, complexity and diversity of settings, subject matter and
registers. Tutors, if engaged and accomplished, can in my opinion be a terrific aid for perfecting particular
aspects of language production, but not so much for actually "learning" it.

I don't want to deviate too much from the OP, but I would like to revisit this issue of real progress and the use of
tutors. I should clarify that I mean by real progress the active skills like speaking and writing. Of course one has
to do extensive reading and listening, all the drills and all the homework. But the problem that many, if not most
people, have is that they hit a wall that I'll call the eternally intermediate wall. You can understand the news on
the
radio and newspaper nearly perfectly but can you talk or write in a manner that resembles what a native speaker
would say? The answer is no. Just a basic conversation talking about mundane topics is challenging.

This is where working with a professional tutor comes in. I'm not talking about a language buddy where you
exchange languages over Skype. Let me say, of course, that there is nothing wrong with this. I'm talking about
someone who is trained in the linguistics of the target language and in language teaching.

The first thing is basic house cleaning: getting rid of those pronuciation mistakes that you don't know you
are making. Then we work on identifying weaknesses and bringing your grammar up to speed. And finally, and
most importantly, the tutor helps you bring all the elements that you have gleaned in your extensive reading into
utterances that you actually create.

What I find interesting when I do tutoring is that my students most of the time know what I'm showing them.
They've seen or heard it before but now they are actually using it in a conversation. It's one thing to read
something on a screen, it's another thing to have it come out of your moth.

This why it is so exciting to work with a good tutor. I can talk about what I want to talk about. And if I don't
know how to say something, I have an immediate answer. And it goes without saying that I'm learning to speak
in a native-like manner. I may have been saying things correctly from a grammatical point of view, but the tutor
is showing me how he or she as a native speaker would have said the same thing.

A tutor does not replace homework. Unless you have lots of money, you'll be seeing your tutor maybe once or
twice a week. When I speak of real progress, I think of the tutor as the "kicker" or catalyst who will help me
transform all my home or classroom work into a real active skill.

One of the byproducts of all this is self-confidence and self-esteem. No longer do you have to dread interacting
with native speakers. The tutor shows you how to handle yourself in the situations you can imagine. You want to
know how to say "Could you pass me the salt please?" No problem. There may be three different ways of saying
that. Or you can work on various ways of starting a conversation. Or maybe you want to work on how to tell a
story of even jokes in the language. These are not easily learned from a book.

All that I've said here can apply to written language. I think it's wonderful to have someone look at my e-mails
and explain to me the subtleties of tone of voice and the use of idiomatic expressions. I would never dare send
off an important e-mail in my target language that I haven't checked with my tutor unless I'm totally sure of my
text.

The point here is that the tutor does not replace all the individual work. The tutor helps to take it to another level.
s_allard on 02 October 2013

Juаn wrote:

s_allard wrote:

Classes are great, so are books, CDs and the Internet, but there is nothing like working with a trained
professional if you want to make real progress.

I don't agree with this at all. I think the vast majority of internalising the grammar and vocabulary comes from actually using it in meaningful conversation and making mistakes. That's why you have so many students who've studied grammar for years and when you see their writing, it's littered with basic grammatical errors, often times things that you literally learn in the first day of English class (not to mention their speaking). It's like learning to play an instrument that you can only play when you have two people. You can study the notes as much as possible, but unless you have practice playing them, you're not going to make a massive amount of progress. Obviously I'm not suggesting you can't learn some useful things on your own, but I do think sessions with a qualified tutor offers more than you suggest in terms of actually learning the language.

What you described seems to be a conversation partner, rather than a tutor. A good tutor should be using conversation to respond to your needs for language. He should react to you struggling to express yourself on a particular issue and tell you some ways that native speakers would make the same point, then give you more practice in that. In that respect, it's far more immediate than waiting for a similar context to appear in a book you're reading. He should also have designed a syllabus that gives you practice in a variety of contexts. One of the big advantages of a private tutor in this respect is that you can actually go to the locations in question and practice using a real context.

And of course a tutor doesn't replace the work you do at home. And there are certainly ways to waste a tutor. But if money was no object, then a qualified, private tutor would definitely be top of my list of language learning tools.
I'm With Stupid on 02 October 2013

I had never heard of Clugston before reading this thread. I found it very difficult to watch his videos. Sometimes I agree with Benny, Steve, Moses, etc., and sometimes I don't. Fine. But at least they present their opinions as opinions, as what has worked for them. I'm glad most people in the language learning community can agree to disagree and get on politely and civilly. Something I've always liked about this forum is that people sincerely try to help each other. I like that we can have different opinions and experiences regarding language learning, but still get on. As someone once told me, 'We may not always see eye to eye, but we can still walk shoulder to shoulder.' As we pool our knowledge, our differences are an asset.

As for Clugston himself, I'm worried. His erratic spelling, his militaristic dressing-up, his persecution and Messiah complexes (him against the language-learning world as he tries to save the 'purity' of linguistics), and his delusions of grandeur and supremacy, all exhibited in his videos and comments, all suggest that man doesn't need to be debated, he needs to be diagnosed. Seriously. I hope he has family around him to help.

As I said, I have always found the community to be generally happy and helpful. It's a pity there are such negative people out there. It's not that he isn't entitled to his own opinions -- he is, as we all are -- it's that he doesn't criticise and share for the sake of helping, instead he does it to bully and browbeat and intimidate. He doesn't want to contribute to the debate, he wants to control it. There is no place for that. His videos left me with a nasty aftertaste, and after today, I don't intend to watch any more of his videos. Why would I, when instead I can watch Steve, Richard, Luca, Benny, Moses...... ?
pfn123 on 03 October 2013

pfn123 wrote:

I had never heard of Clugston before reading this thread. I found it very difficult to watch his videos

His videos left me with a nasty aftertaste, and after today, I don't intend to watch any more of his videos. Why would I, when instead I can watch Steve, Richard, Luca, Benny, Moses...... ?

And of course http://www.youtube.com/user/FluentCzech - FluentCzech has some of the most pleasant language learning videos.
luke on 03 October 2013

luke wrote:

pfn123 wrote:

His videos left me with a nasty aftertaste, and after today, I don't intend to watch any more of his videos. Why would I, when instead I can watch Steve, Richard, Luca, Benny, Moses...... ?

And of course http://www.youtube.com/user/FluentCzech - FluentCzech has some of the most pleasant language learning videos.

Agreed! And Khatz, and ... Well there are many good bloggers, vloggers, and polyglot pundits ;) Too many to list. That was why my little list was followed by dot dot dot ... I'm glad there are so many people sharing their experiences and suggestions. We're all the better off because of them. And I agree, Anthony Lauder is definitely up there :D
pfn123 on 03 October 2013

pfn123 wrote:

Anthony Lauder is definitely up there :D

But he only claims to be a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X7XTui58Qs - PolyNot .
luke on 03 October 2013

luke wrote:

pfn123 wrote:

Anthony Lauder is definitely up there :D

But he only claims to be a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X7XTui58Qs - PolyNot .

Yep, I agree. I wasn't referring to the number of languages he knows. I meant he's 'up there' as one of the most informative (and one of the most entertaining) language learners sharing their experiences and advice online.
pfn123 on 03 October 2013

pfn123 wrote:

luke wrote:

pfn123 wrote:

Anthony Lauder is definitely up there :D

But he only claims to be a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X7XTui58Qs - PolyNot .

Of course. He has a great sense of humor and is extremely humble as well.
luke on 03 October 2013

I think that the debate about this individual whose name I shall no longer pronounce has pretty much run its course.
There seems to be a consensus that this scary person belongs to some lunatic fringe and contributes nothing to the
language learning community. I have decided to simply boycott this person's videos and encourage others to do
likewise.
s_allard on 03 October 2013

s_allard wrote:

I always chuckle at the reaction of some people to my hourly rates, $60 to $100 an hour
depending on the nature of the work involved.

That's pretty mild. I would bust out laughing if I heard those rates.
leosmith on 03 October 2013

Does it really matter whether we acquire a language through an academic approach or a method that is more street-style? Surely people in both camps can learn skills and techniques from each other?

I believe there are parts of Africa and Asia where people commonly speak 3 or 4 languages despite having little in the way of formal education. Do we write off their "non-academic" efforts?
beano on 03 October 2013

s_allard wrote:

I was thinking the same thing... but they are kind of like a train wreck.
Irish_Goon on 03 October 2013

leosmith wrote:

s_allard wrote:

I always chuckle at the reaction of some people to my hourly rates, $60 to
$100 an hour
depending on the nature of the work involved.

That's pretty mild. I would bust out laughing if I heard those rates.

Am I to assume that my rates are ridiculously low? What would be the reasonable rate for private tutoring by a
university lecturer? When I see what accent reduction specialists charge, starting around $105 per hour, I'm
considering bumping up my rates. Pardon my facetiousness and in all seriousness, the cost of these kinds of
services should be viewed in terms of value. Why do people flock to Middlebury College and pay $9,000 for six
weeks of French when they can borrow a book at the library for free? I like to think that you get what you pay for.

As a matter of fact, why even bother with a tutor at all when you can do it yourself? As an example of how useful
a tutor or coach can be, one need not look further than the excellent website of that up and coming polyglot
Gabriel Wyner. http://www.towerofbabelfish.com/development/my-languages/#.U k2GcEb5NOo - Gabriel's
demo in French
Gabe leads workshops around the world on language learning, has invented a method and authored a book to be
published shortly. Like many Youtube polyglots, he has these videos of him speaking various languages. The
French video is basically quite good but there are some major mistakes that are very irritating for a native
listener. I dare say that most native French-speakers would burst out laughing. I can't comment about the other
videos but I suspect that there may be similar problems.

I wish Gabriel well in his business but I certainly would advise that he use the services of a coach or a tutor
before showing the whole world that his command of French is, shall we say, a work in progress. I think this is
embarrassing. But Gabe doesn't know any better and neither do most viewers who don't speak French.

All of these problems could have been fixed in less than an hour and Gabe would never make those mistakes
again. Is that worth $100? For some people yes, for some people no.
s_allard on 03 October 2013

s_allard wrote:

All of these problems could have been fixed in less than an hour and Gabe would never
make those mistakes
again.

That's an interestingly optimistic claim.

If his command of French is still a work in progress, that seems to suggest that a lot
more than one hour's work would fix it, and how could one be sure to have fixed it so
permanently?

Quote:

Is that worth $100? For some people yes, for some people no.

If it were as effective as you suggest, then of course, it's cheap at the price.

But presumably, if he's so less-than-perfect, then further evidence of his output would
presumably reveal a whole range of further imperfections, just waiting to be revealed.

montmorency on 03 October 2013

I find it intriguing that Gabriel Wyner only claims C1 in German (and French), and yet
has lived in a German-speaking country for some time, and has even taught there.
Perhaps he's just never had the time to take the C2 test, but I'd be slightly more
comforted to see C2's there.

However, what he is teaching is his method, not actual languages, so I suppose
it's OK, if his method is OK. I doubt if people who have been following HTLAL for any
length of time really need one of his workshops, but many people might benefit, and
they don't seem outrageously expensive.

But yes, if his personal language demos were faultless, he would present a slightly
better image.
montmorency on 03 October 2013

I watch Clugston´s videos purely for entertainment value. The way he spits a load of fire and hate and then chuckles at his own "humour", and the way he dismisses people who can speak more languages than him, to a much better level as "self agrandizing, non academic, pseudo scientific anti intellectual bandits", to me is absolutely hilarious! And he has recently restyled himself as "The Power Linguist"!

He claims to have lived in Spain for 10 years, but have you seen and heard his Spanish, spoken and written? Dear oh dear, the man can barely write in English.

I really think we should have more appreciation for him, but as a comedian, because I doubt that anyone really takes his "linguistic" babbling seriously. As already mentioned, what is very pathetic is the way he stoops to personal insults about Benny´s weight etc, and he even mentioned Richard Simcott´s appearance, even though with the mere addition of a pair of spectacles, Clugston looks like he could be Richard´s twin brother!

I think it is a case of jealousy, because he always targets the "polyclods" who are the most popular with viewers.

In one way, I know I shouldn´t encourage this total tosser by watching his videos, but it´s just so funny. I am waiting for him to have his own TV show hahaha "You need to get to the gym, you weigh about 50 pounds, and that means you are not a serious language learner!"

hahahahah enough said, we should form an appreciation society

gogglehead on 03 October 2013

s_allard wrote:

In my modest opinion this is too harsh and excessive in the opposite direction. Everyone deserves a chance at self-rectification.

I certainly won't be watching any of his videos though, but that's because with one exception I watch *none* of these Youtube "celebrities" of the language-learning community. Other than professor Argüelles, I find them all quite boring, and in particular regard as spectacularly unimpressive being able to conduct small talk in a foreign language.
Juаn on 03 October 2013

erenko wrote:

s_allard wrote:

But Gabe doesn't know any better and neither do most viewers who don't speak French.

YouTube polyglots (-clods, -nots) are famous for their impeccable pronunciation.

Quote:

Ils sont trop verts, dit-il, et bons pour des goujats.

Do you know how much Michel Thomas charged for his lessons? His pronunciation was divine.
Pity he's dead, you could teach him a lesson or two. Free of charge.

Erenko, are you trolling?
Jeffers on 03 October 2013

Jeffers: I think I'd call erenko's post a well-placed bit of sarcasm, rather than trolling. Pronunciation is something that accomplished polyglots vary quite a lot from each other about, both in attitude and in skill. And he certainly has a point about Michel Thomas - he successfully gave rather expensive courses with an extremely heavy accent in the target languages.

S_allard: If one hour with a tutor fixed pronunciation problems permanently, I'd be much more of a promoter of tutors. I've observed no gains, or temporary gains interleaved with or followed by the same old mistakes over and over, both in myself and in others... tutoring can be useful, but it's very rarely anywhere near that useful.
Volte on 04 October 2013

When I said that Gabriel Wyner's problems could be fixed permanently in an hour, I was certainly not thinking of
pronunciation problems that are often intractable. In this case at hand the pronunciation was not a problem at all.
This person's background as a trained singer plus the courses at Middlebury College probably took care of that. The
problems are really in the area of grammar and vocabulary. Things that are easily corrected and remembered.
Something like saying "astuces" instead of "tips."

I find that perfect pronunciation is overrated. In fact, the video here is an excellent example of good pronunciation
and egregious grammar and vocabulary mistakes. Perfect grammar and vocabulary go far towards compensating for
imperfect phonetics but the opposite does not work.
s_allard on 04 October 2013

Volte wrote:

S_allard: If one hour with a tutor fixed pronunciation problems permanently, I'd be much more of a promoter of tutors. I've observed no gains, or temporary gains interleaved with or followed by the same old mistakes over and over, both in myself and in others... tutoring can be useful, but it's very rarely anywhere near that useful.

I agree. You might be able to tell someone how to fix a problem in an hour, but you have little to no control over whether it's actually successful. In fact, improvements in pronunciation are next to impossible for a teacher to judge without outside aid, such as recording devices or the help of a colleague. The reason being that whether or not the pronunciation of the student is improving, the teacher's ability to listen to them is, and this creates the illusion of progress, when in reality, it'd be just as difficult to understand if they went abroad as they were at the beginning.

Whether or not you can fix someone's pronunciation in an hour would come down to whether they know they're making the mistake. And even then, if they've been making the same mistake for a long time, then it'll likely be ingrained, and it will still take a lot of practice and motivation to change.

I'm With Stupid on 04 October 2013

erenko wrote:

Jeffers wrote:

Erenko, are you trolling?

Everyone's so serious that I feel like crying, I mean laughing.

Your last three posts were pretty much pure sarcasm with no content. Whether or not you agree with s_allard, he's actually explaining his position, and you're just metaphorically rolling your eyes.

I'm still not actually sure what point you're trying to make, but if you find this thread so insufferable, maybe you'd be happier in another thread? Personally, I'm going to review some Anki cards and go to bed.
emk on 04 October 2013

erenko wrote:

If everybody agreed with everybody, nobody would be happy.

I agree... but for the sake of happiness I'll disagree :P
pfn123 on 04 October 2013

Volte wrote:

Jeffers: I think I'd call erenko's post a well-placed bit of sarcasm, rather than trolling.

In a recent thread Erenko and s_allard got into a debate which was turning pretty ugly. It appears to me that Erenko has made several posts directed at winding s_allard up, whether he means to or not. When writing on a forum, nobody can see your face or hear your tone of voice, so innocent sarcastic comments can easily be mistaken as a flame. That's why Facebook starts so many fights in schools.

emk wrote:

erenko wrote:

Jeffers wrote:

Erenko, are you trolling?

Everyone's so serious that I feel like crying, I mean laughing.

Thank you for summing it up so well, emk.
Jeffers on 04 October 2013

I'm With Stupid wrote:

Volte wrote:

S_allard: If one hour with a tutor fixed pronunciation problems
permanently, I'd be much more of a promoter of tutors. I've observed no gains, or temporary gains interleaved
with or followed by the same old mistakes over and over, both in myself and in others... tutoring can be useful,
but it's very rarely anywhere near that useful.

I agree. You might be able to tell someone how to fix a problem in an hour, but you have little to no control over
whether it's actually successful. In fact, improvements in pronunciation are next to impossible for a teacher to
judge without outside aid, such as recording devices or the help of a colleague. The reason being that whether or
not the pronunciation of the student is improving, the teacher's ability to listen to them is, and this creates the
illusion of progress, when in reality, it'd be just as difficult to understand if they went abroad as they were at the
beginning.

Whether or not you can fix someone's pronunciation in an hour would come down to whether they know they're
making the mistake. And even then, if they've been making the same mistake for a long time, then it'll likely be
ingrained, and it will still take a lot of practice and motivation to change.

I certainly agree that pronunciation problems are probably the most difficult to correct because of the difficulty
of retraining the sppech mechanism and the interaction between L1 and L2. Certain things, like the French u take
time, i.e. lots of practice. Prosody is notoriously difficult to master.

On the other hand, individual words or certain details can be cleaned up quite quickly if the learner is able to
focus specifically on the problem. For example, English-speakers initially have a problem pronouncing French
words ending in -tion because of the resemblance with English. But some drilling on the French pronunciation
quickly solves the problem.
s_allard on 04 October 2013

That damn French u.

In fact, for Americans at least, all those damn u's. Micronesians had four distinct
'u' that, in American English, were interchangeable. It's hard to even hear the
difference, though to Micronesians the differences were huge. None of us in the Peace
Corps ever really mastered them. They also have four distinct 'r' sounds, but oddly these
weren't too difficult for us.

This is an excellent example of where some time with a professional tutor can pay off.
kanewai on 04 October 2013

I found ProfArguelles' viewpoint on how linguistics can help with language learning informative.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=80&PN=8&TPN=2 - Ardaschir

Malcolm wrote:

Perhaps Ardaschir could explain how Linguistics helps with language learning (if it does at all).

ProfArguelles wrote:

Linguistics is often viewed as "hard" because it is all too often full of impenetrable jargon and indeed even complex mathematical forumulae. It is full of math and jargon because it isn't about languages any more, it is only theory about Language as an abstract map of the human mind. Noam Chomsky, the leading living linguist, openly dislikes foreign languages, and the only one he really knows is the Hebrew that his rabbinical scholar father taught him as boy. I've studied linguistics to a high level and known many linguists on four continents. There are probably more polyglots among linguists than among members of any other profession, but still, a shocking number of academic linguists have an extremely limited knowledge of foreign languages. I'm in self-imposed exile because I view most of my monolingual linguist colleagues to be the equivalent of zoologists talking about Animals on the basis of the knowledge of a single animal, or botanists talking about Trees on the basis of the knowledge of only one tree. Well, linguistics doesn't get this "hard" and abstract until it gets advanced. The two introductory courses you listed sound like they could be quite accessible and interesting. Also, be on the lookout for a course in something like historical philology. Philology is the only branch of linguistics that will actually help you with the study of languages.

futurianus on 05 October 2013

Any linguist, I'm sure, would tell you that someone hell-bent on communicative
perfection in languages such as Clugstone would not be at home studying linguistics. Even
field linguists aren't required to be the elite of language learners worldwide - they just
need to know the technical language with which to communicate with other linguists their
insights.

Though this whole Clugstone business is trivial and not worth a second's thought, there
might be a risk that people take away the idea that Clugstone's personality somehow
represents "the" academic view of language. All that Clugstone represents is intellectual
terrorism.

Arguelles is a very knowledgeable guy, but I think that through his old-fashioned
humanism he's committed himself to the notion that knowledge about human beings can only
come from from the ways human beings describe themselves. E.g. literature and philosophy.
He has admitted himself that he has skewed in favour of the humanities in his
life-project of cultivating an "encyclopedic mind." I would be surprised if any field
of cognitive sciences (such as linguistics, as it progresses today) caught his interest.

edit: clarity
Retinend on 16 October 2013

I don't like Clugston's style, and I can't see that he is more scientific in his specific arguments than those he criticizes so I don't really see the point in having a discussion with him. If the topic of scientific degrees should turn up during a discussion with a less aggressive opponent then I would just mention that I actually have a relevant university degree and then proceed to discussions about some concrete topics - in English or other languages.
Iversen on 17 October 2013

I must say, I don't agree with Clugston's repetitive aggression and harsh personal attacks/insults directed
towards respected youtubers. Having said that however, I do think he has a lot to contribute (about language
learning) to the polyglot 'community', but it's a shame he can't seem to do it in a more friendly, non-aggressive
manner. Having watched a lot of his videos, buried beneath rudeness, he does give interesting advice, and his
video about the hardest language in the world for an English L1 was particularly interesting and eye-opening for
me, seeing as he nails it down to a specific language, after outlining particular requirements a language would
have to meet in order for it to be considered the 'hardest'. I found this interesting because most people say
Arabic/Chinese etc is the hardest or they stick to the cliche, "Their is no hardest language, you can learn any
language etc etc.." so this was a nice change.

As far as what languages he knows; I read in an interview with him he said he's studied around 32 languages and
is particularly good in 6 of them or something. He seems to have knowledge in Spanish, Italian, French, Thai,
Khmer, Vietnamese as far as I can tell.
Kc2012 on 07 November 2013

I listened to some of his recent videos and I honestly don't think that he has anything new to offer.
He keeps calling himself a "Power Linguist," but doesn't seem to have any credentials to back up this claim. According to his http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christophe-clugston/14/744/ 991 - LinkedIn profile he's a trainer with a BSc in Sociology/Psychology and a BA in Secondary Education and Teaching who speaks Spanish, French and Italian.

His main theses seem to be:

You can only learn a language to perfection in country, therefore it's pointless to study languages that you cannot practice on a regular basis

You can only call yourself a linguist if you studied linguistics at a university and/or did field studies

The best way to learn a language is by rote learning

According to his latest videos (I didn't watch all of them), he's discovered a secret "East German volume learning method" that apparently primarily consists of using several different textbooks simultaneously, but he didn't go into the details.
He also claims that the East Germans used the same "volume method" in sports, which clearly shows that he doesn't know what he's talking about, because many Eastern-bloc athletes were primarily more successful than other athletes because of the unlimited use of illegal performance enhancing substances.

All this shows that he cannot be taken seriously. I certainly won't waste any more time listening to his rants.

Doitsujin on 07 November 2013

Doitsujin wrote:

I listened to some of his recent videos and I honestly don't think that he has anything
new to offer.
He keeps calling himself a "Power Linguist," but doesn't seem to have any credentials to back up this
claim. According to his http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christophe-clugston/14/744/ 991 - LinkedIn
profile he's a trainer with a BSc in Sociology/Psychology and a BA in Secondary Education and
Teaching who speaks Spanish, French and Italian.

His main theses seem to be:

You can only learn a language to perfection in country, therefore it's pointless to study languages
that you cannot practice on a regular basis

You can only call yourself a linguist if you studied linguistics at a university and/or did field studies

The best way to learn a language is by rote learning

According to his latest videos (I didn't
watch all of them), he's discovered a secret "East German volume learning method" that apparently
primarily consists of using several different textbooks simultaneously, but he didn't go into the details.
He also claims that the East Germans used the same "volume method" in sports, which clearly shows that
he doesn't know what he's talking about, because many Eastern-bloc athletes were primarily more
successful than other athletes because of the unlimited use of illegal performance enhancing substances.

All this shows that he cannot be taken seriously. I certainly won't waste any more time listening to his
rants.

This is my problem with Clugston: he not only doesn't help; he harms. He's the only YouTube polyglot
whose opinion I have no respect for. Any other polyglot, agree with them or not, you usually come away
from their posts/videos with something useful and at the very least feeling encouraged; Clugston
leaves you feeling you have achieved nothing, that you're unworthy, he makes you feel like giving up.

That's hardly surprising, though, because IMO that's exactly his intent: to put you in (what he
considers) your place- certainly he has no interest whatsoever in helping you succeed.

His attacks on everyone from Benny to Steve get quite nasty at times, but his attacks on Moses are
actually scandalous. He makes me feel like s***, every single time I read a comment from him (obviously I
no longer watch his videos).

In short: no, I don't think watching a debate between Clugman and other polyglots would be useful. I think
a lot of people learning (especially people on their first foreign language) would feel very demotivated after
watching such a thing.
Random review on 08 November 2013

No doubt quite a few of the YouTube polyglots are on an ego trip. But I have respect for anyone who
demonstrates their competence in various languages. I've yet to hear Clugston speak anything other than
English.
beano on 08 November 2013

I just listened to a couple of his videos, one of them called "The very best YouTube polyglot" and buried
under tons of criticism of some, he does actually (reluctantly) speak nicely about a few of them. I could not
help but smile when he wanted to point out Torbyrne's "weak spots" and mentioned his Spanish and the fact
that he was still in the learning process with Turkish.

Together with my Peruvian friend I have spoken with Torbyrne in Spanish and his Spanish is fantastic. If that
would be considered a weak point then we might all just drop language learning, because the possibility of us
learning L2 at a higher level than that s minimal. And since when does being in a learning process constitute
a weakness?
Solfrid Cristin on 08 November 2013

I cannot believe that some steroid-crazed Youtube troll lunatic generated a 16-page
thread on a supposedly serious language learning forum. We all have vocabulary we could
be learning. Good grief.
TehGarnt on 08 November 2013

Doitsujin wrote:

I had a look into the dozen or so books he holds in front of the camera (you can get a glimpse into some of them at amazon.com). Most of them are textbooks for conversational practice: comprehensive phrasebooks and others that teach language patterns via drills. A few also are books with grammatical exercises, apparently supplementing the aforementioned. I think that's about all.

Judging from the nature of these books and the few indications he gives I presume that what he calls "Volume Language Method" is essentially a home-study substitute for the FSI pattern-drill style of language instruction.

As I understand it the US military adopted this method in WWII and afterwards because they had to find something that would make even the average unexperienced person learn a language rather quickly, preferably in a group setting, keeping the organizational effort to a minimum. It was applied in order to meet the lowest common denominator, but to Clugston army training and field linguistics (??) are for some reason the only valid and "scientific" means of mastering a language. People learning by self-study he likes to call names (which I won't reproduce here) in a most aggressive manner, supposedly being doomed to remain "non-functional" etc., and to me this line of argument and choice of wording is sufficient not to investigate his philosophy any further.

Interestingly Professor Arguelles explained in some of his old posts that compared to intensive output-based classes any solid self-study or philological method will get you the same results in at most half, but more likely one third of the time - or even less if you already have foreign language experience, especially with a related language. Moreover being exposed to unceasing drills for many hours a day can be a real torture.

Regarding Clugston having a debate with any polyglots - well, an attempt to interview him was made by David Mansaray earlier this year, but it didn't materialize. They had a preliminary talk which lasted for several hours due to Clugston blocking each real communication by getting into long monologues and tirades. The talk went nowhere.

A few days later, instead of agreeing to get interviewed, Clugston without further notice suddenly put up a video making fun of Mansaray and his allegedly not being functional in Spanish, which was a gross distortion of the truth since Mansaray had offered him to conduct the interview in Spanish, if he liked to.

After that, as a defence, David put a long excerpt of his talk with Clugston online, which I listened to, and I have to say that Clugston's utterances seemed nothing but unintelligible mental convulsions, even worse than in his videos, whereas Mansaray always remained polite and patient, in spite of being increasingly bewildered.

As I see it Clugston was obviously not interested at all in any open debate right from the beginning and just took the opportunity to corner one of his favorite hate objects and reiterate his scorn in public. And this might be the fate of everyone who wants to follow suit and take him too serious.

Nevertheless he seems to exert a certain spell over others which I cannot account for. There are now several people on youtube backing him up using their real names, among them even a few academics, apparently being unaware that by openly endorsing this vampiric individual they are risking their professional credibility and in the long run may damage their careers.
Kronos on 08 November 2013

Considering that language learning is a small community, why would Clugston go out of his way to alienate himself? It would the same as going to a chess group, then smugly saying that everyone there is a moron. Even if it were the case, you just don't do it.

Could it have something to do with his combat sports? It seems that this area is his expertise, and maybe it is common to be more confrontational in that area. It would be very bad manners to walk into a boxing club with a show off attitude(posting language videos of speaking foreign languages for harmless fun). Showing respect and humility is typically expected in the ring...

You guys do realize that hobbies/lifestyles that involve getting punched in the face sort of makes you different from others, right?
Kugel on 10 November 2013

Kugel wrote:

Considering that language learning is a small community, why would Clugston go out of his way to alienate himself?

I saw somewhere on Reddit that he now offers his super secret German volume method for sale via Paypal. So I guess all the hubbub was just to make his name known and generate interest for his book.

(After all, he lists marketing and ad writing as interests on his LinkedIn page.)
Doitsujin on 10 November 2013

Kugel wrote:

He's repeatedly said that he doesn't consider it a community, so I doubt he's concerned
with being a part of it. Fair enough. He's just one more voice you can choose to either
listen to or ignore, whether inside or outside the community.

As to the original premise of the thread, I doubt a "debate" would serve any purpose at
all. Nothing new would be said by any of the participants.

R.
==
hrhenry on 10 November 2013

Kugel wrote:

Could it have something to do with his combat sports? It seems that this area is his expertise, and maybe it is common to be more confrontational in that area. It would be very bad manners to walk into a boxing club with a show off attitude(posting language videos of speaking foreign languages for harmless fun). Showing respect and humility is typically expected in the ring...

You guys do realize that hobbies/lifestyles that involve getting punched in the face sort of makes you different from others, right?

Respect and humility is expected across all martial arts, not just the ring. I agree that it makes you different but you can't afford to be arrogant and aggressive in combat sports. Everyone I've come across with that attitude normally come out the loser when they encounter someone not intimidated by them and get ostrasized by all the other martial arts groups.

Going back to Clugston I don't bother with people with his attitude in martial arts they are not worth wasting time on.
darkwhispersdal on 10 November 2013

I've never been to a traditional thai martial arts club, but the ones centered on
grappling and striking, at least where I live, are operated by people who are
professional, yet aggressive in cutting out charlatans and the like. You simply can't
fake it when sparring. Now as for foreign language proficiency....

I still disagree with Clugston's approach on youtube, as attacking people for their
hobbies(It could be all that they have in life) is generally an asshole thing to do. If
someone wants to lift their finger 1000 reps daily, I won't say a peep. You do what you
gotta do to stay sane.
Kugel on 10 November 2013