TL;DR — Talk. Learn. Discover. Repeat. #14
Hey yall,
I hope you’ve been well! I have!
I spent a lot of time reading this past week to succeed in my challenge of finishing the book I’m reading in Korean by this Friday. Although most of you received the email about it yesterday, paid subscribers got word of it earlier.
On May 3rd, I had 119 pages left, with 9 days ‘til my deadline. I didn’t get much time alone this weekend so I had to catch up yesterday… and read 43 pages in one evening! This is something that would have been impossible just a few months ago so I’m pretty happy with it.
Although my brain was fried at the end!
This morning I read another 10 pages so I’ve only got about 30 pages left in 2.5 days. Should be fine, right?
This push I’ve forced myself into has reminded me how much I love diving into a good book and forgetting all around. I’ll try my hardest to keep this habit even after I’m done with this book!
Alright, let’s dive in!
🗣️Talk languages
One word I recently learned in Korean is ddabun hada (따분하다), which means “to be boring, dull.”
I found it in the book I am reading and wrote down the sentence it was in to cement it a bit further. The next day, as I was working while listening on repeat to aespa’s new song “I’m unhappy,” I suddenly recognized this word in the lyrics.
I had been working while listening to that song for a few days but it only clicked after I had looked up the word in another context.
This reminded me of the importance of not only exposing ourselves to different mediums but also of looking words up on a regular basis.
Nowadays, everything online seems to revolve around learning from comprehensible input and simply exposing ourselves to tons of content so we absorb our target language. While this technique somewhat works, it is important to combine it with an active mindset of looking words up and trying to memorize them.
Just so we can recognize them the next time they pop up.
So here’s this week’s advice.
Go and use a dictionary more often!
✍️ Learn from my experiences
The Power of Immersion: Best Technique or Completely Overrated?
I love the idea of immersion as a way to learn but most of what’s said online about it is a lie.
It’s not the holy grail that’ll solve all your questions. It’s an extra tool in your toolbox. Nothing more. Alone, it’s close to a complete waste of your time.
In this essay, I went deep into what makes immersion useful, what to avoid, and how to do instead of blindly following online cults.
Side note: I wrote this piece before the small reminder I mentioned in the previous section. Funny how things connect!
🌎Discover new cultures
We’re back for more flower festivals in Asia!
This time we’re starting with a festival I missed by only a few days last year only because I was quarantined as a positive COVID case when I landed in Thailand. Lucky me, right?
The Chiang Mai Flower Festival is a two-day event in early February during which a parade filled with flowers goes through the old town. While not, exactly about one type of flower, it appears local flowers like the yellow and white chrysanthemums as well as damask roses are the most common.
A festival known as Chaiyaphum Dok Krachiao Blooming Festival also happens every year in early June, to celebrate the colors of the Siam Tulip (known as Dok Krachiao in Thai). It doesn’t seem as popular as the other ones I’ve seen but that might be because it’s a 4-hour drive away from Bangkok. To me, that’s all the more reason to enjoy flowers without too many people around!
In the Philippines, the city of Baguio has an entire month dedicated to flowers with the Panagbenga Festival in February. It was created in 1995 to lift the spirits after the 1990 Luzon earthquake and is now a staple of the city. The name itself means “season of blooming” in the indigenous language Kankanaey.
India has loads of flower-related festivals too but I’ll just talk about three.
The first one I found was the Tulip Festival in Srinagar. Indeed, the government opened, this March 2023, a festival in what is the largest tulip garden in Asia, sprawling over 30 hectares with 1.5 million tulips!
In Chandigarh, a three-day festival known as the Rose Festival covers 30 acres of land filled with roses of all colors, from tea roses to blue, to green roses, just to name a few. As someone who loves roses, and whose last name means rose in Japanese (薔薇), that’s one I definitely would love to go to!
Finally, the Kaas Plateau, declared a biodiversity world heritage site by UNESCO for having more than 850 species of wildflowers and many different animals, also transforms into a carpet of splendid hues in September and October.
In Bhutan, the Rhododendron Festival in April celebrates the blooming of this flower in the country. This festival, happening in the Royal Botanical Park, presents 29 of the 46 species of Rhododendrons in Bhutan, along with some rare orchids.
To close this week off, let’s turn to one that gave me chills when I saw a picture of it: the buckwheat flower festival in Ha Giang, Vietnam.
This beauty, happening between September and December every year, celebrates the locals’ important food: buckwheat. What’s particularly interesting about these is the fact buckwheat flowers can change colors when in nature.
This means they can range from white to pink to dark red even!
Just wow.
There’s still a lot throughout Asia but let’s cross the Ocean next week to check out a few mesmerizing festivals in South America.
🗺️Repeat with me (Lesser-Known Languages)
Ch'ol - One of the closest relatives of the Classic Maya languageCh’ol is one of the largest Mayan languages spoken today in Mexico.
It is also closely related to Yucatec, one of the major Mayan languages of Mexico. Like most indigenous languages it is difficult to get a precise number of speakers. As a result, estimations range from 100,000 to 200,000 speakers mostly located in the southern states of Chiapas today.
Ch’ol has two main dialects: Ch’ol of Tumbalá and Ch’ol of Tila. While similar, they have slightly different phonologies and express the progressive and perfection aspects differently.
When it comes to its pronunciation, Ch’ol—like every Mayan language—doesn’t allow words to start with a vowel sound. Whenever a word does start with one, a glottal stop is added beforehand. This is the stop you make in your throat whenever you say “uh-oh.”
Ch’ol also adds a glottal stop between vowels within words to separate them properly. A neat feature if you ask me.
Talking about vowels, it doesn’t just have the commonly-known 5 (a, e, i, o, u) but also an additional one: ä, written as [ɨ] in the IPA. You can listen to it below:
Like the other Mayan language we saw last year and spoken in Guatemala, K’iche, Ch’ol is a Verb-Object-Subject (VOS) language that relies heavily on affixes to express itself.
Here are just a few, with the “-” serving as a way to indicate whether it’s a prefix, infix, or suffix1:
x- → indicates the feminine
aj- → indicates the masculine (rarely used outside of the possession). Can also be used for feminine too in some regions.
-j- → makes a verb passive:
mek → to hug
mejk → hugged
-ob / -o’ → indicates the plural (for the third person plural)
The plural can also be created using clitics:
=la (1st person plural inclusive)
=l(oj)oñ (1st person plural exclusive)
=la (2nd person plural)
Here are a few random sentences I’ve gathered:
Koltyiañetyi → Hello
Wokolix a wäläj → Thank you very much.
Chuqui mi quej a cha’len? → What is he going to do?
Baki sajmiyety? → Where are you going?
Añ ajñoñ tyi Teapajtyak → I have been in (some place near to) Teapa.
Chuquiyes a c’aba’? → What is his (your) name?
Ch’ap’ej jach com → I only want two.
If you wish to learn Ch’ol and don’t speak Spanish, the only resources I’ve found are this 539-page-long paper about its grammar and the Wikipedia page.
If you do speak Spanish, I can recommend this bilingual textbook (Spanish is after the Ch’ol version) and this old textbook.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much content out there. Please do share more in the comments if you know some!
Finally, I’d like to leave you with one interesting insight for the Indiana Jones among you: Some linguists consider the language of the Mayan hieroglyphs to be an ancient form of today’s Ch’ol.
Doesn’t that make you curious to discover the language even more?
Note that most prefixes and suffixes can be preceded or followed by other prefixes and suffixes
I agree about immersion learning. I think people give too much credit and don't realize that to be successful as an immersion learner, you also need to use dictionaries and decipher meanings for yourself. Instead of a textbook to explain grammar and give you vocab, and immersion learner does all of that themselves through dictionaries and other tools.