BBC News - How do you become fluent in 11 languages?
Impressive.
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Unbelievable!!!!!!!!
His accent is really good in the languages that I am familiar with. I can't determine whether his grammar and choice of word is good, but I would guess so.
There is so much hype around people who allegedly speak many languages and often when they are finally put to the test it turns out their accent is awful or they don't know grammar properly.
This guy is just incredibly good. He's the real deal if you ask me!
Да, этот парень - большой молодец. Но все же по-русски он говорит с заметным акцентом и грамматика местами хромает.
He's Russian is awesome. Rather light accent. I've heard only four mistakes. Grammar is not perfect but easily understandable. He's overcompensating the "Р" sound :) Vowels are perfectly pronounced. Double vowels are apparently hard for him like in word Греции
He said he has been to Ярославль - Yaroslavl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
He also said that he lives in Russia now
Every time I start to feel like I'm doing pretty good, learning some Russian.... I hear about someone like THIS! Arghhhhhhhhh! :thanks:
But I guess, for an American, I am still somewhat unusual. :fool"
Haha, I never had any illusions...!
Since I started my new job, I had a desk next to two guys, both (!!)of whom have studied Russian as a foreign language.
The first had forgotten a lot, because he studied Russian back in the 1980s. But he was still following the Russian rock scene because he is a big rock fan and prefers Russian rock over American.
The second person started studying at roughly the same time as me, (2009) but he is MUCH better! Arrgh!
He thinks Russian grammar is "fun and challenging" and he has a much better vocabulary than me. He memorized all the spelling rules!
My excuse is that he is practically a genius with a degree in theoretical physics. I probably 70% of his IQ, at the most...
One of the first things he did after starting his Russian studies was to watch lots of childrens film, then moving on to contemporary comedy shows from TV. Then he started watching Russian war films because he enjoys that.
He never used subtitles and he was able to learn a lot by using increasingly difficult material. Did anyone try a similar approach?
What does it mean? What rules? Or just he spells nearly all the words correctly?Quote:
He memorized all the spelling rules!
Well, today he explained to me lots of things around pronounciation based on spelling.
For example situations in which "и" is pronounced "ы" depending on spelling, and lots of tips around differentiating between "щ" and "ш" which I find a bit confusing. Last week he told me all about "ъ" which I had misunderstood, for example the difference in pronouonciation of a few words in which ъ is the second letter. I did not know anything about that. He said it would be valuable for me if I memorized all spelling rules.
Really my Russian studies are on hold, but I suppose I could take them up - my colleague inspires me.
That's not actually spelling. That's graphics and pronunciation. It is useless and very hard to remember all the spelling rules.Quote:
Well, today he explained to me lots of things around pronounciation based on spelling.
For example situations in which "и" is pronounced "ы" depending on spelling, and lots of tips around differentiating between "щ" and "ш" which I find a bit confusing. Last week he told me all about "ъ" which I had misunderstood, for example the difference in pronouonciation of a few words in which ъ is the second letter. I did not know anything about that. He said it would be valuable for me if I memorized all spelling rules.
Could you tell those words with ъ? сел - съел?
I don't know why is the ш - щ distinction more difficult than л -ль, м - мь?
Well I am really tired now, but I think he said that the hard sign means there is a sort of break and so it sounds different... ш - щ is difficult simply because this is an "artificial difference" for me, just like adding "the" and "a" is for you. To me, this is more or less the same sound and it seems a bit picky to differentiate between them. For words that I have memorised, I have obviously memorised the correct spelling and I don't mix it up once I learnt it for a particular word. But it just feels unnatural and complicated.
It's nothing but a show-off. Anyone can learn a few phrases, put some effort into practicing a proper accent and you are good to go! There are thousands of polyglots like him on the net flaunting their prodigious flare for languages while in fact, I can bet my bottom dollar on it, they didn't even try to study any of those. Well, maybe they did, but didn't get any further than picking up some basics just sufficient to put on a chip show.
Don't be too certain about that...
Quote:
Collins and Livemocha Launch a Search for the UK’s Most Multilingual Child and Student in Britain - Collins Language
Judging will be conducted over Skype (or equivalent) from the child’s school, or at a location agreed by you, with an accredited judge.
The Judging Process
Throughout November, a relaxed and fun judging process will take place, with nominees chatting to the judges fluent in their individual languages over webcam. The schoolchild and student shown to be conversant in the most languages will be declared the winner.
Judges will be supplied by Collins and the ALL (Association For Language Learning) – the UK’s major subject association for the teaching of foreign languages.
True... for example, I would bet money that if you showed him a photograph of a bird from the genus Passer ...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...2_males%29.jpg
...and asked him Что это такое?, he would answer Это маленькая птица ("It's a small bird") or something close to that, whereas most Russian children over the age of five or six would answer Это воробей ("It's a sparrow").
Or, if you asked him how to say "Those people are very wealthy" in Russian, he might be able to provide a direct literal translation like Эти люди очень богатые, but it would never occur to him to say У них всё есть, кроме птичьего молока, ("They've got everything but bird milk") because he was too busy learning Hebrew, Catalan, Afrikaans, etc., to study Russian in more depth and learn some common proverbs and figures of speech.
Which is to say that "fluency" can be defined in different ways, and the BBC video shows that he has an impressive ability to master different accents and perhaps also an excellent memory for rehearsed phrases, but he's not actually demonstrating an ability to converse fluently in all those different languages. (Maybe he can, but the video doesn't prove this.)
This is what I do with English
doesn't work for me at all
I really doubt that it can be true
I mean he might have skipped the subtitles during the showtime but if he doesn't know or understand a word how he could pick up/look up the meaning of it?
Only children can do that through a lifetime of learning
Russian sparrows look a little different :)
More like this onehttp://www.naturelight.ru/photo/2011-07-19/42009.jpg
But you are correct
Still I think pronunciation is much more important for comfort communication than vocabulary
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. But that's what he said.
It's really hard to find subtitles for Russian films online unless you really make an effort to locate them. He said he didn't find any so I guess he didn't try as hard as I did.
Another interesting thing is that he only visited Russia once in his life, on a trip to St Petersburg quite recently.
сел is [s'el] съел [sjel], so no any break but an entire consonant [j] (like "y" in yes), ' signifies palatalization. Ш is close to voiceless English R, Щ is pronounced with the middle of the toungue raised.
These are all questions of Russian graphics. It is like [ke] is spelt que in Spanish while [ka] is spelt ca.
As far as I can see such things cause unbelievable difficulties among learners of Russian, I don't know why.
Ш and Щ are as distinct as man and men are in English (Russians don't usually hear the difference).
You can't hear the difference between "man" and "men" in English?
I keep thinking that if uneducated labourers from Uzbekistan can learn to speak Russian in a few years, then I should b-y well be able to manage to!
I do GET the difference between Ш and Щ - it's just that I don't really think of them as different sounds.
My stepmother who is Japanese has the same problem with R and L when she speaks English - she doesn't think there is any real difference and has to really focus to pronounce them clearly. Even though to all of us there is a massive difference.
I often can't. If they are said one after another, or with an exaggerated articulation, then I can hear the difference. If it's an isolated word in a real phrase, it usually flies over my head. Same with "ship-sheep", etc. It does not cause any problems with comprehension, because the context always helps, but it probably adds to my accent. Not that I'm able to notice that. :)
I think you're defining "fluent" so narrowly you're in danger of rendering it meaningless. If you can talk confidently and readily on a range of subjects without getting stuck then you're fluent, in my view. I'd actually argue that peppering his speech with idiom and proverbs would be a far greater demonstration of "an excellent memory for rehearsed phrases" than talking freely, albeit in more simple language. I tend to avoid using proverbs in Russian even when I know them and can use them correctly because what commonly happens when I do drop one into conversation is that the listener interrupts me to smile and congratulate me on my correct usage of Russian idiom, and the conversation is immediately derailed. I'm also conscious that as an English speaker I always find something amusing and even absurd when I hear foreigners using English idiom, even when they're using it absolutely correctly and their English is otherwise perfect.
As for the воробей, I would answer "it's a small bird" in English, because I don't know one wild bird from another. Does that mean I'm not fluent in English?
Now I can but not always, sometimes man sounds like ман then the difference is obvious, but not always.Quote:
You can't hear the difference between "man" and "men" in English?
I'm not sure I pronounce them differently.
At the beginning it was very difficult. A lot of time had passed before I understood that Russian x and English h are two different sounds.
Workers from Uzbekistan often learnt Russian at school.
yeah I guess they do, plus my comment sounded rather stupid now that I read it again. There is nothing that says a person from Uzbekistan who works in a blue collar job should be any less capable of learning Russian than me, really. Apologies if anyone read that and took offense. :o
I agree.
The guy obviously has some linguistic talent and loves languages, but I highly doubt he's actually fluent in more than 2-4 of them (in 10-15 years - maybe, but not now). He probably can be considered an intermediate or even an advanced student in some of them, but it's a far cry from being fluent. For example he's made a few serious grammar mistakes in his Russian phrases, and I wonder how many mistakes he would have made in an unscripted or more complex text. On the other hand his pronunciation is very good, the accent is very slight and I'm sure he'll get even better with practice.
It's still inspiring to see a young man who puts his mind to work, and it's something to be proud about. But using false and boastful labels cheapen his achievements a little.
I'm trying to avoid using this word as hard as I can when I speak :)
I can probably pronounce it correctly when I focus on it but if talk fast enough - it could become really embarrassing :)
I've noticed that Russians tend to use ship sound much more often than sheep. I guess that sound is much closer to Russian и
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I have discovered that Russian movies with subtitles help me more than anything, even speaking Russian. Because the translation is right there as I am listening. The only problem is that sometimes the subtitles are not very accurate. But I find that watching movies helps me a great deal with pronunciation and phrasing. I have also watched American movies with Russian voice-overs but I do not learn much from them, because the Russian is spoken so fast - as if they have to force so many words into such a short space, that it is hard to understand what they are saying.
My Russian is not fluent enough yet to watch movies without subs...
We can't judje one's abilities by a video, only pronunciation can be checked like that. Throbert was wrong when he tried to define fluency.
Hey
what happened with my post #29?
the quote went backwards!!!
Note that they could both be represented as мэн in Cyrillic -- there's really no way of representing the vowel difference in the standard Russian alphabet. (Just as the English version of the Latin alphabet has no satisfactory way to represent the sound of ы.)
And I remember from my first year Russian class that a LOT of English speakers had huge difficulty (at first) hearing and pronouncing the difference between ы and the diphthong ой. (So a lot of people pronounced мы, ты, вы... like мой, той, вой...)
I appreciate him, not because he speaks 11 languages, but because he said that his favorite language is Greek and it has sentimental value for him. It is very important to hear it from a person who speaks 11 languages...
Well, yes, if you're talking about a recorded <i>monologue</i>, as we saw in the video. On the other hand, being able to recall and use appropriate native proverbs/idioms in an unscripted, spontaneous, multi-topic conversation with a native speaker would demonstrate a higher level of fluency in the target language.
True, the sparrow probably wasn't a very good example -- I doubt any ESL teacher would include "sparrow" on a vocabulary list for students below the advanced level. (Whereas words like "chicken", "pigeon", and "parrot" might be introduced even in a beginning class, although after the generic term "bird".)Quote:
As for the воробей, I would answer "it's a small bird" in English, because I don't know one wild bird from another. Does that mean I'm not fluent in English?
I think that pronouncing ш instead of щ sounds like speaking Russian with Belarussian accent :grin:
Like these two guys, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlUvUTWaFBw