Looks like Benny is going to attempt Japanese now. Here is a recent
tweet:

Benny Wrote:First class over. This language is WAY less intimidating than one would have you believe. Definitely gotta go study Hiragana now though!

Thoughts?

[Zgarbas]

I love Benny's accent and am amazed by the fact that he can maintain it regardless of what language he is speaking (there should be some kind of weird trophy for that).

I'm sure Japanese will sound adorable with it. Looking forward to hearing that.

^ +1

On the comment that -su is pronounced more like -s his reply is "I noticed. That's why I'm getting away from Romaji asap". Hmm, I wonder how this is going to help...

It'll only hurt since he'll have a harder time telling where words end.

He'll improve much faster than most people who study Japanese, but he won't achieve fluency in the same sense that most of us are trying to do (ie, understand everything, express yourself well in any situation etc)

I'm looking forward to the results though.

I, for one, am glad he's finally learning Japanese. This will be tremendously entertaining.

First Blog:

Benny Wrote:As always, I am aiming for fluency, which is B2+ on the CEFRL scale or N2+ on the JLPT, by mid-December.

I know nothing about the JLPT scale, but I think 3 years, not 3 months, is a more realistic time for B2 in Japanese. I assume he will be using a watered down definition of B2, as he did for C1 in Mandarin. It will be interesting to watch though.

Edit: I see I was right, after watching his video. He cut out reading and writing completely, and gave an extremely vague definition of what he considers B2 to be, calling it precise. So what I would like to ask my fellow Japanese learners is: what does one need to know to achieve B2/N2 in speaking and listening?

To me, the easiest thing to check is vocabulary. Here is what I assume one needs for Japanese:

B1: 1000-2500 active; 2000-5000 passive
B2: 2500-5000 active; 5000-10000 passive
C1: 5000-10000 active; 10000-20000 passive
C2: 10000+ active; 20000+ passive

Sound reasonable?

Hope I'm not the only one who had to search to see who the hell this guy was.

[Zgarbas]

Regarding the N2: It will be pretty interesting to see him take a test which has absolutely nothing to do with his usual learning method (seeing as how speaking and conversational production are irrelevant)

I'm sure he will be able to have basic spontaneous conversation (which is what he calls fluency) but he wont be able to sit and pass N2.

His method seems quite flawed for Japanese.

The shame of that is you COULD definitely reach at least upper intermediate level if you had 90 days all dedicated to Japanese and you did it the right way.
So RTK1 in 20-30 days, then straight onto anki/grammar/immersion for 60 days (say 50-70 new sentences/day). Leaves you with what would be N3 level and conversational proficiency if you played your cards correctly.

His results in Mandarin didn't sound very good, 90 days only lower-intermediate. You'd get a similar result at a language school which already isn't that efficient.

Also he's misleading future learners by saying he'll be fluent while not explaining very much that he'll be almost useless as he is now in terms of reading/writing in 90 days time cause he doesn't want to do kanji.

I saw his Chinese videos and with respect, he was nowhere near C1 (at least, nowhere near the numbers defined as C1 above).

I say that because I spent 3 months in China studying 3 hours a day 1v1 and then doing other work myself after (such as completing iknow) and I remember thinking his level and mine were not much different after the same time period.

If hes actually booked himself into the N2 exam I'd be very impressed if he could pass by December.

AKITOD Wrote:His method seems quite flawed for Japanese.

The shame of that is you COULD definitely reach at least upper intermediate level if you had 90 days all dedicated to Japanese and you did it the right way.
So RTK1 in 20-30 days, then straight onto anki/grammar/immersion for 60 days (say 50-70 new sentences/day). Leaves you with what would be N3 level and conversational proficiency if you played your cards correctly.

I'm sorry but even in that video he says he wasn't interested in learning to read yet and only cared about speaking. And you think that the best way for him to study with that target in mind is to spend a whole month, so 1/3 of the entire time, memorizing keywords for Kanji symbols?

You are ridiculous.

EDIT - to add further, with your system its possible he could build a faster passive vocabulary but he is looking to SPEAK to a high level. For that, you need to practice speaking as much as possible. Thousands of flashcards isn't going to get the particular results that he is after here.

I'm quite sure a person can learn to speak quite well if they focus on that solely for 3 months. I'm looking forward to seeing his later videos and checking out his improvement.

NightSky Wrote:If hes actually booked himself into the N2 exam I'd be very impressed if he could pass by December.

He's not going to take the test. He said in his blog that the December test was too soon, and the next one was after the conclusion of his project. Sure is unfortunate that the dates don't work out for Benny.

I suppose he'll find another way to conclude that he's N2, other than taking the test. Which would be the listening portion, anyway, since he's not learning kanji. Kind of like how I concluded I was a millionaire, without actually checking my bank statement. But I'm pretty sure I am.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:If hes actually booked himself into the N2 exam I'd be very impressed if he could pass by December.

He's not going to take the test. He said in his blog that the December test was too soon, and the next one was after the conclusion of his project. Sure is unfortunate that the dates don't work out for Benny.

I suppose he'll find another way to conclude that he's N2, other than taking the test. Which would be the listening portion, anyway, since he's not learning kanji. Kind of like how I concluded I was a millionaire, without actually checking my bank statement. But I'm pretty sure I am.

Yeah I watched his video after making my first post. In 3 months N2 would be extremely tough if not simply impossible, but it wouldn't suprise me if he could be able to pass the listening portion of it.

I think though he gives a fairly low bar for what "fluency" is, but at least he does put videos of himself speaking online for people to critique so hes not hiding his progress completely.

I have a lot more respect for what Benny has done compared to the AJATT guy at least.

Passing N2 listening basically means recognising 6,000 words + grammar equivallent to the first 2 Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar, amiright? That would be quite hard, like learn-70-new-words-a-day hard.

If he has the commitment to pull it off that's great. I could do with the inspiration lol.

TheVinster Wrote:Hope I'm not the only one who had to search to see who the hell this guy was.

You are.

But it's okay, it just means that you don't (yet) spend too much time on language learning forums following youtube links instead of actually studying your target language.

Unfortunately, the rest of us, well.

This isn't the same guy as the previous thread about that polyglot who learned how to Shoot an arrow while riding a horse, in under 90 days, or something, is it?

[Zgarbas]

Different guy.

Benny does use a gajillion languages and there are numerous recordings and proof of his skills. Most debatable thing about him is his definition of fluency, which is conveniently whatever level he reaches =P. I rather like the fella, and like I said, I genuinely think the persistence of his accent is adorable more than proof of his lack of language skills (though oddly discrepant with his claim of being confused for a native).

You can find him on http://www.fluentin3months.com/

Hey everyone! Thanks for the interesting discussion! Since many people in the forums won't know who I am (and as pointed out, this is a good thing! Better to be a good language learner, than to be a good follower of language learning gossip ), just search Youtube for "アイルランド人がスペインにいながら、3ヶ月で日本語ペラペラになれるのか " to see my intro video.

For full transparency, I had a native help me make that title

Just so you know, I've sat and prepared for a bunch of CEFRL exams, so I'm quite familiar with what the titles are, and am not giving a watered down version. While I unfortunately can't sit the JLPT exam, I am totally open to suggestions for what I can do in January in Japan to demonstrate my level. If we find someone who usually tests people in JLPT orals then he or she can put me through the usual kinds of tests and then can write an unedited post on my blog with the evaluations for instance.

Otherwise, I'll upload a 20 or so minute spontaneous conversation where someone with an academic background in Japanese can interview me and that would go online for the world to see. Whatever works and is practical to implement!

I hope people don't get too obsessed with that aspect of things though, because I want to show that you can get very far in a short time with dedication, and not make it about passing tests, which I feel is a way too traditional and academic way of looking at languages.

@uisukii No, that's Tim Ferriss. I've interviewed him about language learning though. He knows Japanese already, and I'm starting from scratch today.

@NightSky Note that I've never claimed to be C1 in Chinese. Search for "Honest evaluation of Benny's Mandarin" to see a blog post written by an independent Mandarin school in Beijing where they critiqued my level after spending hours with me. The conclusion was B1, which was lower than my goal but something I was happy with nonetheless.

BTW I have RTK, but am only planning to use it for reference, and then will study it more properly in December, although I am not aiming for particular goals with Kanji, since reading signs and menus is fine for my purposes if I can have real conversations with people.

I hope you all enjoy the show! Today I am only getting a few hours done because the day I announce these projects are always distracting with tonnes of comments, tweets etc., but from tomorrow on I'll be implementing Leechblock and other tools to not allow me to enter distracting sites, even as interesting as this one, so that I can focus on learning

uisukii Wrote:This isn't the same guy as the previous thread about that polyglot who learned how to Shoot an arrow while riding a horse, in under 90 days, or something, is it?

no, although they both gave really uncharismatic TED talks.

Benny is Irish, and speaks many languages amateurishly. Seriously, that's his claim to fame.

TheVinster Wrote:Hope I'm not the only one who had to search to see who the hell this guy was.

You might be. Maybe it just means we all spend too much time on the internets.

[Zgarbas]

Welcome to the boards, Benny!

Quote:JLPT orals

No such thing. The JLPT is all multiple choice questions. It only tests vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening.

"No such thing. The JLPT is all multiple choice questions. It only tests vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening."

Are you kidding? I'm sorry, but my opinion of the JLPT has just gone down dramatically. In CEFRL exams you have to sit down with someone and speak to them, and this real human being gauges your level through a series of questions that test your ability to truly communicate. In my German one I had to discuss deforestation and was thrown questions by the speaker at random to make sure that I could defend my point of view, and construct particular sentences. In the Spanish one, I was essentially given a job interview.

And then for the aural component you listen but your answers have to demonstrate some level of comprehension and you write them out. While it's true that up to B2 levels the questions aren't very challenging, at least you have to actually produce them yourself, rather than maybe recognizing something in print form that you've heard and just ticking it.

Multiple choice is a really lazy way to create an exam that makes it scalable, but doesn't really test the individual student on subtle communication abilities that can't be so clear cut. I sat a GRE exam in America when I considered doing my post graduate studies there and the fact that the test was multiple choice just made me roll my eyes in how many ways this is a failure to truly test people. I didn't even have to do many of the mathematics problems because I could eliminate certain answers as just definitely wrong immediately and guestimate the right answer without having really done any true mathematics.

Do they at least give you a real spoken test in the N1? If not then I'm not interested in ever sitting these exams. Unless my answers are graded by a human being, and not a computer that scans which boxes I've ticked, then I'm not interested.

Multiple choice, lol... oh Japan...

Anyway, a homo sapien will be helping me demonstrate my spoken and listening abilities in January thank you very much

Thanks for the welcome!

TheVinster Wrote:Hope I'm not the only one who had to search to see who the hell this guy was.

I know the guy. He’s famous for his missionary zeal. If you don’t believe him, he’ll curse you. That proves that he’s a real missionary. Not after your money.