By the way, I checked out Benny’s blog and here is a bit of the some of the most recent exchanges on this subject.
I’m constantly refreshing Steve Kaufmann’s blog to see if you fooled him as well.
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Benny the Irish polyglot [Moderator] 21 hours ago in reply to Bill
Whenever he went off on his rants about me he very consistently showed that he never fully read a single post on my blog, so he likely would have jumped to conclusions very quickly.
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JamesAE 18 hours ago in reply to Bill
They don’t seem too happy with this here:
Login - LingQ…
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Bill 17 hours ago in reply to JamesAE
Basato sul link che hai postato sembra che stavi imparando l’italiano sul lingq. Com’è andato?
JamesAE 10 hours ago in reply to Bill
Sorry for writing in English but I only know a little bit of Italian. For a complete review of LingQ, see benny’s review, I’m not too good at explaining. For me it’s okay, but really only for reading or listening.
Benny the Irish polyglot [Moderator] 11 hours ago in reply to JamesAE
Yes, I’m not surprised that some people on that site have no sense of humour :)"
I must confess that I find Benny extremely annoying. The fact that I am blocked from commenting on his blog, and his insistence that my criticism of him can only be the result of not having read his blog, indicate how sensitive he is about his self-image and how intolerant he is of any criticism. Yet he has a large following of enthusiasts, so I must just be out of touch with the masses.
Let me say that I will believe a confession from Benny when it looks like this.
Benny’s Confession:
I am Benny, a good language learner. I am good at languages mostly because I like learning them. I can speak a number of Romance languages, and I learned them the hard way, by studying and living in the country. Ditto with German. I have a noticeable accent in all the foreign languages that I speak and do not sound like a native in any of them, not now, and not at any time in the past.
I have not achieved fluency from scratch in three months in any language. My “language hacks” are absolute common place things that are widely known and practiced, but putting them in one book is, I think, helpful and hopefully motivating to people. I am a great promoter. I promote myself, my book, and at the same time I promote language learning, so I believe that I am at worst harmless, and at best of benefit to many aspiring polyglots.
Yours sincerely,
Benny,"