7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 89
22 tiny language habits, Anxiety, Alcohol drinking in 4 countries, and Tetum, the minority language that became official!
Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a magnificent week!
Updates
Mine was entrancing.
I’ve studied more Korean than I have even in the last few weeks that were still Korean-intense. I’m only a few episodes from finishing a Korean audio series so I’m currently looking for another one with short 10ish-minute episodes. If you have a good one, let me know!
I’ve also practiced some more German with Assimil and got 6 German novels at my library. Why so many? They were selling 10 books for 1 euro (~1 USD) so I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to get future reading material 🤓
The week really flew by so quickly that it feels like a blur. A beautiful, mesmerizing, blur, but still a blur.
The only other thing I clearly remember is that I finished the 4th deep-dive piece about a lesser-known language (LKL): Taiwanese Hokkien, also called Tâi-gí.
It was so insightful I had to divide it into two pieces: one about history and one about language construction because I had a lot to write about. Despite being done with this long piece, I’m still doing a bit of Glossika study of the language. It’s so fun! 😊
These pieces do take a lot of time to research and write, so please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work. You’ll not only gain access to these deep dives, but also a biweekly reflection piece about language learning.
Alright, let’s dive into what you came for!
7 Bullet Points
Each week, I share 7 things about languages.
I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.
A quick reminder first: I’m not affiliated with any resource so far. Every recommendation you find below comes from my own research and experiences.
🎥 One video
The 4 things it takes to be an expert — By Veritasium
I’ve spent hundreds if not thousands of hours researching all sorts of things related to learning. This video is probably both one of the most simple and one of the most precise ones I’ve seen.
Whether you want to become an expert or not doesn’t really matter. But if you want to learn well, this information will be useful to you.
📚 One article I read
How to learn multiple languages at once — By Lindie Botes
I’m usually a big fan of Lindie’s videos on YouTube but I’d be lying if I said her once-in-a-while-appearing articles didn’t appeal to me just as much. This one is another proof she’s a damn good creative.
In this article, she shared many different ways to learn more than one language at a time. I loved her idea of using the Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 principle).
I hadn’t thought about it, but I might start using an inspired version: 80% of my time on Korean and 20% divided between the rest of my languages. Within this 20%, I’ll spend 80% on German, as it’s my 2nd priority right now.
What can you take from her article and apply to your own journey?
✍🏽 One article I wrote
22 Tiny Habits to Improve Your Language Effortlessly in 2022
I recently realized the end of the year is less than three months away. That motivated me to act more on my goals, but also to think more about what I want 2023 to look like. And I fell on this article from the beginning of the year.
Turns out there were quite a few things I wasn’t doing anymore so I’m changing that right now. First stop: change my phone back to one of my target languages!
Read on to see if there are more for you!
🎧 One podcast episode
Why do we get anxious about learning a second language? | Science Behind Language Learning — By Adventures in Language
I’ve been learning languages for over a decade and reached high levels in a few of them, so you might expect me to never feel anxious about language learning. If you’ve followed me for long enough, however, you’ll know I regularly do. (Paid subscribers even get a front seat at my anxiety in my Thursday’s Thousandth Thought series!)
In this episode, Kaitlynn explained why we all get anxious, why a bit of anxiety isn’t bad, and how we can deal with feeling anxious.
🌎 One cultural aspect
Alcohol drinking in France, Japan, Korea, and Belgium
Born French, my first sip of wine was before I even turned 10. Hell, a friend and I actually stole a bottle of Rosé from his parents and got drunk off it. In the years that followed, I began drinking champagne and other alcoholic drinks for events at home. My family liked all sorts of alcohol, so I even came to believe lesser-common varieties were, well, common.
This is a realization I had during the preparation for a friend’s wedding, where I was the only one knowing what was “Ratafia” apart from the person offering a glass of it.
You see, drinking culture can vary a lot between countries.
In France, we often drink wine during our meals. Long meals—usually for events—, however, will often have a “trou Normand” (literally “Norman hole”). A small glass of liqueur regularly combined with ice-cream. This is thought to help keep eating for the rest of the meal.
In Belgium or Ireland, drinking beer early in the day isn’t particularly regarded as a bad thing, although most people would wait for lunch on working days.
On the other side of the world, Japanese drinking culture tends to revolve around after-work drinks like beer, nihonshu—what’s usually called “sake” abroad1—, highball, and other sawa. Most people don't drink anything during a meal unless they are celebrating something and those who do would usually turn to beer.
In Korea, beer (called maekju 맥주) is most often combined with fried chicken (chikin 치킨). As a result, the word chimeak (치맥) was created and has become a staple. It even has its own Wikipedia page. Koreans also regularly drink their own national drink: soju (소주). This rice-wine-like beverage is usually sold in small bottles and people often count in soju bottles how much they can drink.
There’s also a tasty mix called somaek (소맥). Can you guess the two alcohols in it?
Next week, we’ll talk about the drinking culture in 4 very different cultures.
In the meantime, tell us in the comments how it is in your country!
📜 One quote to ponder
“That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.” — Charlie Chaplin
🌐 One Lesser-Known Language (LKL)
Tetum/Tetun - The official language that was used by a minority
Tetum is a Malayo-Polynesian language, a subgroup of the Austronesian language family. It’s the national language of East Timor2. It can also be written as Tetun.
There are different versions of Tetum but the two main ones are:
Tetum Terik → The “original” Tetum with fewer foreign influences and a conjugation system inexistent in the other variant. It’s spoken only in the south of East Timor
Tetum-Dili → Its official name is Tetum Prasa but it’s more commonly called Tetum Dili as it’s mostly spoken in the capital, Dili. This version developed during the Portuguese occupation (1702-1975). It is the most spoken version today.
The other main forms are: Tetun-Belu and Nana’ek.
Interestingly enough, Tetum-Dili was only spoken by about 8% of the population when it was declared the official language in 1999. That number rose to 36.6% by the 2010 census. The other official language of East Timor is Portuguese, although the same census found only 600 native speakers and the rest spoke it as a second language (36.8%).
Let’s turn to Tetun-Dili’s construction (🤓) for the grammar part.
Tetum-Dili is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). It doesn’t have a gender system for its nouns, but the Portuguese impact has made a few words keep male and female versions, such as the word obrigadu and obrigada to say “Thank you.”
In other Tetum variants, words that need a distinction get a suffix: -mane (“male”) or -feto (“female”).
Similarly, there are no plural forms. Context serves to figure things out but, when the distinction is needed, the suffix sira can be used. Sira is also the pronoun for “they.”
feto = woman/women || feto sira = women
The undefinite article usually isn’t used either but it does exist. It’s the word for “one,” ida. It sits after the noun it relates to:
labarik ida = a child (literally “child/children + one)
The verb “to be” doesn’t exist but there is a verb that means “not to be”: la'ós. (This is sometimes changed to la, as this is the common negation particle.)
Timor-oan sira la'ós Indonézia-oan. = The Timorese are not Indonesians. (Literally, Timor-person + [plural] + not to be + Indonesia-person).
As you may have guessed from the above example, verbs aren’t conjugated in Tetun-Dili.3 There is no past tense either as it is conveyed through context. If the distinction is really needed, the word ona can be added at the end of the sentence:
Hau fó hahán ba sira ona. = I gave them food. (literally: I + to give + food + to + they + [past])
The future tense is created by adding the particle sei before the verb:
Hau sei hatene ko’alia Tetun = I will speak Tetun. (literally: I + will + to know how to + to speak + Tetun).
The Portuguese influences have made Tetun-Dili and Tetum-Teruk almost unintelligible from one another without a bit of study. Many words in Tetun-Dili use a Portuguese version completely different from Tetun-Teruk. For example:
odi (Tetun-Dili) = hate = aran (Tetun-Terik)
If you want to learn the language, Lídia Pereira de Araújo’s YouTube channel has a few videos on the basics. There’s also a playlist created that includes a few old videos (from 2010!) from the deceased famous polyglot Laoshu50500
As for written resources, the only one I found was a well-made Peace Corp textbook with audio and video lessons, all hosted on LiveLingua. The LonelyPlanet Tetum phrasebook also has a few pages available for free here.
As they say in Tetum, Ate logu! (See you later!)
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
Sake (酒) just means “alcohol” in Japanese and can refer to anything ranging from wine to whisky and liqueurs.
West Timor is part of Indonesia and, as such, Tetun is not a national language there, although it is also spoken in this area too.
Tetum-Teruk does have a conjugation system for verbs starting with an “h” though! Basically, they use a system of inflection, changing the first syllable of the verb as they conjugate it.
Not sure if it was because what you wrote really connected for me or because I slowed down and savored while reading. Regardless, thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you. Highlights were your 22 Tiny Habits and Alcohol Drinking (My French heritage is evident). I also liked the Charlie Chaplin quote!