7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 53
Hey language lovers,
Happy New Year again! I hope you’ve all had an amazing start of the year already.
Updates
As I mentioned yesterday, I started the year bedridden with COVID and absolutely no energy. That was the least productive start of the year I’ve had in the past decade.
The upside was that it forced me to rest and get my thoughts in order and start preparing for my departure from France at the beginning of February.
On another note, we’re back for another year so I’ve decided to make a few tweaks to this newsletter!
From today onwards, the weekly tool will be replaced with an explanation of a cultural aspect. After giving you 52 tools last year, I’ve covered all the good ones available right now. I’ll also put out the complete list of these tools later this month so you can have a look whenever you want!
The bi-weekly challenge will also be changed to a monthly challenge so we can dive deeper into each. It will also give more leeway in case you (or I!) have a busy week or two.
Let me know what you think of this new format!
As mentioned in yesterday’s message, I’m partnering with three master skill learners this year and we want to build a course to help you learn how to learn and practice with one skill.
If you haven’t done it yet, help us make the best course by answering this tiny survey! 🙏
Finally, you’ll receive Thursday the first article of my new series about learning a language from scratch.
This will be part of my paid newsletter but the first few pieces will be available for free to all of you. Hope you like it! 😆
Alright, let’s dive in for the first newsletter of the year!
7 Bullet Points
Each week, I share 7 things that could be useful to your learning odyssey. I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.
🎥 One video
3 Tips for Your 2022 Language Study Goals — By Talk To Me In Korean
I absolutely love these three tips and especially the fact Yejin mentioned a change of mindset. We often give up because of wrong beliefs we hold. If you’ve ever thought you have to be perfect or you can’t learn a language, change that! You can do it!
📚 One article I read
These 4 Productivity Principles Make You More Effective Than 99% Of People You Know — By Jari Roomer
The more productive you are, the more you can learn. The more you learn, the easier the rest becomes to learn. That’s why you should come to love learning. And if you haven’t learned much about productivity, Jari got you covered with this article!
✍🏽 One article I wrote
22 Tiny Habits to Improve Your Language Effortlessly in 2022
This is one of the longest articles I’ve written but it was worth it. This piece combines all the tweaks and tricks I’ve come to master on my journey to become a polyglot.
Don’t try to do them all today though! Take your pick and have fun with whichever seems interesting to you. Then add new ones when you can!
🎧 One podcast episode
The Science of Making & Breaking Habits — By Huberman Lab Podcast
Just wow. Dr. Huberman really outdid himself with this incredible episode. I couldn’t stop listening and taking notes until the end. This episode is packed with science and actionable tips to make or break habits.
I was shocked to discover the importance of what’s called “procedural memory.” Simply visualizing all the steps you’ll do to execute a habit is enough to increase the likelihood of you doing that habit, not just the first time, but also later. Mindblowing, right?
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
The first cultural aspect I want to share with you is about laughing 😂. I love a good joke (or a bad one too actually!) and I’ve had the pleasure of laughing in many languages!
But did you know there are different ways to write laughter depending on the language?
The most well-known way to laugh is “hahaha.” Many people also know the Spanish version “jajaja.”
Japanese, on the other hand, says “www” (the first letter of the word “warai” 笑い which means “laughter.”) The Koreans say ㅋㅋㅋ (“kkk”) or ㅎㅎㅎ (“hhh”) while the Greeks say “xaxaxa.”
Fun fact: “xaxaxa” should instead be “χαχαχα” and pronounced “chachacha” but people often just use the standard x and a on English keyboards.
I recently discovered laughter “555” in Thai. I was shocked but it makes sense when you know the language! 5 is “ห้า” in Thai and is pronounced as “ha!”
Do you know any other surprising way to express laughter in another language?
📜 One quote to ponder
“Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.” — Oscar Wilde
💪 One monthly challenge
Create a conversation from scratch
We’ve done a short version of this one last year. This time, the goal is to make a conversation as long as possible with an imaginary partner. Why not with a real person? So you can create both the questions and answers!
Adapt this challenge to your current skill level.
If you’re still a beginner, imagine you’re meeting someone for the first time. Try to create a connection with that imaginary person by sharing as much as possible from your life.
If you’re at an intermediate level, create a conversation about a specific experience like a trip or a work experience. Go in as much detail as possible.
If you’re at an advanced level, pick a topic you don’t know anything about, research the vocabulary and explain it to your imaginary partner! Ask yourself questions to push yourself further.
If that helps, don’t hesitate to create the conversation in your native language first but be careful not to translate it word for word!
I’ll do that with Thai since I’ll be going there in February. Hopefully, that’ll help me learn all the vocab I’ll need when meeting new people there!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
For more of my articles, you can find them here.