Hey yall, I hope you’ve been well!
Despite a pretty bad cough these past few days, I’ve been having tons of fun using Japanese a lot more.
I started reading a Japanese novel I really wanted to get to, spent 2 hours speaking Japanese to new people at a language exchange Saturday, and went back to playing Honkai Impact: Star Rail in Japanese too.
I’ve spent so much time with Japanese, I even had a few Japanese words slip into my Korean for the first time in quite a while. Whoopsie.
But I’m having tons of fun so that’s what’s most important, right?
Anyway, let’s dive right in!
🗣️Talk languages
I recently wrote about living with social anxiety as an advanced language learner and how my passion now also increased my anxiety often.
But, when I listened to the most recent podcast episode from the Huberman Lab about enhancing performance and learning through a growth mindset, I finally understood what was happening.
I think my anxiety related to my languages actually comes from an acquired fixed mindset.
As Andrew Huberman explained, it’s quite common to develop a fixed mindset in areas where we succeed too. And when that “success” becomes part of our identity, we can feel pressured to live up to the expectations that come with it.
When I wasn’t a polyglot, me successfully learning a new language was a surprise. Now, it often feels as if it’s expected. And as if failing meant I was a fraud.
Now that I’ve realized this, I’m going to work on reframing this mindset and make it a growth one once again!
Does this make sense to you? Have you had a similar realization and, if yes, how did you get over it? Help me by sharing!
✍️Learn from my experiences
If you’ve followed me for the past few months, you already know I took the Test Of Proficiency In Korean (TOPIK) about a week ago and have been burned out since I took it on July 9th.
The test-taking experience was the worst I’ve had among the 7 other official language exams I’ve taken in my life (3 in English and 4 in Japanese). I’m happy I prepared for it but I’d have gladly skipped the exam itself had I know how much it’d get on my nerves.
And so, I figured I’d share my experience and the little things absolutely indispensable to know for anybody who wants to take it one day (in Korea at least).
Little things such as not having the right to go out during the break or the official website and actual text day telling two opposite yet crucial information.
Here’s the whole piece about it but head on to the section “My experience on the day of the exam” for these crunchy details.
🌎Discover new cultures
Negative mythological creatures in South East Asia
This week, we’re kicking things off with one belief that doesn’t make much sense to me: the Orang Minyak in Malaysia.
This creature is supposed to be coated with shiny black grease and to abduct young women by night. Apparently, it’s capable of climbing walls but also evades capture due to its slippery coating. My guess would be that you can’t climb walls if you’re slippery but what do I know 🤔
When it comes to scary creatures though, Thailand seems to be the place to go, with countless types of ghosts such as the Phi Tai Hong, Krahang, or the famous Mae Nak.
But what really caught my eye—not for good reasons as you’ll see—is the Krasue, a female spirit with entrails hanging straight from the head. My guess is, like me, you’re not imagining properly in your head so I invite you to type the name on Google to see images if you’re not of a faint heart.
This cursed spirit is always hungry for blood and raw flesh, mostly hunting innocent animals and pregnant women. Phew, chilling.
Another mythological creature is the Phi Pop. A sort of hybrid between zombie and vampire. Do I need to say more about this?
Finally, Bakunawa is a gigantic serpent-like dragon from Filipino folklore that is believed to have eaten seven moons and created eclipses. This creature represents chaos, destruction, and the power of nature’s uncontrollable forces.
The Bakunawa legend changes from region to region but it is always revered and feared. On this point, Bakunawa is similar to other dragons in Asian folklore.
🗺️Repeat with me
Nanngu / Engdewu - A language with two exotic ways to count
This week, we’re turning to a tiny language spoken by 200 people in three villages on Santa Cruz Island. Strangely enough, while it is the least common of the Reefs – Santa Cruz language family (the largest being Aïwoo, spoken by about 8,000 people), it is also the one with the most information easily available online, thanks to a 596-page paper called A Grammar of Engdewu, An Oceanic Language. Despite this extensive paper, little has been written about the language online so here I am. 🙃
Nanngu, also called Engdewu, has some typical features of Oceanic languages such as the use of reduplication and the presence of inclusive and exclusive pronouns.
But it also has some peculiar ones too. The one that really stuck out to me was its use of what’s called “subtractive forms” for the numbers 7, 8, and 9:
Here, 7 is actually “ten minus three”, 8 is “ten minus two” and 9 is “ten minus one”.1
They also have another way to count that isn’t really used anymore but for which the natives speak proudly of: a base-2 way to count by multiplying by a number from 1 to 5: wi-te (2 x 1), wi-lii (2 x 2), wi-tüü (2 x 3), wi-pwoo (2 x 4), and wi-möp[u] (2 x 5 ). I’m quite curious as to how they handle non-multiples of 2 but couldn’t find anything regarding this.
Apart from this, the language follows an SVO structure and uses affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to indicate different meanings, from possession to tense and even plurality. Verbs are surrounded by markers to indicate the tense, aspect, mood, or all three, to indicate the tense.
Here are just a few sentences in the language:
Tü-vö-yö-ü leta.
→ I will write letters. (Where yö is the verb “to write”)Pita vö-nibi nöta.
→ Peter killed the fish (Peter [Past]-kill fish)Lâknu ka i-pwö.
→ The water is cold. (where pwö is the verb “to be cold”)Ee, i-mo-lü
→ Yes, I met him. (where mo is the verb “to see, to meet”)ni=m[u] ka
→ Hello (to one person, literally “you [singular] there”)ni=mwe öki
→ Hello (to a group of people, literally “you [plural] there”)
What a curious language this is! While I wouldn’t advise learning this language without going to the island, I think every grammar nerd like me would really enjoy a swift look at the Grammar paper I referred to for writing this!
Awi kä ilöpi!
(Thank you!)
Thanks for reading!
Mathias,
An average polyglot
The hyphen in the image is not a minus, it’s a way to link different particles together.
Learning about fixed vs. growth mindsets was so transformational for me! I'm very much a fixed mindset person by default, so it's been a process learning how to push myself towards growth when I don't succeed right off the bat.