7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 74
Resources list, overwhelm, Anki, and eye contact around the world
Hey language lovers
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine was a strange one. A meeting with colleagues at 2:00 am on Wednesday messed up my schedule and energy for the rest of the week.
Still, I had loads of interesting conversations last week and my mind is still fuming with ideas.
One of these conversations was with my friend Joel, writer of Learned, an insightful weekly newsletter about words and linguistics. He made me think about the evolution of the French language, something I hadn’t done in years. I highly advise you to read his last piece on that topic (and the older ones too!)
I also had a long conversation with a French person holding widely different world views than mine. For someone like me who considers himself French with other cultures, being told I was not French anymore triggered me. It was one more realization of how the France I grew up in is closing itself up.
Still, I stay hopeful and will keep hoping, one day, people will realize there’s more in the world than their home country.
Phew, heavy.
Anyway, let’s dive in and talk languages!
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
Why you’re so bad at managing your time. — By Matt D’Avella
I’ve been a big fan of Matt D’Avella’s content for years. He’s all about general productivity tips but I find many of those can apply to language learning too.
As Matt said, we should be organizing our tasks by the time but by the energy that’s needed to complete them. Some tasks are just more draining than others.
For example, watching a show in your target language may not need much energy while actively studying and translating a text does. If you know when you have more energy, you can plan to work on the more “difficult” tasks then.
Finally, as he said, “you can’t pour from an empty cup.”
You need to give yourself some time off to have more energy later. If studying daily is too draining for you, why not take Tuesdays and Fridays off your study schedule?
📚 One article I read
The Master List of Resources — on “A Language Learners’ Forum”
You read well. This is a list with links to entire pages of resources for over 70 languages, along with resources that aren’t language-specific.
Most of these lists were created a few years ago but the content is still up to date, especially for “popular” languages.
Not much more to say, except that you’ll certainly find useful resources for whatever language you’re currently learning! I sure did.
Enjoy!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
How to Deal With Overwhelm in Language Learning So You Can Keep Improving
I’ve burned out learning languages from overwhelm more times than I can count. I used to hate it but I’m now thankful I did because I discovered ways to overcome it and move forward.
If you feel you’ve burned out or are getting close to it, this piece might help you.
🎧 One podcast episode
#77 Justin Sung - Memory Researcher Says Anki Won't Make You Fluent - By the Korekara Podcast
I love discovering people who know their stuff. Justin is one of those.
In this interview, he broke down the myth that Anki (and other Spaced-Repetition Systems) is the best learning tool. Too many language learners rely heavily on it.
The interviewer said he prefered to front-load words to make it easier for him to read books. Justin explained the other way around is better because it allows encountering words naturally.
Justin gave his “rule of 3” for Anki: wait until the third time you see the word before you add it to Anki. If you remember it the first three times, delete it. If you get it wrong 5 times in a row, take it off too because it means the rote learning isn’t working.
Loved it.
Listen to the interview for even more ideas!
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Eye contact around the worldI’ve never been comfortable looking people in the eye during conversations. Even when I force myself, my gaze ends up back at my interlocutor’s mouth sooner or later.
This past weekend, I had a conversation with someone who never blinked and stared straight into my eyes the entire time. I felt oppressed. I felt naked. I hated it. And it reminded me this happens a lot more in France than Japan.
Thus the topic of the week!
You see, we’ve all brought up with a rather clear “eye contact” culture. While some push it to the extremes,1 most people follow their culture’s eye contact habits and never take the time to think about it… until they go abroad.
In most of Europe and in the United States, making eye contact is a way to show confidence but also that you care about what the interlocutor is saying. Avoiding eye contact indicates the exact opposite.
In these countries, eye contact is broken regularly but mostly to rest the eyes and blink.
On the contrary, eye contact can be considered rude in most of Asia.
In “Asian cultures,”2 eye contact is usually made for a moment to acknowledge each other before the gaze moves around (from mouth, to notes, to surrounding or whatever). This is a sign of respect.
Beware of websites like this one that, for instance, depits the Chinese people as making eye contact when angry. While true in general, it ignores the eye contact made is different, with eyebrows frowned and held long enough to make even an American feel uneasy. During my time living there 8 years ago, eye contact happened all the time around me.
Apparently, Africa and Latin America also consider prolonged eye contact as rude3.
Finally, in Middle Eastern cultures and especially in Muslims areas, eye contact between sexes is often avoided apart from the initial contact. However, it is acceptable between the same sex and can help insist on the truthfulness of what’s said.
In a previous job in Japan, I often participated as an observer during meetings between French companies trying to export to Japan and Japanese potential importers. I could often see the oppression felt by the Japanese due to the French eye contact.
While in “normal” life, holding eye contact a little too long won’t change much, if you’re trying to expand your business to other countries, check their stance on eye contact!
Bonus reading: The eyes have it: how staring at strangers became a global movement — By the Guardian
📜 One quote to ponder
“Knowledge—like a nail—is made load-bearing by being driven in. If it is not driven deep-enough, it will break when any weight is put upon it.” — Kató Lomb
💪 One monthly challenge (June Edition)
Bidirectional Translation - Master your languageI’ve decided to replace these monthly challenges with something else from July onwards so this will be our last challenge.
To conclude these, I’d like to try bidirectional translation. I mentioned translation as part of Week 72 so I won’t detail its importance again here. Go have a look to know why I think it’s important.
This month, let’s take one (or more) text(s) in our target language and spend some time translating it, one word at a time using a dictionary if need be.
Once we’ll have the translation, we’ll wait a few days and translate it back into the target language. Obviously, this might mean you’ll have to look up words again and research grammar patterns.
This is the goal. To get a good enough handle on the language and improve it further.
✅How the challenge is going for me
I mentioned last week that I’d do this for Korean and Toki Pona but I’ve changed my mind and am now working on translating the first chapter of a simple Chinese easy reader: 第三只眼睛.
It’s easy to understand for me but I also know the sentences I see are ones I wouldn’t be able to make on my own. The goal of this exercise will be to learn to do so!
How is the challenge going for you?
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
Such as me disliking eye contact and the guy I talked to loving it way too much.
I’ll let myself bundle them together since both North-East Asia and Southeast Asia have a similar understanding of eye-contact
“African cultures” and “Latin American cultures”—again, simplification—are so different from “Asian cultures” I find this surprising but I couldn’t find any place saying otherwise.
The funny thing for me is when students make such prolonged eye contact that *I* get uncomfortable. What I mean is, we tell them that they need to make eye contact when doing presentations or giving speeches. But we don't always give them enough time to practice it, so it often feels forced. And, when the students are giving presentations in class, they often consider the teacher to be the only legitimate audience member. Result: eye contact. Unwavering, unblinking, eye contact for the duration of their performance. Teacher beware, I guess!?