7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 70
FLR technique, learning instead of talking, and tipping around the world
Hey language lovers
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine was fabulous. I studied a bit of almost all my languages and visited a lot of places in Hanoi.
The architecture in Hanoi is really quite exquisite for me as I can see the French influence that feels like home to me, combined with the Chinese influence that I saw when I was living in Shanghai 8 years ago. It’s a strange combination that I really appreciate.
On the language side, I started reading in Korean again, not officially entering the Super Challenge yet but to check if that’s something I really want to add to my life right now. It’s an incredibly slow process but I’m enjoying it for now.
I also think it’s time to announce the other language I’ve been working on again. I mentioned it a while back but never gave much more information about it.
I’m actively learning German! 🇩🇪
I’ll be heading to Germany sometime this summer and will spend between two months and… a lot more. Nothing’s set in stone but I plan to actively speak German as much as possible so it’s now my focus.
This being said, I’m still learning Thai too and translating the second chapter of the book I’m reading is becoming easier each day.
Alright, let’s dive right 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
Học ngôn ngữ cần giữ kỷ luật - Phoebe Trần | Have a Sip EP52 — By Vietcetera
Following in the steps of the past few weeks, I was looking for some advice about language-learning in other languages than English and fell upon this amazing discussion between Phoebe and Thuỳ Minh, in Vietnamese and fully subtitled in English.
One topic I found extremely interesting was the idea that languages will evolve like culture.
Just like we now have culture mixes everywhere and nobody is truly from “one culture” anymore, Thuỳ said she believed languages would follow the same trajectory.
In reality, this is already happening.
Some English words have slipped into almost every language. The Korean language from North Korea is now only partly understandable by South Koreans because it hasn’t evolved while internationalization impacted South Korea’s language.
Some people might think this is unfortunate. I see this as an opportunity.
One day there won’t be any untranslatable words. We’ll all be able to exchange with more ease because our language barriers will be more blurred.
They also talked about tons of topics ranging from the importance of discipline, to happiness, changes in the education field in Vietnam, and working with people from Gen Z.
📚 One article I read
FLR Technique — By Laoshu50500 on the How To Learn Any Language forum
If you’ve never heard of Moses Mc Cornick, aka Laoshu50500, you’ve missed out on an inspiring figure in the language-learning community. He, unfortunately, passed away in 2021 leaving us with tons of lessons from his journey into many languages. I wrote some of my takeaways last year after his passing if you’re curious.
He explained and refined his method throughout the years but I still see his first explanations as the most interesting ones. This thread was one of those.
The FLR technique relies on building useful sentences and learning keywords to express yourself.
Moses considered his method as a starting point for learning a language. I think it’s a great method but should be used after getting a few basics down first.
Basically, a bit more input before turning to this much output.
Still, Moses proved with enough dozens of languages how well it worked for him so if you’re curious, have a read—and a look at the videos he mentions in the thread—and give it a go!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
Most People Talk About Learning Languages Instead of Actually Doing It
Breaking News. I talk about learning languages all the time. My life revolves around learning languages and helping others doing it so it might not seem so surprising.
The problem is that I sometimes do it so much it takes time away from actually studying and improving my languages. And, unfortunately, most people make this mistake constantly.
Talking about learning a language is pointless if you don’t actually do it. That’s why I tried to talk about why you should actually do it rather than just talking about it.
🎧 One podcast episode
Time Blocking — By Time and Attention
Time-blocking isn’t the new thing around the block—awful pun intended—but I was happy to discover new ideas in this insightful conversation.
For the few of you who haven’t heard of it yet, however, let me summarize this practice. The idea is to divide your day into many small chunks during which you focus on one single task. Some people enjoy doing this by filling their calendars until there’s no blank space left.
In this conversation, Chris explained a tweak he put in place to improve his time-blocking:
He gives himself options of roughly even value for each block.
Instead of telling himself something like “I’ll write from 10:00 to 12:00,” he’ll also add the option of reading instead if that’s how he feels in the moment. That gives him some freedom to play with.
Ardyn went on to give another great tip: schedule your breaks.
I’ve skipped this part all too many times to know she’s right when she adds:
“If you don’t schedule breaks, you’re just going to end up taking some breaks anyway, and they won’t be high quality breaks.”
I guess it’s time to set real breaks into my routine.
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Tipping around the world
Growing up in France, I was taught tipping was something you did as a way to express gratitude for exceptional service. It’s something that’s stuck with me ever since.
If you know only a few things about the US, the importance of tipping is probably one of those. The custom over there is to add 15-20% to bills. For waiters, no tip may mean not enough means to live.
Looking up information about tipping is interesting because everything seems to be based on the basic assumption that you should tip.
For example, every website I found talking about France mentioned tipping was quite common while, in reality, it’s considered a bonus, not the norm. Lonely Planet mentioned a need for a 10-15% tip for taxis in France, something I’ve never even heard of.
Similarly, tipping can almost offend people in Japan as it is not considered needed at all. This post by Western Union said it should only reward good service but since good service is expected in Japan, it’s not actually a thing. Instead, a good smile with thanks is enough.
Those who accept tips only do so because they’re in touristic areas and know people from the US feel obliged to do it.
Depending on where you came from, tipping or not tipping can feel strange.
I still remember feeling offended by the need to pay a tip after each meal when I went to New York a few years ago. To me, only a great service deserved one. Still, it’s important to adapt to each country’s cultural habits.
That’s why I advise you to always look this up before you travel to any country. Just google “tipping in [Country name]” and you’ll find the custom easily.
And if you really feel a need to tip, even in countries that do have a tipping culture, just ask the waiters to keep the change.
That’s how most tips are given in Europe.
📜 One quote to ponder
“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” ― Abigail Adams
💪 One monthly challenge (May Edition)
Practice Elaboration - Get a Better Handle Your TL
Learning a language can be fun and almost effortless but actually putting some effort is what helps you improve faster.
During May, let’s work on this.
One difficult aspect of learning a language is creating long sentences. It’s all good and fun to make sentences like “I eat a croissant.” but can you precise where, or why, or with whom, or any other detail within the same sentence?
The concept of Elaboration is just what it seems like: to expand (elaborate) your sentences little by little.
For example. “I eat a croissant.” could become “I eat a croissant because I’m hungry.” and then “I eat a croissant because I’m hungry for French food.” and so on.
Try to expand sentences you encounter as often as you can.
Add one detail to a sentence you find in a resource or create a small sentence you slowly make longer and longer!
Continue until you struggle, for that’s where you’ll actually progress! Of course, the more fun you can have along the way, the better. 😉
✅How the challenge is going for me
I’m elaborating sentences with German this month and it’s going pretty well.
I started with a simple “Ich gehe nach Deutschland.” (“I go to Germany.”) and have now created this long paragraph:
“Ich werde nach Deutschland mit dem Flugzeug nächsten Monat fliegen, damit ich mit einer Freundin mehr lernen kann. Aber, ich weiß nicht, ob ich mit ihr Deutsch sprechen könnte, weil sie sehr viel Deutsch gelernt hat und ich nicht. Ich möchte diesen Monat viel lernen, damit wir keine Probleme haben, Deutsch zu sprechen.”
The next step is to get some feedback from natives (on HiNative and Journaly) while I try to make this even longer and maybe play around with some parts.
How is the challenge going for you?
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, so take this with a grain of salt -- I don't think we'll ever hit a point of full linguistic convergence; instead I think our languages will continue to evolve as our communities do, but I think a global "common tongue" (currently English by cultural hegemony) will emerge. What this means is that everyone will speak "standard English," e.g. not British, not American, but a baseline English in addition to their community language(s). We already see this happening for existing languages and communities, but we'll continue to see this as new languages evolve and become separate from their parent languages. So I don't think we'll ever get fully past "untranslatable words" but we will get to a point of easy communication across borders and cultural barriers.
Being a native hindi speaker, I am still learning English. I mean you read Joel's newsletter and you doubt your 13+ years of english speaking. I am fluent in English and Hindi. Sanskrit is okayish. I learnt French 3 years ago and I stopped back then due to lack of time. And when I read your Medium article of how people simply talk about it and don't do it, I found myself guilty.
French is in my list of next languages, I already know the basics, but to be fluent requires deliberate practice. Any podcast recommendations in French?