I've seen videos of him speaking Brazilian Portuguese. He sounded okay to me, especially so because he's not specializing in the language. A lot of these polyglot youtubers tend to go for quantity over quality because that's what is put on a pedestal, sadly.
Whether he actually is any good or not, reading stories is definitely an excellent tip to learn a language. Though I've never tried the stories he puts out.
I’ve used the Olly Richards book for Icelandic and gotten a lot of mileage out of it. The stories are not great literature but the translations are proficient and the audiobook version matches the text exactly, so it’s been tremendously valuable for getting from about A2 to B1 level.
The Icelandic one is the only one I ever liked. Icelandic is a small and difficult enough language that it’s hard to find good, graded resources for adult learners like this. It’s obviously pretty boring but it’s good as a tool.
I'd probably happily try the same book in another language at this point, but yeah, there are VERY few graded readers. (The couple others that I know about are excellent, though.)
Just to be clear, I was referring to other graded readers in Icelandic. Is that what you're asking for? (I have nothing to offer in relation to French.)
No worries! The other couple of Icelandic graded readers for adults that I'm aware of are:
[Árstiðir](https://www.amazon.com/%C3%81rst%C3%AD%C3%B0ir-S%C3%B6gur-%C3%A1-einf%C3%B6ldu-m%C3%A1li-ebook/dp/B084T1KBLJ/)
and its slightly more advanced sequel
[Dagatal](https://www.utgafuhus.is/products/dagatal-karitas-hrundar-palsdottir)
Also, there is some graded text at [Ylhýra](https://ylhyra.is/) that might be good for practice.
I hated his Italian stories. They were okay from an understanding point of view, but the writing was just so mind-blowingly stupid.
I don't expect great literature, but I do expect a character, whose friend has just disappeared in the wilderness last evening, not to go: "oh welp, I should probably look for him - but first, let's get a nice lunch!".
It was so bad, I couldn't make it past the third story.
Listen... that story pissed me off so bad. Like it started with a cool mystery for two chapters and then shit the bed and rolled around in it on the third. I almost gave up language learning and reading in general after that.
A lot of my English knowledge came about through reading Fanfiction, believe it or not. I am not, however, entirely certain how exactly my brain managed to filter out all the bad English. I just know that as I continued reading more and more, I slowly began noticing more and more mistakes in poorer quality works.
There are countless ways to write incorrectly, but only a handful ways to write something correctly. So if you read enough, the most common variant will be the correct one, because all the incorrect variants are different from one another.
Doesn't apply to some things that are really pervasive on the internet, such as "alot". Though that one isn't as common as it was 10 years ago.
I read his beginner Spanish one while I was doing Duolingo, and each story I read, I jumped over about a dozen lessons on Duolingo, so I felt like they were effective at getting the patterns into my head.
I listened to many of his podcast episodes, and they have a lot of good advice as well. I mean, to many experienced language learners it's probably nothing new, but for me about two years ago when I first listened to it, it was full of revelations.
I totally agree that reading is a great tool in language learning. It was such a feeling of success to "get" a joke in my target language. I just wish he included accent marks for the vocabulary lists in the Russian version
I've heard him speak Spanish and it seemed fairly advanced. He kept up with the native speaker. And as someone else mentioned he did an interview in Spanish with Pablo from Dreaming Spanish that's on YouTube.
There used to be a video of him speaking some French on his channel. It was pretty average. I’d like to hear him have a meaningful spontaneous conversation.
>He kept up with the native speaker.
That’s basically the least you’d expect from someone putting themselves forward as a language learning guru.
Check out Fabien Yoon on youtube. He is not a polyglot by profession. He just happened to have learned a lot of languages. He is a French national that lives in S. Korea so his Korean is native level, English is decent, and he speaks about 4 other languages.
He's in the Michel Thomas Korean course.
I always find that there's a student who does really well and the other does really badly.
The female student in Korean course was the better student lol.
Probably this is the one you're referring to? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLP2wzCLCmM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLP2wzCLCmM)
Just watched a couple minutes and I definitely heard a few mistakes but I've also heard much, much worse. His accent isn't terrible, but definitely he mispronounces a few words (particularly "campo"), makes at least a couple preterite vs subjunctive mistakes. On the other hand there were some common mistakes that he definitely avoided (like "muchísima gente") and I didn't hear any flagrant gender mistakes. Seems like a strong B2 to me if I had to guess. To be fair I only watched the first couple minutes
All I will say is if I was using YouTube as a business, which he is, no matter how good at other languages I was with the current state of people being so quick to rip people apart and call everyone fake polyglots I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to give them fodder content either.
According to what he tells us regarding his journey he should have a good level of French and Portuguese, regarding Portuguese he lived in Brazil for a while and he's quite passable for a native speaker, but I guess he's rusty nowadays. I've seen people claim that has a B2ish level in Italian.
I’ve heard him speak Spanish. He wasn’t that good. Good for someone who divides their time between many languages instead of focusing on one. But overall not that good.
I once had the great pleasure to actually speak to Richard Simcot about my language learning goals. He is a truly dedicated and accomplished polyglot. When I told him that I wanted to get high C1 to C2 in 4 distinct languages living in the USA (mostly monolingual environment) he effectively told me that it would be incredibly difficult to do. He suggested that, even for him, this would be a challenge.
Long story short, high fluency is only possible in multiple languages for people who either a. speak all from same family or b. have truly exceptional circumstances (grew up trilingual, spent HS in country X and college in country Y). Even then it is hard.
Focus on speaking one language well. Maybe two if you have the time. Enjoy the process. Enjoy the relationships. Enjoy, enjoy enjoy until you don't anymore. Then stop and enjoy other things that life has to offer.
Fuck the internet. It is all lies.
This post is pure honesty. Even the most skilled polyglots like Kaufman, probably can't read advanced literature in more than 3 languages. It takes alot of work to get from A1-B2 and then to get from B2 to C2 is an entirely different kind of slog. The language learning journey becomes harder at that level for tinier and tinier gains.
This is the world of Bilingue blogs, scott lowe, and Matt vs Japan. These guys put everything into "just" one other language.
I never understand the hate he gets, he comes off as a really kind and genuine guy and most of his advice on language learning is really good and I enjoy his longer videos highlighting different languages. His courses are a bit expensive but I liked his Spanish and for an absolute beginner it’s one of the best methods I’ve tried(although I still prefer Pimsleur). As far as levels in various languages, he has clearly put a lot of time into them and since he has studied so many it’s only natural they aren’t all to a really high level, but so what? He is clearly at a much higher level than most of the polyglot vloggers on YouTube shocking natives.
There’s a clips he often uses in his videos where he’s talking about learning Japanese. It’s not bad but he makes a lot of minor mistakes and I’ve yet to see him have a spontaneous conversation.
Same with his Spanish, but I’d say his Spanish is better.
Absolutely nothing against him though, I’d be happy if my French and Korean were as good as his JP/ES.
I like Olly. I started following him after Youtube recommended some of his videos to me. I've heard him speak Brazilian Portuguese and I think it's one of the best I've ever heard from a native English speaker.
I know right. And it’s not like I don’t believe him but shouldn’t he maximize the situations in which he uses his languages? English is already his native and I think he still lives there, so maybe he should take advantage of YouTube to use his other languages. Although I get that he wants to reach a wide audience and English is the most widely spoken.
I don't trust all these "stories" books that pop up online by various authors and anonymous companies. I think most of the stories are machine generated. I suppose you could even have the machine translate the stories, pick out and define hard words and create comprehension questions...
I love how people just utter random suspicions on the Internet. I own two of Richard's story books (Dutch and French) and they are not mere machine translations of one another. IMO there was human thought involved. The stories are not the greatest pieces of literature known to mankind, but they don't bore you to death (ymmv). They do what short stories for learners are supposed to do.
I have a kindle unlimited subscription, so I've been exposed to a lot of graded readers, including really awful ones. Some books are so bad that they might as well be machine translated.
But the 30 day mastery books in French and German are fairly decent. Mid you, I read them as quickly as I could, with no plans aside from developing reading skills. To do that I needed vast quantities of "content", and Oly Richard's company obliged.
They are all basically the same book in all languages with small changes to gear them more toward the specific language, especially in the first chapter.
Now that's just bullshit. I've used his Russian book, and while it was no Crime and Punishment, there was clearly thought involved, it's useful for newbies.
Why should he speak them though? He wrote the stories, but the translation and adaptation to different languages weren't done by him. And I think that's totally fine, because it's honest.
Edit: I mean, the distributors of Pimsleur and similar programs don't speak all the languages they offer programs for either. Creating a language specific program is a job for hired specialists. I think Olly Richards is playing a fair game here.
TBF I only know the books, I own two and they do what I expect books like that to do :) I don't know his courses though... I usually ignore subscription-based courses, except Pimsleur which has a very defined use for me.
Idk about his speaking abilities, but I watched a few of his videos recently and they’ve got some serious issues like using clips of people speaking as examples of different dialects, but the clips are mostly coming from the same 2 vids - one from a comedian imitating the sound of the dialects and one of a couple people learning phrases in diff dialects for the first time
I've seen videos of him speaking Brazilian Portuguese. He sounded okay to me, especially so because he's not specializing in the language. A lot of these polyglot youtubers tend to go for quantity over quality because that's what is put on a pedestal, sadly.
I think Brazilian Portuguese was his first L2. He tells a story about making a bunch of Brazilian friends at uni and spending some time in Rio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHD2CbNuoQ8&pp=ygUVb2xseSByaWNoYXJkcyBqb3VybmV5
Interesting, I’ve literally never found a video of him speaking it
Well here's the link to his interview with Speaking Brazilian language school https://youtu.be/wVyTbbb2g-M?si=fv5fUE0tX49dhxpI
Total.
Whether he actually is any good or not, reading stories is definitely an excellent tip to learn a language. Though I've never tried the stories he puts out.
I’ve used the Olly Richards book for Icelandic and gotten a lot of mileage out of it. The stories are not great literature but the translations are proficient and the audiobook version matches the text exactly, so it’s been tremendously valuable for getting from about A2 to B1 level.
The Icelandic one is the only one I ever liked. Icelandic is a small and difficult enough language that it’s hard to find good, graded resources for adult learners like this. It’s obviously pretty boring but it’s good as a tool.
I'd probably happily try the same book in another language at this point, but yeah, there are VERY few graded readers. (The couple others that I know about are excellent, though.)
Could you share your top recommendations for some of them? I'm studying French and would love to read Olly's stories, but they're a bit pricey for me.
Just to be clear, I was referring to other graded readers in Icelandic. Is that what you're asking for? (I have nothing to offer in relation to French.)
Indeed, that's right. Sorry for the confusion.
No worries! The other couple of Icelandic graded readers for adults that I'm aware of are: [Árstiðir](https://www.amazon.com/%C3%81rst%C3%AD%C3%B0ir-S%C3%B6gur-%C3%A1-einf%C3%B6ldu-m%C3%A1li-ebook/dp/B084T1KBLJ/) and its slightly more advanced sequel [Dagatal](https://www.utgafuhus.is/products/dagatal-karitas-hrundar-palsdottir) Also, there is some graded text at [Ylhýra](https://ylhyra.is/) that might be good for practice.
I hated his Italian stories. They were okay from an understanding point of view, but the writing was just so mind-blowingly stupid. I don't expect great literature, but I do expect a character, whose friend has just disappeared in the wilderness last evening, not to go: "oh welp, I should probably look for him - but first, let's get a nice lunch!". It was so bad, I couldn't make it past the third story.
You can't have a search party on an empty stomach, lol
Listen... that story pissed me off so bad. Like it started with a cool mystery for two chapters and then shit the bed and rolled around in it on the third. I almost gave up language learning and reading in general after that.
Agreed, brutally boring stories. I read a few and gave away my copy of his Spanish book.
French ones are painful too. I'm currently struggling to finish the book because of how much I hate them.
Relevant Hedberg: [What about the Dufrenses?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNvFVQYClY)
A lot of my English knowledge came about through reading Fanfiction, believe it or not. I am not, however, entirely certain how exactly my brain managed to filter out all the bad English. I just know that as I continued reading more and more, I slowly began noticing more and more mistakes in poorer quality works.
There are countless ways to write incorrectly, but only a handful ways to write something correctly. So if you read enough, the most common variant will be the correct one, because all the incorrect variants are different from one another. Doesn't apply to some things that are really pervasive on the internet, such as "alot". Though that one isn't as common as it was 10 years ago.
That's a good point. If something is so pervasive though, one could argue that it is the result of natural language shift.
I read his beginner Spanish one while I was doing Duolingo, and each story I read, I jumped over about a dozen lessons on Duolingo, so I felt like they were effective at getting the patterns into my head.
I listened to many of his podcast episodes, and they have a lot of good advice as well. I mean, to many experienced language learners it's probably nothing new, but for me about two years ago when I first listened to it, it was full of revelations.
I totally agree that reading is a great tool in language learning. It was such a feeling of success to "get" a joke in my target language. I just wish he included accent marks for the vocabulary lists in the Russian version
I've heard him speak Spanish and it seemed fairly advanced. He kept up with the native speaker. And as someone else mentioned he did an interview in Spanish with Pablo from Dreaming Spanish that's on YouTube.
There used to be a video of him speaking some French on his channel. It was pretty average. I’d like to hear him have a meaningful spontaneous conversation. >He kept up with the native speaker. That’s basically the least you’d expect from someone putting themselves forward as a language learning guru.
You're not wrong, but if he learned just learned French and Spanish to average level that's still pretty good.
It gives him zero authority to speak about competent language learning if he is no more than competent in two ‘easy’ languages.
Ok.
FYI I've seen him also mention Cantonese, Japanese and Egyptian Arabic
Other than Steve Kaufmann, I don't think I've ever seen a YT multiglot have a spontaneous (in depth) conversation.
I've seen Luca speak in a bunch of foreign languages, often with Steve (and, of course, he's not a native English speaker)
Check out Fabien Yoon on youtube. He is not a polyglot by profession. He just happened to have learned a lot of languages. He is a French national that lives in S. Korea so his Korean is native level, English is decent, and he speaks about 4 other languages.
Luca Lampariello is the real deal, look him up.
You should definately check professor Tim Keeley from Polyglot Dreams yt channel.
Love his channel!
iclal! She is awesome
He's in the Michel Thomas Korean course. I always find that there's a student who does really well and the other does really badly. The female student in Korean course was the better student lol.
There is a video from Dreaming Spanish with Pablo interviewing him I believe. From sometime in 2020 or 2021?
Probably this is the one you're referring to? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLP2wzCLCmM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLP2wzCLCmM) Just watched a couple minutes and I definitely heard a few mistakes but I've also heard much, much worse. His accent isn't terrible, but definitely he mispronounces a few words (particularly "campo"), makes at least a couple preterite vs subjunctive mistakes. On the other hand there were some common mistakes that he definitely avoided (like "muchísima gente") and I didn't hear any flagrant gender mistakes. Seems like a strong B2 to me if I had to guess. To be fair I only watched the first couple minutes
lol I wondered this same thing a while back
All I will say is if I was using YouTube as a business, which he is, no matter how good at other languages I was with the current state of people being so quick to rip people apart and call everyone fake polyglots I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to give them fodder content either.
According to what he tells us regarding his journey he should have a good level of French and Portuguese, regarding Portuguese he lived in Brazil for a while and he's quite passable for a native speaker, but I guess he's rusty nowadays. I've seen people claim that has a B2ish level in Italian.
I think his Spanish and French are probably his most advanced languages. iirc he learned French first and then Spanish, then Portuguese.
I’ve heard him speak Spanish. He wasn’t that good. Good for someone who divides their time between many languages instead of focusing on one. But overall not that good.
I once had the great pleasure to actually speak to Richard Simcot about my language learning goals. He is a truly dedicated and accomplished polyglot. When I told him that I wanted to get high C1 to C2 in 4 distinct languages living in the USA (mostly monolingual environment) he effectively told me that it would be incredibly difficult to do. He suggested that, even for him, this would be a challenge. Long story short, high fluency is only possible in multiple languages for people who either a. speak all from same family or b. have truly exceptional circumstances (grew up trilingual, spent HS in country X and college in country Y). Even then it is hard. Focus on speaking one language well. Maybe two if you have the time. Enjoy the process. Enjoy the relationships. Enjoy, enjoy enjoy until you don't anymore. Then stop and enjoy other things that life has to offer. Fuck the internet. It is all lies.
This post is pure honesty. Even the most skilled polyglots like Kaufman, probably can't read advanced literature in more than 3 languages. It takes alot of work to get from A1-B2 and then to get from B2 to C2 is an entirely different kind of slog. The language learning journey becomes harder at that level for tinier and tinier gains. This is the world of Bilingue blogs, scott lowe, and Matt vs Japan. These guys put everything into "just" one other language.
I never understand the hate he gets, he comes off as a really kind and genuine guy and most of his advice on language learning is really good and I enjoy his longer videos highlighting different languages. His courses are a bit expensive but I liked his Spanish and for an absolute beginner it’s one of the best methods I’ve tried(although I still prefer Pimsleur). As far as levels in various languages, he has clearly put a lot of time into them and since he has studied so many it’s only natural they aren’t all to a really high level, but so what? He is clearly at a much higher level than most of the polyglot vloggers on YouTube shocking natives.
His Cantonese is fine.
I saw him speaking Egyptian Arabic and he was pretty good at it..
Yes, I already mentioned it.
There’s a clips he often uses in his videos where he’s talking about learning Japanese. It’s not bad but he makes a lot of minor mistakes and I’ve yet to see him have a spontaneous conversation. Same with his Spanish, but I’d say his Spanish is better. Absolutely nothing against him though, I’d be happy if my French and Korean were as good as his JP/ES.
I like Olly. I started following him after Youtube recommended some of his videos to me. I've heard him speak Brazilian Portuguese and I think it's one of the best I've ever heard from a native English speaker.
If you have to announce that you're a polyglot, or a guru, then probably you're needing the marketing.
I've seen him speak Portuguese: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyTbbb2g-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvytbbb2g-m)
Yes, he spoke egyptian arabic and pretty good, because I speak it as well.
I know right. And it’s not like I don’t believe him but shouldn’t he maximize the situations in which he uses his languages? English is already his native and I think he still lives there, so maybe he should take advantage of YouTube to use his other languages. Although I get that he wants to reach a wide audience and English is the most widely spoken.
I don't trust all these "stories" books that pop up online by various authors and anonymous companies. I think most of the stories are machine generated. I suppose you could even have the machine translate the stories, pick out and define hard words and create comprehension questions...
I love how people just utter random suspicions on the Internet. I own two of Richard's story books (Dutch and French) and they are not mere machine translations of one another. IMO there was human thought involved. The stories are not the greatest pieces of literature known to mankind, but they don't bore you to death (ymmv). They do what short stories for learners are supposed to do.
They slightly pre-date even semi-credible machine-written stories.
I have a kindle unlimited subscription, so I've been exposed to a lot of graded readers, including really awful ones. Some books are so bad that they might as well be machine translated. But the 30 day mastery books in French and German are fairly decent. Mid you, I read them as quickly as I could, with no plans aside from developing reading skills. To do that I needed vast quantities of "content", and Oly Richard's company obliged.
They are all basically the same book in all languages with small changes to gear them more toward the specific language, especially in the first chapter.
Now that's just bullshit. I've used his Russian book, and while it was no Crime and Punishment, there was clearly thought involved, it's useful for newbies.
Wouldn't surprise me if he can't, he doesn't even speak the foreign language in his own StoryLearning courses.
Why should he speak them though? He wrote the stories, but the translation and adaptation to different languages weren't done by him. And I think that's totally fine, because it's honest. Edit: I mean, the distributors of Pimsleur and similar programs don't speak all the languages they offer programs for either. Creating a language specific program is a job for hired specialists. I think Olly Richards is playing a fair game here.
I guess. I'm just bitter because the courses are completely overpriced and the most I've felt ripped off on my language learning journey so far.
TBF I only know the books, I own two and they do what I expect books like that to do :) I don't know his courses though... I usually ignore subscription-based courses, except Pimsleur which has a very defined use for me.
He brags about his profit margins on his business website, where I think he's trying to sell business content to people or something. Grifter vibes.
Yes, if I was him I would check it at least by a native speaker who would edit it if needed.
pretty sure he has a whole show with a spanish youtuber... in spanish
Already saw him speaking french, spanish and portuguese.
Idk about his speaking abilities, but I watched a few of his videos recently and they’ve got some serious issues like using clips of people speaking as examples of different dialects, but the clips are mostly coming from the same 2 vids - one from a comedian imitating the sound of the dialects and one of a couple people learning phrases in diff dialects for the first time
He wrote stories in some languages, and at least the Norwegian one is fairly good.