The Endless Horizon: Language Learning as "A Second Childhood" and "Second Education".

[@JD79-t9r writes in:]

Eisel, it's amazing how these guys always want to dismiss the 'talking about politics or science in your target language'. They say things like 'You don't need to talk about those 'advanced' topics bla bla bla.

What a funny cope!

First off, they call these topics 'advanced' based on their own lack of true fluency in their target language.

These are just normal parts of life.

Notice you never see any of these polyglots or their super-heroes like Krashen mention SCHOOL EDUCATION when talking about how native speakers develop their ability in their own language.

Because this would put an end to the whole Language Learning (fluency) grift completely. Because for someone to truelly be native-level fluent in a language they learn as an adult, they will basically have to relive a whole life in that language. Do all the school work in that language, from Kindergaten all the way to High School (at the very least) and University for some.

They will have to learn the Mathematics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Literature etc that native speakers learn in their own language. From the first day of school till the end of high school.

They will have to sit for all the regular tests. Get all the correction/feedback from teachers. Do the revision while prepairing for tests like native speakers do.

Memorise thousands of passages, sentences, formulas etc because you HAVE TO.

They will have to watch enough media to equal that which a native speaker has consumed. And this includes all sectors, from movies to comedy to songs to News on TV and reading Newspapers to cartoons.

They will have to also consume enough of the dialects of that language from different regions etc similar to a native speaker. Learn and use all the slang as it develops through their lifetime. So this way they know which slang is outdated and which one is new, and use them at the appropriate time like a native-speaker would.

For those who are religi0us, they will have to relearn their book and texts in their new language.

When you say these words to a Christian whose first language is English: "For God so loved the world...." They will automatically just say the remainder of the words and most likely tell you the verse it came from and so many other things associated with that verse.

Which Polyglot (assuming christian) can do this in any of their learned languages?

Can Luca Lampariello correctly describe (In English, German, Chinese or any of the 12+ languages he claims to speak) the industrial production of ammonia including the correct equations at each stage?

This is something done by a first or second year high schooler in most English speaking 3rd countries.

Can he define photosynthesis? osmosis? These are things done by 12 year olds in these countries.

Can he read a poem and be able to point out that there is alliteration used or consonance or assonance or sibilance... and be able to define what each of these words mean?

What is Charles' Law? What about Ohm's Law?

Can he explain each and include the necessary equations for 10 marks each?

Can he give synonyms and antonyms of words without having to think much?

How about talking about the periodic table in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese etc?

Again, these are things taught to teenagers.

These are not 'useless advanced topics' as they like to cope.

Can he comfortably understand a CANIBUS song or a WU TANG CLAN song including the cultural references? Busta Rhymes? Eminem? Nas?

If given the chance to show his speaking skills, can he commentate on a whole game of his favorite Sport similar to how a native-speaker fan of the Sport would? Say, a World Cup soccer game, or professional boxing match or whichever sport he enjoys.

The list is ENDLESS.

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[And I reply:]

Photosynthesis is a telling example: I raised this issue with Wolvengrey at FNU, asking him how languages like Cree and Ojibwe could survive if we didn't produce fundamental science textbooks, such as "intro to biology", in those languages. Cree can't exist just for repeating certain sentiments passed on from your grandmother: in reality, everyone in that institution had accepted that the language was already dead. They were curating a museum exhibit rather than teaching a living language. Similar questions can be asked about "small" modern languages like Lao and Cambodian, if they rely on students to speak English (or some other foreign language) to deal with "serious" issues. [Added in editing: I interviewed a professor in Thailand who admitted that her ecology program relied on all of the students being able to read articles in English, and that most of her classes consisted of extempore diglossia, coaching the students to better understand the English text in Thai. I assume the students were writing exams and essays in a garbled mix of English and Thai.] Among the Sinhalese, it was common to meet people who could neither discuss Buddhist philosophy nor modern politics in their native language, only in English (although Buddhist philosophy and modern politics are uniquely connected to the history of the place, Sri Lanka). You raise several other issues that are worth talking about, but you might be surprised at the extent to which I can (and do) sympathize with these other YouTubers: they're trapped in a cycle of successfully catering to the audience, and they feel that they have to keep coming up with new videos every few days, instead of dealing with the humbling (if not humiliating) and child-like labor of actually learning a language (or actually learning about history, politics or photosynthesis or anything else). You know, I could produce a new video on Plato today, putting together a fresh analysis of what I already know in an entertaining way, but I could also read Plato (JUST IN ENGLISH) for the next five years, before making another video on the topic. Which of these two kind of learning would be rewarded on YouTube?

The Importance of Being Monolingual: the Gigachad Polyglot Perspective.

Eisel Mazard.  Monolingual Polyglot.  Is the #1 vibes-based language education channel on the internet.  You realize. 

LINK: https://youtu.be/h2MhyKJw_Yo

On youtube and everywhere podcasts are "sold".

The Other Ovid: Charles Martin discusses his translation of the Metamorphoses.

Stephanie McCarter's translation is worse than Charles Martin's by every conceivable measure aside from brevity. In my opinion, the difference in quality is drastic, and SM's work is drastically worse, unless for some reason you're interested in reading a translation that has the fewest words per line possible (but even this does not entail that her translation is better suited to parallel reading with the original Latin).

I have owned a very cheap, paperback copy of CM's Ovid since October of 2021, and bought SM's version second hand at the relatively high price of $28.86 Canadian.

There are shallow reasons for CM's translation, now, to be overlooked: Penguin, as a very powerful publishing house, is promoting SM, with a profusion of pink carefully calculated to appeal to Gen-Z, making the book look rather more like an off-brand beauty product than an on-brand examination of ancient ugliness, and while I encourage everyone to judge a book by its cover, in this case the one in a plain, white binding (with just a stripe of blue at the bottom, no illustration whatsoever) is the incongruous winner.

I have discussed the high cost of the Latin text in recent (short) videos: it may be worth mentioning that I paid $54.95 (Canadian) for the Oxford edition, commonly sold for a hundred dollars or more, but if you can find it for $80 (and you can) that would still be cheaper than owning the two volumes of the Loeb edition together. And although I identify as a nihilist, I cannot believe that nothing has improved in the editing of the text between 2004 and 1916. Admittedly, when I was reading Pali, I knew of many examples of ancient texts that had only gotten worse in the passage of the same century.

My life is just one sex scandal after another, apparently.

This one is on "Eisel Mazard" the youtube channel, and "Everyone Hates Eisel Mazard" the podcast, but not on à-bas-le-ciel.

LINK: https://youtu.be/bJk8AJde9uY

LINK: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Yxrut6tXDOoCI3uaWKV1J

Youtube is dead: the lost avant garde of intellectual dissent on the internet.

Now on youtube as never before…

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsTs-Lw_oPI

The Monolingual Polyglot: Learning a New Language for All the Wrong Reasons.

An imperfect parallel to my "dramatic return" to ASOIAF youtubing, I'd point out that quite a few of you started following me for precisely content of this kind… EVEN IF YOU'D RATHER NOT ADMIT IT NOW, IN RETROSPECT. ;-)

Escapism, political engagement and the alternatives: to what extent am I learning a new language just to escape from a cycle of imitation within my own life… to what extent am I learning something new to overcome "the aesthetics of substitution"? Too often, something truly new is desired only as a replacement for something already familiar, instead of being engaged with as genuinely unknown, studied for the sake of pressing into the unknown.

LINK: https://youtu.be/fr3AHEGmmeQ

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere that podcasts are "sold": https://open.spotify.com/episode/5CsFwhDypV5oi9C4q37B86

On obeying a liar for the sake of a lie.

[Coryintheboof8730 writes:]

Would you at minimum say that the only value in reading bs or being lied to (if only extremely minimal) is learning the ins and outs of psychological deception/lies/twisting narratives? Yes you can learn that elsewhere, but if learning new nuances=value there’s that. But I feel like you’ll tell me I’m wrong here for that. But yes, we agree more value is found in 100 other places and situations.

—————

[And I reply:]

Most people I've known, face to face, are damaged for decades by very simple lies that were told to them: I seem to be an unusual person in noticing and dealing with lies rapidly —but most people I've known (99%?) can't cope with them and can't "get over" them.

I realize, BTW, that this reply has relied on extremely idiomatic, colloquial English, and many of my ESL viewers won't really know what I mean.

Even in workplace situations, even in university classroom situations, not getting into the emotional entanglements of family and romantic relationships, the vast majority of people can't cope with the lies they've been told: it's possible this is just stupidity, and it's possible there are psychological aspects that can be usefully pinned down.

Those who think it's a virtue to be trusting and faithful suffer when they realize they would have been more virtuous through suspicion and doubt. Those who think it's a virtue to be obedient suffer when they realize they've been obeying a liar for the sake of a lie.

Austin Vegan writes in to the channel.

[Austin Vegan writes:]

I’ve been vegan for over 9 years and into environmentalism/ecology for even longer. Being in those spaces, I’ve interacted with many people on the left and far left while considering myself more “moderate” or “apolitical.” That said, my political leanings are not only considered “right wing” by the majority of vegans, but often far right, or even treated as if they’re akin to being a “nazi.”

The reality is, my views have remained largely consistent over those years. I’m still vegan. Still an environmentalist. Still an atheist. What has changed is the ideological climate around these spaces. The nature of this certain brand of leftism that has taken hold is to continually move the goalpost as to what is deemed “moral,” and of course acceptable. Views that would have once been seen as normal, nuanced, or just outside the dominant current are now framed as evil, dangerous, or beyond discussion.

I’m at the point of really trying to distance veganism from leftism as far as possible, even refraining from alluding to discrimination and speciesism in educating people. Not because those concepts are totally without value, but because they immediately pull the conversation into a broader ideological framework that I don’t think is necessary, and often does more to alienate than persuade. The case against exploiting animals does not require buying into an entire left-wing worldview, yet veganism is constantly packaged that way, to its own detriment.

In the context of comedy, leftism is virtually incompatible at face value. Comedy provides relief from the suffering in life. It makes light of the absurdity of reality. It plays with tension, contradiction, and discomfort in a way that allows people to process what would otherwise just crush them. A worldview that moralizes everything, polices tone, and treats irreverence itself as suspect cannot coexist comfortably with real comedy. Comedy requires room to breathe. It requires a tolerance for imperfection, for offense, for things landing badly sometimes. Without that, you don’t get comedy, you get sterile ideological performance masquerading as humor.

And what makes it worse is that these same leftist comedians will often feel emboldened to join in the jew-hate only when it aligns with the group-think of the day, “Israel bad,” “free Palestine,” and the like. Not because they arrived there through careful thought, principle, or moral consistency, but because it is socially rewarded within their circles. Their morality is shaped far less by independent reasoning than by mimicry, social pressure, and a constant need to remain aligned with whatever emotional and political consensus is dominant at the moment. Criticizing Israel is one thing. Sliding into outright hostility toward Jews because it has become fashionable in certain circles is another.

—————

[My reply, FWIW:]

Re: "I’m at the point of really trying to distance veganism from leftism as far as possible…" —there's a significant precedent in the rise and fall of New Atheism as an internet phenomenon. It's difficult to remember this now, but the people who identified as atheists (during a brief period of time when money and fame could be had through talking about atheism) really could not deal with the separation of atheism from Communism, specifically, and leftism, generally. I don't think this example has predictive power for what happens next in veganism, it's just an instructive example from the past. https://youtu.be/PjjiQDDQFZA

Antisemitism in Stand Up Comedy: Emptying Out the Left.

LINK: https://youtu.be/Yz8Bhqj5rYA

Available both on Youtube and as a podcast, not just on Spotify but… wherever podcasts are "sold".

Falling Birth Rates and the Fallacy of Composition. #feminism

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0D-b7ilgT8