Today I came across an interesting article on Overlearning, via Polyglottery, which argues that it’s better to learn a relatively small amount thoroughly than to try to learn as much as possible of a language.

The author’s main point is that some language learners don’t repeat words and phrases enough before moving on to the next ones. This results in them half-knowing quite a lot, but unable to produce what they know smoothly and fluently.

A better way is apparently to repeat things many times, then practice using them with native speakers as frequently as possible. In this way, you are able to produce words and phrases without conscious thought – they just flow out when you need them.

The author also says that you can pick up the grammar by learning how to use words and sentence patterns in various situations. You may not know why a particular inflexion is needed, but you will be able to apply it when necessary.

This makes a lot of sense to me and sounds similar to the Pimsleur method.

There are many different reasons to learn languages, some practical, some intellectual, and some sentimental. Have you learnt, are you learning, or would you like to learn any languages purely for fun? If so, which languages and why?

I’m learning, or plan to learn, all the Celtic languages mainly for fun. I fell for Irish because of my interest in traditional Irish music. Same story with Scottish Gaelic. In the case of Welsh, I’m also studying it for practical reasons – before securing my current position, one of the jobs I applied for was based in Bangor in the heart of Welsh-speaking Welsh (y Fro Gymraeg) and a knowledge of Welsh was desirable for that job. Welsh is an ancestral language for me as well – my mum’s family are from Wales and spoke Welsh a few generations ago.

Czech is another language I’m learning mainly for fun, and to surprise and impress my Czech friends. I’d also like to visit the Czech Republic at some point, so my studies are partly practical.

Other languages I’d quite like to learn for fun, if I had the time and could find the relevant materials: a Polynesian language such as Hawai’ian or Maori; a Native American language such as Cherokee or Navajo; a ‘click’ language such as Xhosa or Zulu; and maybe Tibetan and Mongolian, mainly because I really like their alphabets. These are all interesting languages unlike any I already know and I’d like to find out more about the people who speak them.

This post was inspired by discussion on the Language Learning Forum at How to learn any language.

I came across an interesting report from the European Commission about the languages of Europe today. It shows the proportions of people who are native speakers each of the official languages of the EU, and how many people speak them well enough to take part in a conversation.

The language with the highest proportion of native speakers is German (24%). In joint second place with 16% each are French, English and Italian, which are followed by Spanish (11%) and Dutch (6%).

About 31% of non-anglophone EU citizens are conversant in English, while French is spoken non-natively by 12%, German by 8%, Spanish by 4% and Italian by 2%.

Otherall, nearly half of the EU’s denizens can speak English, 32% can speak German, 28% can speak French, 18% speak Italian, and 14% speak Spanish.

In some European countries, particularly Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, at least three quarters of people are able to speak more than one language. While in others, notable the UK, Ireland and Portugal, foreign language abilities are much less common with more than two thirds of people able to speak only their native language.

Last week I found a useful online community website called Gumtree where you can post all kinds of messages. The site was originally just for London, but there are now local versions for many other cities in the UK, including Brighton, and other places around the world. One section that particularly caught my attention is called skills & language swop, where you can find language exchange partners.

I posted a message there and already three people have contacted me – one from Venezuela, one from Spain and one from Belgium. I met the Venezuelan today and we talked mainly in Spainish for about an hour – the longest conversation I’ve ever had in that language. I was able to express myself quite well, inspite of my sometimes muddled word order and dodgy grammar.

A similar community site with versions for even more cities and countries is Kijiji, which means village in Swahili apparently.

One reason why I chose to learn Czech with the Pimsleur course was because I hadn’t done a Pimsleur course before and I want to test as many different types of language course as I can find. To date I’ve tried quite a few Colloquial and Teach Yourself courses, one Rosetta Stone course (Russian), which I’ve yet to finish, and a few lesser-known courses.

When comparing language courses for the same language you can’t start each one from the same level because you can’t erase from your memory what you’ve learnt in each one before trying the next one. If you try comparing a course from the same series for several different languages, you often find that the courses are not identical – the basic format is probably the same, but each one has a different author and the quantity and quality of material varies. Each language also presents you with a different set of challenges, and you may find that some types of course work better for some languages than others.

Generally I find that no single course is sufficient to learn a language, so I often use several different courses during my studies.