7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 69
Listening vs practice, getting unstuck, and respect for the elders
Hey language lovers
I hope you all had a lovely week!
Updates
Mine was quite the eye-opener.
This was my first week in Hanoi and it seems most people don’t speak English. I’ve had to rely on Google Translate a lot more than I wanted but that’s also forced me to look into Vietnamese once more.
It turns out it’s a lot more interesting than I initially thought and I’m enjoying recognizing grammar patterns I’ve seen in other languages or noticing the Chinese influence in some words I hear.
I didn’t find much time to study other languages until Sunday unfortunately but I’m now happy to be back playing with Toki Pona, Ainu, and moving forward with my Thai book.
Alright, let’s dive right in!
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
How I became fluent in Korean - Chan Chan from Myanmar — By TalkToMeInKorean
Following the advice in Italian last week, let’s go for advice in Korean this week! (For this video, you may need to click the CC button to get English subtitles if you don’t understand Korean.)
Chan Chan explained how she used to watch TV shows with a pen and a notebook to write new words and expressions before looking them up in a dictionary, rewatching the episodes, and mimicking the actors.
Her method allowed her to work on every skill needed: Listening while watching the show, writing the words, reading in the dictionary, and speaking when mimicking.
Now, is this fun? Maybe not all the time. Maybe not for everybody.
But it’s hard and that’s what makes it effective. It needs actual efforts and efforts are what you need to improve your language.
Side note: In another proof that context helps, Chan Chan said the word 말투 (“maltu”) many times in the video. Can you guess what it means after watching the video?
📚 One article I read
Only listen! — Discussion on the How To Learn Any Language forum
This 15-year-old conversation got me hooked for a while. I actually remember the shock I had when I first read it many years ago (around 2008-2009 I believe).
What shocked me? One quote from the ALG World method that was put forward:
“Practice cannot help and in fact it damages one's ability to learn naturally.”
At the time, I remember wondering if it was true and if I had ruined my English, Japanese, and Spanish future. Luckily, I now know this is completely wrong.
Practice helps. Practice with feedback helps even more.
ALG World says it doesn’t because they expect 800 hours of at-your-level designed-to-teach-you-at-your-level listening exposure but, even with 2 hours every single day for a year, without a break, that wouldn’t even be reached. And most people can’t allow such a waiting period.
Apparently, their method allows students to reach a perfect Thai accent but the majority give up before then.
All this to say, it’s pointless to use a method if it’s boring and makes you give up.
Would you rather have a potentially perfect accent and never reach it? Or an average real one?
I’d go for the second option every day.
✍🏽 One article I wrote
If You're Feeling Stuck Learning a Language, One of these Two Exercises Could Help
Feeling stuck in a language learning journey is awful. It’s frustrating as hell and it seems like you’ll never be able to get out of it.
The reality, however, is that it’s a good sign. A sign you’ve improved. A sign you’re not a beginner anymore.
You can’t be a beginner and not make progress because anywhere you look there’s stuff to learn.
Still, that’s no reason to accept the frustration and do nothing about it. That’s why I wrote this piece with two exercises that have served me tons to get rid of it and move forward again.
Hope these help you too!
🎧 One podcast episode
Raising multilingual kids while learning the languages yourself — By The Future Is Bilingual
The title says everything about the content here. It’s an insightful interview about learning a language along with one’s own kids. This being said, it can also be useful for those who don’t have children.
I really appreciated the down-to-earth mindset of noticing every small interaction with the language. It’s easy to think you didn’t study at all on a certain day when, in reality, you read a post on Instagram or exchanged a few messages.
These count toward the long-term goal of speaking the language.
I also loved the method Heidi used to help her daughter improve by avoiding correcting her on the spot. Instead, she reuses the word/grammar pattern in its correct form later on so that, over time, her daughter can naturally get better.
If only we all had the patience to do that.
🌎 One cultural aspect to discover
Respect and Care for Elders Around The World
I always had tremendous respect for my grandparents but it wasn’t until I went to Japan that I truly realized the cultural difference with respect to elders.
While I, as a French person, loved my grandparents and demonstrated some respect toward elder people, the Japanese culture demonstrated an almost impossible to understand connection between young people and their elders.
I believe this to be one of the famous aspects of the Japanese culture, but in case you didn’t know, it is common for children to live with their parents once they get older, therefore often combining three generations under the same roof.
This comes from the Confucian principle of filial piety and is also found in other countries where Confucius left a strong mark.
Most people in the western world consider themselves as being good children to their growing older parents but the idea of living with them as an adult, something completely common in Asia, seems incomprehensible.
In France, there was even a law passed in 2004 (Article 207 of the Civil Code) requiring its citizens to keep in touch with their geriatric parents. Whether this is actually applied, I don’t know.
“Filial piety and brotherly respect are the root of humanity.” — Confucius
Now, let’s not oversimplify everything by saying Asian countries are respectful and Western countries aren’t.
First of all, similar laws like the one in France also had to be implemented in China and Singapore. It’s common to find several generations under one roof in Greece too. Nothing is proprietary to one side of the world.
Secondly, there are other cultures too.
For example, there is little talk about the perception of elders in countries throughout Africa but it seems that disrespect to elders is like setting an unpronounced curse no one can revoke.
Also, respect for the elders is pushed forward by most governments around the world because of an ever-aging society. Some countries’ senior citizens’ proportion is growing so much it even has a name: the silver economy.
We’ll all one day be on the other side of the balance. How you will choose to respect your elders will most likely depend on your native culture, but never forget two important things:
You’re here thanks to the previous generations. Respecting them is the least you can do.
If your native culture doesn’t “have” a good way to support your elders, another culture might have the solution.
📜 One quote to ponder
“前人栽树,後人乘凉” – (“One generation plants the trees, the future generations get the shade.”) — Chinese proverb
💪 One monthly challenge (May Edition)
Practice Elaboration - Get a Better Handle Your TL
Learning a language can be fun and almost effortless but actually putting some effort is what helps you improve faster.
During May, let’s work on this.
One difficult aspect of learning a language is creating long sentences. It’s all good and fun to make sentences like “I eat a croissant.” but can you precise where, or why, or with whom, or any other detail within the same sentence?
The concept of Elaboration is just what it seems like: to expand (elaborate) your sentences little by little.
For example. “I eat a croissant.” could become “I eat a croissant because I’m hungry.” and then “I eat a croissant because I’m hungry for French food.” and so on.1
Try to expand sentences you encounter as often as you can.
Add one detail to a sentence you find in a resource or create a small sentence you slowly make longer and longer!
Continue until you struggle, for that’s where you’ll actually progress! Of course, the more fun you can have along the way, the better 😉
✅How the last challenge went for me
April’s challenge was to add a simple task in your target language to your daily routine. The month started well but I slowly lost track of it as the month went on.
As I kept moving from one place to another, my routine got thrown out of the window and I’m only now rebuilding a new one. I do plan on meditating again in one of my target languages but not sure which it will end up being.
How is the challenge going for you?
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
Sorry for the very French example, I guess my stomach is trying to send me signals.