Do you think Benny's explanation is plausible?

[abcdefg]

#18 -- Thanks, @Gato. I wonder how well he could converse after he finished his mainland China travels. Wonder if the additional practice produced a significant improvement.

Those three month videos, all other considerations aside, are painful listening.

[陳德聰]

@renzhe

You didn't quote the second part where I expressly stated that difficulty and complexity are not the same thing. It is much harder to satisfactorily quantify difficulty than it is to quantify complexity. A more complex language would have more features than a comparable less complex language. Note that this would require some additional theoretical work on weighting the different features.

There is no logical nor empirical basis for an assertion that all languages are somehow equally complex, so why would I choose to believe that?

Would you have me believe that Cantonese and Mandarin are equally complex???

[HusbandOfWuhan]

Yes, I think Benny's explanation is plausible because it was his personal experience and his feelings and experiences cannot be denied. Objectively speaking, there is such thing as a cultural barrier or factors involved in and affect the learning of a new language.

People in metropolitan Shanghai may be more impatient due to the fast pace of the big city. However, there are very friendly Shanghainese people all over the place. You just depends whether or not you bump into one. And some Chinese are more open toward non Chinese people, while others are not simply due to cultural reasons. Sometimes it also depends on the mood people are in on that day. I must say that Taiwanese people from those I've met before, are generally friendly.

[GaryM]

I guess I should qualify the term "plausible" in the original question. Implicit in this was the notion of an objective truth that we all might share. I was not asking the question "Does Benny believe that his problems were essentially cultural", I was asking the question "based on peoples experiences generally of Chinese people, are there specific cultural issues that are detrimental to learning the language". I can imagine that this might be true in a place like Japan (where I lived for 10 years), due to the inherent politeness and reservedness of Japanese people. I was wondering whether or not there is something peculiar about Chinese people in Taiwan. According to comments here, that is not the case.

I really want to like Benny. I think his stated goal of encouraging people to learn languages is admirable.

However, he seems to be suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance at the moment. Maybe this is encapsulated by his final sentence.

http://www.fluentin3...ennys-mandarin/

"In the end, I got to one level below what I’d be happier to call fluency, but at least in this sense, the mission has been a complete success."

This is a little like saying; "my goal was to get an A in the exam, but I got a B, which is a complete success". I am not arguing about whether or not he believes it was a complete success, what I am arguing is that "my goal was to get an A in the exam, but I got a B, which is not a complete success" is objectively correct.

I think Benny is making a big mistake. People like their heros to be flawed. As a brand, "The man who can learn any language in 3 months, apart from Chinese" is far more appealing than "The man who says he can learn any language in 3 months, and never admits when he is wrong."

I think he has a small window of opportunity to restore his reputation if he wants to maintain credibility as an objective source of information on language learning. However, if his intent was to create "The Benny Show", and we are not expected to take what he says as an attempt at objective truth, more like a reality show, then I guess that what he is doing is fit for purpose. In which case the mistake was mine in assuming that he was trying to create something more than that.

[imron]

I think Benny is making a big mistake. People like their heros to be flawed. As a brand, "The man can learn any language in 3 months, apart from Chinese" is far more appealing than "The man can who says he learn any language in 3 months, and never admits when he is wrong."

I think he has a small window of opportunity to restore his reputation if he wants to maintain credibility as an objective source of information on language learning.

I think the problem is rather with his chosen naming and branding which leads to certain misunderstandings (which you have demonstrated perfectly in your post). He has said repeatedly and constantly ('til he's blue in the face according to this post) that he doesn't say he can learn any language in 3 months and that that is not the purpose of his language missions. 3 months is simply a goal with a well defined deadline to get him motivated, not necessarily the end target for fluency, and where he ends up he ends up, fluent or not, is not the main point. Unfortunately, the naming and branding of the site give people a different impression, hence the need to repeatedly and constantly explain himself on this issue.

[GaryM]

Well, I think this is where he ends up sounding like a politician;

"One confusion people have when they arrive on my site is this non-existent “claim” that I’m here to prove that fluency in 3 months is possible, which I’ve never made."

..is kind of undermined slightly by titling his website "fluentin3months".

It is a little like having a website called "cheapestdogfood", and having a disclaimer saying;

"One confusion people have when they arrive on my site is this non-existent “claim” that I’m here to provide the cheapest dog food, which I’ve never made."

[imron]

A concern he addresses (for better or worse) in that same post by saying:

If you don’t like it, and would prefer if I had a less ambitious blog name, tough luck

Not that I necessarily agree with that (I'm more inclined to agree with your above statement), I'm just trying to point out what he has said regarding this.

[Guest realmayo]

The question becomes: did that "fluent in 3 months" title start off as "correct", i.e. in accordance with initial hopes and expectations ... only to need subsequent refinement downwards. If it did start off as correct, it'd be interesting to know which languages proved tougher than initially thought. If it was wrong from the outset, well, that's a pity.

[imron]

You could always go back to the beginning and see.

Let us know what you find out

[GaryM]

Well.. it took only 1 minute to answer that question.

http://www.irishpolyglot.com/en/

"How to speak a language fluently in 3 months!

Anyway, in the mean time I have started another website, that I plan on updating about twice a week (it’s only in English this time!!) ... Feel free to follow me on my other blog to read all about it at www.fluentin3months.com ..."

Well, I guess Benny is more of a politician than I thought. The title "How to speak a language fluently in 3 months!" is pretty unambiguous.

So his comment;

"...non-existent “claim” that I’m here to prove that fluency in 3 months is possible, which I’ve never made."

Lets be charitable, and say that he "misremembered" things he has said in the past.

Actually,.. the truth is staring you right in the face as you click on;

http://www.fluentin3months.com/how-to-become-fluent-in-a-language-in-3-months/

It's title is "How to become fluent in a language in 3 months".

[Guest realmayo]

Sooner or later these discussions inevitably come down to a question of what is fluency. While I broadly agree with what you're saying, I think that side of Benny's claims was well-covered in another thread.

On a side-bar, any suggestions to complete the phrase "One man's fluency is another man's _________" ?

[anonymoose]

I'm not sure exactly what Benny means by cultural barriers. I guess it is understandable that Chinese (Taiwanese) people may be more reserved talking to a westerner than, say, a Brazilian, because being of a different ethnicity may put up a psychological barrier, not to mention that Chinese people are probably less used to being accosted by foreigners than Europeans or South Americans.

On the other hand, I wonder to what extent the apparent cold reception he received from the Chinese was precisely because Chinese is harder to learn (for native English speakers) than most other languages. I mean, given his relatively low level of Chinese compared with Spanish or German, it is not surprising that Chinese strangers would have less tolerance or patience to listen to and try to understand him.

[simplet]

I don't even really know what we're discussing here anymore.

At first we were wondering if it's possible to reach his goal in tree months, and obviously it wasn't by a long shot so there isn't much to discuss here. Then we started to discuss whether or not his method is efficient anyway, but now it seems that instead of his supposed method of speaking with people in the streets, he's pretty much been learning like everyone else (everyone that has the money to fly to Taiwan for months without working and pay for several hours of one-on-one tutoring a day that is). So now what do we have left to talk about? There isn't much left to say apart from discussing Benny's personal character, which isn't very interesting I think.

[GaryM]

Hi Simplet.

I can't speak for anyone else, but since I started the thread I can explain what I was discussing. It is about truth, it is about honesty, and in particular on the subject of the relative difficulties of learning Chinese.

From the discussion, we have established that (a) Taiwan does not appear to particularly present "cultural" difficulties to learning Chinese (b) that Benny's explanation is not really plausible in an objective sense (although he clearly believes it himself) ( c) after some quite trivial analysis of his pasts posts, he seems to lack a certain objectivity.

Personally, I would love to hear a polyglot's views of the problems and difficulties of learning Chinese, as they might have some specific insights that those of us who are fluent in only one or two languages do not. Unfortunately Benny does not appear to be the guy to do it.

I think most of us here are guenuinely interested in learning Chinese. Discussing potential sources of inspiration is I think worthwhile, and assessing the quality of their input is entirely consistent with this.

I hope that helps you understand what I thought we were talking about. I understand that there are many non-native English speakers on this website, please let me know if you need any further explanation.

[renzhe]

Personally, I would love to hear a polyglot's views of the problems and difficulties of learning Chinese, as they might have some specific insights that those of us who are fluent in only one or two languages do not.

I'm not a polyglot, but I've written some thoughts about the difficulties of learning Chinese in a different thread: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/36597-has-your-perspective-changed-since-starting-to-learn-chinese/

For me, the major difficulty is the sustained, continuous effort that is required over long periods of time. Like many people say, it's a marathon in which each step is easy, but you need endurance and perseverance. But this kind of stuff only becomes apparent after a longer period of study, not three months.

[Guest realmayo]

Like many people say, it's a marathon in which each step is easy, but you need endurance and perseverance

... which I used to think was a rather daft way of putting it, making notions of easy/difficult completely redundant as long as the thing is possible (and can be broken down in steps). But then I think, most people in the world couldn't complete a marathon if they had to set off right now, I certainly couldn't!

[jbradfor]

that it is cultural differences that have prevented him from attaining the same level as that which he has achieved in other countries. .... Does anyone else have any views on this?

Yes I do

When speaking a language, one's understanding is based a lot on what one expects the other person to say. If one if fluent in a language, and the speaker is clear, one can typically understand meaningless sentences and sentences with no context. The less fluent one is in a language, and/or the less clear the speaker is (e.g. over a bad mobile phone connection), the harder it is to get understand the meaning if one can not guess / predict roughly what is being said.

I'm pretty sure there's no debate over that?

I personally found that when I was learning Chinese, because of cultural differences, I had a harder time guessing / predicting what a Chinese person would say in a given situation, or what they would say about it, than if the person were American.

This has nothing to do with how friendly the person is. [And for the record I found Taiwanese very friendly.] And I certainly wouldn't call it the most difficult part about learning Chinese. [Maybe somewhere around #3 - #5.]

But for me it was a factor.

[Ludens]

Why is everybody here so obsessed with this guy? Every topic that mentions him turns into a long thread that gets hard to ignore after a while, taking up most of the 'popular post' places on the front page. It seems a lot of these threads are a waste of study time.

[BertR]

I agree. Currently all the "popular posts" are posts of this thread. Are these really the posts we want to promote? There are definitely a lot more useful posts than these.

[anonymoose]

If they are popular, it means people like them. Why moan about it? If you don't like them, don't open the thread.