TL;DR — Talk. Learn. Discover. Repeat. #4

Hey yall,

I hope you’ve been extraordinary ‘cause I have!

I’m writing these words on a plane towards Seoul. In about 6 hours (10 hours before you receive this¹), I'll land in South Korea with a one-year "plan." These past two weeks have been incredibly busy as I got my visa and instantly prepared to move across the globe.

I'm exhausted. And yet I can't seem to fall asleep. Too much is running through my mind.

I sure have a lot to say but I'd ramble again and this newsletter would actually become too long and you wouldn’t read it. So for now, I'll let you know this. This is the start of a new year again for me. With this renewed energy, I'll try my best to share with you what I consider crucial in language-learning and languages in general.

Get ready because a lot will happen in the incoming months. With tons of tiny surprises.

In the meantime, if you haven’t savored last week’s deep-dive into the lesser-known language Tigrinya, why not do it now?

Lesser-Known Languages (LKL) — Tigrinya

Alright, let’s dive in!

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🗣️Talk languages

For as long as I remember, I’ve always been afraid of speaking in public. While rather comfortable in 1on1 conversations (until a certain pandemic), my default setting in groups still is to listen until someone “forces me” to talk by asking me a question or my opinion.

Except in one situation.

I become extremely comfortable talking once I’ve had a few (alcoholic) drinks. I know. Duh. This is a common reaction for most people and yet I feel those of us who do enjoy drinking alcohol rarely enough lean into it. Or even want to acknowledge its usefulness. Even if some studies have proved it!

In language learning, this has allowed me to hold conversations I strongly believed I wouldn’t be able to have in my target languages.

Just last week, as I said goodbye to some friends, I ended up having a long conversation in Korean with a friend’s girlfriend even though I’ve mostly relied on English or French with her.

Now, I’m not telling you to start drinking just to improve your confidence in speaking a foreign language, but if you already drink once in a while, why not get something extra out of it?

After all, even if we “feel” as if we’re better drunk, the reality is after too much to drink we’re actually not. What we lose in fluency we gain in confidence. And that means you’re even better than you were when drunk!

If that’s not a confidence booster, I don’t know what is. 🍻

✍️ Learn from my experiences

I’ve spent the past 15 years obsessed with learning languages and done a lot of research on how to better myself at it. After all, who wants to study badly? I sure don’t.

On my journey, I’ve seen tons of absolutely awful advice. It’s frustrating but what’s even worse is the fact there are techniques that actually work wonders but people avoid them because of preconceptions or difficulty.

In Unpopular Yet Incredibly Useful Ways to Learn Anything, I talked about three important ones: using video games, taking (fake) exams, and going analog.

In the end, I also talk about what I struggle doing most: active recall.

🌎Discover new cultures

This month, we’re turning to cultures’ perspectives on the environment.

This has been a hot topic for quite a few years, and especially in “Western countries” because of the impact industrialization has left on the environment. While most now agree we should care for the environment for future generations, it’s not a culturally engrained habit for many.

On the contrary, some other cultures have lived (or at least tried to live) in harmony with nature for a long time. This month, we’ll highlight a few such cultures.

This week, we’re learning from some Islamic cultures’ positive relationships with the environment.

Indeed, environmental protection is emphasized in the Quran and Hadith, which state that humans are custodians of the earth and are responsible for preserving it for future generations.

In Morocco, traditional Islamic farming practices have helped preserve the natural environment and conserve water resources.

Indeed, the khettara, a traditional irrigation system used for centuries, is a network of underground channels used to transport water. It exists under a few different names (most notably Qanāh (قناة) which means “channel” in Arabic) in many other Islamic countries such as Iran, where it seemingly originated from, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.

A system of terracing has also existed for a long time in Morocco. This technique involves building terraces on steep slopes to create level areas for farming. It also helps to prevent soil erosion and conserve water by directing runoff into small pools or channels.

In Iran, agroforestry, crop rotation, and companion planting have all been part of the culture for centuries too. Hunting and fishing are also only allowed to obtain the food required and not for recreation. This follows the Islamic teaching of not wasting resources.

In Malaysia, the practice of Adat (عادت, in Jawi) is followed. Among its many impacts on daily life, Adat is also a traditional community-based system for managing natural resources such as land, forests, or water.

Islamic culture, however, is not the only one pushing forward the idea that natural resources should be cared for.

As such, we’ll turn to a few cultures in Asia next week.

🗺️Repeat with me (Lesser-Known Languages)

Dholuo — A different and fascinating way to conjugate verbs 

This month, we’re running around Africa talking about a few lesser-known languages that are part of large language families. And we’re starting with an interesting one.

Dholuo is a language I keep hearing called “Duoluo"² in my head no matter how hard I try not to. This language (often simply called "Luo" in English) is part of the Luo group of Nilotic languages. Spoken mostly in Kenya and Tanzania, by about 4.2 million people, there are also millions of others in the neighboring countries of Uganda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Before you ask (before that what the people around me asked first) Dholuo is not a language with click sounds³.

Finding clear information about this language was the toughest part of discovering it.

For example, most resources say Dholuo is a tonal language with four tones: (high, low, falling, and rising). Some say they are indicated with accents, and others say there’s no accent in Dholuo. (The latter seems “truer⁴.”)

Similarly, most resources seem to agree Dholuo has noun classes but what they are isn’t clear. The only sure thing is its capacity to express inalienable possession (for example, a bone in your dog’s body or one he finds on the street).

Dholuo is an SVO language that conjugates its verbs in an interesting manner from a French speaker’s perspective: the subject is expressed by adding prefixes to the infinitive form in the present and present continuous tenses.

For example, tiyo is “to work” but atiyo is “I work” and watiyo is “we work.”

Want to express the past? Add nene (or its abbreviated form ne) in front of the present tense:

• Nene otiyo = Ne otiyo = He worked.

To express the future, the word biro⁵ is needed in front of the infinitive form. It’s biro that gets conjugated instead:

• Abiro dhi = I will go (but adhi = I go).

Want to make it continuous? Add a ga in-between: Abiro ga dhi = I will be going.

While this feels inconvenient to look up new verbs as a beginner learner, this is also a fun and different way to present the tenses. I like the idea of having the subject linked to the verb directly. It’d be fun to see it in English too!⁶

Here are a few useful/fun sentences:

• Misawa = Hello (The response is Misawa ahinya.)

• Awacho Dholuo molony = I speak Luo fluently.

• Atiyo ga e apis = I work in an office.

• Ower ga seche ma oluokore. = He sings in the shower

• In ng’a ? = Who are you?⁷ (Literally "you who?")

• Ibiro karang’o? = When will you come? (literally “you-will when?)

Finally, if you’d like to learn this language, I recommend checking Luo English Dictionary’s YouTube channel. It’s a dad and daughter teaching sentences. Their energy is contagious!

Otherwise, you can also check this free PDF textbook and these two websites:

• Dholuo language guide

• Amara & Matt's Luo guide Page

Oriti ahinya! (Goodbye)

1. It’s fun to edit and add this section an hour before you receive this because I’m still exhausted but now it’s also because I’ve already walked quite a bit in a large bookstore and next to the city’s main palace, Gyeongbokgung 🤩

2. I blame Duolingo for this.

3. We’ll turn to one such language next week. 😉

4. For some reason, I get goosebumps when I hear both “truer” and “more true.” They both feel wrong. Probably because things are supposed to be either true or not at all. Anyway.

5. biro seems to also be the verb “to come.” After all, the future will come to us, won’t it?

6. Ilike this system. Werecognize the subject directly with its verb. itIsn’t fun?

7. In Dholuo, there’s a difference between ng and ng’. The latter has a soft g (think “hanger”) while the former has a hard one (think “anger”).