7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 75
Learning about learning, 15 minutes a day, and weekends around the world
Hey language lovers
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine flew by in a blur.
It feels like I was publishing last week’s newsletter just yesterday, even though I’m writing this only a few hours before this arrives in your inbox.
I had a lovely week filled with interesting conversations again and some good Korean study (see challenge section). I also listened to about 10 hours of Chinese podcasts while doing mindless tasks.
The highlight of last week was going to the Polyglot Café in Paris last Thursday. It was the first time in about 8 years and it was a lot of fun! I spoke Chinese out loud for the first time in a few years and it went okay, then I switched to English and French for a while before getting some Korean practice with another learner. I’ll definitely take part again! Maybe even this incoming Thursday. 😁
Finally, I’ve done quite a bit of research into some lesser-known languages that have made me curious. Some of the most interesting ones were: Basque, Ket, and Pirahã.
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
Master Learning and Unlock Your Potential | Eva Keiffenheim | TEDxRohrbachBerg — By TedX Talks
If you’ve never heard of Eva and are curious about learning (which I hope you are if you’re subscribed!), you’re missing out. Eva is a learning junkie with an extremely insightful weekly newsletter: The Learn Letter.
In her recent Ted talk, Eva presented three important aspects of learning:
Why forgetting matters
Why we learn better if it’s hard
How vast our long-term memory is
I especially loved her analogy of learning as a tree. The more you learn, the more branches you have and the more cues you have to attach future knowledge to.
Some people have told me I must have a gift for learning languages but the reality is I’ve just created tons of branches. I can now use some of my Japanese knowledge to improve my Korean or take learning methods I’ve developed for Chinese into my German study.
Have a look at her talk, you won’t regret it!
📚 One article I read
I Asked a Guy Who Studied 20 Languages About the Best Way to Learn — Eva Keiffenheim
This week’s “Eva week” it seems! I had written the section above a few weeks ago, planning to publish it this week but now that she’s published an interview of Yours Truly, I felt I had to share it right away. 😅
If you’ve followed me for some time, you probably already know a lot about my methods and my past, but this interview is still worth your time.
In it, I summarized my past with languages as best as I could and explained how my method evolved as well as my favorite tools.
I hope you like it as much as I loved being interviewed and reading it!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
3 Easy Practices I Use to Learn Languages Daily
I love learning languages but, my god, it’s not always easy to actually sit down to study. That’s why I’m happy I developed these 3 easy practices in my life so I keep on improving day after day.
Hopefully, one will help you!
🎧 One podcast episode
#102 Professor Argüelles on Learning a Language in 15 Minutes a Day — By Language Hacking Podcast
Professor Argüelles is one of my favorite polyglots. His contribution to the language-learning community is undeniably immense. That’s why I’m glad he started being active online again on YouTube for the past 8 or 9 months.
In this interview, he explains you can learn a language in 15 minutes a day in order to build the habit and a foundation in the language. This, in the long run, helps you start living the language.
He also explained the basics of his two most famous study methods: shadowing—reading a text out loud while listening to it, to emulate the speaking style of the speaker—and scriptorium—the written version of shadowing.
He also answers questions about focus, the difference between multilingualism and polyglottery, and why learning a language is so fulfilling.
I highly recommend you to check this interview and his videos out!
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Weekends around the world
I love my weekend time and I’m willing to bet you do too.
Well, you might be luckier than you thought because not every country has the same.
The most common “weekend” is Saturday and Sunday1 in most of the world.
However, there are countries in which the weekend is either Thursday and Friday, or Friday and Saturday. These countries are all part of the Arab world because Friday is a sacred day of worship.
I like to think this is rather well-known but now let’s get into the surprising part.
Some countries have only one.
Afghanistan, Djibouti, Iran, and Palestine have only a one-day weekend, on Friday—to pray.
Nepal’s only day of weekend is on Saturday but the government just announced in May 2022 they’d add Sunday as a weekend day. The last time they tried—to improve productivity and efficiency—they turned back their decision within months so we’ll see how this pans out.
It seems some rare countries like Brunei have their weekend on Friday and Sunday, but work on Saturday. My research showed most people estimated Friday was for prayer but I couldn’t find a good reason for making Sunday2 the second day.
Finally, I want to mention two things to keep in mind:
Some countries (like Japan or Korea for example) keep most restaurants and shops open during the weekend while others (like most of Europe) close everything down on the second weekend day (Sunday).
The idea of a “weekend” is actually new, with its first appearance in a magazine called “Notes and Queries” in 1879, according to the author of “Waiting for the Weekend,” Witold Rybczynski. An interesting rabbit hole to dive into.
📜 One quote to ponder
“Language is wine upon the lips.” – Virginia Woolf
💪 One monthly challenge (June Edition)
Bidirectional Translation - Master your language
I’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 know I said last week I had started translating from Chinese but I changed my mind and went back to Korean instead. I took one of my TOPIK II listening practice books and worked my way through two texts for which I had gotten the answers wrong last year.
The translation into English part felt easy, although I had to look up a few words per text, but the translation back to Korean was a lot harder as I had already forgotten the words I had looked up the day before.
Still, looking at the Korean text now, these “new” words felt much easier.
How is the challenge going for you?
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
Probably because of the historical colonization of the world by Christians.
The most common opinion was “because the rest of the world takes Sunday off” but, as we’ve seen, that’s clearly not the case.