I watched some more of the polyglot videos I mentioned yesterday, and a few others, and one thing I noticed is that in most cases they people in them are talking about things like their languages, and how and why they learned them. One exception is this one by Richard Simcott in which he mentions 50 interesting things about himself in a variety of languages and accents. I also found some videos of a multilingual singer and actor from Vancouver who speaks four languages and sings in eight, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, French and English.
Today I thought of a few other things you could try on videos and audio recordings in languages you’re learning: talk about a subject that really interests you, make a video/audio diary, read poetry or prose, tell stories or jokes, sing songs, or make lessons for languages or other subjects or skills that you’d like to share. They say that a good way to learn is to teach, and learning how to explain the intricacies a language or other subject in a foreign language is good way to improve your command of that language.
For example, I’ve been thinking about making some Irish lessons in Welsh, some Welsh lessons in French, or maybe even some tin whistle lessons in one or more of my languages. Don’t hold your breath though – I’m good at coming up with ideas, but it can take we awhile to do anything about them.
Jayan proceeds to hold his breath. ;-P that sounds great I hope you get around to doing something like that. I think I might try this for the languages I’m learning; it has the potential for being great fun.
Hi Simon,
I like the sound of your language lessons. If you do get around to it, you might want to look into making them with ‘My Language Notebook’. Like the Manx ones that Phil Kelly made here:
http://www.mylanguagenotebook.com/learn_manx.aspx
Its a good way to link the audio to the text and there are built-in ways for users to test themselves, like showing/hiding translations etc.
You could embed any lessons you make straight into omniglot by simply pasting in some html, just like embedding a youtube video.
I know it is my program, but it is FREE 😉
I use it here in my blog:
http://mlnlanguages.blogspot.com/
you really can play tin whistle?
That’s awesome!
Is it a gift or taught?
I got myself a tin whistle with a learning CD and a book from Ireland, back in October 2009. Til this very moment I didn’t do anything about it lol
TJ – I can indeed play the tin whistle, and it was playing the whistle, which I started when I was about 15 or 16, that sparked my interest in Gaelic music and languages. I stopped playing after leaving school, but took it up again a few years ago, inspired by my visits to Ireland.
Hoffi’r syniad a base’n sicr yn denu mwy o ymwelwyr i’r gwefan.
Like the Idea and it would almost certainly attract more visitors to the site.
Dim bod angen mwy
Not that more is needed 😛
I find that this is true in the sense of learning a language through a subject that interests me. Only once have I tried to learn one language through another though. I’d recommend the former over the latter.
“They say that a good way to learn is to teach” — I like!
thank you for the great tips! I’ll definitely follow your advise!