Category: Language learning

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.

Making friends around the world

By Simon

The other day I met a fan of Omniglot from Spain who told me how much she loves Omniglot, especially the phrases section because it helps her make friends all round the world. It was wonderful and encouraging to hear this.

Some other nice things people have said about Omniglot.

The phrases section actually started with phrases like “My hovercraft is full of eels“, and other ‘useful’ phrases like:

– Sot oc’h gant ar binîoù? – Are you fond of bagpipes? [Breton]
– Ha’aheo no paha ‘oe i kena papale kupalaka, pehea la – You must be very proud of your large hat [Hawaiian]
– Îmi poţi împrumuta puţin spatula ta? – Can I borrow your spatula? [Romanian]

The kinds of phrases that you use every day, of course 🙂

Then I thought it might be a good idea to add some somewhat less ‘useful’ phrases like Hello, How are you? and Where are you from? – the kinds of things you might just use now and then.

I often use the phrases pages for opening and closing greetings when writing emails and other messages, and for sending birthday and Christmas greetings. Also, whenever I meet people who speak a language I don’t know, I’ll try to learn at least a few phrases in that language, which is a great way to start conversations.

For example, there’s a Bulgarian lass who works at the hotel I stayed in Douglas in the Isle of Man a few weeks ago. The first time I stayed there two years ago I discovered that she was from Bulgaria, so this time I went back armed with a few Bulgarian phrases, much to her surprise. I think she expected me to continue in Bulgarian after I’d said hello (Здравей [Zdravej]), but I had to explain that my knowledge of Bulgarian is limited.

Do you use the phrases in this way, or in other interesting ways?

Ingrown languages

By Simon

In an interesting book I read recently, What Language Is by John McWhorter, the author discusses why some languages appear a lot more complicated or ‘ingrown’ than others. He gives the example of Persian and Pashto, two Iranian languages spoken in a number of countries in western and central Asia. Whereas Persian has more or less regular and simple verb conjugations, in Pashto the verb endings and other aspects of the language are much less regular. This is because Persian was the language of a large empire in which many people learned Persian as adults, and few did so perfectly, so many of the irregularities and other complex aspects of Old Persian were regularised and simplified. This process didn’t happen with Pashto, so the language is still ingrown.

Other languages that are or have been used as colonial languages or lingua francas with many adults learning them imperfectly have undergone a similar process of simplification. These include English, Mandarin Chinese, colloquial spoken varieties of Arabic, Indonesian and Swahili. According to McWhorter, these languages could be considered abnormal as many of their irregularities and eccentricities have been levelled out. As a result they are relatively easy to learn, or at least somewhat less difficult than more ingrown languages.

One example a particularly ingrown language is Navajo, which even linguists find superlatively forbidding. Some even claim that it’s not possible to learn it after childhood. Apparently none of the Navajo verbs follow a regular pattern, and regularity is notably absent in other parts of the language.

So if you’re struggling to get to grips with Spanish or Mandarin, it might be of comfort to you to remember that you’re not learning Navajo or a similarly ingrown language.

Fušování‏

By Simon

Fušování‏ is a Czech word I discovered recently that appealed to me and that means “tinker, dabbling”. The related verb, fušovat means “to potter, to tinker at, to botch, to dabble, to mess about, to tinker”. Other related words include:

– fušer – quack, tinker, blunderer, boggler, botcher, bungler, cobbler, dabbler
– fušerská práce – botch
– fušersky – shoddily
– fušerský – empirical, patch work
– fušersky pracovat – tamper
– fušerství – botch, fudge, bungle
– fušeřina – patch work, tinker, botch
– fuška – elbow-grease
– fuška – job, chore, elbow-grease, hard work (also – dřina)

Sources: slovnik.cz, Wiktionary

These words could be used to describe the way I teach myself languages – I tend to do this is quite a haphazard way without any particular plan, and just follow my interests, and never know quite where I’ll end up. I keep thinking that perhaps I should try to learn things in a more structured way, but somehow rarely put such thoughts into practise. Languages are a hobby and passion for me. I dabble with them for fun.

Do you dabble or tinker with languages? Are you a linguistic botcher / bungler / tinkerer / dabbler? Or do you approach them in a more structured and focused way?

A review of Rocket Hindi

By Simon

In April this year I was offered a free subscription to a Rocket Languages course in return for writing a review. My plan was to write the review after completing the course, however I realise that it’ll take me quite a while to work my way through the entire course so decided to write the review now.

A bit of background
Rocket Language courses are primarily provided online, though the courses are also available on CDs. The company was started in 2004 by Jason Oxenham and Mark Ling, who wanted to create an online Spanish course that was fun and easy to use, and that gave students the confidence to speak the language as soon as possible. The course proved popular, and the company now offers courses in Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Hindi, German, French, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, ASL and English for Spanish speakers.

Why Hindi?
I wanted to try out the course in a language I didn’t know at all, which narrowed the choice down to ASL and Hindi. I chose Hindi because I know a number of people who speak it and I thought it might be interesting and useful to know. While this review focuses on Rocket Hindi, it is relevant to the other courses as they have a similar structure.

Details of the course
When you log into your Rocket Language course you see a welcome screen featuring links to Your Course, which contains all the language lessons; Your Motivation, which contains tips on learning languages, improving your memory, measuring your progress and so on, and Your Community, which links to the learners’ forums for the language you’re learning, and also for the other languages offered by Rocket Languages.

The course is split into two stages: stage 1 includes sections entitled Greetings and Meetings, The Perfect Tourist, In Town and Food and Drink. Stage 2 has sections entitled Retail Therapy, Family and Friends, Activities and Hobbies and a review section. There is also a section called the Survival Kit, which contains lessons on body parts, city, clothing, colours countries, days, food, house, numbers. In addition, you can download a piece of software called MegaHindi, which tests you on vocabulary with a number of quizzes.

Each lesson features a short conversation in Hindi which is presented in the Devanagari alphabet, in Romanized form and in English. You can listen to just the conversation, or listen to the full lesson, which is narrated by an American with the Hindi parts spoken by native speakers of Hindi. The lessons go through the conversation line by line explaining what all the words mean and how they go together. It explains how the words and structures can be used to make other sentences, and encourages you to make your own sentences. Lessons after the first one also review the conversation from the previous lesson and encourage you to go back to that lesson if you don’t understand everything.

Additional vocabulary used in the lessons is provided, and the end of each lesson you can test whether you have absorbed everything with the Rocket Review – a short quiz on the recorded lesson, and with a written quiz. You can save words into a custom dictionary, and make notes as well.

As well as the main language lessons, there are also lessons on language and culture. These are written lessons which introduce you to various aspects of the culture and include relevant words and phrases with recordings. Within these lessons you can also learn the Devanagari alphabet.

When you have completed each stage there is a comprehensive test on everything covered in that stage. If you score 80% or more, you pass the test and receive a certificate by email. The course aims to take you to A2 level of the Common European Frame of Reference for Languages.

My assessment
So far I have only completed part 1 of stage 1 and have learnt greetings, how to talk about myself, ordering food and drink, booking a hotel and such like. I need listen to each lesson several times before I can understand and produce all the words and phrases, and am gradually becoming more familiar with the sounds, rhythms, structures and the Devanagari alphabet. I would prefer more explanations of the grammar and a more standard Romanization system. The system used looks like this: kaisee haiM aap? (कैसी हैं आप?) – How are you?, while I’m more familiar with the UN system, in which that phrase would be kaisī haiṅ āp? It would also be very useful to have a lesson or some lessons showing you how to write the Devanagari letters and numerals by hand. In the absence of this, I found the SOAS Hindi Script Tutor very useful.

The course has a similar structure to other courses I’ve tried, including Teach Yourself, Colloquial and Pimsleur courses. It covers a lot more material than Pimsleur, though perhaps not quite as much as the Teach Yourself and Colloquial courses – they tend to have more grammatical explanations and exercises, but only the dialogues and some of the exercises are recorded. With the Rocket Language courses every bit of foreign text is recorded, so you’re not left wondering how to pronounce something. The Rocket conversations are recorded at normal conversational speed, I think, and the speakers pronounce things clearly. When explaining words and phrases they pronounce them more slowly and break up some words into syllables.

While the Rocket courses are primarily provided online, you can order an offline version on CDs, and you can also download all the mp3 files and listen to them whenever you like. This feature appeals to me as it means I don’t need to be online or tied to my computer to use the course. I have also made PDFs of all the lessons as well, so can peruse offline if I choose.

The Rocket Language courses seem to be aimed mainly at people who have little of no previous language learning experience and who are planning to visit a country where the language they’re learning is spoken. The conversations I’ve listened to and studied so far are mainly focused on language useful to tourists, however the lessons also show how the phrases used can be applied to different situations, so are useful even if you’re not planning a trip to a relevant country.

How much does it cost?
The online version of each Rocket Language costs US$149, which gives you unlimited, lifetime access to the course, and to any changes and improvements to it. The offline version on CDs costs US$299. Discounts are often available, and free 60-day trials are offered for all languages. These costs compare very favourably with Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur courses, though are more than Teach Yourself and Colloquial courses.

Do I recommend it?
Yes, definitely. I have enjoyed this course so far and hope to complete it eventually. I have successfully tried out some of the phrases on Hindi-speaking friends, and when I listen to online Hindi radio broadcasts, such as BBC Hindi, I am starting to pick odd bits and pieces.

Gaeilge

By Simon

I found an online Irish test on ranganna.com today – it contains 100 questions of ever increasing difficulty and gives you a idea of your level of Irish. It’s available with instructions in Irish and English and has a seven-level marking scheme ranging from beginner to advanced.

I just took the test and got 69/100 or level 5 (Advanced) – I could understand almost all the questions, but my knowledge of the finer points of Irish grammar and orthography could be better. I’m happy with this as my main focus with Irish is understanding, speaking and reading it well.

After you have taken the test it shows you your answers with the incorrect ones highlighted and the correct ones indicated – a useful feature. It also has some suggestions for learning more Irish.

Immersion

By Simon

I spent yesterday in Aberystwyth with two Czech friends and we talked in a mixture of Czech, Welsh and English, with occasional bits of other languages thrown in for good measure. When they were speaking Czech to each other I found that I could understand or guess enough to get a basic idea of what they were talking about, and in some instances I could understand quite a bit more.

While I have been learning Czech on and off (more off than on in fact) for quite a few years, I rarely get the chance to listen to Czech conversations, apart from on online radio, and I was pleased to recognise quite a few of the words and phrases my friends were using. I couldn’t contribute much to the Czech parts of the conversation myself, but that will come with practise.

Quite a lot of the vocabulary and structures they were using have appeared in my Czech courses or in Czech texts I’ve read, so I was at least somewhat familiar with them already. Hearing these things used in context really helped to fix them in my mind. It also helped that I could ask about anything I didn’t understand – this is not possible when I’m listening to online radio or watching films or TV programmes.

This kind of immersion can happen anywhere you can find some native speakers of a language you’re learning (L2) who are willing to help you. Being in a country where your L2 is spoken is an even better form of immersion, but might not be possible for everyone.