Currently I can speak English (my native language is Russian), German, Mandarin. Studying Swedish and Japanese, soon going to pick up Arabic and Spanish. Thanks for inspiration, Tim!
What impresses me the most about him is his humility. He is willing to ask anyone for clarification, even during this video. Well done, sir! :D I only have half the languages he does, and I'm much older!
I can speak five languages: Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, English, Indonesian (and little bit malaysian). Too bad no one supports me and often times I'm just self studying. I only rely on available resources - internet for example. I don't have money to afford formal education about languages. But by the way, this guy is really awesome. If he's going to speak filipino, primarily the tagalog, the grammar has a resemblance with Indonesian and Malaysian so it's not that hard to learn.
huh,i didnt know my language (greek) was dead haha :P i guess he means ancient greek but i wouldnt call it dead people never stopped using it the language never died,it just involved we are taught ancient greek at school(kinda) so a lot of greeks can either read or speak ancient greek or they can do both
I'm FIlipino but I grew up in HK and I speak English, Tagalog, Cantonese and Mandarin fluently. The fun thing about knowing different languages is that I can think of a phrase in a language and translate it around when I'm doing a composition for school.
OMG he's watching Psycho-Pass to study Japanese xD おいおい、サイコパスじゃないか（笑） 他在看【心靈判官】學日文啊！ 애니메 PSYCHO-PASS를 보고 일본어를 공부하고 있어요! Está vendo o anime PSYCHO-PASS estudar Japonês! ...yep that's all I got T_T
Wtf this guy speaks Dutch? I speak Dutch as well and I don't understand the language sometimes. It is awesome that he speaks a language that about twenty million people speak.
I've got so much respect for this guy. I'm a Turkish girl who lives in The Netherlands and I can speak English fluently. So I could help him, but he's to far from here :P. I was learning Japanese, Korean and Arabic (in my own time), but because of college I didn't had the time for it. This guy gives me the feeling to start learning these languages again, and I'm gonna do that :D. Thank you Tim :)
Show me a prodigy that isn't "dedicated". Pure dedication might account for being fluent in 3 languages at age 17...but 20? That is exceptional ability. Don't see how his dedication makes him not exceptional.
OMG he is amazing!! It makes me so inspired to keep learning French! I live in Australia and it is very similar to the US in the way that we are only raised learning English. My school never had a full second language course for students, there was one option, but I never really had an interest as a teen. But I'm taking up learning french as a hobby now :-)
I have loved learning languages too, but as I keep getting older and more busy, I can't find time to continue studying :( So far, I know Spanish and English at high levels, but French is getting up there. I know introductory sign language and German. I need to work on those and Arabic as well as begin on Mandarin.
I understand the way you learn with TV because that is the way I learned English. I'm from Serbia and I can speak fluid English because when I was a kid Disney Channel and Jetix didn't have serbian subtitles so I had to make myself understand.
this man doesnt need subtitles watching anime dubbed in japanese seriously cool and with games that are exclusive for example in japan where the final fantasy series are in japanese
This young man is so motivating. I'm living in Korea now and desperate to learn Hangul. I love the quote he mentioned from Nelson Mandela: "When you talk to a man in his second language, you talk to his brain. When you talk to a man in his first language, you speak to his heart." Tim is the kind of president America needs; he'd be someone who can connect with hearts of people all over the world.
I'm learning English in NE who is from Japan. I respect u so much!! Actually I was thinking about studying other language, but my English is still poor so I just focus the English that's why I gave it up. However I changed mind that I will try some language soon!! Your presence gave me courage. Thank you! 日本語も頑張ってください！！
This is just amazing! I admire such talent. I can barely get myself to speak two! If you were to learn Spanish, you would cover a lot more of the world, which would be the coolest thing ever. But I understand that he probably learns the languages with the history that he's interested in.
Two things immediately stand out about this amazing young man. He's left handed and he speaks English at an extremely rapid rate. This tells me his brain is wired differently than most people's brains.
I've been teaching myself Japanese for a while, and I find that what is actually difficult is not learning vocabulary, more the sentence structures and how different they are.
I meet and chat with a lot of people around the world thru a few game and social sites. Being a house bound old person..I spend a lot of time on the internet. One thing that always amazes me is how folks from so many fantastic foreign countries speak to me in English...and THEN apologise for their "bad english"!! To which I respond that I cannot speak anything but English and I am amazed at their hard work and that they had absolutely nothing to apologise for, they were perfectly fine!
I am amazed at the breath of his knowledge, besides studying the language he studies the culture as well. That's the only way to learn anything. Smart, smart kid with a bright future. I hope he becomes a diplomat!
Fabulous.I can speak Mandarin,Teochew,Cantonese,English.And now im learning Thai quite well.Next semester, i'll learn Japanese.Then,i'll learn French or Spanish.And,that's enough,i think.I love learning language,i wanna learn many kinds of languages,but I don't think i'll survive if i do so,in my country.Whatever,it's cheerful!
The funny thing about this kid is, he's not a genius. He just has an interest and he studies in a REALLY useful and helpful way (I can definitely vouch for watching lots of TV and immersing yourself in the conversation of a country). Plus he has a great memory. It says he can speak 20, but my guess is that he's FLUENT in 3-4 maximum. Which is incredibly impressive, don't get me wrong, but not impossible. Which means there's hope for the rest of us ;)
This is awesome. I've been learning German for about 2 years now in school, but even then I couldn't compare with him in his Hebrew or anything. It's inspirational! I love learning it, though I definitely wish I was better at actually speaking it and communicating vs. just being able to write and read it. But this motivates me to practice speaking it much more! Language learning is so much fun!
I natively speak finnsh and I learned englsih at a young age, I studied japanese as a hobby and learned it, now I'm 21 and picking SPANISH as a hobby. Spanish seems very easy. I whole heartedly agree that new languages open up so many new things about people and cultures that it's more than worth it to learn more and mroe languages. :)
Pashto is an Indo-European language, not a semitic language, it's insulting that in the thumbnail of this video Pashto is depicted with an arabic alphabet, where actually its original alphabet is similar to those of Punjabi and Hindi. It's a sensitive topic because the indo-european populations of middle eastern countries are being heavily persecuted and forcefully assimilated by muslim-arab regimes, be more aware of that next time.
Wow. ^_^ that's exactly how I feel about learning a language! I took Japanese at school for the last 2 years (I'm 16 now) and this summer I'm learning Romanian. And at school next year I'm taking manadrin Chinese and Russian. (Russian isn't offered at school so I'm learning that on my own) ^_^ I wish someone had told me a lot sooner how FUN it was to learn languages!
i currently speak arabic hebrew and english at a very high level (my mother language is arabic) and im truying to learn russian and romanian i just wanted to help you out a bit because in the end you said in hebrew "אתם מסתכלים thnkr" and it is not correct מסתכלים is used to say looking but to say watching you have to say צופים so the sentence is " אתם צופים ב thnkr"" hope i helped you out :) thumbs up so he could see i love what this guy is truying to do and i admire his work
wow that was awesome, this guy is an inspiration to me, i personally speak Kurdish, English and Arabic (in Arabic i'm not fluent), but its only in English i can read and write, in the other two i can only speak it.
I used to think it's abnormal that I'm interested in 15+ languages and usually all I do in my free-time is learning languages but now I feel normal again hahah It must be hard to keep all of them at the same level, I tend to forget even easy English words
I know Polish from my parents, Norwegian because I live in Norway and English from school. I am starting in mini-high after the summer, then I'm going to learn German. I am planning to learn Portugeuse, Spanish and French too so I can travel in Latin-America and such.
I am currently learning French. I want to eventually be fluent. On top of my school work I listen to podcasts in French and I also have a workbook my French teacher gave me that I plan to work on during the summer. After French I want to learn either Portuguese because the economy is thriving in Brazil right now, or Italian just because it's similar to French. I think my brain is wired for language honestly.
tienes razón, algo a tener en cuenta es que formas idiomáticas, no son tantas, si aprendes inglés, muchas formas escandinavas serán similares (alemán por ejemplo) aunque, si él sabe francés e italiano, no le costará aprender español o portugues, de hecho seguramente lo entiende :) es por ese motivo que a hispanohablantes se les dificulta lenguas germánicas, y no tanto las romances...
I feel the same way :3 he is the closest "thing" that proves that humans will someday be in the same page and actually unite and progress as a whole. The key is to be open to others.
I will agree with him on the movie watching thing. I've been watching movies and such for about a year now that are in German. And they help out A LOT, specially when you don't know anyone you can call up to have a conversation with.
keep working on your goal. don't let others effect your motivation in a bad way. i am studying my second language even though its a bit late for me to do so. but my reward for learning the language is to go visit the country that speak that language and have a fun memorable vacation. ^_^
I'm 17 and I'm just sitting here eating my oreos.
you sir are amazing. I'm barely bilingual
they could have coloured most of the map if he speaks spanish
Currently I can speak English (my native language is Russian), German, Mandarin. Studying Swedish and Japanese, soon going to pick up Arabic and Spanish. Thanks for inspiration, Tim!
He's no prodigy. He's just dedicated.
He says it himself.
Im kinda jealous
That's fantastic!! I need to learn another language!!
I don't think this kid realizes the type of careers he could get into. . .
Awesome! i know three languages and was trying to choose between Japanese and Korean maybe i should learn both!
Wasn't surprised when I realised he was left-handed too. 4:17
I hope this kid grows up to become Daniel from Stargate SG1
really inspired meee:) thanks fellow
I speak Pashto, Urdu, Hindi and English. I understand some Arabic and I am learning Spanish. And I am here thinking that I speak a lot of languages!
What impresses me the most about him is his humility. He is willing to ask anyone for clarification, even during this video. Well done, sir! :D I only have half the languages he does, and I'm much older!
I can speak five languages: Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, English, Indonesian (and little bit malaysian). Too bad no one supports me and often times I'm just self studying. I only rely on available resources - internet for example. I don't have money to afford formal education about languages. But by the way, this guy is really awesome. If he's going to speak filipino, primarily the tagalog, the grammar has a resemblance with Indonesian and Malaysian so it's not that hard to learn.
Omg so what if he doesn't know Spanish, he speaks 20 other languages!! He could learn Spanish in a day if he wanted to, relax guys.
His voice changes depending on the language he's speaking lol
huh,i didnt know my language (greek) was dead haha :P i guess he means ancient greek but i wouldnt call it dead people never stopped using it the language never died,it just involved we are taught ancient greek at school(kinda) so a lot of greeks can either read or speak ancient greek or they can do both
he should run for secretary of state
Being dedicated is a huge part of being a prodigy.
I'm FIlipino but I grew up in HK and I speak English, Tagalog, Cantonese and Mandarin fluently. The fun thing about knowing different languages is that I can think of a phrase in a language and translate it around when I'm doing a composition for school.
I have watched so much anime i have watched over the years and i cant speak Japanese. SMH
before i watched this video i read the title, and i was 100% sure he coudn't speak dutch ''yet''. en ja hoor, ik had gelijk ;))
OMG he's watching Psycho-Pass to study Japanese xD
おいおい、サイコパスじゃないか（笑）
他在看【心靈判官】學日文啊！
애니메 PSYCHO-PASS를 보고 일본어를 공부하고 있어요!
Está vendo o anime PSYCHO-PASS estudar Japonês!
...yep that's all I got T_T
omg i just know Persian ,Arabic and English. i wanna learn more
good luck Tim
Thnkr: Prodigies, Restoring hope for the human race.
This video is great! It's inspiring. I want to learn Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Shona and ASL :)
In Denmark it's common to speak 2-3 languages fluently and understand even more, but this is damn beautiful. 20 languages... Unbelievable
this kid is going to work for the CIA
Wtf this guy speaks Dutch? I speak Dutch as well and I don't understand the language sometimes. It is awesome that he speaks a language that about twenty million people speak.
i speak english and turkish and i must say his turkish is pretty impressive for someone who speaks an additional 19 languages
I've got so much respect for this guy.
I'm a Turkish girl who lives in The Netherlands and I can speak English fluently. So I could help him, but he's to far from here :P. I was learning Japanese, Korean and Arabic (in my own time), but because of college I didn't had the time for it. This guy gives me the feeling to start learning these languages again, and I'm gonna do that :D.
Thank you Tim :)
I only know, English, Portuguese, and Spanish. What an amazing 'talent'!! :)
Show me a prodigy that isn't "dedicated". Pure dedication might account for being fluent in 3 languages at age 17...but 20? That is exceptional ability. Don't see how his dedication makes him not exceptional.
ummm.....does he have something against the Spanish language?
OMG he is amazing!! It makes me so inspired to keep learning French! I live in Australia and it is very similar to the US in the way that we are only raised learning English. My school never had a full second language course for students, there was one option, but I never really had an interest as a teen. But I'm taking up learning french as a hobby now :-)
oh he didn't learn spanish >
man this guy motivates me even more to learn more languages! thank you!
I have loved learning languages too, but as I keep getting older and more busy, I can't find time to continue studying :( So far, I know Spanish and English at high levels, but French is getting up there. I know introductory sign language and German. I need to work on those and Arabic as well as begin on Mandarin.
But... Greek isn't dead.
Good job man ;)
Glad you picked up Farsi!
I understand the way you learn with TV because that is the way I learned English. I'm from Serbia and I can speak fluid English because when I was a kid Disney Channel and Jetix didn't have serbian subtitles so I had to make myself understand.
this man doesnt need subtitles watching anime dubbed in japanese seriously cool and with games that are exclusive for example in japan where the final fantasy series are in japanese
his English is incredible. :)
This young man is so motivating. I'm living in Korea now and desperate to learn Hangul. I love the quote he mentioned from Nelson Mandela: "When you talk to a man in his second language, you talk to his brain. When you talk to a man in his first language, you speak to his heart." Tim is the kind of president America needs; he'd be someone who can connect with hearts of people all over the world.
His french is excellent. Bravo jeune homme, continuez votre beau travail!
there was a great point there - learning languages is like learning its cultures -- exactly my point. Good for you and best wishes on new ones!
I'm learning English in NE who is from Japan. I respect u so much!! Actually I was thinking about studying other language, but my English is still poor so I just focus the English that's why I gave it up. However I changed mind that I will try some language soon!! Your presence gave me courage. Thank you!
日本語も頑張ってください！！
This is just amazing! I admire such talent. I can barely get myself to speak two!
If you were to learn Spanish, you would cover a lot more of the world, which would be the coolest thing ever. But I understand that he probably learns the languages with the history that he's interested in.
He can speak my language!!!
he has no problem playing games with many language support
Wow he is amazing! U know what? I'm going to start learning Spanish soon in my junior year and practice some Italian and Japanese at home by myself.
Two things immediately stand out about this amazing young man. He's left handed and he speaks English at an extremely rapid rate. This tells me his brain is wired differently than most people's brains.
I've been teaching myself Japanese for a while, and I find that what is actually difficult is not learning vocabulary, more the sentence structures and how different they are.
Wait. Greek isnt dead.
I meet and chat with a lot of people around the world thru a few game and social sites. Being a house bound old person..I spend a lot of time on the internet.
One thing that always amazes me is how folks from so many fantastic foreign countries speak to me in English...and THEN apologise for their "bad english"!!
To which I respond that I cannot speak anything but English and I am amazed at their hard work and that they had absolutely nothing to apologise for, they were perfectly fine!
I am amazed at the breath of his knowledge, besides studying the language he studies the culture as well. That's the only way to learn anything. Smart, smart kid with a bright future. I hope he becomes a diplomat!
Fabulous.I can speak Mandarin,Teochew,Cantonese,English.And now im learning Thai quite well.Next semester, i'll learn Japanese.Then,i'll learn French or Spanish.And,that's enough,i think.I love learning language,i wanna learn many kinds of languages,but I don't think i'll survive if i do so,in my country.Whatever,it's cheerful!
People like Tim can bring the world much closer together, good luck to him!
Wow, what a dude, quite cool. I'm trying to learn arabic as I am half palestian, and I am very astonished about his pronounciation in arabic! Wow!
you kick ass tim! 완전 멋저!
The funny thing about this kid is, he's not a genius. He just has an interest and he studies in a REALLY useful and helpful way (I can definitely vouch for watching lots of TV and immersing yourself in the conversation of a country). Plus he has a great memory. It says he can speak 20, but my guess is that he's FLUENT in 3-4 maximum. Which is incredibly impressive, don't get me wrong, but not impossible. Which means there's hope for the rest of us ;)
This is awesome. I've been learning German for about 2 years now in school, but even then I couldn't compare with him in his Hebrew or anything. It's inspirational! I love learning it, though I definitely wish I was better at actually speaking it and communicating vs. just being able to write and read it. But this motivates me to practice speaking it much more! Language learning is so much fun!
I natively speak finnsh and I learned englsih at a young age, I studied japanese as a hobby and learned it, now I'm 21 and picking SPANISH as a hobby. Spanish seems very easy.
I whole heartedly agree that new languages open up so many new things about people and cultures that it's more than worth it to learn more and mroe languages. :)
Pashto is an Indo-European language, not a semitic language, it's insulting that in the thumbnail of this video Pashto is depicted with an arabic alphabet, where actually its original alphabet is similar to those of Punjabi and Hindi. It's a sensitive topic because the indo-european populations of middle eastern countries are being heavily persecuted and forcefully assimilated by muslim-arab regimes, be more aware of that next time.
He doesn't speak spanish!!???
Of all the THNKR prodigies, this is the one I envy most!!
No spanish or portuguese? that's a whole continent with only two languages
mantenere apprendimento della lingua italiana di romanticismo
Wow. ^_^ that's exactly how I feel about learning a language! I took Japanese at school for the last 2 years (I'm 16 now) and this summer I'm learning Romanian. And at school next year I'm taking manadrin Chinese and Russian. (Russian isn't offered at school so I'm learning that on my own) ^_^ I wish someone had told me a lot sooner how FUN it was to learn languages!
He is an inspiration. I'm trying to learn german by myself but it's a pain.
He would make a great peace maker.
He is truly inspiring.. I'm curious to see how very linguistically diverse he will be in years to come!
What no Korean? Hahaha! 20 languages, I can barely speak three! I'm amazed!
i currently speak arabic hebrew and english at a very high level (my mother language is arabic) and im truying to learn russian and romanian
i just wanted to help you out a bit because in the end you said in hebrew "אתם מסתכלים thnkr" and it is not correct
מסתכלים is used to say looking but to say watching you have to say צופים
so the sentence is " אתם צופים ב thnkr""
hope i helped you out :)
thumbs up so he could see
i love what this guy is truying to do and i admire his work
الشرق الأوسط .. ما شاء الله تبارك الرحمن
wow that was awesome, this guy is an inspiration to me, i personally speak Kurdish, English and Arabic (in Arabic i'm not fluent), but its only in English i can read and write, in the other two i can only speak it.
Holy moly....that was amazing man.....unbelievable....
I love Tim. He is awesome. Such a smart dude.
I used to think it's abnormal that I'm interested in 15+ languages and usually all I do in my free-time is learning languages but now I feel normal again hahah It must be hard to keep all of them at the same level, I tend to forget even easy English words
Yes, I noticed - he is indeed left-handed like a lot of creatives! What a great young man . . .
You can try learning croatian on serbian because if you learn one you also learn the former language of ex Yugoslavia.
I'm really impressed, amazing job!
I know Polish from my parents, Norwegian because I live in Norway and English from school. I am starting in mini-high after the summer, then I'm going to learn German. I am planning to learn Portugeuse, Spanish and French too so I can travel in Latin-America and such.
This guy has a bright future ahead of him.
This guy is amazing respect he has the hunger that many of us don't have
This inspires me to practice the one language (French) I learned at school. It's not 20, but whatever :P
wow amazing you learned Farsi(Persian) as well?
Really hard language ...
I am currently learning French. I want to eventually be fluent. On top of my school work I listen to podcasts in French and I also have a workbook my French teacher gave me that I plan to work on during the summer. After French I want to learn either Portuguese because the economy is thriving in Brazil right now, or Italian just because it's similar to French. I think my brain is wired for language honestly.
I know only english :( and I am learning arabic
this is amazing - i hope to someday be fluent in mandarin, japanese and my mother tongue, malayalam
Fantastic! This guy is my Hero!
This guy is amazing
and of course he is left-handed :)
6:48 "התחלתי ללמוד לפני שנת חצי"? לזה אתה קורא לדעת שפה?
tienes razón, algo a tener en cuenta es que formas idiomáticas, no son tantas, si aprendes inglés, muchas formas escandinavas serán similares (alemán por ejemplo) aunque, si él sabe francés e italiano, no le costará aprender español o portugues, de hecho seguramente lo entiende :)
es por ese motivo que a hispanohablantes se les dificulta lenguas germánicas, y no tanto las romances...
this is what i want to do but now i only know English and a little bit of Russian
I feel the same way :3 he is the closest "thing" that proves that humans will someday be in the same page and actually unite and progress as a whole. The key is to be open to others.
I will agree with him on the movie watching thing. I've been watching movies and such for about a year now that are in German. And they help out A LOT, specially when you don't know anyone you can call up to have a conversation with.
keep working on your goal. don't let others effect your motivation in a bad way. i am studying my second language even though its a bit late for me to do so. but my reward for learning the language is to go visit the country that speak that language and have a fun memorable vacation. ^_^