7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 93
Hey language lovers
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine was much better than the previous one!
For one, I spent a lot of time researching a bunch of different lesser-known languages. I discovered some interesting gems I’m looking forward to digging into and sharing with you all.
But first, you’ll get some information about another Creole language today. Sranan Tongo. As you’ll see, it’s a curious creole language but the reality is there were many more interesting things to share. And that’s exactly what I did in a deep-dive piece that’ll be available next Monday for paid subscribers.
In it, I’ll talk about Suriname’s history, and cultural aspects like its music, beliefs, and festivals. I also explain pretty much every basic grammar pattern needed to start using the language right away. Subscribe today so you get it right into your inbox next week!
As for my language study, I’m on my second week without much active study. I did start to get back into my German Assimil and studied two new Korean grammar patterns, but that’s it.
I did, however, play more video games in different languages, including some Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in Spanish for the first time in months.
I’m also 8 episodes into the Korean drama Glitch which I’m watching entirely without English subtitles. A first in a long time!
I reckon this week will get even better! 😆
Alright, let’s dive into what you came for now!
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 can LINGUISTICS help you to LEARN languages? — By Kevin Abroad
I’ve gotten more and more interested in linguistics since the beginning of this year. (In my defense, I blame reading awesome newsletters like Learned, Everybody Talks, and Languaging.)
Well, this piece felt like a good in-between discussion about the connection between linguistics and language learning.
Two points, in particular, felt particularly important:
How useful understanding phonology can help with pronunciation
How useful understanding grammatical concepts can help with learning a new language.
I won’t spoil the video more though. Have a look for more info!
📚 One article I read
How to automatically track language learning time using iOS automations — By Elise Cutts
Now, I don’t follow that precisely my passive input in my target languages, but I know some people feel much better doing so. And I also don’t have an iPhone but some people do.
Well, in that case, this piece on how to track your time automatically on iOS might be just right for you.
In all honesty, if I could automate the tracking of my passive exposure, I’d jump on it right away, but I really don’t like iOS so that’s a no-go for me!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
3 Things Outstanding Language Learners Don’t Do
If only everybody understood that everybody can become an incredible language learner, we’d have so many more polyglots. One of the reasons I share so much about language learning is that I want as many people as possible to discover how beautiful the world can become.
That’s why in this piece I talked about three common bad things incredible language learners avoid at all costs.
🎧 One podcast episode
Reading & Listening Comprehension Strategy: When To Focus
It’s easy to consider all the time we spend with the language in the background as “not serious” or not even consider it an integral part of our study but that’s wrong.
In this episode, Steve gives a great analogy as to why the background matters just as much as part of your language learning journey.
If you don’t have the time to listen to it, here’s the summary (without the nice analogy): focused study and unfocused study work as a pair and complement each other!
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Work hours in France and Japan
Growing up in France, I heard about fights for lowering the working hours my entire childhood. By the time I was old enough to have a job, the official number was 35 hours per week.
I thought it was high1… until I realized two things:
35 hours per week is among the lowest numbers in the world.
It’s not a maximum.
In France, hours above the 35-hour threshold needs to be paid as overtime, unless you work a white-collar job, known as “cadre” in France. In this case, overtime work isn’t counted and there’s no limit.
Since many cadres stopped separating work and personal life to answer emails at any time of the day, the French government set a “right to disconnect” (ie. not to respond to emails after work hours) in 2017.
My first real job was in Japan, where work hours didn’t truly matter as long as I finished after my boss. Indeed, in Japan, there is a culture of not leaving before one’s superior out of respect. This can have two major risks:
If your superior leaves extremely late, you’re stuck there even if you’re done with your day’s work.
If your superior wants to go for drinks with the team, it’s (culturally) almost impossible to refuse.
While this culture is slowly disappearing, it is still widely in place in many companies and is a cause of karoshi (過労死) or “death by overwork.”
Next week, we’ll turn to a few other interesting country cases when it comes to working hours. Among others, we’ll discuss a word I had never heard before: Fika.
In the meantime, here’s the average working week around the world in 2017-2018, according to the International Labour Organization:
📜 One quote to ponder
“Many people look without seeing. In other words, they don’t pay attention to what’s in front of them.”—Héctor García, The Book of Ichigo Ichie
🌐 One Lesser-Known Language (LKL)
Sranan Tongo - A curious thriving Dutch-English Creole
I started researching Suriname while being completely wrong.
For some reason, I always thought Suriname was somewhere around Indonesia in South East Asia.2 You could imagine my surprise when I found it on the other side of the ocean in South America, close to the islands I had researched for Papiamento.
Luckily enough, I was right in my understanding that Sranan Tongo was a different kind of Creole language than Papiamentu. Instead of being a Portuguese-inspired creole language, it's considered a Dutch-English creole language. Its grammar mostly comes from English and some of its vocabulary takes its inspiration from Dutch.
Suriname is a country separated from the rest of the continent due to its terrain. This made its language evolve differently from its surrounding countries. The country was "discovered" during the Iberian exploration. From then on, slaves were brought from West Africa.
English settlements emerged starting in 1624. The Dutch followed suit and, following a few wars, conquered the country in 1667. In the short span of time before the Dutch took over, however, English settlers worked closely with the slaves which helped develop an English creole language that would later become Sranan Tongo.
Compared to other English-based Creole languages, Sranan Tongo was influenced by native English speakers during its infancy alone. As the Dutch did not try to change Sranan, the language was left to its own device to grow. It basically avoided a process called decreolization.
Sranan kept evolving, adapting words from Dutch and new slaves brought from Asia (most notably Indonesia as it was a Dutch colony). I reckon Dutch speakers might see the inspiration from their language but I couldn’t find words from it, despite some records saying that “85%” of Sranan vocabulary comes from Dutch. One research paper I found said only 17.85% of the words used were of Dutch origin.
Let’s look at a few grammar points now!
Sranan Tongo is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language that follows pretty much the same standard English phrase construction, with adapted words.
Sranan has a simple conjugation system because there’s none. A particle is added before the verb to change its tense. Interestingly enough, the lack of a particle doesn’t indicate the present (like it does for many languages) but the past tense3.
Mi yepi. → I helped.
Here are the particles used for other tenses:
Present/Present Progressive tense: e
Mi no e siki. → I am not sick.
Future tense: e go/o (from “am going to”)
Wi e go sabi. → We are going to know./ We will know.
Past progressive: ben
Yu ben sribi. → You were sleeping.
The verb “to be” on its own is replaced by the copula “na”:
En na wan man. → He is a man. (literally: He-[copula]-one-man)
The plural third person pronoun is den (from the English “them”) but it can also be added before a noun to change it to the plural if need be:
Den no e dringi. = They don’t drink.
Den mun = the months
If you want to learn Sranan Tongo, resources are scarce online. There is a Peace Corps training document available and a book for Sarammaccan (another Suriname Creole language) that includes Sranan Tongo with English, French, and Dutch. If you speak Dutch, this website and this one seem to cover a lot too.
Finally, this website is filled with stories in Sranan Tongo. If you double-click on any word, its definition appears in the dictionary on the left. A great way to learn in context!
But if you want to learn even more about Sranan Tongo, you can also become a paid subscriber and look forward to next week’s deep dive into it!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
A thought that now makes me laugh.
Geography was never my forte.
Context can make the sentence be understood as being in the present tense though.