ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6275 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French
| Message 1 of 16 30 March 2010 at 2:56pm | IP Logged |
This was a video recently posted by Keith (or KanjiKeith as he calls himself on YouTube), about a Chinese guy called Jerry Dai who moved to Canada and has learned English to an excellent level. I'm not sure if this is the guy Steve Kaufmann met, if it is, he apparently acheived his accent by listening to a imited amount of content a thousand times.
Here are some videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAeiS2a6CuM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMX2bdTxK0
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WANNABEAFREAK Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong cantonese.hk Joined 6786 days ago 144 posts - 185 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Cantonese Studies: French
| Message 2 of 16 02 April 2010 at 9:40am | IP Logged |
amazing
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whipback Groupie United States Joined 5553 days ago 91 posts - 118 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French
| Message 3 of 16 23 June 2011 at 6:52pm | IP Logged |
Judging by his perfect accent I would believe his idea about listening to the same content 4000-5000 times.
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Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5279 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 5 of 16 23 June 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
I cannot, but in the video he speaks some English starting at 0:44. Apparently, this video was shot after he lived in Canada for 7 years, which makes his skills somewhat less impressive, because many students who arrive in the US or Canada at the age of 20 acquired good accents after much less exposure.
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6868 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 6 of 16 24 June 2011 at 12:25am | IP Logged |
Good accent, yes. Good language learning example, yes.
I don't know, maybe it's just me who think that he's a bit like a TV evangelist:
"It took me about two years after I came to Canada, to speak the kind of English that I'm speaking right now.
I know exactly how much my stuff can help you guys.
(...)
-Are you ready?
-Yes!
-I did not hear you! Are you ready?
-Yes!
-I did not hear you! Are you ready?
-YES!
http://youtu.be/rQKBQWXIU_c
Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 24 June 2011 at 11:35am
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egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5655 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 7 of 16 24 June 2011 at 5:11am | IP Logged |
The first video I saw of this guy rubbed me the wrong way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAeiS2a6CuM
His accent is great for sure, but at least in this context he comes off too much like a
late night television salesman. He also asserts that learning grammar is useless in
language learning, which is an oversimplification at best. Perhaps there's some context
I'm missing, but at least from what I've seen he reminds me in a bad way of those
hyper-confident self help seminar personalities.
Him: Do you think about grammar when you're writing in Chinese?
Audience: yes sometimes
Him: In Chinese!
Audience: yes so--
Him: NO! NO you don't!
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seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7091 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek
| Message 8 of 16 24 June 2011 at 7:14pm | IP Logged |
What strikes me about the videos is not his level of English (which is very good) but
his body language. He seems to have assimilated the body language of a North American-
-which made wonder, at first, if he hadn't spent at least some of his childhood or
adolescence in Canada. I don't think
proxemics is the right term to
explain what I'm noticing, but its in the ballpark.
I don't know any better way to explain it. I used to think I was imagining it, but my
Chinese friends in Taiwan also said they could tell--regardless of proficiency in
Chinese--whether the speaker was from Taiwan or North America just by thier body
language (posture, amount of space they leave between themselves and others, etc). A
museum guard in Naples told me something similar. I noticed that she was very good at
admonishing people in thier native language (Italian, French, German, or English) and I
asked her how she knew which language to use. She repled that she could often tell
just from their body language and they way they dressed.
So, I think not only his level of profiency in English but his mastery of non-verbal
behavior also contributes his overall competence.
Interesting video
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