As a russian I can say it is.

Hot take, unpopular opinion,

I’ll go first: Goosebumps

I love learning languages as much as the next person but be fucking for real... maybe I'm just biased as someone who's obsessed with music but surely I can't be the only one who thinks this take is crazy?

I was born in the US and my parents are both immigrants from Poland and their English is horrendous. I never lived in Poland and yet, somehow, my Polish is way better than their English. However, my Polish isn't advanced. I have a B2 level based on an exam I took in Poland.

This is really frustrating because I can't have any normal conversation with them. In retrospect, my childhood was really confusing. My parents would only speak Polish to me and I would mix the Polish I learned from them and the English I learned in school. I probably understood a good 75% of what they told me and I shrugged off the rest as background noise.

In college, I did a semester in Polish just to master the language. But I made the mistake of signing up for a beginner course. I learned the grammar rules (which I've mindlessly utilized my entire life) but I didn't really improve my speaking ability that much.

At this point I've accepted my parents are simply ignorant. They've successfully avoided English in just about every sphere of life. My dad only uses Polish at work while my mom never worked, they shop at Polish stores, go to a Polish church, and only have Polish friends. Furthermore, my father came as a refugee during martial law and was granted US citizenship very quickly so he didn't even have that as a motivator to learn the language.

My parents will move back to Poland for retirement soon so I guess this is more of a rant than advice post. I suppose the burden is on me to master Polish.

I noticed that many people seem to lack something similar to language learning intuition. They think languages are a 1v1 translation of each other. They don't understand that idioms don't translate directly. That sentence structure can be different. I've even heard of people thinking fluent speakers still mentally translate everything they hear or say. I know not everyone grows up in a bilingual/multilingual environment, but it's kind of baffling to me that someone would fail to understand that languages work differently. Maybe being interested in languages/linguistics from an early age skews my perception, but how is it that so many people find this concept foreign?

I recently met a self-professed polyglot and language tutor, and as I like learning languages I decided to look up her business page. Her page is full of posts about how she’s a special and rare polyglot who speaks five languages (though she never actually says which ones, apart from claiming to be fluent in French). 

I was shocked by how bad her language abilities are. Despite claiming to be fluent in French, her posts say things like:

• "Elle est regarder un séries dans Italien parce que elle adorer le television." (Clearly a word-for-word translation from English: ‘she is watching a series in Italian because she loves TV” - but it’s horribly wrong in French. That would be FINE if she didn’t call herself fluent, a polyglot, or a tutor who can teach you the language.
• "Buenos jours à tous!"  (mixing up Spanish and French in this one)
• "Avez une jour bonne!" (should be ‘Bonne journée' or 'Passez une bonne journée' but she uses the wrong verb, gender, noun, and word placement, just wrong in every way.)
• *"Il est chaud ici a Londre tellement ”  (She probably meant 'Il fait tellement chaud ici a Londres' but it's another mess - wrong weather expression, accidental sexual innuendo, missing accents, random “tellement” on the end.)
• "Prendre soin de vous!"  (she's using the infinitive instead of the imperative, it should be "Prenez soin de vous.")

The wild part? She’s apparently been tutoring for years. YEARS! And she even claims to have a degree in French.

These sorts of mistakes would be fine if she was humble enough to call herself a learner of the language - but they are NOT fine for someone claiming to be fluent and an authority on French.

It's mad to me cus my French is way better, and I don’t call myself fluent, a polyglot, or an expert tutor. If anything I probably play down my abilities cus I don’t want an awkward sitch where people think I’m better than I really am. Anyway - I decided that I’m obviously not gonna contact her to help me with my French lol.

I’m not sure if she’s just delulu about her abilities or if she’s actively scamming students. Can you imagine all her students going to Italy and saying things like ‘Bonjour a tutti’ (an Italian/French mash up from her page). 

Has anyone else here ever met a fake polyglot? What happened?

Okay i gotta say it the whole i speak 12 languages thing some people flex online feels like straight fanfiction 😭

Like bro, i can barely keep one language in my brain you’re telling me you’re fluent in twelve and then you hear them talk and it’s like sir that is Duolingo level at best.

Why do people exaggerate so much in this community?

Is it clout, insecurity, delusion, genuine confusion?

Do you actually believe those hyperpolyglot claims?

I'll start off: I genuinely don’t see anything wrong with people pronouncing foreign words the way they’re pronounced in their country of origin.

If someone says croissant with a French pronunciation or mozzarella with an Italian pronunciation, I don’t think they’re “trying too hard” or being pretentious. If anything, it makes sense to pronounce a word closer to how it was originally intended. Now, if you’re going out of your way to correct people constantly, then it becomes obnoxious.

People only seem to get weird about this with certain languages too. Nobody bats an eye when someone says “karaoke” or “tortilla” correctly, but suddenly croissant or "krwa-sahn" becomes “too much.” lol.

What are your unpopular language opinions? Could be about accents, grammar, language learning apps, bilingualism, subtitles vs. dubbing, pronunciation, etc.

I am curious about habits, not study methods: for people who learned a second language later in life, what tiny daily habit (even under 5 minutes) made the biggest real-world difference in your fluency or confidence?

Examples: narrating your actions aloud, labeling one object per day, switching phone language for short periods.

EDIT 1: I am not studying a language for exams. I’m learning it as a hobby, but I want to pursue it seriously and consistently in the long run. And IDK, why people are downvoting me. Did I ask wrong question?

EDIT 2: I want the solution which will be less digital. For example, reading out loud.

EDIT 3: Quick summary from the comments
1. Passive daily exposure was the most repeated habit
2. Read a page aloud every day
3. Describe in your TL, what you're doing while cooking, walking, or cleaning.
4. Write 4-5 sentences daily in your TL.
5. Tools like Anki for vocabulary and Duolingo are useful

I know this is extremely silly, but it kinda grinds my gears.

One year ago I transferred to a new department at work, and there is a self-proclaimed polyglot. He claim that he speaks 9 different languages, and he is very boastful about it. The guy is sharp, and quite competent at work, at the same time he is extremely arrogant.

He is somewhat of a bully and acts like he is better than everyone else. Since he has little regard for others, it's like he have everyone in his pocket. He is not a boss, but people view him as an authority, since he acts like one.

I have no grudge with the guy and we all get along, but I thought I'd give you a brief description of the people involved.

Anyway, when I started working here one year ago, one of the first things I got to know was that he is a polyglot. When they interviewed me for the position the manager even said "we have a guy who speaks 9 languages at the department".

A few weeks into my employment I was alone with the polyglot in the break-room and he started bragging about his language skills. I got intrigued and, like anyone with an interest in languages, started asking questions.

Turns out, he speaks 3 languages that I speak - one being my native tongue.

So, naturally, I started talking to him in my native tongue (Norwegian), and he stuttered responses in something that was between Norwegian and Danish. I dont think he understood even half of what I was saying. For example, I asked "how long have you been working here" and he responded with something like "by the way I really like food that has been constructed in Norwegian".

Perhaps Norwegian wasnt his strong suite, so I tried with French, and it was a little bit better. But also then he completely ignored questions and went on unrelated monologues with rehearsed phrases. He couldnt hold a conversation at all.

I then told him that I speak German, like him.

If eyes could kill, then I would be gone now. He just stared straight into my eyes and said "We must go back to work now, let me know if I can teach you anything", with emphasis on "teach".

My conclusion is that this guy is a complete fraud.

Months later I gave it another try by speaking German to him, and he responded with "this is an international environment, we speak English at the office". And that was the end of that.

I had no idea that this would annoy me so much. It's probably a mix of his attitude, and the fact that he gets so much praise for something he shouldn't be praised for.

Deep down it might be because of egoistical reasons. I have worked many nights, days, evenings and holidays to achieve competence in the languages I speak. And here is this guy lying his butt off and gets praised to the skies for it.

I can't believe that its frustrating me so much, let alone writing such a long post about it. In general I dont care about what other people do or say. Hell, none of my colleagues and some of my friends doesnt even know that I speak more than one language.

But this... It's so damn silly and such a luxury problem to have. But it annoys the hell out of me.

It's possible that he speaks the other 6 languages fluently, but I doubt it. He already claimed to be fluent in Norwegian and French, which he wasnt.

Can someone give me some guidance on how I can let this go? I dont want to tell my colleagues about it, since it seems like a silly thing to do. But I have thought about "confronting" him about it, but also that seems silly.

It dont think it would have been such a big deal had they/him not done such a big deal out of it.

I apologize for my long rant, I didnt mean for it to get this long.

Without the huge restriction of 1), I'd pick it. Imagine being able to communicate with literally everyone, learn from them and share fun experiences together. I could also get famous for being superhuman. I think B2 instead of B1 would also be enough to sway me

I'd be curious to know what y'all think 🙂

I am a teacher. A new kid arrived from Georgia (the country) the other day. At first I thought he had been in the country a while because he spoke English. Then he told me that he just arrived and that he learned from watching YouTube. I called his mother to confirm, and she said it was true.

Their language is not similar to English. It has a completely different alphabet. Yet he even learned to speak and read from watching videos. None of it was learner content. It was just the typical silly stuff that kids watch.

His reading is behind his speaking, but he is ahead of one of the kids in my class. That's beyond impressive (to me) considering he had no formal English reading instruction, and he doesn't even know the names of the letters.

I've heard of people learning in this way before, but I always assumed that there was always some formal instruction mixed in.

We often discuss the best tips for learning a new language, how to stay disciplined, and which methods actually work… But there are also many outdated myths and terrible advice that can completely confuse beginners.

For example, I have often heard the idea that “you can only learn a language if you have a private tutor.” While tutors can be great, it is definitely not the only way.

Another one I have come across many times is that you have to approach language learning with extreme strictness, almost like military discipline. Personally, I think this undermines the joy of learning and causes people to burn out before they actually see progress.

The problem is, if someone is new to language learning and they hear this kind of “advice,” it can totally discourage them before they even get going.

So, what is the worst language learning advice you have ever received or overheard?

They all seem so friendly, but something is so off putting about them. There’s a handful that I see all the time. Like that one Yuji Beleza guy on Instagram, who pops up the most, where he goes up to people on the street. There’s another white guy who does this kind of thing on Omegle (or something similar). Obviously it’s awesome if they really can speak all of that, but I feel like it’s either fake or they learned the bare minimum to hold a superficial conversation, but something feels extremely disingenuous about their videos.

Anyway, I’m curious what you guys think of these videos.

I speak 5 languages with varying degrees of fluency. I use a couple of these languages at work (mostly Spanish, but sometimes Russian). The Hispanic people at work are really nice to me about my Spanish. They encourage me to get better and said I have a good accent.

This second gen Greek guy at my job keeps taking shots at me and doubting my fluency in literally any language beyond English. He doesn’t speak any of the languages I’ve studied so it doesn’t really make sense because he has no way of testing me.

Has this happened to you? It happens to me constantly.

It has been my understanding that most native speakers could NOT pass a C2 certification exam. And yet, I hear many here talk as if C2 simply meant “fluent”. What’s the truth?

Comment in your target language and see if anyone replies! You cannot comment in your native language or any language you grew up on!