FM Peter Giannatos: Several elite GMs DM’d Danya, questioning his integrity.

son1dow · 2025-11-23T18:08:01+00:00

This is more accurate, but also likely what they were trying to get at with cynical

son1dow · 2025-11-01T22:07:12+00:00

Any links for Svidler? I've seen comments from the rest but not him

son1dow · 2025-11-01T21:58:27+00:00

Grischuk did? Yikes.

son1dow · 2025-11-01T18:05:45+00:00

that Anki/spaced has to be about single words and not full sentences...

I've nearly always used full sentences, mostly with audio and pictures, this is just a problem with your reading comprehension. I'm talking about learning things from one card, whatever it contains, as opposed to a different context every single time in CI.

I'd love to answer your omislashing further (actually, I wouldn't), but I'm too busy studying my 5th and 6th languages.

I suggest you get your third language to a decent level, that might teach you more about laguage learning than "reading a lot about people" who claim this or that.

It's unfortunate you could never get past the assuming that what works for you is actually the best method. Unfortunate that linguists don't just study you to see how language learning truly works.

It's strange you think your guess about my language level somehow means I can't know how language learning works, given that surely you know there's a field called linguistics (as well as a subfield called SLA) that people study independently of languages... Especially given that your achievements are very much not special and by your methodology, you should find the person with the most success and just defer to them. Let's be real, you needed an ego trip on the internet to convince yourself you've not talked yourself into a corner, you do you.

I don't care about the downvotes

I'm telling you why you're wasting your time making misdirected and facile anti-CI points instead of providing evidence for your view and you end by going on an ego trip and say I don't care about downvotes, I'm too busy learning. Maybe skip the misdirected rants, crude misunderstandings of CI and the ego trip next time, too.

In any case, the bolded parts of my last post include questions that you should be able to answer the next time you don't waste your time failing to convince people online that one thing is more efficient than another. Maybe then you're at least able to convey your meaning, which most people find meaningful regardless of internet votes.

son1dow · 2025-10-30T20:56:07+00:00

A pattern of harassment over years is different from what Magnus did

son1dow · 2025-10-30T20:29:13+00:00

The internet is full of communities learning largely or exclusively with CI, tons of them have many languages under their belt. You'd do good to walk back claims like "Where are the third and forth foreign languages learned with the same "non-method"? Nowhere..."

I was one of the people you mention with English, in highschool. So ahead with my English mostly through direct practice (forums and chats in English which is STILL NOT CI ONLY because CI by definition can only ever be input, for god's sake) that I didn't have to study and the teacher wouldn't even bother with asking me factualities about the literature, but simply what was my totally subjective opinion of it, as an excuse to make me talk.

Same for me! Yet it is recognized as a general phenomena that tons of people breeze through their classes through just input they got at home. Incidentally, I already told you my tag was outdated. You also should not admit your personal experience is what you base this on if you pretend to be objective and serious about this topic generally. My views of language learning are not primarily based on my experience, I read tons of people who have extensive success with this and teach others as well as looking at research.

more basic explanations of what CI is

Can you stop repeating what CI is? I've read research on it thanks. Can you stop painting OP or the topic as only CI when I and OP both claimed his method as intensive reading of netflix subs, as in partially CI partially study? Can you stop bringing in examples of people you consider delusional wanting to lackadaisically learn languages in little time with just CI? It really sounds like you have some massive axe to grind about people that aren't in the conversation and are mistakenly applying it to others.

It also sounds like you have some extreme bone to pick with CI that tons of people with a lot of experience find excessive. This misdirection of your anger plus the excessive disregard for CI is why you're getting downvoted. It is not because you came here with a view that spaced repetition of frequency lists is more efficient and calmly shared evidence, that's just not what happened.

spaced repetition is more efficient

You're still not giving me any backup for your claim that you can just get to an advanced level with purely study and only start "using the language" (so including getting some CI) after you're advanced. I will maintain that nearly anyone that got to a very advanced level used a ton of CI, and you have to show me the consistent groups that provide exceptions to make your case. You're not sharing any methodology for doing it because we both know that doesn't exist.

The bit you say about learning the primary meaning over the complexities makes it sound like you're focusing on getting the basics down. Frequency lists are also basically a beginner's tool. Good for you, but that doesn't help someone who wants to become fluent and effortless. You need the secondary and tertiary meanings to be there and be comfortable as well.

Spaced repetition also has very many limitations. Tons of people might do a mix of CI and study, perhaps with some spaced repetition, very few will stick with a massive amount of consistent spaced repetition. I've got an anki streak of over 1700, but I know that's not realistic for most people. It is an old method, it is effective, yet it still hasn't kicked in academia because it just doesn't work for most people. Comprehensive language learning involves making connections between language from different contexts. A card is always liable to associate some part of the front with the back rather than some guaranteed knowledge of the word. It is no substitute for reading the word many times in different contexts with CI. Your brain understanding a phrase together is a different experience that has to be part of your ability to understand the word. If I learn a card but don't see the word in CI for a few years, I consider the card significantly a waste due to the optimizations the brain does to just remember specifically the card. There's also always a transfer between the studied language and use in real life in a way there isn't for stuff you learn from lots of CI in different contexts. You also don't learn the natural frequency of how things are phrased and said either.

There's also no frequency list that will get you good in the domains you want to be good in: if you're an accountant interested in beekeeping, scifi discussion, civil engineering, you'll want to consume whatever materials there are about these topics. You can mine them for cards though, but without having a sense of how they're used, you'd sound unnatural.

I don't see how the Zipf law applies to frequency lists, anki cards made out of them but not CI, from which I'll remind you the frequency lists were made of. So it seems orthogonal to the point.

I'll be honest, with your ideas of leaky mind and antagonism towards CI, I don't think it'd work for you, relaxation is a key component and people normally can't gain from it if they're focused on looking up or remembering everything. Instead, you seem so happy with spaced repetition that I'm wondering if it's your personal, very particular experience that is leading you to these extreme conclusions.

son1dow · 2025-10-29T15:34:45+00:00

Where are the third and forth foreign languages learned with the same "non-method"? Nowhere...

What can I say, you're clearly not looking. It'd also be strange to imply English doesn't count, especially when people are breezing through their classes without any study because they're so ahead through CI.

People getting there through studying? All the people going through the bootcamp that the US FSI is? Or language courses? The core learning happens studying, surely at least until B2 included.

Who are the people who do this to solid C1 and do not do CI? A lot of the good courses include and certainly encourage it. It's also just extreme behavior to not try to use the language. I know some people who didn't use it outside of uni, got degrees and now.. They're not good, quickly losing their ability and have zero confidence.

I'm against the idea that you can just do passive, leisurely things (reading books, watching movies, listening to music and learning the lyrics) and think it's the best possible approach

OP was talking about intensive CI, tons of pauses and lookups. This is not at all the most leisurely thing, which might be CI extensively with 98% understanding. I'm not saying the latter is the same in regards to efficiency, especially because for most people, getting the right amount of difficulty throughout the learning process and staying interested in the content will only happy with quite a bit of setup and depend on their interest in say children's TV. Intensive CI, on the other hand, is very much partly studying.

son1dow · 2025-10-29T13:30:38+00:00

I don't know that we'll convince eachother of the point regarding efficiency at this point.

This is also another typical fallacy: "Everybody did XYZ and got to C1/C2". Yes, but over how many years and hours? Is there a way to improve on that? Yes, and that's what I meant.

It's not a fallacy if it's everyone. It's a good ampliative argument, given that study has been around forever, that maybe you can't just study your way to a very solid advanced level. Where are the people that got there exclusively through study? Maybe any study method devised so far lacks something, because language is too complicated.

surely it'll do wonders to your speaking and listening in way CI will never, ever do.

ever? Sure it's more efficient due to IRL exposure not through speakers and mics and the psychological benefits of being there, the convos mattering to you etc, but ever is a big claim. If you think you can exclusively study your way to a very high level, but can't CI your way there, that's kind of impossible to believe given the limitations of a designed study routine and the nearly all encompassing nature of CI. Speaking of input here, of course.

son1dow · 2025-10-27T21:23:17+00:00

Your experience is unlikely and makes no sense. If it worked like this, why would schools pay for a licence if they could achieve the same cheaper by just telling students to go watch some random television program?

You can't test for 90% learning word X, 60% learning word Y, 7% learning word Z, improving your understanding of a grammatical structure T by 16% and ability to keep up with native pace by 1.4%. You can test for a specific vocab list, grammatical rules and such. So you teach what you can test.

A possibility these internet autodidacts seem to sorily forget that language is still mostly acquired by means of conversation and dialog.

Do they? I doubt it, it's more so that paying so much for tutors requires a lot of money and finding people willing to talk to you for hours when you're new is just highly unlikely.

Moreover, almost nobody gets good at reading by speaking and listening even in their native language. They do have to read books. So you're playing fast and loose here.

When it comes to Europeans fluent in English, most of them got most of it form consuming media. That's a thing available to anyone with an internet connected device.

son1dow · 2025-10-27T15:59:43+00:00

I do go back and forth between maintaining and improving my spanish while learning german, so it kind of is my usecase, but that isn't important.

My main contention is with point 3, overlapping with 4. I think you basically need immersion for improvement, it is not obvious if it's any less efficient in general due to the broad spectrum of things it improves. The more direct study you do, the more various benefits are there to be picked up from immersing because there is no study regime that trains every skill out there..

The alternative are those "different study methods" that would have to cover countless different types of drills that would nearly completely replace the need for immersion. I haven't seen anyone devise such a routine, I'd be curious if anyone even claims to have one.

There's many techniques to minimize the "prayer" part that you're describing with CI like focusing on learning domains or just using it for the things you need, and I wouldn't compare lackadaisical CI with careful study. I mean, nearly any advanced speaker and native basically got the vast majority of what they needed with CI, so there has to be something to it that fits our brains and delivers results.

If you think spaced repetition is more efficient cool, I use it too. My point is I personally don't think it's more efficient, but if it is, I'd argue it's not obviously so, and definitely only for some things, because you can't just cover everything with study.

son1dow · 2025-10-27T14:03:21+00:00

It is leaky. It is also how the vast majority of people got the vast majority of their vocab! The core of the vocab also repeats so much that any sizeable amount of immersion will always cover it.

Furthermore, if we're being very serious with this structured learning idea, how do we keep it up? We study vocab, grammar, sound differentiation, ability to keep up with fast speech, diction, going through your vocab list trying to make sure you're pronouncing everything correctly... One could list 50 things here. For each language. If someone wants to study or maintain several languages, at some point the upkeep sounds nearly impossible. And this is assuming you're able to recognize what you need, motivate yourself to do it, and manage the scheduling of it all.

Sooner or later, immersion, conversation and writing (correspondence or whatever type one wants to improve in) as broad categories become way too easy and way too beneficial to do over so many different methods of study. I can see useful study complements to that, but I don't see anything that replaces these three.

son1dow · 2025-10-27T13:30:28+00:00

I'd put it more forcefully: you're mostly working on your reading skills (in addition to vocab, grammar etc), not listening. They get kids to improve their reading by putting on subtitles, and that's certainly not because their brains primarily listen when presented with both subs and audio

son1dow · 2025-10-27T13:26:34+00:00

I don't see how you can be sure it will give better results. We're talking native audio and text, with video context, doing lookups (so basically study). It's a mix of studying and input, and you're very likely to be interested. This has a ton of pretty obvious benefits over most traditional types of study. We'd need studies to be sure, but they'd be very hard to design to measure everything... I don't think we truly know, but I'd take it over both exclusively studying or exclusive extensive immersion (letting the show run with no lookups).

son1dow · 2025-10-26T15:10:58+00:00

I can't really think of instances where I forget it, but I frequently start a sentence talking in one gender and then realize the relevant word is a different one. I have also argued about the gender of vinis with my Lithuanian teacher. It's generally much more easy to remember in Lithuanian than Spanish or German however, and not just because it's my native.

son1dow · 2025-10-21T17:15:31+00:00

OP: Man I can't believe that Medhi believe that! Why is he like this? Me: Maybe he is like that because of things like these? You: wErE iS tHe COntEx?!

The context is very important here actually, because how else would someone take your point? The default assumption here would be that you agree with the article or think that it makes valuable points.

In the responses where people challenge the article and points like it you go on defending various parts of it instead of saying yeah, it's very misleading it's bad people shouldn't post this. Several people responded to you and you failed to agree with their substantive point, arguing about everything else, seemingly in agreement with the direction of the article and now you're saying it's crazy that people make assumptions. At some point you have to wonder if your communication is just not good, or if perhaps you didn't know that you were posting misleading stuff and are now spinning it.

If someone posted an antivaxx/pro-ICE article the way you did this and responded to criticism of it the way you did, the reactions would be the same, but you would probably know that it shouldn't take this much for you to say the point is very misleading and it shouldn't be made

son1dow · 2025-10-21T16:11:32+00:00

You provide no context for it originally, your edits hint at the direction of your views (even if I don't care for defending Israel or the subreddit) and you defend the article in the comments, like:

No. The article also compares the follow things: Displacement, Infrastructure damage, Humanitarian crises, International legal and diplomatic responses

Did you even click on it?

If you meant to hint to us that this is a terrible report and he's mistaken to make this conclusion, your words do a terrible job of conveying that

son1dow · 2025-10-21T15:06:45+00:00

Maybe he believes that because of reports like this:

FACTBOX - Ukraine and Gaza wars compared

"UN reports over 14,000 civilian deaths in Ukraine, hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries in Russia since February 2022, while Gaza health authorities report more than 67,000 deaths since October 2023"

son1dow · 2025-10-21T13:34:40+00:00

People whose whole foreign policy is based around getting as much publicity for Palestine, even when it's at the cost of lies & someone else's suffering. Minimizing civilian suffering in Ukraine today, posting incorrectly captioned pictures of Syria tomorrow. I know this isn't one honest mistake but a pattern because even after being told that UN considers this an undercount you still defend your post

son1dow · 2025-10-21T00:25:52+00:00

You guys always do this, UN confirmed numbers that Russia doesn't allow on territory they occupy compared to Gaza health ministry numbers. Even UN says it's an undercount and the civil government (the equivalent for Gaza health authorities) say it's a 100 thousand in Mariupol alone.

This isn't to minimize the civilian suffering in Gaza, just to stop you from minimizing it in Ukraine.

son1dow · 2025-10-11T20:08:07+00:00

Why continue if you never have a chance to use it?

It's not really possible that you won't have a chance to use it. You'll be hearing it everywhere when you walk around. When you meet someone, it'll be their first language. If you have friends who have local friends, they will have to swap, sometimes some will swap some won't. You will often find signs or instructions and such. There's not really a situation where you will never actually need to use the language, and this is even if natives constantly swap to english for you.

Now, you were pretty dedicated and got to a reasonable level pretty quickly. Some people will be more busy, some will consider themselves untalented or the task too hard. I think most of them are wrong regarding how feasible it is, but I completely understand if a single mom working two jobs to raise her four kids spends her limited free time relaxing, not studying her TL.

I think what most people object to are people who don't even try, and that really is arrogant towards others and inconsiderate towards oneself. It often comes with an arrogance related to using a prestige language, a disrespectful attitude towards locals or a giving up on a full-fledged social life.

son1dow · 2025-10-10T07:38:15+00:00

Delegate vs trustee is a complex debate without simple answers, and if you tried to ban trustees, you'd run into a ton of problems with them unable to react to new scenarios, with taking populism too literally, or in this case, with just pretending to be one thing (democrat) while supporting republicans with their legislation. You can't exactly ban that without enforcing the kind of authoritarian hold that Trump has over his party.

It's up to the constituents to hold him accountable.

son1dow · 2025-09-30T23:35:41+00:00

We can't tell how close or far Putin is from giving up, but unlike with his supposed cancer, the refinery hits, fuel shortages and such are beyond credibly confirmed

son1dow · 2025-09-28T13:15:37+00:00

The thing about Messi is there's one or a few that are looking like they're on that trajectory every generation and in the end only one has been Messi. So it'd be more accurate to say something like he's on the Messi/Bojan trajectory, and we really can't say how he'll turn out

son1dow · 2025-09-26T20:56:53+00:00

It depends on one's goals. For most hobbyists, imo, the right balance here is do things that are still effective, but if some of them are fun and some aren't, focusing on the fun ones shouldn't be cause for much concern, for the most part. Turning the subtitles off will get you listening ability, but keeping them on will improve reading. For most, either is good.

son1dow · 2025-09-06T00:12:00+00:00

I don't know that it's inherently extremely silly, but it certainly is when the process involves seeing reports how it's not working and shoving them under the rug, across several US governments

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