Traditional Language Classes… They Try So Hard!

I almost feel bad for my Spanish professor. I can tell she loves language, she loves her native Spanish language, she speaks English well and I believe her degree is in French, but the methods she relies upon are quite obviously bad. You’ve all been in these classes… Learn present tense, learn past tense, memorize verb conjugations, demonstrative pronouns ect ect.

Yet it remains completely obvious that most students do not learn. It remains completely obvious that students lack interest. It remains completely obvious that Americans in general do have second language skills unless they were born into a language other than English. Yet we continue to beat that dead horse, a corpse that long ago decayed.

Polyglot Spotlight

I like a lot of language aficionados online, but there are three that I find deserve special attention, due to the work they put into the community through their writing, videos, websites ect. I find each one to be a varying degree of interesting, entertaining, approachable or normal. To anyone who dips in on the language learning community’s blogs and youtube channels will be familiar with this group. I hit the extremes of agreement and disagreement with each of them, but I’m a friendly polemicist that long ago realized if I only hung out or was interested in people that agreed with me fully, I’d have zero friends and would have to live as a hermit. These polyglots also disagree with each other, sometimes at high volume and sometimes only in the nuances that an attentive listener can catch.

This post though isn’t about opinions or disagreements on methodology, or anything else controversial, as much as I love that stuff. It’s simply about great everyday people who love to learn languages, and loving languages is something that almost no one reading this post can argue with.

I’ve included videos that I feel most represent the traits I like most about each of the following bloggers. So in no particular order:

Moses, who is better known by his youtube name Laoshu505000, is a video making machine and language boot camp specialist. He attacks languages with a fury about three months at a time. He takes them on in an academically focused way that most of us only wish we had the patience to to handle. He is the epitome of regular middle class guy learning languages. He’s married, he has an everyday middle class job, he’s not really a big world traveler. He just loves acquiring language after language.

This following video is an example of his passion, I only regret that he’s not wearing his signature fishing hat during it. Don’t get used to the Moses without the headgear:

Next up is Steve Kaufmann, probably the internet polyglot I’m most familiar with, who’d I’d definitely meet-up with if he ever found himself in Vegas, although I’d let him visit the brothels on his own. I know him mostly from exchanges on his blog and the Lingq.com website. Steve and I have similar trait in common of being intensely polemical. It’s one of my favorite things about his videos and blog posts. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think I’d sum it up if I said that we believe what we believe and we’ll defend it (in order to strengthen the belief or adjust it to new truths). I’m pretty sure in both of our cases we could be convinced of a different view, but it’s up to the facts and opponent’s presentation.

Steve knows about twelve languages to varying degrees, he goes on runs of making videos and then on separate inactivity runs on that front. As of late his blog has been an education blog as much as it has been a language learning blog. Steve is especially great because he’s knowledgeable in a variety of subjects, he’s a retired successful business owner and he’s always interested in discussion with both those who agree and disagree with him. Just be careful not to curse on his blog…. on this site don’t worry about it so much.. I collect all words. 🙂

Here’s Steve going on one of the little input rants he’s famous for, interesting stuff:

Third and certainly not least of all is Benny Lewis, or better known as Benny the Irish Polyglot. Benny is simple, his name is Benny, he’s Irish, and he’s a polyglot. Benny seems like a fun and entertaining guy, despite the fact that he doesn’t eat dead animals or drink the luscious juice that his Irish forefathers (who I’m forever indebted to) had a hand in creating (eating animals and drinking “luscious juice” being my second and third favorite things to do, behind writing).

Benny has been in Vegas, and we were supposed to meet up, but a mixture of my studies and Benny falling off the wagon and learning of the joys of dollar beer at the cheap casinos and doing illegal substances off illicit body parts of irresponsible women (mom!!), we didn’t meet up unfortunately.

Benny is most admirable for his love of people, as you can see in the videos his goal is to travel, meet people and have loads of his version of “fun”. And he picks up large amounts of the local language along the way.

Another fun thing about Benny, is that he comes from a technical background, so his videos have a pretty high production value and a sort of “corny to be funny” quality as can be seen here:

If you don’t think that’s hilarious then… your parents didn’t do drugs while they were pregnant with you… (loser).

Well here are three wonderful learners and teachers by example of language learning. They all have their own method and ways of assimilating language and living life. Any one of them, or all three could help you waste time with their ideas and antics, of course that’d be a bad thing…

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,000 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 3 times

In 2010, there were 13 new posts, not bad for the first year!

The busiest day of the year was July 20th with 111 views. The most popular post that day was Learning a Language Is Like Moving to a New City.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were lingq.com, thelinguist.blogs.com, twitter.com, alljapaneseallthetime.com, and yearlyglot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for word collector, my word collector, wordcollector, wordcollector wordpress, and banners in foreign languages.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Learning a Language Is Like Moving to a New City March 2010
3 comments

2

About January 2010
2 comments

3

My Entry to The Polyglot Project: A Hunger for Learning August 2010

4

Benny the Irish Polyglot July 2010
2 comments

5

Technology and Learning Languages February 2010
6 comments

Philosophy of Language and Reality and Human Development

I yammer about the philosophy of language over at my humanist exploration blog. Even though it concerns language I figure that its real place was over there, but it involves language so go look if it so interests you.

Practicing a Little Polish, Talking About a Polish Fighter

What Do You Do When You Don’t Have Time?

I mentioned awhile back that I would have to put my practice of the Polish language down for awhile, since I’d be so short on time. I seem to have taken that idea one step further and pretty much stopped studying all my languages (which is pretty bad since I’m actually taking a Spanish class at school -my “Spanish class” is a subject I will take on in a later post). The class, being a complete beginner’s class, unfortunately cannot stay very interesting, it also only meets one day a week. The wonderful world of life may have kept me from doing any comprehensive work on the various languages I’m trying to make stronger, but that can’t really stop me right?

Polish is the most difficult to keep up and advance. I’ve talked before about getting my wife to speak more to me in Polish, but Stu Jay’s post rings true here. It’s not that she gets angry; it’s that it just doesn’t work. We speak to each other in English and it’s strange for our relationship to speak anything else, even if I can get by with some smaller stuff. It makes me want to kick myself when I think how much I avoided just speaking some Polish when I lived there , after I’d accumulated a decent enough vocabulary.

My Spanish has always been good enough to “get by”, but never good enough to sound smart in. With Spanish I have the opposite problem, I need some hot beef vocabulary injections, there’s nothing wrong with my flow in Spanish, it’s all in the fact that sometimes I just don’t have the words. This is what happens when the only Spanish you speak growing up is with your grandmother and it always involves asking for food. If there is a problem with Spanish, it’s more of an excuse, since I’ve grown up around it in my family, and since I’ve grown up around it because I live in the Southwestern quarter of the United States-it just seems so much less exotic.

It is an excuse since the style of literature I most lean towards is the dreaminess and the light existentialism of Latin literature. I hold myself back from reading a lot of Marquez and Borges, because I want to read them in Spanish. Bolano excites me, and I’ve never even read a page. I absolutely loved Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind , but am sad because I read the English version. So my excuse of Spanish not being exotic enough does not hold weight. In Las Vegas I’m also in a better position to have those engaging conversations, naturally there are far more Spanish speakers in Nevada and California than Polish speakers.

So I fall back into the internet polyglot mantra: Enjoy yourself with the language. I may not have time to study vocabulary and may not be in a position to speak as much Polish as I would like to, but I can still listen and read the news in these languages, I can still read lower level books in Spanish and Polish that I enjoy (The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe seems to be a common first foreign language book choice of mine). Though I’m busy with everything, it doesn’t mean I can’t try to use these languages during other parts of the day, and if you have the same problem, it doesn’t mean you can’t try to use your target languages during the day either.

Total Annihilation Challenge from September to September

You can read about the Total Annihilation Challenge at:

Unilang

Then there’s a more personal concise explanation at:
babystepsoffluency

Essentially it’s an immersion challenge that you do along with others, the idea is work hard and finish with the most progress. I will be using this blog and Unilang to track it. I’ll start here with some of my goals and what I’m going to do, my self-challenge will be from September to September.

POLISH-
1-25,000 words known in lingq. (using mostly jedynka at polskieradio.pl)
2 8000 lingq created.
3 1000 lingqs learned.
4 Have 3000 Anki cards for 10,000 sentences method.
5 Finish the novel Nigdziebądź.
6 Finish Assimil the listening, exercises and dictation.
7 50 writings submitted to Lang-8.
8 Force my wife to speak more to me in Polish.
9 Understand TOKFM podcasts.
10 Find conversation partner on skype.

Spanish –
1 Get an A in Spanish 111 and the next class in line too.
2 15000 words known in Lingq.
3 3000 lingq created.
4 500 lingqs learned.
5 2000 sentences in Anki.
6 Longer conversations with the grandparents
7 Understand the Venganzas Del Pasado Podcast.
8 Do all the Assimil Dictations and exercises
9 50 writings posted to Lang 8
10 As many Lingq conversations as possible.
11 Read El Sobrino De Mago, El Leon La Bruja y el Ropero, Cien años de soledad

FRENCH
1 Get an A in French 111 and the next class in line
2 10000 Known words in Lingq (using mostly geopolitique at radiofrance.fr)
3 Read L’Étranger
4 5000 lingqs created
5 1000 lingqs learned
6 2000 sentences in Anki
7 Finish Assimil First Wave Exercises and Dictation
8 Have Assimil Business French started
9 Start conversations on lingq
10 50 writings on Lang 8

Well, I already know this a bit of a prayer but we’ll see. I’m a masochist I guess. At least I don’t have to learn a new writing system for any of these. I’d just like to see where I am with this stuff by September 1st, 2011.

If lingq opens starts Czech I may play with that, I may also do a little German on lingq too. I’m starting to get hungry for German again :)…

Ambition is getting the better of me…

My Entry to The Polyglot Project: A Hunger for Learning

Here’s my entry into the Polyglot project, which you can find info about here: http://www.youtube.com/user/syzygycc. It’s called A Hunger for Learning. The format may not come out perfect, but oh well it’s time to go to bed…

A Hunger for Learning
An Essay on Language Learning by Christopher Sarda

My hunger for learning and knowing reaches far beyond the focus of this essay, but if someone has the heartfelt desire to understand the human condition, how can at least some interest in language learning not exist? I don’t believe it can, and I have to believe that those people who seek to live with a higher understanding of this mammal, that somehow, someway evolved self-consciousness simply has not discovered the beauty and importance of communicating ideas in different structures and methods than they are used to.
Though not as accomplished as some learners that will be featured in this collection, I know one day I will be. I simply do not have a choice in the matter, I’m interested, and therefore I will not stop. I didn’t always believe I could learn a language. I didn’t always believe that I should put in the work either.

SPANISH AND THE BELIEF THAT I HAD NO “EAR” TO LEARN IT

Half of my family is Argentinean. My grandparents do not speak any English, and in the earliest days of my life I’m told, I was using more Spanish than English, due to the fact that I was being taken care of by my grandmother while my parents worked. At some point, my English only mother put an end to that, although she doesn’t recall doing it, my grandmother today claims that that is what happened. Those are the origins of my current fragmented Spanish.
Later my parents divorcing and our moving away from the Hispanic side of my family didn’t help the level of my Spanish. A number of other things after that also added toward my apathy to language learning. For one, although I’ve always had a hunger to learn, I was an undisciplined, bad student. When I took Spanish in school, I didn’t learn anything because I hardly did any work. My step-sister of the same age on the other hand, also half from a Spanish speaking family, took classes and did well in them, that mixed with the fact that she may actually also have an ear for languages didn’t help my apathy. With Spanish, and later Polish, I also helped myself to block any advancement because of the fact I couldn’t express myself or my ideas in my second languages as well as I felt I could in English. This is something I still deal with now.
I spent my adolescence and the beginning of my adulthood believing that I simply didn’t have an ear for language or the time to study or the money to pay for classes. I lived like this until shortly after I met a little Polish girl on a work and travel visa.

STARTING A NEW LANGUAGE
STARTING A NEW CULTURE

The short story of how I came to be married to Gosia is: she came to the US, we fell in love, I fell asleep, and when I woke up I was in Poland.
Though I would eventually become enamored with the Polish language, it would be a good three or four months before I would start to work on it. I was so taken by being in a different country and culture; the food, the architecture, the people, all whether good or bad never failed to interest me. The new weather (Northern Europe vs Las Vegas is certainly a strange jump), meeting my wife’s friends and family, all took its toll and its time. Mixed with the fact that somewhere in the back of my mind language learning wasn’t my thing.
One day though, after Gosia’s mother noticed I hadn’t even tried to learn any Polish, we took a little walk to the language learning bookstore (yes, a lot of Europe has entire bookstores devoted to language learning). We bought a little book called Polish in 4 Weeks and I the journey began.
At the very start, the book advanced my consciousness. Polish and its grammar of noun cases, and its far more complicated than Spanish’s verb conjugations and perfective and imperfective forms, immediately helped me see conversation and communication in a new light, in a way that I had never imagined or conceived; and I plan to have that feeling again once I start an Asian language in earnest. Getting deeper and deeper into the Polish language and therefore into Polish culture opened my eyes to a wonderful new way to get to know a culture and a people better and eventually drove me to start playing with other languages.

THE LANGUAGE LOVING EXPLOSION

It wasn’t long before I knew that my entire life I would always be studying a language. Starting a new language is a far better way to learn about another culture than it is to read a newspaper article or a history book or even to travel to the country. Once I discovered that it was possible to learn and to learn on your own, I became addicted.
Like most of the people bothering to read this, I eventually discovered the most vocal internet polyglots on Youtube, like Moses, Prof Arguelles, and Steve Kaufmann. Listening to their videos had both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, the three of them and others (the how to learn any language forum and the All Japanese All the Time blog for example) introduced me to many methods of learning. Each learner’s style had slight to large differences from the others, and I had to decide what worked best for me. That was also a negative. I wasted a lot of time watching videos and trying everything proposed method half-heartedly, all time that I should have spent studying my languages. Even today though, I’m still learning how to learn. I still cannot however, fire up the webcam (yet) and give my opinions based on my experience and achievements and talk about what the best way is to learn a language. I have to come a little farther I think.
There are things I do know. I know that I will always be studying a language. I know that I will find a method, or more precisely a combination of methods that are best for me. I know basically what ideas will encompass that method. They are:
• Motivation and Discipline
• Massive Input
• To not allow yourself for any reason not to use the language when you can (especially concerning speaking)

I mostly argue in favor of input, and getting as much vocabulary as possible in one’s head. Passive vocabulary is an investment in the future of really knowing a language, rather than knowing how to get-by in one. With all of that said, I do think you should try to speak as early and as often as possible, this is my biggest problem. I can speak authoritatively here, being afraid to speak, worrying that I’ll sound stupid or not intelligent enough, and switching back to English because it’s easier, are the main reasons, I have not learned the languages I’ve studied better and faster. Let me reiterate though, the gaining of input by listening and reading is most important as a future investment if you want to read, speak, listen and write well, but don’t be afraid to use what you’ve learned if you have someone to practice with, even from the beginning. If you don’t have someone, then just work on your input and work on understanding what you read and listen to, it will be more than enough.

MY GOALS, MY ATTITUDE AND THE ROAD AHEAD

My general goals for life are quite ambitious; in fact I keep a whole blog about them. My lofty language goals reflect that ambition. I mostly want to learn European languages; the few non-European languages I plan to tackle are mainly Hindi and Japanese. I hope that these languages offer me new and more difficult challenges when I ready to start them. Hindi and Japanese are the two non euro languages that I want at high levels for, enough to be able to speak about politics and culture and to be able to read novels. I also have a desire to learn at least one African language, probably Swahili, but I don’t plan to start that for awhile. Arabic is a language I most want to use to listen to and read about current events, so I’d be happy to just practice input when I’m ready to start there. Navajo is a language I will be content to only play with, I’d be happy to spend just a year on it to get to a low intermediate to intermediate level.
I think my future, along with my wife’s will be in Europe, a Europe that is becoming more and more unified, but lucky for me unified in everything except language. I plan of course to be at a high level with the majors: French, Spanish, German, and Italian. Home base will probably be Poland, so a near native level of Polish will be essential, and because it was the Polish language that made me so interested in the world of polyglottery, I’ve also become a bit of an aspiring Slavist. That means I plan to gain high levels in two other Slavic languages: Russian and Czech. With a decent level of knowledge in those three Slavic languages it will allow me to play with some other Slavic languages I do not plan to study intensely.
Last but not least are two small languages that stay in the back of my head as languages I would love to have. One is Catalan, which shouldn’t be too hard with a good base in the major romance languages. The second is Hungarian, which I don’t why, it just has such a mystique to it, how could I not let it draw me in?
I know ‘lofty’ may be an understatement for my goals (14 languages were mentioned above!), but sometimes the road traveled is as good a reason to go as the destination. My abstract focus will be on my attitude and motivation. My worry-free demeanor will be my sword, who cares about my progress, so long as there is progress? I recognize I have a long ways to go, but I look forward to seeing all the beautiful scenery on my way to wherever it is I’m going.

The Way to do Shakespeare

Shakespeare is hard. Kids don’t understand him. Adults don’t understand him. For a guy credited with being the father of modern English, the reason he is disliked is rather ironic: “I can’t understand Macbeth”.

Shakespeare is old, and if someone wanted to argue that he’s the grandfather of the English we speak now, not the father, the argument would be sound. It does not make Shakespeare any less great. It does not mean that he loses his place as one of the greatest writers or artists ever produced by humanity.

Shakespeare is at the least among the best (at the very very least). That alone means the more intellectually inclined should have some interest. The problem is in how people think they should read Shakespeare. In my view Shakespeare should be read in a completely different fashion than most other fiction is read today. For one, it’s a play, so it’s meant to be performed. Read as literature, more important are the monologues and dialogues individually, and the words Shakespeare chooses.

In all truth Shakespeare, as far as plot goes, isn’t anything special. He basically stole every general idea, much like Disney just rewrites old fairy tales with singing lobsters, instead of that, he just rewrites old literature with a vivid ‘poetic prose’. It’s star crossed lovers and murderers falling deeper and deeper into darkness. What makes his work a thing of beauty is how his characters get to be star crossed and dark.

This is why it’s better to be either told the gist of the story before hand or to watch some kind of film rendition of the play in question, of which there are no shortage, get an understanding of what is happening in the general plot out of the way, so we can get right to what makes Shakespeare so great and so beautiful.

The way he writes those words! If only we all spoke in such poetry…

Benny the Irish Polyglot

Our friend Benny over at Fluent in 3 months posted his results for his German C2 exam.

I think he failed in his opening goal (one part, the sounding like a native speaker he completely dropped), but I also think he did a great job. Sadly he did not study in the way that he claims to be the best way.

His German should probably go on his list of languages he now speaks, but not for the reasons he claims work. He has now officially learned every language he knows in either the traditional way or the Lingq/Krashen way, or some combination of both.

The only thing we can really agree with him on is the fact that if you want to speak go out and do it… His results do not reflect the actual way he’s learned languages.

His next goal is Hungarian, I’m curious to see what his detailed goals will be with a language that is only (somehow someway???) only related to Finnish and Estonian and has 14-17 noun cases depending who you ask and has far less English/Romance Language cognates than German and Czech do.

Good luck Benny.