Hyperpolyglot’s Bold Claim: 3 Months to Fluency?

[@awallaustin]

thanks for calling this guy's bullshit, love your analysis

[@rhezer]

He was doing a Japanese challenge to learn in 3 months and apparently he dropped it 😂. You can check the old videos in his channel

[@Evildea]

I do remember that

[@japanese2811]

Yeah, just stopped making videos about it altogether... Think he realised it's way harder than he imagined 😂

[@Evildea]

Maybe we can pressure him back into it :D

[@marikothecheetah9342]

Surprise, surprise. :/

[@RogerRamos1993]

The good of that is that he is genuine. He unblocked other languages in 3 months and someone must have dared him to do the same with Japanese and he may have reacted "Japanese, why not?" The problem with Japanese is that if he went through with the challenge is that he would have to drop most of other languages. At least, that is what prevents from starting to learn Japanese.

[@daysandwords]

Personally I don't recommend Glossika because, at least in Swedish, there were some sentences that were - wrong -. And I mean - wrong -. Not "Oh, it sounds a bit weird" or "We don't say that very often", I mean "If you said that to a Swedish person, they would correct you, or correct you in their head, or not know what you meant." So I have no idea how they even got the native speakers to read those sentences. It's literally difficult to do, like it's difficult to say "It's a quite nice day."

[@Evildea]

Wow I didn’t know that and I’ll keep that in mind! That’s terrible and literally defeats the purpose of the product!

[@WeShallOvercome_]

Thank you for raising this issue. OrientalPearl and LinguistJones have also done great exposes of this. From watching many such videos, my reading is that there are two kinds of people who make such outlandish claims: 1. Clickbaiters, and 2. Tyrants. The clickbaiters want to get as many views as possible and the KZbin algorithm often rewards such behaviour. They behave in a comical/fun way, almost not realising they’re doing anyone else any harm. Tyrants behave in a very arrogant way, often sneering or verbally abusing not just their critics, but also their audience. Their motivation, as I see it, is basically a three-cup trick of: “What? You can’t do it in 3 months like I clearly can reading off a script on my channel? You must be stupid then. You’re defective.” It’s standard cult-leader behaviour where they’ve created an online stick to beat you with. I leave it to others to decide which one certain hyperpolyglots are but you won’t have to search far to decide.

[@Evildea]

Yeap, I didn’t realise others had covered him yet and I’m glad they have as he was when I last check starting to get a small but loyal following. I’ll keep an eye on him to see if he mellows out or not in the coming months but he seems to be heading more the route of everyone else stupid and I have the way mentality the last I saw.

[@francegamble1]

😂 I tried getting another polyglot reaction channel to view his stuff, because his videos keep coming into my feed. I spend 3 years on each language. I already feel that I am going slow doing it, but it is comfortable for me at that rate. Mandarin is my 11th language. Do I know them all fluently? Nope. I get bored. 😅 But 3 months? With that technique? No. Not happening. To learn a language like that in 3 months for me to "fluency" would mean no job and no family. I would need 3 months vacation in the language full time. Even then, I am not training to be a translator anymore, so not sure why I would stop my life for that again. (And Esperanto didn't take me 3 years, but I just enjoyed it for 3 years before I picked another language.)

[@Evildea]

I think even in that perfect environment I don't think I could pull it off... unless it was Ido lol. That be the dream though, give me 3 months, no responsibilities, pay me to try learn a language and I would try!

[@neutrino109]

@@Evildea Scott Young did a year without English. 3 months each in 4 countries. No English allowed. He's a smart dude, huge progress, some languages were easier than others, I don't speak Spanish, Portugese, Mandarin, or Korean so I can't judge his level, but no language course to sell and he seems to be tranparent about his successes and failures. Also I think he also recognized at the time he had a writing job he could do anywhere, no wife or kids, it'd be a chance to do it with little to no responsibilities that he wouldn't get later on.

[@Evildea]

I feel like I should learn a European language next to actually see the difference. I always mess with East Asian languages haha. Maybe I'd be in for a pleasant surprise :D

[@damianloder6080]

@@Evildeawhat languages do you speak? I may be a little behind the times, but I thought it was Esperanto, Toki Pona, and now you’re learning Mandarin

[@Evildea]

I speak the languages you mentioned but I’ve dabbled in Japanese, Indonesian, an Australian indigenous language, and taken a short course in Oslan but don’t speak them so don’t mention them. Unless I can actually speak a language conversationally I don’t even list it.

[@mwenengofero]

I always wonder, what is the hurry in learning a language? Learning a new language is a long-term arduous endeavor. Even if you could learn a language in 3 months, you would probably forget everything within the same amount of time and be back to zero. Personally, I don't even understand the point of learning above 10 languages or whatever. I mean, you still need time to practice all these languages and there's only so much time in a day.

[@RogerRamos1993]

There people who are in a hurry to learn in anything, specially anyone with who wants to learn 10 plus languages. I am one of those. While you can't really learn a language in 3 months. 3 months of intensive study are a great start and then you can learn at a more comfortable pace later. I studied/listened to Romanian for 3 months and it did wonders for me. Now I'm able to read and understand videos in Romanian, so now studying is a lot more effective.

[@maybeide8078]

What is the disadvantage to learn a language "fast" ? There isn't any, on my opinion. Clearly, "fine tuning" is a livelong endeavor even in your mother tongue.

[@David_10157]

Great video! Do you recommend doing a ton of repetitions on a certain sized deck first and then moving on, or just hammering away at a large deck which might take 2 hours a day to get through? So in other words, as many repetitions as possible on a small, say 30 card deck, as possible in 2 hours, or 2 hours at your entire deck?

[@Evildea]

I show my process in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4HIiX-Vn9Vne5I Basically, start with small decks and few cards then grow until you find a size / time usage that works for you. I do 350 cards a day repeating each 3 times which takes me about 1.5 hours.

[@justalameusername1736]

On the association thing tho I`ve been using with tagalog while I do my anki reviews, I do it for every new card and they tend to stick. The thing is, as long as you`re reading and listening the language the associations fall off and all there`s left is the meaning. It`s working for me so far and I`ve started learning this language 3 months ago, now I`m understanding a lot more. Like A LOT more. edit: the more you do it the faster you get, some I instantly have a "story" or association for it OFC I`m using a frequency deck, which is allowing me to memorize the words I need the most first.

[@Ablofluido]

Yes, one hundred per cent. Associations absolutely work and they save a huge amount of time.

[@Evildea]

Just make sure when learning the meaning your associating it with the correct meeting, like my date vs 约会 example in the video

[@Ablofluido]

@@Evildea I think the key is to make sure the word is in a phrase or sentence, so you're learning it within a context AND you've got an association to make it stick in your brain. You're covered from both angles.

[@Evildea]

Then that would be a lot better. Although you usually need more than 1 sentence to get a words meaning. But still that's better than no sentence.

[@RogerRamos1993]

I watch his content. I think he teaches good ways to learn languages quickly and everyone could benefit from at least some of "his" ideas (language islands, active recall, mnemonics). However, learning a language in 3 months is not possible to most (except for close languages). What most can do is unblock a language and cover all the basics in that time. One could achieve something close to a conversational low intermediate (a passive vocabulary of a few thousand words and a 1k active) in that time only by dedicating 3 plus hours daily in intensive study. Most people are not that autistic or don't have the time or the energy or the commitment or the hurry (Some say they are in hurry, but they think they can learn a language in 3 months 15 minutes per day, so that doesn't count). In the comments of his videos, most people say they spend 1 or 2 hours a day applying his methods, and they like the result. Before knowing his channel I had already been meaning to do something similar with mass sentences as I never practice speaking, so it was cool to find a channel like his.

[@Evildea]

I got no issue with most of the methods or even people saying they’re getting results. Just with the grandiose claims. I think it sets people up to wonder why they can’t match that then eventually feel shit about themselves.

[@RogerRamos1993]

@Evildea That is a problem, for sure, specially for those who are struggling with their first language (which tends to be the hardest language you'll learn because you don't even know how to do it).

[@neptunemike]

@@EvildeaI think it’s just so he can get clicks

[@twodyport8080]

Ahhh the HyperGigachad. BTW he is supposedly learning Japanese and will be fluent end of dec. Mnemonics for languages just adds more work in my experience. I would add that learning a word happens in stages. The mnemonic approach adds more problems than it solves. BTW Glossika is highly flawed. The sentences are based off English sentences ie not designed in the TL. Wouldn't touch it myself.

[@Evildea]

Another reason why to just make your own sentence cards! I look forward to his end of December update then :D

[@twodyport8080]

@Evildea well ideally but you need a human to translate them properly and they will need to do a lot of adaptation. Currently ChatGPT is still a bit "hello fellow humans", so I use Tateoba. Unfortunately mining relevant sentences is time consuming.

[@Evildea]

I had my wife check over its Chinese and she said there was no errors although it was rather formal. I totally forgot about Tateoba and haven't used it in years. I'm now gonna go check it out again.

[@ronaldonmg]

@@twodyport8080 I quit tatoeba because it doesn't tell you what is a translation of what. Sometimes a phrase in language A has two or three possible translations in language B, and tatoeba doesn´t tell you which one of them I translated to language C

[@twodyport8080]

@ronaldonmg yeah, as its crowd sourced tateoba has some data problems. Although personally I am ok with weak translation to English provided the TL sentence is natural.

[@ChrisBadges]

Thank you for clearing that up. It is deplorable that there are promises made out there that don't work out for everyone the same. It's the same in the fitness community: "Visible abs in 3 months"? - I say: "Check out my gut first". But if you have been a professional gymnast with muscle memory from childhood than our odds are just different... Or maybe you should have mentioned that the fitness plan involves dropping me off in a parachute over a jungle where malnourishment and sickness might do the trick - if I don't die first.

[@Evildea]

Yeeeeeap

[@WeShallOvercome_]

Did these hyperpolyglot claimants invent repeating through listening, reading, and writing? We need to hear, read and repeat a phrase as many times as it takes for us to understand it without translating. How each person organises that time can be quite individual. What are they bringing that ‘listen and repeat’ doesn’t already advocate?

[@Evildea]

They’re re-packaging it in new and sexy ways :D

[@maybeide8078]

Thanks allot - I will test his method.

[@maybeide8078]

Am I "fluent" in englisch, if I speak like you do ?

[@yura979]

What a coincidence. I got recommended your and his channels since last week and these two couldn’t be more different. One has shorter densely packed videos while another spends a lot of viewer’s time without saying much. It’s either common sense or unsubstantiated claims which my personal experience can’t confirm. Would be really curious to see your response to his criticism of Krashen’s Comprehensive Input because honestly I couldn’t finish watching his video

[@Evildea]

I'll check it out but no guarantee I'd do a video as I don't want to subject people to long videos of me ranting haha

[@yura979]

@@Evildea Thanks! I'm just curious what's your opinion about this because as far as I can tell you like to put emphasis on the "grind" aka intensive studies, while someone like Kauffman, AJAAT and witnesses of the Immersion cult gravitate towards extensive approach. Ideally, both are good and necessary imo. But I'm curious if you believe that Krashen just being vague and have a theory that is impossible to prove or disprove or what he says is exactly how we learn slash acquire L2. Maybe a topic for your video in the future

[@Evildea]

I'll cover the overall topic in a future video :)

[@japanese2811]

Surprised you didn't say anything about the thing of listening to something at 1.5x to 2x speed as a beginner. It's hard enough at normal speed, now imagine cranking it up so that you can barely hear anything at all 😅

[@Evildea]

Good point! I was too focussed on the other stuff and totally forgot that haha. Just another reason this is crazy.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

It does makes sense at a later stage, though, like intermediate, because you do understand a lot but you might struggle with faster speech. If you do speed up and your brain gets used to the higher speed, lower speed (i.e. normal native speaker speed) will "slow down" enough in your brain to be well understood.

[@vargasgonzalezcarlosdaniel8114]

You are the best

[@Evildea]

Thanks!

[@narsplace]

another prerequisite is vocabulary knowledge. One can't learn speed reading unless they already know the words to understand the context.

[@Vamos1969]

He's a fake trying to sell his course to the gullible. He'll pull every other method down but his. This is his quote from a polyglot website. ''What’s your story? How did you get into all these languages? Basque is my native language, I learned Spanish in school and of course, watching TV. I had English, French and German lessons in university, but I mostly learned to speak by watching shows, listening to podcasts, reading and talking to people. The same can be said about all the other languages that followed.''

[@Evildea]

As I suspected. Spent a lifetime.

[@Vamos1969]

@@Evildea Yes. Nowhere in his quote does it mention 3 months to get fluent in his languages 😂 He talks a lot of drivel in his videos.

[@Reflekt0r]

Thanks for taking him down, it's well deserved. Though comprehensible output is underrated, his take on input is preposterous. What's the point in speaking if you don't understand native speech? For unrelated languages, you need a lot of time to achieve it. The new video from linguaholic is very telling. He's spent 1000 hours learning Mandarin and his speech is pretty fluent and the pronounciation is quite good, but his near tears because he can't understand natives. Well, 1000 hours would get you very far with a related language but it's just for starters when it comes to Chinese.

[@Evildea]

I’m going to need to check out this video by linguaholic since I’m learning Chinese. Interesting you say after 1000 hours he has fluent speech but can’t understand natives while I’m kind of the opposite. My speech is now starting to get better but I’ve got a way better understanding of natives. Actually I’m definitely going to check out his video now. Thanks!

[@Reflekt0r]

@Evildea What a wonderful coincidence! I'm excited to hear your insights about learning Chinese. I've been stuck at the intermediate plateau for quite a while but recently discovered some methods and resources that might finally help me reach an advanced level. However, my time is quite limited since we're expecting a child next year. My primary goal is focused on comprehension-I want to understand what people are saying and get by with simple sentences. To me, "advanced" means being able to grasp the general meaning of audiobooks and dramas. I'm not quite there yet, though I can already follow the upper intermediate Dashu Mandarin podcast.

[@Evildea]

Sounds like you're probably on a similar level to myself. Lets race each other to fluency :D Gratz on the baby, maybe you'll finally have a Chinese partner to practice with :P

[@Reflekt0r]

@Evildea Thanks🙏! Challenge accepted, 加油！

[@ADAMSIVES]

I love the "grinder" theme. C'est SI vrai!

[@Evildea]

Now get grinding :P

[@Anna_Batista-w6v]

Well... I like repeating sentences and reading a lot with audio. It has worked for me. But I suppose most things work if you keep at it for a long time.

[@Evildea]

That’s fine once you can actually read the script and know enough to understand what’s going on :)

[@Anna_Batista-w6v]

@@Evildea I've been reading graded readers for a while. I have this "feeling" that I can remember better the hanzi if I read and listen at the same time. It's more like a spaced repetition method at this point.

[@narsplace]

Also don't forget that Google translate census bad words. Which isn't good for learning.

[@Evildea]

I didn’t know that! Less reason to use!

[@ronaldonmg]

census--->censors?

[@narsplace]

@@ronaldonmg Samsung has been weird lately with auto correction.

[@johnsprague4914]

Do you think this is reasonable: The approach I am taking with Hindi is: 1.Learn the letters. 2.Practice reading and focus on reading and pronunciation even though I have no vocab and comprehend nothing. 3. In the car to and from work, conversational Pimsleur. intro do grammar structures and some vocabulary. Listening to children's stories read in Hindi. 4. Explanation of foundational grammar (declensions and conjugations, word order) from a native speaking tutor. Practicing making sentences demonstrating those grammatical constructs but no "conversation" per se. That's what I've been doing for the last 6 weeks. I will continue doing those things for another 4 weeks then shift to slamming vocabulary as hard as possible and trying to speak with native tutors (3 different tutors an hour a day each) and reading an hour a day at appropriate levels (children's stories/short stories) on my own. I don't know how "fluent" is defined really but I expect to be functional in the language in speaking, reading and listening to a degree that I can travel without problems in India in 9 months.

[@Evildea]

If you plan in 9 months to go to India then you'll need to put some serious work in to get to a good enough level to effectively use the language. Pimsleur in the car is a good idea because you can't do anything with your hands anyways. I would figure out what exactly you want to do in India then focus on making sentences based on that with your tutor. Get them to record themselves reading all these sentences then listen to those whenever you get a chance and practice mimicking them as much as possible. Basically, hyper focus on your goal. Children's stories are great an all but you might need to skip them as the majority of the vocab you pickup here probably won't be relevant during your trip.

[@johnsprague4914]

@@Evildea Vocab relevance of the children's stories is a good point. Thank you. What I was really looking for there was just to get the sound of the language in my head at a slower speed than conversational. Children's stories tend to be read slowly. I plan on doing highest frequency 2000 ANKI deck for vocab and I think I can cram 2000 words in 6 months very easily. That's 6 months...180 days... 2000/180 is only 11. 11 words a day? I might be able to pull off 15 or 20 and I already have about 300.

[@Evildea]

It sounds like a solid plan. Just make sure you try focus more on the types of conversations you expect to have that way you cover more words, structures, idioms etc that will exist in that area. If you’re going to just do street negotiations, hotel stays etc then get that stuff out of the way early on (assuming it’s not too complex) that way it will be more engrained by the time you go. I believe in you! Just keep grinding :D

[@johnsprague4914]

@@Evildea Thanks, I really appreciate your input.

[@aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve]

70 likes, 68 comments. An unusual ratio. What people need to start talking about is actual numbers. In the last two weeks, I corresponded with a guy who said he was teaching B1-B2 level Spanish. How many total words? 1500. All motion, for example, was va - go (ir - to go). I think a lot of courses are doing this, saying some level, but giving no specifics unless pressed, and the numbers do not correspond. As to memorisation. I need time to memorise. Even normal speaking speed is too fast, just slides right through. I do use association because it is easier to alter a memory than to create a new one. The words I had real trouble with were not that common and I could not find an association for them. If they are common enough, the context will eventually provide one, or maybe it is the 25 repetitions. But I took my time reading. Thus, I had no trouble with going the misdirection from the association. When I could read at something like normal speed (at 9 months), then I moved on to speaking. Picked up the pronunciation and recall as well as the few missing words within a month. You are very correct with G Translate, but not complete. I was going to use, 'I work at a big company,' but it gave me the correct 'Dirbu didelėje įmonėje,' instead of 'Aš dirbu didelėje bendrovėje.' However, 'stove tile' is 'krosnelės plytelė' but for 'a cornice stove stove' 'karnizo krosnies kokles' (nonsense) and for 'a green cornice stove tile' 'žalios karnizinės krosnies čerpės' (roof tiles). The actual correct translation into Lithuanian is 'žalia karnizinė koklė'. But I would take issue with you on one thing. You said that words should be learned in context rather than through mnemonics. For dialogue, sentences are often short and the grammar abbreviated, but for technical subjects, like these stove tiles above, the sentences should be 10 words each. Lithuanian is allergic to 20 word sentences (bad form) and only authors used to reading foreign manuscripts, like PhDs, use them. That is a lot of context. If you use 5 word sentences, then the context is incorrect because the grammar is too simple. I start off with authentic texts from the first sentence. That way I am seeing the authentic grammar. Graded readers have the problem of often being a translation from a foreign language and so they often do not use the correct contexts and correct sequence of words to learn, much like you were complaining about with G Translate.

[@Evildea]

All good points! I personally build my sentences around authentic sentences. So I’ll find an authentic sentence in a video using a word or grammar structure I want to practice then use chat gpt to give me a few variants with the nouns or something else swapped out. Probably not always accurate but at least it gets me up and running fast. I figure I’ll start to recognise the actual errors as I learn and my Chinese is at a state where I can spot something “fishy” now.

[@aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve]

​@@Evildea It took me many years, more like decades, to recognise something fishy. But then, I work as a Lithuanian to English translator, so I only have to worry about making sense of the sentences, not correcting them. Colloquial grammar is simpler and not a problem. But at B1, one is supposed to be working with job-related material, not just conversations. The problem with your idea is that 'The mail carrier delivers letters,' is fine. The translation is straightforward in Lithuanian. But English does not like the passive voice. Thus, the passive is 'The letters arrived,' but in Lithuanian, it is still 'The letters were delivered,' unless they develop feet. Perhaps not the best example. The word for deliver is going to differ in Lithuanian depending on how. My wife corrected me a couple of months ago because I used nuvažiuoti for descend in a lift (nu - down, važiuoti - go in a vehicle). That verb is used for cars. Apparently they use simply išeiti, to go/walk out, for a lift. (I'll have to ask tomorrow what verb is used to go between floors.) Changing the noun can change the verb at the same time. I do agree with going from target language to dominant language for learning vocabulary because 'table' can be translated into many different words in a foreign language. Learning target language to dominant means you have an image from the context of what that word specifically means. Learning 8 words that mean 'table' all at once is a recipe for disaster. I presume that is what you were trying to say in the video. I did check those G Translate examples afterwards with ChatGPT and it got the first sentence wrong, but it was consistently wrong with the rest, presumably because it considered individually asked questions a single session, which G Translate did not. I admit I was being mean with both programmes by asking them to translate from English, but that is what the person you reviewed uses them for, and insists the answers are great for the common languages. But all this raises a question. I am working on writing a novel and so I have paid attention to how ChatGPT writes. It actually uses very few English grammatical constructions. A native speaker uses more. So, a question. You obviously have the SVO sentence, active and passive. Then you have subordinate clauses, which may use a different verb structure in English, but only perhaps different tenses and moods in foreign languages, and you verbal phrases like participial. What more variety do you have? Am I missing something? In Lithuanian, for example, using the above sentence, 'The mail carrier delivers letters,' if the word that follows from the previous sentence is 'letters' (e.g., the conversation is about the letters, not the carrier), I would use 'arrive' in English to put 'letters' first, but in Lithuanian, I would write and sometimes say, 'The letters delivers the mail carrier.' (OVS) This sentence is a matter of style, not of grammar. Thus, to memorise it would be pointless because its use depends on context. I have not seen VSO or VOS, but I have seen SOV. Another nasty trick in Lithuanian. In English, you have two relative clauses following the noun. In Lithuanian, that would be one participial phrase complete with objects and adverbs preceding the noun and a relative clause after it. That can be 10 words right there. Fun teasing one of them out.

[@Evildea]

So Lithuanian sounds more similar to Esperanto than Chinese so I'll use Esperanto examples. As Esperanto can change word order and has a case system and I used the same system to get fluent in Esperanto. For example, "The mailman delivers the letters" could be: - La poŝtisto liveris la leterojn - La leterojn la poŝtisto liveris - Liveris la leterojn la poŝtisto - La leterojn liveris la poŝtisto etc... So as you can see there is numerous ways to say the exact same thing with preferance being on SVO. So I just learn them all through different cards because I have audio on the front and a translation on the back. Then when I'm watching films etc I'll notice that certain ones are used in certain contexts and I'll start to realise over time that the object of the sentence can be pushed to the front based on how much you want to stress it. Or the verb can be pushed to the back based on how "odd" or "foreign" you want to sound. These things you'll pickup just through mass amounts of reviews. Esperanto also has instances where words and grammar will work in certain ways in run on sentences that just don't work that way in English. This is way I always work with complete sentences. It does mean as I'm learning I will make mistakes but when speaking with natives they'll point that out and you'll just become aware of it moving forward. I guess to say theres no perfect solution here. When it comes to Chinese you just need to throw the whole tense / passive / active system out the window because it doesn't look anything like Euorpean languages.

[@aSnailCyclopsNamedSteve]

@@Evildea Well, the city in which Zamenhof was born, was founded in Lithuania, but has spent most of its time in Poland. You're the second person I've met you spoke Esperanto. Thank you for the breakdown. Natives here rarely correct a person, esp. if they stress the right words in a sentence. Can't say as I blame them. I also do not notice mistakes unless they interfere with communication. I will correct a person if the mistake could be taken the wrong way. For example, I examined a marketing company's website. The first page seemed like outstanding English for a Lithuanian, but on a subsequent page, I noticed that the deadlines were humanly impossible and there was an unusual tense mistake. Then, I understood it was AI. I went back to the first page, selected a paragraph at random, and realised the text was inane. Likewise, I have been corresponding with a friend who speaks English as a second language. On the surface, it seems spotless, but if I look really, really closely, everything is just a little off. It could only be corrected in writing. For one thing, I would have to rethink the sentence, which I can't do verbally at that level. Would it pay for me to correct it? No. If he wants to write something professionally, it should be checked by a professional editor anyway. So why does he need to worry now so long as communication s successful? In the US, we did not learn to recite poetry and I have no training to remember sentences. So, your sentence method would not work for me. I prefer roots nowadays. That is something else shared with the Baltic and Slavic languages (English says Balto-Slavic, but don't say that here.) I'll have to look at your comprehensible input video again, as that is the basis for that method (together with shared word families). It's a lot more fun to create your own words than to memorise them, and I can usually guess correctly now. One of the things holding people back from speaking is the fear of getting it wrong. Is it a good idea to put so much stress on perfection? Or is the perfection just for yourself? In the book I am writing to teach Lithuanian, I am deliberately including mistakes, most of which a reader will probably miss in the first chapter (in the dominant language), for just that reason. The dialogue in the target language will be similar, with the student making mistakes and the person speaking with her repeating the sentence correctly. That will highlight the English grammar versus the Lithuanian. In school, I heard that Chinese uses adverbs instead of tenses. Jake Broe was saying that Korean inflects a verb to show the degree of respect. Very different concepts over there.

[@alexandriatempest]

1:17 I think claiming to learn to fluency is where he went wrong. I mean, getting to say, low B1 *might* be possible. Not fluency, but something you can claim to have "learned it"

[@Evildea]

Yeah that would be possible for select individuals and therefore possible to say. The other thing is he said do this for an hour a day. He should have been more realistic in that assessment.

[@Stevenwalks]

Anybody else thinking of Durianrider?

[@Evildea]

Omg almost totally forgot about that guy!

[@elmadas]

I use google translator in reverse. I use only the words I know (or I should know, eg hsk1v3) and then check if the translation in my language (italian) is ok, and then I ask my chinese teacher to check my homework. Lately gtranslate is very bad, i suppose is the input it receives from ai or even people. Especially if you do word by word translation. For sentences it is still barely ok.

[@Evildea]

Yes, it's very bad especially for Chinese.

[@elmadas]

​@@Evildea I have a prejudice against ai lol. Which tools do you use? Which chatgpt? 😅 thanks

[@Evildea]

Atm chatgpt with sentence mining from vlogs and gaming videos :)

[@julesbaby47]

I must be exceedingly thick, but I don’t think I could remember anything without an association. However, for me, the association does fade but is there if I need it. If something can learn a language in three months they must have a super high IQ, which probably rules out 90% of the people reading it.

[@Evildea]

I’d say it would rule out 99% of people. I’ve meet people who I’d consider fluent in multiple languages but they dedicated decades.

[@jasonjames6870]

He's trying to be the Andrew Tate of language learning

[@OxysLokiMoros]

I really like the idea to create sentences/language islands, but I don't trust Chatgpt for japanese... especially if you don't know anything about the language.

[@Evildea]

I know it’s accurate with Chinese as I’ve regularly asked natives to check its output but I have no idea about Japanese. Maybe you can get a native to check it’s output?

[@oderalon]

It's Ziad Fazah all over again 🤣

[@JohnM...]

Well in studying for 8 hours a day, the actor in Tokyo Vice took EIGHT MONTHS to be nearky fluent...

[@Evildea]

I’m totally going to check out his story that sounds insane!

[@horkade]

I read "bald claim"

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

Evildea going to be bald some day too, it seems.

[@Evildea]

Then it truly will be a bald claim!

[@iknowyouwanttofly]

I do think if someone want to learn fast they would probably look at a memory champion and how tge learn then learn some words and grammer like that and couple with lots of immersion?

[@Evildea]

Most memory champions spend their time developing very specific systems to memorise very specific things. Such as associating images with numbers and then groups of numbers etc. I can’t see how that would work for a language but open to any great ideas.

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

La termino hyperpolyglot tuj pensigas min pri la satira jutubisto Language Simp... kies satiron ne ĉiuj komprenas kiel satiron kaj mi pensas, ke multaj liaj spektantoj nun sincera malamas Esperanton pro lia filmeto pri ĝi.

[@Evildea]

Nun mi devas vidi ĉi tiun filmeton kaj eble eĉ fari respondon ĉe mia kanalo!

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

@@Evildea Tion mi atendas!

[@neutrino109]

Google translate says Esperanto = English? The sneakiest Fina Venko!

[@Evildea]

Yeap haha

[@maybeide8078]

What about these two ? They claim to speak 10+ languages "fluently". Because of their young age, they should not need more than 3 months to learn one: The Super Polyglot Brothers are Matthew and Michael, twins who have been learning languages together since the age of 8. In this episode, the two polyglots talk about the languages they both speak fluently (English, Irish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan and Hebrew), other languages that Matthew knows (Galician, Dutch, Afrikaans and Croatian/Serbian), more languages that Michael knows (Hungarian and Albanian) and how they got started learning languages

[@Evildea]

Never heard of them. Guess I'll look into them. Hopefully not another bullshit story.

[@jeremyhighhouse6903]

Dude says how good you can get your pronunciation, yet his english accent is . . . a bit hard to decipher for a native english speaker.

[@karlturner9038]

Fakte mi konsentans pri la ideo, ke oni ripetu pli kaj pli regule por atingi la pli altan nivelon de via cellingvo. Sed ĉi tiu metodo bonas kiam oni havas ian scion pri la gramatiko, alie oni ne havos rezultojn aŭ havos, sed ŝajne ne bonajn. Mallongdire, ripetado sen scio estas senutila. Kaj krome tri monatoj se sufiĉas por atingo de la fluenco certe.

[@Evildea]

Konsentite!

[@theinternationallanguagees9213]

Kie estas la esperantistoj en la komentejo?!?!?! Ĉu okazis amaskabeado?!?!?! Kaŝantaj sin malantaŭ la angla?!?!? Ne! Uzu la superan lingvon esperanto!!! Eĉ se la dio mem ne parolas ee

[@Evildea]

Haha la sumo da neesperantistoj kiuj sekvas min ŝajne superas la Esperantistojn! Sed jes! Daŭre uzu Esperanton por pruvi ĝian utilecon kaj mi daŭre kaŝe mencias ĝin kiel eble plej multe por allogi pli da novlernontojn.

[@TheFiestyhick]

Regarding Mnemonics, I feel like it majorly lame for Chinese because with all those tones and different pronunciation different from English, trying to create associations is a poor strategy like 80% of the time. I feel like you just have to learn the Chinese mostly based on repetition and review. What say you?

[@Evildea]

It is completely useless for Chinese. You’re better off just learning character meanings because at least they have an inherit meaning that makes sense. Could you imagine having to think up 100+ mnemonics for the same damn sound ‘Xiang’ which also includes a hook for their tones and trying to do that all in one day lol. Fuck that haha.

[@TheFiestyhick]

@Evildea hahahaha Totally! I tried a few times to come up with associations and it was dumb because it obviously doesn't include tones so you're memorizing stuff like a damn fool.....lol

[@Evildea]

Yeeeeeap haha, I tried it myself lol and yeah it just don’t work for Chinese.

[@Travelingonline3]

It is a simple problem of calculations. Fluency in a language is achieved when you reach a vocabulary of about 2000 words that is the point where you can express anything you want to say in "simple" language. So if you learn 25 words dayly for 90 days, that is managable. But you also need an immersive environment which challenges you. This is provided by not exactly cheap intensive language courses...

[@Evildea]

2k words doesn't make someone fluent (at least not in Chinese). There are 2,245 in HSK 3 and HSK 3 allows one to only talk about the most basic of concepts without any depth. What music do you like? I like classical music. Stuff like that. 2k words in Esperanto is a different matter and you'd be pretty fluent but that's only assuming you've mastered hearing and producing the various suffixes which is probably the hard part. For Chinese, realistically I think someone would probably need 6k words to be considered fluent.

[@Travelingonline3]

@Evildea There is of course the problem of defining a word. Is boy and boys two words or one, man-men, I-we, speak-speaking-spoke... bus stop, train stop, stop sign, heart stopper. Is everyone of these combinations a new word or can you count these as different usages of one word i.e. "stop"? Toki Pona has just 120 words. B.A.S.I.C. English by Ogden (Ogden's English) has just 800 words. The general count for English is 2000 for B1 and 4000 to 5000 for B2 and 8000 for C, arranging by frequency. I simply don't understand how these extreme word counts of up to 10000 and more for "fluency" are defined.

[@Evildea]

In Chinese those 2,245 are unique words, not variants of each other. I speak Toki Pona and for Toki Pona you may need only 120 words but they are more akin to concepts. You basically need to then memorise sequences of words and then their possible meanings. My 6k estimate is based on HSK 6 which is a list of unique words (i.e. not variants of the same word). English probably can get away with less because they're counting roots as opposed to variants. But I'm not sure, is "swam" and "swim" different words according to that count? Is "went" and "go" different words? So, I'd say realistically you're still looking at 6k words in most languages (Ignoring constructed languages). 2k will allow you to get by but I wouldn't consider if fluent at all.

[@maybeide8078]

I checked his 14 000 sentences in German. I would not say he translates the sentences in a primitve way. Both German and English are to me "perfect", no "word to word" translations or sentences with different meanings: können Er fragte sich, ob er das Rätsel jemals lösen können würde. can He wondered if he would ever be able to solve the puzzle.

[@Evildea]

His Taglog (I think that's what it was) which was shown in the video was torn apart by a native somewhere here in the comment section. It had a heap of issues. So maybe his sentences are good for some languages and bad for others.

[@maybeide8078]

@@Evildea The first task of his method is to create your own sentences. And the sentences have to be interesting to you. That automatically keeps you motivated. He may have used the wrong source for the translation into Tagalog. In any case, his spoken German in his short video is astonishingly perfect. To my surprise, because his mother tongue is Spanish. And Spaniards usually have a strong accent.

[@whimzycloud]

If you get good at making mnemonics it can be a very quick process.

[@Evildea]

I don't doubt it can work. I just don't like it as sometimes the mnemonic hangs around for waaaay too long.

[@TheFiestyhick]

Remember that Grilled Cheese sandwiches are tasty and I know you likes them.

[@Evildea]

@@TheFiestyhick yummy

[@maybeide8078]

Well, there are lots of "hyperpolyglots" out there. Steve Kaufman for example. He claims to speak German fluently. As a native speaker of german, I would say, no. He might survive traverling in Germany, definitely, but "fluent" ? I would say, "I know some chunks of German".

[@Evildea]

Well, if I were him I wouldnt consider myself fluent in German then because fluent to me means you can easily talk about everyday matters, use it professionally in your specific trade and discuss cultural and political matters. I know bits and pieces of many languages but I wouldnt dare call myself fluent.

[@maybeide8078]

​@@vogditis I.e. you proved the opposite of the claim in the video. He said, "it is absolutely impossible to learn a language within three months". But you needed only two ?

[@maybeide8078]

@@vogditis Adults are not able to learn something ? Very strange, definitely and millions of people proved the opposite. This is simply a statement of lazy adults.

[@maybeide8078]

@@vogditis How I learned German Mikel | Hyperpolyglot. Sein Deutsch ist perfekt.

[@DELottProductions]

Imagine upkeeping 10 languages and learning another while spending 3 hrs a day. No job, life, family, fun, just languages.

[@RogerRamos1993]

@@DELottProductions That's the reason vacations exist. 30 days with your family. 335 days with languages.

[@Evildea]

I could just see that. Comes out of his room for 30 days a year to greet the family then returns not to be seen again for another year haha

[@DELottProductions]

@@Evildea The thing that I find crazy is how a lot of YT polyglots will learn a language for the sake of learning a language rather than for improving communication skills or to be able to talk to a wider range of people.

[@RogerRamos1993]

@@DELottProductions Here in Brazil and moneyless, my main reason to learn languages is consuming content. Sure, it'd be cool to be able to talk to people conversationally in 12 languages, but not worth the effort. So, in my case, if I had to talk to someone in English or French, I'd do just fine. As for Italian and Spanish, I'd do just ok. I can read some Catalan and Romanian, but I'd probably resort to speaking English, French or Spanish if I had to talk to someone from Catalonia or Romania. There's German, which is a language I want to be able to speak at least at an a2 level, but want to read fluently (B2 plus). Right now I only know the very basics. German is a gateway drug for Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish. Those offer very little (compared to other languages) in terms of speaking with locals. So in regards to those three, only understanding to the point of reading literature eventually would be a dream come true. Then of course, there are the Slavic languages. Some Albanian, Greek, Turkish, Lingala, etc... If I learn a language for consuming content and I give up, then it means it was born with me and it dies with me. If I learn a language to speak to others, the pressure increases. So, my current opinion is "I'll maintain my skills in English, French and try to improve my Italian and Spanish to talk to people" and "I'll learn other languages to read news, read books, listen to music, understand movies, humor, etc..." and "If I get to be in Romania for one month, for instance, I'll try to develop conversational skills in Romanian before my trip and during the stay and perhaps try to maintain some of it afterwards and if I never to to Romania then I'll never have (probably) a good reason and the motivation to speak it, so only understading is enough" and "If I get to live in Belgium, then I'll try hard to speak Dutch well and if I live in Luxembourg, for instance, then I'll make the effort to learn both German and Luxembourgish well, and so on".

[@ericbwertz]

I'm guessing he works in government.

[@batsoup7031]

Technically you could do 10 hours a day of CI and get 900 hours in 3 months. You wouldn't be what I would call fluent, but you'd be okay.

[@Evildea]

It also depends on the language. 900 hours of Chinese CI wouldn’t get you far. I did a test with 370 and I’ve probably all up spent 1k hours on various methods and I’m only just starting to get conversational

[@batsoup7031]

@@Evildea Yes, I should have said FSI group 1 languages.

[@spoonerboy6281]

I'm bald guy learning japanese. Even though I have been studying for 1 year and 8 mouths I struggle a lot when I speak with someone

[@Evildea]

I’m a balding guy learning Chinese. Maybe learning East Asian languages is the cause of our balding!

[@fab006]

Lol

[@crbgo9854]

Hes no "hyperpolyglot gigachad alpha male attractive to all women...and men."

[@Evildea]

I'm barely attractive to my own wife haha

[@crbgo9854]

@Evildea she with you for something else then I'm sure lol

[@YeshuaIsTheTruth]

Hyperpolyglot = Super multi lingual. 🦸‍♂️ It means you speak 5+ languages to at most a low intermediate level and you have ego problems.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

For me the hyper affix is just redundant. You already have a poly affix. :/

[@neutrino109]

@@marikothecheetah9342 Superpolyhyperfraglisticexpedialidocious-glot

[@ronaldonmg]

@YeshualsTheTruth @@marikothecheetah9342 No need to inflate the words. It takes at least 6 languages to be a polyglot, and over 10 to be hyperpolyglot. There are lots of places where being conversational in 5 languages is not considered anything special