Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese and a little of Jasper's advice

Guest   Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:04 am GMT
(This won't be for everyone and indeed it will look overwhelming at first-but, it ain't.)

Here's the video: Polyglot Prof. Arguelles shows his really very simple and good method of writing out languages. It's probably something many people here do already.

a. Say each word aloud as you write it.
b. Read the whole sentence

http://youtube.com/watch?v=z7FztiCcvl0
Xie   Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:59 pm GMT
Except just a single stroke, he got everything right. I can see his strength as someone hasn't learnt my language for 10+ years.

I'd see this practice as some kind of techniques for confirming what you listen and read (input) and looking for mistakes you could make (checking output). Since you are supposed to say each word aloud, you are tempted to correct every possible mistake through conscious correction, which native speakers wouldn't even bother to do to be polite. I've been told that, when you ACQUIRE a language, you might be tempted to say random sentences and words (or, not random) to confirm what you are learning (acquiring). That's exactly what this method does address.

"An apple"
With your intelligence, you managed to learn this phrase using good input, not bad input. You have, like what our webmasters suggest, chosen not to imitate wrong stuff in class (or sth like that) and try to produce output only when you are sure. When you have become very familiar with it, maybe you have read it three times, you are already in the position to SAY it aloud while trying to write "An apple" (where you know it is anapl rather than an epl, pardon my rough symbols).

But I'm a bit reserved about trying to avoid all mistakes possible. I understand that our professor hasn't learnt Chinese for many years, and, I must be biased, it seems like it IS pretty difficult to learn, just like many others. He did it very well, but the problem, like in his shadowing video, is that.... TO BE FRANK, I found it hard to understand what he's been speaking in that video until I could find the real text. This is a problem of tones. I can't tell how foreign learners can get tones right, but then the bad thing is: if I can't understand that well (especially without the text shown to me, as a NATIVE), then it certainly doesn't work well.
Guest   Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:13 pm GMT
Have you seen his shadowing video in Mandarin on Youtube?

Thank-you for your frankness, really!

I wondered why he choose those three languages to demonstrate and not English, French and maybe Korean. English for ESL learners, French because it is popular and Korean because it is slightly "exotic".

Multilingual people are going to be scrutinized carefully-especially if they make claims of high numbers of languages. It's better to keep the numbers low even if one is familiar with a lot of languaes, but jmo.

I have to commend him for finally opening himself up to frank opinions on Youtube.
Xie   Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:56 pm GMT
I think it still makes sense to demonstrate one's own techniques in _unfamiliar_ languages... well, just because he likes them. It may be more difficult to do this with a native language when you wouldn't possibly make a mistake. If you have a lot of exposure, can produce your own speech without having to worry about mistakes or speak it natively, what's the point of shadowing then?