Imyirtseshem: I understand it can be difficult finding a language partner over the internet despite the fact that there seem to be so many sites providing this service. It took me a few months to find a conversation partner who was consistent enough to be able to have multiple conversations a week with (which was mainly because she had an upcoming English test and she really needed to do well on it, which after our practice she did). I had many experiences before that where the other potential partners were just too flaky, and a few instances where when we did start speaking I quickly found out that this was not someone with who I wanted to spend any more time speaking with. With languages the languages you are pursuing I would imagine scarcity of available members is going to compound the experiences that I had. I can tell you that I’ve had most of my luck with sharedtalk.com, of which there are 2 Dutch speakers in the chat rooms right now (of course, that doesn’t mean they’d make good exchange partners, but they are good leads.) Everybody knows that guy who “plays the numbers game” while finding potential girlfriends (ask every girl they see until they finally get one to go out with them). This guy gets rejected 19 times out of 20, yet still has weekends full of dates. To find a good language partner without traveling, you have to learn to be this guy, and be patient. Or pay for tutors, I have no idea how many Dutch tutors exist.
German, hmm, yes,
Don’t speak that language yet, but maybe some day in the future. I take it from Google translate that you are musing about his possible upbringing. I believe in one of his videos he stated that he has never been to America, however I have no idea about the heritage of his parents. I think Sinatra still edges him out in the blue eyes department, although I always preferred Dean Martin’s music myself.
@Odiernod
Well, I guess I didn’t want to come right out and say it in good ol’ English - but I’m really not 100% convinced that Luca didn’t have some contact to English as a child? (As I say above, if that’s NOT the case, then he has a massive and very rare talent for learning native-like pronunciation, in my opinion…)
Guess you’re right about Dean Martin, though! 
Rank, I’ve heard this argument before ‘no contact with English before I started learning x months ago - look at how fluent I am now’. I never believe it. English is taught all over Europe. I find it hard to believe it. Regardless, he speaks good English now.
Babies are born able to speak English. It’s just that foreigners forget how. :-p
No, as a baby I spoke Yiddish. 
@SBT’pot: “…Babies are born able to speak English. It’s just that foreigners forget how. :-p”
Indeed. And as a babies ‘Foreigner’ were all able to sing in English, it’s just that as adults they forgot how! 
Can anyone rate Luca’s Russian (in terms of mistakes, accuracy)? He seems very fluent. I wonder how long it took him to learn that (and if he lived there or not)…
It’s a good question Peter. (And of course Russian is one of those languages where you can be highly ‘fluent’ - and yet make a new mistake every 3 seconds…)
But at any rate, Luca’s English, French and Spanish are all pretty much top notch IMO.
His Russian sounds good, but to rate it correctly you’ll need a longer dialogue. It’s because one’s language ability is more fluent in subjects one is familiar with…
Luca made several slight mistakes at the beginning of the Russian part. Richard also did several mistakes. Also, for me, Luca’s pronunciation does not sound native-like. When I listened to this video for the first time, I even did not notice the place when they started to speak Russian, although transition to French (I think it was French) I noticed immediately — ‘melody’ changed.
Xena, could I ask how Richard’s Russian accent is too? I’ve had German and Spanish native friends tell me that his German and Spanish accents are perfect.
I haven’t heard many foreigners, who speak Russian as good as Luca. As Xena said, he made some slight mistakes (I guess because he speaks very quickly) and his pronunciation is not native like (but anyway good). To make it a bit more concrete, here is what Luca says at the beginning (grammatical correct in brackets).
По-русски щас. Я знаю что, что это типический [типичный] вопрос для полиглота как тебя [ты], но я хотел тебя спросить где [откуда] же эта страсть к языкам пришла и я хотел задать [тебе вопрос], ты помнишь конкретный момент твоей жизни, когда ты сказал себе, что ты хотел узнать [что ты хочешь знать] много языков?
@maths: Richard’s German is impressive and his accent is great, but it is definitely not perfect. You can hear that he is not a German native speaker.
@SebastianK
I think you’re right - no matter how good a non-native speaker is, you can nearly always detect a very subtle foreign ‘edge’ to their accent. (That’s why I have a feeling that Luca must have heard some Ami-Englisch als Kind…)
In any case, I think they’re both extremely impressive and very inspiring. They make me want to aim higher in my languages. Even though I’m lazy, and I love LingQ and input and all the ‘easiness’ that comes with it, I would be willing to put in the time to work on ‘active’ abilities if I were confident that the methods would work (outside of having lots of speaking practice, which isn’t going to happen here. Let’s face it!).
Yes, they are inspiring and amazing. But I’m not sure whether the average learner could ever realistically hope to emulate them?
As I said in my first post, I suspect it’s no coincidence that guys like Richard and Steve always seem to have had exposure to several languages during early childhood…
I doubt that there’s something inherently different about them. It still takes time for them to learn a language. We all “know” Steve’s story, and which languages he’s learnt and how. I suspect people like Richard and Luca put an enormous amount of time into their language learning. Not measuring by how many years they put in, but by how much time they put into those years.
Exposure alone isn’t enough. I was exposed to many languages as a child but I still grew up monolingual after about 6 years old. (I spoke Yiddish, English, a little Lithuanian and Polish before that point). To me, it probably only helped me with the sounds of those languages in particular, perhaps with sounds in general.
I agree with you there Peter. It’s still a lot of hard work, regardless.
I know Richard well personally, and have chatted with Luca. Both of them devote hours a day, and have done for years, to their languages, plus the absolutely love learning languages. They are not just focused with the end point of being fluent, but rather on enjoying the process along the way. This makes it a pleasure rather than a chore, and sustains them for the long period. Plus, both of them really enjoy speaking to many people in many languages, so there is a strong social aspect to it too - rather than just learning the languages as an intellectual challenge.
@SplogSplog: “…Plus, both of them really enjoy speaking to many people in many languages, so there is a strong social aspect to it too - rather than just learning the languages as an intellectual challenge.”
As regards this ‘social aspect’, I’m amazed that Richard can find many people from countries in western or central Europe who would actually WANT to speak in any language other than ENGLISH.
In my experience there is sometimes almost a kind of hostility towards English speakers who want to speak other languages - it’s as if they think “who does this dumb gringo think he is, trying to speak our language!?”
In fact, it’s pretty much the same at online forums like this one: usually anything up to 99% of the forum posts are in English. And when people do use another language, often it is in the context of an exchange between native speakers of that language, rather than one including foreign learners.
When Imyirtseshem recently tried to find some native speakers of Dutch to practice with, most of them didn’t even bother to reply to him! Yet I guess most of these guys are happy enough to have exchanges with him (and others) in English…
So if Richard just wants to meet up socially with foreigners and talk to them, English would probably be all he needs…