Advice from the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin 2014

From a panel discussion with a number of polyglots on how they learn languages:

Polyglot Gathering Report

I don't know what, if anything, this guy has to sell and I am not affiliated in any way, but thought it might be of interest.

Maybe Iversen will inform us about this gathering.

The short part about Iversen was good but it would be nice if he can tell us a little more, and specifically whether he learned anything large or small to help him with his own studies.

I clicked on the related post reporting on the sessions for the first day. I was surprised not to find something like: "Dealing with negativity and those who challenge your claimed level of abilities", or "Taking it up a notch: from A2-glot to B1-glot" or "Youtubing your way to fame and glory."

Sorry, couldn't resist. I do wonder how many of them strive for Iversen's level/goal of vocabulary knowledge in each of their languages, i.e. 15-20,000 words.

I think that he will tell us if we ask him. We can make a thread for this, for example. I can ask him in an email if you want, we are friends and correspond.

Hahaha LOL. Yes, it was extremely annoying how on a different forum they have complaiend that they were "polyglot bashed" and that "polyglot bashing" is a serious problem. Wow, for one day they must be truly not accepted in the society, then they would shut up about their polyglot bashing. A luxury's problem.

I downlaoded his book and it had about 10 tips for language learning using technology, but this things are well known here I suppose. But it was free and nice that he has written it.

I just saw this brief report and noticed that I'm quoted for this statement: "My main criteria for deciding whether to start learning a language is whether you can pronounce it from the script alone." Ahem, no - this definitely isn't my main criterion (lin guistic relationships and free time are more important), but nevertheless a sensible writing system is an important condition for me for choosing to spend time on a language. If I don't have a teacher and don't hear a language with an a-phonetic writing system it will be unreasonably hard to learn it, and I mentioned languages like Chinese and Arabic as cases where the writing system would be a showstopper. But taken at face value this criterion would also have blocked me from learning English - but there I actually had not only teachers, but also ample supplies of speech samples from TV, and besides I really didn't have any choice.

For me the main differences between the panelists was the extent we depend on 1) written sources and 2) formal learning methods like wordlists/SRS, and also the extent to which we have been able to place ourselves in 3) multilingual environments. Minor differences involves things like the use of music, where my preference for instrumental classical music means that song texts really can't be relevant for me.

As far as I remember the whole 2 hour long session was recorded, but it may take time before anyone has got the time it takes to put it on the internet. And that is also the case with other recordings from Berlin (including the one with my own rant about ways to survive grammar). The people who arranged the event have asked for assistance to video editing, but apparently it hasn't been possible to get enough voluntary editors. This is a bit strange as the few clips which have posted on Youtube don't have subtitles and don't seem to have been heavily edited in other ways, so the editing process shouldn't be too hard.

Did you learn anything new that you might like to implement yourself? Also, how concerned on the whole, were the attendees with efficiency in their language learning? I would think that might be a topic of concern to polyglots.


I hope you don't mind my sharing this link from your HTLAL log, but I thought perhaps the readers here might be interested in that interview Chris Broholm did with you, and which you linked to in your log, on the Actual Fluency site: Iversen interview.

As an aside, although I have listened to some of your youtube vids and not really noticed this, but if I did not know who you were and were only listening to parts of that interview that didn't reveal same or your native language, I would think that you had an Indian English accent, from vowel quality and intonation. Being a European, it is natural you would tend to end up with a British type of accent, but your intonation was more sing-song to my ears, and your enunciation, while very clear, resembled that of Indian English that I have heard (long e vs short i, longer final vowels). Perhaps that has more to do with your native Danish than with more exposure to British media.

I have never really speculated about my accent in English , and I have had few comments to it - except when people frantically tried to pinpoint my origin. Long ago someone suggested an influence from Welsh (which I never have learnt), and now Peregrinus suggests a ressemblance to Indian English. Maybe it true, but I just think that I have drifted aimlessly around on the ocean of my inner speech and happened to end up with something that isn't really welldefined within the world of well-established existing dialects, but nevertheless fairly stable after many years of use. If it was my Danish background that had marked the direction of my English then words like 'clear' and 'singsong' would probably not have been the most adequate to describe it.

The most interesting lectures on the conference were in my opinion those where speakers or learners of less common languages or dialects talked in and about these languages and dialects - like A.Senoner who spoke in Swedish about his native Ladino, Dani Meizner who spoke about (and in) a Tyrolian variant of Bavarian, Ed Robertson with his delightful Scots accent and even more delightful whisky cakes, Rawlings with his lecture about Afrikaans, dr. Popkins with a partly sociological lecture about Welsh and "David" from Sweden who improvised a five minute speed talk in impressively clear and beautiful Latin. Actually one of my biggest grievances is that I had underestimated my need for Esperanto and totally neglected to refresh my Latin (to the degree that I didn't even bring along a dictionary). On the more technical side I didn't learn much - for instance there is a lot of interesting research going on in neurolinguistics, but it turned out to be impossible for Eryk Walczak to describe it at a detailed level with an audience who had widely differing levels of knowledge about the subject. I only heard the second half of Tesco's lecture series about phonetics, but I was really impressed both with his knowledge and his ability to switch languages almost in the middle of a sentence. From the other side of the Atlantic I would like to mention Ellen Jovin, who described ways to make a living out of your language skills in almost glowing tones - and made me very happy that I don't have to participate in such a rat race. My own lecture "How to survive grammar" went well and was well received, but I was slightly puzzled to see it described as advice purely to beginners - I do think that it pays even for advanced learners to think about the order in which you learn things and how you make them easier to memorize. And there weren't many other lectures specifically about learning techniques - except professor Nowaks lecture about the use of etymology, which I unfortunately couldn't witness because I was busy learning about Ladino.

After Budapest I made a video, but with three times as many lectures and several times more interaction one video wouldn't be enough this time - and the result was that I didn't make any video at all about the event. But at least there is the interview with Chris Broholm to refer to, where I got the chance to expound the idiosyncratic side of my language learning. And if the lecture about grammar never turns up on Youtube I might write a rant somewhere with the same content (or even return to video making). I still have the images I used lying around somewhere.

And then I noticed that there are plans about a similar event in Berlin next year. I'll try to include it in my travel plans.

Thanks for the further information. I just was curious as to your accent. I do wonder why people would "frantically" try to pinpoint your origin. Maybe a modern-day Professor Higgins type of person.

You forgot to bring a laptop, tablet or smartphone? Wait, let me guess . . .

Learning how to learn things is a forgotten art. I will be interested to hear your lecture when it becomes available.

I was not expecting anything radically new regarding techniques and methods. I was curious though as to novel uses or combinations of existing ones. So many of the techniques and methods discussed by us here and on HTLAL have never really had any scientific testing, and there are many possible permutations.

I wonder if the attendees were surveyed as to which topics they would most like to hear about in future conferences.

The next Polyglot Gathering in Berlin is scheduled for May 2015, but I have seen different dates - in some places the dates are given as May 1-4, but the homepage says May 13-17. I guess that I can attend the event in both periods, but right now the registration button just leads to the registration page for Facebook - and I'm not going to succomb to that sinister time sucker.

In the meantime you can see a growing lists of video from Berlin 2014 at the "Polyglot Gathering" channel on Youtube. My own modest contribution to the general entertainment is the latest addition so far, but I know that the panel discussion is ready for publication.

I have only so much inclination to watch such youtube vids, though I would watch Iversen and a few others. I would rather see some type of written publication (digital) with contributions from speakers, and which were also peer reviewed in some way, at least to require explicitly citing one's sources and differentiating personal opinion/experience from research based conclusions/recommendations. I don't mean a truly academic publication which would exclude most such speakers, but still something more rigorous than a series of blog posts.

I've heard that Berlin is a nice city, but I don't know if I can visit the polyglot conference, and probably for me, it would be too many people there. I will watch some videos later.