Hey everybody,
I hope your week was marvelous!
Updates
What an amazing week that was for me.
My brother’s just come back home from Myanmar in preparation for his wedding and we’re all psyched. The energy in the house is at an all-time high.
I didn’t get as much time as I wanted studying Thai but I got a bit further with the script. Hopefully, I’ll be “done” with learning it sometime this week.
One letter actually made me laugh out loud for the strange rule attached to it. You see, โ-ะ is a short “o” as in “go” in Thai. It concept is quite similar to other vowels in Thai. It goes around the consonant it’s attached to. But! If it’s followed by a consonnant, it becomes unwritten. Yes, you read right.
It disappears but the sound stays.
For example, บม is literally the letter “p” aspirated ([pʰ]) followed by “m” but since there’s no other vowel, it’s read as “pʰom”! It took me by surprise so I laughed. No way I’m forgetting this rule now!
As for my other languages, you’ll see what I’ve read for the biweekly challenge below. I played Genshin Impact a bit less this week but spent more time on the story in Chinese, learning new words and pronouncing shortish sentences.
On a non language-related note, I’ve started reading Will Smith’s memoir and it’s magnificent. I’m a huge fan so I might be biased, but even if you’re not, there’s no denying his life (with all its flaws included) is nothing short of inspiring.
Alrighty then. Let's dive in!
7 Bullet Points
Each week, I share 7 things that could be useful to your learning odyssey. I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.
One video: Overhaul! Organise your language learning in 1 weekend! 💪 — By Lindsay Williams
I used to love Lindsay’s “Creative Language Learning Podcast” and even recommended a few episodes earlier this year but I thought Lindsay had been focusing on teaching English for a while… until I discovered her YouTube channel this week. It’s amazing and filled with unscripted yet insightful tips.
This one about doing an overhaul of your resources and practices is magnificent. Loved it.
One article I read: The Identity-Shaking Experiences You Have While Living Abroad — By Anu Kumar
Talking about the difficulties of living abroad isn’t easy. Explaining the small details that come with living a “new life” is a challenge I’ve tried to tackle many times, often feelings like I failed to express it well enough. Anu nailed it here. Kudos.
One article I wrote: Language Learning 101: The Lies You’ve Been Told About Grammar
If you’ve been reading me for some time you probably know I love studying grammar. I didn’t always though. Like everybody else, I thought it was boring. Until I realized I had just been taught wrong. Here’s my attempt at bringing light upon the wrong beliefs too many have come to believe. If you’re not already convinced, I hope this will do the trick!
One podcast episode: How to learn a difficult language like Polish? Heather explains. —By Polyglot Insights Podcast
I absolutely loved this interview. Heather gave amazing tips that can help you reframe how you perceive learning a language and improve faster. Heather’s learned Polish for 15 years. Her experience learning one of the hardest languages on earth clearly shows nothing’s too hard to be learned. I highly recommend this interview!
One tool to try: Clockify (Extension & downloadable software)
As a freelance, knowing where my time goes matters a lot! That’s why I’ve been using Clockify for about a year to track what I do when. I absolutely love how easy it is to use. Click to start a session, set a “project”, add a “tag,” and you’re good to go. I don’t use it to track my “advanced” languages because I do too many small things to turn it on and off all the time, but it’s been very useful to track my lower languages (currently, Thai in particular).
One quote to ponder: “When you know what you want, it clarifies what you don’t want. And even painful decisions, though not easy, become simple.” ― Will Smith, Will
New biweekly challenge: Make a tiny presentation to yourself
How about challenging both your writing and speaking abilities? For the next two weeks, spend some time each day preparing a short presentation in your target language so you can record it by the end of the two weeks. You can also make 1 shorter one each week, of course!
I’ll focus on making a short Korean presentation this week and will spend the next one on Thai! The goal is to have a recording of my first time actually saying more than a word at a time in Thai.
Sum-up of the 2nd week of the last challenge: Reading a short novel
I read three more short stories in German this week and also began reading a short graded reader in Chinese. Strangely enough, I felt as if the graded reader was a piece of cake even though I haven’t been reading Chinese stories for a while. Maybe the result of playing Genshin Impact in Chinese? Either way, it was a motivation booster!
Let me know how it went for you by replying to this mail or commenting!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
For more of my articles, you can find them here.