Here’s a useful tip I came across the other day on a new language-related blog – carry a notebook and pencil with you at all times and make a note of things you’d like to say but don’t know how to. Then find out how to say them later by looking them up or asking friends who speak the language you’re learning.

Another good tip is to ask learners of your target language who are at a more advanced level than you to explain things you don’t understand. People who have studied a language as adults are probably able to explain grammar and usage better than native speakers. If you grow up speaking a language, you develop instincts about how to use words, but cannot necessarily explain to others why you use them in a particular way or order – it just feels right to you.

That second point certainly rings true for me – when friends who are studying English ask me to explain why a particular word is used in one place but not another, or ask questions about grammar, I try to work out the answers, if I don’t know them, but often just tell them that that’s the way we say things, and I don’t know why.

One of the commenters on a recent post posed an interesting question:

what is the point of learning so many languages if one is never going to be able to speak them well or use them all? Are they sea shells which we collect to look at or tools that we use?

This made me think about my motives for learning languages, something I do from time to time when trying to decide whether to continue to working on the languages I’ve already ‘collected’, or to go out and collect some new ones.

I learn languages for a variety of reasons – in preparation for holidays in countries where they’re spoken; because they’ll be useful in my work; because I like some aspect of the culture (usually the music); and/or simply because I like the sound of them. I also enjoy the process of learning languages and seem to have some aptitude for it. I realise that I probably won’t become fluent in all the languages I’m studying, and this doesn’t worry me unduly. I’ve been able to make use of all my languages in a range of situations, though opportunities to use some of them are quite rare.

Are you collecting sea shells or forging tools for practical use? Or a bit of both?

Here are a couple of useful language-related websites I came across recently:

Language Podcast Survey
Discussion about and links to podcasts for learning a variety of languages.

Free language
A guide to free online resources for learning languages, such as online lessons, podcasts and so on. Includes details and reviews of resources for learning Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Whoever is behind this site is apparently planing to put any profits they make into a Free Language Foundation which, they hope, “will eventually become wealthy enough to open a physical school and offer scholarships to students from around the world”. Interesting idea. Maybe I could do something similar with Omniglot.

At the moment I’m reading Bill Handley’s Fast Easy Way to Learn a Language, which, as the title suggests, has lots of useful tips about learning languages.

One suggestion I particularly like is to compile a list of words and phrases you want to say and think will be useful to you, then to get translations of them in the language(s) you’re learning, and audio recordings as well, if possible. This will give you a personalised phrasebook that you can continue to expand and improve as you learn more of the language.

I suppose the phrases section on Omniglot could be thought of as my personalised phrasebooks for various languages. It’s something that started as a small collection of ‘useful’ phrases and has grown quite a bit since. I’ve just added a new page with Italian phrases, by the way.

Another good suggestion is that you use several textbooks: one textbook might not explain all the grammar or pronunciation very well, while another one might explain some of it more clearly. Each textbook will also contain different vocabulary and cultural information.

I came across an interesting article today, via this blog, about the connection between physical and mental fitness. According to a study undertaken by Charles Hillman at the University of Illinois, students who are physically fit and who take regular aerobic exercise, tend to do better academically then those who are unfit. Physical exercise increases the flow of blood to all parts of the body, including the brain, the blood brings oxygen and various proteins with it, which help brain cells to function more effectively.

Quite often I listen to my language lessons while juggling, skating, or doing some other form of exercise. I wonder if any studies have been done about the benefits of simultaneous physical and mental exercise.