Here’s a recording of a song (2.7MB) in a mystery language. Do you know or can you guess which language it is and where it’s spoken?
Category: Language
Japanese more difficult than Chinese?
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.
Word of the day – Samhain
Today’s word, Samhain (/ˈsˠaunʲ/) is the Irish word for November, and also refers to the ancient Celtic festival which was traditional celebrated at this time of year to mark the end of the harvest and the start of the ‘Celtic New Year’. The word samhain comes from the Old Irish samain, which possibly means ‘summer’s end’, though that etymology is uncertain.
The last day of October is known as Oíche Shamhna in Irish and Oidhche Shamhna in Scottish Gaelic, both of which mean the ‘night of Samhain’. It was a time for feasting and to for taking stock of livestock and stores of crops, a custom still observed in some areas.
Young polyglot
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
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?
Language quiz
Here’s the first verse of a well-known song in a mystery language. Do you know or can you guess which language it is?
Clue: this language is spoken in parts of North America.
Atyniad pethau newydd
Pan dw i’n dechrau dysgu rhywbeth newydd, fel y gitâr, dw i’n arfer teimlo yn gyffrous ac yn awyddus i ddysgu neu ymarfer bron bob amser mae amser rhydd ‘da fi. Gyda’r gitâr, gobeithio bydd y teimlad hwn yn cynyddu am amser hir. Sôn am fy ngweithgareddau eraill, fel dysgu ieithoedd, chwarae’r chwiban, jyglo, ayyb, weithiau dw i’n teimlo na mod i’n wneud cynnydd o gwbl, neu dw i’n mynd yn wysg ‘y nghefn. Weithiau dw i’n meddwl mod i’n ceisio gwneud gormod.
An dúil i rudaí nua
Nuair atá mé ag tosú rudaí nua a fhoghlaim, mar an giotár, bím corraithe agus bím fonn mór orm a fhoghlaim nó a chleachtadh beagnach gach uair atá am saoire agam. Leis an giotár, tá súil agam beidh an corraithe ag lean ar aghaidh go fadtéarmach. Leis mó ghníomhaíochtaí eile, mar teangacha a fhoghlaim, an fheadóg a sheinm, lámhchleasaíocht a dhéanamh, srl, ó am go ham tá mé ag mothaigh nach bhfuil mé ag lean ar aghaidh ar chor ar bith, nó go bhfuil mé ag dul ar gcúl. Uaireanta tá mé ag smaoineamh go bhfuil mé ag déanamh barraíocht.
Language quiz
Here’s a recording of part of a song in a mystery language. Any ideas which language it is?
Online language tests
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
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.