7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 82
History of Sign Languages, Staying consistent, French culture, and Sinhalese!
Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a magnificent week!
Updates
Mine was exhausting but great.
I visited Brussels for a few days before going to a close friend’s wedding where I saw friends I hadn’t seen for years. It was fun at its highest point most of the time.
Since then, I’ve had said friends over in France and showing them around Paris. It had been a long while since the last time I guided friends but I somehow was able to show them most of my favorite places.
This being said, it wasn’t a productive week language-wise… apart from Japanese as I’ve been talking with my friends mostly in this language for the past 5 days!
I haven’t spoken that much Japanese since October 2020 when I left Japan so I’m happy to see I can still do it!
My goal for this week is to do at least 30 minutes per day of active language study. I don’t mind if it’ll be 10 minutes per language or 30 of one. I just want to get some regularity back in the mix!
The second post of my series about lesser-known languages (LKL) is out. In it, I did a deep dive into the history, culture, and traditions of Papiamento. I also dove deep into the most important grammar patterns!
If you want to support me and get access to all the LKL posts (currently 2 but many more to come!), consider becoming a paid subscriber!
Alright, let’s dive into what you came for!
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
Are you in a language rut? Here’s how you get out - Study with Alex
I loved Alex’s tips because I pretty much always feel in a rut in one of my languages. (Currently, it’s Chinese!)
His first tip about what he calls “shock therapy” was inspiring, to say the least. It got me to watch his look back on recording himself speaking Turkish for 30 days so now I’m thinking of doing it for German.
The other tips were also on point. Check it out and it might help you too!
PS: I discovered Alex with this video but many of his past ones are also worth a look!
📚 One article I read
The History Of Sign Language Explained - By Jonathan Burdick, for Grunge
This detailed and researched article about the history of sign languages around the world was incredibly interesting.
I wish it had existed last year when I studied ASL for 40 hours in 7 days, as it’d have taught me a lot more than what I found back then.
If you’re learning a Sign Language, planning to, or even if you’re not planning to learn one, this article is still worth a read to discover their complicated history.
I had no idea Aristotle thought deaf people were stupid and that there was a huge debate between oralism and manualism!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
How to Stay Consistent When Learning a Language Isn’t Your Priority
For most people, learning a language is an “extra,” a bonus. And as we’re all living busy lives, finding time for something extra isn’t always easy.
I love learning languages so it may be easier for me, but since I’m juggling many, it can still be a challenge. That’s why in this piece I explained how I keep learning not matter what happens.
And how you can too!
🎧 One podcast episode
One of The Best Tools to Learn a Foreign Language - By Language Input Podcast
This tiny section of an interview talks about something I haven’t done much but one of my closest friends spent years doing in Japanese: chatting in English while the interlocutor speaks in the target language.
It might seem like a waste of a good opportunity to practice but it’s actually a great activity for a few reasons:
You have no pressure to make sentences in your target language so you can focus on comprehension
You get a context that fits your life because it’s a conversation you’re having
You can ask people to repeat or rephrase whatever you don’t understand.
Next time you’re freezing at the idea of speaking with a native speaker, why not try this?
🌎 One cultural aspect
Deep-dive into French Culture
France is a popular country. THE most visited country around the world even, with 90 million visitors in 2019.
I hesitated writing about French culture because, well, it feels like everybody knows about it and, you know, I am French so it feels especially weird to simplify it to a few paragraphs.
But still, I wanted to dig deeper into my own culture and share with you some aspects you may not know.
Hope you’ll learn a thing or two!
As I like alcohol, let’s start with a French staple: l’apéro.
The aperitif, or pre-dinner drink, is a common habit of French people. We sit down with a few drinks and eat all kinds of snacks. It’s an occasion to chat in a more relaxed manner than around a dinner table.
This is typically what we mean by “apéro” but there’s a special kind of apéro: l’apéro dinatoire. During the apéro dinatoire, food is usually more important. If there’s an apero dinatoire, there’s no dinner plan afterward. You eat, drink, chat, and call it a night or move on to you next plan.
While the typical apero can easily be taken outside, the apero dinatoire is usually at someone’s place with someone cooking part of the food.
French people will usually toast with one person at a time and look each other in the eye so to avoid bad luck. I have no idea where this originated from but I’ve yet to see a French person not doing it out of habit.
Apart from those who are toasting while in the middle of a conversation with someone else at least...!
La bise is a well-known way to say hi in France but there’s one interesting aspect: depending on the region, how many kisses you should do on the cheeks—and which cheek to start with—changes. While the most common number is two, some regions go up to 4!
When it comes to politeness, the French language is a mess.
We use the plural form of “you,” vous, and the corresponding conjugation. We call it “vouvoiement.” The habit is usually to rely first on it until the older or higher ranked person offers to switch to “tu” (the singular form).
Nowadays, however, this habit is evolving as the switch to tutoiement is happening faster, therefore closing the distance gap and allowing for more honest conversations early into relationships.
The French way of talking can also be quite intricate:
Most French people barely articulate when talking, often skipping a few letters. This is how je ne sais pas (“I don’t know”) turns into jsais pas.
There are tons of expressions in French. I’ve written two pieces on those: about my favorite ones and about cats, but my favorite really is “Je dis ça, je dis rien” (literally, “I say this, I say nothing” → “Just saying”)
Finally, one aspect I love is how French people use “random” sounds in the middle of their sentences.
Whistling or making a “Rrrrh” sound in the middle of a sentence is common practice. Learning to recognize which sound corresponds to what can be tricky. Context matters a lot for this. If you understand French, check this hilarious skit from Gad Elmaleh for an (only-barely over-the-top) example of this in a sentence!
A few rapid-fire notes to conclude this section:
France is the country with the most roundabouts in the world, with half of the total!
On May 1st, the custom is to give a sprig of lily of the valley (called “muguet” in France) to close ones to wish for luck and happiness. This custom dates back to 1561 and seems to also happen in Belgium, Switzerland and Andorre.
The trou normand (literally “Norman hole”) is a small glass of Calvados alcohol—often coupled with apple ice cream—drunk between dishes during long meals. We don’t have them daily but you can be sure they’ll happen during celebrations!
I was quite surprised to discover the French people seem to be the only ones in the world to drink tea from a bowl in the morning, rather than a mug. I mean, why not??
April Fools day is associated with fish in France. Whenever a joke is made on April 1st, it’s followed by saying Poisson d’avril! (“April fish!”). Why it’s called like this is still debated though.
French culture, like any other, is impossible to sum up in just a few words but I hope these will have made you hungry for more!
As we say in French, l’appétit vient en mangeant!
📜 One quote to ponder
“The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.” - Rumi
🌐 One Lesser-Known Language
Sinhalese - The Most Beautiful Script I've Ever Seen
ආයුබෝවන්. ඔබට කෙසේද?
I first saw Sinhalese while I was working in Japan. My colleague was having a swift look at the design of a translation he had received in this language. I was instantly mesmerized.
I had seen magnificent scripts before but this one took the belt. I mean, how could you not be amazed by this character that looks like a hand holding a pen (and is just the “ṇa” syllable): ණ
Here’s the entire script on Wikipedia.
I took a few documents in Sinhalese when I left that job, so I’d have materials to study from one day. It’s still not time for me to dive deep into it, but it is time to learn a bit more about it.
Despite being spoken by 16 million people and being the official language of Sri Lanka, I’ve found most people in the west have never heard of it.
So let me present you Sinhalese.
Or Sinhala. Or Singhala apparently1! Or in its own script: සිංහල
The Sinhalese script is a syllabic alphabet. Instead of using letters, each character represents a syllable2. Let’s take my favorite one: ණ
On its own: ණ is pronounced [ṇa]
When adding ි above, it becomes ණි and changes the vowel to i: [ṇi]
When adding ු under, it becomes ණු and changes the vowel to u: [ṇu]
When adding ැ after, it becomes ණැ and changes the vowel to æ: [ṇæ]
And so on.
This is quite similar to languages like Thai, Khmer, or Lao for example.
Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan Language, which means it’s related to languages from northern India, but Sri Lanka’s historical relationship with the south of India has also meant it’s been influenced by Dravidian languages like Tamil.
For a “complete” history of Sri Lanka, this video seems to give a good summary.
Singhala is a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) language, like Japanese for example.
එයාල ගෙදර යනවා /eyaala gedara yanawaa/ → They are going home. (literally: They - home - go (present tense))
Sinhalese also has what’s called a four-way deictic. What’s that? There’s an extra differentiation made in only a few other languages:
“Here,” close to the speaker: මේ /meː/
“There,” close to the listener: ඕ /oː/
“There,” close to a third person who’s visible: අර /arə/
“There,” close to a third person who’s not visible: ඒ /eː/
Singhala makes a distinction between masculine and feminine nouns but only in written form. When spoken, no distinction is made.
However, they do make a distinction between animate and inanimate nouns and express plurality too, which also impacts its complicated case system.
It seems the verbs are conjugated in multiple forms based on the subject, but only in written form. When spoken, the present tense only requires changing the infinitive verb ending මට /maṭa/ to නවා /nawaa/.
To write = ලිවීමට /livīmaṭa/ → I write: මම ලිවීනවා /mama livīnawaa/
මම (/mama/) means “I”
Sinhala is a pro-drop language where words can be dropped if we can infer them from the context—like the Japanese do.
Here’s the example I found on Wikipedia: කොහෙද ගියේ [koɦedə ɡie], literally "where went", can mean "where did I/you/he/she/we... go".
Finally, let’s see a few basic sentences:
ආයුබෝවන් /āyubōvan/ → Hello
බොහොම ස්තූතියි /bohoma stūtiyi/ → Thank you very much.
ඔබට ස්තුතියි /obaṭa stutiyi/ → Thank you.
මම තේරෙන්නේ නැහැ /mama tērennē næhæ/ → I don’t understand.
Finding resources for Sinhala seems hard but here are a few ones I’ve found that might be useful:
Livelingua - probably the best, with links to the FSI course
ilovelanguages - lots of lessons but lacks good explanations
MyLanguage.org - also lots of lessons but lacking good explanations
Maligawa Wordpress - Good lessons on the present and past tenses
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
I’m not affiliated with any resource so far. Every recommendation you find from me comes from my own research and experiences.
I’ll alternate the three terms from now on just to mess with your head and make sure you remember them like I did 😈
Except for the vowels that indicate, well, vowels on their own. These are used to start some words.