The Vilest People on Earth

YouTube polyglots are an absolute cancer and need to be eradicated

There is a group of people on the internet doing something truly heinous. These guys go around shocking locals, ordering dim sum in Chinese, and basically just being better than the rest of you. I’m talking about polyglots. These motherfuckers claim to speak dozens of languages, with some of them going as far as to say they speak forty or fifty. Now, anyone who isn't retarded knows this is impossible. I'm retarded, and I know it's impossible.

Like anything else that can be commodified and gain traction, these motherfuckers turned language learning into something that can appeal to the TikTok-watching audience. They make content for simpletons (Americans).

Who is a polyglot? Well, to understand that, we first must understand that a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who speaks one language is English. Anyway, a polyglot is someone who knows/is able to use multiple languages. Again, to the American (I'm lumping English in here, too) mind, the knowledge of a second, let alone third, language is seen as a herculean feat. In many parts of the world, this is just the norm. In Kazakhstan, where I live, most people know both Russian and Kazakh. Younger generations know Russian, Kazakh, and English. Take a look at guys from Kenya who know English, Swahili, and one of the plethora of local languages, such as Luhya. You don't see these Kenyan homies walking around shocking minimum wage employees with their language skills; it's just an accepted part of life being multilingual.

Most of the videos on YouTube contain titles like "Guy Surprises Strangers by Speaking 10 Languages" or "White Guy Shocks Locals by Ordering Food in Perfect Mandarin." I want to start with one individual in particular. It was while watching his videos that I realized every single one of these polyglots was an absolute fraud. I promise, I’ll get to the point. How can I tell these people are frauds when I myself don't speak 10 languages? First of all, you begin to notice patterns. To the uninitiated or to people who don't know how languages work, you might see a guy having a two-minute exchange in different languages and find it impressive. But what is the actual content of what is being said? Are they having deep conversations using complex grammatical constructs? Are these people ever put on the spot and asked to talk on topics that weren’t already pre-planned? Are they actually just repeating the same three to four set phrases over and over again? You know, things you can rehearse and memorize?

In 2023, I got a scholarship to study Japanese at Middlebury College. If anyone is familiar with Middlebury's language programs, they are intensive and prestigious. You live in a dormitory for eight weeks with other students and teachers from your specific language school. You sign a contract saying you will speak only the target language for the duration of your time in the program or risk expulsion. Classes are from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. (I think, it might have been to 1 p.m.), and you usually have about four hours of homework and a plethora of projects. In addition to work, there are clubs, events, movie nights, concerts, karaoke, and other things to get students to use Japanese outside of the classroom. The program packs in about one year's worth of a university courseload into two months. It's a lot to take in.

I came into the program at an elementary level. I could read and write both hiragana and katakana and had a basic grasp of grammar and phrases. Was I fluent after the 8 weeks of intensive lessons and daily language usage? That depends on your definition of fluency, but no, not really. Did my ability to converse, read, and comprehend vastly improve compared to what it was? Yes. In those eight weeks, I learned all the different verb forms and the nuances of honorific speech, a shit ton of kanji, and I could carry a conversation. Reading is still an uphill battle for me. I struggle with kanji. But just think, a year's worth of Japanese was packed into an intensive course, and I wasn't one hundred percent fluent. Yet there are people out there claiming to know 10-plus languages. Okay.

I want to start with my least favorite person on planet Earth (the guy I mentioned nine paragraph’s ago). His YouTube channel (and I can only assume his name) is Wouter Corduwener. He's an unfathomably smug Dutchman with an extremely punchable face. Click any of his videos at random, and I'm sure they all have a similar format. For the sake of this topic, I clicked on a video called "Dutchman Practicing Multiple Languages with Strangers" and another called “Giving strangers 50 Euros if I don’t speak their language.”

Polyglot gigachad giving people 50 euros if he doesn't speak their language

He usually waits on a street corner or in some public square and ambushes people, asking where they are from and then blowing their minds with his language skills. Whether it's Tagalog, Mandarin, Italian, or Russian, he constantly repeats a variation of the same phrases. "I like this language very much. I like the culture. I have friends who speak this language. I want to go there." Now, if a person speaks fast and confidently enough, you might think, "Wow, this guy is fluent!" But how hard is it, really, to memorize those phrases? None of them contain complex grammar structures. In Russian, for example (a language I do know), you don't have to worry too much about case declensions in these sentences.

Most of the time, the "shocked" reactions can boil down to people: 1) not expecting to be on camera, 2)being friendly because they are on camera, 3) people being pleasantly surprised/amused that a Dutch dude said a word or two in Tagalog.

However, these people have maybe a minute-long interaction with the guy, so they don't see his whole schtick. They don't see him using the same exact set of phrases with the following thirty people who speak with him.

So while I don't speak Tagalog, I got to the part in the video where he speaks Russian. At one point, our boy Wouter says, "Я знаю, что много люди из России/Ya znayu, chto mnogo lyudi iz Rossii” but this is grammatically incorrect. The phrase means “I know. that a lot of people from Russia”. The problem is that when using the word много (many/a lot of), the following noun should be in the genitive case. So it should be много людей/mnogo lyudei and not много люди. This isn't a life or death mistake, as the point is still clear, but it's where the cracks begin to show in this guy's "fluency ."He makes another mistake once again with the word mnogo/много. Not only does he pronounce it wrong, by pronouncing the final O as a full O, whereas in Russian, due to vowel stress reduction, only the first O in the word is pronounced as O because that syllable is stressed, he again fails to decline the noun after using this word. He says (many languages) много языки/mnogo yazyki when it should be много языков/mnogo yazykov (the genitive case).

Finally, our homeboy says, "I speak 29 languages", which he says as я говорю на двадцать девять языка/ya govoryu na dvadtsat’ devyat’ yazyka” which translates literally as “I speak in 29 languages”, but homeboy forgot that when using “na/in” in this situation, the words need to be in the prepositional case. So really he should be saying “Я говорю на двадцати девяти языках/ya govoryu na dvadtsati devyati yazykakh. I also couldn't quite hear how he said "languages" at the end, but it sounds like he ultimately gave up trying to decline the noun and just said языка instead of языках.

So what does this mean? It means the guy has memorized some key vocab words, but has no clue how to decline nouns and doesn’t know anything about Russian grammatical structure. In this case, it doesn't hamper understanding too much, but if he ever tried to talk about things beyond "I like country X, I have friends from country X," not declining nouns and adjectives properly would begin to make things very complicated and confusing. He isn't unique here; every similar type of self-proclaimed polyglot I've ever seen does the same thing when it comes to Russian.

Memorizing phrases in a language you are not native in isn't as hard as you think. Consider this, during my time at Middlebury I had to give a final presentation in Japanese. The presentation was about eight minutes long. I didn't want to be a dork reading from my script so I decided to memorize the entire thing by heart. Speaking for eight minutes in Japanese with no grammatical mistakes and without relying on my paper obviously wasn't easy, but it was doable. For one week, I practiced by myself, with peers, and with my teacher for about three hours every single day. I pulled it off. Would I be able to recite that speech again today? No. But my point is I was able to memorize an entire speech in another language, so it isn't that hard nor impressive for these polyglot frauds to memorize three sentences in a dozen languages.

Put these guys on the spot where they are asked questions on topics they didn’t previously prepare for and see how well they do.

Now my least favorite polyglot is this despicable cracker-ass mother fucker. From what I gathered, his Chinese is actually really good. I don't speak Chinese, so I have no comment, but it's everything else about him that sucks. I don't know his name, I think it's something like Bitch Ass Cracker. His channel is called Xiaomanyc. All of his videos have titles along the lines of “Clueless White Guy Orders in Perfect Chinese, Shocks Patrons and Staff.”

In fact, in said video, he films himself going to some restaurant, pretending not to know any Chinese, then suddenly BAM, he assaults the unsuspecting Chinese restaurant staff and patrons with his flawless fucking Chinese.

Now, call me a cynic; I don’t think they’re shocked. More than likely, they notice the big fucking camera pointed at his face, and they’re thinking, “Oh, most people come here to eat, not film themselves; that’s a bit weird” Then next, they’re probably thinking, “If homie speaks Chinese, why the fuck did he pretend he didn’t at first." I’m not saying NOBODY is impressed, but the title of the video and the quick cut zooms to unrelated background people make it seem like this white king walked into their stupid fucking toilet food stall and blew their minds by speaking their language better than they could. I mean, just look at the clickbait title. It’s always something along those lines, “Stupid fucking white retard blows Chinamens’ minds by speaking their gibberish.” This naming practice posits that white people inherently don’t have to or shouldn’t know other languages, but when they do it makes them special and based, basically superior. Nobody fucking cares about a brown person who learns multiple languages.

Possibly the best video I’ve ever seen is when this little cracker goes around speaking Jamaican Patois. It really does have to be seen to be believed. Y’all owe Chet Hanks an apology.

cracker speaking Jamaican

The best part is how all of his videos are the same. He starts each interaction speaking English, playing the fool, then you can see him trying to contain his excitement, waiting for the right moment to BLOW their ingant minds with his polyglotism. In the Jamaican video it’s the most hilarious because he essentially just becomes Jar Jar Binks halfway into the conversation.

Another egregious thing this bitch ass cracker does is promoting videos with names like “How I learn to speak any language in 24 hours”. This simply isn’t possible. If he were an honest actor, he’d say, “How I memorized three set phrases in five languages in 24 hours”. Here’s the thing, folks, there is no magic trick or hack to learning a language. The only way to do it is to put in the work, but charlatans like Cracker Boy here and guys like Ikenna (a black cracker) fool simpletons into thinking there’s a cheat code that helps you access a language faster. There isn’t. This is why so many people give up because it’s time-consuming and really fucking hard. These people not only aren’t real polyglots, they are liars, but more than that, they are narcissistic conmen. If they don’t have a product to sell or some BS course, they are simply collecting likes and subscriptions. They thrive on the attention, and morons are giving it to them.

Last but not least, my least favorite person in this club is Yuji Beleza. Motherfucker claims to be conversational in seven languages. He’s not. Everything I said about Wouter applies to Yuji, so I’m not going to repeat myself; the reason I find Yuji particularly egregious is because he’s popularized Kazakhstan quite a bit with his videos. Yuji is whatever the Kazakhstani cultural equivalent of a weeaboo is. The young TikTok-minded Kazakhs seem to love him (at least based on the comments) because he’s 1) handsome, 2) looks Kazakh, and 3) gushes over Kazakhstan. I aint hating on the motherfucker for being handsome, I agree, goodlooking people are superior to ugly people, but it’s his phoniness that drives me crazy. PLEASE find me a video where he says more than “Where are you from? I speak X. I like X.”

I also can’t stand his approach. He just ambushes people in public, and in half the videos, the people clearly look like they don’t want to be talked to or are just humoring Yuji to be polite. Yuji doesn’t give a shit about any of these people. He isn’t conversing with them due to any actual interest in what they have to say; he’s promoting his brand and showing off his language skills to idiots. I implore Kazakhs to turn on him. Also, I know his sister, and she’s a *@(W@(@(@(.

Language learning is a fantastic thing. In an ideal world, I wish I could spend countless hours learning languages. I talked to someone who said it took him around 8 years to become proficient in Japanese. Everyone is different, but for a normal person with a day job and a family, 8 years sounds reasonable, especially for an incredibly difficult language like Japanese. Do the math; if it took 8 years for one language, imagine how long it’d take to be CONVERSATIONALLY fluent in fucking seven.