Benny Lewis's Blog, page 65
January 12, 2018
Old English Writing: A History of the Old English Alphabet
Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc
uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes
eci dryctin or astelidæ
Those are the first few lines of Cædmon's Hymn, a 7th-Century poem generally considered to be the oldest surviving work of English literature. Any idea what it means?
Me neither. Let's look at the modern translation:
Now shall we praise the Warden of Heaven-Kingdom
the might of the Measurer and his purpose
work of the Wulder-Father as he of wonders
Eternal Lord the beginning created
Separated by more than a millennium, these two texts are barely recognisable as the "same" language. Only two words appear unchanged: he and his. A few other connections shine faintly through, like hefaen for heaven, fadur for father, and uerc for work, but I can’t glean much else... and even in the modern version, I still have no idea what a "Wulder-father" is.
There's no doubt about it: Old and Modern English might as well be two completely different languages. Cædmon's Hymn is utterly incomprehensible to the modern English reader.
(See here for an audio version of the original hymn.)
“Old English” is a broad topic. For this article I'll focus on the history of Old English writing. How was Old English written? How did it change as we shifted into middle and more modern dialects? Why doesn't "count" rhyme with the first syllable of "country"? And why do we continue to torture ESL students with bizarrities like the sentence "a rough coughing thoughtful ploughman from Scarborough bought tough dough in Slough"?
Below, I'll explore all these questions, and also tell you why you're probably pronouncing the word "ye" wrong.
But first, a short history lesson about Old English:
A Brief History of "Englisc"
English is a Germanic language, meaning its closest living relatives are Dutch, Frisian, and of course German. The Germanic family, however, is just one branch of the wider Indo-European language family. Other Indo-European branches include Slavic, Italic, and Celtic.
English originated in the area now called England (duh), but it wasn’t the first language to get here. Before English came along, most people in the British Isles spoke Celtic languages, a family whose modern descendants include Irish and Welsh.
Throughout the first millennium AD, the Celtic-speakers of Britain were slowly displaced by waves of immigration and invasion from the European mainland. Groups like the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and Frisians sailed to and settled in Britain, bringing their Germanic languages with them.
For obvious geographical reasons, these invaders mainly came from the southeast. That's why the few Celtic languages that remain in the British Isles today (Cornish, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic) are only found in the archipelago’s northern and western extremities. Meanwhile, the various Germanic dialects slowly merged into a new language that its speakers called Englisc.
It was roundabout this time that Cædmon (his name is pronounced roughly like "CAD-mon") composed his hymn.
Old English Runes - found in Ruins
"Hold on a minute", I hear someone say. "Apart from the weird "æ", that hymn is written using modern English letters. I thought the Old English alphabet used cool runic characters, kind of like what the dwarves use in Lord of the Rings?"
You're right. (Where do you think Tolkien got the idea from?)
You’re reading this article in the Latin alphabet, but English wasn't always written like this. Before the current writing system was introduced to Britain by Christian missionaries in the 9th and 10th centuries, English was primarily written with Anglo-Saxon runes.
The Old English Alphabet
The Old English alphabet looked like this:
This alphabet is also sometimes called the futhorc, from the pronunciation of its first six letters.
Some experts think that the futhorc was brought to the British Isles by immigrants from Frisia (the northern Netherlands). Another theory is that they came here from Scandinavia, then were taken to Frisia in the other direction.
What we know for sure is that the first runic inscriptions started showing up in Britain around the 5th century A.D.. The oldest known piece of written English is the Undley Bracteate, a gold medallion with a runic inscription that reads "this she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman." Another example is the Franks Casket, a whalebone chest from the north of England that’s been dated to the 8th century:
By the 11th century, the futhorc resembled one of the Tolkien novels that it inspired: lots of dead characters. But while most runes fell into disuse, a few survived and were mixed in with the newer writing system.
A “Thorny Problem” with Old English Runes
The following is an extract from the poem The Battle of Maldon, thought to be written shortly after the titular battle of 991 AD:
Brimmanna boda, abeod eft ongean,
sege þinum leodum miccle laþre spell,
þæt her stynt unforcuð eorl mid his werode,
þe wile gealgean eþel þysne
What are those funny "þ" and "ð" characters?
The former, called thorn, is a rune that stayed in use even after most other runes had been forgotten. The latter, called eth, is a modification of the Latin letter d. Both are pronounced like the modern "th" sound(s). So þæt means "that", þe means "the", and I have no idea what unforcuð means, but I imagine it was pronounced something like “un-for-kuth”.
(You can read a modern translation of The Battle of Maldon here.)
The rune ƿ ("wynn") also survived longer than most, used to represent the sound that we now write as "w". Eventually ƿ was replaced with "uu", which was then simplified to "w", which explains why “w” is called “double-u”.
If you speak a modern Latin language like Spanish, you’ll know that they generally don’t use “w”, except in foreign words and names like Washington. This is because “w” didn’t exist in the Latin alphabet; it’s a more recent innovation from English and other northern European languages.
Still, The Battle of Maldon is not much easier to understand than Caedmon’s Hymn.
Thanks to Runes, You're Saying "Ye" Wrong
Runes that have filtered down into “Latin” English can mean that even today we pronounce some English words incorrectly.
There's a trope in the English-speaking world of writing "ye olde [something]" when you want the name of that something to sound old-timey or Medieval. For example, you might see a pub called "Ye Olde Pubbe”.
There are two problems with this. First of all, the world olde is (ironically) a modern invention. "Old" was never written like that in historical English.
Secondly, when modern speakers read the "ye" of “ye olde”, they usually pronounce it like it's written, with a "y" sound. This isn’t how Old English speakers would have said it! If you said “ye” like this to an 11th-Century Englishman, they’d understand it as a plural form of you; this sense lives on in archaic expressions like "hear ye".
The misconception stems from the fact that the word “the” was once written as “þe”, using the "thorn" rune. A handwritten “þ” sometimes looked like a “y”. More importantly, Medieval printing presses didn’t have a “þ” character, so they substituted in “y” instead. So when they printed ye, they were actually writing the.
So, the correct way to pronounce “ye olde pubbe” is in fact simply “the old pub”.
How Old English was Changed Forever by Norman Nobles
Have you noticed how many words English has?
Why do comprehend, respire and azure need to exist when we already have understand, breathe, and blue?
To answer this question, we must go all the way back to the year 1066. As every Brit learns in school, that was the year when William of Normandy, claiming to be the rightful king of England (it was a family matter) sailed across the English Channel, killed his rival Harold in battle, and installed himself on the throne.
With the Normans in charge of England, their dialect of French became the language of nobility. To this day, the British parliament still uses Norman French for certain official purposes.
Meanwhile, the plebeians and riff-raff continued to speak Englisc. The two languages merged over time, but we’re still living with the consequences: fancy words like comprehend and respire have their roots in Latin (via Norman French), while their more common synonyms like understand and breathe are the "original" English words, Germanic in origin.
(Fun fact: despite the French on their tongues, the Normans were actually Vikings who had settled in France; the name "Norman" comes from "North-man". For some reason they lost their original language and picked up one of the local dialects instead, but the more interesting point is that the modern British royal family are directly descended from the same Norman nobles who conquered England in 1066. You heard it right: Queen Elizabeth II is a Viking.)
As well as introducing new vocabulary, the Normans also changed the spelling of some words. For example, the Old English hwaer, hwil and hwaenne became where, when and while, even though the “hw-” spelling more accurately reflected the pronunciation.
Some English speakers, particularly in parts of the U.S., still pronounce words like where with an “h” sound at the beginning - listen to how Johnny Cash says the word “white” at about 0:14 in The Man Comes Around. It’s been nearly 1,000 years, and we still haven’t recovered from this weird spelling change.
And as anyone remotely literate in English knows, when it comes to weird spelling, “white” is just the tip of the iceberg.
From Old English to Middle English
Linguists generally mark the Norman Conquest as the dividing line between Old and Middle English. Within a few centuries, English was finally starting to resemble the language we speak today:
A monk ther was, a fair for the maistrye
An out-rydere, that lovede venerye;
A manly man, to been an abbot able.
Ful many a deyntee hors hadde he in stable
That’s from from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, probably the most famous work of pre-Shakespearean English literature, and a well-known example of (Late) Middle English.
And it’s readable! The spelling is weird, and I don't know what venerye or “maistrye” are, but for the most part I can understand Chaucer without having to search Google for a modern translation.
The Canterbury Tales were written at the tail-end of the 14th Century, a time when English spelling varied widely from place to place. Why wouldn’t it? When you rarely communicate with people who live far away, and you pronounce things differently from them anyway, there’s not much incentive for everybody to try and spell things the same way. All that started to change, however, in the late 15th Century, thanks to an important new invention: the printing press.
As it became easier to put English to paper and to disseminate it widely, local variations in spelling were slowly ironed out. But who got to decide which spelling was "correct"? The answer: no-one. Publishers in different parts of the country used spellings that reflected their local pronunciations and biases. Some spellings caught on nationally, others didn’t, and the emerging "standard" system of English spelling picked up words from all over the place and became full of inconsistencies.
These inconsistencies persist to this day, and have only got worse as pronunciation has changed further. You can see this, for example, in the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare rhymed “sword” with “word”, to give just one example - it made sense at the time, but since then the pronunciations have split. Even then, we haven’t bothered to update the spelling, so “sword” and “word” still look like they should rhyme.
(Some troupes now put on productions of Shakespeare using the original Elizabethan pronunciation, a delight for language nerds like myself.)
There was also a fad in some parts for using spellings that reflected not a word’s pronunciation but its etymology. So for example, “debt” gained its silent “b”, reflecting its origins in the Latin debitum.
Similarly, the Middle English word “iland” gained a silent “s” in order to make it closer to the French isle (and the Latin insula). This was actually a mistake: iland was a Germanic word, and its resemblance to French and Latin is just a coincidence. 500 years later, the misconception remains uncorrected.
Even more unfortunately for modern learners of English, the advent of the printing press happened at a time when English pronunciation was changing rapidly. Modern linguists call it the Great Vowel Shift. Over a period of a few hundred years, the pronunciations of most English vowels changed dramatically, at the exact same time that their spellings were becoming set in stone.
And so in the 21st century, English spelling makes so little sense that even native speakers can struggle.
Why don’t “stove”, “love” and “move” rhyme with each other?
Why is “trollies” the plural of “trolley”, but the plural of “monkey” isn’t “monkies”?
Why is it “i before e, except after c"... and except in science, receive, species, sufficient, vein, feisty, foreign, or ceiling?
Hell, we don’t even write our language's name in a way that makes sense. Shouldn’t it be “Inglish”?
I wonder what the total economic cost is of all this madness? How much time and energy are wasted on schooling children, reprinting documents with errors, and pedantically correcting people who write "sneak peak" or "wrecking havoc"?
It shouldn't have to be like this. Is there any way out of this mess? We’ll see.
English Writing: A Standard Way of Spelling?
There have been many attempts to reform English spelling, and some have even been successful: when Noah Webster published his dictionaries in the 19th Century, he made several proposals for new spellings. Some, like the idea to drop the “k” from “publick” and "musick", caught on. Others, like the suggestion to remove the "u" from "colour" and "humour", only gained traction on one side of the Atlantic. Many of his other proposals didn’t catch on at all, and English remains full of oddities.
Reform isn’t impossible. The German-speaking countries managed to do it in the 1990s, slightly simplifying the spelling of some German words and making the new orthography compulsory in government documents and schools. More recently, the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) passed a similar reform, which is still being implemented in Portuguese-speaking countries today.
In the English-speaking world, however, it’s unlikely that we’ll muster the will to change our spelling any time soon. One problem is that we don’t have an official body like the CPLP that has any influence over the language. Another problem is that there are there are just too many English speakers, spread across too many countries, with too many variations in pronunciation. No-one would ever agree on what the “correct” new spellings should be.
But the biggest barrier of all is that most people don’t care. In fact, many native English speakers are proud of the difficulty of English spelling; it’s seen as an intellectual achievement to master it all. And of course, people who have already learned all the current spellings don’t want to go through the bother of learning them all again.
For now, English spelling is one of those things like the QWERTY keyboard, or the fact that different countries drive on different sides of the road. It’s not ideal, and if we could start over we’d probably do things differently, but it’s just not worth the effort to fix. There are more important problems to worry about.
So it seems that for now, we’re stuck with that “rough coughing thoughtful ploughman”. And it’s been a hell of a journey to get here.
I’m curious: What prompted your interest in learning about Old English? Let me know in the comments.
The post Old English Writing: A History of the Old English Alphabet appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
January 8, 2018
French Exercises Online: 12+ Exercises to Improve Your French Language Skills
There are so many, that it can be difficult to know where to start.
How can you tell the wheat from the chaff?
I’ve searched the web far and wide to find over 10 of the best French exercises to help you improve your French language skills. I made sure to dig up a variety of exercises to help you improve in the four major skill areas of the language: reading, writing, speaking and listening.
A quick note before we get started: if you’d prefer to simply find online French resources that don’t involve exercises or quizzes, check out our articles on French reading and French listening resources.
And now, let’s jump in! Give some (or all!) of the following French exercises a try, and be sure to incorporate your favourites into your regular study routine.
1. Lingolia: French Grammar Exercises
Lingolia’s French site has a wealth of grammar explanations and exercises for nearly all aspects of the French language.
Click any section under the Grammar menu on the left side of the page, then select a subsection to see a nice, clear description of that grammar rule, with examples. Finally, try the exercises at the bottom of the page. You can type your answers onto the page and check your score at the end. This website is best for intermediate speakers, because you need to have a decent foundation in French vocabulary.
2. FrenchPod101: Boost Your French Listening Skills
FrenchPod101, by Innovative Language, has it all. Innovative Language is my go-to resource anytime I want to learn or improve a language. It’s perfect for language learners at any skill level.
FrenchPod101 is organised into seasons from absolute beginner to advanced. Each lesson begins with a recorded dialogue, and then two teachers discuss the vocabulary and grammar presented in the dialogue. When you’ve listened to the lesson, you can play back the dialogue a few more times and record yourself saying the lines to compare yourself with the original. Each lesson also comes with a worksheet and multiple choice test to help you remember what you’ve learned. It’s a veritable buffet of French exercies.
3. French-Resources.org: French Speaking, Reading, Listening and Writing
French-Resources.org is an all-encompassing French language website. You can practise reading, speaking, listening, writing and grammar. The audio recordings and written excerpts are of very high quality.
Click on one of the menu items across the top of the screen, then select an exercise to complete. The one downside of this site is that you can’t type your answers on the screen or get the exercises graded unless you sign up with your email address. You can sign up, or just get out a pen and paper (remember pens and paper??) and complete the exercises that way.
4. Bonjour de France: French Exercises for Exam Prep
Bonjour de France has lessons for all the main areas of French that you’d expect (reading, writing and so on), plus a bunch of more specialised exercises, like idiomatic expressions and study materials for the DELF exam. Each lesson comes with a multiple choice test at the end.
I really like this site because it sorts the lessons by both category and skill level. The only downside is that the instructions for all the exercises, even A1, are written only in French. The exercises are pretty easy to figure out without reading the instructions, but you can paste the instructions into Google Translate to get the gist if you need it.
5. Duolingo French App: Learn French on Your Smartphone
Duolingo gets you to translate different phrases between French and English – it’s really great for learning to read and write in French.
French reading takes a bit more practice to master than, say, Spanish, because of all the silent letters. So the more exposure you get to written French, the better. Use Duolingo as a supplement to some of the other exercises in this list for a well-balanced study routine.
Take a look at the Fi3M review of Duolingo for more info.
6. Simple-French: Beginner and Intermediate French Exercises
Simple-French is a comprehensive website of lessons for beginner and intermediate French learners. Each lesson covers a typical situation you might face in a French-speaking country, and includes a recorded dialogue with transcript, lesson notes on vocab, grammar and pronunciation (including individual recordings of a native speaker pronouncing key vocab), and finally an exercise to test your knowledge.
If you’re a little short on time, try out the “5 minutes of French” section for a series of mini French exercises. And if you’re really short on time, skip to “100 French sentences” for a condensed list of 100 of the most common French phrases you might need to say or understand when travelling in a French-speaking country.
7. BBC French Online: French Video Lessons, Games and More
BBC isn’t just for news and TV. There’s a whole French language section on their website filled with lessons and exercises for French language learners.
Click one of the links in the section “BBC free lessons and courses online” for a good selection of French video lessons and games, with exercises to reinforce the material.
8. edHelper French Reading Exercises
edHelper’s French site has a smallish collection of reading comprehension exercises, but every one of them is worthwhile. Most of them involve summarising a written passage or arranging a set of sentences in the correct logical order - much more useful than your average true-or-false quiz. You can do the exercises without subscribing, but you must subscribe in order to see the answer key.
9. MOddou FLE: Fun French Quizzes
MOddou FLE lets you play a variety of fun games and quizzes to test your French listening comprehension. The exercises available include matching games, multiple choice tests, fill-in-the-blanks and others.
Click “Tags” on the right-hand side to check out the games and exercises for other categories, such as “compréhension écrite” (reading comprehension), “français des affaires” (business French), and more.
10. Lawless French Writing Exercises
Lawless French came up with a pretty neat idea: French quizzes where your answers don’t have to be perfect to get points.
In these quizzes, you translate phrases into French and then grade yourself on how well you did compared to the actual translation. The points are on a scale from 0 to 5, with 5 being perfect and 0 being “horribly wrong”. I’ve never been a fan of French writing exercises that mark your entire answer wrong if you missed one little accent or committed a minor typo. So these exercises are a pretty good compromise.
In addition to these unique writing exercises, you can access all of the other Lawless French lessons and exercises from the menu on the right side of the page. They’re organised by skill level and topic.
11. MosaLingua French: Study French with Audio Flashcards
MosaLingua French, for iOS and Android, is a fun, easy-to-use app that lets you use flashcards to study thousands of French words and phrases. The best part is that you don’t have to decide which cards to study and when: MosaLingua’s spaced repetition algorithm will figure that out for you. You just have to open the app each day and practise the material that is due.
Be sure to check out the Fi3M review of MosaLingua for more info.
12. Quiz Tree: French Vocab Quizzes
The Quiz Tree has a nice set of simple multiple choice quizzes to test your knowledge of tons of French vocabulary. The quizzes are arranged by topic, and the vocab covers a pretty wide range of topics.
13. IE Languages French Listening and Repetition Exercises
These French listening exercises from IE Languages are trickier than you’d think. It’s pretty straightforward: just listen to the audio recordings and click on the words you hear. But French has quite a few sounds that English does not, so you have to listen well to select the right words.
When you’re finished the exercise, you can grade your answers at the bottom of the page. Then you can click to move on to the repetition exercise, which contains many audio recordings for you to listen and repeat, to help you distinguish the many different sounds of French.
Your Turn: What are Your Favourite French Exercises Online?
Do you do online exercises to help improve your French? Have you used any of the above, or found some others? I’d like to hear about it. Tell me in the comments!
The post French Exercises Online: 12+ Exercises to Improve Your French Language Skills appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
January 5, 2018
30 Ways to Start a German Conversation
The next question is, how do you start a German conversation?
If you studied language while at school, chances are that your learning consisted of reading page after page from a textbook. While you may have eventually improved your reading skills in whichever language you were studying, most of what you learned doesn’t really transfer very well to real life.
Do you go around asking people how old they are and telling everyone your trousers are blue in your native tongue? Of course not! You want to ask people how they’re feeling, what their interests are. You want to learn about them and their culture. You want to communicate.
I’ve written before about techniques you can use to build your confidence and start a conversation. So for this article, I’ll just dive straight in with sharing the conversation starters you can use.
Let’s dig in!
German Conversation Starters: Breaking the Ice
Need some help starting a conversation in German? I’ve compiled a list of possible scenarios to help you break the ice when striking up a German conversation with a stranger.
The most important thing to remember when starting a conversation is to say something. Once the words start flowing, you never know where you’ll end up.
On the Street
“Entschuldigung, wie spät ist es?” (“Excuse me, what time is it?”)
“Wo ist eine Bank?” (Where’s a bank?”)
“Wie weit ist es?” (“How far is it?”)
Können Sie es mir (auf der Karte) zeigen?” (“Can you show me (on the map)?”)
At a Train Station
“Ist dieser Platz frei?” (“Is this seat free?”)
“Hält dieser Zug in….?” (“Does this train stop at…?”)
“Wie lange dauert die Fahrt?” (“How long does the trip take?”)
“Welcher Bahnhof ist das?” (“Which station is this?”)
In a Restaurant
“Gibt es noch etwas zu essen?” (“Are you still serving food?”)
“Entschuldigung, kann ich die Karte sehen?” (Excuse me, can I please see the menu?”)
“Was empfehlen Sie?” (“What would you recommend?”)
“Haben Sie vegetarisches Essen?” (“Do you have vegetarian food?”)
“Wie groß sind die Portionen?” (“How big are the portions?”)
“Kriege ich das auch ohne Tomaten?” (“Can I get that without tomato?”)
“Ich bin allergisch gegen Nüsse.” (“I’m allergic to nuts.”)
“Gibt’s auch Nachtisch?” (“Do you have dessert too?”)
“Das hat hervorragend geschmeckt!” (“That was delicious!”)
“Können Sie das einpacken?” (“Can you wrap that up to go?”)
German Conversation: Asking After Interests
Once you’ve started a conversation, how can you keep it going?
A good way of doing this is to ask your conversation partner about their interests. You could ask:
Hast du eine deutsche Lieblingsband? (“Do you have a favourite German band?”)
Spielst du ein Instrument (“Do you play an instrument”)
Welche Sportarten magst du? (“Which type of sports do you like?”)
Was ist dein Lieblingsessen? (“What’s your favourite food?”)
German Conversation on a Night Out
I’m a happily married man, but I still love to get out and meet new people.
When you’re out on the town, here are some German phrases you can use to start a conversation.
“Was gibt’s vom Fass?” (“What’s on tap?”)
“Dieses Kleid steht dir sehr gut!” (“That dress looks good on you!”)
“Ich gebe Ihnen/dir einen aus.” (“I’ll buy you a drink”)
“Was möchten Sie/du?” (“What would you like?”)
“Diese Runde geht auf mich.” (“It’s my round.”)
“Kannst du Billard spielen?” (“Do you know how to play pool/billiards?”)
“Ich hätte gern Orangensaft, bitte.” (“I’ll have an orange juice, please.)
“Können Sie Klubs empfehlen?” (“Can you recommend clubs?”)
“Versuchst du mich anzumachen?” (“Are you trying to pick me up/hit on me?”)
German Conversation Starters: What Are Your Favourites?
How do you practise your conversational German? What are some of your favourite German conversation starters? Let me know in the comments.
The post 30 Ways to Start a German Conversation appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
December 29, 2017
Teach Me German: A Step-by-Step Guide to Your First Month Learning German
With its absurdly long words and unusual grammar structure, learning German can seem a daunting task.
I disagree. I believe German is a good choice for a foreign language for many reasons. Here are a couple:
First, unlike English, German has a standardised form, which is taught in schools across Switzerland, Austria and Germany. This reform, known as Neue deutsche Rechtschreibung was put in place in order to make the spelling of words more uniform and predictable. As such the German language has rules for spelling that are far more rigid than those in English.
Second, German spelling is directly related to pronunciation. So, once you learn the standard pronunciation rules, you’ll be able to read any word correctly in German. As any native speaker (and especially student) of English can tell you, this is certainly not the case in English.
The question is – how are you going to tackle German? Especially if you want to teach yourself German.
Let’s take a look at what you should do in the first hour, first day, first week and first month of learning German.
Teach Me German: Equipment and Time
Before you begin, you will need the following:
Notepad
Pen
Computer or tablet with Internet connection
Optional extras:
German phrasebook
$10 – $20 per week to spend on language teachers
To follow this guide, you’ll need to set aside around four hours each weekend (I recommend scheduling out Saturday mornings), plus around 45 minutes per day on weekdays. It doesn’t have to be one large chunk of time, though. You can spread those 45 minutes throughout the day in whatever way works best for you.
I also suggest you start at the weekend to give yourself a “first day” boost.
All set? Excellent. Let’s take a look at how you’ll spend the first hour of your German language quest.
Teach Me German: The First Hour
Your first step in learning German is to create a personalised German phrasebook.
Why?
I believe if you focus on learning German vocabulary that’s relevant to you and your life, you’ll have greater success with the language, mainly because you’ll be more motivated to learn when you have more opportunities to use the words that you learn. And words relevant to yourself are definitely words you’ll be using often.
Pick a notebook, grab a pen and write “My German Phrasebook” on the cover.
In this notebook, you’re going to jot down all the German phrases that you need to know to talk about yourself, such as why you’re learning German, where you live, the work you do, and your goals for the future.
You’ll find this far more useful than buying a German phrasebook. Phrasebooks feature lots of situations that you’ll never encounter in your everyday life. So, you’re going to create a phrasebook that’s perfectly tailored to you.
Let’s get that first page filled!
To do this, head to the Omniglot.com German phrases page and find the phrases you’d use when greeting someone for the first time. You’ll be looking for the German translations for the following:
Hello
My name is…
What is your name?
Nice to meet you
Goodbye
Write each word and phrase down, along with its English translation. You can click on the phrase in Omniglot to hear its pronunciation by a German speaker. Repeat what is said, until you’ve got the accent down to a “t”.
Teach Me German: The First Day
That’s the first hour done! What should you do with the rest of the day?
I recommend that you continue using Omniglot to fill up at least two pages of your notebook with German phrases and questions that you would use in conversation with a native speaker.
Need a bit of inspiration? Imagine a scenario where you’re meeting a native a speaker of your own language. Say you’re at a party where you only know the host. They’re busy entertaining and you don’t fancy playing the wallflower for the rest of the night. So, you strike up a conversation with a friendly stranger. What questions and answers would you say and give that are relevant to both you and your situation? Keep this in mind as you write down your phrases.
Here are some examples I’d use:
What’s your name?
Where do you live?
I’m from [country or city of origin]
What do you do?
I’m a [job title]
What are your hobbies?
In my free time, I like to…
If your job title and hobbies aren’t listed on Omniglot, you can always use Google Translate to translate them. I know I’d need help with this. Language hacker, author and professional speaker don’t often make it into conventional phrasebooks.
Don’t worry about having perfect grammar with the phrases you collect. When you’re in real conversations, so long as you get your point across, all will be well. My experience with native German speakers is that they’re usually happy to help you correct your mistakes.
Also, resist the temptation to collect every single phrase that you come across. Focus on those that are relevant to you – the ones that you are more likely to use in spoken situations.
Once you’ve got all your phrases and translations written down, say them out loud. Try to do this with a German accent. Exaggerate that accent! You will feel silly, and that’s okay. Good pronunciation is a healthy habit that will serve you well.
Teach Me German: Week 1
Your first day is over. Good work! What’s next for the rest of this week?
Here’s the deal:
By the end of week one, you’re going to be having your first conversation with a native German speaker. Yes, it’s a scary thought. But bear with me. It will be worth it, I promise.
Head over to italki, sign up for an account, and find a native German speaker to chat with. You can either pay a tutor - they’re typically very affordable - or you can arrange for a free session with a conversation exchange partner. Either way, schedule the lesson to be within seven days from when you started learning German.
I recommend that you have this first conversation with a German tutor rather than a conversation partner, as they’re usually more patient and better able to guide you in your learning.
Many italki tutors also offer low-cost trial lessons. Take advantage of this, and try out a few teachers, before you find one that’s a perfect fit.
For as much of the lesson as possible, speak in German. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say – that’s why you created your German phrasebook!
For the rest of the week in the lead-up to your lesson, keep practising German phrases. Alongside with what you’ve already compiled, it would help to learn the following “survival” phrases to help you get through your conversation without switching back to your native language:
Please speak more slowly
Could you say that again?
Please write that down
If you’re nervous about your first conversation with a native German speaker, sign up for my free Speak in a Week course. I’ve designed it to help people just like you overcome their fear of having a conversation in a foreign language.
Teach Me German: Week 2
By now you should have jumped over the first hurdle, having had your first conversation with a native German speaker (if you’re yet to do this, jump onto italki and get it scheduled now!).
How did your conversation go? For many people, it’s an exhilarating experience and they just want to do more. If that’s you, ride the motivation. For some, the first conversation can be more of a challenge. Stick with it and try other tutors. You’ll find a tutor who “clicks” with you in the end.
This week, aim to have at least one conversation with a native speaker. I aim for a minimum of three conversations a week when learning a language, as it’s by far the fastest way to learn. Plus using the language in real conversations keeps me motivated.
Alongside having real conversations, this week is all about expanding your knowledge of German and incorporating new tools into your study.
It’s a good idea to start reading basic texts in German to add new words to your vocabulary. Don’t expect to understand everything you read, as it’s still early days. A dictionary will prove to be your best friend – make sure you look up any words you don’t understand and when you think they’d be useful in conversations, add them to your vocab list.
Not sure of where to start? If you grew up reading fairy tales, you’ll find this collection of German fairytales cosy and familiar. It features the much-loved stories of the Brothers Grimm, in a dual-language format. Perfect for beginners!
Of course, you’ll want to ensure that all the new phrases and words that you’re learning stick in your memory. Virtual flashcards will do just that, which you can create with Anki.
Anki uses Spaced Repetition, which means that it prompts you to review words and phrases only when you’re on the verge of forgetting them. Research has found this is a really efficient way to memorize things.
Another facet of Anki I like is the fact that you can use it anywhere. It’s available for iOS, Android, and desktop computers.
Take the list of personal phrases you created in your first day and import them into Anki. Any other words and phrases you come across should be added to your phrasebook, and if they don’t “stick” in your memory right away, added to Anki as well.
On to week three!
Teach Me German: Week 3
This week, aim to do something every day towards your language learning. A little bit every day is much more effective than a long session once or twice a week.
Even a few minutes here and there each day is better than nothing.
To keep up a daily learning habit, this week you’ll create a study schedule.
Get out your calendar and schedule time every day to study. Even if it’s just ten minutes during a coffee break. Try to set aside longer blocks of time on the weekend.
What should you do during your study time?
Keep adding to your Anki deck and personalised phrases. You can add both words and phrases. I’ve found complete phrases to be far more helpful, since they give the words context.
Aim to schedule at least two conversations with native German speakers this week. As well as meeting with a paid tutor, this week is a good time to find a language exchange partner to chat with, if you haven’t yet. It’s a bit more relaxed than a tutoring session, with the added bonus of being free!
Teach Me German: Week 4
Spend this week maintaining the healthy study habits you set up last week. Follow the schedule you set for yourself to see how it works for you.
Alongside adding to your Anki deck, now’s the time to start building on your listening skills. Here are some ways you can do this:
Listen to a German podcast. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what’s being said – you can treat it as an immersion experiment. Just be sure to listen actively and try your best to pick out words that you know.
Find a German song to listen to. Write out the lyrics then sing along. Here are a few to get you started
Aim for three conversations with native speakers.
Having real conversations in German should remain your top priority.
Teach Me German: Month 2 and Beyond
Congratulations! You’ve managed to dedicate a whole month to learning German. You should take this time to look back and see how far you’ve progressed in just a few weeks.
You’re so much further ahead than you were in that first hour. You can have whole conversations in German now. Great job!
From here on out, keep up with your study. Every day. Even a few minutes here and there will help. So long as you keep speaking in German as much as possible, you’ll find yourself conversationally fluent very soon.
What methods do you use to learn German? Let me know in the comments!
The post Teach Me German: A Step-by-Step Guide to Your First Month Learning German appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
How Learning a Language Helped Me Overcome Postpartum Depression
Now, I am no expert in postpartum depression, and I encourage anyone who is experiencing such symptoms to talk to a trusted licensed medical professional. For me, the postpartum period was marked by sadness, irritability, and loneliness. Naturally, I felt guilty for feeling so down during a time in my life in which I was supposed to be happy.
Hormonal changes were partly responsible for these feelings, I’m sure. I was also depressed, I knew, because my life had changed so drastically in such a short period of time, and I didn’t have the right coping mechanisms or strategies in place to deal with the transition to my new role as a mother. I hadn’t planned for this stage of motherhood.
My whole life, my identify had been tied to achievement. I was a Type-A, straight-A student who had excelled in school and, later, in my job as I climbed the marketing career ladder. I was used to solving complex problems, being creative, analyzing loads of data, and making critical decisions. As a new mom who had decided to temporarily leave the workforce, I wasn’t exposed to the daily brain stimulation that I desperately needed to stay healthy and happy. On top of that, I felt like I had lost all my freedom and independence.
Don’t get me wrong—I was grateful for and in love with my new baby, and I wholly respected the position of motherhood. But honestly, the first year after having my child was pretty dark.
Then I Discovered “Fluent in 3 Months”... and I was Instantly Fascinated
One day as I was nursing my baby and mindlessly surfing the internet, I came across Benny Lewis’ Fluent in 3 Months blog. I was instantly fascinated by the concept of learning a second language, and learning it quickly. The real-life success stories and testimonials captivated me the most.
My previous experience with languages had not been the greatest. My required high school and college foreign language classes were just that: requirements. And they’d left me with feelings of anxiety toward learning a language (speaking, mostly) in a classroom setting.
Benny’s approach seemed different. He, too, had suffered through unpleasant language classroom experiences. Today, he’s fluent in several languages and has helped countless other language learning hopefuls become fluent in their target languages.
I read through as many blog posts as I could on Fluent in 3 Months before downloading the Duolingo app and diving into learning German, the language of my ancestry. I chose Duolingo as a first resource because it was free, user friendly, and structured. The gamification aspect of the app pushed me to progress steadily through the lessons, absorbing all the new vocabulary and grammar that I could retain each day. Before long, I was dreaming in German, not in dialogues, of course, but in individual words and phrases.
Deep into it now, I realized that this whole language learning thing embodied what had been missing from my life since having a baby. Now I had a goal (fluency in a second language) and, through all the resources available online, a way to actually achieve it. Learning German provided the mental exercise that my brain had been craving.
Soon, Duolingo gave way to books, YouTube videos, and podcasts. The more time I spent with languages, the less depressed I felt. The best part of all was that language learning didn’t reduce the amount of time
I spent with my baby. Instead, it enhanced our time together. Everything I was doing to learn German I could do with my child. I read German children’s books aloud to him. I sang to him German kids’ songs I had learned from YouTube. I counted in German to him. I decided that we would become fluent in German together because it would benefit us both! As a monolingual, establishing a bilingual home for my child gave me new purpose, boosting my spirits drastically.
But then duty beckoned, and I had to return to work...
German Preschool to the Rescue!
I eventually went back to my corporate job and needed to find childcare for my then-18-month-old. As fate would have it, there was one opening in our local German immersion preschool, and I jumped at the opportunity to enroll my toddler in the program. As much as I had tried to give my child a bilingual immersion experience at home, I wasn’t at a level in my German to do it as effectively as I wanted.
My son is now in his second year in the total immersion program, and at only three years old, I’m certain he’s more fluent than I am at age 31. I have regular conferences with his teachers, so that’s how I know he’s progressing in his acquisition of the language. Despite my best attempts to keep the German going at home, he speaks mostly English with my husband and me.
I couldn’t be more thankful for my child’s language immersion preschool, and I encourage all parents of young children to search for immersion schools in their area because I highly doubt that, with my busy schedule, I alone could have given my son the gift of a bilingual education.
So, I Started Doing Yoga in German
I think there’s something to be said about my actively learning German on my own but in front of my child as much as possible. Language learning and yoga are my two favorite hobbies, and I combine them whenever I can. Currently, I’m doing a “30 Days of Yoga Videos in German” personal challenge in which I work out to German yoga videos on YouTube each day for a month. My three-year-old isn’t doing yoga with me, but even when he’s doing his own thing in the same room, he’s gaining exposure to native content just as if he was a preschooler living in a German-speaking country. Moreover, he’s seeing how we prioritize language learning in our home in a fun, positive way.
Together, my son and I go to German events in our community, and we are always up for some delicious German food. His school, too, has regular cultural celebrations, so in addition to learning the language, we gain a broader perspective of the world outside the United States. His knowing two languages allows us to share dialogue about other languages too. For example, if we encounter Spanish at the grocery story, we briefly discuss that language, and we count to 10 together in it.
Confession: I’m Not the Ideal Language Student
I’ll be honest: I’m not the ideal language student. I get sidetracked on side projects. This year, for instance, I decided to write and publish my first-ever ebook—about language immersion schools. Also, far too often I fall into the trap of language porn, as Benny has written about. What can I say? The Fluent in 3 Months blog is too enticing!
With 2018 around the corner, though, I’m setting some measurable goals for the year and pushing past my fear of speaking by taking lessons through italki (by the way, italki gift cards are the best gift for your favorite language learner). I decided the other day that 2019 will be the year I visit a German-speaking country, so I have until then to both get fluent and save money for the trip.
A couple of years ago, I gave up Facebook so I could have more time for language learning. In its place, I started using my personal Instagram account to document my journey to learn German. Through Instagram, I have found a welcoming, and supportive language learning community and have connected there with many incredible polyglots, language learners and small businesses in the space. These people keep me inspired, hold me accountable, and challenge me to be creative. Since then, I’ve started a new Facebook account that’s very similar to my Instagram account in that I selectively follow accounts and join groups that keep me on track toward my goal of fluency.
How Am I Doing Now?
I’m pleased to report that today I’m a much happier, healthier wife, mother, and overall person than I was in the weeks and months after having my baby. I absolutely love being the mom of an ornery, goofy, and smart little human, and I’m beyond glad to have found a hobby that we can both pursue for life, an almost “secret language" the two of us can share forever.
A special thank you to Benny Lewis and his team, along with all the other creators of language learning resources available, often for free and with just a click of a button. I encourage everyone to support these entrepreneurs because a lot of work goes into planning, developing, and promoting the content that we’re consuming in our quest to learn another language.
With that, auf Wiedersehen!
The post How Learning a Language Helped Me Overcome Postpartum Depression appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
December 21, 2017
Christmas Food Traditions Around the World
(Likewise, Santa is different too, depending on where you live).
You might indulge in mince pies, or perhaps ham is more your style. For others, a holiday meal wouldn't be complete without fried chicken, fruit cake or salted cod. Depending on where you grew up, and where you live now, the seasonal delicacies that grace your table may be sweet, savory, or a little bit of everything in-between.
Let's take a look at different Christmas and Hanukkah food traditions around the world.
1. Christmas Fried Chicken (Japan)
In Japan, the Christmas season is the most wonderful time of the year for Kentucky Fried Chicken, or KFC, a fast food chain. Because about 3.6 million Japanese families eat KFC on Christmas Eve, they often need to reserve their meal up to two months in advance.
During the 1970s, KFC put together a holiday party bucket and behind it, a brilliant marketing plan. At the time, Japan didn’t have many Christmas traditions. KFC filled that void by telling consumers “here is something that you should do on Christmas”. The trend caught on quickly.
Today, the KFC Christmas bucket doesn’t include just fried chicken. It also includes a Christmas cake - another important food item on Japan’s holiday menu.
Here’s a good recipe for Japanese Christmas Cake.
2. Kūčios (Lithuania)
Kūčios, the traditional Lithuanian Christmas dinner, is held on December 24th every year. And hosting kūčios is no small feat - this meal can take up to a week to prepare. For Lithuanians, the holidays are about spending time with family, so a week-long meal prep is certainly a great opportunity for families to get together and is likely why the tradition has persisted.
Originally kūčios had nine dishes. It was a pagan practice that later expanded to 12 dishes (one for each apostle) when it was appropriated by the Christian church.
No meat, dairy, or hot food are a part of this meal. Instead, it includes fish, breads, and vegetables. Some of the items you might see on the menu are herring served in a tomato, mushroom or onion based sauce, smoked eel, vegetables such as potatoes, sauerkraut (it’s cabbage so it counts as a vegetable, right?), and mushrooms, bread or cranberry pudding.
Try a recipe for cranberry fruit jelly.
3. Latkes (Israel)
Since the Middle Ages, latkes - in some form or another - have been an important part of Hanukkah tradition. Latkes are fried potato pancakes are cooked in oil. This recognizes that the Second Temple kept the Menorah burning with oil for eight days.
Other dishes enjoyed as a part of this tradition include fried donuts and fritters. Hanukkah gelt, small chocolate coins, are given to children by relatives.
Try this latke recipe.
4. Christmas Goose (Germany)
The German Christmas feast is historically centered around the Weihnachtsgans, the Christmas goose. A tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, eating goose was originally tied to St. Martin’s Day, but eventually became a part of the Christmas meal.
Often stuffed with apples, chestnuts, onions, and prunes, then spiced with mugwort and marjoram, the goose is served alongside red cabbage, dumplings, gravy and sauerkraut. The oldest known recipe for this dish comes from a cookbook published in 1350, ‘Das Buch von guter Speise’.
Want to have a German style Christmas dinner this year? Here’s a recipe for for Christmas goose.
5. Panettone (Italy)
Italy has numerous regional traditions when it comes to Christmas dinner. In some parts of Italy, they celebrate with The Feast of the Seven Fishes. This meal includes seven different fish prepared in seven different ways. More often than not, two of the featured items are baccala (salted cod) and calamari. In other areas, they eat roasted lamb, or poultry roasted or boiled and seasoned with sauce.
Sweets also play an important role during the holiday season, and in Northern Italy, one of the infamous holiday sweets is panettone - a cake with candied fruit, chocolate, raisins, and nuts. Other treats include torrone, nougat, marzipan, zeppole, cannoli, and pandoro.
Learn to make panettone with this recipe.
6. Tamales (Costa Rica)
In Costa Rica, making tamales is a Christmas tradition and every family has their own ‘secret’ recipe. The basis of tomales is a corn dough, wrapped in a banana leaf or corn husk, and then steamed. Some are stuffed with pork, and some with beef or chicken. Other foods that may be a part of the filling are garlic, onion, potatoes, or raisins.
Try this recipe for tamales.
7. Christmas Pudding (England)
This dish goes by many names. Whether you call it figgy pudding, plum pudding, ‘pud’ or Christmas pudding, this dessert is a key Christmas tradition in England, Ireland and some parts of the US.
Despite its name, plum pudding doesn’t actually include plums. Pre-Victorian era, ‘plums’ referred to what we now call raisins, and because dried fruits are an important part of this pudding, it is how it earned its name.
Primarily made of suet, egg, molasses, spices, and dried fruits, Christmas pudding is set alight with brandy immediately before it is served.
Try this classic Christmas pudding recipe.
8. Bûche de Noël (France)
La Bûche de Noël is a dessert that symbolically represents the Yule Log - a wood log that was traditionally carried into the home, sprinkled with wine, and then burned on Christmas Eve. In the 1940s when the practice started to disappear, this dessert took up the mantle.
Often made from sponge cake and chocolate buttercream, La Bûche de Noël looks quite a bit like a real log. Other variations on the dessert, have emerged. Now you can find recipes for anything from tiramisu to cran-raspberry mascarpone, caramel cream to Meyer lemon.
Try this recipe for la Bûche de Noël.
9. Kolivo коливо (Bulgaria)
Kolivo, boiled wheat with sugar and walnuts, is often the first item to appear on tables come Christmas Eve in Bulgaria. Similar to a pudding, both Russia (кутья) and Poland (kutia) have comparable dishes.
Sometimes served with honey, poppyseed, other grains, rice, beans, or dried fruit, kolivo can be prepared many different ways. It is often connected with Orthodox traditions. In addition to Bulgaria, it also appears on tables in Serbia, Romania, Georgia, and Ukraine.
Try this recipe for kolivo.
10. Melomakarona / μελομακάρονα (Greece)
Sweet orange-zest cookies soaked in honey and topped with walnut? Yes, please! This item is a holiday treat that regularly appears on tables in Greece. Known as melomakarona, these cookies are often said to taste much like baklava.
Immediately after they’re baked, melomakarona are soaked in a honey-sugar water mixture then sprinkled with walnuts. There is also a less traditional version of this recipe dipped in dark chocolate. Either way - sign me up.
Try this recipe for melomakarona.
11. Cookies (Poland)
Another country with cookies on the menu come holiday season is Poland. Kołaczki is a flaky, jelly-filled confection, with dough often made with sour cream or cream cheese.
These fold-over style cookies come with a variety of fillings. If the standard apricot or raspberry doesn’t do it for you, you can also try poppyseed, nuts, or sweet cheese. They’re topped with confectioners sugar immediately before serving.
Try this recipe for Kołaczki.
Try another traditional Polish recipe for cheese and potato pierogi.
12. Bacalao (Mexico)
Bacalao, or salted cod, is not common in most countries during the holidays, but it’s a staple dish in Mexico. Before refrigeration, salted and preserving meats and fish was necessary. Today, this is no longer the case, but the practice still exists. And when, in the case of bacalao, the fish is rehydrated and cooked, the result is tender and delicious.
In Mexico, Bacalao a la Mexicana is made with tomato, ancho chiles, onions, almost, potato and olives. It’s filling and it certainly warms you up!
Make bacalao with this recipe.
13. Saffron Buns (Sweden)
Julbord, a three course meal, is served come Christmas in Sweden. The first dish is usually fish - often pickled herring. Second, cold cuts (including Christmas ham) along with sausages are served. The third course is often meatballs and a potato casserole called Janssons frestelse.
For dessert, rice pudding is popular, but there’s another treat for which the Swedes are known to make around this time - Saffron Buns.
Saffron buns are sweet and often yellow in color (due to the saffron, of course!). They are shaped into an “S” and then baked into their final buttery form. They’re served to the family by the oldest daughter, by tradition, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying your hand at making them, and most importantly, enjoying the end product.
Make Swedish saffron buns.
14. Roast Pig (Philippines)
Noche Buena, as Christmas dinner is known in the Philippines, is held after families attend the Misa de Gallo (“Mass of the Rooster”). Hamón (cured pork leg) or Lechón (spit-roasted pig) are the main feature. It’s co-stars are often quesa de bola (a ball of cheese), pasta, lumpia (spring rolls) and fruit salad.
Christmas is a big deal in the Philippines. It’s known for having the longest Christmas season with Christmas carols starting as early as September and ending usually around January 9th with the feast of the Black Nazarene. Official observance, however, is from December 16th until the first Sunday of the new year.
Make pineapple-glazed ham.
15. Food Board (Finland)
Fins go buffet style, or literally ‘Christmas table’ style, for their Christmas meal with Joulupöytä. This traditional food board is comparable to the Swedish smörgåsbord or julbord. It contains several dishes typical of the season such as Christmas ham, fish, and casseroles.
Other items on the table may include mushroom salad, pickled herring, and Karelian stew. For dessert, joulutahti (tarts), piparkakku (Gingerbread), and rice pudding are served.
16. Fruitcake (US) the gift that keeps on giving
Calvin Trillin theorized that there is only one fruitcake and that it is simply sent from family to family each year. Most Americans turn their noses at the very thought of fruitcake. But for some reason, this item keeps making the rounds - something made possible because the cakes are soaked in alcohol or other liquors to keep them from molding.
Don’t believe me? On the tonight show, Jay Leno sampled a cake that someone had kept as a family heirloom dating back to 1878. In 2017, the Antarctic Heritage Trust found an 106-year-old fruitcake they deemed “almost edible”.
httpvh://youtu.be/PPcuChTf-ZI
As a kid growing up, my parents always had two or three of them hidden in the pantry around Christmas. They received them as gifts and would step around them until - whoops - they were forgotten, had ‘expired’ (as much as a fruitcake can expire), and could be safely discarded without offending the other party.
So why do we eat it? Or at the very least, gift it?
At some point in history, fruitcake was a display for prosperity. Dried fruits and nuts were expensive items and so this cake was served at special events - like Christmas - to, for lack of a better way to say it, show off. Even though fruitcakes are no longer a way to display wealth, giving them is a tradition that has just stuck.
Try this recipe for Christmas fruitcake.
Which Food Will You Try During the Holidays This Year?
Food traditions certainly abound across the globe come the holidays. No matter what you eat during this time of year, we wish you all:
Bon appétit, buen provecho, いただきます, kalon digor, 慢慢吃, dobar tek!
What meals or treats do you and your family enjoy during the holidays? We’d love to hear about them in the comments.
The post Christmas Food Traditions Around the World appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
December 18, 2017
Learn a Language By Reading: 5 Easy-to-Follow Steps
Do you want to get that excitement and interest you had when you first wanted to learn that foreign language back?
The answer is simple…
Read Interesting Content
By reading interesting content in the language you want to learn -- content that grabs and holds your attention -- you can pick up all the vocabulary and grammar you need to know.
When you read interesting content in meaningful chunks, your brain naturally absorbs word meanings and grammar rules. Your brain can make these vocab and meaning connections much easier through reading than through tedious lists of vocabulary or grammar.
It sounds simple enough, and there’s a step-by-step process I’ve created to help you learn a language through reading.
Before sharing the steps, I’d like to take a look at how human beings learn to read their first language -- and how this can help as you learn to read another language.
How You Learned to Read Your Native Language (And Why it Matters)
When you’re young and trying to learn to read in your own language, there is a natural order to your learning process.
First of all, you learn to speak the language. Only then do you learn what your spoken language looks like in written form. You learn the alphabet. You learn to recognize individual letters, then words. Then, you learn how connect these words and symbols into meaningful strings to create sentences.
Once you’ve mastered all this, then you start to pick up new words naturally from reading.
In other words, when learning your first language, you learn to read before you read to learn. It makes sense, then, that you would use that same model to learn how to read your second language as well!
This Is How Your Brain Processes Words on the Page
Research has found that the first and last letters matter most to the human brain when reading.
According to Matt Davis from Cambridge University the brain reads whole words, and can often do so from just having the first and last letters in place.
In fact, one study has found that jumbled letters in the middle of words only slows down reading speed by 11 percent.
When you read in your native language, your brain automatically makes connections from context and familiarity with words by using the first and last letters to speed up the decoding and comprehension processes when reading.
But what if you don’t even know what those letters are, let alone what words they spell?
How will your brain process the material you’re trying to read?
The reason why it’s so hard to read in a language you’re first learning is because your brain can’t use this natural process to speed up the reading process. You don’t have the advantage of being able to easily extract meaning from words and sentences. You have to work a lot harder.
Cultural and background knowledge are also essential parts of comprehending any text.
It can be difficult to understand humor, historical and pop culture references, and culture-specific sayings in another language. You may have understood each and every word, every sentence, but the meaning of the larger context was lost on you.
When reading in a new language, everything feels different, and many things are different. The symbols that represent sounds are often different, even in languages that also use Latin script. For example, the t in Portuguese makes something more like the ch sound. In Spanish, -e has the same name that we call the letter -a in English.
And it can feel even more tricky with languages that don’t use Latin script. Even the directionality of the language’s script can be different. In Korean, you read left-to-right and top-to-bottom. One of the reasons it often takes three or four times as long for an English speaker to learn languages like Mandarin, Korean, Arabic and Japanese is because those languages don’t share as much in common with English as other more closely-related languages do.
All those different elements are confusing and foreign to what your brain is used to processing.
That’s why a person who can easily and accurately read while scanning, skimming, and skipping over words in their native language, is suddenly rendered illiterate when trying to read in a second language. However, there is good news. . .
When you can read, you can learn anything.
By learning to read in the language you’re studying, you get so much more out of the learning experience. When you come across words in several different contexts through reading, you start to understand and comprehend vocabulary in a more meaningful way. You can learn much more about language and culture than you could ever discover by reading a language-learning book through reading material written in that language.
The literacy skills you already have are transferable. Those basic skills you developed when you learned to read when you were a child can be used to build your knowledge and comfort with a new language. By reading, you can grow your vocabulary in a new language exponentially in a short amount of time and with less concentrated effort.
Smart linguaphiles know this. Dr. Stephen Krashen, a leader in the teaching of languages, promotes free reading time in language classes. Tim Ferriss credits “a nasty manga habit” in part for helping build his Japanese language skills.
Good readers not only decode words, they negotiate meaning, make predictions, use prior knowledge, and create visuals of what they read. Good readers read rapidly, read accurately, enjoy reading, and walk away from what they read with a full understanding of what they finished.
They use lots of comprehension strategies simultaneously and think on many levels to make sense of a text.
Learning to read in another language unlocks the way to learning words and syntax that you couldn’t otherwise and starts you reading to learn.
Reading in a foreign language offers vocabulary in meaningful chunks. Neuroscientists can even detect changes in signals to the brain if words make sense in context or not called N400. The more closely our brain can match the pattern of a native speaker in our target language, the higher our proficiency level is.
Be Like a Hollywood A-List Actor: Dig Deep Into the Text
Think back to a time when you saw a movie, play or television program that really drew you in.
It can be hard to remember that all those visual and dramatic mediums usually begin with the written word.
Before appearing in your favorite TV show or movie, the actors read and learned the text so deeply that the language became a part of them. Only then were they able to pass that story on to you without that text in from of them.
This is the type of approach to take when reading in a foreign language – dig deep into a text multiple times. Each time you do this, you will learn more vocabulary and grammar.
Here are the five steps I follow to dig deep when I’m reading in a new language.
Step 1: Start with Conversations
Focus on spoken language at the beginning of your language learning journey, and once you’ve started speaking, don’t stop. A language textbook is a great tool when used correctly, but you didn’t learn your native language by reading out of one. We all started with spoken language.
Parents of children with any speech difficulties in early childhood are advised to spend a lot of time speaking and reading to their children. That’s because hearing a language helps you understand the relationship between sounds and print accurately, and is key in learning to how to read.
The spoken and the written word are connected. Focusing on conversations will help you to access the written word, make connections, and always expand your vocabulary. Reading will help you develop your vocabulary for conversations. The relationship has a lot of reciprocity.
Step 2: Choose Texts That Allow You to Problem Solve
If you have a beginner’s grasp of word and phrase meanings, make sure you spend some quality time studying a text more at the paragraph level. This allows you to language “problem solve” without being way beyond your level of comprehension, so you can work out the meanings of words that you haven’t encountered before.
This approach means you can pick up new vocabulary without getting too frustrated and drowning. The problem solving also allows you to make logical connections, further embedding the vocabulary you pick up this way into your memory.
Step 3: Choose Texts That You Enjoy
As I said at the beginning of this article, it’s really important to choose reading materials that grab your interest.
When people go to high school and college, they spend a lot of time reading. However, this assigned reading is often not fun or interesting to the majority of students. Now that you are learning to read a new language yourself, you should choose what you want to read.
Think recipes, blogs, trashy novels, pop culture magazines, websites, menus – read whatever you like. If you like literature, read or reread a classic in your second language. Here are a few links to free reading resources online, with many different languages available:
Project Gutenburg
Newspapers online
Magazines online
Open Library
Feedbooks
It’s always a good idea to start out reading for short periods of time and building up your reading stamina as you grow in your vocabulary naturally. It doesn’t have to be academic to work.
A magazine of self-quizzes is a great way to help easily and enjoyably expand your vocabulary.
Step 4: Mark Up the Text and Read It Multiple Times
A great bonus of spending time reading to build your language skills is that when you encounter an unknown word, you can “pause” the text and give yourself time to find the meaning. That can be really difficult when you’re in a conversation with someone!
If you underline unfamiliar words, then write the definitions in the margins, you can understand the text and cement new words in your memory. Sticky notes are also great replacements if you can’t mark up the text you’re reading. Stick them in the margins of the text.
Step 5: Make the Most of Online Tools
If you’re reading online, apps such as LingQ and ReadLang can help you look up unknown words, offer reading selections, and make flashcards of words you’ve looked up.
What’s more, a simple Google search can yield all sorts of authentic target language reading. Check out these finds online:
Japanese Menus
Target Language Web Content
Fresh content delivered daily in many languages is all over the web.
When you do it right, reading is a great way to learn a language. Happy reading!
The post Learn a Language By Reading: 5 Easy-to-Follow Steps appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
December 15, 2017
Study Spanish: 10 Methods to Learn Fluent Spanish
Spanish was the first language I learned to a conversational level, so I get this question a lot. People often want a magic bullet - what's the one best method or technique to get the Spanish language into their heads?
Here's a secret: there is no one best way to study Spanish. There are almost as many effective ways to learn Spanish as there are people who have learned it.
With that being said, for every effective way to learn Spanish, there are even more ineffective ways. Take it from me - I tried and failed repeatedly for years to gain a passable level of Spanish, and kept falling flat on my face. Even six months of living in Valencia didn't help.
Eventually, I managed to learn Spanish to a high level of fluency, and even have a C2 diploma (the highest level) in the language. So I can assure you - just because you've failed in the past, doesn't mean you're doomed.
If you're struggling with Spanish, it's not because you "don't have the language gene". You probably just don't have the right study method.
In this post I'll outline some of the most common and effective methods for studying Spanish. I can't tell you what the "best" program is for your specific needs - only you can figure that out. Experiment with different approaches until you discover what works best for you.
1. My Favourite: Study Spanish by Speaking From Day One
In my first six months in Spain, I hardly learned anything in the language. It wasn't for lack of trying. I'd put the effort in (or so I thought) but I just wasn’t able to make it work.
Then, I hit upon the most important realisation I've ever made in my journey to language-learning success. Once I made this discovery, everything changed - and before long I was having confident conversations in Spanish.
What was the secret?
I needed to speak Spanish.
That might sound obvious, but it's advice that many would-be Spanish speakers (like my 21-year-old self!) struggle to follow. Instead, they attempt to learn Spanish by burying their nose in books, occasionally watching a Spanish movie (with English subtitles), then speaking English all day with their friends, family and coworkers. No wonder I learned so slowly!
At Fluent in 3 Months (Fi3M) I've always advocated that you speak from day one. Speaking Spanish is a skill, and to learn any skill you must practise it! Just open your mouth, and don't be afraid to make a few mistakes.
If you speak from day one, you'll find it's possible to have real (albeit imperfect) conversations with native speakers far sooner than you think. In my Conversation Countdown course, I'll take you from a total beginner in Spanish (or any language) to the point where you can have your first conversation with a native speaker in as little as a week.
2. Stop Speaking English! Study Spanish Through Immersion
When I broke through my barriers in Valencia and finally started making progress with Spanish, there were two reasons why I succeeded. It wasn't just that I started speaking Spanish as much as possible - it was that I completely stopped speaking English. For one month, I committed to speaking no English whatsoever, and succeeded. Not a single word of English escaped my mouth during these 30 days.
I've since used the same this approach for many other languages: living in the country and having a strict policy of speaking only the language I'm learning.
This is the immersion approach, and it's extremely effective. The reason is simple. Not all hours are created equal; forty hours of intensive Spanish immersion in a single week will be far more valuable than forty hours spread out haphazardly over a few weeks. The more often you immerse yourself, the less time you waste trying to remember what you learned last time you spoke Spanish.
My friend Scott Young took this approach to its extreme when he learned four languages in a year (three months per language). The cardinal rule that helped him succeed? No English.
“But Benny,” you’re probably thinking, “you got to live in Spain! It must have been easy to immerse yourself there. What about people who can’t do that?” Don’t worry, you don't have to travel to a Spanish-speaking country to immerse yourself - I’ve learned several languages while living nowhere near the countries where they’re spoken. In fact, travelling to the country is no guarantee that you'll be immersed. It's easy to get trapped in the expat bubble (like I initially did in Valencia). It’s definitely possible to achieve immersion in your home country - which I'll cover below.
Also note that immersion doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. Depending on your job and your lifestyle, it's probably impractical to avoid English 100% of the time. Just try to minimise the amount of English you do speak, even if you can't eliminate it completely.
3. Study Spanish by Listening to Podcasts and Audio Courses
Spanish podcasts and audio courses are no substitute for speaking practice - but they make a great supplement, and can give structure to your learning.
A popular podcast for Spanish learners of all levels is SpanishPod101. The creator, Innovative Language, offers courses in more than 30 languages. And of course there are many, many other Spanish audio courses out there.
Two other well-known audio courses that we’ve reviewed on Fi3M are Michel Thomas and Pimsleur.
4. Study Spanish by Taking a University Course
I have a degree in Electronic Engineering, and didn't have any success with language learning until after I'd already graduated. But many universities offer degrees in Spanish, and if you're serious about getting your Spanish to a high level, this is a legitimate option.
The advantages of a degree are:
You'll learn to speak, read and write Spanish at a very high level.
You'll learn to understand the language and all its inner workings, going deep in your study of Spanish grammar and the subtleties of the language.
You'll study more than just the language itself - you'll learn about Spanish literature, the language's history, and the culture and history of countries where it's spoken.
You'll typically spend part of your degree - maybe a semester or an entire year - living and studying in a Spanish-speaking country. A perfect opportunity for the immersion that I mentioned above!
At some universities you may be able to study Spanish alongside something else - e.g. as a "minor" in the American system. Sometimes it's possible to get a degree in two languages simultaneously - often, you study one language that you've already started learning (e.g. in secondary school), and another ab initio (from scratch).
The obvious disadvantages of a bachelor's degree are that it takes three or four years to earn one and, depending on the country, can be very expensive. There are faster, cheaper ways to get your Spanish to an impressive level.
A bachelor's degree in Spanish is definitely not for everyone - but it’s the right choice for some people.
5. Study Spanish in the Sun: Take a Spanish Summer School Course
If you don't have the time or desire to get a full degree in Spanish, consider a shorter course in a language school.
Many schools offer intensive programs, which can be a great way to gain the kind of immersion I described above.
What's even better is a "total immersion program", in which you and your fellow learners live on the school's premises and pledge to speak only Spanish for the duration of the course. Middlebury College in the U.S., for example, is well-known for its intensive immersion programs. Remember I said that you don't need to travel to a Spanish-speaking country to gain immersion!
I can't give advice on specific schools, because it obviously depends on where you are. Read online reviews and try to talk to former students to see if you can learn a bit about the programme and decide whether it suits your learning style before you sign up.
6. Learn Spanish With a Tutor (Online or In-Person)
With classroom learning, you generally move at the pace of the slowest learner. That's why small class sizes are better - and best of all is a class size of one.
One-on-one tutoring is often surprisingly close in cost to group lessons in a classroom. This is especially true for online tutoring, since your tutor doesn’t have to spend time travelling to meet you. If you can afford it, I highly recommend seeking a one-on-one tutor.
italki is a popular platform where you can find one-on-one Spanish tutors who can give you lessons over video chat. The cost of lessons is very reasonable, with tutors available from just a few dollars per hour.
Different Spanish teachers have different styles; don't be afraid to shop around and try a few different teachers before settling on one that you like.
In-person Spanish lessons aren't necessarily better than online lessons; it's very convenient to be able to have lessons from your own home. In fact, while learning Mandarin in Taiwan I ended up switching from in-person to Skype lessons with the same tutor. Even though we lived in the same city, it wasn't worth the effort and travel time to meet in person.
7. Free Option: Study Spanish with a Language Partner
"But Benny, I can't afford Spanish lessons with a tutor or at a language school! And no one in my area speaks Spanish! How can I practise?"
Death to your excuses, I say! There's a still a way: find a language exchange partner (sometimes called a language tandem partner or a conversation partner).
If you're reading this, you speak English. That means there's a lot of Spanish speakers who'd like to practise their English with you. In return, many of them would be happy to let you practise Spanish with them.
If you can find a Spanish-speaking language partner in your city and can meet up in person, great. If not, you still have no excuse - it's easy to find someone online to chat with on Skype italki isn’t just for paid tutors. You can also find thousands of language exchange partners to help you practise Spanish for free.
A language exchange can be structured any way you want. You might just want to casually converse with your partner about whatever comes to mind, switching languages at a predefined interval (e.g. every 5 or 10 minutes). Or you could work through a series of structured exercises or language games together. It's up to you.
Many people end up becoming good friends with their language exchange partners - even visiting each other in their home countries!
8. Go to Spanish Language Meetups
A language exchange doesn't have to be one-on-one. In many cities you can find "language exchange" events, where people from all over the world get together to speak and practise many languages together. Meetup.com is a good place to find events like this.
The popularity of Spanish as a second language means that most major cities have meetup groups that are just for Spanish speakers who want to learn English and visa versa. Some meetup groups are more open-ended, open to speakers of all languages.
The danger of events like these is that you can end up having the same conversations over and over with the people you meet - "where are you from?", "what do you do?", etc. The best language exchanges avoid this problem by adding some structure, for example you may play some language games together or be given specific conversation starters or topics to talk about.
If there are no Spanish language groups in your area, go ahead and create your own. Anyone can create a group on Meetup.com, and you’re bound to get several members joining up who have been hoping for a group like this for ages.
9. Keep the Energy for Spanish Pumping: Join a Language Learning Challenge
Learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint, and learners sometimes struggle with motivation.
One great way to solve this problem is to join a language learning community. If you surround yourself with other people who are on the same journey as you - whether they're learning Spanish or any other language - you'll all be able to support and encourage each other in pursuit of your shared goal.
Learning communities can be offline or online. If you're having classroom lessons, then I hope your class feels like a learning community! You're all in it together, so why not help each other out and support each other?
Online communities can be powerful too. At Fi3M we run a regular event called the Add1Challenge, where people from all around the world commit to have a 15-minute conversation with a native speaker of their new language after just 90 days of study. Our participants have seen great results.
10. Make Spanish Words Stick in Your Brain Using Mnemonics
Mnemonics isn't an entire study method in itself, but it's still a powerful tool that every language learner should be familiar with.
Languages require a great deal of memorization - vocabulary, grammar rules, phrases, idioms, etc. There are better and worse ways to get all this information into your head - and the best way is to become skilled at mnemonics.
A "mnemonic" is a memory technique that uses imagery or other mental cues to help you quickly recall information. There are many different kinds, but they all use the same underlying principle: when something is hard to remember, find a way to associate it with something that is easy to remember.
The topic of mnemonics goes deep. One advanced technique is the memory palace, in which you construct a mental image of a building (or buildings) you know well, and then imagine placing items at different locations in the building to remind you of certain words or concepts.
Mnemonic techniques like the memory palace take practice to get good at. Once you're good at them, they easily repay the initial time investment. They're an extremely effective way to memorize large amounts of vocabulary.
What’s Your Favourite Method for Spanish Study?
How do you like to study Spanish? Or what new methods have you learned from this article that you’re planning to use? Please let me know in the comments.
The post Study Spanish: 10 Methods to Learn Fluent Spanish appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
December 11, 2017
Less Commonly Taught Languages: How to Find Resources
A couple of years ago, I developed an interest in the music of the Baltics. Then, in the summer of 2016, I was awarded a Fulbright grant to study the music of Latvia. Not long before then, I hadn’t even heard of the Latvian language. Suddenly, I found myself needing to learn this language to improve my research and ability to live in Latvia.
Latvia is a country that’s the size of West Virginia, located in the Baltic region in northern Europe. Finding resources to learn Latvian was difficult because it is a language that is only spoken by about two million people.
After a year of study, help from a lot of friends, and a lot of stumbling around online, I found effective methods for learning this beautiful but lesser-known language. It’s my hope, for those of you who want to learn a minority language, indigenous language, or other less commonly taught language, to show you some ways of finding useful online resources, many of them free.
Here’s the step-by-step approach I used to find resources for learning Latvian, and that you can use to find resources for less commonly taught languages.
Step 1: Research the Essentials of Your Target Language [4 things]
Before you begin, you’ll want to know a couple of things about your target language:
The English name of your target language,
The name of your target language in the target language. For example, the word “Latvian” is "Latviešu” in Latvian. You’ll find a lot more useful content by searching in your target language.
The flag of the country that speaks your target language. Many language resources feature an image of a flag, so knowing it in advance can be a helpful visual aid during the search process.
The family of languages that your target language belongs to. Some resources, such as Memrise, categorize their courses by their language families. You can find this information, and other quick and easy facts about your target language, on Wikipedia.
Step 2: Check the “Big Five” for Your Target Language
I call these language learning sites the “Big Five” not because they’re the most famous language courses or websites, but because they’re where you’re most likely to get a quick win in your search for resources.
And DuoLingo doesn’t feature here, because while it has excellent courses, it doesn’t actually cover all that many languages.
The Big Five sites for less commonly taught languages are:
Memrise . Memrise is a flashcard-based learning system that encourages its users to create courses, so it includes many less commonly taught languages. You can search for your target language using their search function. You can also view all of their possible language decks by clicking on the “Languages” bar on the left-hand side of the screen, and then sorting by origin or language family. Memrise decks usually include audio, and some include visuals as well.
Surface Languages . This website provides basic vocabulary for 40 languages, and includes audio examples as well as games for practise. This is a good place to go if you are a beginner.
Innovative Language Podcasts . These podcasts courses are available for 30 languages, including many less commonly taught languages. They’re a Fluent in 3 Months favourite.
Anki Shared Decks This flash-card based application includes decks for a lot of different languages. This is a great way to learn vocabulary and simple phrases, depending on the decks available, although the amount of audio may vary.
Anki is available for desktop computers, and iOS and Android devices.
ClozeMaster Clozemaster is a fill-in-the-blank gamified learning tool. It’s slightly more advanced than the other tools in the Big Five, but once you want to get beyond learning vocabulary and basic grammar, it’s very useful. A simple version is available for free, and advanced features are available for a monthly fee.
Step 3: Search Google in Your Target Language -- Google Translate is Your Friend
When you’re learning a less commonly taught language, the resources are often not in the most obvious, easy-to-reach places online.
My best advice for finding these resources is to always do your Google searches in your target language, not English. Why? Many valuable resources—TV stations, language activities and games—won’t always have the content listed in English. To that end I have found googletranslate to be very useful to get started.
Here’s how to use Google Translate to help you find and use online language resources:
Get the translation of the thing you’re looking for. Do you like to watch cooking shows to improve your listening skills? Are you looking for word games in your target language? Use those terms in your favorite internet search engine to search for new resources.
Translate the resources you find. If you enter a link into the left-hand side of the Google Translate page, it will translate the webpage for you. The translations won’t be perfect, but they’ll be really helpful.
A tip to those of you learning inflected languages! In Latvian, the word “culture” is kultūra, but if I use it as an adjective as in “culture house,” the word becomes kultūras. Also if the word is used as a direct object, it becomes kultūru. This can cause a search engine to block out valuable resources if you use one ending but not another. Usually, there is a wildcard character that allows you to replace one or more letters using a symbol, which will help expand your search results. Common wild characters are ?, %, _ and *. To demonstrate, if I were searching for something with the word “kultūra,” I would search the term “kultūr%” which would produce all results with the kultūr stem and all of its possible endings.
Step 4: Look for Government Agency Resources
Latvians take their language so seriously that they have a government agency intended to preserve and promote their language.
Many countries with their own unique language often have some kind of educational or government institute that focuses on teaching, preserving, codifying, and sometimes even defending their language. The good news is that their websites often have lots of great resources for learning the language that can take the form of tests, online games or word lists. Or they may offer resources like books and CDs that you can use to continue learning.
The bad news? Finding these resources can be a challenge, so I recommend searching for them only when you have a basic command of the language.
Terms that you may want to use to find these resources include: language, education, ministry, department, bureau, domestic, and, of course, the name of the target language. You’ll want to use these words in various combinations in your favorite search engine.
You may also want to try the appropriate Boolean operators (commands such as “AND” or “OR”) to search more efficiently. For example, just searching “language ministry” may leave out sources that are named “department,” but if you search “language” AND “ministry” OR “department, you’re likely to find more relevant results. It is best to run your search in the target language rather than English (but with English Boolean operators!) Also, to increase the number results, try using the local version of your search engine. For example, google.lv (Google in Latvia) will produce more relevant results than the standard google.com.
Step 5: Get Offline and Go On a Real World Adventure
Looking for a language exchange partner, or possible language-meet ups in your target language? Try searching your target language or country along with your city or town of residence.
You may also want to search on Facebook, since many of these smaller community groups won’t have a website.
Your target language and culture may turn up in some interesting real-world places, such as:
Cultural Centres
I was astonished to discover that when I searched “Latvia Indianapolis,” lo and behold there was a Latvian Community Center only a fifteen minute drive from where I was living. Not only that, but their building supported the activities of about six other culture groups as well. Take the time to find out if there are culture groups in your backyard.
Restaurants
One of my teachers in grad school needed to work with a pronunciation coach in Catalan, one of the regional languages of Spain. So where did he go to find a native speaker? The local tapas restaurant. A conversation and a few phone calls later led him to a language coach. See if anyone in your area has a restaurant of the region that interests you, go, enjoy the food, and strike up a conversation!
Festivals
Keep an eye out for any kind of cultural festivals that may be taking place in your area, since many cultural groups frequently hold annual festivals or celebrations. Look at event listings in your city or town, or head over to Facebook and search for your target language or country under “Events.”
Local Colleges
Even though you may not be able to find a course in your target language, you still may be able to find someone in higher education that speaks it. Often, language professors will take an interest in other languages and may either know it (for example, the Russian professor at my graduate school also knew Latvian), or may have contacts in the area who can help you. Start with your local college’s foreign language department, and reach out to either the secretary or a professor that knows one of the majority languages of the region.
Intensive Language Courses
You may consider taking a summer language intensive if you need advanced training quickly. These courses are, well, intense, and involve living and breathing the language for several weeks. And yes, it is possible to find intensives in less commonly taught languages. Googling “Intensive” or “Intensive Course” along with your target language (in English) should bring up the information you need.
Over to You
Are you learning a minority, indigenous, or lesser-taught language? What resources have you used to learn your target language? How did you find them? Let us know in the comments!
The post Less Commonly Taught Languages: How to Find Resources appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
December 7, 2017
LingQ Review: An Honest, In-Depth Review of the LingQ Language Learning Tool
In this LingQ review I’ll give my honest opinion of LingQ, and we’ll look at how you can use LingQ to learn a language.
What is LingQ?
LingQ (pronounced "link") is a language learning website created by Steve Kaufmann that provides a wealth of audio and written content. LingQ calls itself "an online language learning community”, and once you're a member you can engage with this community to find a language exchange partner.
LingQ courses are available in 14 languages, including Spanish, German, French, English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Italian. As the time of writing, 10 further languages are in beta development.
After using LingQ for a couple of months as part of my French studies, I see it as the Swiss Army Knife of language learning. It takes every language learning tool you could possibly think of (and more!), and puts them all together in one place.
That means you can use LingQ to improve your skills in:
Reading
Writing
Listening
Speaking
Vocabulary building
Putting all that together in one place is a daring feat. But does it work?
Let's take a look inside. There's a lot to take in, so I'll go through the various LingQ tools, with screenshots of how each works.
Let's start by looking at the lesson system.
LingQ's Language Lessons
At the core of LingQ is the lesson system. Each lesson features a short text in your target language. A typical lesson looks like this:
Every lesson includes a reading and listening element. You can read through the lesson or listen to the lesson spoken by native French speakers, or both.
The lessons are organised into courses, and most of the courses follow a story. Each lesson builds on the story in the previous lesson, and introduces new vocabulary.
Talking of vocabulary, in the screenshot above, you'll notice the colour-coding on the words in the lesson. Words with a white background (i.e. no highlight) are the words I've told LingQ that I already know. Words with a yellow background are my LingQs. These are the words I'm learning with the help of LingQ, because I've told LingQ that I don't yet know these words. Words with a blue background are new words that I've not encountered previously on LingQ. So I need to tell LingQ whether or not I know these words. I do this by clicking on one of the blue words. In this example I've clicked on "rappeler":
You'll see that to the right of the lesson is a blue box featuring "rappeler", the word I selected. In this box, I can press the green button to listen to the word. I can tell LingQ I know this word. Or I can select one of the definitions. If I select a definition, I am creating a new LingQ, and the word becomes part of my LingQ flashcard deck. I'll come to that in a moment.
Next, let's have a look at the different types of lessons available on LingQ.
LingQ Lessons: Study What Interests You
LingQ has a huge variety of courses available. From the get-go, you're encouraged to find courses on topics that interest you. For me, that's an extra reason to keep coming back to LingQ.
With French, there is a library of over 700 courses available. Some of my favourites include:
TED talks in French
The Foreign Language Institute French course
Greetings and Goodbyes
One Year in France
French Expressions and Proverbs
The Little Prince (book)
The History of France
News in Easy French
Alice in Wonderland (book)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (book)
Whatever you're into, you're likely to find a course that catches your interest and keeps you coming back to learn more.
Now let's take a look at flashcards and LingQ's other memory tools...
LingQ's Vocabulary Building Tools
As I mentioned earlier, anytime you're in a lesson or listening to LingQ audio and you encounter a word you don't know, you can add it as a LingQ.
Each LingQ has a rating between one and four, as follows:
New (just added as a LingQ)
Can't Remember
Not Sure
Learned
How do you learn LingQs? In the vocabulary section of LingQ.
There are four different tools for learning vocabulary:
The tools are:
Flashcards
Cloze Tests
Dictation
Multiple Choice
All the tools use a Spaced Repetition System for choosing which words you should be tested on. This is one of the most effective ways of learning vocabulary, as it means that you're prompted to remember words when you're on the verge of forgetting them.
Let's look at each of the memorisation tools in turn.
LingQ Flashcards
This is a simple flashcard deck where on one side you see the French word, as so:
When you click the flashcard, you're shown the translation, plus the word in context, as so:
You can change the settings to reverse the flashcards, so you're shown the English and have to guess the French translation.
The flashcards remind me of using one of my favourite language tools, Anki. The bonus is that in the LingQ system, it's much quicker to create flashcards than with Anki. That's because in LingQ the flashcards are created automatically whenever you tell LingQ in one of the lessons that you don't know a word.
LingQ Cloze Tests
With LingQ's cloze tool, you complete a sentence in your target language, from a choice of words, as follows:
The word you'll need to add the sentence is always one of your LingQs. This is useful for testing your new vocabulary in context.
LingQ's Dictation Tool
With the dictation tests, you hear one of the words you're learning, and you have to type it out.
I've found the tool to be very strict and intolerant of any spelling mistakes or typos. Even so, it's a good way of developing your listening and writing skills at the same time.
LingQ's Multiple Choice Test
With the multiple choice test, you choose the correct translation of a word from the four choices presented. Here's an example:
I found this to be similar to using flashcards, although a little easier.
LingQ's Other Tools: Speaking and Writing
LingQ's main focus in its lessons and vocabulary building tools is reading, listening and learning new vocabulary. All this is included in the standard monthly subscription.
LingQ also gives you the option to improve your speaking skills through conversations with native speakers, and to have your writing checked by native speakers. To have a conversation, you're required to purchase LingQ points. For LingQ subscribers, it's $20 for 2,000 points. This gives you one hour of conversation with a conversation partner. You can also earn points by offering your services as a conversation partner in your native language.
I paid for points to try out having a conversation with a native speaker on LingQ.
It's worth bearing in mind that LingQ isn't really a platform where language teachers earn a living. Most people will be speaking with you to earn points, so they can spend these points on their own language learning (not to earn an income, as with other tutoring services). Consequently, there's not a big selection of conversation partners to choose from. Even so, I found a conversation partner who was available at a time convenient to me, and I found her helpful and supportive.
Who is that Cute Pink Pirate? Points, Challenges, Streaks, and Words Learned
Do you need a little extra encouragement to keep coming back to language learning? LingQ has that covered - and in typical Swiss Army Knife fashion, not just once, but several times over.
First - as with Duolingo - LingQ tracks your streak. You have to use LingQ every day to maintain your streak.
Second, when you join LingQ, you're given a cute avatar, like this:
When you learn LingQs, you earn virtual coins. With these coins, you can buy items for your avatar. I've bought my avatar a pirate hat!
You can also join community challenges for your language. With French, there's a monthly challenge where your aim is to create as many LingQs as possible, and a 90-day challenge that sets you targets for how much reading and listening to do, and how many LingQs to learn, during those 90 days. I've not taken part in a challenge, but I can see how it would be motivating.
Finally, LingQ provides a detailed statistical breakdown of what you've studied - including how many hours of listening you've done, and how many words you've read. This is a great way to track your progress and to see how much you've learned.
Learning on Your Smartphone or Tablet with LingQ
In addition to the desktop site, LingQ is available as a downloadable app for smartphones and tablets. This allows you to complete LingQ lessons and review your LingQ flashcards.
So far, I've preferred using the desktop site as it gives me more flexibility to explore LingQ's wide variety of features. But I found the app easy to use, and an effective distillation of LingQ's core features.
My Honest Opinion on LingQ
I love LingQ!
There are so many good things to say about it.
The lessons are my favourite part of LingQ. They're very similar to the Assimil approach, in that you pick up the language through immersion. You're thrown in at the deep end, and you're expected to pick up grammar and vocabulary as you go. Also like Assimil, they combine listening and reading, which I find an especially powerful way of learning.
What's better about LingQ compared to textbook-based courses such as Assimil is that it's interactive. A key part of the lessons is letting LingQ know the new words you've encountered, so you can add them to your flashcard deck. To me, that's an additional safety net that makes sure I'm getting as much as possible from the lessons.
I also really appreciate the wide variety of lessons available. As much as I love learning a new language, fresh learning materials are important in keeping me engaged in learning. And with LingQ, there's always something new to discover.
I like that you're in charge of your own learning. You choose what you learn, and follow your interests. This lines up well with the language hacking approach we advocate at Fluent in 3 Months.
What's not to like about LingQ? Not much.
I'm not a huge fan of the avatar, and of the process of earning coins to upgrade your avatar. It feels gimmicky to me, though I guess kids using the site would enjoy it.
I also got confused about the difference between coins (which pay for avatar upgrades) and points (which pay for speaking lessons and writing critiques). But these are only small niggles in an overall amazing system.
As I've said a couple of times already, LingQ is a bit like a Swiss Army knife. It attempts to provide everything you could ever need to learn a language. And all the tools it provides are good quality and effective.
But what's really impressive to me is that LingQ's core tools (lessons and vocabulary building) are among the best I've found. It's a bit like having a Swiss Army knife that also happens to be one of the best standalone knives - not to mention all the other great tools that come with it.
From the number of tools available at LingQ, it's clear that they have a strong focus on investing in developing the site and the tools on it.
I should also note that their customer support is excellent, and they gave a prompt and helpful response when I contacted them.
I would always recommend using a variety of tools and courses to learn a language. That said, if I had to pick just one, it would be LingQ. As long as you're motivated and willing to create your own learning path, it will take you a long way.
Highly recommended.
Would you like to try out LingQ? Follow this link to sign up for a free account.
The post LingQ Review: An Honest, In-Depth Review of the LingQ Language Learning Tool appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
