Language / Super fast Polish language learning strategies from internet polyglots [29]

This is Benny.
@tony Thanks.
@delphian I don't know who these friends of yours are. Either you are making it up, or they are.

I never claimed to pass the German C2 exam, not in person, and not in Couchsurfing Berlin. I have claimed to pass the Spanish C2, since the Instituto Cervantes awarded me with it a few years ago so perhaps people got that mixed up? I am very proud of my results and what I did in 3 months. If you aren't impressed that's quite alright; I invite you to try to get similar results as quickly ;)

I also have no recollection of a German girl ever doing such a thing with me. If she did then that doesn't really prove much; if you try to catch me out *intentionally* (i.e. this is _not_ a natural social environment) you undoubtedly will in any of my languages, including English. Hit me with "non typical" topics like republican politics or biochemistry and you will indeed have me stumped. Do this in a social environment where I may have met your friend and I will conclude this person is too boring for me talk to and will nod politely while my attention drifts elsewhere.

This doesn't detract from my fluent comfort to socialise in the language with people who *don't* have an agenda to test me unfairly. Without any actual information it's impossible to decipher these misleading claims.

Most of the frustration from that Polish girl comes from a personal falling out that apparently she had with Randy. Why that involves making things up about claims I never made is beyond me. I tried to patiently answer her questions on twitter but it soon became apparent that she wasn't interested in my answers; it was an interrogation where she had already made up her mind about me. This is not a "discussion" I have the patience or time to indulge.

To people in general; there's nothing magical about what I propose. Start speaking your target language TODAY (even if you have just learned a few phrases), force yourself to socialise with natives (if you can't travel chat on Skype every day) and in a few months you will dramatically improve your level. Don't judge me based on my URL (which describes the fact that I TRAVEL every 2 or 3 months and aim high in my target languages; it's a travel blog as well as a language blog), read a post or two and you'll see that what I write actually makes a lot of sense for people focused on speaking better quickly.

If your focus is to write novels in the target language or pass the scrutiny of marine biologists who may appear at any given moment, then I definitely can't help you.

And please call me Benny. "Irish polyglot" isn't my name.

Language / Super fast Polish language learning strategies from internet polyglots [29]

Thanks slick ;)
Of course, I never claimed to be fluent in Hungarian. People who want to devalue my encouraging advice tend to do nothing but put words in my mouth. I'm proud of the work I did in Hungarian in 2 months, reaching precisely what I had aimed for, and I encourage others to try too. Note that sometimes I won't reach what I aim for; that's life. I'll pick myself up, dust myself off and try again ;)

What I do isn't so magical; I have met others who make incredible strides in a language despite not having "natural talents" only because they forced themselves to in a short time.

If it has taken you several years to reach a stage you aren't satisfied with it's because you aren't giving yourself any pressure. I give myself 2 or 3 months, so I HAVE to improve quickly! It's just Parkinson's law. If you think Polish is under some special cloak of being extra-hard, please keep in mind that Polish is way more similar to English in a lot of ways than Hungarian would be. I don't believe I can leave links here in my first comments, but if you feel Polish is one of the hardest languages in the world, please search for "hardest language to learn" in Google. I think my article about it is somewhere on page one.

Language / Super fast Polish language learning strategies from internet polyglots [29]

Koala, I've never learned Polish. I was in Poland once for a week, but did nothing more than flick through a phrase book to get survival basics as I was actually there to speak Esperanto at a conference. You will never read me claim to have ever spoken Polish. So if you were to talk to me on Skype in Polish, I guarantee you wouldn't be impressed :-P

My comments about Polish are observations based on the 13 or so languages that I have devoted time to. You are right that I have forgotten many of them like Hungarian, Catalan, Czech etc. but the 8 I do speak fluently are those I maintain regularly. Here in Amsterdam I speak Spanish, Portuguese, German, French etc. quite regularly. I was just hosting a Couchsurfer from Gran Canaria over the weekend for example and was speaking in Spanish with her. She said several times that she feels like she is talking to someone from home (I aim for the Canary islands accent in my Spanish, as I find it's the most neutral internationally). This is certainly me using a language after having learned it ;)

The point to learn a language is different for everyone. I wish to have meaningful relationships with people from the country I am visiting. When I leave the country, occasionally I will decide not to maintain the language due to the work involved and the fact that I didn't resonate with that culture as I would have hoped, and sometimes I will maintain it. Criticising that decision is pointless as it's just my living and travel style. It says nothing against what you can do in 3 months.

"Most people" don't learn languages, or do so in school for a decade and can't communicate even basically. I find this terribly inefficient. If you wish to speak a language for life, then applying Parkinson's law and learning it quickly is the smartest move in my opinion. You'll still have work left and that's OK. I'd like to get back to all my fluent languages and ultimately eliminate my accent for example. There's nothing magical about 3 months; it's the time I like to spend in an interesting new city. But you *should* have tight deadlines.

Language / Super fast Polish language learning strategies from internet polyglots [29]

"then you let yourself judge the language's difficulty based on your experience with it"

Please re-read my comment. I said my thoughts on Polish were an extrapolation based on almost a decade of learning languages, NOT my ten minute flick through a phrasebook so that I could travel to Zakopane. This tendency to put words in my mouth is something the Polish blogger does frequently and it shows not reading what I write properly.

I didn't come here to argue, just to set the record straight on misleading comments about me that have been made.

If someone forces a topic on me that I'm not interested in, I won't talk about it. I can definitely discuss all those topics you listed in all my fluent languages, but if you spring religion on me when I'm at a bar talking about an upcoming party, I will zone you out until you leave me alone. The same way I will get annoyed if you talk about the party while I'm in the middle of an intense debate about epistemology. It's unlikely your friend scoped the social situation properly, especially if she saw it as an opportunity to expose me as a "fraud" rather than simply socialise with me naturally as everyone else was.

As I said, I would react the same way in English. I have little patience for people bringing up irrelevant topics of conversation. You can also conclude from this that my English isn't fluent if you like...

If you believe someone can't be fluent in 8 languages, that's fair enough. I would suggest you don't go to India or meet up with anyone who works for the European Union as this belief will get challenged. If you aren't impressed by a video of mine, that's your prerogative. Others agree this demonstrates good use of the language. The Goethe Institut themselves awarded me a 75% in the oral part of the C2 exam. I did badly in other parts, but people who read my blog know that my priority is always conversational.

My level isn't bilingual, but it is fluent. It's important that you don't mix up the two.

I am not so interested in hijacking this thread to explain myself, as I said I just want to set the record straight on misleading things that are being said about me. People should read my blog and decide for themselves.

Language / Super fast Polish language learning strategies from internet polyglots [29]

More misleading information. If anyone here has studied a language in high school and received poor grades, then they know they are far from "at least intermediate level". I did study German in school, and was very open about this, but I got a C in my final grade. In retrospect my end-of-school exam was terribly easy; getting a C shows how little I cared about it. A few years ago I went to Germany and couldn't even order food or a train ticket with what I had. This is not intermediate. I was not taught German for several years, I was present in a classroom for an hour a week for five years as my teacher rattled on about DER/DIE/DAS tables.

Phrasing someone as earning money as the same as "trying to make a quick buck" is a loaded statement. I have written a book and multimedia course and have a link to it on my blog. Judge the guide or judge my completely free blog. The fact that I need to pay bills too doesn't detract from how seriously you should take the half a million free words I've written on the blog over the last 2 years. If you were an English teacher, then should I take you less seriously because people pay you to teach it? Many people earn from what they are passionate about. I put a lot of work into my blog and an occasional sale of the LHG covers that.

I need to make one sale per day to cover my living expenses, no more. So there is no aggressiveness in my sales pitches, no pop-up ads, no flashing fake highlighter pen and countdown timers etc. and this means I can focus entirely on blog posts. I'm actually redesigning the site right now and will take all links and banners away from the top on the main page, so it will feature even less prominently.

The one thing I would agree with you on is that what I achieve isn't surprising. The purpose of my site is to encourage others to try too.