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).

Good news for Japanese language learners: the Japanese government has sponsored a website that allows transcription of any podcast recorded in Japanese.  Podcastle produces automated transcription of Japanese podcasts into Kanji, and from there, users of the site can correct and modify as necessary.

I’ve already discussed how useful podcasts and radio shows can be for language learning, especially when teamed with transcripts to refer to or read over before or after listening.  Using a lot of audio for learning will help to improve your listening, pronunciation, and speaking fluency.

By all accounts, the transcriptions aren’t perfect, but that’s to be expected.  As technology gets more accurate, and as the site gains more users, transcripts will become much more accurate.  As it stands, they might be better for intermediate and advanced learners of the language, but it is still a worthwhile effort.

For more information and a review of the service, go to Street-Smart Language Learning™.

It seems like it’s human nature to try to find the easiest and fastest way to do things, and this is especially true for things we find difficult or don’t understand.  Language learning seems to be one of the things that people are constantly trying to find a shortcut for.  Are there quick fixes and magic solutions?

There are many websites that claim that it is possible for people to learn a foreign language easily and quickly, and you can get it done simply by being asleep.  One website even tells this fantastic story, of a student who achieved great success using their methods:

In Budapest, Hungary, a student wanted to learn English quickly enough to win a BBC contest. Using the sleep-learning method , he memorized one thousand and twenty-six English words in six weeks and won first prize!

Sounds easy, right?  Well, an EFL teacher thought he would ask some people who had tried similar methods.  Not only did he find out that there was a lot more work involved than just listening to audio while you sleep, but that the students who had tried it didn’t feel like they were learning about grammar and sentence structures.  They did report that they became more familiar with speech sounds of English, and improved their pronunciation, though.  The teacher also proposed that doing about 15 minutes of study right before sleeping, and right after waking up (as was instructed in the sleep learning courses) could be beneficial to all students.  Read his full post here.

Has anyone else had experience of learning or enhancing their learning by listening to things while they sleep?

Two teachers of the Welsh language have taken it upon themselves to provide an online Welsh language learning service, free of charge to anyone wishing to learn the language.  Their passion for the language and wish to use natural, spoken Welsh to teach others has resulted in an mp3-based learning system available at SaySomethingInWelsh.com.  The creators have been so generous with their time that they have made the language course free for all users, and are busy supporting a new international Welsh language community.

A FREE internet course in Welsh has stunned its creators, with more than 3,500 learners registering from locations as far afield as Timbuktu and New Zealand.

SaySomethingInWelsh.com – which emphasises the spoken word – was set up by teachers Iestyn ap Dafydd and Aran Jones because of their frustration with more conventional courses.

The site has been inundated with plaudits from people across the world who decided to sign up for what they see as a more user- friendly way of learning the language.

Available in MP3 files which can be downloaded and played at any convenient time, it claims to get rid of time wasted on reading and writing in order to help people learn to speak and understand Welsh far more quickly than is possible with traditional methods.

Iestyn and Aran describe themselves as “serial language learners” who wanted to make sure that cutting edge approaches were available in Welsh.

“I can’t think of a time when I haven’t been trying to learn one language or another,” said Aran, who lives in Pwllheli and is chief executive of the Welsh language communities group Cymuned.

The course is free because it is possible to distribute electronic files for very close to zero cost.

“We realised early on that the work involved in putting the course together, the writing and recording, was something we were happy to do as volunteers just to make sure that this kind of material is available in Welsh,” said Iestyn of Maesycymmer, near Caer- philly.

“It costs us virtually nothing to distribute the course, so we thought it would be a boost to Welsh learners, and to the language itself, if we offered it for free.”

Full article from WalesOnline.

In my last post, I talked about the usefulness of dictionaries, and how they will inevitably struggle to keep up with changing languages.  No language resource will ever be completely current, as, by their nature, they are describing what has already happened, words that have already been used.

I read a great post on Confessions of a Language Addict, that discussed this very issue, along with giving some interesting advice about dealing with differences between spoken and documented language, whether the language is natural or created.

When you’re learning a language, real or made-up, one of the struggles you’re going to face is that no resource is going to be completely accurate, at least not for the time you’re learning it. Study French and you’ll think that “I don’t know” is je ne sais pas, pronounced “zhuh nuh say pah.” But you’re more likely to hear “shay pas.” Orthography hasn’t caught up to speech - and probably won’t. That’s because of the strange byplay between orthography and speech: People will still say “zhuh nuh say pah” for emphasis because when you’re carefully sounding something out, you sound it out as it is written, not as it is transcribed. Likewise in English, “I’m gonna go ta New York tamara” turns into “I am going to go to New York to-morrow” if you’re asked to repeat yourself. So writing isn’t always great for everyday speech, but it’s marvelous if you want to talk to someone as if he is half deaf.

So what can we do?  Well, if you are determined to use a formal version of your target language, I think you’ll be fine to use written resources as they are.  But what if you want to learn to talk to real people?  To be understood by them and speak, as much as possible, as native speakers do?

Don’t take written material as gospel.  Embrace the fact that there will be differences between what you read and what you hear and experience.  Trust that maybe your ears aren’t deceiving you!

Learning from a native speaker is always a great direction to take.  He or she will be able to answer any questions you have about the differences between textbooks and real speech.  In order to really see language at work, though, you have to be able to hear real people speak to each other.  Beginners will often need slower versions of conversations, or breakdowns of examples.  Podcasts are a great way to go, especially if they have some written material to go along with them.  If you can’t get out into an environment where people speak your native language, try audio books or internet radio.  Repeat what you hear.

Dialects and regional usage mean that nobody will ever speak the imaginary ‘real’ language.  This should encourage you!  Listen, repeat what you hear, speak the language, and revel in the fact that people begin to understand you on their terms.

A new proposal from Qiu He, a provincial committee member in the Kunming, in the Yunnan province of China, has led to the mandatory education of local civil servants over the next year.  Because Kunming is widely known as a ‘bridge’ from China to South and South-East Asia, civil servants will not only have to brush up on their Mandarin and computer skills, they will have to master hundreds of basic phrases in five other languages.

Civil servants will have to attend an intensive schedule of classes after work, three times a week, sometimes until 10pm.

English is not the only language they will learn. “We will also learn Lao, Burmese, Thai and Vietnamese, as well as Mandarin and computer skills,” an official from the publicity department of the CPC Kunming Municipal Committee told reporters.

On-the-job public officials under the age of 50 in Kunming are required to master 700 daily expressions across five foreign languages including 300 English sentences and 100 sentences in Lao, Burmese, Thai and Vietnamese each.

Qiu also set out clear study duration. A report by Xinhua News Agency said that Qiu has required civil servants under the age of 50 in Kunming to master 300 English sentences, 100 sentences in Vietnamese, Burmese and Lao each before National Day this year. The Kunming Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government will organize tests to determine the standard of learning and will regard proficiency in rare languages as a requirement for promotion.

As much as I applaud foreign language learning in the workplace, I can’t help but think that this is a punishing schedule that may be a little too ambitious.  The languages are very different, and none use the same script.  I wonder if the students will be required to read and write these languages as well, or if the training will be predominantly spoken.  I will be interested to see how successful this venture turns out to be.

Full article from People’s Daily Online.

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.

I’ve heard a lot of taglines to promote language learning, but “Fight Terrorism: Learn Chinese” is up there with the best of them.

Teaching Mandarin to students in the remote Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region was helping the fight against terrorism, chairman of the autonomous region Nur Bekri said.

“Terrorists from neighboring countries mainly target Uygurs that are relatively isolated from mainstream society as they cannot speak Mandarin. They are then tricked into terrorist activities,” Bekri said.

The remote Chinese region has a population of just over 20 million, with the majority being minority groups including Uygur and Khazak, who do not speak Mandarin natively.  Bilingual education has been encouraged since 2002, and Mandarin is taught in pre-schools and kindergartens so children will be more able to cope with being schooled in a second language later on.

But foreign media have criticized the policy, in which Mandarin is used as the language of instruction and minority languages are taught as a subject.

Bekri said there had been demand for Mandarin language lessons from ethnic minority students who wanted to be able to communicate with other Chinese.

He made it clear that these students had not been compelled to learn the language, but that they saw it as a desirable skill.

“The students have benefited from mastering Mandarin. We are making our best effort to create opportunities and an environment for them to learn the language,” Bekri said.

“We don’t need to force them.”

Students and parents of students interviewed for the article recognise the importance of learning such an influential language, and don’t see it diminishing their own cultures.  In one case, a man thought that it would help his people promote their culture.

I think as long as this is a case of promoting bilingualism for its merits, and not a major language and culture stamping out smaller ones, it’s all for the good.

Full article from China Daily.

One of my favourite linguistic phenomena is the eggcorn.  It occurs when a person hears something slightly different to what was said, but the misheard form still makes some sort of sense.  If a person never sees the phrase written down, it’s very possible for them to think that their interpretation is the correct version.

A good example is the word eggcorn itself, which some people believe is the correct pronunciation and spelling of acorn.  It qualifies as a true eggcorn, because acorns are egg-shaped, and corn is a kind of seed, so eggcorn almost makes sense.

A little digging around the internet has revealed some gems, and the Eggcorn Database is a great source.  It encourages public submission, discussion, and possible etymologies.  It even includes some that it doesn’t technically classify as eggcorns.

Here are some of my favourites:

• (chocolate) eclair >> eggclair
• (social) leper >> leopard
• an arm and a leg >> a nominal egg
• eau de cologne >> odor cologne
• cold-hearted >> coal-hearted

Social leopards

I’ve mentioned before that musical training seems to help with language skills, and a recent American study has made progress into the specifics of the notion that ‘music makes you smarter’.

Children exposed to a multi-year programme of music tuition involving training in increasingly complex rhythmic, tonal, and practical skills display superior cognitive performance in reading skills compared with their non-musically trained peers, according to a study published today in the journal Psychology of Music, published by SAGE.

According to authors Joseph M Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University, USA, data from this study will help to clarify the role of music study on cognition and shed light on the question of the potential of music to enhance school performance in language and literacy.

Both the control group and the musically-trained group showed similar results after the second group had already undergone two years of musical training.  There are several theories as to what this means, but the authors of the study are quite confident that multiple years of musical training have a strong positive effect on vocabulary and and reading skills.

Full article from Eurekalert.