Category: Language learning

Верблюд стоит на трёх ногах

By Simon

Camels

A few years ago I tried to learn Russian just using Rosetta Stone Russian to test how well it worked. I chose Russian because I hadn’t studied before and because I thought it would be an interesting and useful language learn. At that time I also needed to put together web pages in Russian from time to time, so I thought being able to at least read the language a bit would be handy.

I spent over six months studying every day and in all that time I didn’t learn any phrases like Здравствуйте (Hello), Как дела? (How are you?) or Спасибо (thank you), but I did learn colours, numbers, a variety or nouns like мальчик (boy), девушка (girl), лошадь (horse), слон (elephant) and самолет (aeroplane), and ‘useful’ phrases like, Лошадь не настоящая (The horse is not real), Тигр сидит на стене (The tiger is sitting on the wall), and Верблюд стоит на трёх ногах (The camel is standing on three legs).

Rosetta Stone is designed to teach you entirely through the language you’re learning using photos and recordings. It’s not always clear exactly what the photos are supposed to represent, and when you’re asked to match photos to written or spoken words and phrases, it’s possible to do so without really understanding the words and phrases. The choice of phrases may seem somewhat strange, though many language courses, especially older ones, use similar kinds of phrases to teach you vocabulary and to illustrate various grammatical constructions.

Last week I started learning Russian again using Language101.com, which provides online courses in French, German, Danish, Spanish, Irish, Canadian French and Russian. It uses a spaced repetition system (SRS) with recordings, and contains thousands of phrases for each language. Over the past few days I’ve learnt more practical and useful Russian phrases than I did in six months with Rosetta Stone, and I’ll be writing a review of the site soon.

I plan to focus mainly on Russian for the next two months using such courses as Language101.com, WikiTranslate.org, A Spoonful of Russian and Language Bridge. I’ll also listen Russian language radio every day (at the moment I’m listening to Радио Голос России).

One word I recognised while listening to Russian radio yesterday was верблюд (camel) – I think they were talking about camels in Tajikistan. I remembered it because of the phrase from Rosetta Stone. This got me thinking that while you would rarely use phrases like верблюд стоит на трёх ногах, unless you happened to live in a camel-infested Russian-speaking region, such as Tajikistan, that phrase is very memorable because it’s unusual and funny.

Perhaps that’s the point – learning phrases like this helps you to remember ordinary words like stand, three and legs, as well as camel, and it shows you how to put them together. The more unusual and funny or silly the phrase, the more likely you are to remember it. It works for me at least. So I plan to try constructing similarly unusual, funny, silly and ridiculous sentences in Russian and other languages to help me remember vocabulary and grammatical patterns. I might even make some videos like the ones on my YouTube channel featuring these phrases.

Do you have any suggestions for suitably silly phrases?

[Addendum] Here’s my Language101.com review.

Cvičení dělá mistra / Practice makes perfect

By Simon

When learning a language I usually spend a lot of time listening to and reading it, and as a result become at least reasonably proficient at understanding it in speech and writing. In most cases though, I don’t spend as much time speaking and writing it, so my speaking and writing abilities tend to lag behind my reading and listening skills.

For example, I can remember quite a few of the phrases and even whole chunks of dialogue from my language courses, and can recognise and understand them when I hear them or read them, and perhaps also use them in speech and writing, if the context permits. When I try to talk about things not covered by the courses though, I quickly find that my vocabulary runs out and I struggle to construct my own sentences.

Of course I can look up any words I don’t know in a dictionary, or ask a native speaker, if one is available, and this is fine for isolating languages like Mandarin as you can just stick the words in the appropriate place in your sentence, as long as you know that place. In synthetic languages like Czech and Russian though, you have to apply the appropriate inflections to the words, at least you do if you want to speak and write them correctly and to be understood, as I do.

So I think I need to do a lot more practise making my own sentences in the languages I’m working on – currently Czech and Breton. I could start with simple sentences from my language courses and other sources and change and/or add bits. For example, a simple sentence from my Czech course (Colloquial Czech) is Jsem student (I’m a student). I could change the person of the verb: Jsi student (You are a student), the number: Jsme studenti (We are students), or the tense: Byli jsme studenti (We were students). I could change the noun: Jsem lingvista (I’m a linguist), and add over words to the sentence: Jsem líný lingvista (I’m a lazy linguist), Jsem líný lingvista z Anglie (I’m a lazy linguist from England).

I can check these sentences by searching for them in Google to see if anyone else has used them, or something similar. That’s also a good way to find texts related to what you’re writing / talking about.

It’s probably best to start with simple sentences, and once I can construct them fairly well, I could try linking them together. Another exercise that might be useful is to take a paragraph in one of the languages I’m learning and to focus on one particularly type of word – nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. I could just try to identify each type, or change things – for example, the tense of the verbs.

Do you do anything similar when learning languages?

This post was inspired by a video on the FluentCzech channel on YouTube which discusses a similar way to learn languages – constructing simple sentences in your L2, translating them to your L1, then back to your L2.

Chinese app

By Simon

Chinese character app logo

A new application for Android devices that teaches you how to read and write the 100 most widely-used Chinese characters was launched today.

It shows you how to write each character with animations, and also has recordings in Mandarin Chinese and English, as well as pinyin transcription and English translations for each character,

It was developed by Adam Beaumont of Leafcutter Studios with Mandarin Chinese recordings by a Chinese friend of mine, Helen Zhang (张丹), and English recordings by me.

Sing me a song

By Simon

Recently I’ve noticed that my motivation to study languages is low. I listen to online radio stations in various language every day; I’m reading literature in Welsh, Irish, French and Manx at the moment; and I speak my languages with myself and with others when the opportunity arises. Occasionally I’ll listen to and/or read a lesson in one of the languages I’m dabbling with at the moment (mainly Czech, Russian and Breton), however I’m not strongly motivated to learn the languages and don’t study them everyday.

I’ve been thinking about other ways to study and practise using my languages that will interest me more and have realised that what I really enjoy is singing. So maybe I could try learning songs in the languages I want to study and practise. I already know quite a few songs in English, Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and in the Bangor Community Choir and other groups I’ve sang with, we’ve learnt songs in various other languages, including Bulgarian, Corsican, Croatian, Georgian, Greek, Sindebele, Spanish, Xhosa, Yoruba and Zulu.

What I’d like to learn is songs that most people in a particular country or who speak a particular language know. The kind of songs you might learn at home and/or at school, including children’s songs, which can be good for learning basic vocabulary. So any suggestions are welcome, including words, translations, recordings and so on.

I’m particularly interested in songs in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Breton, Cornish, Czech, Russian, Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese), Japanese. I’ll also share them with you in the songs section of Omniglot.

Do it because it’s fun

By Simon

The title of this post is a song writing tips from Kate Rowe’s website – she’s an Australian singer/song writer who support the Spooky Men’s Chorale on their recent UK tour. I saw them in Caernarfon and found the website after that, saw the tips and thought that could apply, with some adaptations to language learning.

Here they are:

• Do it because it’s fun, not because you want to achieve something.
• Write a lot, often, to get used to your own voice and trains of thought.
• Rather than “coming up with” ideas, relax and let images start appearing in your mind.
• Let your mind tell you a story, and write or record exactly what you see and hear.
• Write fast, without editing. Get all the ideas down, even if they seem ridiculous.
• Later, take the most interesting bits. It might only be a sentence! Just keep writing.

Even without changes, these apply to writing in a language you’re learning.

I think it’s better to learn a language because it’s fun, it’s something you enjoy doing, and it’s a language/culture you really like, rather than because you feel you should, or you think the language might be useful one day. I sometimes learn languages to try out different language courses, and unless I fall in love with the languages or the cultures of people who speak them, or the countries where they’re spoken, I find my motivation for them tends to diminish and disappear after a while.

It helps to practise all language skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing, and indeed typing, as often as you can.

The third tip isn’t perhaps directly relevant to language learning, but when you’re reading or listening the your L2, it can help to relax and let it flow into your eyes and ears without worrying about things you don’t understand. The meanings of unknown words that come up frequently is likely to become clear from the context.

Stories are useful for language learning – reading and listening to them, and making them up yourself just for fun, and/or to practise using particular grammatical structures and vocabulary.

When writing in a foreign language it might help to write fast, not worry about mistakes, and to edit later.

Komz a rez brezhoneg? / Wyt ti’n siarad Llydaweg?

By Simon

I decided to have a go at learning Breton today and listened to some of Le Breton sans peine. I just listened without looking at the book to see if I could understand anything – one of my friends is convinced that Breton has more similarities with Welsh than with Cornish, but I thought that Breton is closer to Cornish, so I decided to test this.

I speak Welsh more or less fluently, and do know a few Breton words already, including degemer mat (welcome), trugarez (thank you = trugaredd, ‘mercy / compassion’, in Welsh), pelc’h emañ …? (where is …? = pa le, ‘which place?’, in Welsh), and I was able to guess the means of some words that sound similar to their Welsh equivalents: mor (sea – môr in Welsh), ti (house – tŷ in Welsh), glas (blue/green – glas in Welsh). I could also understand some of the numbers and some French loanwords, apart from that though, I had no idea, or only the vaguest idea, what they were talking about most of the time.

This is just my own impression, but it seems that mutual intelligibility between Welsh and Breton is very limited. The stories of Breton onion sellers in Wales being able to talk to the local Welsh speakers in Breton and be understood are perhaps exaggerated. Or perhaps the onion sellers, known as Sioni Wynwns (Johnny Onions) in Welsh, learnt enough Welsh to have basic conversations with Welsh speakers.

While I was in the Isle of Man earlier this year I heard some Cornish and was able to make some sense of it, but the Breton I heard there made very little sense to me.

ウェールズ語

By Simon

ウェールズ語の基本

According to a report I found today, a textbook for Japanese people wanting to learn Welsh entitled ウェールズ語の基本 (Wēruzugo no Kihon – “Basic Welsh”) by Dr Yoshifumi Nagata (永田喜文) and Takeshi Koike (小池剛史) was recently published.

Dr Nagata teaches Welsh culture at universities in Japan and developed an interest for the Welsh language through the Welsh poetry of R. S. Thomas. While trying to learn Welsh in Japan he was frustrated by the lack of material in Japanese so decided to produce the textbook. Takeshi Koike learnt Welsh in Lampeter and speaks and writes it fluently and has published several works on the Welsh language.

This isn’t the only Welsh language course in Japanese though: on Amazon.co.jp I found 毎日ウェールズ語を話そう (Let’s Talk Welsh Every Day) by Hiroshi Mizutani (水谷宏), which was published in 1996.

Do you know of any other resources in Japanese for Welsh learners?

Oes llawer o bobl yn dysgu Cymraeg yn Siapan?

日本ではウェールズ語を勉強する人がたくさんいますか？

Mynd i’r afael

By Simon

Mynd i’r afael is a Welsh expression I’ve noticed quite a bit recently on Radio Cymru, and from the context in which it is used, I think it means something like “to try hard to deal with something”.

Here are some examples:

Angen i Brifysgol Cymru fynd i’r afael â dilysu canolfannau newydd, medd y Gweinidog Addysg, Leighton Andrews.
The University of Wales needs to address the validation of the new centres, said the Education Minister, Leighton Andrews.

[Source: BBC Newyddion]

Mae ‘na lawer o gymorth a chefnogaeth ar gael i bobl sy’n poeni am droseddu ac i’r rhai sydd am helpu i fynd i’r afael â throseddu.
Plenty of help and support is available to people who are worried about crime and those who want to help tackle crime.

[Source: www.direct.gov.uk]

NB. In both these examples mynd has mutated to fynd.

From these examples it seems that mynd i’r afael, which literally means “go to the grip/grasp/handle/hold”, means “tackle” “address” or perhaps “get a grip on”. Google translate gives “(to) address” for this term, as does the BBC Welsh dictionary. I got the impression from the context that quite a bit of effort was involved, but perhaps this is not always the case.

These days I tend to learn new words and expressions in Welsh, and in my other fluent languages, through extensive listening and reading. If I notice a word or phrase that crops up frequently, I’ll try and work out its meaning(s) from the context, and sometimes it takes a while to hone in on exact meaning(s). When I learn things in this way I tend to remember better than if I just look them up in a dictionary, though I do remember dictionary words if I use them quite a bit after looking them up.

How do you learn new vocabulary?

Spreek je Nederlands?

By Simon

Today’s post comes from an email sent in by James Eglinton.

I have met many non-native English speakers who speak English with no discernible non-native accent. I know Dutch people (with Irish spouses) who can pass themselves off as Irish in Ireland. I know French people who speak faultless British English, I have heard a German speaking Scottish Gaelic and I struggled to tell that he wasn’t a native speaker. I also know various non-native French speakers who have to convince French people that they really are foreigners. I know Scots who can pass themselves off as Germans in Germany. Wherever you go in the world, you meet non-native English speakers with perfect American accents …

In my own situation, I grew up with English and Gaelic, and also learned French while living in Paris. When I was living there, people would ask if I was Belgian or Swiss. My French accent wasn’t quite native enough for them to think I was French, but I spoke it well enough that they generally thought I was a native speaker from somewhere else in French-speaking Europe.

I now live in the Netherlands and have learned Dutch to fluent non-native level. Thanks to my Gaelic background, Dutch gutturals don’t pose any major problems, but although I speak Dutch all day at work, I have found trying to acquire a decent native-like accent astonishingly difficult. I have found Dutch easy to speak well, but thus far impossible to speak perfectly. I regularly ask Dutch people, “Have you ever met a foreigner who speaks such good Dutch that you didn’t know they were foreign?” The universal answer is, “No”.

I’m aware that Dutch has a couple of very tricky features (the klemtone [misplaced stress] and the system of de and het definite articles) that make acquiring native level fluency very difficult (or perhaps impossible?), but I wonder if any Omniglot readers know non-native Dutch speakers who speak faultless Dutch.

If not, why is Dutch so seemingly impossible to learn at that level? Are there sociological factors involved (i.e. very few people learn Dutch, many millions learn English/French etc, which creates a more challenging setting for Dutch learners) or is Dutch just uniquely hard to master due to some subtle grammatical nuances?

Easy Languages Language Trip Giveaway

By Simon

Today over on The Language Traveler they’re launching their first ever language trip giveaway. The grand prize is 2 weeks of French lessons, including accommodation, in Brussels in Belgium valued at €795 or approximately US$1,100.

To participate, eligible visitors simply have to leave a comment on the announcement post. The winner will then be randomly selected from all the valid entries.

The Language Traveler is the official blog of Easy Languages, a study abroad agency based in Brussels that can arrange language courses at over 70 destinations around the world.