Has anybody seen this guy before?
The stuff he claims to be able to do (being entirely self-taught) after just a few weeks is right out of this universe! Either he is the biggest fraud in history, or he is an absolute genius!!
Pretty awesome, the guy seems to have a lot of dedication. Even learning what he said off by heart in a few weeks would be a challenge in itself!
Can anybody rate his level in the various languages? (I’m only acquainted with Russian)
His Russian pronunciation is bad.But he don’t have many problems with grammar,I guess.I don’t know his level in other languages,but in my opinion his skills will be improved across the time.I think he really love language learning that’s why he study difficult languages,such as Russian.
He seems to be remarkably fluent in all of his languages. Of course, fluency doesn’t always equate to accuracy and quality. But this guy does seem (to my inexpert ear at least) to be pretty convincing…
His Russian pronunciation is very strange. I think he memorizes and then speaks.
I was thinking something similar Steve. Scripted/memorised. But, let’s all hope he continues and gets good at speaking on the fly. More polyglots won’t spoil this broth. 
Have you seen his Arabic Cairo-dialect video? If it was scripted and memorized, then IMO he deserves a gold medal for this feat alone!
The average man on the street can’t even mimic a single word in a foreign language, and assuming that this guy has only been memorizing scripts (as people suspect), it’s still a kind of talent (although, for me it’s much easier to memorize stuff that actually MEANS something to me, than just a string of random sounds).
By the way, I’ve heard a worse Russian accent from people who have studied the language for years.
A new clip (Hindi):
More evidence that I’m just terrible at language learning and that I should move onto another hobby…
Adventures of a teenage polyglot A Teenage Master of Languages Finds Online Fellowship - The New York Times / by John Leland. - New York Times newspaper. This is about Timothy Doner and about several other famous polyglots (ultraglots?)
One interesting comment from the NYT article:
"…His final preparation consisted of watching Hindi soap operas, which have become a bonus pleasure, he said. “I get to feel less guilty about watching trash TV,” he said. “To watch ‘The Bachelor’ in English is one thing, but in Hindi it’s O.K.” "
This certainly chimes in entirely with my experiences of watching German TV. In the past I’ve watched some pretty trashy low grade stuff on RTL. I can’t deny getting a kind of cheap kick out of them, yet I have never watched tacky low-brow soap operas, etc, in my native English (at least, not since I was about 15 or 16 years old!)
His Russian pronunciation is very strange.
@steve
His Russian pronunciation is largely influenced by the phonetics of Arabic or Persian, which are his earlier foreign languages. Such a thing happens pretty often. For instance, Steve, one could certainly tell that you are familiar with Asian languages from the way you speak Russian. I know several girls here in Moscow, who have a strong American accent in German.
“Steve, one could certainly tell that you are familiar with Asian languages from the way you speak Russian”
I wonder if any other Russian native speaker gets this impression from listening to my Russian. I would tend to doubt it.
@steve Well, there is at least one more guy, who has left a fuzzy joke of that kind -)
Lipailon: “он подходил к русскому как к японскому))”
Remember how I saw that comment while thinking about it.
Your Russian pronunciation is quite clear, distinct and absolutely intelligible, but it is possible to guess from it, what your previous language learning experience was.
In Tim’s case, if I didn’t know it, there is no way I would say from his Russian, that he’s an American, my guess would be - an Arab or Persian.
Once again, I know a couple of Russians speaking French or German with an American accent. It happens pretty often, when one tries to avoid having his “native” accent and just ends up with the one from his previous foreign language.
I read about Tim’s language activities in the New York Time’s article today, so I had a look on Tim’s You Tube channel and decided to subscibe to his channel. I like the way he does his video presentations and am now curious to know whether he wants to subscribe to my channel as well and have a look at my videos. He speaks different languages than I do but at least we have English and French in common, so let’s see, if there will be some contact. I have contact with other young language learners as well, so the age difference from my experience is not a problem.
Fasulye
@Imyirtseshem “More evidence that I’m just terrible at language learning and that I should move onto another hobby…”
I’m terrible at relationships but I am certainly not going to move onto another hobby… and yeah, my language learning skills aren’t good either
@A Teenage Master of Languages Finds Online Fellowship - The New York Times
"When school is out, Timothy said, he spends up to 15 hours a day studying, teaching himself the rudiments of a language in two or three weeks. "
15 hours? opss…
“Mr. Simcott, in turn, introduced Timothy’s videos to the online forum he runs, How to Learn Any Language.”
“…to the online forum HE runs…”… err, no comments
Now I feel totally discouraged from learning languages whatsoever! I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I simply cannot spend 8 hours a day learning, let alone 15 hours! I average 1-1,5 hours a day and I have many days when I do nothing language related. Am I just lazy? Am I not enough motivated? Do I have less free time than polyglots? I have to study things other than languages, I have to work, but apart from that I get tired after 1,5 hours of learning. I don’t believe in talent, because it’s because of hard work that Tim, professor Arguelles, Richard Simcott, Luca Lampariello and others achieved so much. I should feel motivated to make more effort, yet I feel completely demoralised… Why do I have to “inch” towards progress, while others seem to fly towards it?
I know the same feeling, Customic. But, I’m sticking to it because I love what I’m doing. One day, I guess people will look at me and wonder how I learn languages so quickly. Actually, they probably already do… I guess the same goes for you.