7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 81

Spanish guide, Learning with music, Grammar study, Proxemics, and Papiamento!

Hey language lovers,

I hope you all had a magnificent week!

Updates

Mine was just great.

I had a rather slow start last week but a good day got me rolling afterward. I’m still far from being completely satisfied with how much I (actively) studied last week, but I’m getting closer to what I feel is a “good” amount—ie, not too much so I don’t burn out but enough so I make some progress.

I also tried something I hadn’t done in a while: watching an anime with subtitles in another language.

In this case, I watched all the episodes of Ranking of Kings with German subtitles. Knowing Japanese allowed me to make more sense of the subtitles but still have enough time to figure out entire sentences before hearing them. I’ll probably do this more often.

I also continued my research and wrote a lot about Papiamento, my next deep-dive language for you, my dear paid supporters 😘. Before it’s out, however, read today’s section about it! It’s only a fraction of what’s to come next week!

As a reminder, the first post of my series about lesser-known languages is already out. In it, I did an (extremely) deep dive into the Ainu’s history and culture, and gave enough information for you to create your first sentences in Ainu! 😉

Alright, let’s dive into what you came for!

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7 Bullet Points

Each week, I share 7 things about languages.

I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.

🎥 One video

Spanish Master Guide: How to Learn Spanish & Tips + Resources — Polyglot Secrets

Well, doesn’t the title say it all?

In this video, Stefani explains how she learned Spanish to a high level, gives resources, and even talks about a few features and idiosyncracies of Spanish.

Of course, take what you like. You don’t need to follow all her advice if you don’t enjoy them. For instance, I never got hooked on La Casa de Papel, but really enjoyed Control Z. (I just started the new season that came out earlier this month!)

📚 One article I read

Is Passive Listening Language Learning Possible? How to Learn with Music — by Michelle Baumgartner (FluentU blog)

I love these well-organized, deep dives into topics. And this one was no exception. It even made me want to start using music more actively to study languages!

I’ll give you two extra resources¹ not mentioned in there though:

• Radio.garden: A map of the world, more convenient to choose a radio.

• Every Noise: A list of styles of music from all around the world, each is linked to a Spotify playlist. Amazing resource to find songs you like!

✍🏽 One article I wrote

How to Study Grammar Without Begin Bored to Death

Grammar is the beast of language learning. For some reason, even though there’s a lot more vocabulary to learn, it’s the grammar study that scares everyone.

I blame crappy school lessons for this one.

In this piece, I tried to explain why grammar matters, isn’t soo freaking hard, and give you a few ways to get started learning what you need!

🎧 One podcast episode

Ask Benny: Why Learn Esperanto? — By The Language Hacking Podcast

I’m not studying Esperanto right now, but I have to admit I almost went back to open a few Esperanto files I have on my external disk, after I listened to this episode.

Will Esperanto ever become the Lingua Franca in the world? I sure doubt it. But is it an interesting and active community worth discovering? It sure seems that way.

I’ll get back to it one day.

And in the meantime, listen to this short episode to hear other great reasons to learn Esperanto!

🌎 One cultural aspect

Personal Space around the world

Proxemics, as is called the study of “personal space,” is an interesting field I didn’t know existed until I researched personal space differences around the world.

I expected to find a few blog posts mentioning it and not an exact distance as this article did for 42 countries.

And yet, it makes sense. No matter where you’re from, you’ll have certainly felt strange about either one of the below situations:

• Your interlocutor is so close to you that it makes you want to step back.

• Your interlocutor is keeping such a distance, you want to get closer.

As a French person, my personal space is reserved for people close to me—and la bise of course—but stand too far away and I’ll worry I stink or something.

When I first arrived in Asia, however, I often felt the space between me and people was way too large. I was already struggling with Japanese and Korean, but now they were adding the difficulty of hearing on top of it?

It turns out this wasn’t against me. Most countries in Asia have what is called a “non-contact culture.” They keep a distance from others around.

Well, to be more precise, they keep a distance for both their “social space” (ie. with strangers), and their “personal space” (ie. with acquaintances). That distance only slightly reduces for the “intimate space” (ie. close friends).

On the contrary, South America, South Europe, and some countries of the Middle East have a “contact culture,” in which the intimate distance can be closer than many other countries’ personal distance.

My first time in Korea (and Asia as a whole), when I was 19, I was introduced to someone at a bar and went in for the French “bise” to introduce myself. The girl pulled her head backward so quickly and so far that I was left speechless.

Beware of other people’s personal space when you meet people from other cultures.

Close talkers can make you feel oppressed, like in this clip from Seinfeld, but always remember they may not mean to do so!

📜 One quote to ponder

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” — Carl Rogers

🌐 One Lesser-Known Language

Papiamento/Papiamentu - Satisfying a 10-year old itch

Papiamento is a language that’s tickled my curiosity for the past 10 years, ever since I read Expugnator’s log on the How To Learn Any Language forum. I enjoyed the name of the language but never looked further.

Papiamento is the official and most widely spoken language on the Dutch ABC islands—not to confuse with the Alaskan ABC islands. It’s a creole language that emerged and grew these past 500 years or so.

The ABC islands were discovered in 1499 by Spanish explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Colonization started slowly in 1529. In 1634, the Dutch fought and won against Spain to gain control of the islands. They created a large port where Portuguese-speaking traders began trading slaves.

This seems to be the beginning of the creation of Papiamento.

Because, yes, Papiamento is considered a Portuguese Creole language, despite the islands having never been held by the Portuguese officially. In fact, about 80% of its words have either Portuguese or Spanish origin.

Alright, let’s get into this beautiful language.

Papiamento is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language, like English or Spanish, but its verbs aren’t actually conjugated—contrary to Dutch or Portuguese:

• The present tense is expressed with the word “ta” (to be, from the Spanish “estar”) in front of the main verb

  • Mi ta haci → I do.

• The preterite tense uses “a” (From the Spanish “ha” of “ha hecho” for example)

  • Bo a haci → You did/You have done

• The future tense uses “lo” (From the Portuguese “logo,” meaning “later”), although it’s only used when really needed.

  • Lo nos haci → We will do.

    • The particle usually comes before the pronoun.

Contrary to Spanish and Portuguese, personal pronouns are usually not omitted. These can also be used as possessive pronouns if a noun follows them:

• Mi buki → my book

• Mi ta skirbi bo carta. → I write your card.

There’s also no gender in Papiamento which is why there’s also only one version of the indefinite and definite article:

• Un stul → A chair

• E stul → The chair

The plural form exists but is only used when precision is required even with the context. To create a plural noun, the suffix “nan” is added:

• mi ruman = my sibling

• mi rumannan = my siblings

Politeness is usually expressed with the use of the words “sir” and “miss” in Papiamento:

• Sir: Señor (From Spanish Señor) and Mener (From Dutch Meneer)

• Miss: Señora (From Spanish Señora) and Yufrou (From Dutch Juffrouw)

Want to learn more about Papiamento? You’ll find a short course here and a complete textbook here.

Or you can become a paid subscriber and receive the deep-dive article about Papiamento that will go live next Monday, after learning the language and culture for the past month!

In it, you´ll discover more about the history of the ABC islands, the amazing music and dances that emerged there, and—of course—a deeper dive into the language’s grammar with sentences to get you started!

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As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra

1. I’m not affiliated with any resource so far. Every recommendation you find from me comes from my own research and experiences.