7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 99
Lo-Fi Music, Gestures, Boosting attention and memory, Christomas in Europe, and Créole seychellois!
Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine was more of the same as last week: I continued my preparation to go to South Korea next year, wrote quite a bit, and studied some Korean and German.
I started doing some shadowing in Korean to work on my pronunciation and the flow in which I speak but it’s been so long it still feels weird. Hopefully it’ll get better soon!
In any case, this week is the very last version of this newsletter as it is. I hope you enjoy it!
Next week will be a special episode to celebrate the 100th edition of this 7-bullet-point newsletter (7BPN) and the end of 2022.🥳🎉 It’ll be a long one but I’m sure you’ll love it.
There will also be some announcements but I won’t spoil the surprise for you 🤫
Alright, let’s dive into Week 99 of the 7BPN!
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
Focus and Study Lo-Fi Music: Study Beats — By Headspace
Well, there isn’t much to say about the content of this “video” except that it’s an hour of nice beats to listen to while focusing.
I used to listen to it all the time when I had a subscription to Headspace (I moved to Calm a few months back) so I’m glad to get access to it for free now!
📚 One article I read
Students Who Gesture during Learning ‘Grasp’ Concepts Better — By Matthew Hutson
Reading this summary of a research paper reminded me of a habit I took while learning Kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) many years ago: using my index to “draw” in the air the Kanji I wasn’t sure about as a way to visualize them.
Having research backing up that gestures help in learning abstract concepts is an interesting evolution. After all, it’s already been proven that writing by hand helps in remembering. Could that be because of the gesture itself?1
More research will be needed but I’ll now add gesturing me writing words in the air when I can’t actually take notes.
After all, it’s a convenient detail to make remembering easier!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
How to Learn 2 Languages in 2023 Without Burning Out
It’s way too easy to burn out when learning one language and it gets even worse when we learn two or more. That’s why I shared in this piece three crucial ways to avoid burnout and keep improving in the long run.
The most important?
The first one: keeping notes (digital and/or analog) so you can see with your own eyes that what you once considered new and complicated isn’t anymore.
🎧 One podcast episode
Dr. Wendy Suzuki: Boost Attention & Memory with Science-Based Tools | Episode 73 — The Huberman Lab
I've listened to this episode at least 6 times over the past 5 months to make sure I wouldn't miss any tiny interesting detail to share with you because of how useful I thought this piece was. The problem is that I was always outside and didn't take notes while walking.
But enough is enough. I just listened to it one last time and it's time to let you know about it.
This episode was probably my favorite podcast episode of the entire year. Not only is it entertaining, but Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Wendy Suzuki also go deep into how to improve our focus and attention.
I could never make it justice in a few words so I highly recommend you to listen to it (take your time!) but here are just a few of the takeaways I took:
Exercising for 30 minutes in the morning increases focus and cognition for at least the next 2 hours. This works for everybody. 🤯
Any occasion you have to raise your heart rate (through exercise) contributes to positive long-term effects on the hippocampus and pre-frontal cortex (both crucial in learning and retaining information).
A 10-minute walk can dramatically shift your mood, even if done inside.
Meditating for 10-12 minutes daily (not more or less) is enough to drastically reduce stress response, and improve mood and cognitive performance.
Cold showers provide a burst of dopamine throughout the morning following one but you can also enjoy a warm shower like Dr. Suzuki does and finish with a minute of cold for the health benefits.
Novelty, repetition, association, and emotional resonance are the four key aspects helping in remembering anything.
There's so much more to learn though, including some of Dr. Suzuki’s not-yet-published research results, so go on and have a listen!
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Christmas Traditions in Europe
After talking about traditions in North-East Asia and Latin America, we’re finishing this year’s tour of Christmas Traditions with my home, Europe. Well, part of Europe because there’s a lot to say here!
And we’re starting with my home country, France. I just learned that most people don’t celebrate Christmas on the same day we do here.
While Christmas Day, the 25th, is the most important part in other countries, it is on Christmas Eve, the 24th, that we celebrate it in France. A celebration we call “Le réveillon de Noël:” The 25th, is more a day to relax here.
Doing more research into what French Christmas traditions are made me realize that, indeed, while a common habit is to leave socks in front of a fireplace for gifts, the French version is to leave shoes instead.
When it comes to food, there’s no real requirement apart from the bûche de Noël (aka Yule Log), a frozen dessert in the form of a yule log. In fact, I’ve already had two since the beginning of December, just to warm myself up.
Further east, the Austrians have a bunch of interesting Christmas-time traditions.
First, December 4 is called “Barbaratag” (the day of Barbara). The tradition on this day is to cut small twigs from cherry trees or forsythias to put them in a vase at home. If they bloom before Christmas Eve, it is seen as a sign of luck and health for the coming year.
On December 6, Saint Nicholas goes from house to house with its beast-like helper Krampus who punishes nasty children. While this tradition isn’t much in place in large cities nowadays, parades of people disguised as Krampus are a common celebration nowadays. This recent street interview video from Easy German shows how important this is and how scary these costumes get.2
Up north, in Sweden, Christmas is synonymous with Donald Duck.
Yes. Every Christmas Eve at 3 pm, millions of people stop their activities to watch the 1958 Disney Special “From All of Us to You” known as “Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar en god jul” (“Donald Duck and friends wish you a Merry Christmas”).
It’s so popular it’s always in the most popular shows of the year3, and emergency calls usually drop by 20% during the broadcast. Every year, about 40% of the population tunes in.
A true Christmas beauty.
On that note, I wish those of you who celebrate it a Merry Christmas and the others Happy Holidays! ☃️🎁🎄🎅
FYI, I’ll be going around more countries’ Christmas traditions next December so don’t hesitate to share some interesting ones you know!
📜 One quote to ponder
“Productivity is a process of understanding and adapting to your constraints.”—Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus
🌐 One Lesser-Known Language (LKL)
Créole seychellois - A language that got rid of genders with definite articles
Most French people know of the existence of the "Creole" language and think there's only one variant. I was one of those. Or at least I thought there was only one French Creole. Until I began researching Creole languages earlier this year and discovered the incredibly wide world of evolutions and mix of languages known as the Creole languages.
The most common French Creole is Haitian Creole, with over 10 million speakers in and around Haiti. The Seychelles islands, located far (far) away from Haiti are a dream holiday spot for many. I had never looked into this country of over 100 islands and somehow expected its population to speak either French or English.
It turns out I was almost correct.
While French and English are official languages, so is the language known as Seychellois Creole, kreol, or seselwa. It's also the most spoken language of the three and the de facto official language with 91.4% of the population being native speakers of it.4
Kreol has only gained more strength since the country gained its independence from the UK in 1976. Lenstiti Kreol (The Creole Institute) was created in 1981 and the language codified in order to ensure its durability over time.
Seselwa shares many aspects with Mauritian Creole but, contrary to the latter, it is an official language.
Seychellois Creole's infancy started when the French colonizers established a claim on the islands in 1754. Even though the colony was taken by the British soon after, in 1811, it was French that left the largest impact on the language's structure and culture.
One very interesting evolution from French is the association of the definite article to most nouns. As a result, the French word for "the table," "la table" becomes latab in Kreol. 🤯 All nouns also lost gender in this process and the language, therefore, requires adding "mal" or "femel" in front of a noun if the nuance is required.
Seselwa is an SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language, like most other Creole languages. There is no plural form but the word bann (from the French "bande," meaning "group") can be added before a noun if the nuance is required:
latab = the table / tables but bann latab = tables
Like most Creole languages, there is no conjugation depending on the subject, and tenses are expressed through a few particles added before the verb.
Ti = past tense:
Mon ti swazi → I chose.
Leo ti donn Gabriel lakle. → Leo gave the key (to) Gabriel.
Pe = Progressive tense
Nou ankor pe manze → We are still eating.
Nou ti ankor pe manze → We were still eating.
A/Pou = Future tense
Zot pou vwar? → Will they see?
Pa = Negation (sometimes "pag")
Personn pa ti vini. → Nobody came.
Ou pag kapab grate pwason → You [singular] can't/couldn't scratch the fish.
If no tense or negation marker is needed in the sentence, a "placeholder" word is needed in Kreol: i. This is specific to this language5 as the very similar Mauritian Creole doesn't have such a particle:
Pyer i manz mang. → Peter eats a mango/ mangoes.
As a French speaker, the written version of this language feels close to home. I can recognize the transformation of words and guess their meaning with ease. It's also quite interesting to see a different written version of certain sounds I'm used to, like the "wa" in "pwason" and "vwar" that are written as "poisson" and "voir" in French. And yet, hearing the language's flow in videos like this one makes me rack my brain.
That's the beauty of Creole languages. They feel close to home even when they are spoken far away from the language that impacted them.
In a sense, Creole languages give us a peak into how languages truly evolve when they meet and mingle.
Thanks for reading and, again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! ☃️🎁🎄
Mathias Barra
I reckon no because seeing the content written also contributes to coding the information in our brain in multiple ways.
It was 6 times most popular, 11 times second most popular, 3 times third, and 2 times fourth since the year 2000.
vs 5.1% for English and 0.7% for French
It appears Reunion Creole also has this i but still