Wanda Kaishin

4 hours ago, Mameha said:

 There's no need to be so rough...

Sorry about that. But if you'll read the other posts, I'm not the only one who interpreted yours this way. Is it possible your friend doesn't know that "teach me your language" = "occasionally answer a question I have about your language" in your way of thinking?

6 hours ago, Eli Stutz said:

It's not much more complicated (actually, the idea is for it to be very simple). But you can say a lot more than ugh. How did cave men say "I love you" and "where are you from?".

I could be wrong, but I think the "I love you" conversation went something like this:

Caveman: Ugh!

Cavewoman: Ugh.

And the "where are you from" conversation went something like this:

Local Caveman: Ugh?

Strange Caveman: Ugh!

Korean - I once again plan to start Korean this year. I wanted to do it last year, but I decided to try to boost my Mandarin to B2 before proceeding. I'll probably start it in fall, after a long voyage to Taiwan, Ukraine, Japan and Thailand.

Mandarin - My Mandarin is on track to be a strong B2 by the time I plan to stop studying it intensively at the end of February. After that I'll just maintain it.

Spanish - Although this is my best foreign language (C1), I haven't even tried to maintain it for many years. I'll roll it back into my review schedule, meaning I'll maintain it once every 6 days.

Japanese, Thai, French & Russian - Along with Mandarin and Spanish, I'll maintain these once every 6 days. That means I'll talk to a native speaker for 15 min, read for about 30 min, and watch 30 min of a TV show or movie in that language.

On 8/5/2014, 10:21:28, Determined2014 said:

English is my first language and I grew up learning swahili as my second language.

That's strange - you profile says Maragoli is your first language. Swahili is my third language, which is why you got my attention.

15 hours ago, takibari said:

Thinking in a foreign language forces you to make better decisions do you agree?

Nope.

Very cool - thanks!

I spend what it takes to learn the language efficiently. I find out what the best resources are ahead of time, and try to get them for a good price. I hire tutors on italki for conversation. I travel to the country, but I think of this as a vacation, or perhaps the reason i learn the language, rather than the price of learning a language.

Cave men just said "ugh!" Why is your language so much more complicated?

What do you mean when you ask someone "teach me your language"? It takes thousands of hours to learn a language. How many of those thousands of hours do you expect them to spend with you? Are you willing to pay them? Personally, I get a little annoyed at acquaintances who ask me to teach them English. But I hide my annoyance, because I realize this kind of person is rarely serious about learning. I usually just chuckle, or even reply "ok", but they never follow through. Rather than torture your friends, why not just do a free language exchange on skype?

When Ziad Fazah made the claim that he can speak and write 58 languages, he was interviewed by a certain Spanish language variety show, and quizzed by native speakers of many different nationalities. Based on the interview, do you think his claims are true? How do you feel about the claims of "hyper-polyglots" in general?

"Bad" motivation? Evil/naughty/stupid are all in the eye of the beholder. But there is such a thing as "insufficient" motivation. What is sufficient to motivate one person might be insufficient to motivate another. I remember Benny Lewis ranting about how people trying to learn a language for work were doomed to fail because they lack "passion". I strongly disagree with this. For example, when I started learning Japanese I remember a group of international law students taking their masters in a Japanese university all blowing us away with their incredibly rapid progress, all in the name of work.

I also like the list of posts on the rh side, on the main page for example. Very convenient.

Absolutely not. I would think very few people if any could claim to have this ability in any language.

I understand what you're saying, but this is Krashen; easily the most famous educator involved with second language acquisition theory. Oh well, I'll stop worrying about it now.

I'm on chrome, on my mac, and I didn't have any issues at all.

Lol - I'm overwhelmed with all these responses.

I have them often, especially since I started taking cold potato starch as a supplement. I know that sounds crazy, but apparently dreams really are stomach related. 

The sky - she's bleeding!

But seriously, I like it. It would be cool to change it thematically from time to time, like major websites do for different holidays and such, only we could do it for different languages or countries. Just an idea; might be too much of a hassle.

7 hours ago, anna3101 said:

I wonder why so many of us do not believe they can do it

Good question. Maybe because it takes so much time, and inexperienced learners don't know they have to be really patient.

In that case, I bet your version of "master it" and mine are very different.

Yes, the third is much easier than the second for reasons already mentioned by others. But I want to add one more reason that I don't think has been mentioned - confidence. You already know that you are able to learn a language as an adult to an advanced level. This is huge.

I'll take your word for it.

Here's what my opinion is based on. His videos show he's at A2 with bad tones imo. I was surprised that his teacher rated him at B1 with good tones; but she did qualify it by saying he could pass the HSK3 spoken test. I'm not familiar with the test, but I've heard many say that it's not B1. 

Anyway, he claimed to be studying 10 hours a day, so I think even reaching B1 in that amount of time isn't unusual. At least not for a world famous polyglot who claims his methods are superior. In fact I would say that his level after 3 months was pretty good, but for 900 hours it was below average. As I've said before, if you are a beginner who isn't familiar with language learning, or if you need encouragement, then you might find Benny useful. For others, not so much.

So much better than his videos then? 

Is A2 in 900 hours pretty well?

You're in luck! Anna started a thread about him here.