Category: Language learning

Attitudes of minority languages speakers to learners

By Simon

A friend of mine posted an interesting question on Regional, Minority & Indigenous Languages group on Facebook:

“Has anyone ever experienced rejection or hostility from a minority group for learning their language?”

This generated a lot of discussion.

Sometimes when I speak Welsh to people in shops in Bangor they will reply in English. I don’t know why they do this, but it is a but frustrating. That is the only negative experiences I’ve had with speakers of the minority languages I speak or am learning (Welsh, Breton, Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Manx).

I have only met a few young Breton speakers, and they were happy to talk to me in Breton, but I understand that many older native speakers of Breton are not willing to talk to learners, partly because they find them difficult to understand as they speak a standardised form of Breton with lots of neologisms.

If you are studying or have learnt any minority/endangered languages, have you had any problems with being accepted by their speech communities?

Twitterizing

By Simon

Today I finally got round to signing up for Twitter, something I’d considered for a long time, but didn’t do anything about – this is often how I do things, or rather don’t do them. I’ll be tweeting as @Omniglossia as someone else is using @Omniglot. I plan to use to as a place to post sentences that I’ve put together in languages I’m learning. I try to make them memorable by adding unusual, silly and funny elements along with the ordinary words I want to remember. Your corrections, comments and suggestions are always welcome. I’ll also use it promote stuff going on elsewhere in the Omniglot realm.

Do you use Twitter as a tool for learning languages and/or for practising languages?

Learning vocabulary

By Simon

There are some interesting tips on how to learn vocabulary (including my own little contribution) on SmartLanguageLearner.com. Do you use any of these methods? Or do you have your own ones?

Since I wrote my contribution to that blog, I’ve been thinking about this and realised that constructing sentences using words I’m learning might help them to stick in my memory, especially if the sentences include unusual, silly and/or funny words and create interesting images and associations. For example, if I want to learn words for furniture I might picture each piece of furniture with an animal in, on, under, behind or in front of it – there’s a camel on the chair, a tiger under the table and a fox in the fridge. These should be a bit more memorable than ‘the cat sat on the mat’ and will help me learn animal names, and prepositions, or the equivalents. I could also expand the sentences to add verbs and adjectives I want to remember. Maybe Dr Seus books in languages I’m learning would help as well.

I forgot the elephant!

By Simon

The elephant I forgot

A few days ago after the Bangor Languages Learners’ meet up, I was talking to one of the other members of the group and suddenly exclaimed, “I forgot the elephant!”, and hurried back into the café to retrieve it. As he commented, it’s not a phrase that often comes up in conversation. The elephant in question is a small white one from Morocco that usually lives on my mantelpiece, but which had taken up temporary residence on the table in the café where we met so that people who hadn’t been to the group before could find us. When we left the café I forgot to take the elephant, and only remembered when I went outside.

Many people suggest that you should focus on learning the most frequently-used words of a language first, and only learn the less common ones later, if you really want to. However, I like to learn both frequently-used words and obscure words because you never know when you might need them.

Do you focus exclusively on frequently-used words, or do you like learning obscure and unusual words as well?

Can you imagine a situation in which you would say “I forgot the elephant!” or something similarly unusual?

Which language next?

By Simon

As today is the 1st October it’s time to change my focus to a different language on my Multilngual Musings blog – but which one? During the past three months I’ve focused on Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx – a different one each month – and have found the exercise of writing something and recording it every day very useful for my proficiency in them. While my knowledge of each of these languages has improved, there is still plenty more to learn.

As for the next language to focus on – I could continue the Celtic theme and choose Welsh or Breton, or go for one of the other languages I want to brush up, such as German, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto, French or Spanish. I feel confident writing in Welsh, and fairly confident in French, but the it would be a struggle with the others, which is one reason why I’m doing this as I need the practice.

Have you undertaken any language-related project like this? If so, how successful have they been?

Cultural Immersion

By Simon

When learning a language it helps if you can immerse yourself as much as possible in it. It also helps if you immerse yourself in the culture of the people who speak the language. One if the first things you learn might be the words to use to greet people, for example, but do you know whether to shake their hands, bow, kiss their cheeks, or do something else when you greet them? Do you know which topics of conversation are acceptable and which are best avoided? Do you know how close to stand to someone and how to take turns in conversation? These are all important parts of culture that differ from country to country, and even within countries. Some language text books touch on things like this, but few go into any depth.

There are books and websites that explain the cultures and etiquette of particular countries – I find the Culture Shock! series of books interesting and useful. You can also learn about culture, at least to some extent, by watching films and TV programmes, but the best way is probably to spend time in a country or region where your target language is spoken and to be observant, and to ask questions about any cultural practices that puzzle you.

You might end up adopting some of the cultural practices, even ones that seemed really strange at first. For example, after spending time in Japan I started taking off my outdoor shoes and putting on indoor ones when arriving home, and being prepared to do so elsewhere. This habit has become so ingrained that it feels somehow wrong to wear outdoor shoes inside.

Do you try to learn about culture as well as language? If so, how do you go about it?

Have you adopted any habits or customs from other cultures?

Back in Bangor

By Simon

I’m now back in Bangor after a very enjoyable and interesting week at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. We learnt 15 songs during the week, so the course wasn’t as intensive as the one I did last year when we learnt twice as many songs, and we learnt about the background of the songs, and even saw some of the places about which they were written, or which are mentioned in them.

There wasn’t much Gaelic spoken in the class, which was mainly in English, but I spoke Gaelic with various other people and feel more confident about speaking it now. As well as Gaelic, I also got to speak some Japanese, French, German, Irish and Manx, which was fun. When I’m speaking Scottish Gaelic and I can’t think of words I often use Irish ones, which are usually very similar as the two languages are very close. I even had one conversation in a mixture of Irish and Scottish Gaelic with an Irish man who speaks both, which was a little confusing.

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

By Simon

This week I am doing a course in Scottish Gaelic songs with Mary Ann Kennedy at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye. This is my third visit to the college and each time my Gaelic gets a bit better. Even though I’m not doing a course in Gaelic language, I have opportunities to speak Gaelic with other students and with members of staff, and occasionally even with local people, and this really helps me to improve my speaking and listening abilities.

There are fourteen of us in the class from various countries, including Scotland, Ireland, Austria, the USA, Canada and Japan, so I have some opportunities to use my other languages. There’s one lad who’s fluent in Gaelic, and quite a few of the others have studied it at least a little, though I think I’m the only other who’s conversational in the language. The teaching is in English with only odd bits here and there in Gaelic. There are no other courses in the main college this week but there is a Gaelic language course running at Flodigarry (Flòdaigearraidh) in the north end of the island – we are in the south, and we will meet those students at a cèilidh on Thursday night.

Russian

By Simon

I spoke a bit of Russian with the couch surfers yesterday and today, but we spoke mostly in English. They said that my Russian pronunciation is good and they could understand what I was saying, which is encouraging. I can talk about myself and my family in Russian now – those were the things I was focusing on yesterday morning, but can’t say much in Russian about other things. I also learned some Russian words and phrases from them, and quite a lot about Russia and Russian culture, which was very interesting.

I think that focusing on learning language for specific situations is a useful thing to do, and if you write down and/or record the things you learn, you’re more likely to remember them. However I like to talk about a wide range of subjects, so it would take quite a while to learn the relevant language. One subject/topic at a time might be the way to go.

Русский язык

By Simon

I have a couple of Russian couchsurfers coming to stay with me today, so this morning I am focusing on Russian. They both speak English, but I’d like to speak at least some Russian with them. I’m trying to think of things I might say – particularly about myself, my family and my work, and asking them about those kinds of things – and working out how to say them in Russian. I’m also listening to Голос России (The Voice of Russia) to get tuned in to the language.

Do you use this technique of focusing on learning the words and phrases you might need for particular situations? Does it work for you?

I haven’t studied much Russian recently as I’ve been focusing on other languages, and when I got to the test section at the end of lesson eight in my Russian textbook I realised that though I can understand most of the language used, I’m not so good at producing it as my grammatical knowledge is somewhat shaky. I need to go back and learn the noun declensions and verb conjugations.