Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

General discussion about learning languages
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leosmith
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby leosmith » Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:20 am

tarvos wrote:Early on, I was especially influenced by...

I'm surprised Greg Thomson isn't on your list.
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tarvos
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby tarvos » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:40 am

leosmith wrote:
tarvos wrote:Early on, I was especially influenced by...

I'm surprised Greg Thomson isn't on your list.


I don't even know who he is.
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby Ogrim » Wed Oct 03, 2018 7:49 am

The first person that inspired me was my German and French teacher in secondary school. She had an amazing capability of making langauge learning interesting to us obnoxious teenagers (well, at least to some of us), and to make us see the link between learning a language and getting access to another culture. If only there were more teachers like her, youngsters would actually come out of school having learnt a language (or two).

Nowadays I don't have any idols, but I have a lot of respect for Professor Arguelles, as I guess his more academic approach corresponds to mine. And when joining HTLAL I discovered all those great members who keep on inspiring and motivating me through sharing their knowledge and passion for languages. Special mention to Iversen and Iguanamon, but also Solfrid Cristina (who is no longer active since we moved to LLorg), Tarvos, Cavesa, Expugnator and Systematiker. I could make the list longer, but this will have to do.
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby Iversen » Wed Oct 03, 2018 10:20 am

I forgot to mention my teacher in French at the gymnasium (i.e. high school, lycée), Carl Johan Olsen, who somehow had found out that I studied Italian and Spanish at home using textbooks - and when other pupils got questions in French he would without warning pose me one in Italian or Spanish. This really kept me doing my private homework with those languages.

Unfortunately the class was a 'mat-fys' one, i.e. on the mathematical-physical line, so even though he from day one attempted to do everything in French (the socalled natural method), he realised around the middle of the third and last year that the attempt had failed completely, and then he took decisive action to save us. We almost fell down from our chairs the first time he addressed us in Danish - he was of course Danish, but we had almost forgotten that he might know our language - and for the last six months or so he took us through the French language using the whole gamut of methods from the good old black school, like grammar, translations back and forth and (simple) wordlists ... and most of us passed the exam in French. This experience not only made me quite sceptical about the 'natural' method, but it was also a strong factor behind my decision never ever under any circumstances to become a teacher.
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby aaleks » Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:13 pm

In my case it's this forum and its members. I never know what would catch my attention the next time but there almost always is something.
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby leosmith » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:59 pm

tarvos wrote:
leosmith wrote:
tarvos wrote:Early on, I was especially influenced by...

I'm surprised Greg Thomson isn't on your list.

I don't even know who he is.

My bad. I got you confused with Linguamor on HTLAL. She recommended 2 or 3 articles by Greg Thomson, and it seemed to be a big influence in the way she learned and taught languages. He is one of my main inspirations as well. Here is a sample of his work.
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby David1917 » Sat Oct 06, 2018 4:24 pm



I watch this like twice a month for inspo.
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby MacGyver » Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:58 pm

Steve Kaufman helped me a lot with his videos. Before I found him, my studies were just going through textbooks which only yielded limited results.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are a lot of youtube language people who I find annoying, full of themselves or just plain fake.
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Re: Who is your main inspiration in the language learning world?

Postby OptikOort » Tue Oct 23, 2018 7:09 pm

Not a specific person, but all those people ( including members of this forum ) that have taken up such a difficult task as learning a new language and have transformed it into an everyday hobby. The dedication to the cause combined with the complexity of the process impresses me and inspires me a lot. Another very important factor is maintaining this effort while leading a life with a job, responsibilities etc. So all in all, all these everyday people that are not "geniuses" and still succeed at the above are my inspiration.
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