Tom Doner – Polyglot

Why he was learning foreign languages, how he did it?

Tom Doner is an American who can speak many languages. He has been teaching himself languages since he was 13-year-old. Now, he has achieved his goal in nearly 23 languages. 

He used to be a child actor. It brought him to find out of a gift for accent while he was going to auditions for radio commercials. Consequently, he interested to start learning French at the beginning, and then Latin, Hebrew, Pashto, Ojibwe, and another.

There is a saying from Nelson Mandela that Tom Doner was talking at Tedx Talks in 2014 said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart”. That was the main reason why he has learnt languages.

The technique that he used to memorise vocabulary called “Method of loci” which help him to take mnemonics. For example: If he has 10 vocabulary words in the list that he wants to learn. He takes each of those words and instead of memorizing them in blocks we integrate them into our spatial memory. He also memorises vocabulary in batches of sounds that were similar. It helps him not confusing in many languages that he had learnt at the same time.

Finally, languages learning let him open his mind. It was putting him into contact with people all around the world and was learning various different couture. “You can translate words easily. But you can’t quite translate meaning.” He said.

Comments

  1. David WoodfieldJune 24, 2021 at 5:58 PM

    Nice post. Certainly, Doner has developed a good 'ear' for languages and accents.I think it would be a real asset in language learning. To be able to hear words and phrases as they are pronounced and to be able to reproduce them is a rare skill. By studying phonology, though - that is how the meaningful sounds in a language, the phonemes, are produced - you can practise how to produce the sounds of your target language accurately. You can learn what shape your mouth should be in and where to put your tongue in your mouth and whether to 'voice' or 'aspirate' and so on when you are producing sounds.
    You rightly point to the Mandela quote when reflecting on Doner's motivation for learning
    languages. I think speakers of the languages we learn, on the whole, are appreciative of our efforts to communicate with them in their languages. In making the effort to interact with them in their language we are, simply said, showing them respect.
    By the way, can you tell me more about the 'method of loci.' Can you explain how Doner integrates words he wants to learn in to his 'spatial memory'?
    David :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. MikeJune 27, 2021 at 6:11 PM

    Great, post, Hong. There is a lot of difficult vocabulary that you use. I'm going to ask you about Tim Doner again tomorrow in class, so that you can practise using this vocabulary. I would also like to hear more about "the method of loci." Well done!!

    ReplyDelete

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