Category: Language learning

Lingro

By Simon

The other day the editor of Lingro contacted me asking for comments on his site, which describes as a multilingual online dictionary and language learning site.

The dictionary part can be used to look up words in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish. You can also open a webpage, Word doc, PDF or text file within the dictionary and look up any of the words by clicking on them. This brings up a pop up with translations of the words, and definitions in some cases. Here’s an example of one of Omniglot’s pages in the English-Spanish dictionary – you can change the language combination at the bottom of the screen.

You can save the words you look up in a personal wordlist, which you can peruse later to check if you remember them. There are some virtual flashcards you can use to help you with this in the games section. You can also edit words and add definitions.

Deconstructing languages

By Simon

In a recent post on his blog, Tim Ferriss explains how he deconstructs languages in order to get an idea of their structure, grammar, sound system and writing system. This gives him an idea how long it will take and how difficult it will be to learn each language and helps him to decide whether or not to do so.

His method is the find native speakers, ask them to translate a number of sentences into their language, writing them in their native writing system, if one exists, and in transliteration. The translations of the sentences give him an overview of verb conjugates, word order, whether or not noun cases and/or auxiliary verbs are used. If possible, he also asks the native speakers to give examples of words for each consonant and vowel.

Some of the sentences he uses include:

The apple is red.
It is John’s apple.
I give John the apple.
We give him the apple.
He gives it to John.
She gives it to him.
I must give it to him.
I want to give it to her.

He suggests that before you take the plunge into learning a language, it’s worth your while finding out just what you’re letting yourself in for. He compares it to a return on investment – with some languages you will get a much better return, i.e. you will learn them more rapidly, than with others.

I also found an interview with Tim Ferris in which he discusses some of his techniques for learning languages.

Japanese more difficult than Chinese?

By Simon

An article I came across today, via Keith’s blog, argues that it’s a lot more difficult to learn Japanese than Chinese.

The author of the article studied both Chinese and Japanese at the Defense Language Institute (DLI), and lived in Japan for over seven years. He feels confident about communicating in Chinese (Mandarin) and found it much easier than Japanese, or Spanish and German, which he studied in high school. He didn’t find learning Japanese at the DLI too hard, but had difficulty communicating with Japanese people in Japan. He believes the main difficulties are the sheer amount of Japanese syntax, only a small proportion of which is covered in most Japanese courses, and Japanese culture, in which people tend to avoid saying things in a straightforward way.

My own experiences are somewhat similar – I found Chinese easier to learn than Japanese, though I’ve only been to Japan once and was there for four months, whereas I spent over five years in Taiwan, plus a couple of months in China. Had I spent longer in Japan, I’m sure my Japanese would be a lot better now. Would it be as good as my Chinese? I don’t know.

Young polyglot

By Simon

According to a Press Association article, a 10 year old British school boy has mastered ten languages, and is working on his eleventh. He grew up speaking Hindi and English, learnt Spanish, Italian, German and French at school, and has taught himself Thai, Swahili, Mandarin and Polish using CDs and DVDs, as part of a programme called the Junior Language Challenge. His next language is Luganda, one of the major languages of Uganda.

He is quoted as saying:

“Learning these languages is my favourite part of school, along with music. Learning Swahili was probably one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced and Mandarin Chinese was hard, too.”

A related article in The Hindu quotes the Deputy Headmaster of his schools as saying that “Arpan is a language genius, a natural when it comes to listening to an exact pronunciation and repeating it perfectly”.

His ambition is to become a surgeon and to work in various countries, which is one reason why he’s learnt the languages.

Learn vocabulary in your own language

By Simon

Today we have a guest post from James in Chile:

I came across this website which helps the hungry as you build your word power and have been playing on it. It’s quite fun (I am at the level 45/46 out of 50 levels) and is the sort of thing I would LOVE to see in Spanish (English has all the best resources). But it made me reflect on the idea of learning words. I have had to do this as I try to get my Spanish up to the level of a PhD in an arts subject (which is who I am linguistically in English), but the idea of learning words in your own language is something that as a Brit I find very weird, though my American friends seem not to. I learn words by reading and reading and looking up sometimes, which means you learn the word and it’s use rather than a list with definitions. Any thoughts on learning words in your own language?

The other thing that the freerice website made me think about was guessing words. If you read a lot you tend to do this as looking everything up is slow and boring, and if you are learning a second language then you do it even more. I am a comfortable 45 on their scale of difficulty and frequently go up to 46, though many of these words I don’t “know” but rather intuit their meaning. Often I use my Greek, Latin, etc to help me, but equally there are words I have no recollection of having seen before but have a gut feeling about: this must be a geographical term or an item of clothing. Do you guess what words mean, or do you always turn to the dictionary?

I got up to level 50 today on the freerice site, but the process is really strange. I have never seen most of these words before and after a few minutes I stopped trying to work out what the words mean (I tend to know or be able to work it out about up to level 46, and I would use in speech many of the words at level 44 and 45). Instead I just looked at the word and the options and went with what felt right. Given that I tend not to know about half the words at level 46 it means I have to intuit 10-15 words in a row to get to level 50, which is no mean feat. It set me thinking about the whole idea of passive and active vocabulary. I’m a native English speaker who lives and works in Spanish, and have studied to a fairly high level Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and German. I wonder whether the identity of my other languages help with my English vocab. I can read English as far back as Chaucer and my Germanic vocab is increased by my knowledge of German and Dutch, I studied Latin for 6 years and many Spanish words are strongly Latinate and I had reasonably good French (the third main source of English vocabulary).

Has anyone thought about how “passive” vocabulary works?

Online language tests

By Simon

Most online language tests I’ve come across seem to use be of the ‘fill in the blanks’ variety. Today I found an online Chinese test with some interesting variations on the theme.

It’s divided into three sections, the first of which asks to choose where to place words, which you are given, in sentences. The second section has standard fill in the blanks questions, and the third section tests your knowledge of Chinese culture. I took the test earlier today and got 25 points. Unfortunately it doesn’t show which answer were wrong.

Do you know of any other online language tests which don’t involve just filling in the blanks?

Give peas a chance

By Simon

An interesting article in the Washington Post that I found today describes one way of encouraging kids to learn languages – through a shared task, in this case, shelling peas.

The article’s author explains that her son was reluctant to learn her mother tongue, Hindi, until a visit to India when he was four years old. During that visit, the son saw his mother and grandmother shelling peas and wandered over to find out what they were doing. He was fascinated by the pea pods and started to open them up to extract the peas. While doing this he listened to the others and started asking questions, which they answered in Hindi.

After returning to the States, the author continued to shell peas with her son while talking with him in Hindi and telling him stories, which he found very interesting, and he now speaks Hindi well. The author also explains how she heard the stories from one of her relatives while making noodles.

Too much time?

By Simon

Before finding my current job, I spent almost a year searching for work while staying with my parents. During that time, I had great plans to learn languages, the guitar, and various other things. I did manage to acquire a basic knowledge of Welsh and Esperanto, but rushed through the courses with the aim of finishing them, rather than trying to learn the languages as thoroughly as possible. My efforts to learn the guitar didn’t come to much – I learnt a few chords and tunes, but soon got out of the habit of practising regularly. I found myself putting things off, knowing that I could do them later. In the end, I ended up doing not very much. It was as if I had too much time.

A couple of weeks ago, I started learning the guitar again. This time I’m having a lesson once a week, am practising every day, and am trying to learn as much as possible on my own. Finding time to practise the guitar, to study languages, and for all my other hobbies, doesn’t seem to be a problem, even though my spare time is limited.

Ynsee Gaelg (Learn Manx)

By Simon

Ynsee Gaelg is a new site I found this week that contains Manx language lessons, games, stories, news and information about the language. The lessons are available at three levels: Toshiaghteyr (Beginners), Meanagh (Intermediate) and Ard (Advanced) and include sound files for all the phrases and texts, something that’s lacking from other online Manx lessons. The stories and news are in English or Manx.

I’m impressed with this site – it contains a lot of useful, well-presented content, and also looks good. Now if I can just find a bit of time amongst my other activities, I’ll use it to learn some more Manx.

I find Manx texts quite difficult to read due to lack of familiarity with the spelling system. If I read the texts aloud however, I can often understand them better.

Unintentional questions

By Simon

In many languages a raising inflection at the end of a statement makes it into a question. A post I read the other day on Invading Holland discusses the authors’ struggles with the Dutch language. Particularly the way he adds a raising inflection to the ends of statements, not because he want to make them into questions, but because he’s unsure if he’s saying them correctly and seeks confirmation.

This is often misinterpreted because rather than answering the unspoken question, i.e. “Did I get that right?”, people tend to doubt his sanity when he appears to ask them questions like “I’ll have a coffee?” or “I’d like to go to the station?”. He calls it the ‘The Unintentional Question Effect’.

When speaking foreign, I’ve also been known to unleash unintended questions on unsuspecting interlocutors, and have noticed others doing the same thing.