HTLAL vs LLORG

[s_allard]

Recently I've found myself starting posts on this forum and halfway through saying to myself: Why am I bothering? After all, why put all this time and effort into something that doesn't lead to much debate and can even lead to nasty remarks. Who needs this grief?

I liked the HTLAL in its prime because there was a lot of vigorous debate and I was right in the middle. I wouldn't call the discussions academic; it was more like we were debating conceptual issues that I think had a lot of bearing on language learning. As has been mentioned there was a relatively small number of regular contributors and heavy hitters that I was always curious to read.

And there were always people doing crazy things. I remember one individual who was going to listen to a Michel Thomas course repeatedly for 72 hours without sleeping. I don't recall finding out what happened.

Some of the regular contributors from HTLAL are here at LLORG and it's always a pleasure to read them. They know who they are. But for me the magic has gone. It's not that there's nothing to debate about. It's more like there's no point. After a number of people pointed out recently, rather impolitely I believe, that I had talked about something a few years ago on HTLAL, I gave up and decided that my time could be better spent on actually learning languages rather than talking about learning them.

[jeff_lindqvist]

And there were always people doing crazy things. I remember one individual who was going to listen to a Michel Thomas course repeatedly for 72 hours without sleeping. I don't recall finding out what happened.

Thanks for reminding me of that thread!

The Ultimate Accelerated Learning Exp. ! (Message 80)

I think I'd like to try that some time. Wait a second, I have five days off now...

[Systematiker]

Recently I've found myself starting posts on this forum and halfway through saying to myself: Why am I bothering? After all, why put all this time and effort into something that doesn't lead to much debate and can even lead to nasty remarks. Who needs this grief?

I liked the HTLAL in its prime because there was a lot of vigorous debate and I was right in the middle. I wouldn't call the discussions academic; it was more like we were debating conceptual issues that I think had a lot of bearing on language learning. As has been mentioned there was a relatively small number of regular contributors and heavy hitters that I was always curious to read.

And there were always people doing crazy things. I remember one individual who was going to listen to a Michel Thomas course repeatedly for 72 hours without sleeping. I don't recall finding out what happened.

Some of the regular contributors from HTLAL are here at LLORG and it's always a pleasure to read them. They know who they are. But for me the magic has gone. It's not that there's nothing to debate about. It's more like there's no point. After a number of people pointed out recently, rather impolitely I believe, that I had talked about something a few years ago on HTLAL, I gave up and decided that my time could be better spent on actually learning languages rather than talking about learning them.

Some of this is a shame, especially since I enjoy most of your posts and (perhaps surprisingly) often find myself in agreement with you (perhaps not with how it’s always expressed, but in content or viewpoint). It’s just that often I don’t have the time to invest in substantive discussion, so it often goes by without my participation. I rather like what you bring to this forum.

[iguanamon]

Recently I've found myself starting posts on this forum and halfway through saying to myself: Why am I bothering? After all, why put all this time and effort into something that doesn't lead to much debate and can even lead to nasty remarks. Who needs this grief?
Some of the regular contributors from HTLAL are here at LLORL and it's always a pleasure to read them. They know who they are. But for me the magic has gone. It's not that there's nothing to debate about. It's more like there's no point. After a number of people pointed out recently, rather impolitely I believe, that I had talked about something a few years ago on HTLAL, I gave up and decided that my time could be better spent on actually learning languages rather than talking about learning them.

Please do post about what you want to discuss. I have found your language-learning philosophy intriguing, especially the focus on core vocabulary mastery. I am looking forward to seeing how your German experiment goes. If successful, and in my opinion even B1 in 90 days is a success, I think this has great potential to change the way we think about language-learning. We need to challenge our complacency and deeply held beliefs. It keeps things fresh. Such discussion would probably be best done, in today's forum, in your log. Then, if people don't like what you have to say (as long as it's within forum rules), tough luck. It's your log. If you started one, or converted your German experiment into a log (just ask the mods to move it into the log section, it will still show up in active topics), I would be a regular follower and I'm sure others would be as well.

[Axon]

We talk about plenty of non ling related things too of course, but the discussions I have here that touch on linguistics are nothing like the discussions I have in person (and that's not because of the nature of online forums). And I'm not talking about things like sitting in class discussing these things, I'm talking about chatting with someone over lunch.

I agree with this. I have linguistics conversations pretty regularly, but this forum never seems like the place for it. My formal training is even in second language acquisition.

There are interesting linguistic aspects of language learning. I'm perfectly satisfied just touching on these when they come up in the forum, and otherwise enjoying them by myself or with friends. This forum seems like a great place to share personal progress and learning anecdotes - something that might wear thin with those same friends.

[smallwhite]

Not sure which ones you had in mind but hopefully Julie will come back too. (she's registered here)

... whatever two smallwhite meant...

1. profile picture is a photo of a dark-haired young man (called Alex?)
2. learned Japanese, went to Japan (while a member on LLorg), found a translating job there vonPeterhof

S

But I wrote 2 simply because I didn't know how else to phrase my question. Obviously I don't know everyone's profession.

I actually feel like I remember someone asking a while ago why there were so few linguists here.

Maybe you mean our dialogue:

smallwhite: If there are 2000 fulltime translators and interpreters in that office alone, how come we don't get any of them here on LLorg? We only have one translator, I think?
aokoye: We have one or two translators but I don't think either of them work for the EU. I don't know that we have anyone who is employed as an interpreter.

in the thread This Man Speaks 32 Different Languages?

[aokoye]

I actually feel like I remember someone asking a while ago why there were so few linguists here.

Maybe you mean our dialogue:

smallwhite: If there are 2000 fulltime translators and interpreters in that office alone, how come we don't get any of them here on LLorg? We only have one translator, I think?
aokoye: We have one or two translators but I don't think either of them work for the EU. I don't know that we have anyone who is employed as an interpreter.

in the thread This Man Speaks 32 Different Languages?

I don't think that's the post I was talking about. I'm almost positive the word "linguist" was used.

[Cainntear]

Some closed curated groups work a little better (a Syriac group I belong too has interesting content) but the majority of the open-ended polyglot groups are usually a tremendous waste of time. I do recruit there - and post links to here when I see someone that has a serious question.

But the unending "how do you say blah-blah in Swahili" just kill me.

Mostly useless but I'm still in a few.

The thing is that Facebook is designed for ephemeral conversations -- it isn't designed for "timeless" data, and discovering old data is next to impossible.

In an old-school language-specific forum, you'd often have newbies come in and ask stupid questions, and somebody would helpfully dig out a link to an old thread on that subject, then write a post welcoming the newbie, giving the link to thread, offering brief pointers on how to use the site's search function and finish with "if anything isn't clear, please do feel free to ask".

And then there would be the newbies who would search the archive without prompting, then post saying "Sorry, I've searched the archive and can't find an answer to this question, maybe I just wasn't using the right words...?" or suchlike.

There's none of that in any of the Facebook language groups I'm a member of, because Facebook groups don't support or encourage that sort of behaviour. So the genuinely knowledgable get bored very very easily, and the well-intentioned but poorly informed take over answering. Worse, there is nothing in Facebook to give new members any clue as to the trustworthiness of other members -- no "member since", no "has received X likes" -- so misinformation can quickly drown out good information just by force of numbers.

[zenmonkey]

Yep, that's a pretty good analysis.

Having said that to make this place better as reference tool the search function could definitely be improved with tags and word clouds. That really was a great part of the old site before the search got monetised.

[Seneca]

Yep, that's a pretty good analysis.

Having said that to make this place better as reference tool the search function could definitely be improved with tags and word clouds. That really was a great part of the old site before the search got monetised.

I just created bookmarks of these:
HTLAL

LLORG

It cuts out the weakness of the respective search engines built into each site