Benny Rallies the Language Learning Community to Make Fun Video for Steve!

Benny the Irish Polyglot made this awesome video with other members of the language learning community to celebrate Steve’s 10-year Youtube anniversary!

Not subscribed to Steve’s YouTube channel yet? Subscribe here: Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve - YouTube

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I am not fan of Benny’s teaching method, but I must admit that he is a nice person!

In the past, Steve Kaufmann described the guy as “a clown”.

Maybe Benny has gotten a little more serious in the last couple of years? I don’t follow him myself.

It’s one big advert for the sites the participants run, but it’s a great video nonetheless.

Neither do I, but I do believe that Benny has an ability to encourage many people to start learning a foreign language. Of course most of them will fail following his silly speaking from day one approach but that is that…

Wow i see you have added 2 new languages to your list! How did you get your italian to catch your french?

What a great job Benny did. This was a very thoughtful project and it probably took them a while to put together. I think he should wear a suit all the time.

Benny always struck me as a super nice guy. His Language Hacking Guide was a helpful book for me. I have never tried to speak a language from Day One. When I found Benny, I already had a good amount of Spanish, but was self-conscious about using it. Benny help motivated me to not be. However, I think his dive right into it approach would be a good one if you just got dropped into the middle of the country and had to make a go of it.

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Well… perhaps. I myself am not a person that speak a lot, and I learn languages primarily to be able to consume native content so I might be a bit biased as my goals are not communication centered. But spending a lot of money on Italki lessons when you can barely say hi doesn’t make sense to me. Lingq is cheap and more effective in my opinion, even Assimil or whatever other course will work better.

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There’are many of them to help us.

A really fun video! Such a nice thing for Benny and the polyglot gang to do for Steve!
♪♫•* CONGRATULATIONS •♫♪
♪♫•
STEVE! •♫♪
♪♫•
You deserve it! *•♫♪
•♫♪.•°”˜˜”°•.¸☆ ★ ☆¸.•°”˜˜”*°•.¸☆

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Are you doing well with your French, @Tourminator?

I’d like to challenge you with a little text and see if you could sum it up in English for me.

Thanks!

Haha what part of the page would you like summed up? There are bits of text everywhere!

Oh, the first one when you open the link. Just the warning sign. I’ve got that one on my door but I want it in English – a good one.

“Warning!
You know my cute peach tree?
People are so curious!
Ring before entering”

Great!

I see you’are making progress and keep it up.
Thank you for helping, man! I think that the old sign (Welcome) will remain at my door. I’ll try to sell the warning sign at Blocket.se

Cheers!

He always struck me as a bit of a snake.

I can’t help but think Benny is slightly jealous of Steve’s success. When first checking out lingq I read his review which didn’t make lingq sound too great. There’s also another guy on you tube (guy with the skin head) that has a lot of unflattering comments about lingq. Both offer up their own free, not very usable, versions of lingq though.

I think if the truth be known Steve’s method is one many have been using themselves for a long time. Some are just gutted they didn’t come up with a similar site early on themselves.

Output verses input debate! What debate, everyone should just do what they like. Both methods have some merit depending on the learner. Bit egotistical to compare it to a boxing match. Just my thoughts, probably should be learning French rather than writing long messages on the forum.

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I know what you’re saying, but, even though I haven’t met him, I think Benny in is heart of hearts is one of those guys that is happy that everyone is learning languages, not afraid to do it, and loves when everybody is successful. I remember reading the LingQ review of his when it came out, but can’t remember too much of it. Maybe it was about not putting enough emphasis on speaking and it being limited to those occaisions when you have some time before you start speaking.

The guy with the shaved head is passionate, but he is certifiable. It’s tough to get through a single video of his. That being said, he has his reasons for being the way he is. I’ll leave it at that.

I agree the languages Benny (and other people) speak very well have come from a lot of input. They may have been speaking throughout all that time, but the language did get “into” them somehow.

Benny doesn’t seem to be a true polyglot to me. He is rather a great salesman that takes advantage of his outstanding social skills and confidence. He also uses a well-known trick that once you learn how to pronounce the language really well, you will be perceived as a better speaker than in fact you are. His blog is full of cliches and I have an impression that he spends much more time cramming than he would ever admit. But this is only my intuition, I may be wrong.

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I think you’re right about the pronunciation effect. It has an immediate wow factor. One will get a lot of positive comments about one’s high level of ‘x’ language with a good accent.

The trick to keeping the pretence that your level is high is as follows.

1 Know when to nod in the right places, even if you don’t know what’s being said.
2 Ask distracting questions to get the subject back on to something you’re familiar with.
3 Pretend to be immature (integrate stuff into your foreign language personality projection that will limit the conversation to low level stuff). Maybe some eccentricity would work here.
4 Add booze or your the drug of choice into the mix that will dumb down all speakers and disable their ability to judge your language skill.
5 Keep social interaction at noisy places like bars and clubs where you can ask the speaker to repeat again, while using the excuse that the music is to loud. Such places allow you to socially flit about allowing you to practice your same limited vocabulary set.
6 Lastly get the feck away from a group or person before the listener has time to evaluate your true language proficiency. I recommend twenty to thirty minutes max.

I can personally attest to the veracity of a couple of the methods above myself when learning Chinese, except I have a terrible accent.

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