Category: Language learning

Nihongo

By Simon

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。

Pimsleur – a review

By Simon

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.

Languages of Europe

By Simon

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.

Language exchange

By Simon

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.

Comparing language courses

By Simon

One reason why I chose to learn Czech with the Pimsleur course was because I hadn’t done a Pimsleur course before and I want to test as many different types of language course as I can find. To date I’ve tried quite a few Colloquial and Teach Yourself courses, one Rosetta Stone course (Russian), which I’ve yet to finish, and a few lesser-known courses.

When comparing language courses for the same language you can’t start each one from the same level because you can’t erase from your memory what you’ve learnt in each one before trying the next one. If you try comparing a course from the same series for several different languages, you often find that the courses are not identical – the basic format is probably the same, but each one has a different author and the quantity and quality of material varies. Each language also presents you with a different set of challenges, and you may find that some types of course work better for some languages than others.

Generally I find that no single course is sufficient to learn a language, so I often use several different courses during my studies.

Pimsleur

By Simon

I’m now half way through my Pimsleur Czech course and am enjoying it. I like the way the lessons are arranged and the way you’re asked to construct new sentences using the words you already know. The focus on listening and speaking really suits me as these are the skills I prefer to focus on. The relatively small amount of material covered by the course is covered in some detail, so I feel confidient about using it.

When I’ve completed this course, I plan to tackle Routledge’s Colloquial Czech. After that, I’ll be able to say mluvím český and I’ll have another go at Russian.

Have you learnt any languages with Pimsleur courses? What do you think of them?

False friends

By Simon

When learning a foreign language, you sometimes encounter false friends: words that sound like words in your native language, but which don’t mean the same thing. For example, the French word sensible means sensitive, not sensible. The French for sensible is prudent or sage. A Rathaus is not a home for German rats but a town hall. The Irish word for food, bia, sounds like beer – but beer is beoir or leann. The word pan means bread in Spanish and Japanese, and sir or mister in Polish and Ukrainian. And remember not to try to borrow books from a French or Portuguese librairie, a Spanish librería or an Italian libreria – these words all mean book shop. A library is a biblioteca in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, and a bibliothèque in French.

Some foreign words sound like rude words in your language. For example, the German words Fahrt (ride, journey) and Fach (panel, case, subject) cause much amusement among English-speaking students of German. As do the Irish words faic (nothing), as in faic na fride (not one jot), and feic (to see/see!).

Fortunately quite a few words are international and are used in many different languages, often with some adjustments for the spelling, writing and pronunciation conventions of each language. International words include telephone, television, taxi, hotel, restaurant, airport, etc.

You can find a longer list of false friends here.

Lingua mortua sola lingua bona est?

By Simon

There seem to be many arguments for and against learning classical languages, such as Latin and Ancient Greek, and other dead languages. Some people claim that learning these languages gives you a better understanding modern languages. Others claim that learning Latin gives you a good understanding of grammar and can make you more disciplined in your studies.

To date I’ve only dipped my toe into the ocean of Latin scholarship. All the languages I’ve studied are modern ones spoken by people on a daily basis. This is not the case for Latin or other dead languages. Courses in dead languages tend to focus on grammar and translation. This approach puts many people off, myself included.

A major reason for learning classical languages is to read the wealth of literature written in them. This is especially true for Latin. If you want to be able to read Latin though, is it really necessary to learn how to conjugate verbs, inflect nouns and how to translate from your language into Latin? The ability to recognise what the inflections signify when you encounter them would seem to be more useful.

There are even people who view Latin as a living language. For example, there’s an organisation in Germany that organises Septimanae Latinae Europaeae (European Latin Weeks) at which Latin students and scholars can get together and speak to each other in Latin. Roman food is also available at these gatherings.

Have you studied any dead languages? What are your thoughts on the utility or otherwise of such study?

Poetry in many languages

By Simon

I came across an very interesting website today, lyrikline, which features poetry in many different languages from Albanian to Welsh. It also has recordings of the poets reading their their poetry aloud, biographical information about the poets, details of their publications, plus translations of the poems into German, and, in some cases, English. The site itself is in German, English, French, Slovenian and Arabic.

This looks like an excellent resource for poetry lovers and language learners, and I’ll certainly be spending some time exploring it.

Czech

By Simon

I’ve decided to put Russian on hold for now and have started learning Czech instead. My Czech friends have taught a few words and phrases, and I hope to acquire a much more knowledge of the language.

I’m beginning my studies with the Pimsleur Czech course, which consists of 10 half-hour lessons. The small amount of material covered by the course seems to be covered thoroughly. As I listen to the tapes, I’m converting them to mp3 format so that I can copy them to my mp3 player and listen to again whenever I want.

At the same time, I’m also digitizing some of my other language courses, which is enabling me to brush my Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Cantonese and Taiwanese. It will take quite a while to convert all my tapes to mp3s, but I’m in no particular hurry.