Language Trainers Blog

Well, the short answer is no.  However, it’s actually possible to learn how to read and pronounce hangul, the Korean written language, in a study session or two.

To the casual observer, hangul appears to be a pictographic script, like Chinese or ancient Egyptian. In actual fact, it’s an alphabetic language with fewer letters than English.  There are 14 consonants and 10 vowels in Korean, and they are grouped together to form written characters that represent single syllables.

There are some great resources out there for learning, and Joophas collected a few of them in this very comprehensive post.  If you go to the end of the post, there are some very useful links, as well as some beautiful script/pronunciation charts.

If you manage to associate each letter with its sound, and become familiar with how they fit together in script, you will be able to read Korean out loud in no time.  Of course, knowing what you’re saying is the next important step! 

Have you got any useful Korean language tips?

For regular note-taking and writing practice, everyone has their own preferences for paper - lined or unlined, spiral bound, A4, A5, 100gsm.  Then there are the writing implements - pens, pencils, markers.  Some people prefer just to record audio, or use a laptop or netbook.  Even with all of these choices, when it comes to specialist paper for writing Asian characters, it can be difficult to find what you want if you don’t live in a place with a large Asian community.

I’ve found a few online resources for downloading and printing your own character practice pages, and will list them below.  Please add more in the comments if you know of any!

Dr Lili Worksheet - Character worksheet with spaces for name and date.  Grid with horizontal and vertical internal lines.  Has room under each line for writing pinyin/notes.

Dofufa practice paper - Character practice paper with three different sizes of grid.  Internal horizontal and vertical lines.

Incompetech free online graph paper - Probably my favourite resource for printing paper.  They have a lot of different kinds of graph paper, as well as note-taking paper and a few options for Chinese and Japanese character practice.  Their graph paper generator allows you to choose the size of your paper, the size of the grids, and even what colour you would like to print in.  Try printing in landscape for even more options.  My favourite is the Chinese Character Guide (X-style), which has room for writing pinyin as well as diagonal internal lines.

Good luck with the practice!

October is National Poetry Month in the United Kingdom, and it’s a great opportunity to celebrate the beauty that language can create, whether it be in your native tongue or a foreign language.

This month is the perfect time to discover something new in poetry, whether you are an existing enthusiast or not.  These days poetry doesn’t have to be classical, or in rhyming couplets.  It can take the form of non-rhyming prose, haiku, performance art, or poetry jam.  It can be dramatic or serene.

For language learners, poetry can be a great inspiration, and it’s very fulfilling to be able to understand a poet’s original intention.  Try a couple of poems in your target language, and compare them to their translations.  Can you see any difference?  It’s always useful to bear in mind that translations of art need to be somewhat artistic themselves, and fail as poetic translations if they are word-for-word.

What are your favourite foreign language poems?

What is your motivation to learn a language?  For some people, it helps to have a concrete goal like successfully understanding a favourite book in its original language.  Some people choose a famous novel or poem or writer to use as their inspiration for continuing their language study.  As good as translators can be these days, they can never capture exactly the original feeling that the author intended, and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to read and understand the majority of an original piece of writing.

Whether you are learning a language for business or personal reasons, it can be really helpful to have a target like this, especially when it is a book or piece of prose you know you will enjoy.  Of course, for professional reasons you may wish to read material related to your own industry, but the comprehension of this is also rewarding.

If you are new to a language, start with achievable goals, like reading children’s stories, newspaper articles, or simple short stories.  Using a Dostoyevsky epic in its original Russian as your first goal might be a bit ambitious, but you could always use it as a long-term aim.  Also bear in mind that reading classical stories in outdated languages might not help you with your conversational vocabulary.

Some websites and publishers also provide side-by-side translations of books and texts, so you can refer to the translated text whenever you come across something you don’t understand.  Remember that to understand something, you don’t have to know every single word.  Even native speakers stumble on vocabulary sometimes.  Look words up when you need to, but don’t let difficult words interrupt your enjoyment of reading.

I came across an interesting discussion thread about people’s ‘books they’d learn a language for’, which includes suggestions about great books in contributors’ own languages.  Which books do you want to read in their original forms, and which would you recommend to learners of your language?  Have you achieved any of your language goals?

It’s not always just people’s foreign language skills that need polishing.  Often, people need a little bit of help with their own language, whether it be improving their overall skill levels, or bringing their literacy up to speed with their oral language capabilities.

I am completely in favour of literacy organisations, and a lot of them do great work within communities all over the world.

I recently stumbled across a literacy site supported by the Verizon Foundation in the US.  It offers a wide range of free resources for teachers and parents, but for some reason, the name bothered me.  The name of the site is Thinkfinity, which appears to be a portmanteau made up of the words think and infinity.  I know that made-up words are used for many things, including business names and newfangled jargon terms, but the use of a non-word to support literacy development scratches at me the wrong way.  It’s not even a particularly good portmanteau.

Don’t get me wrong, though, this won’t make me take support away from their general cause.

I found an A-Z of literacy organisations, and from that list drew a few more gems:

Read On - Write Away! - a Derbyshire organisation who not only have a great pun in their name, but also use the exclamation mark in their acronym, ROWA!

ContinYou - a British community learning organisation.  For some reason, their name doesn’t bug me at all, as it sounds like an actual word, and also directly conveys a feeling of self improvement.

Clinks - an organisation working with NGOs (non-government organisations) and the criminal justice system in the UK.  This may be my favourite one, as it not only incorporates the idea of community links; clink is also a slang term for prison, or jail.

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.

A Chinese student from Sichuan province failed his gaokao (final examinations) essay because it was written in ancient characters, some of which were from thousands of years ago.  From Shanghaiist:

The script, called “甲骨 Jia Gu” (oracle bone script) is from the Bronze Age and is usually found on ox bones or turtle shells. Professors who translated the essay into modern Chinese found that 19-year-old Huang Ling’s character use was largely correct, but his essay was awarded an 8 out of 80 (later lowered to 6).

The student’s score would normally mean that he would not be accepted into university, as Chinese requirements are usually very strict.  However, examiners were impressed by his knowledge, and correct usage, of the so-called Oracle Bone script, and he may be accepted into Sichuan University after all.

Although I applaud his risky performance, I wonder if the results would be as positive if a British student wrote an essay in Middle English, or a French student in Gaulish.  I kind of like to hope so.

In the aftermath of the recent Iranian election, the protests that followed, and the ensuing violence, the availability of accurate information is becoming rarer, and more crucial.  Hotels in Tehran have been locked down to prevent foreign journalists from reporting anything to the outside world.  Live video footage posted to YouTube and messages sent through Twitter by protesters and people amidst the violence have become important sources of news for people within the country, and around the world.  Unfortunately, the people in power in Iran have realised this, and done their best to shut down mobile and internet networks, and it has escalated to the point where anyone seen openly carrying a laptop, mobile phone, or camera runs the risk of being attacked by paramilitary groups.

Internet giant Google has pushed forward their release of Google Translate in Persian, or Farsi, which is the major language of Iran.  This will hopefully make more international information and news available to people within Iran, and Persian speakers around the world, as well as allowing outsiders to get an idea of what is happening inside the country.

The Twitter service is playing an arguably more important role on the ground, as protesters are using it to organise demonstrations as well as spread news to the outside world.  It has even been recognised as crucial by the US State Department, who urged the company to delay a planned upgrade in order for service to continue uninterrupted in Iran.

If you’re interested in knowing more about what’s happening, I found quite a good summary on Reddit, there’s a lot of information in the news, and there are plenty of Twitter, news, and blog feeds being updated all the time.  As well as wanting to keep up-to-date with the actual situation, I’m fascinated by the changing roles of media, technology, and communication.  Is the blocking of a single website or internet service tantamount to a human rights issue these days?

Unless you’ve been living under a virtual rock recently, you’ll know about the so-called microblogging service Twitter.  It allows businesses, news media, celebrities, and individuals to broadcast their thoughts in 140 character tweets, as well as keep up with all manner of other people and organisations.  Best of all, you don’t have to be connected to a PC, or even the internet.  Most functions can be accessed by mobile phone (depending on what country you’re in), and communicating is as easy as sending a text message (SMS).

After skimming over Online Colleges’ extensive collection of 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the College Classroom, I started thinking about practical uses for tweeting in the language classroom (or, more specifically, outside the language classroom).

From the Communication section:

1. Direct Tweet. [Teachers] and students can contact each other through direct Tweets without having to share cell phone numbers.
2. Get to know your classmates. A class Twitter group will help facilitate [teachers] and students getting to know each other, especially if the class is part of a more intimate setting such as a seminar.
3. Collaborate on projects. When working together on projects, set up a group using an app like Tweetworks to facilitate communication between everyone working together.
4. Make announcements. [Teachers] can send out reminders about upcoming tests, project due dates, or any news that needs to be shared via Twitter.
5. Share interesting websites. Both [teachers] and students can post interesting websites that are relevant to their class.
6. Daily learning. Twitter feeds happen much more frequently than the two or three times a day a student is in class, therefore using Twitter in the classroom means there is a daily opportunity for learning.

More specific to language learning:

1. Practice a foreign language. Language classes can take advantage of the opportunity to communicate in the target language of the class by finding native speakers on Twitter.
2. Follow mentors. If [teachers] or other key figures in your field of study are on Twitter, follow them to keep up with their research and activities.
3. Follow an idea, word, or event. Send “track ___” with whatever word, event, or idea you want to follow in the blank, and you will receive Tweets that contain that keyword.

Teachers can set students short assignments that they have to complete in 140 characters or less.  Students can post interesting new words or points they learn, and can learn from peers around the world.  Post interesting news stories or websites about your chosen language.

The length restriction is a bit of a double-edged sword in that what you will see from native speakers will often be informal abbreviations, or internet slang, but at the same time, because communication is key, learners won’t have to worry too much about spelling and grammar.

It could be worth finding out if your language teacher or fellow students uses the service, or look up a few interesting people who tweet in your target language.  There are a lot of possibilities out there for this kind of thing, and I’d be interested to hear about your experiences.

A sign in Birmingham does a good job of reminding us why spacing and typography are important.

Spotted by Michael James and posted in the Telegraph Sign Language series.