Comments on: Don’t just stand there… Say something!

By: the input hypothesis and the fallacy of antimoon and AJATT 2 « thousand mile journey

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:54:39 +0000

[...] proportions – Benny the Irish Polyglot. I think the first thing I read on his site was “speak as soon as possible“. “What. The. Hell.” I thought – surely this must be wrong! Surely this is [...]

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:51:37 +0000

Thanks for the follow up comment Rachel! Wish I could attend the conference; I lived in San Diego for 4 months many moons ago!
I'll definitely be less focused on details in Mandarin and try to let the conversation flow whenever I take it on!

By: Rachel

Rachel — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:05:31 +0000

Ok Benny, now I know what kind of learner you are. I have a post on “Tone Robots” regarding Mandarin (http://chitchatchinese.wordpress.com/2010/01/03...) And, these types of analytical learners are always ahead of the game. Just may sound robotic and weird to start. The advice is good from last comment, listen to natural cadence of language. Not enough time for this language, but when you take up Mandarin you can do it. Doing a presentation at a conference early tomorrow in San Diego on the very topic.

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:41:53 +0000

Thanks Felix! Note that the “How much” is subtitles on what I am saying Because of the noise you don't hear her say สิบ before ห้า so it seems like it's just 5 from the audio
Definitely some good advice there!! I've discovered that other learners are way too hung up on tones and even if you mess up once or twice it's not a big deal if it's part of large sentences. Next time I'll be letting it flow without worrying so much
Merci !

By: Felix

Felix — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:28:18 +0000

Hmmm in the video… there is a bit of background noise, but I hear the watermelon lady say 5 instead of 15 baht… is it just me? And also when you ask her อะไรครับ you should subtitle it as What? and not How much?

One comment I'd give you is that you focus way way too much on the tones, and not on the natural flow of your voice. Even though they are an important part of the language, tones are highly overrated and shouldn't be intimidating, nor placed before everything else… listen to people speak.

Good job though… just with those few phrases, you probably made the day of a few Thais otherwise jaded of dealing with unilingual anglosaxoids on a dialy basis. Lâche pas la patate!

By: Raphaël AJ

Raphaël AJ — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:52:42 +0000

Salut,

Durant ma scolarité et mes années d'université, j'ai étudié l'anglais (je m'en sors plutôt bien) et découvert l'allemand, le gaélique irlandais (“Conas atá tú?”, my teacher was from Cork), le japonais, et le breton. J'ai aussi découvert l'espéranto, qui me plait beaucoup.

Je viens de passer une bonne heure sur ton site et toutes tes aventures me donnent envie de reprendre l'apprentissage de ces langues. C'est déjà le cas pour l'allemand, puisque je suis auxiliaire de vie scolaire (special needs assistant) pour un élève qui étudie cette langue.

Je te remercie beaucoup pour ton témoignage, ça redonne de l'énergie.

By: Language Hacking with Digital Nomad Benny the Irish Polyglot | Thrilling Heroics

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:25:13 +0000

[...] Here’s a quick video of the Thai he learned (in a matter of days) while he was here, which also illustrates his emphasis on “filtering”: [...]

By: Fast Jay

Fast Jay — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:01:11 +0000

Interesting post. I guess that some people will see your skill-level at this point as a failure, some will find it incredible that you can already do that after 8 weeks. What matters most is how you feel about it.

After 1,5 years of spanish i can hold a conversation about almost anything, flirt with girls (even have success now and then), follow a movie, understand song lyrics, … But my end goal is approach the level of a native speaker.
And i'm still far away from that. So you could call it a success or a failure, but it is what it is and i have spend my time wisely so for me that's the most important thing.

By: LucienS

LucienS — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:54:49 +0000

Marvellous! Many English people, or Dutch for that matter, would feel very happy if they could get by in French like you do in Thai!

Better to be a confident parrot than a bird that cannot sing (http://storks.poland.pl/interesting_facts/artic...)

By: Colm

Colm — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:01:56 +0000

Benny,

Go hiontach ar fad! I've stumbled across your blog lately (from AJATT) and think it's great. It's excellent practical advise, I particularly loved the idea of mini goals and stopping speaking in English. Both have helped me already with my own missions. Common sence when you think about it, but sometimes it does need to be said!

Something I don't know if you touched on in other posts is learning a new language through a non-native one you (mostly) speak, it takes English out of the picture and really helps re-enforce the existing one.

Looking forward to your next mision, go n-éirí leat!

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:19:35 +0000

It's true that ALL linguists don't say that, but I'd argue that on a fuzzy scale of linguist to language hacker, there are many different shades. A pure linguist is more interested in theory than application, plain and simple.
Getting over the fear is important. Some will say to wait until you are “more ready”, but I think that does indeed become a mantra as you suggest. This is why I say you should do it from day one (a mistake I made in this attempt myself as mentioned).

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:14:28 +0000

Thanks as always for your positivity Annette
I'm glad you saw the true purpose of what I was trying to express in the post!! Let's hope some more people are inspired to try to be language optimists

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:12:45 +0000

What kind of tourists have you been meeting?? I've met people living here for several years who wouldn't dare use Thai like that (even though I argue here that literally anyone could do it). Luckily that's the minority of expats, but you need to meet some of the tourists I've been seeing... even before this weekend when all I said was hello, thank you etc. I was well ahead of them. It's sad because it's pure laziness, but that's the way it is.

Please note that I reached that spoken level in a weekend, not in 8 weeks. However, it's of course likely that some of the study I did for reading (still not much) contributed to my ability to speak in the end.

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:12:20 +0000

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:06:48 +0000

Good tips Rachel. For most people, starting with a tutor or fellow-learner is the best way to begin. However, I get high off of embarrassment, so I always dive straight into the deep end

By: Annette

Annette — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:55:39 +0000

“some people may tell me how bad my tones are and say that I’m a fraud for making an edited video”

You are not a fraud at all. On the contrary, I think the video was an extremely creative way to illustrate your point: all videos (at least ones that look good) have been edited in some way. I have never seen the “glass is half full” saying illustrated in such an interesting, creative, and effective way. I'm inspired

By: Talen

Talen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:14:26 +0000

I have to say I applaud your effort but for spending 8 weeks in Thailand and studying the language the video showed no more language skill than any tourist to the Kingdom walks away with without studying.

Even spending only two weeks In Thailand it's pretty simple to pick up the basic questions and answers needed to buy something and navigate the city politely.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:51:16 +0000

The students in my language school who always learn the best are the ones who throw themselves in and start using the language right away. I admire that ability. I struggle with that because it is a bit of an “out of control” feeling. You can't be hard on yourself and you have to be ready to laugh with people laughing at/with you. Some people need to wait until their passive knowledge is at an intermediate level before they start working on their active skills (perhaps what the Japanese student mentioned). That's cool too, just going to take a lot longer to get those active skills up and running. If you are that type, I recommend getting those active skills going sooner in an environment you can feel safe in, such as with a language exchange partner, hiring a tutor, joining a language group, etc.

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:34:04 +0000

Yes, a huge amount of takes is typical for any video production really. I just wanted to be honest and not mislead readers not familiar with how videos can be edited to filter the facts. Hopefully the metaphor for applying it to their memories is understood by people!
Thanks for the encouragement Eldon!!

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:31:56 +0000

Hi Adam; I am totally for correction! Without it, self-improvement is extremely hard.
In the early stages people need to focus on the positive as I keep saying, so getting wrong word-order or mumbling the non-key words isn't ideal, but if they get the gist it is certainly a great start; you are communicating without using English. Something to be proud of!
When you reach lower-intermediate then you have to make sure you continue to make progress. In that case, having friends willing to correct you, or getting private lessons is ideal.
Accepting that you make mistakes is important in the early stages but must be weeded out when you are aiming for fluency, after getting over the initial nervousness to speak.
Fluency in my mind requires a vast reduction in mistakes; not 100%, but certainly all of them, especially basic ones. Even if they can understand you, it's slowing down the conversation for them to decipher what you might mean and this is certainly not anything along the lines of fluent.
Depending on the level you are at now, do whatever it takes to make sure you make the most progress possible is what I'd say Low level; focus on confidence to speak. Medium-level: focus on improving and ironing out mistakes If your Thai isn't good enough to ask for mistake correction yet, you may need to practise it much more, and consider getting lessons or patient friends who don't mind correcting you
Best of luck!!