7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 76
Announcement, hilarious Q&A, learning to read, and wedding clothes
Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a magnificent week!
Updates
Mine flew by in a blur again.
I just spent a few minutes to reflect on what I did for my languages and nothing stood out at the beginning.
And then I remembered. It turns out I did a lot but one of those tasks overshadowed the rest: I got back into Assimil German. 🇩🇪
It had been bugging me ever since I mentioned the collection to Eva Keiffenheim when she interviewed me: If I loved it so much, what wasn’t I using it? I don’t have the answer to that question, but at least I’m enjoying it again! I started from lesson 32 and just finished 37. I’m also listening to the audio using WorkAudioBook so I can practice pronouncing each sentence.
As I mentioned in my last Thai update, I’m also starting to get some more exposure to Thai with a podcast called SoulRiwit and Bangkok Breaking. It feels good to hear the language a bit—although it’s nothing compared to reading it!
I also discovered the Polyglot Conference will be happening IRL this year, in Cholula, so I’m considering going there and learn some basics of Nahuatl too. I took part in the Polyglot Conference in 2014 (in Serbia) and 2019 (in Japan), and each experience was just… mind-blowingly inspiring and motivating.
Finally, I’ll be taking off the challenge part of the newsletter at the end of the month to replace it with a new section.
What, you ask?🤔
Each week, I’ll be diving into a lesser-known language. I’ll share a bit of the language’s history and its grammar basics. You’ll even get to learn a few words!
And for those whose curiosity needs more to be satisfied, I’ll add another letter once a month where I’ll go much more in depth on one of the languages I’ll have covered.
This will be for paid members only, though, so subscribe now so you don’t miss the first edition early July! From the third one onwards, you’ll even get to ask me which language you’d like me to dive into and write about. I’ll do the research and satisfy your curiosity urges.😊
Alright, let’s dive in what you came for!
7 Bullet Points
Each week, I share 7 things that could be useful to your language learning odyssey.
I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.
🎥 One video
Polyglot Answers Reddit Language Learning Questions — By Language Simp
If you’ve got a good sense of humor and are looking for a good laugh, this video is for you. If you tend to take people by their words without noticing sarcasm, I’d say avoid it though!
This kind of video is a fresh breath of air compared to more serious videos about learning languages and it feels good to have some fun!
His over-confidence is just plain hilarious to me.
I won’t spoil it for you, though. Have a look and let me know what you thought of it!
📚 One article I read
The Ultimate Guide to Benefits of Being a Bilingual — By James Smith
Quite the clickbait title but, hey, it worked on me so kudos to James.
Still, the content delivers. If you have doubts about whether you should start/keep learning a foreign language, I hope these will remind you of the beauty of what’s ahead.
My favorite two were:
It opens cultural and social opportunities. — I’ve lived so many incredible experiences talking to locals who spoke no word of English in Japan I could write a book about this.
It makes learning more languages easier. — This is the secret of polyglots.
✍🏽 One article I wrote
The Complete Guide to Why and How to Learn to Read in a Foreign Language
I love that there are all kinds of language learners but there’s one thing that frustrates me like hell: those who say you don’t need to learn to read in your target language.
In this rather long piece, I did a deep dive into the importance of learning to read and how you can do it.
Hint: It’s not as complicated as you thought.
Bonus: If you want to have a look at how I learned to read the Thai script, check this post out:
🎧 One podcast episode
#07 Naps — By The Matt Walker Podcast
Dr. Matthew Walker is one of the most renowned researchers on the topic of sleep. He also wrote the famous book Why We Sleep.
In this short 10-min episode, he discussed the usefulness of naps, and their risks when taken at the wrong time.
The summary is that you should avoid naps if you already struggle with sleep at night, but if not you should take naps of less than 20 minutes before 2:00 pm. More than this or later than this can create “sleep inertia”—ie. feeling worse after than before the nap—or reduce the quality of your sleep during the night.
I recommend you listen to the episode for a snack on the topic and this 3-hour-long interview I recommend in Week 32 if you’re interested in digging deeper!
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Wedding clothes around the world
I’ve been to weddings in France and in Japan and saw an incredible difference between them. One wedding in Japan between friends from Korea and Norway combined three wedding styles into one. A beautiful experience.
And with the wedding season starting, I’d like to dive deeper into this topic for the next two weeks.
This week we’ll talk about attire and next about traditions.
While the “typical” wedding in Europe and North America is typically Christian, with the bride wearing a white dress and the groom a suit, attires can change drastically in other countries.
In Japan and Korea, for example, most weddings include at least two attires. One like in the West (suit and white dress), and one with traditional clothes. In Japan, the bride will usually wear the colorful Iro-Uchikake and, in more traditional weddings, the white Shiromuku. In Korea, the traditional wedding Hanbok gives another feel to the wedding.
While dresses in Japan and Korea are rather large, other countries have tighter clothes. In India, there is a bridal lehenga as the most standard saree for weddings. In Thailand, the dress is also tight and always made of Thai silk.
In South America, brides wear a pollera during traditional weddings, a dress that varies throughout the continent but generally consists of a colorful shirt and the pollerón of fine cotton or wool fabric. They attire is then completed with a tembleques on the head made of pearls, crystal beads, and alluding to nature.
The dresses throughout Africa are also usually colorful with motifs rarely seen elsewhere. Depending on the country, the style can vary quite a bit and the colors can be combined with white to create a beautiful contrast.
It’d be impossible to describe all the possible wedding attires around the world as sub-cultures often have their own outfits, but if you’re curious here’s a list of 38 pictures (as you’ll see the Japanese outfits has been reduced to one variation though!)
📜 One quote to ponder
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” – John Dewey
💪 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
Well, here we go again. I forgot to do the challenge this week.
As you’ll have seen in the updates, it doesn’t mean I didn’t study though so that’s the most important!
Still, I’ll try to do one or two texts this week!
How’s it going for you?
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra