7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 87
Metaverse, Grammar study, Undead language, skinship, and Bavarian!
Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a magnificent week!
Updates
Mine was awesome.
I spent loads of time studying Korean, mostly through reading comics, playing a visual game, and even translating a bit the lyrics of a few news songs I found. Here’s a relaxing one if you want.
On Saturday, I went to Paris and bought the official Assimil book with audio for German, along with a book of easy stories. Even if I could do those with PDFs, there’s nothing more motivating to me than to see the book in the corner of my eye.
In the evening I went to the Polyglot Café in Paris where I was able to speak a bit of Chinese and Japanese with some people I met. It was a fun evening and I plan on going again. It’s always so intriguing finding people from all paths of life gathering with the same goal of speaking languages.
I’ve also written a large part of the next LKL deep-dive, about Taiwanese Hokkien. I’m really struggling to not actively choose to learn the language for the rest of the year (or more). It’s so interesting!
If you want to read it, consider becoming a paid subscriber! You’ll also get the previous languages I’ve already dove into: Ainu (currently available for all subscribers!), Papiamento, and Sinhalese!
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.
A quick reminder first: I’m not affiliated with any resource so far. Every recommendation you find below comes from my own research and experiences.
🎥 One video
How to Learn Japanese with Video Games (Starter Guide) — Game Gengo ゲーム言語
This video focuses on Japanese but I reckon the first part can be useful to any language learner.
I love this channel and this video explains the philosophy, tools, and types of games suited for this learning method.
If you learn Japanese in particular, check his other videos. They are well-explained, to the point, and can teach you something no matter your level. (Even at my level, with the JLPT N1, I (re)discover a few words per video).
📚 One article I read
Metaverse and language learning: Preparing for an immersive future — By Nergiz Kern
Nergiz Kern is Head of Research at Immerse, a company focused on bringing language learning to Virtual Reality. I fell upon this article while looking for something new to share with you1, and I’m glad I did.
I’m not really interested in learning to use VR at the moment but closing my eyes to it would be a mistake. Whether we want it or not, VR will change everything, just like the Internet did.
And in this piece, Nergiz explains why it’s so important for teachers to get ready for it. I guess I’ll have to do so too!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
5 Simple Strategies to Practice Your Grammar in a New Language
Grammar rocks.
While focusing on it alone is a bad idea, ignoring it altogether is an even worse one. That’s why I tried to share some useful and fun ways to practice the grammar in your target language.
My favorite among those? Finding other situations where the grammar is used. Nothing better to keep learning than getting some variety in the mix!
🎧 One podcast episode
Latin, the undead language — Subtitle
I hated my 6 years studying Latin in school. I even actively tried to focus on other subjects during classes2. Yet, today, I'm glad I studied Latin because the little I remember has contributed to appreciating more my native language, French, and other words with Latin origins.
I knew there was a community of people reading and learning Latin online. This episode made me realize there’s more than this.
There are people meeting up and talking in Latin today! And the host went to learn from some of those.
He then talks about the creation of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, a sort of dictionary recording every citation of each word. Something that’d be impossible with our currently-used languages.
When the first iteration will be done, in 2050, it’ll have taken 150 years to conclude!
This was an incredibly interesting episode, to say the least.
🌎 One cultural aspect
Skinship Around the World
I thought “skinship” was a common word in English. It turns out it’s not. This term was coined in Japan by combining the English terms “Skin” and “Kinship.”
The Urban Dictionary defines it as :
The act of intimate, non-sexual touching between very close (usually same-sex, but can include both genders) platonic friends. It involves acts such as holding hands/arms, hugging, and kissing on the cheeks.
Growing up in France, contact with other people was always normal. I would give the typical French “bise” to female friends and a fist bump or such to male friends. Since University, however, I also give the “bise” or a hug to male friends. Doing so to friends of friends isn’t so rare either.
The first time I went to Asia, in 2010, I knew things would be different but I forgot and tried to give the “bise” to a girl I met. She pulled away from me in shock.
Contact with others depends a lot on one’s culture and upbringing.
While French and Spanish-speaking countries are prone to have a lot of contact for greetings, two same-sex people usually stop at that point. In Korea, however, hugs, arm-clenches, and such are common between two people of the same sex.
Germany and other more Nordic countries are starting to be more at ease with skinship but this is not the norm for older generations. A study also showed that, contrary to stereotypical expectations, Italians are also quite uneasy with human touch.
Japanese culture doesn’t include much contact between people, even when close. Well, to be more precise, human contact is pretty much non-existent outside loving relationships.
As a result, services to fill that need have grown. This ranges from the long-standing kyabakura and host clubs to more recent ones like renting a family, friend, or partner for a certain time. Nowadays, there are even ear-cleaning maid cafés and cuddle cafés.
In South Africa, physical contact appears to be quite common. In fact, a lack of contact can be interpreted as a lack of trust or unfriendliness. I reckon this is probably the case across the rest of Africa.
How is skinship like in your country? Please share in the comments!
📜 One quote to ponder
“Not sharing an opportunity to learn is a cardinal sin.” — Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
🌐 One Lesser-Known Language (LKL)
Bavarian - The Germanic Language Germans Don't Get
I’ve been learning German on and off since 2020. It’s currently on “On.” So when I discovered there was a dialect of German that Germans couldn’t understand, I had to have a look.
It turns out Bairisch, as it’s called in German, is spoken by about 14 million people, mostly in Bavaria and Austria. There are a few varieties but these are intelligible between each other.
Bavarian is the language of what was called the Kingdom of Bavaria from 1806 to 1918 but it had been there for almost a thousand years, as an evolution of High German first, and Upper German (Oberdeutsch) later.
“Standard German” originally came from High German too but it evolved differently from Bavarian. Here’s a short article about all the different “kinds” of German.
Today, Bavarian speakers can code-switch into German with ease but Germans struggle to understand Bavarian. This being said, as you can see in this recent Easy German Video, the host (on the right) begins to recognize words more and more as she learns a few words.
Some words are iterations of the German version, while some others sound nothing like Standard German. For example, Servus means Hello, while the Standard German is Hallo!
As you can hear in the video above, many unstressed vowels are dropped in spoken Bavarian. Some other frequent changes are:
Turning ei into oa: Meinen (German) → Moana (Bavarian) = to think
Turning -er into -a: Meister (German) → Moasta (Bavarian) = Master
The grammar is quite similar to German but it appears possible to use double negatives (a feature common in the past but not kept much by standard German) and triple negatives!
Finally, let’s go through a few sentences next to Standard German while we’re at it! (The order used below is: Bavarian - German - English)
I mech hoam — Ich will nachhause — I want to go home.
Wia kum I jetz do hi? — Wie komme ich dahin? — How do I get there?
I gfrei mi, dass du heid do bist. — Ich freue mich, dass du heute da bist. — I’m happy that you’re here today.
Pfiadi! — Tschüß! — Bye!
Want to learn Bavarian? Have a look at this list of resources on FluentU. This being said, unless you’re in Bavaria, I’d advise first learning the basics of German as there are a lot more resources from German to learn Bavarian!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
It’s more complicated than this, but let’s just call it that for this short explanation.
Ie. this is not a sponsored section!
I created my current signature after 2 full classes of Latin, concentrated on experimenting instead of Latin.
Regarding Latin: one thing the internet has taught me - whatever it was you thought was dead and gone is being kept alive by a small group of faithful followers somewhere on the internet.