Level Up with Moses and Benny

This is a totally cool video and definitely worth sitting through twelve minutes of a shaky camera and poor audio. Even my wife, who is not a language enthusiast, loved this video. If you are a language lover or want to be one, please watch it.

Benny (the Irish Polyglot) Lewis has the playful attitude and lust for life that that his compatriots are famous for. In his case, this includes a love for languages and travel. Benny has been traveling the globe for eight years and got his language learning method down to a system. He’ll even sell you a book about that system. He likes focusing on a language for three months and striving to speak it fluently by the end of that period. We can thank this video in large part to his world travels, especially coming to Ohio (that’s a state in the USA). A point that Benny makes in this video, that I really like, is that shyness is probably not a lifelong stamp and often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Moses McCormick is the other language enthusiast in this video with an Irish last name. He, like Benny, also has language services that he would be happy sell you. If you watched the video you cannot help but be impressed with Moses. I know I can’t. With the soft relentlessness of a door-to-door salesman, Moses lets nothing stand in his way to have a positive language experience. In this video, he gives us all a fabulous example to follow: get out there and use your languages! He also gives us a great example of learning and using the languages in your community. Moses has never visited Cambodia and perhaps never will, but that doesn’t stop him from interacting with Cambodians in Columbus, Ohio.

Benny has also written a post about his experience on his blog which includes another video not seen here. I suggest you give a look. Thanks for the video guys!

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New Lady Polyglots

The MehrsprachICH competition is over and I am happy to announce that my friend Richard won first place! Thanks to those of you who responded to my invitation to vote for him. Every voted certainly counted. While I am please that Richard won, I was also happy to come across new polyglots that I was previously unaware of.

Male polyglots are very well represented online. Moses McCormick, Benny Lewis, Steve Kaufmann, Stuart Jay Raj, Luca Lampariello, Richard Simcott and Dr. Alexander Argüelles are some of the most well known. Female polyglots are not nearly as well represented but they do exist. Three who have come to my attention are Susanna Zaraysky, Jana Fadness and Kathleen Hearons. These ladies have done some fabulous work with their languages and their videos are definitely worth watching.

The MehrsprechICH competition introduced me to three more lady polyglots that I would like to highlight here. Dalia Hazem’s video didn’t actually make it into the competition but is worthy of mention nonetheless. You can tell that she’s serious about writing and making her works known in English and German in addition to her native Arabic.

Lily Alexandrova’s video got fourth place in the competition. Be sure to turn on the subtitles when you watch it. Her knowledge of French, German, Spanish and Italian (in addition to her native Bulgarian) are impressive to say the least. As a native English speaker, I get a huge kick out of her English. She speaks as if she were the daughter of an English lord. Watch out world! She’s going to be a lawyer soon.

Anastasia, from Lithuania, had the best produced video in the competition. Her love of languages and cultural exchange come across very clearly as she switches effortlessly between her four most fluent languages: Lithuanian, Russian, English and German. She also includes fun little scenes in Spanish, Polish, Korean and Japanese. I was genuinely surprised that she didn’t get more votes. Remember to turn on the subtitles while watching her video as well.

I want to wish all three of these new young polyglots the best! We hope they will all continue to share their language learning journeys with us.

One of the Best Polyglots in the World

The multilingual competition in Europe is still on! It boggles the mind to see the best contestant trailing in a distant third place. I suppose this wouldn’t bother me so much if the other contestants had studied over 30 languages like Richard; it wouldn’t be as big of a deal if any of them had a near native or native command of six languages, like Richard; I probably would have a hard time deciding whom to vote for if I had ever seen ANY of the other contestants encouraging fellow language learners online before. This is exactly what Richard has been doing for years. See him below in New York encouraging the next generation of hyperpolyglots.

Don’t wait! It will take you two seconds to vote here to make sure the best person wins. Who would be better to represent and promote multilingualism in the world than a man who has studied languages since kindergarten and has been promoting multilingualism for years ? Vote for Richard!

European Multilingual Competition

Deutsche-Welle is having a multilingual competition for Europeans. My friend Richard Simcott is one of nine people you can vote for. He is by far the most advanced multilingual competitor (16 languages!) but his video doesn’t have the production quality that a few of the others have. That’s not the point of the competition but it gets votes apparently.

Vote for him here! You don’t have to be European to vote and they will take your votes right up to the 24th of July.