Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

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hrhenry
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby hrhenry » 2013-04-13, 16:43

El Tigre Chino wrote:...(Ordering Döner Kebab in Turkish, maybe?) :D

Not to be too hard on Benny, but he failed at his Turkish mission, too, although he will say it was due to health issues.

If I remember correctly (and I do :)), his "health issues" were lack of proper sleep, due to lighting in his rented apartment. I had suggested he try changing his sleeping hours, and was promptly smacked down on his blog.

It's hard for me to take any of his "missions" seriously these days.

R.
==
See my language-learning progress at http://languagehopper.blogspot.com (focusing on Turkçe).
Other language blogs:
Ojibwemowin: http://indoojibwem.blogspot.com
Piemontèis: http://elmepiemonteis.blogspot.com

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby TeneReef » 2013-04-13, 18:40

Benny's approach is good for people with photographic memory.
No wonder why many languages certificates aren't valid for ever (TOEFL results are no longer valid after 2 years). :mrgreen: Yeah, I had surgery when I was in medical school, two months of classes and two big books of 2 000 pages, exam taken, good grades...That does not make me a surgeon. :mrgreen:
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby הענט » 2013-04-16, 22:02

I'm done talking about him and I'm done sneaking a peak at his stupid blog. He's the Pied Piper of Hamelin and his readers are the r.... kids. :rotfl:

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby Nooj » 2013-04-17, 13:02

What do you guys think about loki2504? I love the guy, he's always so enthusiastic and you can really tell he likes talking to people.

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby הענט » 2013-04-17, 14:18

I like Loki. I think sometime ago he said that IE languages were boring, but other than that he's a great person. He's really into Turkish and Arabic, right? :D

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby johnklepac » 2013-04-25, 23:36

El Tigre Chino wrote:I like Loki. I think sometime ago he said that IE languages were boring, but other than that he's a great person. He's really into Turkish and Arabic, right? :D

He seems okay. I think IE languages are overall probably more boring than other ones, but at the same time they compose a very broad spectrum.

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby Lur » 2013-04-26, 0:33

Well, if you think broadly on this classic IE type of language, with three genders, dual number, verbs with several conjugations and lots of tenses, where everything declines, and most modern ones being simplifications of that... I am not sure if it's that common. Certainly, at least from my perspective, it feels like the normal, "default" type of language, and the non-IE languages look like exotic, thrilling departures (I love the crazy auxiliar verbs in Basque).

If I spoke, I don't know, Japanese or something, I don't know how would I see IE.

I remember reading that the Romance languages are boring, but honestly in the context of all the existing linguistic variety I don't know a lot of families that are like these. I think their ubiquity and the relative similarity between our most common languages that give us that impression.
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-26, 1:38

most modern ones being simplifications of that...
Nope. More analytic does not mean simpler. There's roughly the same amount of complexity in every language, only it's distributed differently. In synthetic languages it's in the morphology, and in analytic languages it's in the syntax.

If you need convincing, take a look at Classical Chinese. Barely any inflection at all, but the syntax will drive you insane.
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby Yasna » 2013-04-26, 1:55

mōdgethanc wrote:Nope. More analytic does not mean simpler. There's roughly the same amount of complexity in every language, only it's distributed differently. In synthetic languages it's in the morphology, and in analytic languages it's in the syntax.

Got anything to back up that claim? John McWhorter argued pretty persuasively in "What Language Is" that the complexity of some morphological nightmares like Archi and Navajo is unparalleled by analytically complex languages.
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-26, 2:27

Got anything to back up that claim? John McWhorter argued pretty persuasively in "What Language Is" that the complexity of some morphological nightmares like Archi and Navajo is unparalleled by analytically complex languages.
Actually, I can't seem to find much on the topic. Geoffrey Sampson argues in Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable (2009) that this viewpoint is wrong (he is a major critic of linguistic nativism in general, such as the ideas of Chomsky and Pinker). However, Miestamo et. al. discuss the difficulty of objectively measuring the complexity of a given language in Language Complexity (2008). I haven't read the book by McWhorter but I'm not surprised he would take that view, since he specializes in creole languages, which seem like an exception to this assumption.

Fromkin et al. argue that all languages are in fact equally complex and have the same expressive power in An Introduction to Language (2011). They appear to take the Chomskian view of linguistic nativism. I believe Sapir argued in favour of all languages having an equivalent amount of complexity as well.

It appears to be uncontroversial that languages can be more complex than others in certain aspects; there may indeed be no equivalent to the morphology of polysynthetic languages like Navajo in analytic languages, but that doesn't necessarily mean Navajo is more complex as a whole.
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby OldBoring » 2013-04-26, 2:57

mōdgethanc wrote:If you need convincing, take a look at Classical Chinese. Barely any inflection at all, but the syntax will drive you insane.

I think Classical Chinese doesn't even have a grammar. Everything is based on context and intuition. :lol:
Though I think you may have the same feeling for Modern Chinese.

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-26, 3:51

Youngfun wrote:I think Classical Chinese doesn't even have a grammar. Everything is based on context and intuition. :lol:
Oh, it does all right. It's probably the best example of an isolating language that I know of, except maybe Vietnamese. When you say "everything is based on context", you don't know how right you are.
Though I think you may have the same feeling for Modern Chinese.
Mandarin and other Chinese varieties definitely have a lot of grammar. It's just mostly found in the syntax, instead of the inflections that other languages have.
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby הענט » 2013-04-27, 8:22

johnklepac wrote:
El Tigre Chino wrote:I like Loki. I think sometime ago he said that IE languages were boring, but other than that he's a great person. He's really into Turkish and Arabic, right? :D

He seems okay. I think IE languages are overall probably more boring than other ones, but at the same time they compose a very broad spectrum.
I would say that some languages may seem boring, because they don't pose enough challenge, but still. Greek, Hindi, Persian or Welsh aren't that boring, are they? On the other hand Indonesian is boring and is not part of the IE languages.

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 15:44

El Tigre Chino wrote:I would say that some languages may seem boring, because they don't pose enough challenge, but still. Greek, Hindi, Persian or Welsh aren't that boring, are they?
Maybe you could say IE languages are boring if we mean Germanic and Romance languages, but Slavic, Iranian and Aryan languages are all pretty interesting to me. Even Romance languages are interesting in their own way. I can't say the Germanic family does much for me though, except for German, Icelandic and Old English.

IE isolates like Greek and Armenian are pretty neat too. I hate Latin with a fiery passion, but Ancient Greek is awesome.
On the other hand Indonesian is boring and is not part of the IE languages.
That's what's keeping me from learning it. I like the idea of knowing Indonesian, but the language itself does nothing for me.
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby Lur » 2013-04-27, 15:53

mōdgethanc wrote: I can't say the Germanic family does much for me though, except for German, Icelandic and Old English.

Heh, of these, you like the same ones as me.

I do like Latin a lot, though.
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby IpseDixit » 2013-05-08, 14:22

I've watched many polyglots' videos. Some of them seem to me really genuine and honest, others instead seem to be impostors... they claim to speak lots of languages, yet they just stutter some very basic phrases in most of their allegedly known languages and that's all.

Moreover I've noticed that, by and large, the people who to me seem real polyglots are more or less humble or at least not boastful. Whereas the people whom I perceive as less genuine, give me an impression of being more "vainglorious", almost as if being polyglot is a supernatural power...

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby Marah » 2013-08-26, 11:40

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RsPu7v7iZ4
I've just stumbled on this video. Nice, isn't it? :)
Par exemple, l'enfant croit au Père Noël. L'adulte non. L'adulte ne croit pas au Père Noël. Il vote.

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby הענט » 2015-12-13, 12:41

Finally someone uploaded Ziad's viva el lunes episode without any editing and it's not in his favor. It only shows more of his boasting. I really laughed at the fact that according to him there are 58 languages in the world and the remaining "3000" are mere dialects. So Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are full-blown languages, but Cherokee is probably just heavily accented German.

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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby Trapy » 2015-12-14, 7:29

A two year old thread?! Gods you must really hate him :D. Mind posting the link though?
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Re: Youtube polyglots, are they for real?

Postby הענט » 2015-12-14, 8:44

Trapy wrote:A two year old thread?! Gods you must really hate him :D. Mind posting the link though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-N_Xl9DyGs
Last edited by הענט on 2015-12-16, 13:56, edited 1 time in total.


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