t3amkill3r Wrote:His next video is up:

Hmm, if his Skype partner wasn't so patient and good at figuring out what he's trying to say he'd be getting a lot of confused looks at best, I think. If he's making me uncomfortable, isn't he going to make a lot of Japanese people uncomfortable? Which would affect their willingness to talk to him. I'd be much more impressed with simpler, accurate Japanese than it getting mangled, not even sure he's really going the most efficient way about his goal, when he's messing up basic words and phrases.

For conversational fluency in a language, which I can see why he'd want to aim for, I feel there's still other considerations than just vocab + grammar. There's cultural aspects involved when conversing with someone, too, for it to really be effective communication - even if it's just knowing that being told 上手 doesn't necessarily mean your Japanese is amazing, haha.

The latest video seems like a testament to why a learner shouldn't go monolingual from the beginning.

Similar to what s0apgun said, couldn't the time he spent stumbling around have been better spent learning and practicing simple phrases with correct pronunciation? Then he could put those to immediate use and sound pretty "fluent." A person who practiced basic phrases all day long for 10 days would be further along, I think.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong, and time will tell. I'll be interested in how this plays out in a few more weeks.

No matter what, props to Benny for putting himself out there as a YouTube experiment in learning Japanese.

An old joke comes to mind:
He's a genius. A 10-sai.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:The latest video seems like a testament to why a learner shouldn't go monolingual from the beginning.

Similar to what s0apgun said, couldn't the time he spent stumbling around have been better spent learning and practicing simple phrases with correct pronunciation? Then he could put those to immediate use and sound pretty "fluent." A person who practiced basic phrases all day long for 10 days would be further along, I think.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong, and time will tell. I'll be interested in how this plays out in a few more weeks.

No matter what, props to Benny for putting himself out there as a YouTube experiment in learning Japanese.

Yeah I agree with all this. I think output is very important to someone studying a language and the more they speak the better at speaking will be, but I'm really unconvinced from his videos that its the best way to work right at the very very beginning.

For Chinese whilst doing Pimsleur by myself I also did 1 on 1 classes for 3 hours a day, and that's obviously the best way to learn at the beginning if you can afford to pay for it. You get the opportunity to practice your output but are also getting plenty of structured input, which I think is definitely better at the beginning.

That and frankly I think language learning SHOULD be something you enjoy, because if you don't enjoy it you won't go far. And frankly going completely monolingual within days of beginning looks incredibly painful and unenjoyable to me.

NightSky Wrote:I think language learning SHOULD be something you enjoy,

I was once in a lunatic asylum. Of course, vodka was strictly forbidden. But there was a guy there who could produce anything from nothing. He drank vodka from an empty bottle. He was so convincing that many an inmate would do the same. Some of them got drunk for free.

buonaparte Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:I think language learning SHOULD be something you enjoy,

I was once in a lunatic asylum. Of course, vodka was strictly forbidden. But there was a guy there who could produce anything from nothing. He drank vodka from an empty bottle. He was so convincing that many an inmate would do the same. Some of them got drunk for free.

Got drunk for free, that is, until he started bottling and selling the empty bottles of vodka. Because as he discovered, many an inmate would pay handsomely for a taste of something so delicious.

[Zgarbas]

buonaparte Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:I think language learning SHOULD be something you enjoy,

I was once in a lunatic asylum. Of course, vodka was strictly forbidden. But there was a guy there who could produce anything from nothing. He drank vodka from an empty bottle. He was so convincing that many an inmate would do the same. Some of them got drunk for free.

This is the most Russian story I've ever heard.

buonaparte Wrote:An old joke comes to mind:
He's a genius. A 10-sai.

What's the origin of that? Is it really Japanese? Doing it in Japanese makes it obvious, but when in English you see "genius" and have to connect the dots to 10-sai and it becomes more clever.

I think it's possible to reach what Benny calls "fluency" in three months of full time study.

But I also think that if someone's goal is to eventually be able to put their knowledge of Japanese to use (by communicating in a seamless, natural manner with Japanese speakers), they should study with the Kanji, from the beginning. They're much too helpful in understanding the intricacies of the language to neglect.

s0apgun Wrote:True for an average person but Benny has been doing this language thing for a while. I would have expected after 10 days he could at least express some more basic phrases. It seems right now he understands kana, a handful of vocab, and some simple grammar rules after 80 hours of studying. I think if Benny just put that much time into a shadowing book like 「日本語を話そう!」he could be much further along right now with HIS goal.

He would be able to express himself a little better, right now, I guess. But his goal is to reach a certain level at the end of three months, not constant progress during.

I think that he's trying to start by assessing how Japanese works, first. That will help him formulate a more efficient plan for learning it.

[s0apgun]

SOU SHE TEH OH

best part haha

That is awefully unpleasant to listen to !

That being said, and even though I strongly disagree with him saying that one can speak japanese (or any language) at a good level without reading, i am impressed by his skills in other languages so I wish him the best in his studies.

I don't really like the scripted videos because I don't see the point of them. Its hard to know how much of his improvement in this video is due to his Japanese getting better or if its because he already knows what to say in advance...

Honestly I was suprised he really made any mistakes at all, but then if it was me I'd have just practiced it a few times and made sure I knew what I was saying before hand.

Anyway good luck to him, hes clearly working hard at it.

I don't know what's with Benny's doltish-almost-makes-you-cringe performance, even for a total beginner wth?, (I keep thinking there is something あやしい about it) but honestly I wish I wouldn't have placed Japanese up on a pedestal from the start, that way I may have gotten conversational sooner.

NightSky Wrote:I don't really like the scripted videos because I don't see the point of them. Its hard to know how much of his improvement in this video is due to his Japanese getting better or if its because he already knows what to say in advance...

This is it for me I don't want to hear his scripted videos, I want to hear spontaneous speech!

Then again, that might be a bit hypocritical of me, because I've been thinking about putting a video up on YouTube maybe, but if I did it would most definitely be scripted... But my speaking skills are terrible in any language, so even if I did an English video it would be scripted >.<;;

But yeah, I can understand how frustrating it might be - what does he know, and what is he just repeating? Especially since he's making a few grammar mistakes (like にです from last week and そしてを from this one, so even scripting isn't completely working), but I hope he's actually learning something. I guess if he posts another Skype conversation we'll be able to see for ourselves.

Good luck to him. Japanese is hard, man...

I don't know why anyone would want to watch that. he is so awful, and ok we all were at that point... but we don't walk around showing everyone our leprechaun because It's not a good look. similarly we didn't have the poor judgement to try showing people how we speak a foreign language until we're a little bit good at it.

His nice-guy Irish country-boy routine (in english) is almost as grating as that Hindenburg disaster of a youtube clip. I'm 2nd-generation Irish so I have no problem hating on lame countrymen. This guy has not touched a woman in years.

Judging from this, I'd say he's not learning a lot of Japanese aurally, by listening and repeating. Otherwise he wouldn't break up the syllables the way he's doing. It seems like he's memorized a written script. That seems weird for a guy who's motto is Speak from Day One. If he'd just had a tutor run through those sentences with him a few times, he'd be able to output them smoothly.

I agree with youasuki--there's something あやしい about the whole thing. It's like he's trying to make mistakes, almost as a set-up, so that later he'll look better by comparison. For a guy who speaks so many languages, I don't see why he's having so much trouble presenting pre-prepared sentences. Strange.

oh, dtcamero ... you're sounding so jealous. Don't be such a hater, darling. I still think you're precious. ;P

Yeah, I really don't get the super-negative reactions to this video. Doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Is it just me, or does it sound kind of like he's affecting an almost Romance language-ish (maybe Italian or Spanish) sounding accent for his pronunciation at times? I don't have the best ear for these things, but it really sounded like that to me, especially on some words, like when he said とってーめー instead of とても, or when he said するときに. I'd recommend keep drilling pronunciation and trying to shadow to get better rhythm and inflection on the words, but I could just be hearing things.

That being said, I actually like that he's showing his progress in real time, warts and all, especially since he is promoting a method for learning on his site. I do wish he would use less scripted material for the videos, but the only problem I'll have is if he's still at a fairly low level after 3 months, but tries to pass it off as fluent.

patriconia Wrote:Is it just me, or does it sound kind of like he's affecting an almost Romance language-ish (maybe Italian or Spanish) sounding accent for his pronunciation at times?

Yeah, definitely. I was thinking the same thing^^

@patriconia

Yeah, I totally agree. It sounds more like he's originally Italian than Irish. Not that I'd expected him to have much of a clue on pronounciation at this early point though. It's not like I myself was any expert after three weeks.

No! No hate at all, I wish I had done that myself as well.

But he's performance is dubiously bad. That's all.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:It's like he's trying to make mistakes, almost as a set-up, so that later he'll look better by comparison. For a guy who speaks so many languages, I don't see why he's having so much trouble presenting pre-prepared sentences. Strange.

Yup.

Or maybe he's just learning a language and recording his progress. Please stop with the dumb conspiracies.

egoplant Wrote:Or maybe he's just learning a language and recording his progress. Please stop with the dumb conspiracies.

Disagreeeee.