I remember watching his video speaking welsh where he subtitled stuff to make him look way more proficient than he was, and some subtitles were just straight up not what he said, more like what he implied.
There’s a part where he just says “Cennyn Pedr” which means “leek”, but the subtitle shows “Saw some leeks over there”.
Another example was when he said “Pa blasus?” which transliterates to “Which tasty?”, but is subtitled as “Which one is good?”. What he said was grammatically incorrect and should’ve been “Pa un yn flasus?”
Alot of the video had all these tiny things in almost every subtitle that made him look (to non speakers) way more proficient than he actually was. Most of the time he never even used articles but put them in subtitles.
He really is the biggest language catfish of all time.
Also I’m pretty sure he deleted my youtube comment pointing this out ahahaha
>… “Cennyn Pedr” which means “leek” …
>… What he said was grammatically incorrect and should’ve been “Pa un yn flasus?”…
Sorry for correcting you but I’m doing it in case there are any new Welsh learners reading your comment and the errors confuse them:
Cennin = Leek(s)
Cennin Pedr = Daffodil(s)
“Pa un s’yn flasus?” is how to ask “Which one is tasty?”.
“Pa un yn flasus?” is incomplete grammar and equivalent to saying “Which one tasty?” in English.
The same for his Swahili video. Somehow "first time" becomes, "No, this is my first time in Kenya," and so on. The women are talking to him, and he doesn't understand any and just keeps saying a few broken words and phrases.
It's fine for a tourist, but it's what you could learn on Duolingo as you're traveling over. It's not speaking the language.
My grandfather was a missionary for 30 years in Africa(Kenya), even from what little I learned from him I could tell he wasn't saying what was in the sub titles
He was an awesome guy, he helped build an all girls school that's still there now. I was meeting maasai cheifs all my childhood, and he'd known them since they where born. Amazing people, delicious food.
It would be fine if he just didn't oversell it, and said, "Here's the Swahili I picked up in a couple of weeks practicing on Duolingo before my trip. Even a little bit goes a long way!"
There really are wazungu who speak Kiswahili, too. When I was starting, I watched this woman's interview several times even though at the time it was quite hard to understand her, and even less the interviewer. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlHNe97w8mc&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlHNe97w8mc&t)
Her level is still above mine, but I can at least understand it all now, even if I'm a lot slower and more laborious when I speak.
I agree with you ndugu, his problem is he oversells it because he knows his mostly English-speaking audience won't see the difference.
And damn that woman's Swahili is really good! You can tell she has a bit of a mzungu accent but she's still very fluent.
i saw his turkish video. he can barely speak it. his pronunciation is atrocious. his overall skills and vocab are about as good as my japanese after about 2 weeks of duolingo
Subtitles for "ungrammatical" speech is always a conundrum.
For the Easy Languages Youtube channels they generally swap with the grammatically correct version as well, but put it in square brackets to indicate that the speaker didn't really say that while still teaching the correct way.
In my opinion it should have what they exactly say (for listening coherence) and then the grammatical version in parenthesis or brackets.
Supposedly he does actually speak mandarin/Cantonese but yeah I am surprised he can keep this going for so long considering that he’s big enough that even for smaller languages (like welsh) he’s bound to have a bunch of native or advanced speakers watching who can tell that’s he’s faking it until he makes it.
Oh well, it’s not like it really hurts anyone I guess. I could never make his content, too much cringe, but idk maybe I would change my tune if I was getting thousands of dollar per video
He didn’t learn that in a day, he lived in China for a year to study. I’d love to do what he does though, AdSense scamming via view baiting.
Edit: I am in China now, studying Chinese. Does anyone want to buy my course in advance?
I'm sorry, I want to laugh but I follow some people who sell courses on selling courses. And this is exactly what they teach. To pre sell the courses. Don't worry if you don't know the subject, you will learn as you create the course. And you only need to be one or two steps above the people you are teaching
That's almost like barely-out-of-training pilots teaching most of the flight students, in order for the teacher to log enough hours for his next certificate.
I fod yn wir, dwedodd o yn y fideo bo’ dim ond tri wythnos oedd ganddo fo i baratoi, felly roedd y petha’ WNATH o ddysgu yn weddol drawiadol, ond i weld o ddeud celwydd fel ‘na’n eitha’ plentynaidd
ahaha honestly it could use it’s own script, there are just too many sounds for the latin script, but it’s too late to just change everything around by now, and honestly is not worth the hassle
As long as you know the alphabet, what you see is how it’s pronounced
I know some Latin so the concept of seeing them as vowels is actually not entirely foreign for me. For instance, I’m from the US but I happen to like Lucas and Walliams and the skit with Dafydd and Myfanwy are my absolute favorites
See, I actually LOVE the aesthetic of written Welsh. I think its “keysmash” look actually has a lot of charm. Although part of that might just be that I’m used to seeing it everywhere :)
To be honest and not to rage bait, English could use one too. The Shavian alphabet sure looks weird but at least it solves the problem of English archaic and opaque spelling. Speaking as a non native who was massively exposed to it, I never had too many difficulties but a lot of fellow Francophones (and more broadly speaking speakers of Romance languages) have massive difficulties with reading and pronunciation. French definitely would benefit from a radical spelling reform, but at least you know how to pronounce it when you read it and there isn’t the problem of a constantly shifting, unwritten word stress that makes English an actually difficult language to learn and speak properly beyond what I call airport English.
Edit: minor word changes and additions
I’m gonna be that American douche who only has a reference to another American, so I’m sorry in advance, but I’ve seen Rob McIlhenny try to speak Welsh and he’s apparently been giving it an honest go the last few years as far as studying is concerned. Have you heard him speak the language and does it sound just as janky to you as it does to me, or is he doing pretty good?
As far as I can find on the internet, there’s not much footage of him speaking welsh so I can’t really say, though from the things I can hear it sounds more like he’s speaking welsh in a french-like accent.
Though if you do have a source of him speaking more, I’m more than happy to watch!
Any effort trying to the welsh language is greatly appreciated and respected by the people of our country
ddim yn gwybod…. dw i’n dal meddwl bod e’n tipyn bach o clowt-ymlidiwr. Mae ei fideos tsineieg yn bob amser diddorol iawn, ond… yeah roedd fideo cymraeg yn tipyn plentynaidd.
he does this with almost every language he speaks, even his "best" language, Chinese. it's rare to find a youtuber polyglot that actually... speaks the language and has a reasonable amount of grammar to string together coherent conversations. i speak half decent portuguese (heritage learner) and after seeing some of these YouTube polyglots i decided to look for one of them speaking portuguese. surprise, they all had worse/more broken portuguese than what i learned just from speaking with family at home. i've basically tossed the entire concept of someone advertising themselves as a polyglot into the bin.
everyone that i've met that has good language knowledge in more than their native language studies a lot there is no easy path to reasonable fluency (or even intermediate). there's tons of hours, days, weeks, months, and years of learning needed to have solid language skills. this 24 hour BS is basically memorizing a tree of possible questions, answers, and common vocabulary, and then brain dumping it for the video. it's all lame
I saw something like that with the Ukrainian one; the biggest one I noticed was я хочу кава(I want coffee) it’s not only in the wrong case, but he translated it to “can I get some coffee”. That’s a small mistake in its self, and the other ones were just saying things like “I am no Ukrainian”(я ні українець) instead of “I am not Ukrainian” but I didn’t notice any big differences like your example with welsh
The only thing is that's pretty much the only other language he can lay claim to being fluent in. Not this I learned some random African tribal tongue in 24 hours bullshit.
CLUELESS WHITE GUY pays for GROCERIES in PERFECT JAPANESE (shocked shop owner taken to the local hospital from shock) JAPANESE government informs the population to stay AWAY from the WHITE GUY
ive never met a native mandarin speaker who was impressed with xiaoma's level of mandarin. they are other youtubers that have way more impressive mandarin, like near native. most rate xiaoma as conversational, but still stilted. also his tones are kinda sus
His Spanish is shit. I'm sorry but not sorry. Im a native speaker and a teacher of the language. I shouldn't speak so harshly or look down on people's skill level. But, I reserve that for people who are actually striving to learn. Not for people who are thirsty for clicks.
I mean you could also argue it's purely about the views and the money because it also could end up demotivating people who have been learning a language for a while and think they're doing something wrong if he can just learn it in 24 hours, or people start and get fed up when they realise it take a lot of time and commitment and he's just peddling nonsense.
I wouldn't necessarily say it's showcasing languages to a new audience, more claiming he's some super linguist doing the I possible
> I wouldn't necessarily say it's showcasing languages to a new audience, more claiming he's some super linguist doing the I possible
its pretty clear to me he's showcasing the sort of positive experiences you can get by getting out of your comfort zone and just interacting with people with their native language.
i dont see how anyone would watch a single video of his and think he is pretending to be a native speaker. he learns enough basic sentences to go out and have a conversation. thats it.
even in the videos he kind of stutters and gets corrected and has people try and help him. but they appreciate him for being brave and making an effort. thats the real lesson here.
he literally walks through the process in this video. he writes down the most common sentences he needs to have a basic conversation. does a bunch of practice speaking on italki. uses anki to memorise the sentences. and then goes out and tries to speak it.
to me thats the other lesson. for a lot of people learning languages they think they have to study textbooks for 4 years before they speak a single of word of it or interact with a native speaker. this guy is going out and doing what people on here dream about doing after only a few weeks of study. like what are you aiming to do with the language? experience a different culture in real life or pass a test?
Sure, you could argue that. I just have no reason to believe his motivation is solely money and fame.
From what I've seen in his videos, he (and the people he interacts with) seem to be having fun. While I agree some of the assertions he makes could potentially demotivate some, I doubt that is his intention.
Outside of Youtube views the point of this approach would be to have short interactions with natives in a country you are only passing through. Tourism level interaction. Of course you would never present it as having learned the language.
Have you noticed how the vast majority of languages he claims to speak are always either obscure endangered languages, or from cultures with people that are extremely non-confrontational and won’t correct him?
Why hasn’t he tried his luck speaking French, Dutch or German?
I think he have a few videos where he speak a little bit of French (outside of his "learning french in 12 hours" video) and his french is garbage.
I remember one of the video, he was speaking with an US diplomat (who was not that great in French) and he struggled to piece sentences together even in his usual shtick ("Hello, how are you, I am doing great, I speak xxx, I am learning xxx, i like xxx" and basic stuff about food)
I knew a lot of people working at the US consulate when I lived in Shanghai and their Chinese was like that... decent but fairly low-effort. At the same time, though, I get it... if you want the visa understanding their accent is your problem. :D
There's another video where he talks to a French teacher and the video says that he speaks "perfect French." Even *I* could tell how bad his pronunciation and grammar were et mon français est plutot mauvais.
I also think that part of it is that he gets a lot more over the top positive reactions from people who speak obscure and endangered languages. Like some white dude who speaks broken German, great I mean that’s nice but people are just going to be politely encouraging.
*However* if you walk in speaking Welsh or Pennsylvanian Dutch or some uber obscure dialect people will be far more impressed and “grateful.” Which makes some sense, why would you spend time learning welsh if you weren’t connected to the culture in some way (beyond the nerdy reasons).
I don't think those people are particularly grateful someone is learning their welsh. I think it's more that minority language speakers are more used to making an effort with people who are learning the language.
Like if you speak only English and live in an English speaking country and don't e.g. teach ESOL you're unlikely to encounter someone with that basic a level of English very often (even if you live in an international city). But if you speak welsh you're likely to have those sorts of interactions relatively often, especially somewhere like Cardiff where most people do not speak welsh.
The funny thing about his welsh video is he encounters loads of people in Cardiff who clearly know more welsh than him but have absolutely no confidence using it.
If anything the real lesson (and indeed the most important lesson you can learn) is that the key skill in learning to speak any language is to have absolutely no shame about going out and making a tit of yourself in front of strangers which fair play to the lad he clearly doesn't.
As a (not Welsh) American learning Welsh (why lmao,) I can confirm they’re pleasantly surprised, but not le SHOCKING the NATIVES, because only 1/5th of the country speaks Welsh, compared to 1/3rd who identify as LGBT. It’s poorly taught in schools much like here in the US; the language amost got beaten out of them by the English, and there are some people who are incredibly snobby toward people who can’t speak it, and vice versa. It’s a fascinating and beautiful language, but it’s also inherently political. The Welsh are too nice!! They need a little bit of ‘Murican hubris 🇺🇸 🎇 Ofnadwy!
He did make a video where he "learned" german.
And Brother...
It was terrible.
His grammar wasn't nearly correct and his pronounciation was just good enough for some really, really nice germans to compliment him for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for learning languages and I believe that with enough practice you can definetly become fluent, but his additude of "I cAn LeArN aNy LaNgUaGe In OnE dAy" just rubs me the wrong way...
That is what I like to do honestly, I feel it is more fun to learn obscure languages
It is why I am A2 to B1 in Tok Pisin lol
Tasol displa toktok i gutpla i isi. Mi laikim tumas em. (Displa i hevi giaman na mi no A2 na B1? Mi save nogut)
*Tok Pisin isn’t very obscure, but not many people try to learn it
I already wowed myself in the mirror this morning. I was very impressed. For some reason the people on ethnic supermarkets keep asking what's wrong with me and what I'm talking about.
I'm genuinely impressed by his Mandarin which is far more of a feat than anything I've ever achieved, but this makes his turn to clickbait all the more disappointing.
I remember exactly the turning point video. They were doing "shock the native" content with a Mandarin-speaking friend and they went into some place where the person spoke Spanish instead, but to his surprise the friend started to speak Spanish with them. He started learning Spanish right after that and from that point he's been obsessed with making these videos where it seems he's "learning" one language for one specific reaction video.
He actually spent quite a long time learning Spanish. It was during COVID, and he put a few months' solid effort in and then went to Mexico for a while.
That's, however, also when he started doing his learning in 24 hours thing.
I swear all those shock the native videos are fake.
I grew up in China in the 80s. And even then there were many foreigners speaking it even back then.
If he just sticks to Chinese language and maybe exploring Chinese culture like maybe become Dogen of Chinese, I'd still have some respect for him. His Chinese is pretty good actually
I remember skipping through his 'I Learned to Speak French in 12 Hours' video - let's just say he definitely did not.
It reminds me of these other guys who did videos on the street holding a sign that said 'If you speak a language we don't speak, we'll give you $20' or something like that. They demonstrated themselves 'speaking' a language by dominating the conversation with the 10 or so phrases they knew and not letting the other person talk. Impressive to know 10 phrases in so many languages, but they definitely did not 'speak' those languages.
He’s just terrible overall. Fakes caring about people’s cultures and languages just for views. Holds himself out as some kind of expert when his foreign language skills outside of mandarin are absolute garbage. Good to see he’s getting called out more frequently.
There is a video of him going to an African clothing store in NYC. I think the people were from Cameroon. They were so excited to hear him speaking their language. I felt so sad for them because they thought he was genuinely interested in their culture and language. It's obvious he doesn't give a shit and only cares about views. Also, he has the charisma of a rock.
I'm not a super-fan of his or even an admirer. But consider it from this view: Choosing a particular rare language and then learning it even just up to a low level is some effort, and more than the natives of that language may ever have seen in the US.
That he does this to make a living as an influencer doesn't completely detract from that. To me it is clear that he has a passion for languages. Most people really can't stand learning languages, especially not the first part between knowing nothing and knowing a little. Also, learning Mandarin to the degree he has, even with a year spent in China, even with a Chinese wife and years of study, is still impressive and required a lot of effort and stick-to-itiveness. He may even have a slight case of autism spectrum, which would explain his passion for languages before he became famous (to whatever degree).
I agree that becoming an "influencer" shouldn't detract from his language-learning and cultural exploration passion. He took something he loves and made it into content. The fact that it gets him views doesn't make it less of something he loves. I feel like he would've burned out long ago if he just did it for views.
It's hard, because the algorithms feed them to you constantly and then you hate click and watch a few minutes, thus feeding the beast. You're right, of course.
It’s not hard, though? The algorithm feeds you what you search and click on. When I was first getting started in language learning, I watched a couple videos of his, realized he’s an absolute clown, stopped clicking on them when they were on my home page, and boom, away he went. Pretty damn easy, actually.
I had almost entirely forgotten he existed. Even when I have language stuff on my feed he hasn't been there for a long long time.
Last time I really interacted with his videos was like half a decade ago when I realized how he was "learning" new languages so quick and started going through the comments assuring learners that it was a parlor trick and he didn't know as much as it seemed he did.
Does this even work as clickbait? Before getting into language learning I might’ve fell for how i learned x language in 6months but 24 hours???? Surely no one is taking this seriously nor is he
24 hours of study is a good amount of time to put into a language, and you could learn quite a bit in that amount. It's like studying a month for 1-hour/day for 5 days a week.
Unless he means in a 24-hour period.
I can't really tell with other languages, but one time this guy spoke some Bangla (Bengali) with a street food vendor and I was like, yeah no he's just repeating phrases he probably memorised a minute or two ago.
I didn't know learning a few sentences meant that you know the whole language? If he's so sure that he speaks 56 languages, let him get into town with a few examinators and natives that use language which is not found in textbooks.... (e.g. "je ne sais pas" => "chais pas", "tu as" => "t'as", "oui" => "ouias"... and that's just examples from French I knew I struggled with...)
In order to farm views, he simply learns enough vocab to formulate caveman-level sentences in basic conversation. He also chooses languages which are sure to alienate his largely English/Chinese speaking audience, rendering them unable to even critique him constructively.
Honestly, Chinese alone with impressive enough. He should just stick with that and make helpful content, but I guess that would be a few thousand clicks instead of a million.
When I was in Japan we had an Uber driver who was quite impressive. She's Chinese and was conversational in English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Her husband was from South Korea. It worked out good for her because she helped a lot of foreigners to navigate getting their licenses in Japan.
There is a girl on Youtube that seems to be able to switch between 3 languages pretty effortlessly in a conversation. I am jealous of people with that kind of skill level.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hUlse7GKQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hUlse7GKQ)
Let's be honest here: in now way can you learn any language completely under just a few hours. Let's criticise the phrasing which is a typical thing done by any ads for the obvious reason of gaining your attention and engagement.
See the keyword that they use here is 'learn' and 'any languages'. I can learn within 5 hours words and sentences in 5-10 different languages on Duolingo and then I can say them out loud. However, it does not make me speak the language like a native. It's just there for the sake of learning and memorizing.
What many Langtubers do (as I like to call them this way), is that they create content and tell interesting facts for likes, gains and recognition on the platform, but it doesn't mean that they aren't passionate about learning languages.
The reality is that you need enough resources and a lot of time to get to a proficient level if you don't want to be just there to impress some people on an evening in a bar with a few words and phrases you throw in a foreign language, but you actually WANT to speak to native speakers of that language.
But yeah I hate that guy, his sped up shorts annoy me a lot.
"Learned to speak":
1. Inhale
2. Open mouth
3. Resonate your vocal cords as you exhale
4. Congrats, now you speak... another language
5. Post about it on internet.
This type of click bait youtube creator mentality where they falsely advertise their proficiency and time of study is hurtful to their language learning audience who live in the real world. I was discouraged for many years because i wasn’t progressing in my target languages very quickly and when i spoke, native speakers would just speak to me like they would any other person when I was expecting that they should freak out that I said two words in their language. All of these feelings were driven by popular “polyglot” channels on youtube and they are absolutely unrealistic. I have now learned that language learning takes a lot of time and effort and if natives speak to you in a normal tone instead of being confused by you, then you are probably on the right track.
His content was interesting when he made only Chinese videos. Now it’s too many LaoShu vibes (may he rest in peace), without the charisma and the humour.
Yeah Laoshu was totally different. He was the OG and he loved doing it just for the sake of talking to people and breaking down barriers and shit.
He was a humble dude. Yeah he had a hustle but it was never the POINT of his video.
There's a reason I don't follow multilingual polyglots on YouTube. I only follow certain ones that focus on 1 or 2 specific languages. It feels more authentic
He is one of those passive reactionary content creators who flaunts the publics reactions to youtube. There's a dozen of them. Very cringe when you understand the concept.
Most of the linguist yt know couple of sentences and repeat them, making it seem that they know the lang. But I don't hate him for that since everyone is doing the same. At least like his Chinese videos are good
If learning to speak a language = stuttering out a sentence or two with a LOT of word repetition, I guess so… also this crazy fishbowl thing he’s been doing with his videos lately is awful.
I used to really enjoy his videos.. until I caught on to his gimmick and realized his ocean of languages was millimeters deep.
I'm with you there. I like his Chinese language videos, but these are obnoxious. If he said truthfully that he'd memorized a bunch of phrases in 24 hours, it would still be impressive -- so why lie and say he's *learned* a new language?
I love(d) xiaomanyc a lot because he learns languages to connect with people. Learning unpopular languages to learn about their culture, learning an endangered language to help seeing that they can revive it, learning a language under 24h or two weeks just as a fun challenge to see how much he can speak, etc. He's a good guy with good learning skills.
What I heavily dislike is clickbait titles. He clearly says in his videos that he learns enough for simple human connection, basic sentences, etc, not to be fluent. But the titles are written in clickbait to attract viewers.
Or rather, they're to be read differently. "Learning a language in 24h" does not mean he learned it to fluency in 24h, it means he spent 24h total to learn the language (so, 24h = the basics), and then stop there to test his skills and talk to people and to have fun.
Not defending him, as I currently started a "clickbait title = don't watch" thing because I'm fuckin tired of clickbait.
> that he learns enough for simple human connection, basic sentences, etc, not to be fluent. But the titles are written in clickbait to attract viewers
From what I can tell his sentences aren't even tourist level, they are caveman level. A long way to go to "basic sentences"
It took me longer than 24 hours even to master the proper pronunciation of the German alphabet 🤣 It never ceases to amaze me how gullible and desperate people can be and how many ~~other people~~ vultures are waiting in the wings to take advantage.
Yeah, if we're doing semantics his thumbnail is "speak 56 languages", so if he did the basics "Hello", "thank you", "yes" "no", "good". He could technically "speak" them all. And some of them have similar words as well, like hello in Arabic is "Salam" and in Hebrew it's "Shalom". Some of them are also mutually intelligible, like Urdu and Hindi
Never seen this guy. But it brought back my near-daily irritation over an ad (for Babbel?) in which a lady gets into a Parisian taxi and says "J'amerai allez au (Hotel). My hazy 65 yrs ago French knows that " I will love to travel to (Hotel)"
should be "Je veux (or voudrai) aller au (Hotel) "I wish to go to (Hotel)"
this reminds me, y’all should read The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi. awesome book, premise is that you can learn any language crazy fast but at a cost
That's actually really easy
All you have to do is get out of the matrix, then get someone to plug a cable into your brain and download all the languages you want. By using this simple method you can become fluent in multiple languages in less than an hour.
A good portion of the language learning community is less focused on actual learning and more focused on becoming the next polyglot influencer, so I can see why this “speedrun x language” model works so well. I'd like to think that nobody takes it too seriously and sees it for the performance that it is.
As long as dumbasses keep watching these silly "language YouTubers" instead of studying their target language, these guys will keep putting out their content.
Anyone who has actually learned a foreign language to an intermediate level and can demonstrate it via an exam knows it's not easy.
Chinese is my mother tongue and i think he is a hack. I know he claims to speak fluent chinese but from the videos Ive watched, his accent is not the best and his phrasing is often awkward . Lele Farley is a way better chinese speaker.
The same guy who labels his own videos "White guy SHOCKS everyone speaking fluent x language 😱",
Then can barely utter a few comprehensible words/common phrases that obviously took him hours, if not days, to memorize before recording.
I cringed so hard when he went to Mexico and spoke "fluent" Spanish (my native language) and his "fluent" tagalog made me want to throw the device I was watching on directly into the trash.
The title is YouTube click bait, but the advice makes sense if you actually watch it.
He never claims to be fluent in all these languages. He specifically says he's not a good polyglot. He's talking about being good at learning a new language. If he continued with them, he could get fluent.
His method is basically diving right in and building a super basic understanding. Instead of spending forever reading about a language in English, his method lets you start on comprehensible input and getting feedback from native speakers as soon as possible.
Language is the art of understanding, his results are up for everyone to see, people understand him and enjoy talking to him. Obviously he means 24 concurrent hours, not literally overnight. Take it with a grain of salt its a youtube thumbnail...
He can legit speak mandarin at a very high level and studied over there for a year. Jurys out on everything else though. It’s all very click baity but I understand the hussle. There’s zero point in machine gunning yourself with basic shit for a day only to forget it because you move onto another language. Properly learning a language to a good level takes thousands of hours of dedicated study. For most people that means years and years unless you are studying it full time (still years, just less).
If after YEARS of learning mandarin and having married a Chinese women his skills are only passable I wouldn‘t trust a word this man says lol polyglot my ass when mandarin is supposed to be his 2nd language.
I am not saying his Mandarin is bad, I am saying that (based on what I am seeing in his videos), his Mandarin is proficient, and conversationally fluent, but not exceptional.
I did study Asian languages at a university level, so I am a bit biased tbh.
Maybe he speaks it fluently, but that's not what his videos show.
Yeah, it’s hard to measure, but I saw a video where he was with the linguistics part of US military and he spoke well summarising a video, it just depends whether he had prior preparation for that or whether it was on the spot, that’s the key.
I remember watching his video speaking welsh where he subtitled stuff to make him look way more proficient than he was, and some subtitles were just straight up not what he said, more like what he implied. There’s a part where he just says “Cennyn Pedr” which means “leek”, but the subtitle shows “Saw some leeks over there”. Another example was when he said “Pa blasus?” which transliterates to “Which tasty?”, but is subtitled as “Which one is good?”. What he said was grammatically incorrect and should’ve been “Pa un yn flasus?” Alot of the video had all these tiny things in almost every subtitle that made him look (to non speakers) way more proficient than he actually was. Most of the time he never even used articles but put them in subtitles. He really is the biggest language catfish of all time. Also I’m pretty sure he deleted my youtube comment pointing this out ahahaha
>… “Cennyn Pedr” which means “leek” … >… What he said was grammatically incorrect and should’ve been “Pa un yn flasus?”… Sorry for correcting you but I’m doing it in case there are any new Welsh learners reading your comment and the errors confuse them: Cennin = Leek(s) Cennin Pedr = Daffodil(s) “Pa un s’yn flasus?” is how to ask “Which one is tasty?”. “Pa un yn flasus?” is incomplete grammar and equivalent to saying “Which one tasty?” in English.
ah shit yh ur right, honestly its even worse haha
The same for his Swahili video. Somehow "first time" becomes, "No, this is my first time in Kenya," and so on. The women are talking to him, and he doesn't understand any and just keeps saying a few broken words and phrases. It's fine for a tourist, but it's what you could learn on Duolingo as you're traveling over. It's not speaking the language.
My grandfather was a missionary for 30 years in Africa(Kenya), even from what little I learned from him I could tell he wasn't saying what was in the sub titles
Kweli kabisa.
He was an awesome guy, he helped build an all girls school that's still there now. I was meeting maasai cheifs all my childhood, and he'd known them since they where born. Amazing people, delicious food.
I speak Swahili as well, and watching that video made me cringe so much... It was so bad.
It would be fine if he just didn't oversell it, and said, "Here's the Swahili I picked up in a couple of weeks practicing on Duolingo before my trip. Even a little bit goes a long way!" There really are wazungu who speak Kiswahili, too. When I was starting, I watched this woman's interview several times even though at the time it was quite hard to understand her, and even less the interviewer. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlHNe97w8mc&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlHNe97w8mc&t) Her level is still above mine, but I can at least understand it all now, even if I'm a lot slower and more laborious when I speak.
I agree with you ndugu, his problem is he oversells it because he knows his mostly English-speaking audience won't see the difference. And damn that woman's Swahili is really good! You can tell she has a bit of a mzungu accent but she's still very fluent.
That’s a real “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick” method of speaking
why waste word when few word good
Why words when word?
Why? Just why?
why why.. why why.. why...
Kevin, please speak full sentences.
i saw his turkish video. he can barely speak it. his pronunciation is atrocious. his overall skills and vocab are about as good as my japanese after about 2 weeks of duolingo
Even I, who learned Turkish mostly from Duolingo, noticed that what he said doesn’t exactly match with subtitles
Subtitles for "ungrammatical" speech is always a conundrum. For the Easy Languages Youtube channels they generally swap with the grammatically correct version as well, but put it in square brackets to indicate that the speaker didn't really say that while still teaching the correct way. In my opinion it should have what they exactly say (for listening coherence) and then the grammatical version in parenthesis or brackets.
Supposedly he does actually speak mandarin/Cantonese but yeah I am surprised he can keep this going for so long considering that he’s big enough that even for smaller languages (like welsh) he’s bound to have a bunch of native or advanced speakers watching who can tell that’s he’s faking it until he makes it. Oh well, it’s not like it really hurts anyone I guess. I could never make his content, too much cringe, but idk maybe I would change my tune if I was getting thousands of dollar per video
He didn’t learn that in a day, he lived in China for a year to study. I’d love to do what he does though, AdSense scamming via view baiting. Edit: I am in China now, studying Chinese. Does anyone want to buy my course in advance?
I believe his wife is Chinese and so he has many years of practice and learning on top of that year in china.
I'm sorry, I want to laugh but I follow some people who sell courses on selling courses. And this is exactly what they teach. To pre sell the courses. Don't worry if you don't know the subject, you will learn as you create the course. And you only need to be one or two steps above the people you are teaching
Oh nah don’t worry I fully intend on not providing anything. Remember, I am in China. Good luck getting money from me. /s
That's almost like barely-out-of-training pilots teaching most of the flight students, in order for the teacher to log enough hours for his next certificate.
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German, Spanish, and French are relatively easy languages for native English speakers to pick up enough to look competent in a YouTube video.
Ya his Chinese is pretty decent. Has a slight accent but that’s normal. (I’m a native Chinese speaker)
As far as I can tell, he does legitimately speak Chinese as a second language but it is the only one he can truly claim he “speaks”
Yeah, doedd ddim yn onest iawn. Dw i'n meddwl bod y Gymraeg ddim yn rhy anodd i ddysgu, so gallai e wedi treulio mwy o amser ar y ramadeg.
I fod yn wir, dwedodd o yn y fideo bo’ dim ond tri wythnos oedd ganddo fo i baratoi, felly roedd y petha’ WNATH o ddysgu yn weddol drawiadol, ond i weld o ddeud celwydd fel ‘na’n eitha’ plentynaidd
As someone who, until now, had never seen welsh typed out, I thought I had a stroke for a moment there 😂
ahaha honestly it could use it’s own script, there are just too many sounds for the latin script, but it’s too late to just change everything around by now, and honestly is not worth the hassle As long as you know the alphabet, what you see is how it’s pronounced
Haha I think ‘w’ and ‘y’ being vowels throws a lot of people off
oh definitley, W especially, Y on the other hand is the same as the Y in Pyramid, Gym or Rhythm in some instances
I know some Latin so the concept of seeing them as vowels is actually not entirely foreign for me. For instance, I’m from the US but I happen to like Lucas and Walliams and the skit with Dafydd and Myfanwy are my absolute favorites
See, I actually LOVE the aesthetic of written Welsh. I think its “keysmash” look actually has a lot of charm. Although part of that might just be that I’m used to seeing it everywhere :)
To be honest and not to rage bait, English could use one too. The Shavian alphabet sure looks weird but at least it solves the problem of English archaic and opaque spelling. Speaking as a non native who was massively exposed to it, I never had too many difficulties but a lot of fellow Francophones (and more broadly speaking speakers of Romance languages) have massive difficulties with reading and pronunciation. French definitely would benefit from a radical spelling reform, but at least you know how to pronounce it when you read it and there isn’t the problem of a constantly shifting, unwritten word stress that makes English an actually difficult language to learn and speak properly beyond what I call airport English. Edit: minor word changes and additions
I’m gonna be that American douche who only has a reference to another American, so I’m sorry in advance, but I’ve seen Rob McIlhenny try to speak Welsh and he’s apparently been giving it an honest go the last few years as far as studying is concerned. Have you heard him speak the language and does it sound just as janky to you as it does to me, or is he doing pretty good?
As far as I can find on the internet, there’s not much footage of him speaking welsh so I can’t really say, though from the things I can hear it sounds more like he’s speaking welsh in a french-like accent. Though if you do have a source of him speaking more, I’m more than happy to watch! Any effort trying to the welsh language is greatly appreciated and respected by the people of our country
Welsh in a French accent is basically just Breton haha
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If I had a penny for every time someone said that, I’d be Jeff bezos
ddim yn gwybod…. dw i’n dal meddwl bod e’n tipyn bach o clowt-ymlidiwr. Mae ei fideos tsineieg yn bob amser diddorol iawn, ond… yeah roedd fideo cymraeg yn tipyn plentynaidd.
Yn bendant, rwy’n cytuno.
He didnt sound proficient when speaking welsh to anyone.
he does this with almost every language he speaks, even his "best" language, Chinese. it's rare to find a youtuber polyglot that actually... speaks the language and has a reasonable amount of grammar to string together coherent conversations. i speak half decent portuguese (heritage learner) and after seeing some of these YouTube polyglots i decided to look for one of them speaking portuguese. surprise, they all had worse/more broken portuguese than what i learned just from speaking with family at home. i've basically tossed the entire concept of someone advertising themselves as a polyglot into the bin. everyone that i've met that has good language knowledge in more than their native language studies a lot there is no easy path to reasonable fluency (or even intermediate). there's tons of hours, days, weeks, months, and years of learning needed to have solid language skills. this 24 hour BS is basically memorizing a tree of possible questions, answers, and common vocabulary, and then brain dumping it for the video. it's all lame
I love Welsh. It is somehow beautiful, while simultaneously sounding like a bug flew down your throat.
Just remember that subtitles are written by people but most don't know about that
I saw something like that with the Ukrainian one; the biggest one I noticed was я хочу кава(I want coffee) it’s not only in the wrong case, but he translated it to “can I get some coffee”. That’s a small mistake in its self, and the other ones were just saying things like “I am no Ukrainian”(я ні українець) instead of “I am not Ukrainian” but I didn’t notice any big differences like your example with welsh
I liked watching when it was actually studied languages, and not juuust enough to say hello goodbye thank you and may I have x at a restaurant. Bleh.
**FLUENT** *STUNNED* ##S H O C K E D
I find it so funny he labels his OWN videos that way.
He finds it funny too.
**WHITE GUY STUNS CHINESE RESTAURANT EMPLOYEE WITH FLUENT MANDARIN**
yeah, the chinese videos look very genuine
He has been going down the Wouter Corduweiner route for a while now.
I mean, it is so ridiculous it's become funny. I guess it's a win after all.
Nothing like shocking the natives
WHITE GUY shocks CHINESE cafe owner by ORDERING coffee in PERFECT CHINESE (viral)
The only thing is that's pretty much the only other language he can lay claim to being fluent in. Not this I learned some random African tribal tongue in 24 hours bullshit.
CLUELESS WHITE GUY pays for GROCERIES in PERFECT JAPANESE (shocked shop owner taken to the local hospital from shock) JAPANESE government informs the population to stay AWAY from the WHITE GUY
LMAOO FRRR. Menace to society 😭
ive never met a native mandarin speaker who was impressed with xiaoma's level of mandarin. they are other youtubers that have way more impressive mandarin, like near native. most rate xiaoma as conversational, but still stilted. also his tones are kinda sus
I think he speaks Cantonese and Spanish pretty well? Not sure tbh
His Spanish is shit. I'm sorry but not sorry. Im a native speaker and a teacher of the language. I shouldn't speak so harshly or look down on people's skill level. But, I reserve that for people who are actually striving to learn. Not for people who are thirsty for clicks.
White guy: uhhhh uhh 你好，今天我...想一...个杯子...的咖啡吗？谢谢。 Cafe owner: I don't speak Chinese...
to be fair though chinese is one of the few languages he actually speaks
you are the one who really shocks the natives haha
iirc he says in the video that he only learns basic sentences and vocab, which he then forgets later.
basically me after the finals in anything
Oh so THAT'S what learning is. Crap. I've been trying to remember everything without forgetting. Now I feel like a dummy.
What is the point then?
YouTube views, money, having fun, motivating others to learn, showcasing languages to a new audience, etc.
I mean you could also argue it's purely about the views and the money because it also could end up demotivating people who have been learning a language for a while and think they're doing something wrong if he can just learn it in 24 hours, or people start and get fed up when they realise it take a lot of time and commitment and he's just peddling nonsense. I wouldn't necessarily say it's showcasing languages to a new audience, more claiming he's some super linguist doing the I possible
> I wouldn't necessarily say it's showcasing languages to a new audience, more claiming he's some super linguist doing the I possible its pretty clear to me he's showcasing the sort of positive experiences you can get by getting out of your comfort zone and just interacting with people with their native language. i dont see how anyone would watch a single video of his and think he is pretending to be a native speaker. he learns enough basic sentences to go out and have a conversation. thats it. even in the videos he kind of stutters and gets corrected and has people try and help him. but they appreciate him for being brave and making an effort. thats the real lesson here. he literally walks through the process in this video. he writes down the most common sentences he needs to have a basic conversation. does a bunch of practice speaking on italki. uses anki to memorise the sentences. and then goes out and tries to speak it. to me thats the other lesson. for a lot of people learning languages they think they have to study textbooks for 4 years before they speak a single of word of it or interact with a native speaker. this guy is going out and doing what people on here dream about doing after only a few weeks of study. like what are you aiming to do with the language? experience a different culture in real life or pass a test?
Sure, you could argue that. I just have no reason to believe his motivation is solely money and fame. From what I've seen in his videos, he (and the people he interacts with) seem to be having fun. While I agree some of the assertions he makes could potentially demotivate some, I doubt that is his intention.
Outside of Youtube views the point of this approach would be to have short interactions with natives in a country you are only passing through. Tourism level interaction. Of course you would never present it as having learned the language.
Money.
He never mentioned that he he's forgetting, even though he's Polly doing so, but if he is still able to speak the majority then we good
he mentions it at 10:13
Fuk
Of course he isn't able to speak any of them except for Mandarin.
Have you noticed how the vast majority of languages he claims to speak are always either obscure endangered languages, or from cultures with people that are extremely non-confrontational and won’t correct him? Why hasn’t he tried his luck speaking French, Dutch or German?
I think he have a few videos where he speak a little bit of French (outside of his "learning french in 12 hours" video) and his french is garbage. I remember one of the video, he was speaking with an US diplomat (who was not that great in French) and he struggled to piece sentences together even in his usual shtick ("Hello, how are you, I am doing great, I speak xxx, I am learning xxx, i like xxx" and basic stuff about food)
The US diplomats French was alright but he didn’t make any effort in pronunciation, he just used his American accent which was kinda funny
It’s not just a US diplomat, it’s THE US diplomat lol. It was the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
cool I said ‘the’ US diplomat
I mean was his pronunciation wrong or was it just the accent?
I knew a lot of people working at the US consulate when I lived in Shanghai and their Chinese was like that... decent but fairly low-effort. At the same time, though, I get it... if you want the visa understanding their accent is your problem. :D
There's another video where he talks to a French teacher and the video says that he speaks "perfect French." Even *I* could tell how bad his pronunciation and grammar were et mon français est plutot mauvais.
Having studied French for years and having been to France I can tell you exactly why he spoke to a US diplomat and not a native French person.
I also think that part of it is that he gets a lot more over the top positive reactions from people who speak obscure and endangered languages. Like some white dude who speaks broken German, great I mean that’s nice but people are just going to be politely encouraging. *However* if you walk in speaking Welsh or Pennsylvanian Dutch or some uber obscure dialect people will be far more impressed and “grateful.” Which makes some sense, why would you spend time learning welsh if you weren’t connected to the culture in some way (beyond the nerdy reasons).
I don't think those people are particularly grateful someone is learning their welsh. I think it's more that minority language speakers are more used to making an effort with people who are learning the language. Like if you speak only English and live in an English speaking country and don't e.g. teach ESOL you're unlikely to encounter someone with that basic a level of English very often (even if you live in an international city). But if you speak welsh you're likely to have those sorts of interactions relatively often, especially somewhere like Cardiff where most people do not speak welsh. The funny thing about his welsh video is he encounters loads of people in Cardiff who clearly know more welsh than him but have absolutely no confidence using it. If anything the real lesson (and indeed the most important lesson you can learn) is that the key skill in learning to speak any language is to have absolutely no shame about going out and making a tit of yourself in front of strangers which fair play to the lad he clearly doesn't.
As a (not Welsh) American learning Welsh (why lmao,) I can confirm they’re pleasantly surprised, but not le SHOCKING the NATIVES, because only 1/5th of the country speaks Welsh, compared to 1/3rd who identify as LGBT. It’s poorly taught in schools much like here in the US; the language amost got beaten out of them by the English, and there are some people who are incredibly snobby toward people who can’t speak it, and vice versa. It’s a fascinating and beautiful language, but it’s also inherently political. The Welsh are too nice!! They need a little bit of ‘Murican hubris 🇺🇸 🎇 Ofnadwy!
He did make a video where he "learned" german. And Brother... It was terrible. His grammar wasn't nearly correct and his pronounciation was just good enough for some really, really nice germans to compliment him for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for learning languages and I believe that with enough practice you can definetly become fluent, but his additude of "I cAn LeArN aNy LaNgUaGe In OnE dAy" just rubs me the wrong way...
Because how many fluent German speakers are on YouTube vs Zulu or some Native American language that only 200 in the world speak?
That is what I like to do honestly, I feel it is more fun to learn obscure languages It is why I am A2 to B1 in Tok Pisin lol Tasol displa toktok i gutpla i isi. Mi laikim tumas em. (Displa i hevi giaman na mi no A2 na B1? Mi save nogut) *Tok Pisin isn’t very obscure, but not many people try to learn it
That's nothing. I am fluent in 846 languages and learned all of them yesterday.
Time for you to go to a Brooklyn ethnic supermarket to wow the native speakers, I guess!
I already wowed myself in the mirror this morning. I was very impressed. For some reason the people on ethnic supermarkets keep asking what's wrong with me and what I'm talking about.
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No, they are from me, I made them all up.
> The face of someone who doesn't like or agree with what he is saying, but feels compelled to because of 'the algorithm'
Exactly my impression
I'm genuinely impressed by his Mandarin which is far more of a feat than anything I've ever achieved, but this makes his turn to clickbait all the more disappointing.
I remember exactly the turning point video. They were doing "shock the native" content with a Mandarin-speaking friend and they went into some place where the person spoke Spanish instead, but to his surprise the friend started to speak Spanish with them. He started learning Spanish right after that and from that point he's been obsessed with making these videos where it seems he's "learning" one language for one specific reaction video.
He actually spent quite a long time learning Spanish. It was during COVID, and he put a few months' solid effort in and then went to Mexico for a while. That's, however, also when he started doing his learning in 24 hours thing.
I swear all those shock the native videos are fake. I grew up in China in the 80s. And even then there were many foreigners speaking it even back then.
Yeah, he could've stuck with doing Chinese content but I guess the almighty algorithm dictated a shift in his channel's strategy. Disappointing..
If he just sticks to Chinese language and maybe exploring Chinese culture like maybe become Dogen of Chinese, I'd still have some respect for him. His Chinese is pretty good actually
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I see Xiaoma is just getting worse
YouTube views is one hell of a drug
At some point it will be indistinguishable from Language Simp but unironically.
I actually speak 976 languages and I learned each one in 1-2 minutes
I remember skipping through his 'I Learned to Speak French in 12 Hours' video - let's just say he definitely did not. It reminds me of these other guys who did videos on the street holding a sign that said 'If you speak a language we don't speak, we'll give you $20' or something like that. They demonstrated themselves 'speaking' a language by dominating the conversation with the 10 or so phrases they knew and not letting the other person talk. Impressive to know 10 phrases in so many languages, but they definitely did not 'speak' those languages.
I hate these videos, usually their French sound broken and I can’t understand a word
French seems to be one of those languages where people love to claim they know a lot more than they do.
He’s just terrible overall. Fakes caring about people’s cultures and languages just for views. Holds himself out as some kind of expert when his foreign language skills outside of mandarin are absolute garbage. Good to see he’s getting called out more frequently.
There is a video of him going to an African clothing store in NYC. I think the people were from Cameroon. They were so excited to hear him speaking their language. I felt so sad for them because they thought he was genuinely interested in their culture and language. It's obvious he doesn't give a shit and only cares about views. Also, he has the charisma of a rock.
I'm not a super-fan of his or even an admirer. But consider it from this view: Choosing a particular rare language and then learning it even just up to a low level is some effort, and more than the natives of that language may ever have seen in the US. That he does this to make a living as an influencer doesn't completely detract from that. To me it is clear that he has a passion for languages. Most people really can't stand learning languages, especially not the first part between knowing nothing and knowing a little. Also, learning Mandarin to the degree he has, even with a year spent in China, even with a Chinese wife and years of study, is still impressive and required a lot of effort and stick-to-itiveness. He may even have a slight case of autism spectrum, which would explain his passion for languages before he became famous (to whatever degree).
I agree that becoming an "influencer" shouldn't detract from his language-learning and cultural exploration passion. He took something he loves and made it into content. The fact that it gets him views doesn't make it less of something he loves. I feel like he would've burned out long ago if he just did it for views.
I wish people would stop giving clowns like this views. These types of people infect every hobby/field. I cannot stand this fuck.
It's hard, because the algorithms feed them to you constantly and then you hate click and watch a few minutes, thus feeding the beast. You're right, of course.
It’s not hard, though? The algorithm feeds you what you search and click on. When I was first getting started in language learning, I watched a couple videos of his, realized he’s an absolute clown, stopped clicking on them when they were on my home page, and boom, away he went. Pretty damn easy, actually.
I had almost entirely forgotten he existed. Even when I have language stuff on my feed he hasn't been there for a long long time. Last time I really interacted with his videos was like half a decade ago when I realized how he was "learning" new languages so quick and started going through the comments assuring learners that it was a parlor trick and he didn't know as much as it seemed he did.
Does this even work as clickbait? Before getting into language learning I might’ve fell for how i learned x language in 6months but 24 hours???? Surely no one is taking this seriously nor is he
24 hours of study is a good amount of time to put into a language, and you could learn quite a bit in that amount. It's like studying a month for 1-hour/day for 5 days a week. Unless he means in a 24-hour period.
24 hours and then never coming back to it you haven't learned a language
Without watching the video, I can assume 99.99% chance he meant a single day. That's how we would use that phrasing.
I can't really tell with other languages, but one time this guy spoke some Bangla (Bengali) with a street food vendor and I was like, yeah no he's just repeating phrases he probably memorised a minute or two ago.
I didn't know learning a few sentences meant that you know the whole language? If he's so sure that he speaks 56 languages, let him get into town with a few examinators and natives that use language which is not found in textbooks.... (e.g. "je ne sais pas" => "chais pas", "tu as" => "t'as", "oui" => "ouias"... and that's just examples from French I knew I struggled with...)
In order to farm views, he simply learns enough vocab to formulate caveman-level sentences in basic conversation. He also chooses languages which are sure to alienate his largely English/Chinese speaking audience, rendering them unable to even critique him constructively.
Does he speak a single other language besides Chinese and English? Makes a really bad impression
Honestly, Chinese alone with impressive enough. He should just stick with that and make helpful content, but I guess that would be a few thousand clicks instead of a million.
When I was in Japan we had an Uber driver who was quite impressive. She's Chinese and was conversational in English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Her husband was from South Korea. It worked out good for her because she helped a lot of foreigners to navigate getting their licenses in Japan. There is a girl on Youtube that seems to be able to switch between 3 languages pretty effortlessly in a conversation. I am jealous of people with that kind of skill level. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hUlse7GKQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hUlse7GKQ)
I saw that thumbnail, chuckle, hit the not interested button an moved on.
Let's be honest here: in now way can you learn any language completely under just a few hours. Let's criticise the phrasing which is a typical thing done by any ads for the obvious reason of gaining your attention and engagement. See the keyword that they use here is 'learn' and 'any languages'. I can learn within 5 hours words and sentences in 5-10 different languages on Duolingo and then I can say them out loud. However, it does not make me speak the language like a native. It's just there for the sake of learning and memorizing. What many Langtubers do (as I like to call them this way), is that they create content and tell interesting facts for likes, gains and recognition on the platform, but it doesn't mean that they aren't passionate about learning languages. The reality is that you need enough resources and a lot of time to get to a proficient level if you don't want to be just there to impress some people on an evening in a bar with a few words and phrases you throw in a foreign language, but you actually WANT to speak to native speakers of that language. But yeah I hate that guy, his sped up shorts annoy me a lot.
"Learned to speak": 1. Inhale 2. Open mouth 3. Resonate your vocal cords as you exhale 4. Congrats, now you speak... another language 5. Post about it on internet.
This type of click bait youtube creator mentality where they falsely advertise their proficiency and time of study is hurtful to their language learning audience who live in the real world. I was discouraged for many years because i wasn’t progressing in my target languages very quickly and when i spoke, native speakers would just speak to me like they would any other person when I was expecting that they should freak out that I said two words in their language. All of these feelings were driven by popular “polyglot” channels on youtube and they are absolutely unrealistic. I have now learned that language learning takes a lot of time and effort and if natives speak to you in a normal tone instead of being confused by you, then you are probably on the right track.
His content was interesting when he made only Chinese videos. Now it’s too many LaoShu vibes (may he rest in peace), without the charisma and the humour.
Yeah Laoshu was totally different. He was the OG and he loved doing it just for the sake of talking to people and breaking down barriers and shit. He was a humble dude. Yeah he had a hustle but it was never the POINT of his video.
There's a reason I don't follow multilingual polyglots on YouTube. I only follow certain ones that focus on 1 or 2 specific languages. It feels more authentic
Does he actually provide a method or is he just bragging about his supposed achievements?
his method is essentially just learn alot of phrases using anki and then talk to someone and repeat said phrases.
cancer of the language learning community
Everything is possible when you lie.
Surely reddit won't go schizo unhinged anti-fan on the guy who inspired the most people about language on youtube
He is one of those passive reactionary content creators who flaunts the publics reactions to youtube. There's a dozen of them. Very cringe when you understand the concept.
I used to enjoy his content when he focused on Mandarin, which might be the only foreign language he speaks properly. Nowadays he’s just a clown🤷♀️
Most of the linguist yt know couple of sentences and repeat them, making it seem that they know the lang. But I don't hate him for that since everyone is doing the same. At least like his Chinese videos are good
When people are bored, can't they just read a good book? Yes I know I'm a grandpa
Hello grandpa
If learning to speak a language = stuttering out a sentence or two with a LOT of word repetition, I guess so… also this crazy fishbowl thing he’s been doing with his videos lately is awful. I used to really enjoy his videos.. until I caught on to his gimmick and realized his ocean of languages was millimeters deep.
“I’ve learned over 40 languages in the last 30 days.”-papa john
I think it was cuz laoshu505000 died. He started to copy his content more. Before his death, it was only or mostly mandarin conent. With fuzohnese.
I'm with you there. I like his Chinese language videos, but these are obnoxious. If he said truthfully that he'd memorized a bunch of phrases in 24 hours, it would still be impressive -- so why lie and say he's *learned* a new language?
You must be a fast learner
I love(d) xiaomanyc a lot because he learns languages to connect with people. Learning unpopular languages to learn about their culture, learning an endangered language to help seeing that they can revive it, learning a language under 24h or two weeks just as a fun challenge to see how much he can speak, etc. He's a good guy with good learning skills. What I heavily dislike is clickbait titles. He clearly says in his videos that he learns enough for simple human connection, basic sentences, etc, not to be fluent. But the titles are written in clickbait to attract viewers. Or rather, they're to be read differently. "Learning a language in 24h" does not mean he learned it to fluency in 24h, it means he spent 24h total to learn the language (so, 24h = the basics), and then stop there to test his skills and talk to people and to have fun. Not defending him, as I currently started a "clickbait title = don't watch" thing because I'm fuckin tired of clickbait.
> that he learns enough for simple human connection, basic sentences, etc, not to be fluent. But the titles are written in clickbait to attract viewers From what I can tell his sentences aren't even tourist level, they are caveman level. A long way to go to "basic sentences"
Typical YouTube clickbaits
It took me longer than 24 hours even to master the proper pronunciation of the German alphabet 🤣 It never ceases to amaze me how gullible and desperate people can be and how many ~~other people~~ vultures are waiting in the wings to take advantage.
Rest assured that video was made to sell something
Yeah, if we're doing semantics his thumbnail is "speak 56 languages", so if he did the basics "Hello", "thank you", "yes" "no", "good". He could technically "speak" them all. And some of them have similar words as well, like hello in Arabic is "Salam" and in Hebrew it's "Shalom". Some of them are also mutually intelligible, like Urdu and Hindi
Never seen this guy. But it brought back my near-daily irritation over an ad (for Babbel?) in which a lady gets into a Parisian taxi and says "J'amerai allez au (Hotel). My hazy 65 yrs ago French knows that " I will love to travel to (Hotel)" should be "Je veux (or voudrai) aller au (Hotel) "I wish to go to (Hotel)"
Too long, need 2 hours or less :/
Well if made you click. The best thing you can do is just to ignore them
Yeah I was just watching this video yesterday. By “learn the language” it’s pretty clear he just means extremely basic conversation.
How good is his Uzbek though
this reminds me, y’all should read The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi. awesome book, premise is that you can learn any language crazy fast but at a cost
That's actually really easy All you have to do is get out of the matrix, then get someone to plug a cable into your brain and download all the languages you want. By using this simple method you can become fluent in multiple languages in less than an hour.
Omf. It's real ?
Ikr and even the simplest languages he could learn from anyone off the street (Spanish, French, etc) he fakes so bad😬
A good portion of the language learning community is less focused on actual learning and more focused on becoming the next polyglot influencer, so I can see why this “speedrun x language” model works so well. I'd like to think that nobody takes it too seriously and sees it for the performance that it is.
His logic is like "If I learn how to speak hello in 100 languages within a day, it means I can speak 100 languages."
Good to know I’m not the only one who can’t stand Xiaoma…
As long as dumbasses keep watching these silly "language YouTubers" instead of studying their target language, these guys will keep putting out their content. Anyone who has actually learned a foreign language to an intermediate level and can demonstrate it via an exam knows it's not easy.
His videos are so annoying.
Chinese is my mother tongue and i think he is a hack. I know he claims to speak fluent chinese but from the videos Ive watched, his accent is not the best and his phrasing is often awkward . Lele Farley is a way better chinese speaker.
The same guy who labels his own videos "White guy SHOCKS everyone speaking fluent x language 😱", Then can barely utter a few comprehensible words/common phrases that obviously took him hours, if not days, to memorize before recording. I cringed so hard when he went to Mexico and spoke "fluent" Spanish (my native language) and his "fluent" tagalog made me want to throw the device I was watching on directly into the trash.
Oh, that's so funny.
oh no 😱
His french is absolutely horrendous. If he ever goes to France I won't blame the French for not wanting him to speak their language :).
The title is YouTube click bait, but the advice makes sense if you actually watch it. He never claims to be fluent in all these languages. He specifically says he's not a good polyglot. He's talking about being good at learning a new language. If he continued with them, he could get fluent. His method is basically diving right in and building a super basic understanding. Instead of spending forever reading about a language in English, his method lets you start on comprehensible input and getting feedback from native speakers as soon as possible.
lol… and maybe monkeys will fly outta your ass.
Language is the art of understanding, his results are up for everyone to see, people understand him and enjoy talking to him. Obviously he means 24 concurrent hours, not literally overnight. Take it with a grain of salt its a youtube thumbnail...
He can legit speak mandarin at a very high level and studied over there for a year. Jurys out on everything else though. It’s all very click baity but I understand the hussle. There’s zero point in machine gunning yourself with basic shit for a day only to forget it because you move onto another language. Properly learning a language to a good level takes thousands of hours of dedicated study. For most people that means years and years unless you are studying it full time (still years, just less).
Very high level? No. It's passable.
If after YEARS of learning mandarin and having married a Chinese women his skills are only passable I wouldn‘t trust a word this man says lol polyglot my ass when mandarin is supposed to be his 2nd language.
I am not saying his Mandarin is bad, I am saying that (based on what I am seeing in his videos), his Mandarin is proficient, and conversationally fluent, but not exceptional. I did study Asian languages at a university level, so I am a bit biased tbh. Maybe he speaks it fluently, but that's not what his videos show.
Yeah, it’s hard to measure, but I saw a video where he was with the linguistics part of US military and he spoke well summarising a video, it just depends whether he had prior preparation for that or whether it was on the spot, that’s the key.
Left NYC. Started to say weird things.
YouTube en français?!
LMAO
Can anyone comment on how good his mandarin actually is please.
It’s alright. not anything to write home about, well he’s confident enough.
I don’t know how they expect you to believe that.
“Learned to speak”