Language Trainers Blog

…or, by being around other people who are doing.

During my short visit to Milan, I got to have the fun experience of being in a small car with three Italian girls who weren’t 100% sure where they were going. Typically, Italians are exuberant in their speech, and talk a lot with their hands, and these girls were no exception. Although they spoke almost entirely in Italian, I managed to work out quite a few words just by what we were doing. We made a lot of left turns (yes, we got a bit lost), so I learned that sinistra means left. It took me a while to work out that Magenta was a town, not a colour, but I managed. When we finally reached our destination, I had a few more direction terms under my belt. The girls apologised for speaking entirely in Italian, but I didn’t mind at all. I got to learn a few new practical words, and also got to see Italians waving their arms and yelling ‘Papa Giovanni!’ multiple times (no joke – I think it was the name of a road).

One interesting thing I’ve found about Italians is that they speak less English than their western European neighbours (e.g. Switzerland, Austria, Germany). I’m not sure why there isn’t as much focus on English as in other countries, but it may be because Italy, like Spain, already has multiple dialects within the fairly small country (click on the image to see the full size).

Whatever the reason, and they are often a bit self-deprecating about their abilities (even though I really have had no trouble understanding them). I met one guy (an Italian rapper, no less) who spoke self-proclaimed ‘Macaroni English’, which is apparently quite basic English with a very Italian flair. I think he was being too hard on himself, but I loved the phrase nonetheless.

I think Italians often don’t give themselves enough credit for their language skills. What do you think?

I’ve been listening to Italians speak to each other for the last couple of days and I love the ups and downs of the language that are the result of putting the stress on specific syllables in the word. In fact, if you don’t put the stress on the correct part of the word, some people may not understand you at all, even if you do get the actual word right. Most of the time, the stress is on the second to last syllable of the word, even with long words, e.g. cappuccino, panino. There’s also a lot of ‘r’ rolling, which may be hard for some people to get used to. It may be especially difficult for speakers of some Asian languages, which don’t really have ‘r’ sounds in the first place.

I think the best way to make yourself understood is to try to sound as much like a stereotypical Italian as possible. You may think it’s silly, or even offensive, but if you spend some time listening to Italians speak to each other, you will see that they are as expressive as they appear in films and on TV. It may mean making your voice go up and down more often than you’re used to, and speaking with your hands (Italians do this a lot), but it will help. Let your voice and hands go a little, and see if you can pronounce this beautiful language like an enthusiastic native!

I recently started a salsa dance class, out of interest in dance, as well as a need for exercise.  I had assumed that because the website and the woman I dealt with were bilingual, that at least some of the instruction would be in English.  I was almost right.

I was the only person in the class who didn’t speak Chinese, so I mostly watched and followed along.  The names of the steps were in English, so that helped a bit.  In fact, I got to learn a few new terms because of the repetitive nature of the class, it helped with my listening skills, and I got to do something I enjoyed at the same time.

Taking an interest course in a different language is a great way to practice your language skills, but it may be difficult if your language level isn’t very high yet.  Practical courses are easier, because there is a lot of watching, demonstration, and practice involved, with the instruction not being the main part.

Even if you don’t want to take a course entirely in another language (or if this option isn’t available to you), you can still pick up or develop a hobby that involves other languages or culture.  Dance or music from other countries, foreign films, cuisine, crafts.  Learn more about terms you already know, for example, the background of Italian food names, or learn how to read knitting patterns in another language.  It will add interest to your existing hobbies, and won’t put too much pressure on your language learning.

Taking it to the extreme, American Jim O’Neill’s lifelong love of baseball language (not the sport itself, but the language used) has led him to create a dictionary of baseball terms.  Not just an English dictionary, but an English-Spanish one.

“I was just a little kid when I first heard ‘Can of corn,’ ” O’Neill said. “And I thought that was the coolest expression I had ever heard in my life.”

Hearing that baseball phrase, which means an easy-to-catch fly ball, started O’Neill on a decades-long quest to translate English baseball phrases into Spanish dialects.

O’Neill, faculty emeritus in the St. Cloud State University Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, turned his love of the language into a book he self-published, “The Bilingual Baseball Dictionary English-Spanish/Spanish-English.”

His dictionary contains about 8,000 definitions in its 344 pages, with nearly 3½ pages alone dedicated to various ways of saying “hit a home run” in Spanish.

I thought that most hobbies would only have a few pages’ worth of useful terms, but who knew baseball could have so many?

Full article from the St. Cloud Times.

FreeRice is an excellent website that combines education and charity.  The concept is simple: answer a question correctly and the UN World Food Program will donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry family somewhere in the world.

FreeRice started out as an English vocabulary game.  They would show you a word and then give four possible definitions or synonyms.  Since then, they have added English grammar, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and several other subject areas like mathematics, chemistry, and geography.

The difficulty level automatically adjusts depending on whether you get the question right or wrong, so the more questions you get right, the harder it becomes.  A great feature is that it will tell you the correct answers to the questions you miss, and repeats them later on in the game - an excellent revision method.

The  highest English vocabulary level they use is 60.  I’ve gotten to a maximum of 50 the last few times I’ve played.  The most memorable word I’ve learned today is jalousie, which is a type of window blind.  I actually guessed the answer correctly, even though it looks like a terrible attempt at spelling ‘jealousy’.

There’s no minimum or maximum number of questions, so there’s no excuse for having no time to feed people in need.  See if you can get to the highest level in your area of expertise, or even better, in the language you’re studying.

They say that nothing is free, but the cost of this is hardly worth mentioning, and the benefits far outweigh the effort of pointing and clicking!

If you’ve ever had to type a handful of words in a foreign language, but don’t use that foreign language enough to warrant adding it to your computer’s language bar, then TypeIt.org may be what you’re looking for.

It has pages for twelve different languages, including a one that lets you type the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols for English pronunciation. Unfortunately the keyboard shortcuts only work for Internet Explorer, but even without them, it’s a simple type/click, copy, paste scenario.

If you’re worried about getting your diacritics right, and don’t want to bother with using a character map, inserting a symbol, or changing your keyboard input language (and having to remember where the right keys are in the different layout), then check it out. It has character sets for Czech, French, German, Hungarian, IPA (English), Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

…and you could only take one word with you, what word would it be?

Obviously this is a ridiculous, hypothetical situation, but we’ve all seen The Little Mermaid, right?  What if she’d been given a single word that she could say to Prince Eric?

In English, all of our salutation words and phrases are different.  Hello, hi, good morning, how are you, fine, goodbye, bye, toodle-oo.

In more than a few other languages, the same word can be used for both ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.  In French, it is ‘salut‘; in Thai it is ‘sawasdee‘; and in Italian it is ‘ciao‘.

Similarly, in French you can use ‘ça va‘ to mean both ‘how are you?’ (informal) and ‘fine’ (or, ‘it goes’).

In Laos and Hawaii, there are even more flexible words.  ‘Sabai di‘ (Lao) and ‘aloha‘ (Hawaiian) can be used to mean ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘welcome’, ‘fine’ (in response to ‘how are you?’), and many other things.  It’s difficult to establish exactly how many ways they can be used by their local people.

Adding in a question syllable (’baw‘), an entire conversation can be carried out in Laos thus:

A: Sabai di! (Hello!)
B: Sabai di! (Hello!)
A: Sabai di baw? (How are you?)
B: Sabai di. Sabai di baw? (Fine. How are you?)
B: Sabai di! (Fine!)

Added to this, both the Lao and the Hawaiian peoples are renowned for their friendly nature and hospitality, so maybe they’re onto something.

Perhaps, given the awful hypothetical choice, I’d pick ‘aloha’!