Benny, neither you or me are going to control the comments on this forum. It is up to you whether you choose to participate or not, same as anyone else. I am tired of biting my tongue on my own forum. I am not going to continue to censor myself as I have been doing for the last little while.
Payne is perfectly entitled to his views, in particular since he bought your book.
Your consistent personal attacks on Edwin, calling him pathetic, directing snide comments his way like “Great job on “alerting” Steve by the way!” as if there was something nasty in mentioning your recent blog post, all strike me as childish, but that is your style. I might add that I find your self-pitying posturing here equally childish. In the famous words of Russel Peters in his youtube video imitating a Chinese shopkeeper, “Be a man!”.(google it).
You refer to my questions as loaded. Why? You were offended that Edwin referred me to your most recent blog post. You object to Edwin’s comments about that blog post, why? These are his views. If you don’t want people to comment on your views, don’t post on your blog. You can censor your own blog, you cannot censor this forum. Here are my views.
Your blog post is a superficial rant against figments of your imagination. I have posted the link above here in this thread so anyone can read the whole text, I will comment on a few quotes. You can call them out of context, but they are representative as anyone reading the whole post can see for themselves.
Quote #1.
"there is one end-use (to language learning) that really annoys the hell out of me: to show off.
Gather around and watch my performance!!
I like to call this the dancing-monkey reason to learn a language. Such a person doesn’t actually see any worth in the language itself; they just want attention from people."
Whom are you talking about here Benny? What right have you to judge what motivates other people to learn languages. In my view the only thing that matters is whether they enjoy learning the language and learn to communicate in the language they have chosen to learn.
Quote # 2
“Demonstrating to the world how great you are by speaking a bunch of languages is the ultimate ego-inflation. It’s the best party trick ever; being multilingual can be as good as being a dancing monkey in terms of getting attention; at least to the person who thinks it will work.”
Again whom are you referring to here?
Quote # 3
"The great pissing competition
And now comes the ugly side of language learning; something you would never expect from language learning; which is ultimately a way to communicate and bridge gaps between people: Verbal wars fuelled by testosterone.
I find it mind boggling when I look online in forums, and on some websites when I see how some polyglots treat one another, both towards me and towards others I’ve personally talked to and know are genuine. I’ve personally gotten so much abuse, insults and character attacks online that I’ve never discussed on this blog. I’m genuinely trying to encourage the world to learn languages, but endless arguments about irrelevant or misleading things will shadow this and attempt to portray me as an evil force."
As long as you make claims that you are unwilling to back up, (and I don’t say unable since I just don’t know) and react so defensively to any critical questioning, you will be subject to more criticism and questioning. There is no way to avoid it. You should not confuse healthy skepticism about your claims with a “pissing match” amongst polyglots, which I have not found to be the case. I get the odd troll, but they are few and far between.
Quote # 4
“If you are learning a language to impress people, then let me tell you right now that you are wasting your time! You simply won’t be getting the validation you seek, or if you do, it will be as superficial as your need to get it.”
Impressing others, native speakers, friends, relatives, etc. is a part of the motivation of a language learner, and quite legitimate. If you speak well you will impress these people. What is the problem?
Quote # 5
“When people do find out I’m a polyglot”
as if you hide the fact. Are you kidding? You have a blog called Benny the Irish Polyglot, sell a book on Language Hacks, claim to travel the world learning languages and post regularly about the subject and when someone asks you what you do you say “Shucks I would rather not say”.?
Quote # 6
“When I speak to any individual I only ever need one language; the one they speak and that’s why I learned it in the first place. If I were to rattle off French or whatever at them just to show that I can (which you’ll be happy to hear that I don’t), rather than be impressed they’d realise that it’s just a weak male ego seeking validation. Sadly this is what I see online occasionally when people use their languages for no reason but status.”
Most people only speak one language and do not rattle off irrelevant languages in a conversation. Who does this in conversations?
Yes there are people who do videos of themselves speaking various languages online, and I presume they are the targets of this article., me, Moses, Stu Jay Ray, Lucca etc. You want to tell these people to stop doing it because you don’t do it.
(Quote # 7) “Try not to learn a language as a party trick; the world has enough dancing monkeys as it is!”
The fact is that these “dancing monkeys” have credibility because we can see them backing up what they claim to be able to do. Sadly this is not the case with most of your claims, and as long as that situations persists, you will continue to be viewed skeptically by many, despite the great work you do in promoting language learning.
To me your entire post is a meaningless rant about nothing.
There it is, not out of context, on subject, and with that I would suggest that we cancel our discussion on Tuesday because I find your way of discussing things dishonest and unpleasant and I do not want to be involved.
