Category: Language learning

Newyddion o Gymru / News from Wales

By Simon

Fe ffeindiais i dwy straeon diddorol o Gymru heddiw:

Pwyleg yn Wrecsam
Mae plismon o Wrecsam yn dysgu Pwyleg oherwydd fod tuag 10,000 o fewnfudwyr o’r Wlad Pwyl yn byw yno, a fe wnaeth e ddod yn ail yng Ngwobrau Blynyddol i Swyddogion Cymunedol.

Selsig ddraig
Oherwydd does dim cig draig yn y selsig gydag enw ‘selsig y Ddraig Gymreig’ (a wneir gyda chig moch, cennin a chilli), mae rhaid i gwmni o Grug Hywel newid yr enw, yn ôl Gwasanaeth Safonau Masnach.

Two news stories from Wales caught my eye today:

Polish in Wrexham
A policeman from Wrexham is learning Polish in order to communicate with the numerous Polish immigrants who live there, and he came second in the Jane’s Police Review Community Police Officer of the Year Award.

Dragon sausages
A Welsh company may face legal action because of the potentially misleading name of one of its products: Welsh Dragon Sausages. After analysing the sausages, the fine people at from Trading Standards determined that not one trace of dragon meat was to be found in them, so are advising the company to change the name. The sausages actually contain pork, leek and chilli.

Building vocabulary

By Simon

There’s some useful advice on a site I found today called Language Learning Tips. One of the tips for building vocabulary is that you try to learn three new words in the language(s) you’re studying every day, and that you write them down in a diary or blog. After a year, you’ll have a vocabulary of over a thousand words.

I think this technique could be expanded by trying to use the new words in sentences, and maybe even building up a story with them.

I tried to learn five new words a day in seven languages for several months with some success. Though I think maybe I was a bit overly ambitious. Maybe three words a day in five languages would be more achievable. The trouble is, which languages? Definitely Welsh, Irish and Spanish, and perhaps Japanese and Czech.

Have you used this technique or something similar?

Art and aliens

By Simon

It struck me today that the Irish word for artists, ealaíontóirí, sounds like ‘alien tory’. I hadn’t really noticed this before. When I hear or read the word, it usually brings to mind artists and art, though hearing it out of context triggered the thoughts of extraterrestrial members of the Conservative Party.

I try to think in the languages I’m studying as much as possible, and to picture in my mind the things and actions I hear or read about. Sometimes I only notice that a foreign word sounds funny to English speakers when someone who doesn’t speak the language points this out to me, or if my brain is in English mode.

Climbing mountains

By Simon

My studies of Czech are progressing slowly. So far I’ve only really got to grips with the first lesson of Colloquial Czech, and am working on lesson 2. Yesterday I had a quick look at the later lessons and wondered whether I’ll ever get that far. I know I shouldn’t let this put me off, but it a bit disheartening to see how far I have to go.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to make this comparison, but learning languages has quite a lot in common with climbing mountains. You start off in the foothills where the going is relatively easy, as long as you are physically fit / your language learning skills are up to scratch, otherwise you might find even this stage a struggle. Past the foothills there will be some difficult climbs and some long, hard slogs up slopes of varying steepness.

You might come up against some seemingly unscaleable obstacles, though with time and effort you probably find a way over or round them, perhaps with the assistance of a guide/teacher. When you think you’re not making much upward progress, or are even going downhill, it might help to turn round to admire the view and to see how far you’ve come.

Even when you reach the summit, you’ll probably see further summits to scale. You might also look over at neighbouring moutains (related languages) or distant ones (unrelated languages) and think that it would be interesting to climb/learn them.

As you’re climbing, you might look up at the mountain every now and then and think it looks steep and difficult to climb. This might inspire you to try harder, or to stop and enjoy the view / put what you’ve learnt to good use. If you decide to give up and do something else, then come back to your climbing/learning, you’ll probably find the going easier the second time, as you’ve already been that way before.

With Czech I’m pootling around in the foothills at the moment. When I look up towards the summit, I wonder whether this is a mountain I really want to climb, or whether I should stick to more familiar mountains.

Whistle This!

By Simon

Today I came across a website for (tin/penny/Irish) whistle players called Whistle This! which is based on an interesting idea: every two weeks a new tune is posted on the site with the sheet music, whistle notation and a recording. Visitors are invited to learn the tunes, record themselves playing them, and to send in their recordings, which others can then listen to and comment on. There is also a forum for whistle and music-related discussion. I plan to start learning the tunes and sending my recordings in, perhaps starting when the next tune is posted.

This concept could possibly be adapted for language learning. Instead of tunes you could have dialogues, extracts from literature, poems or short stories for people to learn, recite and record. Ideally you’d have native or fluent speakers providing the initial recordings. Maybe someone has already thought of this and a site or sites like this already exist, though I haven’t found any yet.

Polyglots

By Simon

It struck me today that many polyglots and hyperpolyglots are male. I wonder if this has something to do with the instinct to collect things and the tendency to get a bit carried away with particular subjects, traits that seem more common in males than females. Perhaps it might also be a result of the male inclination to show off. The ability to learn many languages is quite a good indicator of intelligence, after all.

Any thoughts on this?

Addition
I suspected this might be a controversial observation. Maybe I should expand my point a bit: I’m certainly not implying that there are no female polyglots, or that men are better at languages than women. What I mean by polyglots here is people who learn a large number of languages, i.e. ten or more. If you look at the list of polyglots on Wikipedia, you notice that most of those who know 10+ languages are men.

Polyglot language exchange

By Simon

I came across another useful site for language learners today – Polyglot, which describes itself as a ‘free language exchange community’ where you can ‘learn languages and make friends’. The site apparently has over 100,000 members.

As well as finding online language exchange partners and penpals, you can also use the site to set up realworld meetings with other language learners. I might try to set something up in Brighton.

Some of the features of the site, like the forms, only work properly in Internet Explorer, and if you try to enter more than eight languages in the ‘Languages you want to learn’ section it says ‘Don’t over estimate yourself’, but apart from that, the site looks good.

Fun languages

By Simon

Many years ago while travelling in China, I heard Norwegian being spoken for the first time when I met some Norwegians in Guangzhou. To me their language sounded sort of familiar and quite funny – a bit like German being spoken by very drunk people. Danish and Swedish sound similar to me and I think it’s the intonation that makes them sound like fun languages and puts a smile on my face. I also quite like the sounds of Dutch, which again sounds to me like a funny kind of German.

The only Germanic languages I currently know are English and German. I plan to learn one or two others, Norwegian and maybe Dutch, in the not too distant future.

A friend recently starting learning Norwegian and he’s really enjoying it. He finds it a quirky and fun language and says that he’s never before studied a language that makes him laugh out loud so frequently.

Which languages put a smile on your face?

Time capsules

By Simon

A while ago I came across an interesting language learning-related idea but then promptly forgot where it was. I finally found it again today here. The idea is that you record yourself speaking the language(s) you’re learning every so often, then go back to the recordings later to see how much progress you’ve made. These recordings could be said to be linguistic time capsules.

If you’ve learning to play a musical instrument or to sing, you could make something similar – a musical time capsule.

Which language to study?

By Simon

If you’re trying to choose which language to learn, the following question, which is based on one I came across yesterday, might help you to decide:

If you were offered a free trip to one of the countries where the languages you’re considering are spoken, which country would you choose?

For me, choosing which language(s) to learn is a frequent conundrum, though often the choice is between learning a new language, or brushing up and improving my knowledge of
languages I already know. Often I end up trying to do both.