If people are really interested in knowing of course one should be talking to them about it.
I often get the feeling hispanics are looked down upon in the US. Hispanics in the US are really chuffed but also surprised if you address them In Spanish. I was surprised at that. This could suggest they dont have that happening very often or I have been mixing with the wrong crowd, oh dear.
@Marianne10 “Hispanics in the US are really chuffed but also surprised if you address them In Spanish.”
This hasn’t been my experience at all. My experience has been that once a Spanish speaker finds out I speak the language, the conversation’s tended to turn to Spanish and stays in Spanish, until English is needed (a non-Spanish speaker enters the conversation, for example).
Billy Conolly. I can agree with what you say.
I think he is a representative of linguistics for the layman though. I cannot imagine having him as a lecturer at uni! Linguistics is a lot wider than what he touches on, but my point was I could at least go away with a few pointers and look it up elsewhere. I am not getting that from the other youtubers who talk about language learning.
It is the absence of an admission from the man from Eire that leads my thoughts to NPD. Actually he has more to gain from admitting it was a lot harder than what he thought but he was happy as he felt he could now communicate albeit not to the level he said. He has lost a lot of supporters and I think it will hurt sales ultimately (if that was one of his unstated goals).
Hrhenry - I meant Hispanics in the US are happy when you speak with them in Spanish. They are suprised at first but they open up immediately. This is not the case in Europe since many people speak Spanish.
Imyrtseshem - I have had a closer look at Clugston’s recent video. I do not agree that he is just reeling off stuff he has just read/learnt. In fact he backs everything off with relevant examples and it is clear he draws on previous knowledge.You cannot speak at length on a subject you have just learnt with such fluency (I have to do that in my job a lot). It is not possible to talk like that if you have only just learnt it. He is explaining it differently as this is youtube. I do not agree with everything he says either for example the consonant clusters in English and the example of “school”. I do agree the guy is not that likeable. I do not like his patronising attitude and his arrogance but teachers do not have to be nice people. It is a common misconception you have to be nice to be a good teacher.
@Marianne10 “It is a common misconception you have to be nice to be a good teacher.”
Nice is such a broad term. I think it’s perfectly fine to have strong opinions on things, but a lack of either understanding of the student or passion in seeing people learn certainly makes for a bad teacher.
I don’t view Clugston as a teacher, rather as someone that has passion, just not for teaching (he’s repeatedly said he’s not on youtube to teach “dilletantes”). And correct me if I’m wrong, but he hasn’t actually offered any teaching, has he? I think he’s stated plans to release something, but as yet hasn’t actually done any teaching.
I agree with others here that he’s still getting his basic linguistics education himself and isn’t to the point of being able to effectively teach.
Imyerteshem- I was just flicking through this thread and realised you have deleted all of your comments. Was there something in there you did not want to share in the end? I think it is a good idea to leave the comments more or less as they were as people might consult them later. What do you say?