The CRAZIEST stories from my time at Rosetta Stone in Grand Central Terminal New York City

[@geraltofrivia9424]

"Breakfast to everyone" is how you greet someone in East Allemania.

[@cliffenyprize8489]

I haven't seen a storytime video this great since 2038, keep it up!

[@languagejones6784]

* squints * we meet again

[@kierstynsharrow1266]

@@languagejones6784 🤣

[@SanjayMerchant]

As someone who did occasionally busk in Graybar Passage around 2009, I apologize for however many times you had to hear me sing "Ah, mes amis."

[@The_Lord_Of_Confusion]

the time travel guy story is quite funny, I have to use that line sometimes to see what happens

[@anidnmeno]

"seeking satisfaction through self gratification" i love it

[@jackperl7040]

All Power to East Alemania!

[@totustuus5279]

You Alemanian dog. The German Confederation will crush you

[@sjoerdglaser2794]

You've probably already heard this before. But 'breakfast for everybody' in Dutch is more like 'ontbijt VOOR iedereen' instead of NAAR. With 'voor' it's more like 'to' as in: 'bring breakbast to everybody'. While 'voor' is more like a wish. As in a round of beer in a pub 'beers for everyone!'

[@mjears]

Okay, _finally_ at the end I get why the overall volume in this was so low! Great stories. I’ll be passing the kiosk in a few minutes.

[@nqldaro]

Fun video :) Did you notice if the time traveler had any discernable accent? Curious if English sound changes in the parallel timeline evolved the same as in ours.

[@languagejones6784]

contemporary Harlem. Not sure when he was originally from.

[@paulbiologist]

Nice to see Maigret on your bookshelf, I love thise books. They zip along and really good short books for French learning as there's a lot of dialogue... although you can end up with some pretty dated vocab...

[@GroovingPict]

how did Wallace Shawn react to that? like, you quote his undoubtedly most famous line to him, and he goes something like "hah, yeah, good one, so you recognised me huh", and you go "what on earth are you talking about?"... must have been confusing :p

[@languagejones6784]

He literally winced

[@Ledturbeaux]

I walked past this kiosk everyday for years

[@JCtheMusicMan_]

Awesome tales! As an unemployed jazz musician and hobby linguist who wished I had a PhD in linguistics, I am thoroughly entertained and educated by your videos!

[@spoddie]

"Breakfast to everyone" was my CIA handler's contact sentence. Lucky you didn't reply "Everyone deserves a good breakfast" otherwise our mission would have been aborted. Also, I'm now a struggling Linguist, I was thinking about switching careers to jazz musician but apparently that's not a good idea.

[@AaronQuitta]

Cool video! Would you be willing to do a video going over your thesis at some point?

[@languagejones6784]

Definitely. That's on its way.

[@hybrismc4105]

....alright, more stories please. Any stories.

[@lroc6272]

Thank you , really enjoyed

[@languagejones6784]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@empresagabriel]

Amazing stories. It's crazy how life happens and stories unfold unexpectedly at a daily pace.

[@jackthomson1603]

legendary vid, thank u

[@topilinkala1594]

We are all time travellers. My speed is 1s/1s forward most of the time. You know it speeds up when you move faster. Acceleration speeds it up also.

[@davekaiser7891]

Best wacky language story: On an overnight train to nowhere in Russia, a Russian man, completely shitfaced, jams a hunting knife onto the table in our room, so that the knife is quivering back n forth, then says “let me tell you about my wife…and her lover.”

[@Thermobyte]

It could be a time traveler. Alternatively however, that's a great bit to pull on unsuspecting strangers.

[@illexsquid]

No, it was DEFINITELY a time traveler.

[@hodelhophopp9386]

Please do talk about the story in Rome with the mafiosi

[@jazzygiraffe8589]

It's so cool you've been a jazz musician at some point because I've really been enjoying your videos and have been quite fascinated with language learning for a while now but am planning on studying jazz music at university :)

[@jeroenwarner4834]

I'm afraid you weren't paying attention... he said there's no money in Jazz! As a trainef pianist turned translator turned political scientist I concur..

[@EvidentlyThinking]

Cheers for the video!

[@languagejones6784]

Thanks!

[@bigscarysteve]

I'm not sure what Rosetta Stone was doing in Grand Central Station. Were you providing on-the-spot translation services? Or were you simply trying to sell the software? I saw a free trial of Rosetta Stone somewhere--a very long time ago. From what I saw, it looked to me as if it were simply a mnemonic system that someone had come up with and decided to use for language learning specifically, when it probably could have been used for anything. I wasn't particularly impressed with that, so I never bought it. It seems to me that Rosetta Stone's success has more to do with aggressive marketing than with the actual success of the program. Then again, I don't like Pimsleur either. In fact, I'm not really happy with any approach to language learning that I've ever been presented with. I try to come up with my own, since that seems to work better for me than anything anybody else comes up with.

[@languagejones6784]

It was retail software sales. I only have experience with versions 2, 3, and 4, but it struck me that in V2 the linguists had free rein, and it was an eclectic but truly great program, and from V3 onward it had a lot more care put into the UX, really tailored to usability for the average person. I'm probably the only person who absolutely adored the old version that everyone complains about.

[@frechjo]

I like the old Pimsleur audio courses (I don't know what the new browser thingy is about). I would never call them a complete course. It's good at encouraging you to start speaking, and gives you some confidence that's probably completely unjustified. But I think that's good, and paired with other stuff, it helps. But I never payed for them. If I had to, I'd probably spend the money some other ways.

[@bigscarysteve]

@@frechjo I've heard a lot of people swear by Pimsleur. If it works for you, then I guess more power to you, but I've never seen the appeal. It all looks pretty pointless to me. I prefer a logically organized approach to understanding a language's structure.

[@sjm42]

You had me at SLIDERS! 😍😁

[@kierstynsharrow1266]

#BreakfastToEveryone

[@illexsquid]

Someone needs to get Samuel L. Jackson on video saying this.

[@jetlaggedchef6806]

Loving your vidoes! I just bought a place in Italy and plan to move there in a year or two. Any advice on learning Italian? (e.g. - program vs immersion school vs... ?)

[@mydogisbailey]

This man is big brain

[@fernandobearly4497]

why do you have a Unix book on the shelf?

[@aroberge1]

Commenting for the algorithm (as you mentioned most often in other videos - but strangely not in this one, perhaps since you have perform editing through time travel). I discovered you just a few days ago and I find your videos to be both extremely interesting and most annoying - the latter because they distract me from watching more videos in my target language (Spanish). Bonne chance avec ton expérience dans l'apprentissage du "canadien français". (The use of "ton" instead of "votre" being very intentional in this context.)

[@paulwalther5237]

You've gotten me thinking of trying out my lifetime subscription I've been ignoring for years. *edit* Alright. The iPhone app still feels like a lazy port from the PC version. It’s much better on the iPad or PC but it is confusing why they didn’t revise the phone app to compete with Duolingo etc.

[@crbielert]

That was epic.

[@shmankersox]

Oh my gosh... What you said about buskers 😂😭 When I was doing a Master of Music degree in violin at Juilliard I used to busk in both Central Park and in the subway (Times Square station or Columbus Circle usually, on the platforms because I didn't want to bother to get a permit, maybe that was your mistake?) and I had easily an hour's worth of music (mostly solo Bach, and some Vivaldi because people generally recognize the Four Seasons). This was between 2010 and 2012 btw, there's a non-zero chance you saw me at some point and assumed what I was playing was the only thing I knew 😂😂😂. Slim chances, but non-zero. There were also other musicians I saw there, busking in various parts of the city, who were legitimately super impressive. Maybe don't paint us all with the same brush? Anyway, I'm in a professional orchestra now, no longer in NYC, so those days are, at least for now, behind me. It's worth saying also that my busking experience did a great deal to improve my performance anxiety management (and pay my expenses, it wasn't not lucrative). So I can credit those experiences in part for my overall music performance education. Love the channel, only found it recently but I've been enjoying it! Be nice.

[@MrRubikraft]

Breakfast to you :-)

[@languagejones6784]

Same to you!

[@eurovicious]

Great video. Love the Sliders shoutout. Not seen The Princess Bride but I know Wallace Shawn from DS9 and Southland Tales. What's the story with the abortive jazz career?

[@languagejones6784]

I called worked as a bandleader, composer, arranger, and side man for almost a decade. I called it quits when I saw a live recording session at a club and my mentor, whose session it was, paid his musicians half of what I paid mine. I already felt guilty about paying so little. I asked how he afforded such a nice house, car, and so on, and long story short, most seemingly successful jazz musicians just have successful spouses. AND teach in music programs, take every gig they can, regardless what it is. I still play, I just enjoy it now and can focus on the music rather than putting food on the table.

[@eurovicious]

​@@languagejones6784 I love hearing stories like that, thanks. I worked as a translator in Germany for a decade and most of the other expats I knew who worked as translators or English teachers were women with high-earning engineer husbands. Seems a lot of interesting professions need that spousal subsidy...

[@ak5659]

I've noticed that, too. I'm an ASL interpreter and I was shocked to find out that spoken language interpreters get paid half what we do.

[@takingbus11]

What’s your instrument? Can you do an improvisation video? Will settle for a standard. The language stuff is nice, too.

[@byronwilliams7977]

Fun video :)

[@amethystjean1744]

Breakfast to everyone! lol

[@nicholaswise5818]

OMG You had a jazz career!?

[@beansclox]

4:30 we all have em'

[@hadlerhannibalrex]

Sayonara!

[@GrumpyMcFrog]

Can we get a video on the Dutch Neighbors Prank, please?

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

0:55 Ehhh... My question was when did a big block of granodiorite with an inscription in three languages become an employer... But I guess this is something else called "Rosetta Stone" 😅

[@eritain]

No, it's -- you were right the first time. Sort of. Let's see ... the nanoplaque infestation sensed quorum and booted into self-awareness around 2029 -- sometimes they/it says 2028, hard to get a straight answer out of those critters/that gestalt, you know how it is -- and best estimate is it/they had infiltrated and crawled most of the British Museum collection already, so when the "Make Friends" Glitch happened they/it probably restructured the Stone for sapience pretty much immediately. But I guess Rosetta didn't really accumulate the economic clout to start hiring folks until about 2032. Maybe 2031. Safe to assume it started making deals under the table before its public debut, and we can't really check its financials because "minerals don't pay taxes" (thanks a lot, House of Lords). Sometime around then, anyway.

[@resourceress7]

❤

[@batya7]

Time travel is real.

[@jduerstine]

for the algorithm

[@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

ontbijt VOOR iedereen..

[@larryeber]

😅

[@Badbooo123]

So basically it doesn't work right? You said your wife wasn't able to speek to him after she finished it

[@Droni0201]

What language do you speak?

[@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

He spoke American Engrish, with an New England accent.

[@aimee-made]

@@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands He doesn't sound particularly New England to me, that said, I'm a New Englander, so maybe I just can't hear it!

[@mickgorro]

"real twelve monkeys situation"?

[@AndyGneiss]

"12 Monkeys" is a 1995 science fiction film involving time travel.

[@michaelballance1893]

Rosetta Stone is almost useless and way overpriced.