I don’t know about his other languages but as some of the comments on the video say his French is absolutely terrible.
It’s hard to tell with his poor accent but i’m fairly sure he says he was born in Paris.
I’m presuming his other languages are as bad?
Maybe it’s time for him to stop giving everyone else flack when he’s clearly at a very basic level.
Looks like he deleted the comment regarding about his French.
I remember this guy. He’s a stereotypical Muay Thai/MMA meathead. I remember the videos where he decided to just randomly go on a campaign to bash and ad hominem different polyglots.
Yes, it’s certainly pitiful for someone who bashes other polyglots on a regular basis and who is so inclined to brag about his accomplishments and “awesomeness”.
His accent in French is thick, he says that he was born in Paris but he has grown up in other countries. Then he goes on to repeat the same in Italian. His Italian accent’s better than his French one but he just delivers that simple sentence.
His Spanish seems to be better than the other two languages. His English accent is strong but he’s understandable. He sometimes struggles for words, and reverts to English in at least one instance, but he goes on to say much more than in French and Italian and, to be completely fair, he uses subjunctive just fine, which is hard for foreigners, so it’s not bad but nothing to write home about.
He later adds a couple more sentences in French/Italian and they seem to confirm my impression about his level in those two. He’s certainly hopeless when it comes to pronouncing less than obvious French phonemes (“peu” is a clear example).
Yep. Even with my very limited French i can spot his heavy accent (i’ve never spoken in French and my pronunciation/accent is better than his) and the fact that he seems to be struggling for words.
It’s kind of hilarious that the only thing that matters to this guy is peer review and academia yet he is both hopeless at academia (there’s a transcript of his phd thesis somewhere, his written English is so appalling that he wouldn’t pass an undergrad degree in a western country) and languages. Just goes to show the difference between an academic ‘linguist’ and someone who can actually DO.
Now when he claims people couldn’t ‘learn an unscripted language’ (like who would even want to?!) maybe people should ask him why he hasn’t been able to learn French or Italian.
well well.clugston i was expecting something better from a guy who bashes other people ways of learning his hard american english accent comes through in the languages he spoke especially in french you would expect that a “academic linguist” would be at least able to pronounce words correctly even if he has slight accent.i don’t think he is fluent at all
I’m trying to understand his channel. It’s heavily Mixed martial arts oriented. I don’t know how familiar you Brits are with MMA culture, but around here, the idea is to be loud, arrogant, and bash the other person to generate revenue and views. The irony is, it’s opposite of what martial arts strive to teach, which is humbleness.
I personally think he’s genuinely mentally ill.
He obviously has a problem or two. I wonder why a human being would spend so much time and energy on people who he (presumably) doesn’t even know personally. Even if he doesn’t like their business philosophy I just don’t see how his reaction is reasonable. You can also see that he gets emotional about it so he obviously has a problem.
My God, what a joke. Until this moment I always kind of suspected that Clugston could probably speak multiple languages fairly well and was just rough around the edges. I was even considering buying his course as I wanted to see what someone with “credentials” had to say. No way. His method apparently does not even work for him. Now I think he is just a dick and that his method of learning languages are just as unsupported (by evidence) as his fighting technique. He has NO business attacking Steve’s language abilities. This video proves Clugston is nothing but a phony windbag.
Ha
He lost me in his video when he said that lingq takes too long… and then proceeded to recommend pimsleur.
It’s the clear case of having no concept of different people with different preferences. Just because lingq is’t his jam doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work for other people.
He sounds like the kind of guy that will tell you are “wrong” for liking a band he doesn’t and will insult you for not liking his favorite band.
I mean, to be fair french is a doozy of a language to pronounce.
It was unscripted, unrehearsed, unedited (except for that little glitch in the middle), so it’s impossible to tell too much about his level. Sure, if that’s the only thing we have to go by we need to assume the worst. But he probably hasn’t maintained those languages either. If you try to make this type of unscripted video, especially in an unmaintained language, you might be shocked at how much you suck. I speak from experience.
In making these little videos, I think the best way to improve is to make a lot of them. Experience makes a big difference. Writing a script, rehearsing and editing obviously will improve it. Keep in mind that many of the most famous polyglot videos on youtube are quite well polished.
The guys who impress me the most are those who put out so much stuff you know they aren’t faking it - it would take a huge effort to manicure hours and hours of video. Steve falls into this category. I’m sure he does a certain amount of prep, for example when he makes an ad in a language that he doesn’t know very well, but I bet quite a few of his videos have very little prep. Maybe he’d care to comment?
If I remember correctly, he said that his top 5 languages, English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish, He can basically turn on at anytime. while the rest he needs a little bit of review to reactivate the others.