Yeah, I don’t doubt it JayB.
Jay,
you have way too much time on your hands! You did you dig up that video? Hostage taker shot by undercover agent on live TV, man that was raw! Only in China…
On the topic of this thread, I personally would enjoy polyglot discussions on a range of different topics. I think in that particular case of polyglots showcasing their prowess I would not have any preferences regarding the topics as long as there is some variety there. I always enjoyed audio interviews on Steve’s blog, because they tended to be longer. I don’t really think the video part is so important. Audio interviews could also be longer since one wouldn’t be restricted to the 10 minutes limit at Youtube.
@Friedemann: " …Where did you dig up that video?"
It’s easy enough. You just need to go to Youtube and search under “headshot” - there’s loads of raw TV footage from Brazil, China, and the US…
See for example:
(All from Brazilian TV news)
And from the US:
(This last one was filmed by a SWAT team camera and is absolutely ultra-raw!)
“The truth is, an experienced polyglot who uses Assimil Russian (or LingQ or Linguaphone) for 1 hour every day for 6-8 months will most probably speak and understand Russian much better than the average Joe who has had 6 semesters of Russian at college plus a one month trip to Moscow…”
I don’t know how anyone could stay on beginner material like Assimil, or Linguaphone for 6-8 months. They would have to move to authentic content, within a few months, if they were serious, in my view.
I’ll share my experience - as a serious language learner (which everyone around here should be convinced of by now).
I’ve been working with Assimil Hebrew for about the last month and a half. I work through 10 lessons per day, listening a couple times and reading. Also, I watch an episode or two of a tv show for getting the sounds into my head and hearing the words in other contexts. That’s around 1 hours of Assimil (listening and reading) every day. Right now, I can basically understand well the first 10 lessons of the course. After this things start getting much more difficult. By lesson 21 I’m understanding about 1/4 of the overall text - even though I know more than half of the words. (I know just over 800 now). Native materials? I’ve looked at them. Wow, it’s just far too hard. I am pretty courageous in my language learning and love a challenge, but there a point where things are just overwhelming to the point of frustration and disappointment.
This is what I find hard to understand about you and your approach, Steve. I can’t go to those sorts of materials because working on a Harry Potter book (for example - I looked at this in French) after 3 months when the unknown percentage is 90% + and understanding perhaps less, it’s not fun learning.
Well I know (of) someone who has used Assimil and Linguaphone for periods of months and years at a time - Prof Arguelles!
Each to his own, Steve…
Five-six months is what it takes to finish an Assimil course, nothing strange with that. I’d be surprised if Linguaphone takes shorter than that (unless you have a photographic memory or know a related language).
I can’t really say what to expect from an Assimil course for a total beginner, since I’ve always had SOME knowledge of the language (and/or used the course in combination with other material), but what Imyirtseshem says sounds like what I’ve experienced. I’m not stupid regarding languages, but I couldn’t move to authentic content unless the language was really easy (hint: Esperanto) or really close to some other language I know (Scandinavian languages…(Spanish → Portuguese, German → Dutch).
I doubt that Arguelles stays exclusively with Assimiil or Linguaphone for years. There is simply not enough vocabulary, and to me vocabulary is the key to achieving a high level of comprehension, which in turn is the foundation of fluency. In the case of Russian I studied a number of beginner texts in parallel and started authentic material within 6 months, while continuing to go back to the beginner texts from time to time. I personally enjoy the interest and challenge of authentic texts, and alternate this with more relaxing reading and listening to easier material. I do not find that it is feasible to attempt to “ace” any of these beginner texts, so I do not really think in terms of how long it takes to “finish” any of them. They are just resources.
Correct, he doesn’t use it for years. He also works through several other books at the same time when he learns languages.
Yet again Steve, I don’t know how you’re able to go to such a level so quickly. We all agree that vocabulary is king. The thing is that none of the rest of us are able to acquire it as quickly as you are. I can’t acquire the words in Assimil quick enough. There’s no shortage from where I’m sitting. Perhaps you could explain how having lots of words speeds up the rate of learning them. That’s quite the mystery to me.
Jeff, I find Linguaphone to be a great follow-up to Assimil. You’ll learn a number of new words, see things in new contexts. I did it with Dutch with good results.
@Steve: “…I doubt that Arguelles stays exclusively with Assimiil or Linguaphone for years.”
No, I don’t think he ever worked at a single course for multiple years. On his Youtube review of Assimil he suggests 1 hour per day for 1 year as the amount of time needed fully to “assimilate” all of the texts in a typical Assimil course.
After that I guess he would move on to more advanced materials - no doubt including at least some authentic material.
I used Assimil for Russian sporadically, mostly the earlier chapters. It progresses very quickly towards the end with excerpts from Tolstoy etc. I prefer to read Tolstoy at LingQ with the audio book to help me along. I do not like full translations and found most of their notes not helpful.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for massive input. My repertoire of Irish tunes wouldn’t be as large if I hadn’t constantly exposed myself to whatever music I came across. The “lazy” musician aims low, and it’ll take forever to learn even just a dozen of tunes in the same time the avid musician learns ten times more.
Having the “quickly but poorly” strategy in mind (presented by HTLAL member Fanatic some years ago, funnily enough with the Assimil courses in mind), I know that aiming high generally gives better results than aiming low. If I aim for 1000 new words in a week (or month) I’ll probably fail (but still learn a few hundreds), while the one who aims for 100 will only learn 100 (and still have 900 words “left”).
Maybe Imyirtseshem and I haven’t devoured enough texts.
Agreed Jeff. (Actually, I reckon one could probably complete an Assimil course in 4 to 5 months - if a whole hour were indeed devoted to the task every single day…)
Jeff:
1 1/2 months of Hebrew: 75653 words
(Taking into account that Hebrew’s not possible to read if you don’t already know the words which you’re reading. - Unlike German or Russian, for example.)
3+ months of French: 188847 words
I’ve been amazingly lazy here! 
(Both of those work out to an average of around 1850 words read per day.)
I realise that this is merely a beginning step in a long journey. My Dutch in just under 6 months makes up 1485917 words but I’m guessing that I have done 3 times that in total.
JayB, depends on the size of the Assimil course too. The Hindi one is only around 50 lessons (jam packed though) and the Hebrew, 2 book course I’m using has 120. I think the average is around 85/90 though.
Yeah, you could almost say that Assimil Hebrew has two completely different levels to it - beginners and then advanced.
BTW I guess you must be using the version of Assimil Hebrew which is taught in French, Imyirtseshem?
I know that they don’t offer it in English yet; and even in their German range (which is much bigger than English) the Hebrew course is still only listed as a ‘coming soon’ title…
I guess you could say that.
Indeed, it’s the French course. However, I don’t use the French part of the course. I’ve just added the texts here to LingQ. I’d like to be able to check things in the French but it’s just not quite at a sufficient level to be able to do that yet.
If the individual wants to speak to a foreigner who speaks Russian (also can speak French and Spanish to advanced fluency, and Italian to a decent level-although my Italian is admittedly not as strong), I’d be willing to chat with him on skype. Also Russian does NOT take decades to learn. I studied it intensively for 2 years, spent a month in Moscow, and since then (the past 8 months) have been studying it more leisurely, by speaking with friends, reading, listening to Russian radio, etc. I don’t claim to have the same level as a native, but saying that it takes decades to learn Russian is ludicrous.
I really can relate to Imyrtseshem’s point about the rate of vocabulary acquisition. To me when Steve says that he knows 20.000 czech words after 6 months, at first to me that sounds like, sorry, bragging. I then went back to Steve’s “can we learn 100 words a day?” video where he actually fleshes out what “knowing a word” really means to him and I would agree with most of what he said in that video. The gist of the video is that the degree of familiarity with and mastery of those words is different in a new language than in one own’s native language and that the vocabulary slowly grows on us.
Where I agree with Imytrseshem is that to read really challenging literature at such an early point in time as Steve seems to do wouldn’t be something that I would enjoy. In his video on how he learned Swedish Steve talks about the great books he devoured when he learned that language. During this video it becomes evident at some point that Steve does not know the Swedish word for “future”, not even passively. I don’t know Steve’s word count in Swedish then or now. But to me “future” is a very basic and very essential word. If I don’t have the word for “future” at least in my passive vocabulary in a language I am learning, I believe my vocabulary is way too weak to fight my way through novels or other callenging literature.
I can understand what Steve does, in terms of reading newspaper articles in Czech after two or three months (on LingQ). If the LingQ creating process were a bit quicker, I would probably try something similar. In my case, I’m a beginner (approx A1, or A1+) in German. It would be very painful for me to import and LingQ newspaper articles in German. If all the LingQs had already been created though, it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to read. So what I’m saying is, it’s not impossible, if you either a) have the patience to create an enormous amount of LingQs for each lesson, or b) can create them quickly (perhaps the QuickLingQ function takes care of this?), so that the reading itself can continue!
In terms of reading novels away from LingQ, I find it difficult and I get lost more easily if there are (on average) more than 10 new words per page (which I will probably underline). If there 2-5, that is perfect. If there are 5-10, it’s not too annoying. But 10-15, or 15-20 starts to get painful and the story is hard to follow.