While we're on nationality, I have to say I find it hypocritical in the extreme that you wrote a long angry blog post about problems you have with Americans, which include overzealous marketing. And then you make ridiculous claims like "fluent in 3 months".
I saw your ChinesePod video after three months of study and it wasn't even remotely fluent. As tokenadult said, other than the intro it was slow and heavily accented.
In fact, I would go so far as to say the average college aged student I've met who has done an intensive program such as IUP in Beijing or ICLP in China not only has better reading skills, but also larger vocabulary, clearer accent and more fluid speech.
To clarify, I'm not saying you didn't manage to learn a good amount in three months. ICLP and IUP are top programs and very intense, and you're definitely ahead of the average university student who isn't in a great immersion program. Why the over-the-top claims? It's completely possible to make a successful language learning business without them. Just look at Steve "the linguist" Kaufman (a pretty good Chinese speaker, btw).
As the Chinese women pointed out, you have a good habit of boldly speaking the languages you are trying out. 「我覺得你有一個很好的習慣。 就是，你的目的是在用語言。你學一點以後，你馬上出去用和別人說話。而且，你很勇敢。」 (The transcription into Chinese characters from the soundtrack of the video is my own. The English translation was already provided as captions on the YouTube video, which I was listening to, but not watching, as I typed my first reply.) I had never heard you speak English in person and only in snatches of quoted speech while listening to the video, so I didn't place your English accent to a particular country among the countries you have visited in your world travels. I see now from looking at the linked videos that the Chinese woman in the interview has HUGE experience in speaking Chinese to foreigners with very little proficiency in Chinese, and has strong English of her own.
I'll comment for onlookers that according to Chinese social-science surveys, barely more than half the population of China is conversant in Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin), the official language of the country.[1] So Mandarin is a very "fault-tolerant" language, as many people who speak it in China are speaking it with other people with a poor command of the language.
I can't do crosswords in English, my native language. I definitely can't breeze through classical texts. It's important to be realistic on the other end of the scale too.
Criteria like this are way too demanding, and it's one of the biggest problems in language learning that makes people feel worthless; having elitist standards that you "don't" speak a language unless you speak it like a university professor, regardless of the fact that you may not speak your mother tongue that way.
Well there's different types of crosswords. I guess they mean the ones that focus on the language itself (eg. idiomatic stuff) and not requiring some obscure knowledge
Hi there Hacker News! Thanks for the interest in my article :)
My site went down an hour or so ago because I'm making database changes - I'm actually HN proof, since I had an article do very well here years ago that is much more positive than the one linked to this time. Check it out:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2780067
Some of you might have noticed that I changed the post title - this was coincidentally something I was doing just before I found out HN was linking to me. This article of mine from years ago sends me lots of traffic, but I do wish that my less controversial articles encouraging language learning would get more exposure too ;)
Thanks for all the comments, and I hope not too many arguments come about! I was only thinking out loud in that post, as you can see written at the end.
I loved the new readers I got from HN when my Life Lessons post went viral here, so I hope a few of you will stick around. Thanks again!
If after spending many hours watching TV you feel your life has been enhanced in some way, then by all means keep it up. In my opinion people don't feel this way (I certainly never did and grew up glued to my TV) and would have spent their time better in other activities rather than following hours of reality TV shows etc.
Doing "whatever you like" doesn't necessarily enrich your life. It's just immediate pleasure. Sometimes doing whatever is BEST for you (which you should of course decide) is way more important. If people really sat down and thought about it, a lot of them would realise that, as much as they like it, TV is NOT best for them.
I have lived in the UK and tv there is just as bad as anywhere else (I particularly remember gardening shows ad nauseum). If you think your life is infinitely enriched by tv, wait till you get out there (and garden for example).
As I said in another comment, these are just things that I have personally learned in the last 8 years. Disagree with them if you will.
I do agree that TV quality is better in the UK (we get most of it in Ireland) compared to the states, but there is still plenty of rubbish that people waste their time with. If you just watch documentaries or educational programming, then that enriches your life and there would be nothing negative for me to say about it.
why do i need to "enrich my life"? can't i be happy with how it is? who are you to tell other what's BEST for them?
how about you get a little older? how about staying in a place for a little longer, say 10 years and see how time makes a difference? your zero impact runaway life is a narrow experience - ever thought about that?
maybe you'll realize that all your travels, all your experiences don't make your life a jota more "valuable" or less valuable than the ones of any other being, whatever life they live.
First off, you're really defensive about some person's blog post. I mean, seriously. He's not working on your spleen.
Secondly, it's "lessons learned", not commandments. Just stuff he picked up whilst traveling, not universally-accepted, committee-approved advice for everyone on planet earth and those who aren't born yet.
Finally, what on earth does age have to do with conveying general observations? What would staying 10 years in Portofino tell me that I couldn't get from open exploration and friendly/social interaction in a few weeks? That they actually ship their sardines live from China and throw them into the Ligurian? Good to know, but I'm a traveler. Why do I need to know that?
"your open mind - isn't."
I don't think he conferred himself any type of honor or status about his travels that assumes he is open-minded, except to say "I had an open mind while traveling and learned some stuff. Hope you can appreciate it." He isn't bigoted against people who do or don't do anything from what I could read in that article. When he says "don't defer your happiness" he means just that: Appreciate what you've got while you're planning on attaining more if that's the goal."
This is the only list post I've ever written on my blog, since I was in a reflective mood about a long list of specific things and felt this got my point across clearest. You'll find a lot of stories that expand on and discuss particular parts in greater detail if you follow the links ;)
It's been an amazing experience seeing this go viral (see the counts on the left of the post), but I'll be sticking to my non-list posts for the majority of what I write :)
Also, this isn't advice but what I've learned. I didn't want it to come across as preachy, but actually something I would like to have told myself at age 21 and am thinking aloud.
Another post that you may find more relevant to Paris is my experience in finally learning how to get along with Parisians: http://www.fluentin3months.com/closed-minded/
This is important to keep in mind as it's the only place in the world that my speak-the-language-from-day-one approach needed some tweaking ;)
Enjoy the city - my favourite activity there is to stand over the bridge to the Cité and wave at a boat passing underneath and have 200 Japanese tourists wave back. Fun times!
As I said in the post, closed-mindedness is something that people have to realise lies within themselves. This post wasn't calling Parisians closed minded.
I assumed you were calling yourself closed-minded.
But my point was that the whole open-minded versus closed-minded conversation hinges upon cultural values which are by no means universal. There are many cases where the reverse is seen as important (e.g. resisting outside influences) or where the entire topic is not seen as meaningful or important.
How do you become an expert? Change your concept of expertise! Another excellent article from 30sleeps about thinking outside the box to achieve your goals
