7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 91
King of hyperpolyglots, Fluency in more than 3 months, Alcohol drinking in South America, and a constructed spatial Creole!
Hey language lovers,
I hope you all had a magnificent week!
Updates
My last week was freaking awesome. I studied Korean a lot, researched many languages (and moved forward with writing about the next lesser-known language deep-dive), wrote tons, and spent quality time with my family.
I also had a lovely time chatting with my good friend Joel, who writes Learned. Which brings me to remind you to go check his newsletter!
As you saw in my newsletter last week, Joel and I had fun making each other figure out which language the other had prepared. Well, in Part 2 this week featured in his newsletter out since yesterday, I’m the one making Joel guess the language I had prepared.
Will you notice me avoiding a critical remark Joel made? 😉
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 I Learn Languages | 8 Tips for Success — By Bella
This video combines common tips with less common ones and shows some of the tools Bella uses to learn her languages. I liked that she touched upon working on the pronunciation because it’s usually where I fall pretty hard (at least for Korean and Chinese).
I’ll leave you with a quote I loved from the video:
“Learning a language, essentially, is imitation. We’re replicating how people sound and how they communicate.”
📚 One article I read
King of the Hyperpolyglots — By Michael Erard, author of Babel No More
This interesting story about a German hyperpolyglot caught my eye for its flashy title. This is the kind of piece you want to read to satisfy your curiosity and it did just that.
I enjoy reading about dead polyglots because there’s always this wonder about what’s true and what’s gotten exaggerated over the years/decades.
Well, read this one you tell me which parts you thought were a bit too much. Here’s my favorite over-the-top bit:
His Tuscan dialect was so good, the Italian ambassador in Beijing offered to cut Krebs’s hair, just to be able to hear Tuscan.
His Tuscan dialect was so good, the Italian ambassador in Beijing offered to cut Krebs’s hair, just to be able to hear Tuscan.
I mean. Come on. 😂
✍🏽 One article I wrote
Why I’m Happy It’s Impossible to Be Fluent in 3 Months
I sometimes wonder how great it’d be to speak tons of languages and master them as quickly as the above “King of the Hyperpolyglots.” And then I remember how delightful it is to actually learn them.
I love the fact that I’m able to speak Japanese very well but you know what I love even more? Discovering new expressions and words in it.
Learning a language isn’t about the goal. It’s about the journey.
And the tons of fun you’ll have.
🎧 One podcast episode
Is it okay to study closely related languages at the same time? — By The Unconventional Polyglot
Similarly to William, I’ve studied closely related languages for a while. As he said, it’s definitely possible to mix them up. For example, I used to use the verb “to do” with adjectives in Japanese despite it being done like that in Korean only.1
And yet, as he says, mistakes disappear with time as you start noticing them. One by one, they stop being an issue.
On the flip side, learning two languages at the same time can make the journey more interesting as you compare them, and also simplify understanding patterns!
🌎 One cultural aspect
Alcohol drinking in South America
After talking about European countries, Japan, Korea, and India, let’s turn to alcohol-drinking patterns in South America this week.
To start us off, let’s talk about Brazil.
I always pictured Brazil as a country with quite heavy-drinking habits but it turns out that’s not true at all! According to a 2022 study published in Nature, 73.5% of the 85,000+ people surveyed did not drink alcohol at all.
Still, it doesn’t mean there isn’t much alcohol in Brazil. It turns out the people who do drink, drink heavily. And that heavy drinking yet increases during the country’s largest festival: Carnival.
In fact, the first recorded production of spirit in South America comes from Brazil, in the 16th century with a sugarcane-based liquor called Cachaça. This liquor is the basis for a cocktail known as caipirinha.
Cachaça, while available around the world today, is more appreciated in Brazil than anywhere else. About 1.5 billion liters of it are drunk in Brazil each year compared to only 15 million in the rest of the world.
There are also quite a few local beers available in Brazil, such as Skol, Antartica, Schin2 or Brahma. I originally thought the latter one would be from India but it seems its name holds no relation to the Hindu god Brahma.
Then, there’s Cauim. A traditional alcoholic beverage close to a beer that comes from the indigenous people of Brazil and which can be found across South America today.
In Venezuela, the traditional liquor made from Agave called Cocuy has been steadily growing for the past decade. Due to heavy taxes imposed on liquors from above, this moonshine drink also known as the Tequila of Venezuela took over the previously most drunk liquor: whiskey. In fact, up until 2014, Venezuela was the second-highest per capita consumer of whiskey in Latin America. But between 2013 and 2018, its consumption fell by 43%!
As for Argentina and Peru, they both have a beer-drinking culture associated with social drinking. These drinks are often exchanged while talking. But, as could be expected of countries with a large wine industry, they also enjoy wine on a regular basis. Still, not all wines are created equal so it seems they enjoy cheap wine by adding ice to it.
A scary idea if you ask my French mind.
Did I forget a few interesting drinks or quirks of drinking habits in South America? Let me know by leaving a comment!
Next week, we’ll close this tour around the world of alcohol-drinking habits by looking at a few countries in Africa!
📜 One quote to ponder
“We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly."— Kato Lomb
🌐 One Lesser-Known Language (LKL)
Belter Creole - The Extraplanetary Creole Language
I’ve learned more about constructed languages in 2022 than ever before. The reason each one makes me want to find yet another one. The genius found behind each is entrancing. Belter Creole was not an exception.
Created by Nick Farmer for the 2015 TV series The Expanse, the language kept developing until its last season in 2020.3
As the name suggests, Belter Creole is a creole language. This means it is a combination of other languages that emerged in order to allow communication between people who spoke different languages. Indeed, this is the language spoken on the “Belt” in the TV series. Its speakers come from all parts of Earth and Mars.
Belter Creole, also called Lang Belta in its language is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language. It is mostly written using Latin letters with most letters being somewhat close to their English counterpart, but there is no strict orthography agreed upon.
Lang Belta is an analytic language, which means it uses helper words to indicate a relationship between words. For example, ando is a suffix to mean that an action is ongoing.4
Like in many other creole languages, there is no verb conjugation. Instead, the root is taken and then something indicates a change of tense:
ta → past tense indicator, similar to Papiamento as seen a few months ago.
Mi ta vedi fo im. = I looked for him/her/it.
gonya → future tense indicator, sounds like an updated version of “gonna” to me
Mi gonya vedi fo i’m. = I will look for him/her/it.
tili → habitual aspect marker
Mi tili du adewu. = I habitually/regularly sing.
Tili can also be followed by the verb “to have,”tenye. In this case, it’ll indicate ownership.
Negation is created by adding the word na before the verb:
Mi na sasa. = I don’t know.
There are many words created through combination. Here’s a table that’ll give you a good idea of the system:
Finally, here are just some sentences to give you a better feel for the language:
Mi du ámolof to. = I love you. (literally: I/me + to love + you)
Keting nem to? = What is your name? (lit. what-thing + name + you?)
Nem mi Kerísh. = My name is Chris.
Xídawang kopeng mi. = This is my friend. (lit: this-one + friend + I/me)
Xetamang tili du xeta. = Haters gonna hate. (lit. hate-person + [habitual marker] + to hate)
Fodagut, gif fo mi owkwa. = Please, give me some water. (lit.: please + give + for + I/me + water)
Taki Taki = Thank you5
If you want to learn more about the Belter Language, its Fandom wiki page is very developed. There’s also a Lang Belta cheatsheet available for free, a Memrise phrasebook deck, or even this Tumblr page with links to many more!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
In Korean, you say “to do easy” to mean “to be easy”. Basically, I used to apply the Korean version to Japanese. I clearly made countless people confused.
They were bought in 2011 by the Japanese company Kirin but the beer itself is from Brazil.
The books had a different Belter Creole with no order and just random words/expressions taken from languages across the planet. Look at how diverse this list is!
Those who speak Spanish will recognize the influence of its own way to form the present continuous.
One Taki is an informal “Thanks”