@vankrot: “…They could easily talk about something more interesting, for example, if they were speaking French, they could talk about the book “Candide”, or any other book for that matter. Also, the “Euro Crisis” is pretty interesting and will affect English, French, German, Spanish etc speakers.”
Indeed. And I would suggest that some of you guys contact Richard through his facebook page and make this point to him. I guess he would probably be happy to talk about other things in his next video.
As far as Robert goes, there is absolutely no doubt at all that he can talk about EVERYTHING in his main working languages (including complex technical topics.) He is a highly trained professional interpreter.
ad vankrot: (…) I would be interested to talk to you, I’ll send you an email:) (…)
I look forward to our conversations. Ich freue mich auf unsere Gespräche.
ad Jay: Thank you for your kind words
ad Marianne10: (…) I agree with the view that there is vanity involved. (…)
If we were really that vain none of us would have put up any video in the first place I think. Knowing that quite a few people will actually look for every single mistake you make to then triumphantly refute a claim you have never made (“See, he is not perfect after all” - something which I for example have never claimed to be and never will) is not always a pleasant feeling.
And I admit that I have repeatedly thought about taking down all my videos. I might do just that one day, I don’t know yet but so far I’ve had more positive than negative feedback. My original intention has not changed: getting to know more people who are interested in language learning. Thanks to my videos I have been contacted by many interesting people from all walks of life and various age groups. This has been a very satisfying experience for me both on a linguistic and personal level and I can only hope that some people find my videos useful for their own learning process. That’s all there is to it for me and I don’t think vanity plays any role in it. Unless you think vain people like to be constantly reminded of their mistakes
Luca and Amir have been doing a series of videos where they talk about their life experiences living in different places, such as Barcelona and Kazakhstan. I must admit I found these much more interesting than the videos where they talk about language learning the whole time.
“Beginner’s Italian”…“Italian for beginners”…“ab initio Italian”…
I guess there are a few ways of expressing this idea
BTW
Thanks for the link. I was very interested to see the list of notable hyperglots - I never knew, for example, that Friedrich Engels had a mastery of 20 languages! How could somebody who was so stupid be so…well…so clever…!? ¦:-[]
Because in Marxism, you can consider yourself an “master” at something with a whole lot less effort, that way everybody can be a master and no one will feel inferior!
Jaybe said "How could somebody who was so stupid be so…well…so clever…!? "
I would not equate language ability with being clever. I have met plenty of bilingual people who were not particularly clever. Languages can be learnt. You just have to work hard.
Marx was a very bright mind indeed and a product of his time, corrupt political systems can abuse any kind of intellectual theory or belief system. You find them both on the left and the right of the political devide. I bet nobody usually bashing Marx has ever read him in depth. I’d also suggest our American friends be a little bit less triumphant since capitalism has no answers to the pressing issues of our time either. In fact, within the given limits of a finite planet with its finite resources, capitalism is perfectly capable of running us all into the ground and probably will do so.
I have to agree completely with Friedemann. You have to keep in mind the socio-political context of a country or an era to fully understand a phenomena. I will stop here since the post was initially about the video of Mr. Simcott.
I’ll just chime in to agree with Friedemann. I saw the comments about Engels and Marxism, thought about saying something, and then decided not to. Friedemann said what I would have wanted to say in a very nice and concise way.
As for the polyglot videos, I’ve lost interest in watching them. I see the point of them - people demonstrate their ability in multiple foreign languages which gives people confidence in following their language learning advice, but after a certain point, the topic of language learning gets pretty repetitive. I also don’t really see the point of listening to 2 non-native speakers discuss something unless what they’re discussing is intrinsically interesting. Plus, I only understand English and French, so most of the conversation is lost on me. Nobody ever includes Japanese in these polyglot discussions!
I understand Friedemann’s point. Though I have to say that I get a little bored about talking about a range of topics I know I cannot do proper justice. Personally I prefer to listen to people with really deep knowledge of subjects talking in depth and debating. There are too many people out there already talking about things they know little about, especially online. I had to do it throughout school and university to demonstrate my ability in languages on a range of subjects. In fact I have to do it now in Turkish to deepen my understanding of that language. I suppose I could share some videos practising that, if you find it helpful, useful or interesting…let me know…
My goals for making videos on YouTube are to meet like-minded people and take part in a community, encouraging others in the learning process. The YouTube channel and the videos I make are part of what I do. I also try to engage with people on my Facebook page and answer any questions they might have. Sadly time is always my enemy as I have a full-time job, a family and my own language study also.
Why do I do this? Well…I simply love languages and I would like more people to learn them. Yes it has been nice to get some lovely comments and feedback, but I get a lot of horrible comments too. I cannot say that I am doing this for vanity. Being called the names I get on a daily basis from my YouTube videos could never be something a person would want to see if they’re doing this for vanity. I do my best to ignore the negativity, support my fellow language learners (all of them as our goal is the same - to promote language learning) and to continue to share positive stories of learning. I want more people to see that it is OK and normal to study languages. I also want to highlight resources and show how to get started and maintain the momentum.
On this forum it is a bit like preaching to the converted (which is why some will not find all of my videos so interesting, I suppose), but I am pleased to see that some of what I put out there is appealing to some of you nonetheless.
I hope to engender a positive environment for people to join up, share experiences, talk about language and encourage one another. Anyone wishing to add to that is always welcome. Moving forward I do have some practical ideas about languages and work related to them based on my experiences.
Thank you all for your comments and feedback. I appreciate the time you have taken to do it in a polite and considerate manner.
@Friedemann: “…Marx was a very bright mind indeed … I bet nobody usually bashing Marx has ever read him in depth…”
Erm, you know that Marx and Engels were not the same person…right!?
Of course my comment about Engels was meant to be fairly flippant - doubtless he was a clever guy.
That said, I also tend to agree with those folks who have pointed out that being multilingual doesn’t necessarily equate with high intelligence. In practice, however, I have never run into a polyglot (whether yourself, Robert, Marianne, Mike, Steve, Luca, Richard, etc) who is not also evidently a very intelligent person. (Even Benny Lewes is quite obviously no intellectual slouch!)
I can honestly say that I always enjoy watching your videos and find them a great inspiration. (For me it’s not a big problem if your focus is on language learning, because this is something which never ceases to interest me!)
I just discovered the thread (and the site) and read through it with a smile on my face.
Let me first thank you for the kind comments. In another thread a guy told me with brutal honesty that my Italian accent sucked on this video, so I guess we just have to take the good with the bad. It was lovely to have Richard as my guest for a week, and judging from your comments I guess we should simply have taped some of our free conversations which were obviously on an extremely varied number of topics during the course of a week. Since this was the first time I was “presented” to the linguistic YouTube community, it seemed like a natural thing to do to speak about how I came to learn the languages I speak, though.
And of course for some of you who have heard 100 such videos already it would be boring, but for me it was all new and exciting, and I was very happy to be chaperoned by Richard on my first try. Women are often criticised for not having the guts to put themselves out there, and that was one of the reasons why I accepted Richard’s proposal to do a video.
My experience so far should encourage more women to try, I have not had any unpleasent reactions. Different views on what the topic should be, like you have voiced in this thread, I do not consider criticism - I would just use it as inspiration if I dare to do another video later. And the comment about my Italian accent just made me laugh - because compared to my other languages my Italian accent does suck. I spent 5 weeks in Italy and had 20 evening classes 24 years ago, and have used it very little since. It would have been more than a miracle if I had sounded like a native.
But please come up with suggestions. I refuse to talk about Candide though. I hate Candide! Awful book!
