Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine was incredibly busy preparing for my flight to Bangkok this Thursday!
I, unfortunately, didn’t have much time to study my languages but still succeeded in finishing my imaginary conversation in Thai. Now, I’ll ask native speakers to record it on RhinoSpike so I can listen to it often.
A movie I saw on Sunday evening reminded me how much I love languages.
I saw Eurovision Contest on Netflix (a comedy starring Will Ferrell) and the song at the end included a few Icelandic words. I got chills and suddenly wanted to learn Icelandic! I’ll hold off for now but will still listen to a few Icelandic songs here and there.
I spent most of January feeling I was stuck on the burners, ready to launch. Now, February feels like it’ll be an incredible month full of discoveries and challenges.
It’s scary and exciting at the same time but I’m happy to take you on the ride.
For this week, I have one bonus tool added at the end of the newsletter, courtesy of one subscriber, Les, who rightfully thought it could be useful for some of you!
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
Five habits I use to teach myself anything 🌟 Story of how a polyglot learned how to draw — By LanguageGirl
I loved this idea of showing how her skills of learning languages were transferable to other skills. This instructive video going back and forth between languages and drawing showed all that matters is thinking forward and finding pleasure in the struggles along the way.
If you’ve ever doubted your capacity to learn a language, think backward while watching this video. Ask yourself, what skill have I already learned and how did I do it?
📚 One article I read
7 Science-Backed Insights to Boost Your Meta-Learning - By Eva Keiffenheim
What a beautiful and useful piece from Eva. I love that she not only gives you the science behind learning but also specific action tasks to put these nuggets into use.
I consider #3 the most important insight. We’ve all gotten too used to using the same ineffective learning methods because they make us feel good. Change that and switch to harder methods. As she says, “Learning works best when it feels hard.”
✍🏽 One article I wrote
How to Increase Your Reading Speed in a Foreign Language
Some people think writing is the hardest skill to learn in a foreign language. Sure, it can get tough with languages like Chinese or Japanese. For most languages, however, writing comes easy once you know how to read. That’s why I consider reading the toughest skill to become good at.
Reading a new language is a slow process. You try to pronounce the words in your head and end up taking 10 minutes to read a paragraph. That’s why learning to read faster in a foreign language is such an important task.
In this free article, I shared methods I’ve used to get better at reading fast my languages.
There’s one more way I didn’t mention in my article. Reading lyrics of songs as you listen to them. If you want to read really fast, find rap songs like this one in Korean!
🎧 One podcast episode
Author Scott H. Young on How to Apply His "Ultralearning" Principles in Language Learning — By The Language Mastery Show
Oh my god, a new interview of one of my favorite authors Scott H. Young on my favorite topic. This interview was full of gems. Listing them all would be difficult so I highly recommend listening to it all. But here are just a few of them:
As Scott said, learning cannot be effortless but it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. “I think learning is effortful. I think it can be a fun effort.
Going to a country isn’t enough to learn the language. You can easily live in an English bubble and survive. You have to need to use it and that need must be created by yourself.
Learning a language is more learning than acquisition. You can learn vocabulary from exposure but that works better once you have an alright level. In the beginning, you need to actively learn.
You need to build automaticity to be able to speak the language well. For that, you need to produce the language as much as possible. You can do that by writing and getting corrections on websites like italki or journaly, or speaking the language.
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
The Culture of Expressing “I”
The first person pronoun can say a lot about you and the situation in some languages.
Most languages in the West have a neutral “I” anyone can use. In French, both men and women use “je.” In Spanish, it’ll be “yo.” In German, “ich.” You get the gist.
In Asia, however, pronouns can carry a lot more weight.
The standard polite way to say I in Japanese is 私 (“watashi”) but ぼく (“boku”) can also be used in somewhat formal settings. Then, complications appear for informal settings.
俺 (“ore”) can only be used by men with friends, and has a very “manly” connotation to it. I’ve been using this one most often ever since I had a girly Japanese tone back in 2012. One switch of a word allowed the girliness of my speech to disappear. That’s how strong this word is.
Women will often stick to 私 (“watashi”) in informal settings but those who want to sound cute will get rid of the w to create あたし (“atashi”).
In Thai, there are 10 different ways to say “I,” even though only 3 are very common (one for men, ผม, and two for women, ดิฉัน and ฉัน). Then, there are words like ข้าพเจ้า used only in writing and for specific situations like speeches or contracts.
In countries where there are different versions of “I,” the way you express it can impact drastically the rest of the conversations.
Using an impolite “I” in a formal setting is rude and can create a rupture with your interlocutor. Similarly, using a formal “I” with a close one can be seen as putting some distance with the interlocutor.
I can still remember the face my Japanese ex made the first time I mistakenly used Watashi in a conversation with her! 😅 Luckily, she laughed it off since I had just finished a meeting with clients in Japanese.
📜 One quote to ponder
“Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.” —Peter C. Brown, Make it Stick
💪 One monthly challenge
Record yourself for a month
For February, let’s work on building some confidence in ourselves through the power of speaking.
Going out to talk to native speakers can be hard (both mentally and in real life). It’s even harder when you think you sound like a kid who’s broken his voice after screaming for too long.
We all know we sound awful when we start a new language. A few months or years in, we expect ourselves to sound good. It’s normal to hate feeling uncomfortable saying words in a language you love.
That’s why in February, I challenge you to record yourself in your target language every single day. Do it from your phone if you’re on the move but try to keep the streak.
Pick one long sentence that you will include in your recording every day.
That sentence will serve to judge the progress you’ll have done at the end of the month. You’ll be able to compare Day 1 vs Day 28. Depending on your level, add a bit or a lot more to your recording!
And if you miss one day, don’t give up and get back to it!
Quick tip: On Day 1, ask a native speaker to record their pronunciation of the sentence. You can do so for free on HiNative. Here’s the recording I got today.
✅Last monthly challenge review
Create a conversation from scratch
The challenge for January was to create a conversation from scratch. I chose to do it in Thai so I could learn the basics I will need soon.
I entered everything in a table on Notion so you can check the entire imaginary conversation here. 📋
As you’ll see, I added notes on the side to indicate the grammar patterns I learned and the words I really wanted to remember.
To create this conversation, I used a lot of different tools but the main ones were: HiNative, ThaiWithMod on YouTube, Wiktionary, and Papago.
I regret not having the time to add a few sentences about hobbies and one with the present continuous but that’ll be for next time.
I’ll go into more details on the entire process in this week’s article of my new series A Complete Journey Into a New Language. Stay tuned!
How did the challenge go for you?
🎁Bonus
This week, I’d like to share a useful tool for those learning French, Italian, Spanish, or German that one of you told me about recently: Accento.
This is a simple text editor in which you can click on the special characters the language you learn uses. No more searching for ñ or ä online to copy-paste it, one click and you have it.
I often use Branah to type in my new language but that only works when I have internet. If you prefer to focus by cutting off the internet, Accento can be the perfect solution for you.
Thanks again, Les, for sharing this tool! 🙏
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
For more of my articles, you can find them here.
Scott Young and meta-learning. Polyglot and inquisitive questions. It is so nice to finally meet a fellow ultralearner.