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The Polyglot Community / Conlangers / General Language Learning Autism - Attention seekers that barely speak the languages they claim, pretentious language creators, grifters shilling language learning scams and more!
Awesome, thank you, I also found some leaked audio from Matt admitting it was a scam as well as the attempts to silence the leaker and his friend who he interviewed with where he admitted it.
Added some stuff on La'adan and the drama about it not being inclusive enough
Would the fake pronunciation/translator Youtubers count? They're pretty cringe and often unintentionally hilarious. Julien Miquel's channel has like 400K+ subs, and the guy's pronunciation guides mostly consist of putting on a bad accent. The Italian word guides are probably the best, as he legit just says everything like he'd doing a mobster impression, lol.
Or the more historical examples like the infamous Portuguese-to-English phrase book "English as She Is Spoke", which was so bad that Abraham Lincoln and his friends used to read it aloud to each other at parties to galls of laughter. Apparently it was made by copying an existing Portuguese-to-French book by a non-English speaker who didn't realize that French and English aren't the same language.
Would the fake pronunciation/translator Youtubers count? They're pretty cringe and often unintentionally hilarious. Julien Miquel's channel has like 400K+ subs, and the guy's pronunciation guides mostly consist of putting on a bad accent. The Italian word guides are probably the best, as he legit just says everything like he'd doing a mobster impression, lol.
Or the more historical examples like the infamous Portuguese-to-English phrase book "English as She Is Spoke", which was so bad that Abraham Lincoln and his friends used to read it aloud to each other at parties to galls of laughter. Apparently it was made by copying an existing Portuguese-to-French book by a non-English speaker who didn't realize that French and English aren't the same language.
Yeah, that could be discussed here. The OP however is already big enough adding the scammers and the conlangers to it.
I finished the Polyglot Scammers Guy section and also began the section on Matt and Ken's scams and added more to the conlanging section. Will probably organize the thread better when it is done.
Xiaoma's "street smart languages" has photos of his face everywhere. Also note the "Play (k)" in the bottom left corner of the screenshot, makes it look kinda sloppy.
It's also hilarious how people are willing to believe that some random guy on YouTube has the magic formula for learning languages.
Also, Street Smart Languages is planning on adding languages that Xiaoma likely does not even speak to a conversational level.
Honestly, it's such blatant grifting that I wouldn't feel bad for anyone wasting their money on this shit.
All that can be said about this, is that if he troons out like Oli London (archive), then we may have an actual lolcow.
Despite all this, I feel that the (fake) polygot/language learning community doesn't have many actual lolcows. I can't find anything about drama in this community, and that's kinda what's needed to be funny.
That being said... I heard Xiaoma has a Chinese wife, but can't really find anything about it. Just saying, the kinds of men that liv(ed) in China and marry Chinese women, almost without exception, fit a certain stereotype.
Except that just his request for a permit to travel was denied and he really believes "no further appeal may be made in this case" constitutes a lifetime ban. For some language learning genius, he is really stupid.
Called out in the comments
Apparently he said something offensive to blacks in Chinese too 嘻嘻
(sorry thought this person was trying to say 黑鬼 but apparently they are just offended by something more mundane)
小马在纽约 (xiaomanNYC) posted a video about his near death experience on an airplane as he was travelling to Ghana. He claims his plane was possibly leaking fuel and the pilot came back into the cabin to check the wing to see what was happening. He starts crying on video about how he might die, might never hold his baby again etc.
He starts panicking to his wife
Everything was fine. Pilot even knew of him. Big fan! It was a fuel imbalance, which is no cause for panic in an airplane making a cross-Atlantic journey out of the USA. Boeing even says that following procedure should allow for a flight to carry on to its destination. If an engine goes out, Boeing and Airbuses are able to fly on one engine. It was just his airline's policy to return should this failure occur.
Found his flight
DL9923. 2 hours in they noticed a problem and returned.
TL DR; he panicked his wife and started having a breakdown in the plane because of a simple issue that was likely communicated to him while in air. This is not a big issue and he is click baiting a disaster to gain sympathy from his fans
https://youtu.be/0JYs8w8-bRM - This is a video where he gets a "Naked, Full-Body Korean Body Scrub." It seems there are more interesting things on his channel, but posting a video of oneself giggling and almost moaning while being massaged says something about one's ego.
https://youtu.be/RM3ZjXON8hk - Of course, Xiaoma cares deeply for the community that allowed him to advance YouTube into a career. With his "White guy shocks Chinese people with perfect Chinese."
Okay, got the scammer section done and I found a few good reddit posts from the Chinese learning community calling out a video done by Benny Lewis who claimed was fluent in Chinese.
I just need to work on the conlang section and the thread should be ready for review!
Okay, got the scammer section done and I found a few good reddit posts from the Chinese learning community calling out a video done by Benny Lewis who claimed was fluent in Chinese.
I just need to work on the conlang section and the thread should be ready for review!
I remember that video. It was so cringe and painful to get through but Benny had to do it as he was getting questioned by others on how real his motto of "Fluent in 3 Months" actually was. I could be wrong, but I think after that time, fluent in 3 months sort of became a motto/tagline rather than something Benny was pushing after that video
I remember that video. It was so cringe and painful to get through but Benny had to do it as he was getting questioned by others on how real his motto of "Fluent in 3 Months" actually was. I could be wrong, but I think after that time, fluent in 3 months sort of became a motto/tagline rather than something Benny was pushing after that video
they are all cows! whats wrong with you? dont you have anything better to do than learning useles languages like french or spanish?
there is nothing of worth written in most languages, so why bother learning them?
I find language learning to be fun, so the fact that there are people out there trying to scam others with it kind of makes me mad.
The best tip I've ever seen for learning languages/becoming a polyglot was literally free, and it was this: learn related languages simultaneously. If you're learning Spanish, also study Italian, etc. The logic was that they can reinforce each other in their similarities, but also that their similarities build off of each other. I don't have fluency in any languages other than English, but I've found that there's some truth to this, at least in my study of Dutch and German.
Hörn’s guide to learning a language without a class: (although a real language class is always of help in speaking)
Find a language in which you can find media that is of interest to you
Secondly, find reputable textbooks in the language. Textbooks give you a very clear journey to follow. Textbooks will usually teach you grammar and then give you basic vocabulary to use the grammar properly. Make notecards of all vocabulary you learn and repeat them often. Even if you have it mastered at one point in time, you can always lose it. I recommend sets of 10 for notecards. A good thing to do is to repeatedly write words for Asian languages. Online notecards work best for languages like Korean because you are typing and learning the keyboard while you study.
While this process is going on and you are learning the language, listen to the media you are interested in. Even if you don’t understand, being able to separate words in a language like Korean or Chinese is invaluable to developing your ability. Follow this process for long enough and you will approach fluency.
There are some native nuances but it is generally hard to use them perfectly. The only way to learn a language is time and dedication. Thankfully even retards are able to speak their native tongue so learning a language is not the impossible task that people make it out to be.
https://youtu.be/0JYs8w8-bRM - This is a video where he gets a "Naked, Full-Body Korean Body Scrub." It seems there are more interesting things on his channel, but posting a video of oneself giggling and almost moaning while being massaged says something about one's ego.
I recommend sets of 10 for notecards. A good thing to do is to repeatedly write words for Asian languages. Online notecards work best for languages like Korean because you are typing and learning the keyboard while you study.
Personally, Anki is probably better to use than notecards. First of all, paper notecards can't include the audio of the word or phrase being pronounced, which is very important for improving and remembering pronunciation. Second of all, Anki includes advanced "spaced repetition" technology, which is based on actual research into human memorization. I think Anki is best for studying anything, not just a language, provided you use it every single day. Anecdotally, I can say it works very well.
TL;DR: I think online notecards (specifically Anki) are almost always better than paper notecards
Man, I am having a hard time writing the last 10 percent of the OP, mostly due to the fact that most of the major drama in the conlanging community happened pre-internet for the most part so documentation is a bit hard to come by. I am kind of tempted to say "fuck it" and just go with what I have.
