TL;DR #07 — Talk. Learn. Discover. Repeat.

Mar 7, 2023

Hey yall,

I hope you had a wonderful week! Mine was packed to the brim but still loads of fun. I wrote a lot, practiced my Korean a whole lot, and started playing a new video game I was really looking forward to: Octopath Traveler 2.

And, you know it, I’m playing it in Korean too! It’s making the experience slower but the audio language is in Japanese so I can rely on this for the history when I’m a bit tired.

The only downside? This took some time away from reading the Korean books I have but it’s just a matter of time before I dive into them again.

I’ve been meeting up often with a Korean friend I met in Japan and we’ve been switching back and forth between Korean so much that every time we meet I end the evening with some strange mixes like igeo nusumeossji (이거 盗멌지), basically putting a Korean (past tense) verb ending to the Japanese verb nusumu 盗む which means “to steal.”

That’s a whole new level of brain fart if you ask me.

Still, I see this as a sort of win as instead of putting Korean words in Japanese, the main language coming out is Korean. This is not the first time I mix languages so I know it’ll pass anyway!

Oh, and talking about Korean, in case you missed it, I’ve just started a new series about things I’m discovering in Korea and Korean. If you missed the first edition, here it is!

The Average Polyglot

Dazzled by Korean #01

I’ve now been in Korea for about three weeks. In my time here, I’ve had the opportunity to catch up with friends and meet a few new people. I’ve learned a few words on the fly and discovered some gre…

3 months ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Mathias Barra

Hope those of you who missed it enjoy it as much as I did writing it!

Alright, let’s dive in!

🗣️Talk languages

This week, I’m turning to a bad habit most people have when it comes to learning languages. I have it too and can’t seem to completely stop it. Hell, I’m even part of the problem in a way.

You see, it’s easy to fall into a habit of looking for better ways to study languages.

As part of the 7 Bullet Point newsletter I wrote over the past two years, I spent hundreds

of hours pouring through articles, podcasts, videos, and research about language learning. While I still follow a few of the people I found, I don’t religiously check everything they post. In fact, the last time I made an effort to find something interesting or new to share was almost two months ago.

And you know what happened? I feel I’ve improved much more in my languages.

So here’s a quick reminder for you too:

Sometimes, the best choice you can make is acting. Don’t look for a better way to study. Just start now.

Because looking for better is often just another way to procrastinate!

✍️ Learn from my experiences

I’ve recently been thinking a lot about how my life has changed since I was in school. This may be because I’ve met up with friends I hadn’t seen for 10 years or this may be because living abroad again has pushed me to look into how I got here in the first place.

Either way, this caused me to write about Unhealthy Learning Habits We Keep After School, how I got rid of them, and why you should too. Which extremely unhealthy habits?

Cramming our study into long sessions and acting as if learning was a chore.

Considering learning a chore, in particular, is a habit I’ve seen way too many people keep over the years. My best friend has given up on learning Japanese at least three times mostly because he kept pushing back his study sessions. The reason? He saw them as exhausting instead of fun.

Hopefully, this reflection essay will make you think too!

🌎Discover new cultures

For the month of March, we’re sticking to the environment but we’re talking about more recent evolutions.

Bhutan has a long history of environmental conservation. Its constitution requires 60% of the land to be covered by forest since the 1990s. (It’s currently at about 72.5%). The government's policy of "Gross National Happiness" which was first introduced in the 1970s, emphasizes the importance of balancing economic development with environmental conservation and cultural preservation.

Bhutan is also the only country in the world to have a negative carbon footprint which means it absorbs more carbon than it emits!

While it’s been an example for the world, many also realize the context of Bhutan as a secluded country also “helps” in being more environmentally friendly.

In Asia, Singapore is another great example when it comes to caring for the environment.

The city-state has implemented a comprehensive waste management system, which includes recycling, waste-to-energy incineration, and landfill management. Additionally, Singapore has implemented a green building rating system since 2005 and added new restrictions to it in 2009 and 2014. In 2015, 29% of its total built-up gross floor area had received the rating and the government’s goal is to reach 80% by 2030.

To push this measure further, they implemented the Singapore Green Plan 2030 in 2021. It includes targets such as quadrupling solar energy deployment by 2025, reducing waste sent to landfill by 30% by 2030, and increasing nature parks’ land area by over 50% from the 2020 baseline.

Not to be outdone, South Korea is the highest-rated Asian country in the Green Future Index 2022 (10th in the world). This is, in part due to its well-developed recycling system set in place in 1995 and improved throughout the decades.

In fact, I recently discovered that while throwing away recyclable garbage is free, throwing away food waste is not! It requires a specific bag that can only be used in the area where bought. 🤯

But that’s not it. In 2022, Korea started again a policy they tried between 2002 and 2008: charging a deposit for disposable cups in coffee shops so that people would bring them back. While only 37% were returned during the last try, the deposit has been raised from 50 - 100 won ($0.04 - $0.08) to 300 won ($0.23)

. Between this and the more environment-conscious population of today, the government now expects 90% of cups to return this time.

For Asia’s largest café economy, this could really help.

Finally, Korea plans to reduce its plastic waste 50% by 2030 and drastically increase the recycling rate to 70%. For this, colored plastic bottles have ceased to exist in Korea since 2020 as removing color from the bottles was a problem for recycling companies.

Every country tries to tackle the environmental crisis in its own manner. They each have their own set of problems so it’s interesting to see how they choose to focus their efforts.

For example, the coffee shop culture of Korea is a much more important factor than in most other countries while adding greenery is important for a city-state like Singapore.

Next week, we’ll turn to my home turf of Europe and see a few countries on the right path!

🗺️Repeat with me (Lesser-Known Languages)

Ambon Malay - A curious Malay-based Creole

I have to admit ever since I started looking into Creole languages, I thought they were all based on major Western languages like French, English, Dutch, or Portuguese. You might have thought the same so here we are with another version: Ambon Malay.

Just like its name implies, this Creole language based in Indonesia is based on Malay. It is said a trade language known as Vehicular Malay was used in the Moluccas islands and was known to most when the Portuguese arrived in the 15th century.

By the time the Portuguese left their fort in Ambon to the Dutch in 1605, many Portuguese words had entered the Malay spoken in the region. While other varieties of Malay in the region still kept Portuguese words, Ambon Malay kept a lot more.

The Dutch apparently tried to make Ambon a colony “where the Dutch language ruled”

but failed and settled on using Malay for education and administration. The evolution of the Malay spoken at the time into what is now known as Ambon Malay or Ambonese Malay is unclear but experts say there were native speakers of it by early 19th century.

In short, Ambon Malay is a Malay-based creole with influence from Portuguese, Dutch, and the many vernacular languages of the region.

Since then, the language has grown at the expense of other local vernacular languages and is now spoken by about 200,000 people in the Moluccas.

As part of Indonesia, most speakers are at least bilingual but Ambon Malay is influencing the Indonesian spoken in the area as much as Indonesian influences it. For its speakers, there’s no clear line between the two languages as they alternate between the two throughout the day.

As a non-speaker of standard Malay, it is difficult for me to notice the similarities and differences between the two languages but here are a few things I’ve seen:

Its sentence order is a strict Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). As words are pretty much never modified, the order of the sentence is crucial in understanding.
Like many Creole languages, many words have a shortened form commonly used. This shows in particular for the personal pronouns:

Here, *Beta* comes from Classical Malay and is only used by royal people speaking to people of equal rank. *‘ong* is a shorten form of “orang” which means “person.” *Ose*, however, comes from Portuguese *voce* meaning “you.”

The plural form is usually understood through context but can be created by duplicating the word in question:
- kata~kata = word-word = words
Duplicated can also help indicate a repeated activity or intensify a situation:
- Jala sampe lapar~lapar = (We) walked until (we were) very hungry. [walk - until - hungry~hungry]
There are many ways to express a negation. The following ones are confirmed and researched but this Wikipedia states there are more.
- seng (from Portuguese sem “without, not”) → By far the most common
  - Nene Luhu itu seng mati, antua hilang. → Nene Luhu
    5
    didn’t die, she disappeared. [Nene Luhu demonstrative no die, 3sg lost]
- tar/tra
  6
- tida (a recent introduction from Indonesian tidak)
  7
Verbs are not modified to indicate tense but time adverbs, aspect markers, or context help indicate the one meant. For example, the word ada indicates progression:
- De blong ada makang. → He’s not eating yet. [he no-yet PROG eat]

If you wish to learn more about it, check out the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APICS) page about it or the Wikipedia mentioned above. Also, this PDF translates two recorded conversations between native speakers.

This Word document also has some information about it and you can hear what it sounds like in this short 1-minute video.

It seems a few words can also be found on the Wiktionary page too!

Ambonese Malay was a bit harder to follow and notice its peculiar similarities to its base language because of my lack of knowledge but I still loved discovering it! It was a fun surprise to see the term orang I had learned in Indonesian so many years ago!

As they say in Ambon, Dangke!

Next week, we’re turning to another Creole language with a surprising base!

Side note: Discovering the great and extensive website Omniglot didn’t have any record of this language (🤯), I looked into some other languages I’ve covered only to see Tayo wasn’t on it either!