7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 98
Yoruba, Sleep and memory, Common mistakes, Christmas in Latin America, and the auxlang Interlingua!
Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine was quite nice.
Nothing extraordinary happened but it was a pleasant week during which everything went pretty much as expected. I was busy on some days and had some time for myself on others.
I finally started moving forward to more practical aspects of my moving to South Korea in late January, such as looking for places to stay, checking banks, and whatnot. It’s so exciting!
I also almost finished preparing some surprises for the new year and the renewal of this newsletter. It’s just as exciting and I’m looking forward to sharing this with you all.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do much active study of my languages but I still read Webtoons in Korean and played some video games in German. If all goes well, this week should be the start of me being more active in my Korean learning!
Alright, let’s dive into what you came for now!
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
YORUBA - A Language of NIGERIA (and the WORLD) — LangFocus
I’m cheating this week by sharing one language you may not know depending on where you’re from. In a sort, this could be considered a “lesser-known” language.
And yet, this African language is spoken by 35-40 million speakers around the world!
In this to-the-point video, the basics of the language structure and some simple phrases are deconstructed with colors and recordings.
This is a great introduction if you know nothing about African languages.😉
📚 One article I read
How to learn a language — By Sandy Millini
Now, this was quite the long piece, filled with mostly amazing advice!
Loved it.
It’s so long that listing all the nuggets of wisdom would be pointless here. I invite you to read the piece itself but here are my 3 favorites:
Creating a “My favorite mistakes’ page” with the correct and incorrect versions. A good way to treasure your mistakes and improve.
Recording phrases you like. Why have to create them later when you can write them down as you find them?
Using color coding for specific purposes. My notes are disgusting compared to Sandy’s but the idea is the same: one color for one purpose helps with remembering
✍🏽 One article I wrote
3 Incredibly Common Mistakes New Language Learners Will Definitely Make in 2023
I’m psyched every December because I know there are thousands upon thousands of potential new language learners about to join the beautiful world of language learning. I also know, unfortunately, that many will give up soon after.
This piece is me trying to have as few people as possible give up by warning them about what I think are the most common mistakes.
Hopefully, that’ll work!
🎧 One podcast episode
# 35: Sleep and Memory - Part 1 and #36: Sleep and Memory - Part 2 — The Matt Walker Podcast
I know. I’m cheating twice in a week as this is a two-part episode but, hey, the combined time of both is under some other episodes I’ve shared so… we’re good? Plus there should be a Part 3 coming soon anyway!
In this (probably) 3-part series, Dr. Matt Walker — a specialist in sleep studies and the author of Why We Sleep — discusses the importance of sleeping in relation to learning.
We’ve all heard sleeping well is important for learning well but Dr. Walker brings study results and interesting details some might not know. As he explains, sleep is important (for learning) for three main reasons:
Before learning, sleep helps prepare the brain for the formation of memories (Part 1)
After learning, sleeping helps cement memories (Part 2)
Sleep interconnects new memories together and enables ingenuity and creativity. (Probably Part 3)
All the more reasons to care more for our sleep!
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Christmas Traditions in Latin America
After discussing peculiar Christmas traditions in North East Asia last week, we’re crossing the Pacific Ocean to find some completely different Christmas traditions.
Starting with the largest country in Latin America, the custom of “Secret Santa” seems to be quite common in Brazil. This being said, instead of staying secret forever, the small gifts are given with a nickname (apelidos) until Christmas Day when they reveal themselves.
Employees also get a 13th salary (known as "Aguinaldo" in Spanish-speaking countries) at the end of December. I thought this was a custom that only existed in my native country of France, but it seems to happen also in many other countries. In fact, while it’s not obligatory in France, it is in most countries of South America (where companies get fined otherwise, except in Peru where it’s at the company’s discretion)1.
Talking about Peru, an event known as Chocolatada happens in the weeks before Christmas day. During it, homemade hot chocolate, Panetón, or sweetbreads and small gifts are given to children and their families in hopes of spreading joy and Christmas cheer.2
In Caracas in Venezuela, another interesting tradition is to go to the special Christmas morning masses on roller skate between December 16 and 24. This is apparently so popular that the government closed the streets until 8 am to allow citizens to skate safely.
Finally, a particular Christmastime festival happens on December 23rd in Oaxaca City in Mexico: La Noche de Rábanos. This is a competition of radish carving to create all sorts of scenes. An interesting sight!
Do you know any other interesting Latin American Christmas traditions? Share them with us!
📜 One quote to ponder
“Clarity affords focus.” — Thomas Leonard.
🌐 One Lesser-Known Language (LKL)
Interlingua - The Conlang you can understand without studying
If 2022 has proved one thing to me, it’s that there are a lot more interesting languages than I ever thought. And among I’ve especially grown fond of constructed languages, also known as conlangs.
This week we’re turning to one of them: Interlingua.
Interlingua is an auxlang (auxiliary language) which means it was created with the goal of becoming a tool to have conversations (as opposed to conlangs like Dothraki or Sindarin, which were created for fictional purposes).
Interlingua was created between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). Despite its name, it is different from the other two conlangs with a similar name:
Interlingua de Peano, more commonly known as Latino sine flexione
Interlingue, also sometimes known as Occidental (its previous name)
Interlingua was created to be extremely simple to understand. In fact, if you speak a Romance language, you should be able to understand Interlingua. Proof is, this TikToker makes videos in Interlingua and is easy to understand by the millions of people following him.
There are a few reasons for this.
Interlingua is based on 7 “control” languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Russian. The two last ones act as “secondary controls,” and Spanish and Portuguese count as one due to their similarities though.
For a word to be part of Interlingua vocabulary, it can follow either of these patterns:
If it’s part of at least 3 of the 4 primary languages
If it’s part of 2 of the primary languages, its presence in German or Russian is decisive.
As for its grammar, every feature found in all the control languages needs to be kept (such as a distinctive plural form) while every feature lacking in as much as one control language can be forgone (such as gentrification as it is missing in English).
These factors combine to make Interlingua easy to understand for any speaker of Romance languages.
This being said, you may have guessed why it didn’t become an International Auxiliary Language. Just like Esperanto and most other auxlangs, it only relies on Western languages despite the existence of countless different languages in Asia and Africa notably.
Considering its “simple” grammar, I won’t dig into it here, but rather direct you to this 1951 paper by the authors of the language where everything is explained. I’ll only hover over a few interesting points:
Verbs only have one form per tense. (Only the present tense has 4.)
There is no present continuous (as it doesn’t exist in French).
Questions can be made in one of 4 ways:
Inversing the subject and verb
Starting the sentence with a question word
Adding “Esque” at the start
Making the intonation rise at the end of the sentence.
If you want to learn the language, I’d advise you to refer to the PDF linked above (or its website version) and refer to the Reddit were the community is quite active. The Wikipedia page is also quite complete. The official Interlingua website, of course, will also be a great reference to use and even has a dictionary
Finally, here are a few sentences to test your understanding. Check the footnotes for their translations. Let me know in the comments if you got them!
Iste pais es libere.3
In van io ha tentate convincer le.4
Io labora in le citate.5
Que es tu nomine? 6
Solo iste pensata le inquietava.7
As they say in Interlingua,
A revider! 8
Thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
Fun fact, there are even 14th-month salaries in some countries!
Nowadays, this event is especially popular in the poorest Andean communities and happens throughout the year.
This country is free.
In vain have I tried to convince him.
I work in the city.
What is your name?
Only this thought worried him.
See you later!