I find it odd that a guy who has preschool level french and thinks himself to be an authority on judging the quality of foreign languages for which he seems to only be able to speak English (somewhat decently).
I didn’t want to post such a worthless thread, but I’m tired of reading people who constantly bag out others on their achievements. If you watch, he criticizes Steve Kaufmann on his French where himself only sounds like to know 1 or 2 random words on other videos with the thickest gringo accent one can imagine.
Anyway, though my opinion doesn’t matter and who am I to judge since I barely speak a word or two of French; my thoughts on who is the best polyglot in order in of who I know and heard:
Richard Simcott
Luca
Steve Kaufmann
Felix - loki2504
Stu Jay
Vladimir
Amir
I didn’t rank Benny or Lao shu because most of their languages are intermediate level on limited topics.
Anyway, the point of this thread is to ignore random unauthoritative and hypocritical people like Christophe Clugston. He is the first to quickly comment about others flaws when he makes the same himself. He hates Steve for over-extending the definition of linguist to mean polyglot and so like a child tries to sound all big and mighty by criticizing Steve on every thing and anything. He would probably say that Steve’s dog doesn’t bark as fluently as his own dog. I hope you get my drift.
I’m pretty sure no body cares about this thread nor him. So watch the video and maybe comment if you got the time.
I recall a video by Glossika who says that many people described his attempts to learn certain languages as offensive. I for one am pro encouragement. I put thousands of hours into French and still sound horrible and kindergarten level, though I will keep going irrespective of the negative comments and discouragement.
-christopheclugston: “Who is the best Polyglot? I bet you don’t know. Christophe Clugston tells you, based on scientific criteria.”-
hahahahaha “SCIENTIFIC”
ah, I’d only seen a few of Stu Jays videos, and read a few of his blogs. Indeed he seems very accomplished with languages, but I agree, from what I know of NLP is hazy pseudo-science. I understand that Stu Jay is very much a motivational coach, working with companies, I imagine the NLP stuff goes down well with business managers
@Imyirtseshem “You’d think that Clugston with his demand that every opinion be cited (except his own, for some reason), would be more weary of such ‘shady characters’.”
that’s not very likely:
-HugeDomains.com
Linguist, language teacher, pro fighter, developed what has been called the Worlde’s strongest self defense. Accelerated learning, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Athletic enhancement (mental and physical)-
“NLP is always something which I’ve taken to be pseudo-nonsense.”
yep and nope…
now, is hypnosis kinda pseudo-nonsense? yep… then why did I write “nope”? cause even pseudo-nonsense seems to work (somehow) in real-life scenarios… why? I have no clue
Ranking the YouTube polyglots seems quite foolish to me. Language learning is not a competition, I don’t get why everybody wants to know who’s “the best polyglot”. Even if someone knows just one foreign language, he might communicate better in that language than someone who knows a dozen of languages. And after all, language is all about communication.
In reconsidering, I would vote for Richard for the range and and number of his languages, and Luca for the smoothness of his pronunciation. But then Stu Jay Ray is quite amazing as well. So maybe I would not vote at all.
As for Clugston… I watched one of his videos. It was so full of nonsense, I couldn’t help leave a comment midway through – which I regretted writing after hearing more of the video. In any case, he refused my comment because I wasn’t using my real name (there are videos of me on my channel and they mention my name!) and ridiculed my post in the most cavalier manner while misspelling every second word. Anyway, I’m done with that clown.
I did not even know I was in that kind of “competition”. It is nice to see that people find some of my videos useful but that’s about it for me. I enjoy studying languages and exchanging ideas and experiences. I have a lot to learn from others and I hope I’ll have even more opportunities to do so in future.
Clugston posted a video with some parts I enjoyed recently, called “The biggest tool you have for learning foreign languages.” After his usual boilerplate of denigrating YouTube polyglots, he talks a bit about real-time interpretation as a powerful exercise for improving skill (and locating gaps in vocabulary / expressive ability) in your languages.
He evidently has far too high an opinion of himself…
Having read a lot about NLP, a lot of it is not well founded scientifically but they can provide some useful practical techniques.
There are assumptions made about our psychology and use of language which don’t stand up well to scrutiny. For example it is claimed that people favour a way of thinking about the world that is linked to a certain sense and that a persons use of language identifies which “modality” the person favours. So if a person generally thinks visually then they will likely use words and phrases relating to sight. Someone with a visual modality would likely say “I see what you mean.” a lot, instead of “I hear where you’re coming from” , which would indicate they favour an auditory modality.
As soon as I read that I thought this was bunk. My mother and father are both blind with my mother having been blind since birth, and my father lost any useable sight over a decade ago. Both of them use lots of visual expressions like “I see” or even things like “I went to see a film”. Saying things like that are merely habits of speech that we pick up.
It’s also discredited by the academic community for lack of empirical evidence and putting forth factual errors. That said, some of the mental techniques taught can be beneficial for certain things, so it is not all complete nonsense. Just… Mostly.
After a little research, it even seems that much of the online martial arts community consider him an absolute joke. He even claims to have re-discovered the fighting style of the gladiators from the time of Julius Caesar…
The prerequisite for the title “best polyglot” should be that the person first BE a polyglot. Clugston shows no evidence that he speaks any language beyond English, which, in any event, he mangles with stilted syntax. I certainly have seen no videos of him speaking foreign languages. He shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath as Steve, Luca, Richard, et. al. I know his type well, being a student of the history of radical groups: He reminds me of conspiracy theorists like Lyndon LaRouche. They ramble on and on and on but don’t actually say anything. They make video upon video saying the exact same thing. They create an image of themselves as a “guru,” based on nothing but hot air, and they build up a fan base of true believers who think that the guru has “exposed” the “mainstream” and, through brave “dissidence,” has shown “the truth” and “the secrets” of (fill in the blank). He’s a fraud.
