Category: Language learning

New languages to learn?

By Simon

Recently I have acquired quite a few new language courses: as a sponsor of the Polyglot Conference in New York I received 10 new Colloquial language courses in Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish and Russian. I also bought a Glossika Russian course with the special offer given to conference participants, and bought a Basque course from Assimil with affiliate commission from Amazon France.

My new language courses

I learnt a little Hungarian many years ago, and am currently working on Czech and Russian, but haven’t studied any of the other languages before. I’d love to know at least the basics of all of them, though have no particular need or desire to learn them at the moment. Also, I already have courses in a number of languages that I have only glanced at so far – Arabic, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots and Cornish.

Do you sometimes get carried away with acquiring language courses and other materials?

Do you think you will get round to learn all those languages one day?

Language learning – better, easier, quicker

By Simon

People who make language learning apps, online language courses and similar sometimes contact me asking me to review their apps/courses, and to link to them / promote them on Omniglot. This is often in exchange for free use of their courses for a certain period. This is exactly the kind of thing I hoped might happen when I set up Omniglot. Well, actually I hoped that language schools might offer me free or reduced rate courses in other countries – back in 1998 there weren’t so many online courses about, and no language learning apps – and I thought that one day I would be going from country to country learning languages, at least part of the time.

In the course descriptions for these apps/courses they say that they will teach you the real language that you need to know, and often promise that the course won’t bore you with complex grammar or befuddle you with grammatical terms. They also might say that their courses provide new, innovative, never-before-seen ways to learn languages quickly and easily.

I’ve tried quite a few of these apps and courses, and generally they are variations on the same basic model: you learn a bunch of phrases, often travel-related, maybe with pictures, and are tested on them, often using some kind of spaced repetition system. Some courses give you a chance to make sentences using the words you’ve learnt. Some include a bit of grammar as well, but not too much, as that’s boring and might scare the horses.

I’m not trying to belittle all the work that goes into these courses, and the people who make them do seem to believe that their courses are truely innovative. However I rarely find anything genuinely new in them.

One app I heard about recently is Smigin, which is free and available for iOS and Android. It teaches you basic travel-related phrases, and has a neat feature that you can construct your own phrases and hear them spoken. The recordings give you an idea of pronounciation, but as each part is recorded separately they do not give you the best model for how to pronounce the whole phrase. The people at Smigin are also planning to create an app to teach you more language beyond the travel phrases – Smigin Pro, which looks like it will be an expanded version of the travel app, with a few extra features, like a way to practise conversations virtually, and videos. Most importantly it is “without the hassle of grammar rules.”

After trying Smigin Travel I starting thinking about how a similar system might be used to teach you those dreaded grammar rules. I’m not sure exactly how, but have a few ideas.

sina toki ala toki e toki pona?

By Simon

Toki Pona in the Toki Pona script

Last week I started learning Toki Pona, the language consisting of just 120 words created by Sonja Lang in 2001. I’ve been thinking about giving it a try since the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin last year, when I went to talk about the language and met people who speak it, and Sonja herself.

It’s an interesting language, and as the vocabulary is so small, most words have multiple meanings, and you have to think creatively to express things not in the vocabulary. The structure is also interesting – it’s an isolating language with grammatical particles somewhat like Japanese, and word order is the most important thing, as words do not conjugate or decline or change in any way.

I’ve mainly been using the online lessons at: http://tokipwnage.webs.com

I have also discovered that there’s a signed version of Toki Pona http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/signlanguage.php, which is the first constructed sign language I’ve come across, though you may know of others.

Do you speak toki pona, or have you dabbled with it? What are your experiences?

By the way, the title of this post means “Do you speak Toki Pona?” (literally, “you talk not talk [direct object particle] toki pona?”)

The Importance of Patterns

By Simon

Patterns - a piece of abstract art created by Simon Ager illustrate this blog post

Last week I went to a concert that featuring a jazz pianist and an artist. While the pianist played, the artist painted on her iPad, which was connected to a projector and projected on a big screen. The artist created pictures based on the music, and I think the pianist also created some tunes based on the art. It was all very abstract, especially the art. During the concert I was looking for patterns, shapes or anything in the art that looked like something familiar. I didn’t find much, but enjoyed the experience anyway.

Afterwards I got thinking about patterns and familiarity and came to the conclusion that we tend to feel most comfortable with the familiar – familiar people, things, places, sounds, etc – i.e our comfort zone. When we encounter the unfamiliar we try to find anything in it we can make sense of. We look for patterns, and anything else we can recognise. If we cannot find such things we may decide that the unfamiliar is not for us.

Abstract art and some forms of music, for example, are sometimes said to be “challenging”, and I think this is because there is little in them that is familiar, and this is why it takes longer to appreciate them – we need longer to find any patterns they may contain and for them to become familiar.

When we first encounter a foreign language everything is unfamiliar, and this can put a lot of people off. However a language that has a lot in common with your mother tongue can be easier to learn than one that has little or nothing in common with it as you will find more that is already familiar, and probably feel more comfortable with it.

To become familiar with the patterns, sounds, words and structures of a foreign language we need to get a lot of exposure to it – i.e. listen, read, and watch films and TV programmes. Doing these things alone is not enough to learn a language – you need to speak it and maybe write it as well – but they will make it more familiar to you.

The more you learn of a language, the more patterns you will spot within it, and the easier it will be to spot those patterns. The patterns might be how words are put together to form sentences, how grammatical changes are applied to words, how words can mean different things in different contexts, how speakers interact with one another, what topics are appropriate to different situations, and so on.

So you may need to get outside your comfort zone at first, but over time your comfort zone will expand to include the new language.

Language learning lethargy

By Simon

Cat on dictionaries - an illustration of language learning lethargy

Are there times when you don’t feel like learning languages and can’t summon up much enthusiasm about them? When language learning lethargy strikes, in fact.

For me most of August this year was like that – I did use my languages when I had the chance, and spoke quite a bit of French and Welsh, and odd bits of Italian and Irish. I also listened to plenty of foreign language radio, as I often do. I didn’t go out of my way to find opportunities to practise my languages though, and didn’t study at all for almost the whole month. This is unusual for me.

Sometimes I think to myself, “You already speak five languages more or less fluently, and know quite a few others to varying degrees. Isn’t that enough?”, and my usual answer is “No, I want to learn more!”. Recently however, my motivation to learn more has been low and my answer was “Yes, that’s enough for now.”

This month I am re-starting my studies with Czech, and am planning to start dabbling with other languages as well. Yesterday my Teach Yourself Swedish course finally arrived – the one I got for free after attending the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in May. So I will be learning more Swedish before long.

If you come down with language learning lethargy from time to time, how do you deal with it?

Frantastique

By Simon

Learn French with Frantastique

I’m happy to announce that Omniglot has partnered with Frantastique to help you enhance your language skills and effectively learn French.

Frantastique is a 15 minute daily online training, which is tailored for each user’s level of French.

So how does Frantastique work?

Your daily lesson is sent by e-mail every morning

Every morning, your lesson arrives in your e-mail inbox.

Each lesson contains a selection of exercises, videos, texts, dialogues, conjugation tests, and mini-lessons in French.

Personalized French content
Frantastique’s artificial intelligence engine builds lessons based on your needs, your requests, and your level.

You will discover professional scenarios, a wide variety of accents, and exercises and plenty of humor.

10 to 15 minutes daily is all it takes!

Francophone Culture
Every day, you’ll hear a citation with different accents, film clips, songs and more to help you explore the richness of French culture around the world.

Receive a personalized correction e-mail immediately following your lesson
After clicking the ‘Envoyer’ button, you will receive a correction e-mail with your daily score, explanations of your answers, the scripts of the dialogues or videos, the vocabulary you have requested and more.

Making progress and retaining information
The course automatically adapts to your objectives, needs, and learning speed.

The artificial intelligence engine builds each lesson dynamically to focus on points of difficulty, as well as topics you’ve requested, to ensure you’ve committed what you’ve learned to your long-term memory.

Your French improves effortlessly, daily!

Ominglot is giving away 1 month of Frantastique lessons to all its readers.

Click here to begin your French training.

Here’s a nice whatabout

By Simon

In the comments on an article I read today in the Guardian – Why North Koreans are developing an appetite for foreign languages – I noticed an interesting turn of phrase:

Here’s a nice Whatabout. I suggest Brits suddenly get keen on learning foreign languages. Start with Arabic and Russian. Oh yes, and brush up on French too….

I hadn’t seen the expression Whatabout before so it caught my attention. Have you come across it before, or do you use it yourself?

The article mentions foreign language learning is compulsory for North Koreans from the age of 4 (they must start school early), and that the most popular languages to learn are Chinese (probably Mandarin) and English. Learning languages give students a better chance of getting into university, which leads to better job prospects, particular in foreign trade, which is increasing, and Chinese is also popular because they want to understand Chinese TV programmes. However relatively few North Koreans are able to go to university and few other people are likely to learn languages are the chances of using them are minimal.

Learn Korean for free!

By Simon

90 Day Korean

90 Day Korean have an exclusive offer for Omniglot visitors: three free Korean courses.

The 90 Day Korean web course teaches to you how to have a three minute conversation with a native Korean within 90 days. It’s a beginner Korean course that delivers you PDF and mp3 lessons in your inbox every week with only the essential parts of the language, all explained using psychology and stories so you can’t forget them (even if you tried).

Two winners will receive 90 Day Korean web course scholarships for 30 days. One grand prize winner will receive a 90 Day Korean web course scholarship for 90 days.

The first three people to answer the following questions correctly will receive the scholarships.

1. When was the Korean alphabet invented?
2. What is the second largest city in South Korea?
3. How many hanja do people in South Korea have to learn at school?

Please write to me at feedback[at]omniglot[dot]com with your name and the answers. Do not post them in the comments.

Update
We have a winners of all the courses, so this competition is now finished.

Post-vernacular languages

By Simon

In an article I read today – Sustaining languages: An interview with Peter Austin, I came across an interesting idea – post-vernacular languages.

A vernacular language is one you use in your everyday life, while a post-vernacular language is one you may not want to use in your daily life and as means of communication, but may learn to connect or reconnect with your heritage, culture and heritage, for fun, out of interest, or for other reasons.

An example given in the article is of Jewish people in the USA who use English as their everyday language, but decide to learn some Yiddish as it was the language of their parents or grandparents. Some may just learn a few words and phrases, others may learn more of the language, but few will use it as a vernacular language.

Here is an interesting video which discusses the status of Yiddish as a post-vernacular language:

There is also a book which discuss the phenomenon: Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture by Jeffrey Shandler

My learning and use of languages is mostly post-vernacular – I learn them mainly for fun and out of interest, and while I do sometimes use them to communicate with others, that isn’t necessarily my primary goal. I have used languages in a vernacular way when living in other countries, and I do currently life in Wales, in an area where the majority of people speak Welsh, and I use Welsh quite often, though not necessarily every day.

La plume de ma tante

By Simon

La plume de ma tante

I wrote a new song last week based on the phrase ‘la plume de ma tante‘ (My aunt’s quill/pen/feather). This phrase cropped up in a conversation I had with friends a few weeks ago when we were talking about learning languages, and how languages are taught.

According to Wikipedia this phrase possibly appeared in French textbooks in the 19th century and early 20th century, and was designed to teach people French vowel sounds. Other phrases used in a similar way include Le petit bébé est un peu malade (the little baby is slightly ill), and Un bon vin blanc (a good white wine). An equivalent phrase, which appeared in the first Assimil English course for French speakers, is My tailor is rich.

While it’s unlikely you would often use such phrases in everyday conversation, they do have their uses: to illustrate aspects of pronunciation, to practise using various grammatical structures, and to learn vocabulary. Moreover they tend to be easier to remember if they are silly and/or bizarre. My song could be used to learn family words, how to say where things are, or are not, and words for furniture, clothes, animals, etc.

Here are the lyrics, a recording and a translation of my song:

La Plume de Ma Tante

Refrain
Où est la plume de ma tante ?
Dis-moi si tu sais où elle est.
Je l’ai vue ce matin je pense,
Mais maintenant elle a disparu.

Ce n’est pas sur la chaise de mon oncle,
Et c’est pas sous la table non plus.
Ce n’est pas dans le piano de mon grand-père,
Et ce n’est pas dans le seau de ma sœur.

Refrain

Ce n’est pas dans le frigo de mon frère
Et ce n’est pas dans sa poche non plus
Ce n’est pas dans le manteau de ma grand-mère,
Et ce n’est pas entre le marteau et l’enclume.

Refrain

Ce n’est pas derrière la dinde
Et ce n’est pas au-dessus du dromadaire
Ce n’est pas dans la piscine de mon papa
Et ce n’est pas dans le nez de ma nièce.

Refrain

My Aunt’s Quill

Chorus
Where is my aunt’s quill?
Tell me if you know where it is.
I saw it this morning, I think,
But now it has disappeared.

It’s not on my uncle’s chair,
And it’s not under the table either.
It’s not in my grandfather’s piano,
And it’s not in my sister’s bucket.

Chorus

It’s not in my brother’s fridge
And it’s not in his pocket either.
It’s not in my grandmother’s coat
And it’s not between the hammer and the anvil.

Chorus

It’s not behind the turkey,
And it’s not over the dromedary.
It’s not in my dad’s swimming pool,
And it’s not in my niece’s nose.

Chorus

The expression entre le marteau et l’enclume, which literally means “between the hammer and the anvil”, is the French equivalent of the English expressions ‘between a rock and a hard place’, and ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’ – i.e. in a difficult situation.

There is also a musical entitled La Plume de ma Tante written and directed by Robert Dhery, and at least one other song that incorporates this phrase.