kitakitsune wrote:

That's the US government's scale for when they try to teach people (from zero) to be linguists. It's based on many years and lots of experience teaching native English speakers how to speak these languages.

As far as I know, German gets its own category because of some grammatical quirks English speakers have trouble overcoming.

Maybe also because while German may be closely related to English, it often uses Germanic terms that existed in Anglo-Saxon dialects, but that were replaced by French terms after the Norman conquest, like "ymbsprǽc" which isn't far from German Gespräch, but has been replaced by "conversation" in modern English.

For the same reason French and Romanian are easier to learn for English native speakers because their vocabulary is largely Latin-based, so even if the grammar is different, you don't spend much time on learning words... like with Japanese for example...

One of my British classmates who learned both German and French put it like this: In French, all the easy words are different from English, but you use them every day, so you don't forget them, and the difficult words are the same. In German, all the easy words are the same as in English,  and the difficult ones are all different... which is why he forgot most of his German and remembered most of his French.

So you could say that for English native speakers:

Swedish: easy grammar, more difficult vocabulary (not to mention pronunciation)
French: harder grammar, easy vocabulary
German: harder grammar, more difficult vocabulary

Not sure though why Dutch wouldn't be in the same category as German, but it's the FSI and they've been doing this for decades, so they're probably right. Not to mention that there is hardly any professional incentive to learn Dutch because everybody there speaks excellent English already...

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

He doesn't even speak Hebrew in the video...

He speaks Hebrew for a good 20 seconds, starting at 2:19.

Zgarbas wrote:

We also have horrendous grammar rules, an substantial amount of irregularities, the weird phonetics, three gendered conjugations, 4 types of impersonal verb tenses and about 30 personal conjugations and all that. Not to mention the about 10% of the language which is slavic in nature...

You forgot the odd spelling and the Greek and Turkish words. But this classic on language evolution (http://www.amazon.com/Story-Language-Ma … amp;sr=1-1) at least claims that Romanian is still closer to Latin than Portuguese or French.

Also a bit of Russian, Hungarian and a lot of English loan-words these days. Plus each region with its own gazillion words which no other region understand (and that particular region with its very own past tense).

Not saying we're not close to Latin, but at least from what I got to see with Italians and Spanish people it is not intuitive enough for them make most links without prior study.

Latin: Panem
Spanish: Pan
Italian: Pane
Romanian: Pâine.

I thought people from Shawinigan had an accent in both official languages...?

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

JimmySeal wrote:

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

He doesn't even speak Hebrew in the video...

He speaks Hebrew for a good 20 seconds, starting at 2:19.

Thanks, I didn't see it. Call me a cynic but I am just so used to these claims in my ten years in the game. I can see how I jumped on the guy but I have just heard all this so many times, researched these claims so many times and disproved these claims so many times to be overly positive...

What do you think of his accent(s)? As far as I can tell he's pretty good across the board. Accent is an area in which some polyglots excel and others are terrible. Michel Thomas for example spoke with a strong accent in every language except (presumably) Polish.

Zgarbas wrote:

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.

Try to be more accurate when criticizing other people:

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

I will grant you that's very impressive

(About the polyglot)

Irixmark wrote:

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

I think I am a direct person who often rubs people up the wrong way and have been called rude before.

One the of the many great things about this forum is that people tend to stay civilized even in heated discussions, and that nobody brags about their achievements, even though some really have earned "bragging rights" because of the level of deep knowledge and fluency in Japanese they have achieved. Please keep it that way.

He criticized the spot they gave that guy and used himself as an example, maybe because he doesn't know other examples? But that also implies that he's saying that he himself didn't do something impressive, which I see as being humble.

HonyakuJoshua just gave his criticism and you guys started bashing him, I think you are the troubled people who should consider and be open-minded about what others say. He might be wrong, but you could've been more polite in disapproving...

I speak two languages ONLY, and I too wouldn't admit that guy can speak eleven languages unless they show how they evaluated him! Maybe he memorized stuff, right?

Talking about being civilized, maybe you should consider being more open-minded and use more critical thinking...

Edit:

dtcamero wrote:

if we're not being trolled, Honyaku J-star is obviously a bit threatened that this guy has such significant achievements at his young age, and is getting so much attention for it.
...

If that's what you believe, why wouldn't you just let him fade away by himself?

Last edited by undead_saif (2012 February 23, 1:06 pm)

undead_saif, that is what he said about 20 posts into the discussion, and after I said that.

Being suspicious is understandable, though personally I don't see the point in it. Stating that you can do that in 2 years is kind of silly(which he did in his very first post), then keeping on and on about how he got good results at French tests in highschools probably means he is better than this kid of which we know nothing about. Also it gets really tiresome to read his life achievements over and over again, and as much as I try to just jump his posts when they show up the amazing trainwreck logic keeps getting me to read them occasionally.

Also it irks me to see bad debate skills. Contradictions between early statements and latter claims, changing the subject, deliberately ignoring 95% of what is said in favor of pulling whatever next comes out of his keyboard.

(and seriously, no one picking up the troubled vibe? The whole part where he insists on bringing up teachers that have wronged him 20 years ago and then mentioning and rementioning every single achievement he has ever had?)

@Zgarbas lol OK, just leave him be then. If he's so, then discussing with him isn't good for you.

One thing I'm grateful about in this thread is knowing about Dr. Kató Lomb and so about her book "POLYGLOT - How I Learn Languages",  I just started reading it, quoting from it:
"Indifferent to foreign languages in secondary school and university (her PhD was in chemistry), she began to acquire English on her own in 1933 for economic reasons: to find work as a teacher."

That just shows how harsh reality can be and how that "bad" situation lead her to become a great achiever. That was one of the best things I've ever knew about!

@Undead Saif yeah kato is a great encouragement to me! I have another pdf which of hers which i can email you if i can dig it out. I am glad I helped you feel better today.

@dtcamero I am not obsessed with kanji gold. I make a lot of posts on the what's this word/phrase thread and my hobbies include chess, running and socializing and volunteering. I think its DISGUSTING that you use the disability Aspergers as a slur - I know many kind, loving, intelligent, sensitive people who have this disability. Please, please edit your post. It is a sickening insult to anyone who has this disability and their families. I would frankly ban you from the forum here and now. insult me by all means, but please don't make such crude, ignorant remarks.

@Ice Cream I was more upset with his using a disability as an insult but thanks anyway.

@Zgarbas "Being suspicious is understandable, though personally I don't see the point in it. Stating that you can do that in 2 years is kind of silly(which he did in his very first post), then keeping on and on about how he got good results at French tests in high schools probably means he is better than this kid of which we know nothing about."
 
PLEASE TELL ME WHERE I SAY THIS I could never learn Hebrew in two years. I reiterate PLEASE TELL ME WHERE I AM BETTER THAN THIS "KID".fyo i am 24 years old and the teacher was 6 years ago.

@Fillanzea Where I am from, Liverpool Uk generations of abuse by the Catholic Church is brushed under the carpet whereas the powers that be make a big deal about woman's rights (even they don't do anything for women's rights.)

Here is a case which illustrates the states corruption http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article … claim.html

Of course I think women's rights are extremely important, I just think the regime is pretending to care for women's rights whilst letting corruption go unnoticed and letting paedophiles walk the street etc.

I had a quick look at this Michael Thomas method - how this would work alongside SRS, sentence mining picking and Japanese for that matter?

HonyakuJoshua seems like the type of guy that might invite himself to parties to boast about himself. No offense but just admire the 20-year-old's commitment and motivation to do what he's even done so far. Don't overanalyze it too much. It's not like he won the competition so that he could say HonyakuJoshua respected him.