A while ago I came across an interesting language learning-related idea but then promptly forgot where it was. I finally found it again today here. The idea is that you record yourself speaking the language(s) you’re learning every so often, then go back to the recordings later to see how much progress you’ve made. These recordings could be said to be linguistic time capsules.
If you’ve learning to play a musical instrument or to sing, you could make something similar – a musical time capsule.
If you’re trying to choose which language to learn, the following question, which is based on one I came across yesterday, might help you to decide:
If you were offered a free trip to one of the countries where the languages you’re considering are spoken, which country would you choose?
For me, choosing which language(s) to learn is a frequent conundrum, though often the choice is between learning a new language, or brushing up and improving my knowledge of
languages I already know. Often I end up trying to do both.
I came across some useful online language proficiency tests today on the Transparent Language site. There are tests for Chinese (Romanized), Dutch, English, English (for Spanish Speakers), French, German, Irish, Italian, Japanese (Romanized), Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. The questions are all fill-in-the-blanks type and each test consists of two grammar sections, a vocabulary section and a reading comprehension section.
I just took the Irish test and got a overall score of 105 out of 150 or 70%. My highest scores was in the vocabulary section – 27/30 or 90%, and the reading comprehension – 25/30 or 83%. I didn’t do so well in the grammar sections getting only 27/45 or 60% in each one. Obviously my Irish grammar needs more work.
Does anybody know of any online language test that include listening? I’m sure I’ve seen some somewhere but can’t remember where.
Today I came across an interesting article on Overlearning, via Polyglottery, which argues that it’s better to learn a relatively small amount thoroughly than to try to learn as much as possible of a language.
The author’s main point is that some language learners don’t repeat words and phrases enough before moving on to the next ones. This results in them half-knowing quite a lot, but unable to produce what they know smoothly and fluently.
A better way is apparently to repeat things many times, then practice using them with native speakers as frequently as possible. In this way, you are able to produce words and phrases without conscious thought – they just flow out when you need them.
The author also says that you can pick up the grammar by learning how to use words and sentence patterns in various situations. You may not know why a particular inflexion is needed, but you will be able to apply it when necessary.
This makes a lot of sense to me and sounds similar to the Pimsleur method.
The son of one of my friends has decided that he wants to learn Japanese and his parents have asked me if I can recommend any suitable courses for him. I thought of the Talk Now! series, but they only teach you a limited number of words and phrases, and the lad, who’s 10 years old, wants to learn more than that. I also suggested Pimsleur.
Have you any suggestions?
There are many different reasons to learn languages, some practical, some intellectual, and some sentimental. Have you learnt, are you learning, or would you like to learn any languages purely for fun? If so, which languages and why?
I’m learning, or plan to learn, all the Celtic languages mainly for fun. I fell for Irish because of my interest in traditional Irish music. Same story with Scottish Gaelic. In the case of Welsh, I’m also studying it for practical reasons – before securing my current position, one of the jobs I applied for was based in Bangor in the heart of Welsh-speaking Welsh (y Fro Gymraeg) and a knowledge of Welsh was desirable for that job. Welsh is an ancestral language for me as well – my mum’s family are from Wales and spoke Welsh a few generations ago.
Czech is another language I’m learning mainly for fun, and to surprise and impress my Czech friends. I’d also like to visit the Czech Republic at some point, so my studies are partly practical.
Other languages I’d quite like to learn for fun, if I had the time and could find the relevant materials: a Polynesian language such as Hawai’ian or Maori; a Native American language such as Cherokee or Navajo; a ‘click’ language such as Xhosa or Zulu; and maybe Tibetan and Mongolian, mainly because I really like their alphabets. These are all interesting languages unlike any I already know and I’d like to find out more about the people who speak them.
This post was inspired by discussion on the Language Learning Forum at How to learn any language.
This morning I had a long chat on Skype with a Japanese lass from somewhere near Tokyo. We talked in a mixture of Japanese and English, and I was pleased to discover that I can still speak Japanese, inspite of many years of neglect. There are many words I’ve forgotten, and I tend to get the word order wrong sometimes, but I can still communicate, and it was starting to come back to me slowly as we talked.
今朝は私がスカイプで日本の女性としゃべた。私たちは日本語と英語に話した。彼女はイギリスに二年の間に英語を勉強しただから、英語が上手だ。私は大学を卒業後、日本語を話す機会が少なかったたから、今は日本語が下手になる、然し今でも日本語に通信することが出来ます。
I have now listened to all 10 lessons of my Pimsleur Czech course, most of them several times. I’ve a long way to go before I can speak Czech, but I do know quite a few useful words and phrases now, and I am beginning to acquire a feeling for the structure of the language. I also know how to pronounce words, though some of the consonant clusters are tricky. When I listen to Radio Prague or my Czech friends talking, I can get a basic idea of what they’re on about.
Before I started the course, I’d read many reviews of Pimsleur courses, many positive, some negative, so I had an idea of what I was letting myself in for. I now think that Pimsleur courses can give you a good foundation in a language, which you can build on with other courses. They are particularly good for languages unlike any of the ones you already know.
Next week I’m going to start on Colloquial Czech – I had a quick look at it yesterday and found that I could understand quite a lot of the stuff in the first lesson, which is encouraging.
I came across an interesting report from the European Commission about the languages of Europe today. It shows the proportions of people who are native speakers each of the official languages of the EU, and how many people speak them well enough to take part in a conversation.
The language with the highest proportion of native speakers is German (24%). In joint second place with 16% each are French, English and Italian, which are followed by Spanish (11%) and Dutch (6%).
About 31% of non-anglophone EU citizens are conversant in English, while French is spoken non-natively by 12%, German by 8%, Spanish by 4% and Italian by 2%.
Otherall, nearly half of the EU’s denizens can speak English, 32% can speak German, 28% can speak French, 18% speak Italian, and 14% speak Spanish.
In some European countries, particularly Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, at least three quarters of people are able to speak more than one language. While in others, notable the UK, Ireland and Portugal, foreign language abilities are much less common with more than two thirds of people able to speak only their native language.
Last week I found a useful online community website called Gumtree where you can post all kinds of messages. The site was originally just for London, but there are now local versions for many other cities in the UK, including Brighton, and other places around the world. One section that particularly caught my attention is called skills & language swop, where you can find language exchange partners.
I posted a message there and already three people have contacted me – one from Venezuela, one from Spain and one from Belgium. I met the Venezuelan today and we talked mainly in Spainish for about an hour – the longest conversation I’ve ever had in that language. I was able to express myself quite well, inspite of my sometimes muddled word order and dodgy grammar.
A similar community site with versions for even more cities and countries is Kijiji, which means village in Swahili apparently.