Polyglot Report Card: May 1st, 2019

Thirty Days. Two Presentations. One fantastic conference. Lots of crises in my recent life in the past year but hoping I’m going to manage well.

So for this one I’m going to only rate languages that (1) I will almost certain encounter speakers of during the conference and (2) are not ones that I regularly encounter at language exchange events by different people (so no Spanish, German or English).

And exactly what I need to do for each.

Let’s go:

Yiddish: above all good in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation is very good, flow is mostly good, I just wish I had more vocabulary, that’s all. But I know plenty of people who would be happy with the vocabulary I currently have in Yiddish. After all, I have more than a decade of experience.

Yiddish plan: my 7,000+ word Anki deck. Use during commutes.

My Yiddish plan is also identical to my Scandinavian plan, but my knowledge of Norwegian is slightly weaker than Yiddish or of Swedish or Danish.

Finnish: Overall quite strong, I think I just need to solidify knowledge of some idiomatic expressions.

Finnish Plan: Cloze Deletions during my commute. Which I’m already doing.

Hebrew: Understanding is EXCELLENT. My vocabulary needs more depth but I don’t know if I’ll have the time to do it, especially with my presentations.

Hebrew plan: use Lingq or Clozemaster more often.

Hungarian: I can manage conversations about some topics well, others not so well. I need consistent practice.

Hungarian plan: watch YouTube / Hungarian TV during workouts or chores.

My Hungarian plan is also valid for Slovak but my flow is a lot better. For obvious reasons I’m more likely to focus on Slovak until after the conference.

Tok Pisin: Haven’t maintained it in a while but when asked to speak it I manage very well. My Bislama and Pijin have somewhat fallen down the wayside but I think I could manage them with a native speaker if I had to. I probably won’t encounter Ni-Vanuatu, etc. at that conference. I know because the guest list is mostly open.

Tok Pisin Plan: Listen to audio in the subway. I can literally understand everything said to almost everything said.

Hawaiian: Probably the dark horse rising star of my group, I don’t know if I’ll have the opportunity to use it but I won’t be surprised if I do. My accent is good, my basic vocabulary is good, my cultural knowledge is a bit on the weak side, I don’t know Hawaiian songs too well.

Hawaiian Plan: Oiwi TV needs myself a-watching.

Lao: Ha. Probably the one language I’m gonna be the most disappointed in (as was the case in the 2017 Polyglot Conference). I’m going to need to do more than just my Memrise course for this one (I only have Lao, Palauan and Hiva Oa / South Marquesan active on Memrise right now).

Lao Plan: multilingual posting in closed groups, uTalk speaking exercises, possibly customizing Lingq.

Fiji Hindi: I can understand a significant amount, but given that I’ll mostly be hearing Standard Hindi, this will need work. This is a language I retired for a while but then I decided to revive it this month because there will be many people who will have learned Esperanto and Hindi for the Gathering Challenge. (I did not, however).

Fiji Hindi Plan: Put an entire textbook into Lingq (I use the Gujarati slot) during one weekend when I feel very passionate. By “entire textbook” I mean “only the simple sentences”. Then go through the vocabulary during the week.

But as for what I will focus on during May, it will likely be Niuean and Fiji Hindi, actually. These are two languages I think that I’ll need the most for the gathering (with the exception of Slovak which I’ll likely soak up very well once I’m there). So I need to work on those. If I am very, VERY satisfied with Niuean, I’ll pivot to Slovak instead.

For what it’s worth, I’ll be focusing more on fewer languages once this conference is over. And I’ll write in more detail about my plan then.

My list remains the same for my post-Gathering language lineup, and I’ll redesign my website to suit it: Scandinavian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Greenlandic and Finnish.

(If I add another language it will likely something required for a trip, business or a relationship but only if I deem it ABSOLUTELY necessary and fulfilling)

Jared Gimbel: The Story You Never Knew

Tomorrow is my birthday (when I’ll be writing something else).

As my 20’s come to a close tomorrow, I will forever remember this decade of my life as the one that transformed me to a confused follower into an internationally-minded, confident explorer.

Around age 24 I started to invest seriously in my studies of Jewish and Nordic Languages, thereby setting up the primary basis of my income (until my video games start coming out!)

Around age 25, weeks before my 26^th birthday, I discovered Tok Pisin for the first time, one of the most transformative experiences of my life that left me with a soft spot towards the developing world and I am in awe of how efficient and poetic Tok Pisin is on every level. It serves as a testament to human endurance, that even when being enslaved and bereft of dignity, humans will hold onto culture, humor and the resilience that defines us all. Other Creole languages I studied since then from the Atlantic and the Pacific had very much the same features.

At age 29, I was told that my parents were floating the idea of travelling to Fiji. Within the following days, I went to Barnes and Noble and got myself the Lonely Planet Fijian textbook and began memorizing phrases IMMEDIATELY.

There is a lot of victory that I had over the course of the language journeys of my 20’s, but there are also the stories and sides that had deep defeat as well.

Sometimes I made silly mistakes in classes on the most basic level, sometimes even concerning things I said about the English language.

Within every one of my language successes I had dozens of times in which I encountered discouragement from native speakers or “beat myself up” because of my high standards.

While my videos were gaining traction in Palau and Kiribati I also had to deal with an angry Subreddit and woke up one morning to an entire webpage dedicated to insulting me. It wouldn’t be the last time that happened.

When abroad I worried that I would never “get good” at the target language and sometimes called up my family on the verge of tears. I also sometimes was made to feel like a stupid American or, even worse, that my religious upbringing in my teenage years left me with a permanent handicap in how I understood the world. (As a girl I dated once told me, “you know a lot about books, but you do not know life”.)

I also had to realize in my later 20’s that there would be a lot of dreams I needed to let go of. I couldn’t seriously become native-like fluent in a language I didn’t really care about (and unlike most people, the “languages that I didn’t really love” were actually the global giants of Western Europe. My heart has been with “the little guys” for quite a while now. )

In all likelihood, barring romance with a Spanish-speaker or business or tourism, my Danish will always be better than my Spanish, no matter what. But I’m okay with that because hearing Danish spoken on the streets of New York City (or anywhere else) always makes me happy. I remember one time when I was returning from a Bar Mitzvah in Washington D.C. I get off the bus and Penn Station and I hear a teenage boy on the street saying, “ja, det er jeg meget sikker på” (Yup, I’m really sure of that”) into a  smartphone. I smiled and knew I was in New York again.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life trying to be someone else and I still remember a teacher in the Paideia Institute telling me that “life is too short and too precious to be wasted on something that you don’t care about” (that was Barbara Spectre, in case anyone who was also in the program is reading this).

In college and in high school I was deeply religious and looking back I think it was largely not because I myself wanted it but because I myself was afraid of divine punishment. In 2013 I made the decision to walk away from religion, bit by bit, and there were a lot of woodland walks where I was worried that some force was going to punish me if I made the decision to turn on the computer on Saturday. Shortly I realize that my fear was preventing me from having the life that I wanted and that I had actually thrown away many years and opportunities on account of being someone I didn’t really want to be.

I became ultra-competitive deep down inside. Hardened by my experiences in higher education, I had learned to become ruthlessly perfectionist to the degree that several friends told me that “no human being can [feasibly] live like that”.

I figured that in any field, whether that is in business, romance, success in getting clicks on your blog posts, etc…that you had to be as GOOD as you possibly can in a world of infinite choice, otherwise you would be thoughtlessly tossed aside in favor of someone better. Perhaps the first time I really experienced something like this was with the college application process, but it was deeply toxic because only years later did I realize that we live in a culture of fear in which our deepest insecurities are made omnipresent so that we can be sold stuff more easily.

Throughout my entire life, even as a toddler, I had known that I was very different. At age 3, I was perusing atlases and wondering about what life was like in areas far away from the DC area. At age 29, here I am in a room in Brooklyn and to my left is a bookcase with language learning books from every continent (except Antarctica). Then as well as now, I somehow felt as though my interest in places and things far away from me would be a cause for stigma.

One time I even had someone at Mundo Lingo tell me that learning Kiribati was not a wise investment because “they’re going to be underwater soon”. I was calm with him but deep down inside you can imagine how furious I really was at this display of heartlessness.

With each growing year I see that there is an ongoing struggle for control of the world, between ordinary people who want to save it and those who treasure short-term profit above humanity and don’t care if the world goes to pieces because of it. Too many people have told me that my work with languages of Oceania / the Arctic is essential to the assist in the struggle of the former.

With each language of the developing world I learn, I see man’s inhumanity to man even more pronounced with each page. But despite that, I also see that the human tapestry is something to admire in all of its glory, despite the fact that I’ll never get to experience the whole thing no matter HOW hard I study.

To some degree it shook me to my core. I saw exactly how rigged the system seems to be in favor of the world-destroyers and doubted my ability to change anything.

But I’ll end on this note.

April 2013. I’m in Woodbridge, Connecticut, my parents’ hometown (for Passover). I go to the library one day and I go to the travel section and I find a book on “Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands” in the language section. I discover the Greenlandic Language for the first time and I fall in love. I obsess about it and the very thought of me seeing another Greenlandic word makes me giddy.

I go to the library the day afterwards and I take a digital camera with me. I photograph all of the language section (it was about five pages or so) and then I go home and I make flashcards out of it on Memrise (it was the first-ever Greenlandic course on Memrise. Now there seem to be about a hundred more from all languages!)

Despite the fact that I was not good and it (and still don’t think I am) I wrote blogposts about my experience, consumed Greenlandic TV and music and told many of my friends about it.

In 2018 I’ve noticed that, at least online, there is a lot more recognition of all things Greenland. Especially in the language-learning communities. Back when Memrise had hundreds of course categories available on the app version (before relegating them only to the Desktop version), they had a Greenlandic category…one that was added because of something that I myself did. Thousands of learners have at least sampled the language from the looks of it. And it seems that Greenland-o-mania will grow even more with my release of “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures” later next year (despite the fact that it got delayed MULTIPLE years on account of difficult circumstances in my life).

Perhaps I had a part in bringing about this “revolution”. I will not know for certain, but back when I made the Palauan video series I actually encountered several commenters saying that they were inspired to teach Palauan to their significant others because of my videos.

That’s. Not. Nothing.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I’m going to go get some gifts. I’ll say this: Clozemaster Pro in its custom sentence packs is going to be HARD to beat!

See you at age 30!

First Day of Tumbuka (Using uTalk Only) … How Did it Go?

I’ll make this easy reading.

For those who didn’t read my post yesterday, I decided to set myself a more dare-devilish goal (in line with a greater self-improvement related goal that I am likely to unveil tomorrow).

For one year (from this year’s one-week-before-Rosh-Hashanah until that of the next year), I would use ONLY one app to learn Tumbuka (a regional language of Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania). The only other resource I am allowed to use is CHANCE conversations with speakers (because this opportunity, if it presents itself, will be essential for the project).

I completed the first skill and unlocked another one – said first skill was filled with basic phrases like “how much does this cost?” “yes”, “no”, “I don’t understand” etc. (Omniglot.com fare, mostly, but less extensive).

I’ll see if I can go through a whole skill every day, if not that then a half-skill. I may also need to go to some other courses to “get more coins” to unlock stuff – something that would not be difficult as long as I want to endure fit-for-children voices in languages I’ve been studying for years now.

Some thoughts:

• I quite like it! I’m already quite equipped to…pretty much say everything that I learned, with maybe one or two exceptions.
• The temptation to use a notebook, Wikipedia or Memrise is a great one. But I have to resist it for the sake of science.
• The pronunciation is straightforward and the app presents MANDATORY recording of your voice in order to complete some activities (in the 1990’s this would be an issue but not so in the smartphone era).
• So far, absolutely no grammar coverage at all in the curriculum. But I guess this will make this “mission” very interesting, it being the first language in adulthood in which I am not learning grammar for in a “scholarly” manner.
• In misremembering words in the recording phases, I defaulted to patterns I recognized from…languages of Oceania or Greenlandic. Given that I was also using THOSE languages in uTalk, perhaps not altogether surprising.
• I like the hippo. I still quite like the hippo. Perhaps I will meet the hippo one day. Or not.

 

Some rules I’m laying out for this challenge:

• The PRIMARY GOAL is to complete the course (every single skill marked with a check and every activity done) a year from yesterday.
• My goal should be to COMPLETE a skill every day.
• If necessary, I can review a skill to fulfill this requirement.
• I MAY NOT USE ANYTHING ELSE TO LEARN TUMBUKA DURING THE YEAR. No Memrise, no books, no writing exercises, no Glosbe – nothing but uTalk and CHANCE conversations with fluent speakers. Granted given that I didn’t even know what it was two weeks ago, I don’t think this should be much of an issue. (I have met people from Zambia before in real life, however…speaking of which, I should update that list on my blog…)
• During vacations or periods of holiday or illness, I am exempt from using the app on a daily basis.
• When the challenge is complete after one year, I may choose to either write a blogpost about the experience or film myself speaking Tumbuka.

 

(I’ll also write another “diary entry” one week out and another one a month out or so, and possibly one every month after that.)

 

Well this is going to be an interesting year. If only I can keep myself consistently motivated. Let’s see if I can do it!

Speaking Greenlandic as a Foreign Language in Greenland: What Was It Like?

Scene: Reykjavik.

It was more than four years since I first discovered the Greenlandic language at a library in rural Connecticut in April 2013.

October 18, 2017 marked the first time that I heard Greenlandic spoken in person. Oddly, it was actually not the first time using Greenlandic with a real person (that was December 5^th, 2016, the day before my interview with KNR [the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation] but it was a mix of Greenlandic and English and it was on the phone. I used English in that interview, with an interpreter with KNR who did an EXCELLENT job, but I also made sure to use some Greenlandic in the interview as well.)

We boarded the plane that was headed to Nuuk and I was excited but also weighed down by travel and, yes, the nagging thought that I was gonna SCREW EVERYTHING UP (I did end up accidentally responding to a Danish-speaking captain in English at one point, but with each year I realize how I shouldn’t take minor-slip ups personally. Looking back at the whole trip, my usage of Greenlandic and Danish was a huge success, despite the fact that I wasn’t fluent in Greenlandic at the time).

Here are some stories to illustrate what sort of reception I got:

• The Captain asked in English what sort of nationalities were represented on the plane. I said, in Greenlandic, “Hello everyone, I’m American” and I got treated to a planeful of “wow” ‘s and even some applause. Whether that was the fact that Americans are a rarity in Greenland or because I was using Greenlandic as a foreigner is anyone’s guess.

 

• I stayed with a host family in Nuuk. The mom knew I was coming from the USA so she addressed me in English and in the middle of the journey I suddenly switched to Danish without warning and then Greenlandic (she was very impressed with both, so I recall). She told me that I spoke Greenlandic better than almost all of the foreigners that live there (!!!) I asked her what language I should use to order things in. I was told to use Danish or English most of the time while in Nuuk, Greenlandic in smaller settlements.

 

• In moving in, there was the daughter present and when I began using some Greenlandic I got a dumbfounded blank stare as though I had revealed myself to be a divine being. She pretty much asked me why on earth I would do it. I explained that I liked Greenlandic music and then showed my Reise Know How book that had helped me throughout my Greenlandic Language journey.

 

• Sometimes I messed up with Greenlandic with my host family, in which case people would usually switch to Danish with me. People also wanted to use some English with me sometimes. Which was okay. I’ve learned to not take it personally as long as I’m not the one that uses English to the detriment of showing respect to the culture or “expecting people to know my language”.

 

• When I met some of my celebrity idols at Katuaq, I used Danish and English and I made an effort to use some Greenlandic but for some reason it wasn’t ideal at the time. I had the opportunity to meet the well-known Greenlandic actor Qillannguaq Berthelsen and he told me that I pronounced his name very well. I was so curious to hear what name he goes by with people who can’t pronounce “Qillannguaq” and he told me he goes by “Q” with such people. When I met Marc’s family I was capable of understanding a lot of what was said between them but I made sure that I got the chance to use some Greenlandic with him and his family while he and his friends got the chance to use some English with me. However, I did have some significant troubles understanding Greenlandic without the subtitles when I saw the movie. I really liked the movie, it was one of the funniest I have EVER seen and fantastically put together, by the way.

 

• In meeting Nanook (one of Greenland’s best-known musical acts), Frederik (one of the lead singers) told me that I spoke Greenlandic well, Christian (the other lead singer of Nanook) said that he was “amazed” with my linguistic abilities (do you understand what it is to me to meet one of my your favorite musicians and the first words he says to you is “I remember you!” Oh, I didn’t mention that I had chat exchanges with both of them prior to visiting the Atlantic Music Shop in Greenland. I got Nanook albums and gear and wore a Nanook T-Shirt during my Polyglot Conference Presentation, exactly as I told Nanook that I would). With the two of them I remember going back between Greenlandic, Danish and English. Everyone’s happy that way. J

 

• For buying museum tickets I used exclusively Danish although just in case I made sure to use some Greenlandic if I heard a staff member using it.

 

• For asking directions I used Greenlandic and I only got one response in English (very heavily accented English from a new couple that had just moved to Nuuk). I got lost in Nuuk during my first hour (I went to Nuuk Center to get food and I couldn’t find my way back to my host family. It was then that I saw the Northern Lights for the first time. )

 

• The bar. Oh wow. I got SO many positive responses that it was unbelievable. People telling me that my accent was amazing and that I was super-talented and that they had “heard about the guy who learned Greenlandic in a week” (that wasn’t Daniel Tammet, who I met a matter of days afterwards in Reykjavik, but Paul Barbato, who went on to become the host of the super-successful “Geography Now” YouTube channel. His Greenlandic video, how I ended up discovering him, was openly teleprompted with audio provided from a native speaker, if I recall correctly. Nothing wrong with that!). It was in pubs like these that I had a lot of opportunity to practice and I got nothing short of a red-carpet treatment. Imagine speaking your target language and getting, in response, a very enthusiastic “QAA! QAA! QAA!!!!!” (WOW! WOW! WOW!!!!!) I’ll never forget those sort of reactions. Ever.

 

• With taxi drivers I used some Greenlandic as well, and part of me remembers getting discounted on account of it. Not also to mention my language skills getting me free rides and other fun stuff. One taxi driver was perplexed why this American kid recognized almost every Greenlandic song that came on the radio. I can’t even do that in the UNITED STATES!

 

 

 

Granted, my nervousness sometimes held me back and it wasn’t absolutely perfect all of the time. But I did make gains and hopefully I’ll learn to teach myself how to not hold back and not have self-doubt in the future. That’s what 2018 is for, right? And 2019. And 2020. And the rest of my life. And your life for yourself!

What were YOUR immersion experiences like, especially with languages that most people don’t study? Let me know in the comments!

P.S. I also completed the “30 Days of Greenlandic” challenge earlier today (I rushed it because of a surprise video I’m making!). I’ll post the compilation of recordings as my last video in 2017!

Lessons I Learned from the 30-Day Speaking Challenge in Lao in November 2017

Shortly after having returned from Iceland after the Polyglot Conference last month, I discovered the fine art of 30-Day Challenge Groups thanks to friends / Facebook Polyglot groups / general curiosity.

During November 2017 I gave one of them a spin for the first time and I chose Lao. I recorded myself speaking Lao for thirty days straight (31 October – 29 November) and I compiled all of the results here with English subtitles (Turn on Closed Captions!):

Did I accomplish fluency in Lao? Not yet. Have I gotten closer? Most certainly. Will I become fluent in Lao more easily if I did this several times? I don’t know, but I would venture most probably.

Some reflections from the journey:

 

• A Big Portion of the Language Learning Journey is Patching Up Mistakes

 

Lao has some sounds that I didn’t manage as well in the beginning, most notably the sounds represented as “ə” or “y” in transliteration. This was in addition to me being quite careless with my tones after the first week or so (we’ll see how much “damage” that does when Lao speakers actually encounter this video for the first time, I’m imagining that I could be understandable but a bit off-putting in a sense).

But I’ve noticed that with each new recording, in addition to the Anki- and Memrise-training that I not only did in transit but also mentioned OUTRIGHT in the challenges, I had a lot of my weaknesses slip away bit by bit.

Looking back on my journeys with languages like Swedish, Hebrew and Finnish, there was a similar pattern: sometimes I would say things that wouldn’t entirely make sense, and then I would discover them and I would avoid saying certain awkward phrases or incorrect verb forms in the future.

When you rehearse a language through speaking imperfectly, that’s really what’s expected (and as much as it pains me to think about my past mistakes, I’m grateful that I continue to do something like Benny Lewis’ “Speak from Day One” method rather than this academic notion of “don’t speak unless you can do it perfectly” [which, in my understanding, would just entrench a “fear of flying” in a sense]).

 

• No One Program Will Fix Everything

 

This is important. I signed up thinking that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance that I could put Lao on my list of fluent languages by the time 2018 rolled around.

NOPE!

(Although maybe I could have if I put a LOT more effort into it, but having to maintain more than a dozen languages is moderately painful at times. Also, 2017 isn’t over yet…)

By the end of the challenge, it had occurred to me that while my grammar and idiomatic knowledge were usually on point, my knowledge of numbers, months and the days of the week were severely lacking.

That, and I still can’t read Lao as fluidly as I could, let’s say, Yiddish.

There continue to be gaps, but this program more than anything really helped me assemble my framework understanding of how Lao works and I will continue to grow on that framework in the future.

The 30-Day Challenge was noticeably helpful for the following in particular:

 

• Sentence structure
• Accent
• Knowledge of the most commonly used words in conversation
• Verb usage
• Conjunctions

 

And being able to wear a sticker with the likeness of this flag.

 

• The Reward of a Good Deed is Another Good Deed

 

This is a quote from the Jewish text of “Pirkei Avot” (Ethics of the Fathers). The idea is this: one good deed leads to a chain of good deeds, and one bad deed likewise can lead to a chain of bad deeds as well.

The same came happen for habits.

During the middle of the challenge there were tasks involved that required watching or reading media in your target language. (Full disclosure: just in case, I had to pick a Lao film with English subtitles, which was okay by me)

Because of that, I was also inspired to glimpse Lao culture in more depth, which in turn brought me to the library to read about Laos in travel literature when I had the chance.

Also after having enthusiastically plunged into the first week, I was similarly driven to complete the rest of the challenge without missing a day (well…technically…I missed the last day, but I began a day early and did the first prompt twice as a result, but Day 30 was just “pick a topic from the first week and do it over again to see how you’ve improved” and it was a choice between that and my compilation video and I chose the latter).

Quite a lot of people gave up later on or even in the middle (as commitment challenges go this is actually a common occurrence).

Knowing that I might be tempted to give up, I hooked myself in the first week, knowing that I would go the whole way if I made it a true habit.

And it seems that it will continue to be a habit because in December 2017 I’ll be doing the 30-Day Greenlandic Speaking Challenge!

This. Will. Be. FUN!!!!

30-Day Lao Speaking Challenge: 10 Days Left + Day Before My Birthday Reflection

 

My birthday is tomorrow! It will be a fantastic day to reflect on what I have accomplished in my life thus far. One thing of note is the fact that with each passing year I seem to accomplish what was unthinkable the previous year. I hope that this coming year of my life continues to amaze me beyond all belief.

I’m not going to remark on my progress or how I’ve changed in 2017. That will have to wait until December. But I thought I’d give a run-down of where I’ve been going since the conference:

 

• For November: Lao

 

Thanks to a friend of mine I discovered the 30-Day Speaking Challenge on Facebook. Realizing that I probably wasn’t going to progress a lot with a tonal language unless I did something seriously, I decided to take it on for November, choosing Lao (which has been a GREAT experience for me so far).

 

Three negatives about my experience with Lao so far, three positives;

 

• Not a lot of good resources to look up words reliably
• Not getting feedback on my tones (but this is honestly “what I signed up for”, and also really makes me understand how much EASIER it is to learn a politically powerful language, even one like Mandarin Chinese [you’ll hear more about that in a bit!]). Actually, not getting feedback from anything.
• Not a lot of music I like in Lao. (Still looking!)

 

+ I’m significantly bolstered in my motivation to focus on one language at a time. This is in addition to the YouTube Series, which serve as “warm-ups” to the Internet challenges such as this one which will cast me on the way to genuine fluency

+ My “flow” has greatly improved. Some languages I know (Krio) and knew (Portuguese) quite well, but didn’t really have a flow for them in a way that made me feel genuine. When I speak a language like Yiddish or Danish, I don’t sound like a learner in the slightest, and that’s because the rhythms of me speaking the language sound flowing and natural. It’s possible to be fluent in a language and now have that flow (as COUNTLESS English L2 speakers throughout the world have demonstrated with me throughout my life).

+ I’m learning words on a daily basis without fail because I’m engaging my multiple senses in taking in knowledge of the language.

• December Challenges: Greenlandic

 

I’m not fluent in Greenlandic, despite the victories I had with the language when I was in Nuuk last month.

 

I’m honestly burned out in studying the language and so I think one thing that would help would be if I were to do this 30-Day Challenge in Greenlandic.

 

Obviously I’m expecting ZERO feedback from other participants, but this I a self-imposed challenge. And who knows? I may find myself surprise.

 

• December Challenges: Burmese

There’s another 30-Day challenge I’ll be doing in December, the EuroLinguiste One, and I’ll be doing it with Burmese. The culmination of the project will be me filming a 2-5 minute video speaking Burmese (I could even use a script if necessary).

Given that I really need to find myself reading the language at a quick pace if I want to make any genuine progress with it, I think this challenge would be helpful (part of it involves doing Facebook posts in the language as well as setting your device to that language. I have multiple Burmese-speaking Facebook friends so they can help me and/or laugh at me as they so choose. But they’ve been extremely supportive, so thank you.)

 

• Looking Forward: 30-Day Challenges Every Month for 2018 and beyond. Mostly with Languages I’ve studied previously I need to climb “Mount Fluency” with .

 

After the polyglot conference it seems that I’ll have to focus a lot more on maintenance and a lot less on acquisition of New Languages. That said, I may take on one or two new ones in 2018, and it seems that Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese going to be on my short-term plans for reasons I quite can’t explain yet (no, travel plans are not involved).

Already with Duolingo Mandarin I’ve been noticing a significant amount of words that resemble Burmese (given that they are both Sino-Tibetan Languages). Mandarin Speakers can’t understand spoken Burmese, but there are words in common with similar meanings and so it’s good to have that advantage.

 

• New YouTube Series for My Birthday Tomorrow!

Can’t reveal anything about it yet!

The only thing I do know, however, is that I will continue to acquire more and more experiences as I go through life!

Onwards!

Last Weekend in the US Before the Polyglot Conference: Where Do I Stand?

Monday I head to Iceland, Wednesday I head to Greenland, and here I am writing this piece from Brooklyn, wondering if I’m going to leave my language missions abroad (and the Polyglot Conference itself) with a great sense of relief or accomplishment or covered with clouds of self-doubt.

More recently I’ve been having nightmares in which I bring my security as a polyglot into question (e.g. online comments popping up [in my DREAMS, mind you] that tell me that my accent is bad and that I’m a fake, or in which I’m asked to speak to people in their native language and, well, these have been all over the board. Some have been stutter-worthy, other instances in which I’m practicing in my dreams have involved me doing WAAAAY better than my conscious self could imagine.)

Also, I’ve had dreams more recently in Burmese, Tongan and…Gilbertese! (My Burmese is probably at around A2 right now, Tongan at A1, and Gilbertese can be A2 if I can do EVERYTHING right in the next few days.)

In the meantime, however, I’ve decided to hit the “pause” button” on my studies of Fiji Hindi, Guarani and Khmer (although I’ll continue to do them after the Conference and, of course, in my YouTube series).

A huge break for me is the fact that I’ve been capable of mastering spoken Jamaican Patois in nearly a week (!!!!!!) Granted, Trinidadian Creole and Sierra Leone Krio are EXTREMELY close to these (Krio has more African influence, Trinidadian Creole has more English influence, and then there’s my stunt with Belizean Creole [or “Bileez Kriol”] that also really helped with solving the Jamaican Mystery more quickly than I had expected. Also, for many Americans, Jamaican Patois is hardly anything foreign, thanks to the influence of Jamaican music and culture all over the globe.)

The only “weak” language I’m working on (I have to focus on ONE in order to get it good enough at this point) is Gilbertese.

So here’s my currently lineup right now! (ESTIMATING my levels:)

 

A1 – Gilbertese, Tongan

A2 – Lao, Burmese, Hungarian, Polish

B1 – French, Irish, Greenlandic, Cornish

B2 – Hebrew, Finnish, Breton, Spanish (EU), German, Icelandic, Krio, Jamaican Patois, Trinidadian Creole

C1 – Tok Pisin, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Yiddish

C2 – Bislama, Solomon Islands Pijin

Native – English (US)

 

That’s a total of 27 (And I usually don’t tell people that Solomon Islands Pijin is my STRONGEST foreign language!) I may have underestimated my B2’s and overestimated my B1’s.

If I count those I forgot (which I MAY be inclined to use on various occasions, no idea how I would manage with any of them given how seldom I’ve studied them for MONTHS), this brings the list significantly higher (30+), but most of those I forgot are in the A1-A2 level.

My study routine before this conference was significantly less organized and less effective than my study routine before the 2015 conference. It was extremely scatterbrained but this time I have the added advantage of having an immersion environment for three different languages before the conference (Greenlandic, Danish and Icelandic). Again, that is likely to prove a big confidence booster or a confidence wrecker. Whatever the case, I’ll manage with significantly more wisdom after the fact.

The biggest gift I’ve had this year for language learning has been the fact that I have return to Anki.

I was struggling a lot with Spanish especially over the course of multiple years and I’ve noticed that extensive vocabulary lists in languages that I have already mastered the grammar of have turned my mind into an unbeatable machine (whenever I’ve had significant practice with Anki earlier than day in the relevant language, that is).

The only reason I adopted Anki at all was because I was expecting to go on a Trek with no Internet in Myanmar (it didn’t end up happening, although I did visit the country back in May) and knowing that I had to resume teaching right afterwards meant that I couldn’t show signs of being “rusty” upon returning from my trip. Luckily I got the consistent practice and a lot more.

Goals right now:

• Get a good accent in the languages I may have not been exposed to as much (Gilbertese and Tongan especially). Listening to music and radio will help.
• Get a FLAWLESS accent in the Carribean Creoles.
• Hone tones in Burmese and Lao
• Complete my Lao Anki course (DONE!)
• Complete my Krio Anki course (probably not going to happen but I’ll try!)
• Complete my Gilbertese Memrise course (REALLY not happening but the more progress I’ll make, the better).
• Devote time on transport to memorizing words as best I can.
• Develop a morning routine in which I can get exposed to all languages in less than an hour (to be used the mornings before the days of the conference, may choose to skip languages that I’ve been using frequently or if I’m feeling REALLY secure in them).
• Ask my friends to write comments in the languages in the lists above.
• MENTAL DISCIPLINE. I have to let go of all my previous failures and be more forgiving of myself. No one’s going to be “out to get me”, either among the locals of various places and certainly NOT the people at the conference. I did fantastically at the last conference and I’m sure I’ll do it again.

 

In 2015, the languages I significantly underperformed with were Spanish, German, Irish and Finnish. I’ve gotten a lot better at all of them since then. The Languages I significantly overperformed with were Yiddish, Swedish, Faroese (since forgotten) and especially Norwegian (the super-duper winner of the 2015 conference, got regularly mistaken as a native speaker by pretty much everyone!)

Since 2015 I have paused my studies of Dutch, Faroese, Northern Sami, Ukrainian, Russian and Portuguese (and probably a number of others I’ve forgotten).

Whatever happens, I have to stay optimistic and determined.

Hope to see you there!

Reflections on How to Improve My Personal Character (September 2017)

Another autumn, another reflection, another cycle of sadness and rebirth…on any given year I have two “New Year’s Days”, one of these is, of course, January 1^st, where I reflect about my professional life and set goals for the coming year (fun fact: after having gotten Lyme Disease in late 2015 I let this blog “sleep”, and my big project for 2017 was reviving it, which is probably one of my big successes of the year. Welsh, Tajik, Hungarian, and Krio have also been on my “to-do” list for 2017, the latter two of which have, so far, been astounding successes (Krio during the Summer and Hungarian during Summer-Autumn and Autumn).

For Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, my resolutions are different. Instead of focusing on goals (such as “establishing project X, revive blog Y and strengthen / learn languages ABC”, I focus on personal character traits.

Part of me things that our outlooks and our character really change as a result of extremely painful experiences (e.g. failures of any variety, romantic breakup, death, getting fired etc.), and while these have no doubt caused me to change I also think that change can come about with intentional focus.

Truth be told, I set a number of goals for myself in 2017. I haven’t met all of them (e.g. revive my comic books on DeviantArt, get my Patreon Page seriously going, get Kaverini Nuuk Adventures published this year), but I’ve met a significant amount of them, especially as far as language learning is concerned.

I’m going to make a list of personal things I need changed in the coming year so that I can enter this coming year a more fulfilled spiritual experience:

 

• Stop letting poisonous memories of the past control me in any way.

 

Probably the most important point on this list, but it’s a very heavy one. I’ve had unfortunate experiences with language-learning, including times in which I feel I haven’t done enough or made really stupid mistakes (I’m less forgiving with myself than most native speakers are).

Ever since before my Bar Mitzvah (which, for those unaware, takes place at age 13 for boys), my memory has been “collecting” literally every single failure and rejection I’ve ever had, and they tend to carry a lot more weight in my memory than any success, ever. So much so that one snide internet comment carries more weight in my mind than being accepted to prestigious conferences and receiving awards. (I wish I were joking and I KNOW it sounds silly, but I’m working on trying to fix it…)

One moron online told me that I sucked at Spanish (in that video back in March) despite the fact that the SAME VIDEO was featured in a Mexican magazine and that I’ve received many compliments from Spaniards on my accent. (By the way, that magazine should know that my name is not actually “Jared Gimbl”.

And I haven’t even touched on my various academic shortcomings either (which I’m more open to talking about now given what I’ve become since then).

 

• Become more uninhibited in my personality, as if I were vlogging at all times (esp. in public)

 

Maybe it had to do with living in cultures of conformity, maybe it had to do with having graduated from Wesleyan University and entered other areas of the “real world”, but since 2013 until quite recently I’ve noticed that I’ve been more inhibited in my personality.

I look at my videos right now and they don’t contain the wackiness that I usually portray to my siblings and other family members, although one day it very well may get there.

Obviously behaving like a joker maniac in public is never an option, but thanks to some very judgmental people I’ve met over the course of my life I’ve subconsciously set a “self-defense” mechanism in which I don’t express my personality as much.

Autumn 2017. That season ends. I’m gonna show more of my personality everywhere I am from now on to try to undo the damage that “experience” dealt me.

 

• Stop being afraid of snide comments, rejection, or anything like it, both online and in the real world.

 

I’m a towering figure that many people look up to (even though at times I don’t think that I deserve it at all). In so doing, I will attract skeptics and “haters” (i.e. people who deliberately try to knock achievers down when they are threatened by them.) I’ve encountered these people both in real life and online, and I can’t be afraid of them anymore.

I’ve had my real-life doubters apologize to me when I show my skills at events like Mundo Lingo. Online ones are obviously significantly more difficult to dissuade but one day they’ll learn and I look forward to the apologies I get from them.

And even if I do attract haters, it’s actually a really good sign because it shows that I am creating change that the world needs but that most people are uncomfortable with.

Losing subscribers isn’t an excuse to hold back, either. I do what I want and I’ll leave the approval-seeking Jared to the past back when he needed it. (I think that being approval-seeking is a toxic habit that, again, the education system instills in many of us).

 

• Stop assuming that certain situations make me look “stupid” or that people are constantly on the lookout to point out my weaknesses / make me seem like a fraud / etc.

 

Ah, yes, sometimes when I post things in groups or online I worry that there are some people who are trying to judge me and knock me down. Thanks to past experiences, part of me sees the world as “achievers vs. haterz”, in which the latter group aggressively tries to take down the former.

As a result, I’ve become possessed with a slight paranoia in which I’m distrustful of other people, especially when I first meet them.

Again, my education made me SO afraid of the red pen and the bad grade, as well as instilling the illusion that everyone else was doing better at everything that I was, that I worry too much about my image at times.

I literally avoided online forums for years because of it, and avoided posting things about myself on YouTube UNTIL THIS YEAR.

I’m quite certain that every champion ever has the same variety of insecurities but don’t get arrested by it in the slightest. In fact, some of my great heroes in the language-learning community have been very forthright about them and actually earn respect for being vulnerable because of it!

Gotta be the same way, y’know?

 

• My sky-high standards that I set for myself are good, but I have to realize when it inflicts pain to myself

 

When somebody calls my skills in their language “good” as opposed to “very good” or “excellent” (note to word: in every language I speak well there is a distinction between all of these), I somehow feel that I haven’t done enough.

When speaking German last night, I feel that I messed up grammar and idioms more than I would have liked to, and I got genuinely vexed because of it. My Irish and Hungarian didn’t live up to my standards either (and I’ve just been working on Hungarian seriously for like a month and a half now!)

I was worried that there would be someone nearby who thought “this guy isn’t good at all!” (despite the fact that I used Swedish, Yiddish and French both during that event last night and earlier on that day, and I think I managed extremely well with all of them). I left home thinking that I was a fake and that I would never get a polyglot video good enough to impress millions of viewers…and that my own emotional shortcomings and perfectionism, coupled with growing nervousness, would forever make it out of reach…

I’ve managed well with German and Irish in the past, it was probably due to a lack of practice, to be honest, and that can really be fixed. I had a similar incident with Icelandic back in November and I intensely studied for a month to ensure that it would never happen again.

 

• Stop trying to run away from things

 

I have to learn to say “yes” to things more often, and this includes translation jobs, meetings, or any opportunity to create or speak.

The Jared who somehow tries to shield himself from the rest of the world, perhaps because he’s been hurt too much at some points (see no. 1) isn’t the real Jared. The real Jared always strives for great adventure.

 

• Answer messages more frequently

 

As a result of my increased presence in the world, I get a lot of people messaging me for advice, inspiration, or just wanting to talk about anything. Sadly, I have not been as good as a responder as I would like to, and I would genuinely like to change that.

Part of me thinks that I am being judged all of the time, and as a result I have to wait until I’m “feeling well” in order to ensure that I can come off as my best self.

But one thing that I’ve (debatably) notices is that … even when I think to myself “I’m doing a horrible job”, others can still be thinking “wow, everything he’s saying makes so much sense!”

Maybe one thing I would need to do is set aside three times a day in which I deliberately “clear out” my Facebook messenger inbox with responding to all of my unread messages. That may help. Also if I get a message at one point and I think I have a good enough response to it, I can answer it immediately.

Point is, I think this is something I need to fix right now. But something tells me that the day isn’t far off when I get thousands of messages a day and it won’t be possible for me to sort through all of them…

 

In what sort of ways are you trying to improve yourself? Let us know!

Buffalo Weekend Travel Mission September 2017 – Report Card!

 

Preamble:

Okay, so I’m headed back to Connecticut today (for a family visit) and then back to Brooklyn tomorrow, and in the meantime I’m going to set up a plan for my language learning as a car passenger . Remember that I’m rehearsing three languages in general:

Trinidadian Creole – Go through the grammar section in the book once more. Try to read as many sentences and about the grammar as well as you can. If you’re getting sick of that, look at the vocabulary list at the back of the book. My 4G is already in tatters and I can’t afford to have calypso music immersion on an eight-hour journey.

In short: read grammar section of the book, if you’re sick of that, read the glossary of that book. Stop immediately if your’e feeling motion sickness.

Hungarian – Anki will get you sick in the car (interestingly the Reise Know How books don’t tend to get my carsick and I don’t know why. That company has a lot of things going for it and a lot of details in its works very-well planned out). The one thing you do have is Mango Languages in the audio mode. That isn’t nothing. Make sure to use Anki during the „breaks”. You also have Colloquial Hungarian. Looking at the tables isn’t going to do you much good, but one thing that will do you much good is looking at sentences and small grammatical explanations. I wondered for about a month what on earth a „coverb” is and I finally understand it thanks to this Friday. You also have the Colloquial Hungarian Audio. In short: strengthen your knowledge using the audio.

Mossi –I know this significantly less well than the other two languages on this list, I would recommend going through the grammar sections of my Reise Know How Book, given that it contains a lot of material that my video series doesn’t cover. I don’t know if I’m going to continue the video series because I put everything in it in my Memrise course (which is also published AND the first-ever Mossi course on Memrise! I also did the first-ever Greenlandic course on Memrise! Lucky me!) I also have the audio for the Peace Corps book if I get motion sickness. In short: use the grammar section of the book, if you’re feeling motion sickness, use the downloaded audio from the Peace Corps booklet you used during your Jared Gimbel Learns Mossi Series.

Overall: Motion sickness and learning fatigue are my biggest enemies and now I have a plan to combat both of them. Another”honorable mention” enemy is actually…the fact that I sometimes want to „flirt” with other languages in the meantime, including those that I want to review on Anki or with music, or completely new ones (do I mention how I sometimes feel even more guilty with each new language I decide to „explore” , even though I’m not even seeking fluency in all of them? But hey, if I weren’t so worried about the opinions of others, I wouldn’t feel guilty in the slightest, now, would I? Now THAT is something to reflect on for the upcoming Jewish High-Holiday season and its moods of self-improvement!)

(I wrote the above plan before the trip. I wrote the reflection below after it)

 

SO HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED:

 

Not a failure per se, but a disappointment was my time with Mossi. Two things I had underestimated during the journey. For one, I did use audio and while it did help with pronunciation in some small capacity I couldn’t hear it consistently a lot of the time.

What’s more, I turned to Mossi in the final third of the journey in which my discipline was completely drained. I was only capable of doing about one page of sight-reading at a time (and sight-reading is seldom a good idea with language-learning unless you have to at the given moment [e.g. in a waiting room]).

It wasn’t completely useless but I did not think that it brought me closer to fluency at all.

Lesson learned: don’t try to force studying, especially in afternoons or evenings when you’re „not feeling up to it”. You can’t be a learning machine no matter how committed you are or how much an educational system works you down.

 

Much like the journey there, Hungarian proved to be a moderate sucess. I carried through with my plan exactly as I had intended and I had just the right amount of energy when I chose to go through Mango Languages Audio and Anki Sentences with the language. It wasn’t the most productive study session I’ve had, but I began to notice patterns, includin how to express favorites, indirect statements, wishes and many other important pieces.

(One thing that has struck me as very interesting through this Hungarian journey is exactly how sub-par Duolingo has really been on the journey. It has been helpful to a small degree, no doubt, but it seems that it hasn’t even been one of my top-five resources at all).

The Anki Sentence Deck has BY FAR been the most helpful thing, assisting me with patterns that constantly repeat themselves as well as showing me common constructions in words and sentences that are actually useful in conversation (in stark contrast to Duolingo’s school-of-hard-knocks Hungarian sentences that test grammar knowledge and virtually nothing else).

Lesson Learned: a single weekend (or other small period of time) can bring great results with significant focus.

 

And now for the big win, Trinidadian Creole. I knew exactly what the fix was with the grammar and I was gladly showing off my knowledge of Trini Creole to my family members with great amusement and amasement.

While my knowledge will certainly become more consistent as time comes on, it has been nearly a year a half since I got the book and, thanks to it as well as radio-listening and other forms of immersion (not also to mention overhearing it and other Carribean Creoles on the streets of Brooklyn), I will have Triniadian Creole join the ranks of my strongest languages!

Obviously the similarities to English made it easier…or did it? I often had to notice what sort of words were different from standard English (little can often be pronounced like „likkle”, and various vowel patterns are different in comparison to American English, and we haven’t even touched on the fact that Triniadian Creole lacks grammatical features that English has [e.no. no passive sentences, „haffu” is usually used instead of „must”, sometimes tense is indicated only by context, and, the big confusing one, the fact that the words for „can” and „can’t” sound dangerously similar!)

I came, I saw, I have one more language on my list! About time! (and Jamaican Patois is going to be one of my projects for the coming year, and one of the coming years may indeed be a year in which I agree to study no more new languages, instead focusing on maintenance and improvement!)

Concluding Thoughts:

• Keeping a journal is helpful for detecting what makes your memory and mind work and what makes it slump.
• Don’t expect everything to be a victory.
• Don’t expect everything to be a defeat.
• Analyze your current situation thoroughly before any „big mission”
• Analyze past tendencies as well
• Reflect afterwards

I’ll be returning to the blog with more straightforward advice and language showcases in the next few posts.

 

Any ideas? Let me know!

Victoriously yours,

Jared

Polyglot Report Card: June 2017

A new polyglot video is coming soon and its production is within sight! So therefore, given that I want to return to the world of video-making with an experience you will remember (I think maybe three / four videos a year would probably be a good benchmark of my progress unless one of my creation goes COMPLETELY viral), time for me to rate myself.

So that you know, I’m going to be as RUTHLESS as possible with myself and expose my weaknesses to their core. At the same time, I am going to realize that (1) there is always room for improvement, even in one’s native language(s) and (2) this is, in part, to expose my vulnerability (which a lot of Internet polyglots, I fear, tend to not do).

I am going to be featuring a total of 36 languages in this video, and I believe it will be the first-ever polyglot video to feature languages native to every continent (except for Antarctica).

They are as follows, although the order is to be decided:

English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea), Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Finnish, Spanish (EU), Breton, Bislama (Vanuatu), Pijin (Solomon Islands), Irish, Cornish, Polish, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), French (EU), Portuguese (both EU and BR), Dutch (Netherlands), Welsh (Southern), Ukrainian, Russian, Italian, Faroese, Northern Sami, Burmese, Estonian, Hungarian, Krio (Sierra Leone), Tajik, Tahitian, Guarani (Jopara) and Tigrinya.

Yes, I have studied MANY other languages besides, but I’ll be focusing on these in order to maintain my sanity and cover enough material within a reasonable time limit.

Yes, the last three are very recent additions and, while they are not going by very swimmingly and require some work, I know I’ll be able to include small bits of them in the video (and I’m not talking about “good luck” or “bye-bye” like in my last one, but complete sentences). One reason I made my March 2017 video so short was because I thought that it would match with people’s attention spans. Ah well. At least it was good enough for a first try.

Anyhow, time for me to get graded. Biggest Strength, Biggest Weakness, Accent, Grammar, and Future Course of Action before I film the video.

 

English

 

Biggest Strength: It’s my native language (despite what you may have heard, read or believed). I’ve had a lot of exposure to it throughout my life and I can easily use idioms and cultural references with ease. I’m so good at speaking English (even by native speaker standards) that often I have to train myself to simplify my thought patterns for languages that often required more direct methods of communication (French, Burmese, Bislama, etc.)

Biggest Weakness: Thanks to me having avoided English-language media for years now in order to raise my skills in other languages, sometimes my spoken English has detectable traces of influence from other languages. Sometimes I even find myself talking in Nordic accents without even realizing it, as well as expressions and grammatical pieces from English Creole Languages. (NOTE: Do not let this serve as any discouragement from learning English Creole Languages! American, Hiberno- and Caribbean forms of English are 110% legitimate versions of the language that came about through similar influences as well and also have traces of other people’s native languages present throughout! Maybe the same could also be said about…any language anywhere!)

Accent: I need to sound more American sometimes rather than something “international”. I pull it off with my family well enough, but sometimes I have to get myself to deliberately sound “lazier” in order to not get the “where are you from? You have an accent” spiel.

Grammar: My sentence structure also shifts sometimes to something more distinctly German or Romance-Language oriented. Sometimes this makes me sound like a foreigner and I would obviously catch it in editing. I really need to stop this.

Future course of Action: Just be cognizant of when I make mistakes and try to avoid them in the future. This will certainly be an interesting topic to write about in the future.

 

Danish

 

Biggest Strength: Where do I start? I’m very good at reading and understanding things seldom becomes an issue for me. Yes, I can’t pick up “every word” as clearly as I could with Norwegian or Swedish but I can’t even do that with English a lot of the time either. You see, this is a problem a lot of novice language learners have. They judge their L2 to a higher standard than the one they have for their native languages. Please, be aware of when you do this. My biggest strength? I’ve finally gotten over the understanding hurdle, and it’s been years since I’ve done it and I’m getting better. Those of who you have studied Danish know exactly how much of a pain this can really be.

Biggest Weakness: In speaking, I think I need to use idioms and expressions more often, although going through a 16,000+ word Danish – English dictionary on Anki certainly is helping. What’s more, I need to be VERY cognizant of slip-ups when it comes to vowel shifts, especially as far as the infamous letter a is concerned (the Danish a is often pronounced like a short-a sound like in “bat”, English also has a similar quality. This actually makes Danish more approachable to native English speakers who have never spoken any other language aside from English before).

Accent: I’ve been told that my accent is fantastic. But sometimes when shifting very quickly from another Nordic Language to Danish (or from any language to Danish, period), I need to take a second or two to get my pronunciation “sounding right”. That, and singing has really done significant wonders for my accent, especially since the beginning (which is the hardest part, esp. with Danish)

Grammar: No glaring issues that I can think of.

Future course of Action: I need to sing more! Out loud! And talk to myself more often when I’m using Danish to study (e.g. while reading a text for research or using Anki)

 

Swedish

Biggest Strength: Why couldn’t I be like this in Sweden? Took me years to get here, but Swedish is now solidly one of my strongest languages. My Swedish-American heritage propelled me into this journey with a sense of purpose and, while I still haven’t read the letters in Swedish from my deceased family members, I know 110% I’d be able to talk to them (if I…ever had the opportunity to have spoken to them…). I can use idioms, synonoms, a wide variety of words and put them together in a way in which my personality genuinely comes through. If that isn’t fluency, nothing is.

Biggest Weakness: Two things (1) sometimes I flub pronunciation of a word once or twice (although rarely) and (2) sometimes I let some of my negative experiences with the Swedish language (e.g. having had native speakers once or twice refuse to speak to me in Swedish or otherwise treat me not very nicely) attach themselves to me even though I shouldn’t. I should know better than that to realize that I’m not that insecure beginner anymore! But sometimes my emotional core sometimes likes to think that I am, despite the fact that on some days I use Swedish for 4-6 hours.

Accent: Not the Finland-Swedish I was talking when I was living there, that’s for sure (although Finland-Swedish is finally growing on me!). I think it’s a really good job and the worst I’ve ever gotten within the past year is being asked if I spent a significant amount of time in Norway / if I’m Norwegian (and, once or twice, being switch to Norwegian on, but I’m okay with that, of course!)

Grammar: Very few, if any. Had trouble for a while as to exactly when to use the word “fast” (too difficult to explain in a single sentence), but that’s been dealt with.

Future course of Action: Mindfulness. I have to let my bad memories go. And stay gone. Otherwise, I’m gonna keep on doing what I’m doing. Come a long way.

 

Norwegian

 

Biggest Strength: I got a lot of exposure to this language with television and as a result my knowledge of the culture and general patterns is very, very sharp. My exposure to this language on YouTube ensures that I can pepper my speech with idioms and a very natural flow.

Biggest Weakness: I have trouble reading very complicated and specialized texts. Casual dialogue is not a problem for me, ever. Also Norwegian is probably my weakest of the Scandinavian Mainland Trio, by virtue of the fact that I’ve interacted with Norwegian speakers the least. I sometimes have issue understanding dialects that are not Oslo or Sami.

Accent: Sometimes I think I sound like a cartoon character. Been told that my accent places me squarely in Eastern Norway. Good. That’s what I want.

Grammar: Some arcane forms of pasts and plurals that I’ve heard referenced in some songs are things I need to gain more familiarity with. Aside from that, very few issues.

Future course of Action: I literally haven’t watched Norwegian TV all year and I need to do it more often. Not YouTube. Go on NRK and watch stuff.

 

 Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea)

 

Biggest Strength: I can understand radio broadcasts and television with extraordinary ease. I could even transcribe a lot of it!

Biggest Weakness: Understanding the language as used by locals in documentaries can be possible but sometimes is a bit of a problem. The fact that I haven’t had a lot of practice with the spoken language, while I use it with my family members (regardless of whether or not they understand it), needs to be accounted for.

Accent: Yes, I can imitate a lot of people who sing and who present on TV or on podcasts, but I think my Tok Pisin accent needs something to make it sound less American. Difficult to say what.

Grammar: Bislama and Pijin have more prepositions and I have to be conscious to avoid their usage in Tok Pisin. Which I usually do.

Future course of Action: Watch PNG documentaries where Tok Pisin is featured. Otherwise, hey…maybe speaking the official variety as used in the programs described above isn’t a bad thing at all! More reading practice would also be good.

 

 Yiddish

Biggest Strength: The one language I’ve spent the most time with being fluent. I’m committed, its a language that echoes with me and it shows on every level.

Biggest Weakness: Still have some Yinglish here and there, although rarely. I also really want it to be more idiomatic, referencing well-known phrases and proverbs. And by “well-known phrases” I don’t mean “bible verses”. Sometimes it takes me a while to “switch” into fluent Yiddish from English (and by “ a while” I mean “ a few seconds”)

Accent: Some people really like it, saying that it sounds like the true Yiddish of the Lithuanian Yeshives. Others think is sounds too close to German or thinks that it sounds “strange”. Non-native speakers, especially from secular institutions, love it.

Grammar: Sometimes I make stupid mistakes, although never in my classes, thankfully. This only happens when I’m switching languages really quickly.

Future course of Action: Keep going through my comprehensive Anki list (it is 7000+ words). Has a lot of words that would make my language sound more natural than it already is.

 

Hebrew

Biggest Strength: I have a lot of cultural resonance with the Hebrew language, given that it (along with French) were the first ones I was exposed to as a child alongside English. My knowledge of Biblical quotes is top-notch (which is surprisingly useful in conversation and rhetoric in Hebrew), as well as my knowledge of prayers. I also know a lot about the culture and mentality in general, more than anywhere else aside from the US.

Biggest Weakness: However, there are gaps in my vocabulary as far as purisms go, and if there weren’t Yiddish’s Hebrew words (that were taken back into Modern Hebrew in the days of Zionism) in the equation, it would be a lot worse off. I’m good conversationally but there’s something missing in comparison to the way I speak Swedish or German or Tok Pisin. That something is an extended vocabulary of abstract nouns.

Accent: Good enough to fool the staff members at Ben Gurion. That was 2015. I’m even better now.

Grammar: The Binyanim are second-nature to me, which presents interesting problems when I’m trying to…well…explain how they work. Fun fact: native Hebrew speakers get disqualified from teaching their native language because they “crash and burn” while being asked to explain binyanim, not also to mention that colloquial speech also bypasses a lot of complicated verb forms as well as using grammatically incorrect forms (much like English speakers in this country!)

Future course of Action: I’m supposed to be programming this list of 10,000 most common Hebrew words into Anki. Unfortunately I have to edit the list to make it consistent and I’m not making steady progress with it. Israeli TV shows would also really help me with my vocabulary gaps. While I don’t need the subtitles at ALL to understand it, maybe I should use them from English (or even another language!) just in case I need to gain an extra degree of wisdom in the translation business.

 

German

Biggest Strength: Thanks to the Kauderwelsch series, I’ve read more German than literally any other language on this list (barring various forms of Hebrew). I can watch Let’s Play Videos online and follow them consistently, my passive vocabulary is huge. Lots of people, native speakers and otherwise, think that I do a good job. Yeah, if only I could have been this good…when I was living there!

Biggest Weakness: Gender shenaningans, issues with some relative pronouns (a sentence like “The cities in which I have lived” can present some problems for me, and by “problems” I mean “hold on a moment”)

Accent: I speak like I’m from the South of Germany thanks to my guilty pleasure of watching Domtendo on a weekly basis. Somehow thinks that it needs some fine-tuning, although I don’t know how or why. Maybe it sounds too Scandinavian sometimes.

Grammar: What’s more, sometimes I have to correct my grammar errors in German but I do the same in English too. I would say that my German grammar is mostly acceptable.

Future course of Action: The relative pronouns need fixing in this regard. Also playing video games in German with more complicated vocabulary sets would really help me.

 

Finnish

 

Biggest Strength: I’m really used to spicing up my Finnish so that it doesn’t sound like a textbook. I also have a broad knowledge of Finnish morphology

Biggest Weakness:  I have the reverse problem with Hebrew—I know a lot of abstract nouns but often names of material things can elude me at times.

Accent: I’ve noticed that my accent tends to sound like one of the last five Finnish-language voices I heard last. Aside from that, I would say it is good although I have trouble imitating Finnish-accented English.

Grammar: Good in regards to colloquial speech, could use work in regards to the written language. Given that I mostly want to use Finnish to engage with the popular culture, part of me is okay with the dynamicI have now.

Future course of Action: I guess I’ll have to speed through that Anki list of 22000 Finnish words now, won’t I? Any way I could randomize it? Or I could do the less intensive thing and use clozemaster. Television would also be good but part of me worries exactly how much time I’ll have to practice langauges with it.

 

Spanish (EU)

Biggest Strength: The one official EU language I can read best! It’s obviously the doing of video games.

Biggest Weakness: I sometimes feel self-conscious to talk to native speakers, given how I’m haunted by past memories of screwing up this language and feeling like a failure when attempting it. Sometimes I don’t e even tell native speakers that I know it!

Accent: Irritiatingly Peninsular, which causes Spaniards to swoon and a host of reactions from Latino Spanish speakers, ranging from “so cool!” to “huh? I can’t understand anything…”

Grammar: Only a handful of knots in irregular verbs.

Future course of Action: I’ve tried and tried to find a way to improve and seldom does “more TV” or “more Anki” or “more Clozemaster” actually do anything. I think it’s a mindfulness thing and I don’t really know how to push away my bad memories. Sometimes they were so bad that I literally gave up the language three times. This sadly resulted in me having gone to a Puerto Rican New Year’s Party and me being unable to understand a lot of what was being said. What got me back into it? Let’s Play Videos in Spanish. That’s what. Oh, and video games in general.

 

Breton

Biggest Strength: Casual conversation goes by well when I get the chance to use it. Although given the level of Breton speakers I’ve encountered in the past few months, this isn’t a very high standards. I have a friend of mine who is in an intensive Breton language program right now! Hopefully we’ll be able to hone each other’s skills upon his return!

Biggest Weakness: Reading.

Accent: Good enough, I guess.

Grammar:  My one blind spot is verb conjugation, and maybe some forms of mutation (for those unaware: Celtic languages have some initial letters of words change under certain circumstances, this is called “mutation”)

Future course of Action: The reading-with-the-glosses procedure I outlined many posts ago (split an article into sentences, look up the words you don’t know, read the article aloud and translate it into your native language).

 

Bislama (Vanuatu)

 

Biggest Strength: Can understand almost anything spoken in it.

Biggest Weakness: While I can speak it very well, Bislama has a rich array of exclamations and I haven’t mastered anywhere close to all of them.

Accent: Good, or acceptable at the absolute least.

Grammar: Mastered.

Future course of Action: listen to the Radio more often in Bislama

 

 Pijin (Solomon Islands)

 

Biggest Strength: Can understand almost everything spoken in it

Biggest Weakness: Sometimes I sound too proper (in using too many English words).

Accent: Good, I think.

Grammar: Mastered

Future course of Action: use YouTube to watch stuff in Pijin more often, the Radio, especially in Honiara, is primarily English.

 

 Irish

 

Biggest Strength: My accent is very good. That’s what Irish people have told me.

Biggest Weakness: The spoken language, especially outside of Connemara, can elude me. Some verb forms could use work.

Accent: Very good, according to Irish people.

Grammar: Good enough for converseation, but I need to get many other verb forms under my belt to go from good to great.

Future course of Action: Find fun stuff to do in Irish and do it, but it has to involve listening.

 

Cornish

 

Biggest Strength: My listening abilities. I can understand a great deal of my favorite Cornish podcasts without a sweat!

Biggest Weakness: I do have trouble understanding songs in Cornish, however, and my grammar needs work.

Accent: Good? Okay? Questionable?

Grammar: I. Need. Work. With. This. Verbs can be a mess especially as well as prepositions. Oh, and like Hebrew and the other Celtic languages, prepositions change if it matches a person.

Future course of Action: Speaking exercises about myself.

 

 Polish

 

Biggest Strength: My pronunciation is good and I can make things flow a good amount of the time until I get tripped up.

Biggest Weakness: Vocabulary gaps concerning things like politics, jokes, etc.

Accent: Very good to good.

Grammar: Verbs good, cases okay, adjectives very good, articles not something you need to worry about with Polish (given that they do not exist).

Future course of Action: Read stuff on Facebook more often and translate it using your gloss-method. Also using Clozemaster is good to learn both vocabulary and brush up on elements of grammar.

 

 Greenlandic (Kalaallisut)

 

Biggest Strength: My pronunciation is good.

Biggest Weakness: My reading is terrible and my writing is almost non-existent.

Accent: I’ve been told it is good.

Grammar: Read almost everything on the topic by now and this is actually one thing I don’t need to worry about.

Future course of Action: Reading exercises with the glosses.

 

 French (EU)

Biggest Strength: I can have fluid conversations about many topics, especially about languages and travel.

Biggest Weakness: Verb conjugations and idiomatic phrases drawing blanks.

Accent: All over the board. I’ve heard that it is mostly good, however.

Grammar: Verbs need work.

Future course of Action: Clozemaster and Duolingo for verbs, look at table after table and also that gloss exercise couldn’t hurt you.

 

Portuguese (both EU and BR)

Biggest Strength: Can read very well.

Biggest Weakness: Have trouble speaking. Thanks to the fact that I don’t have much of a cultural resonance with any Lusophone country (the way I do with many of my better languages…see a pattern?), I lapse frequently into Portuñol.

Accent: Okay to good, based on feedback.

Grammar: Surprisingly not too weak.

Future course of Action: Watch cartoons, get songs, find things to like about Lusophonecountries and movies and what-have-you.

 

 Dutch (Netherlands)

 

Biggest Strength: A lot of casual phrases make me sound like I speak the language better than I do.

Biggest Weakness: I can’t read it very well.

Accent: I don’t think it is that good.

Grammar: Gaps with irregular verbs.

Future course of Action: Between reading and singing, all of your weaknesses would go away.

 

Welsh (Southern)

 

Biggest Strength: I have a convincing accent.

Biggest Weakness: Vocabulary gaps and virtually no good knowledge of verbs. Questions can pose a problem.

Accent: Convincing.

Grammar: Verbs need work.

Future course of Action: Reading things would help, as well Duolingo but only with verb-related or question-related skills.

 

Ukrainian

 

Biggest Strength: My accent can be good.

Biggest Weakness: Literally everything else.

Accent: The one good thing I have.

Grammar: Okay, I lied, the second good thing I have.

Future course of Action: I have issues when I speak and often I have to go slowly. Films haven’t really helped much so I’ve enlisted Mango Languages’ Ukrainian to help me. Maybe more Duolingo would help too. Maybe I should spend more time with language-learning materials before I try immersion again.

 

Russian

Biggest Strength: I can say a significant amount of basic phrases convincingly.

Biggest Weakness: Consistent vocabulary gaps.

Accent: I’ve been told it is good.

Grammar: Learning it for that one year in college was good for something. I’d say “decent”

Future course of Action: Anki + Songs + Clozemaster.

 

 Italian

Biggest Strength: I can understand and read a lot of it.

Biggest Weakness: My active skills are usually trash unless I have had a lot of exposure in the previous days.

Accent: Good, I’ve heard.

Grammar: Inconsistent.

Future course of Action: Let’s Play Videos are not working, but maybe if I watch cartoons in Italian, they MIGHT…work…

 

Faroese

 

Biggest Strength: Pronunciation isn’t an issue.

Biggest Weakness: Haven’t rehearsed in a while and forgot a lot of it.

Accent: Decent, I think

Grammar: Needs work.

Future course of Action: Use Memrise to help you get back on your toes, and use Faroese music to job your memory a bit.

 

Northern Sami

Biggest Strength: Pronunciation isn’t an issue.

Biggest Weakness: Everything that isn’t basic phrases.

Accent: O…kay?

Grammar: Tons of gaps.

Future course of Action: See how much you can remember from watching the TV shows in Northern Sami you used to watch before you decided to drop it.

 

 Burmese

Biggest Strength: I have a good grasp of the grammar.

Biggest Weakness: I can’t read too well + my tones need work

Accent: Okay for a foreigner, I think.

Grammar: Good.

Future course of Action: Read through all of my books, recite everything outloud and, where there is Burmese script (because not all of my books have it), write it out.

 

 Estonian

Biggest Strength: I’m good at casual speaking at a basic level.

Biggest Weakness: The letter õ, comprehension and reading issues.

Accent: All over the board.

Grammar: Good, thanks to Finnish.

Future course of Action: Songs, cartoons, reading.

 

Hungarian

Biggest Strength: My accent is good and pronunciation is not an issue.

Biggest Weakness: I don’t know the cases too well and there are very predictable vocabulary gaps.

Accent: Good to very good.

Grammar: LOL

Future course of Action:Tried immersion once, didn’t work too well, should probably go through book dialogues and simple sentences at this juncture. Mango Languages is also deployed.

 

Krio (Sierra Leone)

Biggest Strength: I can understand a lot!

Biggest Weakness: Need less English-language content when I speak to sound genuine. I also forget key words every now and then. But hey, I started a month ago!

Accent: I think it’s good.

Grammar: Decent

Future course of Action: I have this Peace Corps book and all of the words in the glossary should be put into a flash card program without any second thought to it.

 

Tajik

 

Biggest Strength: I can pronounce things.

Biggest Weakness: Everything else.

Accent: I think it’s either good or silly.

Grammar: I can do possessives…! …?

Future course of Action: You have a book. You have grammar guides. Go through the grammar guides. Form sentences about yourself when you can.

 

Tahitian

Biggest Strength: I began last week.

Biggest Weakness: I’m still a beginner.

Accent: Coming to terms with it.

Grammar: Needs work.

Future course of Action: Just keep going!

 

Guarani (Jopara)

 

Biggest Strength: My pronunciation is good.

Biggest Weakness: I literally cannot form sentences.

Accent: Interesting to good to consistent.

Grammar: LOL

Future course of Action: Prepare a stump-speech about yourself. Somehow.

 

 

Tigrinya

 

Biggest Strength: I just began today!

Biggest Weakness: Yeah, who are you, do you expect me to say “NO WEAKNESSES” on day 1? Really?

Accent: Needs significant work.

Grammar: LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Future course of Action: Invest in free books and YouTube Tutorials.

 

So, to lay out my recipes in short:

 

English: Just be cognizant of when I make mistakes and try to avoid them in the future. This will certainly be an interesting topic to write about in the future.

Danish: I need to sing more! Out loud! And talk to myself more often when I’m using Danish to study (e.g. while reading a text for research or using Anki)

Swedish: Mindfulness. I have to let my bad memories go. And stay gone. Otherwise, I’m gonna keep on doing what I’m doing. Come a long way.

Norwegian: I literally haven’t watched Norwegian TV all year and I need to do it more often. Not YouTube. Go on NRK and watch stuff.

Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea): Watch PNG documentaries where Tok Pisin is featured. Otherwise, hey…maybe speaking the official variety as used in the programs described above isn’t a bad thing at all! More reading practice would also be good.

 Yiddish: Keep going through my comprehensive Anki list (it is 7000+ words). Has a lot of words that would make my language sound more natural than it already is.

Hebrew: I’m supposed to be programming this list of 10,000 most common Hebrew words into Anki. Unfortunately I have to edit the list to make it consistent and I’m not making steady progress with it. Israeli TV shows would also really help me with my vocabulary gaps. While I don’t need the subtitles at ALL to understand it, maybe I should use them from English (or even another language!) just in case I need to gain an extra degree of wisdom in the translation business.

 

German:  The relative pronouns need fixing. Also playing video games in German with more complicated vocabulary sets would really help me.

Finnish: I guess I’ll have to speed through that Anki list of 22000 Finnish words now, won’t I? Any way I could randomize it? Or I could do the less intensive thing and use clozemaster. Television would also be good but part of me worries exactly how much time I’ll have to practice langauges with it.

Spanish (EU): I’ve tried and tried to find a way to improve and seldom does “more TV” or “more Anki” or “more Clozemaster” actually do anything. I think it’s a mindfulness thing and I don’t really know how to push away my bad memories. Sometimes they were so bad that I literally gave up the language three times. This sadly resulted in me having gone to a Puerto Rican New Year’s Party and me being unable to understand a lot of what was being said. What got me back into it? Let’s Play Videos in Spanish. That’s what. Oh, and video games in general.

Breton: The reading-with-the-glosses procedure I outlined many posts ago (split an article into sentences, look up the words you don’t know, read the article aloud and translate it into your native language).

Bislama (Vanuatu): listen to the Radio more often in Bislama

 Pijin (Solomon Islands): use YouTube to watch stuff in Pijin more often, the Radio, especially in Honiara, is primarily English.

Irish: Find fun stuff to do in Irish and do it, but it has to involve listening.

Cornish: Speaking exercises about myself.

Polish: Read stuff on Facebook more often and translate it using your gloss-method. Also using Clozemaster is good to learn both vocabulary and brush up on elements of grammar.

Greenlandic (Kalaallisut): Reading exercises with the glosses.

 French (EU): Clozemaster and Duolingo for verbs, look at table after table and also that gloss exercise couldn’t hurt you.

Portuguese (both EU and BR): Watch cartoons, get songs, find things to like about Lusophonecountries and movies and what-have-you.

 Dutch (Netherlands): Between reading and singing, all of your weaknesses would go away.

Welsh (Southern): Reading things would help, as well Duolingo but only with verb-related or question-related skills.

 

Ukrainian: I have issues when I speak and often I have to go slowly. Films haven’t really helped much so I’ve enlisted Mango Languages’ Ukrainian to help me. Maybe more Duolingo would help too. Maybe I should spend more time with language-learning materials before I try immersion again.

Russian: Anki + Songs + Clozemaster.

Italian: Let’s Play Videos are not working, but maybe if I watch cartoons in Italian, they MIGHT…work…

Faroese: Use Memrise to help you get back on your toes, and use Faroese music to job your memory a bit.

Northern Sami: See how much you can remember from watching the TV shows in Northern Sami you used to watch before you decided to drop it.

 Burmese: Read through all of my books, recite everything outloud and, where there is Burmese script (because not all of my books have it), write it out.

 Estonian: Songs, cartoons, reading.

Hungarian: Tried immersion once, didn’t work too well, should probably go through book dialogues and simple sentences at this juncture. Mango Languages is also deployed.

Krio (Sierra Leone): I have this Peace Corps book and all of the words in the glossary should be put into a flash card program without any second thought to it.

Tajik: You have a book. You have grammar guides. Go through the grammar guides. Form sentences about yourself when you can.

Tahitian: Just keep going!

Guarani (Jopara) Prepare a stump-speech about yourself. Somehow.

Tigrinya: Invest in free books and YouTube Tutorials.

 

(NOTE from 29 June 2017: Since writing this post, I tried to learn Tigrinya but found the resources difficult and scarce. As a result, I’ll be learning a bit of another African native language, Mossi / Mooré, which is the primary language of Burkina Faso and also used in some surrounding states. But who knows what other languages I’ll learn and/or forget in the future?)