TL;DR — Talk. Learn. Discover. Repeat. #18
Hey yall, I hope you’ve been well!
I’ve been keeping busy as much as possible with preparation for the TOPIK which is happening in a week and a half. I’m so not ready but, well, I guess we’ll see my real level at least!
I joined a language exchange party on Saturday and got to practice Japanese and Korean with a bunch of people. I had wanted to do it for a long time but never found the energy to do it. Glad I did. It was a lot of fun and I plan on doing it again!
Anyway, let’s dive right in!
🗣️Talk languages
I’ve been fascinated by AI and more specifically ChatGPT ever since it launched late last year. I’ve also used it extensively to learn and practice my languages but always disliked its lack of “new” content.
So I gave up last week and got the paid version to get access to GPT 4 and, most importantly, plugins to link it to the web.
Since then, I’ve used it to study for the TOPIK exam by getting it to look for example questions and inspire itself from those to create more.
Even better, I asked it to look for recent news articles about certain topics (for example, global warming) in Korean and then used that article as reading comprehension practice first before asking ChatGPT to question me about it and even debate. Tonight, I’m planning on making it create a new TOPIK question based on a random news article I’ll send it. I wonder how that’ll go. 😊
If you’re curious about using ChatGPT to learn languages, it’s on my to-do list but, until then, I think this recent and very detailed piece by Lou about using it for intermediate learners will have you busy for some time!
✍️Learn from my experiences
I’ve been keeping a diary on and off for the past 5 years. While most of it has been written in English (and recently in my native French), my diary is an integral part of how I learn languages.
I’ve given and seen the advice of writing in a diary shared countless times but it often lacks explanations. After all, what should we write about as language learners? How can we be sure our sentences are correct? And why is it important to do so?
Well, this week I answered all these questions in The Complete Guide to Using a Diary to Learn Languages Better.
In short, I talk about how to master the present, past, and future while learning the vocabulary you need and share two resources I’ve heavily relied upon for the past decade or so.
Do you use a diary to learn too? Do you use it differently from me? Let me know!
🌎Discover new cultures
As a French-born, most of the mythological creatures found in Europe felt… well-known. Obvious even. Until I looked up north to find many “new” ones.
The Selkies were the first I found. These mythological seal-looking beings capable of turning into real humans by shedding their skin can be found in Scottish and Irish mythology. This separates them from “traditional” mermaids who transform their seal tail into legs.
Looking even further north, Scandinavian folklore has what they call Rå, a spirit existing to serve as the keeper of a certain location. They have different names depending on the place:
Hulder/Huldra: a seductive forest creature who watched over humans’ charcoal while they rested
Sjörå/Sjöfru: a seductive creature protecting lakes and giving good fishing luck or saving good people from drowning. It also lures unfaithful and unkind men to drown them.
Bergsrå: a creature living in the mountains
On the Southern side of the continent, there are also many positive creatures in Greek mythology, most of which are nymphs.
One I hadn’t heard of, however, was the Naiad, a female spirit overseeing all types of bodies of fresh water. Different from river gods, the Naiad inhabited still waters like ponds or wells.
Comparing mythological creatures in Europe with Asia, it was interesting to notice how much more “human-like” the ones in Europe are. Of course, there are also unicorns, centaurs, or even griffins but still.
Any idea why?
🗺️Repeat with me
Kalaallisut - A beautiful language with a 153-letter long word
I highly hesitated to research this language as it’s actually somewhat related to Alutiiq about which I delve into this month’s deep dive. I thought it’d be better to get something more “different” but I still had a swift look nonetheless.
And wow is it different!
So let me introduce Kalaallisut, or as some may know it, Greenlandic. Yes. Kalaallisut is actually the official language of Greenland, with about 50,000 speakers. Like Alutiiq, it is an Eskimo-Aleut language.
Kalaallisut is a polysynthetic language, which means that words are often composed of a base element plus one or more affixes. These affixes can indicate things like tense, mood, person, number, and case. That’s how the longest word in Greenlandic is a whopping 153 letters long:
Nalunaarasuartaatee-ranngualioqatigiiffissua-lioriataallaqqissupiloru-jussuanngortartuinnaka-sinngortinniamisaalinn-guatsiaraluallaqqooqiga-minngamiaasiinngooq.1
It didn’t have a writing system until 1840 when the missionary Samuel Kleinschmidt wrote the language for the first time. Today’s written system, however, was set only 51 years ago, in 1972.
When spoken, some northeastern dialects only use 3 vowel sounds instead of 4. The schwa sound (/ә/) turns into an /i/ whenever it is followed by a consonant and an /a/ when followed by another vowel.
Sentence structure in Kalaallisut follows an ergative-absolutive pattern. In such a language, the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are treated the same way, while the subject of a transitive verb is treated differently.2
While I did give an extreme example above, words usually don’t go over 20-ish letters apparently. Here are a few simple sentences to prove it:
Mathiasimik ateqarpunga. → My name is Mathias
Piareerpugut → We are ready.
Eqqaamassavaannga → They will remember me.
Piitaq napparsimammat pulaarparput → We’re visiting Peter because he is sick.
From what I’ve seen Kalaallisut is a beauty but it’s also a beast in its own category with tons of cases, suffixes, and—worse—only few resources teaching it online. Despite being the sole official language of Greenland since 2009, there’s only one YouTube channel (this one) teaching a bit of Greenlandic so getting a good ear for the sounds of this language is quite hard.
As for other types of resources, the Unilang forum page is quite well explained and the LearnGreenlandic website has quite a bit available (although you do need to create a free account to access it). This Memrise deck does seem to cover quite a lot too.
Considering Greenland’s official language was Danish until recently, however, I reckon there might be more for Danish speakers!
Qujan! Aluu! (Thank you! Have a nice day!)
Thanks for reading!
Mathias,
An average polyglot
It apparently means something like “There were reports that they apparently – God knows for how many times – once again had considered whatever I, my poor condition despite, still could be considered to be quite adept and resourceful as an initiator to put a consortium together for the establishment of a range of small radio stations.”