HonyakuJoshua wrote:

I think what Rawlings did was impressive, just not impressive enough to call him "the man".

Take it easy man, transatlantic guys tend to go "ohh, ahh" more often than Brits or Ozies do.

They say "awasome" you hear that, disagree and say "normal", they hear that, disagree and say "you are nihilist" - looks like a cultural clash to me

kusterdu wrote:

What is a transatlantic guy?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/transatlantic

JimmySeal wrote:

Is seeing someone getting a bit of admiration and praise detracting from your non-stop ego trip, Josh?

No, not at all - I readily admit my faults on here - I just think, as I have said many times on this thread that I doubt whether he is really fluent in these languages and that I also think there are better documented polyglots than him. If I was on an ego trip I wouldn't be posting stuff I didn't understand on the "what this word/phrase thread" or admitting on a public forum that I couldn't finish a job without my gf etc

Well done to the lad on winning the competition.

@Inny Jam yeah that's probably right the Canadians I know communicate like this....

I will grant you that's very impressive

Joshua, you strike me as a very troubled individual.

I swear, it's like every post you write screams that. Also a buttload of information about your life.

He's lucky his mother brought him up with three languages.  That's a massive headstart on most people.

In 翻訳除臭痾's defense, I think the points he raises are mostly valid and there are people out there massively over evaluating their own abilities in multiple languages. However such people tend to have truly god awful accents and basically sound horrendous. I think it would be pretty difficult remembering and delivering his lines without being somewhat decent at the languages. Also googling Alex Rawling doesn't turn up much beside that bbc link, so it's not like he's spamming himself all over you tube or something.

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

@Zgarbas most people would define me as being sane and well balanced - I just mention my gf cos she did help me a lot professionally. You still haven't apoligized.

@irixmark if you look at my post you will see I was only replying to someone who asked who are you exactly. Do you own this forum?

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

quark wrote:

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

Where did I say I could surpass him in a year?! I didn't: You're making it up. I have been called a pedophile, a killer, psychopath and a worse still a recluse, but this time there is no evidence to support what you just said. Please apologise.

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

English,  German, Dutch, Afrikaans, are the same family (Germanic) and have similar vocabulary. I could learn these in a year.


French, , Catalan and Italian.Spanish Are the same family (romance) and have similar vocabulary. I could learn these in a year.

Right there.

I didn't say i could learn Hebrew, Russian or Greek in a year did I, you ******* idiot?

This is what I meant by being uncivilized, and the one thing said in this thread that most calls for an apology.

I've heard other people complain about unimpressive polyglots, but who are you thinking of in particular?  Is there anybody besides Moses McCormick that you're impressed with?

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

nadiatims wrote:

Some of these hyperglots "master" their languages to a rather low standard (not that there's anything wrong with focus on quantity over quality), but this guy seems to be the real deal, not that I can really verify them though. His dutch pronunciation seems a little off but still very good job overall.

I am very suspicious and even if he does speak them well…

Well, his Spanish seems to be pretty good actually. It's not remarkably good, but it's better than most English natives that learned / 'picked up' Spanish that I know.

However, this was probably scripted so his actual ability in any of those languages may be slightly worse than what we've seen.

Last edited by turvy (2012 February 23, 5:26 am)

turvy wrote:

Well, his Spanish seems to be pretty good actually. It's not remarkably good, but it's better than most English natives that learned / 'picked up' Spanish that I know.

Well, I don't know anything about spanish or how good english natives usually get at it, but I think "better than most english speakers" isn't exactly a glowing endorsement when it comes to languages. It's like how other japanese people woo and wow when their friend is able to speak even the slightest bit of English. I personally wouldn't want my own ability compared to people who never studied or do so only semi seriously. I think this is kind of where the 'tall poppy syndrome' comes in, because these polyglots' skills almost seem like magic to a lot of laymen they get showered by praise but the people who know a little better are kind of 'meh' about it. Intermediate or low advanced skills appear a lot more amazing when you're just a beginner at something.

Romanian similar to English?

Wtf?

wow, what a carcrash of a thread.

i dunno, i think that any form of fluency in 11 languages is pretty impressive. I don't see any real basis to start putting this guy down, anyway. He seems to be doing good
Whether other people are doing better or not isn't really the point, is it...

Anyway, about the difference in difficulty levels of languages, i think a lot of it has to do with how different the grammar structure is from english, not just how much of a vocabulary head start you get.

Like, there's differences with French grammar too, but i get the impression that it would be much quicker to attain listening fluency in French because the grammar structure is so much more similar to english than it is for Japanese, which means your brain should not take as long to start processing whole sentences, i guess.