It is strange just how much people seem to stress (pardon the pun) over accent, isn’t it?
I have been an English Instructor, and I know that it is an important part of making yourself understood - but I also grew up hearing English spoken with accents from all over the world.
If someone criticized an English learner for not having perfect Standard Received Pronunciation (British) or an American accent, they would be severely criticized themselves.
Most particularly if the learner’s language was perfectly clear and easy to understand.
Myself - as a native speaker I have had a problem with “TH” since I was a kid.
No one except teachers ever comments on it.
I suspect most people don’t even notice it.
Ultimately, once you achieve good clarity and consistency (if you have a problem in pronunciation, it is always the same and can be recognized by the listener). judgements on someone’s accent start to become status judgements.
There’s too much snobbery in it.
I have seen (listened to) a few of Steve’s Spanish videos. I can’t judge his accent according any cultural bias (which accent would you compare it to, since over 20 countries speak Spanish?) (and I am not a native Spanish speaker) - but I can say I have had no problems so far understanding his Spanish.
I know the kind of attitude you mean. The moment you tell somebody you are learning language X, they ask you to show off some of your skills. Of course if you are just getting started you don’t have any particularly good skills and they then act like you are some sort of idiot for not being good in the language. It is as if you have already failed in your language learning after a few weeks. I think a lot of it is them simply not knowing what is necessary to learn a language.
I remember getting a similar attitude related to the fact that I used to own about 400-500 books (mostly bought from charity shops during my 8 years as a student at university). Of course, most of them would be unread. People would give me these sneering looks when they would find out that most of the books were unread, as if I somehow failed in my attempt to read lots of books and was only pretending to be well read. I never understood why one would want lots of books that they have read instead of lots of books that they have not read.
Haha too true. Similarly I once started playing guitar. Classical guitar.
People who had not played any musical instrument in their lives somehow equate poor playing to that of a young child. Surely an adult who tried would almost immediately be better than that?
I never told them I was learning to play, but having right hand fingernails specially shaped while left hand has them trimmed properly is a giveaway.
All of the great guitarists can readily recall doing scale runs on the guitar daily for years while also studying the instrument and getting through their course work. The average person just thinks “oh they’re just a natural at it”.
If I am able to speak Korean somewhat conversationally one day in the future, I’ll just tell all the people that ask how I was able to learn it this: “oh my wife is Korean”. Anything more than that and they want to help me diagnose where I went wrong in my approach for it to have taken so much effort.
I hate the idea of talent. In most fields, talent only distinguishes the 90th percentile from the 99th percentile. Getting to the top in anything requires 90% hard work.
People say it about knitting of all things. “I could never knit like you do. You just have talent!” No . . . I’m sure you could if you just tried and made as many mistakes as I have.
In his favour is the fact that many people are inspired to learn languages who might otherwise not do so. I also don’t think he pretended to be a beginner in German. It was more his claim that he would be mistaken for a Berliner that put me off.
He used to be dismissive of input based learning but has mellowed on that score. I gather he is a nice guy and if we all met for a beer probably would like the guy.
Some of his claims are a bit out there, but he is a bona fide polyglot, even if not in the same league as Luca and Richard Simcott. Nothing to sneeze at. And if he can make a living out of it, all the more power to him.
If memory serves, he claimed quite clearly that he was a beginner at the beginning and then at the end claimed he was almost at a C2 level. Admittedly the first claim was much more realistic than the second claim. I found it very poor taste.
I would not be surprised if somebody actually mistook him for a Berliner for maybe 10 seconds, if they were expecting a Berliner. Last week, a German guy mistook me for an Austrian during the first 30 seconds of a conversation even though my British accent when I speak German is very strong (of course, when I then told him that I am British, he immediately started speaking English).
Yeah, he certainly tried to claim that he was starting as a virtual beginner. It was only after someone found some online exchanges in (decent functional German) that the thing started to unravel. As I recall there were a number of entirely “uncontroversial” people in the online Polyglot community (such as Judith Meyer) who were also bothered by his conduct at the time.
Making a living out of it is fine. But then he should be strictly and scrupulously honest about what he is doing in 3-6 months, and what he is (genuinely) able to attain within this timeframe, IMHO.
His strongest language, probably, is Spanish. Well, if you do some digging, it turns out that he lived and worked in Spain for a very long time, took lessons, etc. And he has had quite a few longish stints in Latin America over the years too… But that isn’t quite the method that he has been selling!
This is what gets me: this concept of “hey guys, give me $50 and you won’t have to put in the work over time like I did!”
Yeah, I have to say I don’t usually like to speak ill of anybody else but I figured this guy out pretty quickly. From what I can tell he doesn’t really have a method, just tells people to go speak a language from zero.
Not only do I not think this is a particularly effective way to go about it, it’s also not really advice. You could say the same about any skill out there: “Oh yeah just go and do it!”
He also makes a big point about how he wants to help the beginners, those who are new to the scene. It’s not surprising really since anybody who has half a clue about learning a language won’t be sending him money for what he’s offering.
All that said, if the guy is making money off the back of being dishonest or shall we say: ‘masking the truth,’ then you can’t really blame him or get angry with him.
People only need to do their own research into learning languages to avoid being duped, a simple Google search will suffice. If you’re going to hand money over on a whim to a total stranger without looking at all of your options you probably deserve to get taken in.
Besides, I imagine people buy into his premium memberships etc because they like the community he’s built, it helps keep them motivated, or whatever other reason. I imagine he throws in a load of other guff as padding to try and justify the fee. However, if people want to pay him just to be part of his community then fair enough I guess.
What we can say is he’s certainly not the only one taking advantage of novice language learners. I don’t know what he charges for his “services” but there are people out there taking the absolute piss.
I saw a package deal a couple of months ago from a company selling 2 lessons/week (sent to you by email I think), each lesson has a duration of 15 minutes since “that’s all you need to make progress” plus you get to be part of their special ‘members only’ forum all for the bargain price of £40/month on a 12 month subscription only basis. Ludicrous.
Well I was curious as to what he is getting at. I mean I know what he is saying but what he intends people to DO with the results of this?
So I googled him and languages and:
If that title isn’t pure internet click-bait, I don’t know what is!
He seems to argue it’s useful for two things primarily:
Deconstruct a language yourself to find out how similar it is to your own before embarking on the journey of learning it.
That by doing this, you have basically ‘learned’ the language in a very short space of time (one hour by the title of the article)
Potentially for #1, it could be a valid technique if a person did not really care which language they were learning but just wanted one they could learn quickly.
Of course one could save time with an internet connection because you can already find out how closely related any language is to your own. Probably not that accurately but in a ballpark.
In any case most people have a language they want to know for a particular reason. Be it for travel, work opportunities, and the like. So that decision is actually already made. No need for a poor-mans grammar sketch.
Even his second point is somewhat erroneous. I think breaking down sentences and seeing the grammar of a language is important. One has to do it. One has to read something, try figure it out, if necessary look at a native language translation and see how it is constructed.
But discovering the grammar and trying to guess its meaning is unnecessary. Someone else has probably done it, and it is one Google search or grammar book lookup away.
Any decent source will probably be able to even mention additional nuances or mention things like “this is used when writing, but not when speaking” which would take forever to figure out.
I did a lot of searching on language learning. The common thread with people who actually show they can function in a target language is that they put in the hard yards initially and got a tonne of exposure to it.
When I told my oldest sister, who doesn’t speak any other language than English, that I was learning Dutch, all she had to say was, “I hate Germanic languages.” When I then reminded her that English is a Germanic language, all she could say was, “Well, yeah, but…”
An interesting take on Zuckerberg’s Chinese is from the Chinese students who attended his lecture. Apparently they were largely not amused. They expected a serious lecture from a well known internet personality/entrepreneur and instead got a demonstration of Zuckerberg’s Chinese, which, frankly, is not very good, at least not good enough to hold a substantial meaningful discussion. It is as if Zuckerberg used the occasion to show off, not only to those present in the room, but to others via youtube. “Look at me. I can speak Chinese”
Language should be for communication not for showing off or performing. If, in the case of Zuckerberg’s meeting with this elite group of Chinese students , his Chinese is not as good as their English, he should probably speak English after a short intro in Chinese.
I am never miffed if my interlocutor switches to English because my language skills are not good enough. I just switch to English. I then either have to improve my skills, or find people even worse in English than I am in their language, or find a friend or tutor, which I also do.
On Tim Ferris, I find his “deconstructing the language in 4 hours” to be frivolous pedantry. The most onerous and time consuming task in language learning is acquiring the words and phrases. Even a theoretical knowledge of the structure is not that useful since we can’t remember it or use it, until we have enough exposure to the language, and that takes a long time, in my experience.
My thoughts exactly. His marketing skills and ads come straight out of a Buzzfeed page (ever see those? "Doctors hate him! One simple trick to cure your diabetes).
He knows his marketing crowd: Get rich quick, lazy, and non committed people not willing to put int the time. The fact that his videos have 95% thumbs up either means he has something meaning we can learn, or his audience is something else.
I’ve had a couple of people think I came from the 'stans because I’m Asian that knows Russian. Fair assumption. I’m not offended, but rather, I’m laughing about it.
Are you meeting random people your age in social settings? The average Americans only experience with “Chinese” is a few lines in a Jackie Chan movie. Why would you care what they think about your abilities with a language they likely can’t even identify?
Exactly. The cannon fodder for these online spivs are people who think they can spend 50 bucks and get a magic trick - the so called “hack” that will enable them to defy medical science, or to achieve something in 5% of the normal time, or with 10% of the normal workrate, etc.
The really sad thing is that there is no shortage of gullible goofs out there waiting to be taken for a ride!
It is a pet hate of mine - and I probably do care way too much! But it does p_ss me off to see people throwing around spurious claims about going from beginner to C1 level in 3 months, or whatever. As one of those people who actually knows from experience what is required to reach a solid C1 level,(i.e. how much time and work, how many many months of immersion living in a country, and especially how much READING it takes) it just seems impossibly ignorant and vulgar to bandy about such claims - especially in order to con people out of money.
It was certainly a little bit annoying after 6 months of intensively learning German in Vienna and only being at a good A2/low B1 level to read some guy online claiming to have got to almost a C2 in 3 months.
When I tell someone that I am learning a language (for example Polish or Swedish)
most of the time the only response I get is: huh?! Why would you want to learn that language?!
The only reason why this is annoying sometimes is because the tone in their voice tells me they think I’m wasting my time.
(Which is obviously not the case)
Furtermore I think you should never shame anyone for their language skills when you can clearly see that they are doing the best they can. But if someone does, well, haters gonna hate.
Keep up your learning and the people who complain about your chinese now will assume you’re fluent the moment they see you have a basic conversation in Chinese ^^
But it does p_ss me off to see people throwing around spurious claims about going from beginner to C1 level in 3 months, or whatever. As one of those people who actually knows from experience what is required to reach a solid C1 level,(i.e. how much time and work, how many many months of immersion living in a country, and especially how much READING it takes) it just seems impossibly ignorant and vulgar to bandy about such claims - especially in order to con people out of money.