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Moses McCormick’s admirable achievement

 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery Post Reply
221 messages over 28 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 21 ... 27 28 Next >>
noriyuki_nomura
Bilingual Octoglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 5100 days ago

304 posts - 465 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1
Studies: TurkishA1, Korean

 
 Message 161 of 221
08 December 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged 
I wholeheartedly agree with this point.

translator2 wrote:
For language lessons, I prefer to watch videos made by native speakers or people who have studied a language for many years, rather than people teaching stuff they learned from a textbook yesterday.

6 persons have voted this message useful



languagenerd09
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
youtube.com/user/Lan
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174 posts - 267 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai

 
 Message 162 of 221
16 December 2010 at 4:07am | IP Logged 
I have simply been inspired by Moses in language learning this year and I am very very thankful for that.
5 persons have voted this message useful



bluecollar
Groupie
United States
Joined 5914 days ago

43 posts - 48 votes

 
 Message 163 of 221
08 April 2011 at 6:08pm | IP Logged 
His enthusiasm for languages is inspiring but most of his languages are useless though.We all can learn how to pronounce a lot of languages,write a few sentences,use googletranslate to translate them and make videos of ourselves "speaking" countless languages.Moses is a nice guy but the truth remains his language learning approach is what we should avoid: a mile wide and an inch deep.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Ari
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Norway
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 Message 164 of 221
08 April 2011 at 9:26pm | IP Logged 
bluecollar wrote:
His enthusiasm for languages is inspiring but most of his languages are useless though.We all
can learn how to pronounce a lot of languages,write a few sentences,use googletranslate to translate them and
make videos of ourselves "speaking" countless languages.Moses is a nice guy but the truth remains his language
learning approach is what we should avoid: a mile wide and an inch deep.

Very true, as long as by "we" you mean "people with the same priorities as me". A mile wide and an inch deep is a
helluvalot of dirt.

EDIT: And by "useless" you mean "of no use for the things I want to do with my languages".

Edited by Ari on 08 April 2011 at 9:27pm

23 persons have voted this message useful



blindside70
Newbie
United States
polymathisthegoal.co
Joined 5521 days ago

24 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Polish, German, French

 
 Message 165 of 221
09 April 2011 at 4:57pm | IP Logged 
I think you got it right Ari. It's all about your goals. Moses can have a basic conversation in a large majority of his languages, but then he probably can't talk politics or read novels in great many of them.

Truth is though he probably doesn't talk much politics or read many novels in English either.
5 persons have voted this message useful



ChiaBrain
Bilingual Diglot
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United States
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Studies: German

 
 Message 166 of 221
10 April 2011 at 9:23am | IP Logged 
There's a lot to be said for breadth of study.

Why should I waste so much time becoming natively fluent in just one extra language when
I can spend that time sampling a wide variety of them and learn about the nature of
language itself?!?!?




5 persons have voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 4890 days ago

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Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
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 Message 167 of 221
10 April 2011 at 5:49pm | IP Logged 
ChiaBrain wrote:
There's a lot to be said for breadth of study.

Why should I waste so much time becoming natively fluent in just one extra language when
I can spend that time sampling a wide variety of them and learn about the nature of
language itself?!?!?

My goal (outside of my job's linguistic requirements) is to become fluent enough in a language that I can have a meaningful conversation with a variety of people about a variety of topics. I also want to be able to easily read good literature in the language.

But I'm discovering that occasional excursions into other languages are healthy, if nothing else than for a break in monotony. I don't have to become fluent in everything I'm exposed to.

R.
==
10 persons have voted this message useful



blindside70
Newbie
United States
polymathisthegoal.co
Joined 5521 days ago

24 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Polish, German, French

 
 Message 168 of 221
10 April 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged 
hrhenry wrote:

My goal (outside of my job's linguistic requirements) is to become fluent enough in a language that I can have a meaningful conversation with a variety of people about a variety of topics. I also want to be able to easily read good literature in the language.

But I'm discovering that occasional excursions into other languages are healthy, if nothing else than for a break in monotony. I don't have to become fluent in everything I'm exposed to.

R.
==


Agreed. I have my main goals, but I find myself interested in other languages at other times for other reasons. The Filipinos that sit around me at work have made me interested in Tagalog. I don't plan to work to get fluent in that particular language, but I did buy the Teach Yourself book to be able to play with it.


2 persons have voted this message useful



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