AMAZING! 13 year old polyglot speaks 20 languages

[Tristano]

Guys come on.
Bashing a 13 old girl that can speak 20 languages at vary degrees of proficiency because she's not good in all her languages is utterly ridiculous. Perfection is no obligation. I remember an old joke that says "Do you know what is an American who can speak 4 languages? A polyglot. Do you know what is a Belgian who can speak 4 languages? A barista, for example"

The only criticism that I have for this video is when Wouter says that Dutch is a very difficult language. Come on
So difficult that even the immigrants with the lowest IQ can learn it good enough to get by. Just because it is your mother tongue it doesn't mean it's very difficult.

[Stefan]

Guys come on. Bashing a 13 old girl that can speak 20 languages at vary degrees of proficiency because she's not good in all her languages is utterly ridiculous. Perfection is no obligation.

I reckon the annoyance is only a result of the video creators clickbait title. The claim of "speaks 20 languages" in the title while multiple languages are just two phrases with cuts between. It rubs people the wrong way when the industry is filled with self-proclaimed gurus claiming to speak x languages or learning a language in a week.

Her passion is great and she'll make tremendous progress if she keeps it up.

[Cèid Donn]

Guys come on. Bashing a 13 old girl that can speak 20 languages at vary degrees of proficiency because she's not good in all her languages is utterly ridiculous. Perfection is no obligation.

I reckon the annoyance is only a result of the video creators clickbait title. The claim of "speaks 20 languages" in the title while multiple languages are just two phrases with cuts between. It rubs people the wrong way when the industry is filled with self-proclaimed gurus claiming to speak x languages or learning a language in a week.

Her passion is great and she'll make tremendous progress if she keeps it up.

Well, perhaps that's what is behind the negativity. I don't know the minds of other people so I will refrain for speaking for them, but I do agree there is some accountability here by the content creator who appears to spin this in a clickbait-y direction and it's unfair to this girl, Cameron. Cameron says at the end that she wants to improve in all these languages so to be fluent in them all, so I do believe she had no intention in presenting herself as a fluent speaker, just as a kid who is really passionate about languages, which is great.

I started learning my first "second" language (German) around this age and I was able to pick up some basic conversation skills really fast--like, within a few weeks. People thought I was some kind of prodigy, but really, that's how fast most any kid can learn when they are really excited about something. I was very eager to learn a new language and I even had a written list of languages--over 60!--that I wanted to learn, but the adults in my life were not encouraging nor supportive, because in the US when I was young, multilingualism was not see as a valuable skills. I only was able to learn German because my school offered it (this was before the internet was available to everyone). I wish I had the support and encouragement this girl has when I was her age. Maybe I would be fluent in 20 languages by now, who knows.

[tarvos]

Wouter is notoriously clickbaity in my experience.

[STARSEARCHINGCAT]

There's lots to say about this kid.

First, I'm feel cheated by this title that she speaks 20 languages, when it's more of learning 20 languages. Obviously it's really exaggerated. It looks like that she and Wouter are speaking really fluently, but they're mostly just saying the easiest things like the greetings or "I like this language.", that's just the basics every beginner can do.

There were lots of switching to English when she can't remember the words, grammatical mistakes, pronunciation issues, in most of them. The ones that I found she was good at were English, Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese, German.

Remarks:
INDONESIAN: She just switched back to English without finishing the only sentence. She clearly can't speak it well.
CHINESE: She switched the Spanish "de" with Chinese "的" (de).
KOREAN: Even a non-Korean speaker remarks her. She said "한국어 food". The switching back to English isn't what she did. She literally said, "Korean language food", doesn't make sense.
FRENCH: She can't say much, admits it herself.
DUTCH: Same thing as French.
TAGALOG: Same thing as above.
FINNISH: Not bad, but I don't think she can speak much by just ending with the greetings.
THAI: She didn't say anything but greetings.
ARABIC: She couldn't say much really.

She's (now, was) only 13 years old, and only started 4 years ago. It's not so surprising.

[Leurre]

I for one am totally fine with pointing out flaws, guys, it's ok, it's human
I'll say though my biggest discomfort with watching the video, when it touched on languages I know or am learning, is that there was almost no soul in any of them. I didn't get the impression that either speaker really owned or felt themselves own the language they were speaking. Actually no, Spanish for the girl, a little. But Korean, Japanese, French, Mandarin...nothing for me. It felt like a performance more than a conversation, and I didn't enjoy the video because of that. But it's great that this was shared, there's some great convo around it.

[Kraut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_grA3Vbuefc
14 year old polyglot speaks 13 languages during question game

[lusan]

I cannot take any polyglot's video (or whoever posted it) seriously when it's an interview that has been cut every 20 seconds—just be honest and show the whole thing.

As for her speaking 20 languages, that's simply not true. The title might be better suited as, 13 year old learning 20 languages. As it stands, I feel a little cheated by the title.

Chances are that the poster of that video chose the clickbait route. Obviously, it was effective.

She is no doubt an exceptionally bright kid with a great talent; but, unfortunately, I see her as being used as a pawn to get views. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

I personally never accepted this type of performance.
Why?
Time, time, time.... Common sense.
20 languages in 13 years!
Let's say. 13/20 ~ 0.60.
So in average 6 months per language from the birth.
Obviously, impossible.

3-5 languages maybe.... if they are learned within a polyg. family.
Otherwise, non ha nessun senso!

... and no... I did not watch the video... no need to give away my clicks in this attention economy we live today.