Jared here. Since 2014 I’ve been writing on this page semi-regularly. There have been many successes I have had (Fijian, Burmese, English Creoles), many failures (Tumbuka, perhaps Greenlandic in a sense, Tuvaluan). But I think I’ve done enough exploring and I think that now I have other duties.
Allow me to be clear – I AM keeping this site live. There is no intention on my behalf to delete any of the content (although, no doubt, I think that some of my content has not aged particularly well). But looking at this patchwork site I see great mirth, great distress, and a slice of my life that I have devoted myself to.
I have gotten messages from many people throughout the globe saying that this website was the reason they chose to learn indigenous / Pacific / Jewish / Nordic languages. I am very grateful for that and that is precisely why I need to head on to other projects. For now. I may indeed return, especially if I get comments requesting particular pieces or problems.
In Summer 2019 I made a choice for me to focus more on my favorite languages. The languages of my heritage – Hungarian, Swedish and Yiddish – were first priority, in addition to ones related to my games (Greenlandic) or places I’ve dreamed of visited (languages of Polynesia).
And I decided that if I needed to sacrifice mediocre conversational fluency in many others, then so be it. Don’t get me wrong, mediocre conversational fluency IS an accomplishment to be proud of. I’ve encountered it all over the world. I would even argue it is the most popular foreign language mode, regardless of the language.
But now I have another job.
With climate collapse constantly being on my mind and mass extinctions of language present, there is another front.
I have to create content in those other languages to the best of my ability. I have to give other people a reason to engage. I have to contribute more thoroughly against what my friend Brian Loo calls the “Starbucksifying” of the world. And I feel that with writing English-language pieces, I really haven’t been doing that.
To that end, I will have to use my hobbies (gaming, cartooning, religion, intercultural dialogue, language pedagogy, among many others) in order to galvanize this world into the direction I want it to.
This blog was my training ground, in a sense. And now I’m ready to use my skills to create engaging content in smaller languages. Even as a non-native speaker. Because every little bit counts.
When I started this blog I thought that I would have to end it in about a year. When I started this blog I had tons of insecurity about my own language skills. That time has passed and I’m ready to move into a new direction.
I cannot do everything at once. I think that a lot has been contributed to the art of language learning, and many greats such as Steve Kaufmann, Olly Richards and too many others to list have been behind it.
I do not want to contribute to an already crowded field. If I do, then it will likely be more on how to learn endangered languages.
I need to use YouTube, Tumblr, my Facebook Pages, and many more in the fight against Starbucksification of the world. (Keep in mind, this isn’t about Starbucks itself, and this wasn’t my term, but rather the idea that people are shedding their local cultures for something more corporate and global).
I need to become the hero that languages of the Arctic, languages of my Heritage, and languages of the South Pacific need.
And that time is now.
And so to that end, I bid a farewell to this World with Little Worlds for the time being. Perhaps there may indeed be a time to return, especially if you want me to write about anything.
I just uploaded my Day 30 video for Greenlandic on Facebook (the final installment for the 90th day will be a conversation with a native speaker. And before you ask, yes, I have access to them. Many of them, in fact).
But I can’t help but notice over the course of the past month that, with the exception of financial earnings (and, to some degree, even that), my motivation is virtually gone. It has gotten so bad that I’m not even motivated to have fun anymore, oddly enough.
What exactly is going wrong?
I can theorize.
The routines are not helpful at all
My retention from Memrise is virtually nil at this point, minus some occasional passive-understanding bonuses. It feels like a chore to me, almost, even for languages that I really, really want.
I remember when I was in Jewish school that there came a point in which I asked myself what the big idea about reciting the prayers every day was, given that I had recited them so often that I can (still) remember all of them. Now if only I could memorize OTHER languages with the same efficiency.
Which gives me another idea…
Create new routines
In Orthodox Judaism there is the idea that one should pray three times every day. A set of texts that are recited, partially out loud, partially silently, and also regulated by time constraints (the morning prayer, afternoon prayer and evening prayer all have to be recited at certain times).
Perhaps in some respects I should treat my phrasebooks like prayer books, and read through them, even silently, on a daily basis. That way, I can actively memorize a lot of the material very well even if I have only passive understanding of it.
I want to build other areas of my life, too
I want to be a better game designer, better at understanding relationships at all kinds, better at connecting with people with whom I have nothing in common. I love languages, but sometimes I feel that too much of them blocks other areas of development in my life as well and I have to be conscious of that.
So what do I do know?
Well, on top of the 30-day Speaking Challenge which I’ll be doing tomorrow for Greenlandic and likely either Hawaiian or Tahitian (I’m leaning towards the latter), I think I should follow the prayer book routine at least for a while and see where it gets me. I’ll probably do it with my Greenlandic phrasebook, recite one portion of the book in the morning, another in the afternoon and another in the evening. (Like in the Jewish understanding, sometimes I can stack the afternoon and evening sessions back-to-back).
That way I’ll have everything memorized before I know it and internalized with the exact precision with which I remembered the prayers.
Here I am watching as the sun sets over Bratislava and a thunderstorm appears to be in the works. I’ll walk outside and enjoy the twilight but first I’ll need to relate a bit about how things went from my perspective.
The fellow attendees at the conference were curious, accepting, not in the least bit critical, vulnerable and kind. Often in the “real world” I sometimes hear comments like “let’s continue in English because I speak English better than you speak my native language” (I know, right?)
But the way things appear at Polyglot Conferences, everyone has a series of ladders and it doesn’t really matter how far you up on them…or not…you are, as long as you have some drive to go higher or even taste a language for a little bit.
There were also great lessons in vulnerability. I saw in genuine action that fluency is not perfection (and come to think of it, I never heard almost anyone speak non-Native English without some type of grammatical mistake. AND THAT’S OKAY.
Corollary: it’s okay to speak any language non-natively with mistakes too, as long as you can communicate and patch your errors one-by-one, which may indeed take a lifetime or never fully get perfect, but that’s the beauty of learning, isn’t it?
In any case, I had a humbling experience realizing what it was like for people to present in their non-native languages. I was a lot more reserved. I was energetic and I second-guessed my grammar a lot. I thought “wow, the speakers of Yiddish and Swedish are gonna give me a bajillion dislikes when these videos come out”.
My first thought after concluding both was that they were disasters. But later on I then realized that despite sometimes fumbling for words, using too many filler words, or even sometimes making Norwedish errors in my Niuean presentation, that’s okay.
It was really the first time I’ve done it and it gave me a newfound appreciation for the many speakers of other languages who gave talks in English as well (and I think I can compare myself favorably with how they did).
I didn’t have the same quality of the “taking a class with Jared is like getting a drink from a firehose” that I have with classes I teach in English (and my classes in other languages are like that but they’re usually not filmed, which was the big issue in making me nervous. I’ve taught dozens of classes in non-native languages before, just not with a camera in front of me that was headed straight to YouTube. I even noticed that when the camera was off I became a lot more natural and less nervous.)
But I guess that’s okay.
My next project will be to improve my Greenlandic and Danish both substantially for the sake of “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures”, a task that will last ninety days at least.
Greenlandic I speak…okay but not well, and Danish I speak well but I’d like to speak better. I’d rate them as A2 and C1 respectively. I am already developing a plan to get a lot more Danish music as well so that I can create a full-fledged environment of being immersed in both languages (I already have a lot of Greenlandic music but I’m open for more suggestions, too).
The requirements: film a 10-minute video after 90 days speaking your target language (or, should you choose the reading or the writing tracks, choose the appropriate avenue). I do have access to native speakers and a lot more than I thought was possible a week ago.
So here’s what happened.
I uploaded a video on Facebook of me speaking Greenlandic for a minute. A Greenlandic friend of mine asked to share it in a group, which he did, and then it became viral in Greenland generating hundreds of likes and I woke up with endless friend requests from all over Greenland (which I accepted because I’m making a video game about Greenland and because it is my favorite country, too!)
I got comments like “we should crowdfund his vacation here” or “he speaks better than most Danes who have been living here for a decade have” (this was something explicitly told to me by my host mom in Greenland. Info checks out.
Well this is going to be fun. Time for me to enjoy the Slovak twilight one last time for this journey.
Because of work that I’ve been doing on “Nuuk Adventures” as well as other commitments, I haven’t been making videos or writing blog posts as often as I used to. I do love what languages give me, but the biggest dream in my life right now is to get my first video game published and popular and while there have been difficulties with that, I will need to make sacrifices in other areas of my life. And that’s okay.
Anyhow, for June 2018 I imposed a challenge on myself to not write two consecutive posts in the same language for a whole month.
Here are some things that I realized as a result of the experience:
I most often defaulted to languages that I felt “needed work”.
Hungarian and Fijian were my primary focuses in June and will continue to be so in July (when I revive my Fiji Hindi as well). Devoting a serious amount of time to three languages every day will be difficult, but I’m not one to be afraid.
I don’t have a single Facebook friend who speaks Fijian (even though I do know some who can read Fijian words out loud and pronounce them correctly). That said, I often wrote posts in Fijian with English translations in the comments.
I have a substantial amount of Hungarian friends and Hungarian-speaking friends from other places (the U.S. and Israel, mostly). Between that and machine translations for Hungarian (despite the fact that they translated the word “Fijian” as “fiancé” in a recent post of mine), I didn’t need to translate them into English.
I struggle with Hungarian sentence structure (although I’m getting used to the cases better every day).
In line with that thought…
It enabled me to “refresh” languages that I couldn’t engage with online as readily (such as Irish and Gilbertese)
Learning Hungarian for me has proven to be MUCH, MUCH easier than learning any language from Oceania. Hungarian is all over the internet in comparison to languages like Fijian or Gilbertese.
As a result, my motivation for Fijian somewhat slumped because sometimes I felt that I couldn’t find interesting content as much (although maybe I’m…not looking hard enough! Yo, I’m always open for suggestions…)
Gilbertese was also an issue because “comprehensive input” (describing something that Olly Richards is currently using with his Italian project) has been…non-existent…except for my YouTube series on Gilbertese which is helpful but it’s clear that I’m a non-native and that my pronunciation in the earlier entries needed improvement. (the ‘ in the b’a combination is pronounced as “bwa”, and in some Gilbertese orthographies is written as such).
Actively translating things into rarer languages was helpful.
That said, sometimes I worried that I was “doing it wrong” and sometimes I realized that my vocabulary retention wasn’t too high.
But the key is to do something that helps, even a little bit, and to keep doing it.
My English-Language Posts Got Significantly More Likes (Not Surprised at All)
Machine Translation or not, most people would see something in Finnish and scroll past it if they don’t have a solid ability to read it.
I saved my longer, eloquent posts for being written in English and then had quaint observations and jokes in other languages. This doesn’t reflect my skills, but rather my audience.
My Facebook Friend Requests Quadrupled as a Result
My posts are open and so when people saw what I was doing they were immediately intrigued. With growing skepticism of polyglot culture for a number of reasons, the fact that I was writing posts in many languages, some of which haven’t been touched by machine translation at all, was a clear marker that I was genuine (which I know that I am).
A lot of people in the online Facebook groups added me as a result. Yes, I have following enabled, but I’m always glad to help others in any way I can. Granted, I get hundreds of messages a day and it has been hard for me to keep up. But I do try.
It seems likely that this may become a permanent habit in July and Beyond
I’m not going to lie, I genuinely enjoyed this, it made me project a more interesting version of myself and it cemented my vocabulary in many languages significantly.
I also got two corrections over the course of the month (one from a Hungarian speaker and another about word choice from a Swedish speaker). I’m grateful for your input and I don’t take it personally.
JULY 2018 Challenge:
July 2018’s challenge (I’m probably going to make the weekly challenges a habit, inspired by the legendary Ari in Beijing):
– I must translate ALL Facebook posts I write into either Fijian or Fiji Hindi. This is true regardless of source language. (Posts in Hungarian, Hebrew, Danish, English, etc. are affected)
– Exceptions include emergencies and life-changing announcements (including “Kaverini” announcements)
– I can write the translation in a comment instead (for example, if I want to write a very powerfully worded political piece, I may opt for doing this).
– I may use any orthography for Fiji Hindi.
– I may use as many English loan words in Fiji Hindi as necessary for it to feel genuine (e.g. the way an Indo-Fijian would speak). The same is true for English loan words in Fijian.
– For the sake of balancing translating into the two languages, I have to alternate between Fijian and Fiji Hindi with each post. If I translate into both, it serves as a wild card and I can choose which of the two to do for the next post.
– Instagram is unaffected, but if I share any Instagram photos or videos to Facebook, I must translate the caption into one of the two languages in a comment (or both).
– The challenge will be suspended in the event of me going abroad. (Foreshadowing?)
CAN I DO IT? We’ll see!
From years ago. My language list is a bit different now.
Polyglot Facebook groups exploded last week with countless debates and personal stories about learning languages of Scandinavia via on-location immersion (or, in simpler terms, learning Swedish in Sweden very much like I did [even though I did the majority of the work after I left]).
The vast majority of the stories were discouraging for a multitude of reasons. Icelanders who wanted to use English no matter what. Danes telling study-abroad students that learning their language was a waste of time. Nearly a HUNDRED stories about people had given up learning these languages because of these attitudes.
I’d like to say two things.
First off, there’s tunnel vision at work in a lot of these. Looking back at my time in Sweden, I was met mostly with ENCOURAGEMENT to learn Swedish from native-speaking friends (especially since I told them that I was doing it for heritage reasons). But again, there were times that I screwed up with in hesitating (which WILL get you answered in English) and unnaturally slow speech (same result).
I had frustration, no doubt. I called up my parents for encouragement and sometimes was nearly on the verge of crying, wondering how I could ever learn the language of my family to read the letters of my ancestors who had passed on.
But there were also people like the learners I met in Heidelberg, staff members at stores who would use Swedish with me even if I was speaking English to my family members within earshot, and those who were pleased when I switched from ordering my groceries in English to Swedish and told me that I was going a good job.
Keep in mind that during all of this I was at a BASIC level. And another thing to keep in mind (with all of these internet horror stories hopping around) is the fact that using a language is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME depending on what level you’re on.
That’s the first thing.
The second thing is, yes, the attitudes need to improve. As far as the west is concerned, the day is not far when NO ONE will be impressed by good English spoken by non-natives anymore. The flipside to this is that as fewer and fewer people in the Anglophone world see a reason to learn languages, especially those outside of the mainstream, the more you’ll stand out and the more people will want to engage you because of that.
If you are a speaker of a language other than English, you have a MORAL IMPERATIVE to not switch to English unless absolutely necessary. This isn’t up for debate anymore in an age of mass language death. No one is impressed, no one thinks it fun, and it just makes you look insecure. If you don’t like the fact that I said that, get over it. Learn to have some pride in your identity and your native language and realize that throwing away your identity for some cool American-esque one only serves the corporations destroying the planet. (And did I mention it makes you look insecure? I did. Also using multiple languages with English is okay, as no doubt I may encounter in places like Fiji should I go there later this year).
The good news is that most people are changing. The polyglot communities seem to be getting more powerful and with the Internet people are being exposed to other languages and cultures more quickly than before and realize that machine translation isn’t going to solve everything or make everything accessible.
When I was reading a lot of the Scandinavian discouragement stories in groups, I kept on thinking “why did none of this really happen to me?” In Greenland when buying things in stores, it was usually in a mixture of Greenlandic and Danish even though sometimes they might have thrown some English in their in the off-chance that they thought I was from somewhere else. (Disclosure: with the exception of speaking with friends [in which we took turns hopping between various languages], I didn’t take the English-thing personally and just continued using whatever language I was without flinching).
Then, of course, the fact that I’ve met speakers from the Nordic countries in New York and they’ve all been super-appreciative of my efforts to learn their language and with CONSISTENCY they’ve told me that they’ve been impressed. Sometimes some of them wanted to learn other languages from me, in which case I was willing to switch (I gotta do my part to keep languages alive too, y’know). But nowhere NEAR the variety of stuff along the lines of “people told me to stop wasting their time, people rolled their eyes, I needed a perfect accent in order to not get English used with me”, yada yada yada.
It has nearly been one year since I was in Myanmar and I could have easily blamed the fact that I got answered in English fairly frequently on the fact that I’m WHITE. Or I could do the mature thing and realize that I’ve encountered fluent Burmese speakers of all races and that I should have worked on my general fluidity and sounding natural rather than expecting to get answered in Burmese with simple phrasebook material.
Looking back at my time in Sweden and Iceland, I saw it as an added challenge. Getting answered in Icelandic in a restaurant was so elusive in polyglot groups that it almost never happened. I had it done consistently (with public transport it was another story because they expected me to be a tourist. Keep using Icelandic and they’ll switch, trust me on this. Again, with personal conversations = completely different game). That said, I also hear that Quebec and Senegal make Iceland seem like “the first level in the game”.
At the end of the day, I want you to read this piece with nothing but encouragement.
Getting fluency in the languages of the Nordic countries AND getting L1 speakers to use it with you IS VERY MUCH POSSIBLE. Don’t believe ANYONE who tells you otherwise. Sure, there may be some people who discourage you but they’d exist for any language community and are always in the minority.
But any language journey, no matter what language you choose, is no simple process—you need to be dynamic, inventive and persistent.
And keep in mind that, in all likelihood, you’re not reading a whole lot of success stories about language learning in the polyglot groups. But those success stories are out there and you can start writing your own!
I’ve noticed that whenever the seasons are on the verge of changing I seem to think about what sort of languages I am enjoying (or not) and I make changes accordingly.
Some languages like Dutch and Northern Sami I used to have impressive command of but now they seem to have dwindled to nothing. Others I really enjoyed learning but it occurred to me that, for whatever reason (some of which couldn’t be articulated), I didn’t really feel as though I “had the spark anymore”. Faroese, Estonian and Russian were all obsessions of mine that fell by the wayside as a result (although I still speak a bit of all languages in this paragraph and, if the need arises, I could revive them).
So I’ve decided to clear my list of all of the following. The most noteworthy clearances are Breton and French just…don’t do it for me anymore. And French I mostly learned for peer-pressure reasons anyhow. It would be one thing if I were actively planning to go to the Ivory Coast or French Polynesia instead of Fiji in the summer (and if I were even headed to Vanuatu I would make it a priority). But right now, I’m just not feeling it. Same with Breton, and I’m glad for the times we’ve had together, but for some odd reason I feel as though I need a break. (Cornish I’m still undecided about, given that St. Piran’s Day is coming up on March 5. Cornish is probably the one language that I’ve been on-again off-again the most).
I also really need to start focusing on quality, especially as I continue to enter the global spotlight with both my polyglotism AND my video games being released later this year. I’m already getting more messages than I can humanly deal with… a day that I DREAMED of seeing as a high school student.
Anyhow, on my languages page I reduced it to 31, and all of my fluent languages (B2 or higher) got to stay except for Breton which I hadn’t been practicing too much as of late anyhow. Also while Spanish and German get to stay, they are, along with English, the ones that I have the least amount of emotional attachment to (sorry).
Anyhow, let’s go through my list from A0 (a few words) to B1 (intermediate plateau) and I’ll go through the reasons I decided to keep those ones in particular.
A0
First off, Guarani is my opportunity to glimpse an indigenous culture of South America (Paraguay) that may be under siege. I devoted a lot of time on my YouTube Channel last year and I actually met a fluent speaker in Fall 2017 who absolutely refused to use it with me for some reason (I’m not going to lie, I felt snubbed and borderline offended. In an age of mass language death, you should be sharing with anyone willing to partake of your culture.)
Despite that, I shouldn’t let one bad interaction with a speaker get me down and I’m gonna be up again because it occurs to me that I need to know more about indigenous South American than I already do (it’s probably the one continent that I know the least about, actually, even if you include Antarctica).
Given that I’m headed to Fiji later on this year, Fiji Hindi is also a priority despite the fact that I’ve struggled with this one more than any other Indo-European language that isn’t Celtic. Resources are scarce and ways to rehearse it are difficult, but I’ll attempt an “attack plan” once I feel as though I’m a solid B2 in Fijian, which may be sooner than I think (a “Why Fijian is Easy” post is coming soon!)
Given the relations between the native Fijians / iTaukei and the Fiji Indians have been difficult at times, it behooves me to learn about them both, especially given that I’ll get to see close up hand. I’ve heard that Fiji Indians are prominent in the tourist industry and my chances to interact with them will be many.
Next up on the A0 list is Uyghur. I’ve gotten so much fantastic feedback from attempting this language on YouTube, not also to mention the deep pride that many Uyghurs have for their culture, that I’m going to continue it. It would be, in a sense, one of my first Chinese Languages (and I still haven’t forgotten about Mandarin quite yet but I’ll reveal everything in good time. With both my one surviving grandparent coming from a Hungarian family and my Oceania venture, I feel time-crunched from multiple sides. It seems that Uyghur is not going to be too much of a serious investment in the near future, but I’ll see what I can do with it and I have no plans to drop it completely).
Last among the A0 list is Tuvaluan. While Tongan has been dropped for the time being (too close to Fijian for me to actively work on both at the same time, as is Tuvaluan), Tuvaluan is something I want to at least be able to use in SOME capacity before heading to Fiji (if I even end up going there at all) by virtue of the fact that Fiji’s only endangered language is Tuvaluan (y’know, the expatriate community). Also given that Tuvalu is in a similar situation to Kiribati with the whole climate change thing, it’s something I believe is a moral duty. If only there were readily available good textbooks for it, otherwise I’ll have to write my own from dictionaries, grammar books and Bible translations, not also to mention help from the Tuvaluan sub-Reddit (I believe the Kiribati sub-Reddit is by invitation only. I applied to join. No answer. Hey, mods at Kiribati, can you approve me? Kam raba! [Thank you guys!])
A1
Probably the language for which I have been lauded by native speakers the most, Palauan gets to stay and will be a constant feature of my programming. You guys have fantastic music and have given me very concrete and useful advice and not a DROP of discouragement! Also that Palau Pledge and that movie with the giant is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve read / seen all year!
Probably not at A1 anymore because of months of not practicing, but I’ll have African languages in part represented by Mossi (Krio’s still on my list, don’t worry). My first tonal language from outside Asia, I think I really need to learn more about Burkina Faso, given how Christian and Muslim traditions (not also to mention elements of traditional African religions) really blend together. There’s a lot on my plate right now so no actively working on Mossi now, but at least you get to stay on my radar as opposed to the many languages that I decided to drop.
Probably my favorite Caribbean Creole is that of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I discovered Vincentian Creole through Bible recordings and one of these days I’ll make sure to spend more time with you. You’re probably the one Caribbean nation most Americans know the least about. Can’t wait to start spending more time together!
Lastly among the A1 category (I dropped Arabic but I’ll probably be putting it back later this year when my Fijian and Fiji Hindi is secure), Tajik. Everything about you is fascinating and also very distinct from the Western Culture I experience every day in the United States. You and Uyghur will be my Central Asian projects for the not-too-distant future.
A2
Burmese music is something I have in huge doses and that I’m fascinated with. Also the Burmese-American community here in New York City, not also to mention plenty of professional opportunities with politics and translation work should I choose to get good enough. Alongside Tok Pisin, Burmese really gave me a glimpse into a country that was severely wrecked by imperialist meddling (you could pretty much say this for…well, almost everywhere on the planet, which is why I believe learning languages from these areas of the globe is a morally correct decision for all of us who want to learn some).
Irish is a language of my ancestors and one I’ve dreamed of learning well for a decade. I used to be better but I slumped terribly in progress leading up to the Polyglot Conference in 2017. I still don’t consider myself that good despite the fact that I remember having some manageable conversations in it. Probably my most poorly managed language learning project.
Gilbertese of course gets to stay. As does Fijian.
B1
Greenlandic is the language I’ve struggled with the most and STILL the hardest I’ve attempted. But given that I’m working on a video game set there I’m going to continue this fantastic relationship I’ve had with my favorite language (even though it is now tied with Gilbertese for my favorite).
Despite the fact that I SERIOUSLY need good music that I like in it, Lao is staying around too. I’ve seen heartbreaking homemade films in Lao that I will never forget for as long as I live, and this is the first language I’ve learned from a genuinely communist state. A truly meaningful experience…besides, I really like the sound of the language despite the fact that the tones still “get me”.
Lastly, Hungarian and Polish get to stay around. Hungarian is an ancestral language of mine and my deepest regret in my polyglot life is having not chosen to study it earlier. But luckily I still have time…as long as I focus. Among European Languages, Hungarian has THE most supportive native speakers (although I’ve met one or two who gave me a hard time on the surface but then gave me vaguely reluctant support…sort of?) Polish is the second-most commonly used language on my Facebook feed. Being able to speed-reed it is something I should really learn sooner than later.
I haven’t been having the best month and so I may have under-practiced some of these but I think a good dosage of focused Saturdays should get me in shape, especially with my priorities straightened out.
February is almost on its way out, and with it my Greenlandic 30-Day challenge (cut to 28 days, or so it seems) in addition to Fijian. Next month is more Fijian and another language on this page that I haven’t decided yet!
A lot of language learners are afraid of trying to learn a language with “few resources” (a phrase that means many things to many people).
For some, a language like Armenian would have few resources (when there are Armenian communities all over the globe and definitely a lot of a free resources and books that would get you started). Others would even define a language like SWEDISH as having few resources.
For me, the only languages I’m unable to learn are those with virtually no resources that I can access at all. But even if I don’t have these resources now, perhaps they’ll come out in a few years. In 2012/2013 I had trouble finding good places to learn Icelandic. In 2018 the number of Icelandic resources has exploded exponentially, even when you take only free resources into account.
So, if you want to learn a language and you can’t find ANY book to learn it, either ask around on the internet (like the specialized sub-Reddits for people of various nationalities) OR…wait.
But now let’s answer the question I set out to answer:
Is learning a language with only a handful of resources available frustrating for me?
Surprisingly, it isn’t. Here’s why not.
If there is ONE MISTAKE that I have seen language learners make with great consistency, it is being too attached to their language learning materials. They use only the books or the spoken materials for learners and sometimes they never, EVER venture into the world in which the language is actually used, for and by native speakers.
This is why I go to events very often and I encounter people who have been learning Spanish for YEARS and they still sound like…well, learners.
A lot of people see language learning materials as “the way” to get fluent. No. It’s only a gateway to fluency in order to ensure that you have a GROUNDING in the language so that you can fly into the world in which the language is used by native speakers without any issues.
To that end, there’s actually an ADVANTAGE in learning languages that are only served via a PDF or two on the Live Lingua Project (such as Fijian, which I’m working on right now). My path of least resistance is to grow SICK of the book, but there usually aren’t any other books to turn to (aside from the Lonely Planet phrasebooks, one for the South Pacific which serves as an introduction to many Pacific Languages and also the Kauderwelsch Fijian book for German speakers which is EXTREMELY helpful [and I don’t even own the book, I’ve just seen the preview]).
What do I do once I’m sick of the Peace Corps Fijian book and can’t stomach it anymore?
I use Fijian on radio. In songs. I read it in YouTube comments. I start using it the way a native speaker would.
But instead what usually tends to happen is that a learner hops from one series of language learning resources to another without actually engaging with the language in any way a native speaker would. Interestingly I’ve notice that people who learn English as a foreign language DON’T tend to do this.
Yes, sometimes the lack of resources can be frustrating, such as the fact that it took me a LONG time to even find out how to say “why” in Tongan. Dictionaries wouldn’t help me, the books I found didn’t offer any clue, but luckily I found an Anki deck (of ALL THINGS!) that gave me the answer.
(In case you’re curious, “why” would be “ko e hā … ai”, and you put the thing you’re asking “why” about where the “…” is. If this concept isn’t clear to you, I can illustrate it in a comment if need be. Just ask.)
Aside from things like that, with enough discipline as well as a willingness to engage the language in real life, having few resources is no issue for me.
As of the time of writing, I’ve never heard Fijian or Tongan spoken by real-life people EVER. (Well…except when I was saying phrases to other people, that is.) I have heard them both plenty of times on the Internet to ensure that, when I do meet native speakers, I know what to expect.
I went FOUR YEARS learning Greenlandic without having used it with any person face-to-face. It wasn’t until I was ready to board the airplane from Reykjavik to Nuuk that I heard it spoken in person for the first time. And all of the knowledge I had acquired in Greenlandic up until that point was just as applicable as it would have been for a language that I would have heard spoken on the street regularly for years.
It wasn’t a handicap or an issue at all.
To recap:
Having few resources actually ensures that you can engage with the language “in real life” earlier, because you sort of don’t have any other choice once you’re sick of the one or two books for the language you have
A lot of language learners get attached to their resources and hop from one learning book to another. Bad, bad idea. Instead of hopping across books, find ways to USE the language online. This could be watching videos in the language, using audio or even reading blog pieces or Facebook or YouTube comments.
If you want to learn a language and you can only find one book that gives you a grounding in the language as far as all parts of speech (adjectives, verbs, etc.) and equips you for a good range of situations, THAT IS ENOUGH. You may not need any other book.
Lastly, a recap of my own progress with the projects for this month:
Greenlandic: gaining more and more vocabulary via the 30-Day Speaking challenge! I’m not making turbo progress but it occurs to me how much my latent knowledge has expanded after a break!
Fijian: You’d be surprised how much you can learn with 30 minutes of exposure to a language every day. Right now I’m primarily using the book in order to ensure that I can understand how the language words. Fijian seems to be moderate difficulty, almost in the dead center of the curve as far as my previous languages go (with Greenlandic, Irish and Burmese being on the very hard side and on the very easy side…English Creoles).
I haven’t started with Bahamian Creole yet. Again, since many people would consider this a dialect of English rather than a separate language (more often than for Trinidadian or Vincentian English Creoles), it doesn’t really “break my promise” to do no new languages in 2018. This is more of a fun project I’m doing for exploration’s sake, Fijian is my highest priority right now.
Well, here I am at what is the conclusion of the most legendary year of my life!
I think the one thing that changed the most about me over the course of this year was that I became very secure in my identity and, as a result, stopped taking forms of rejection so personally (someone says bad things about me online? Not my issue, I’m a hero! Someone doesn’t want to engage meaningfully in a conversation with me? I know I’m good at what I do, it reflects on THAT person!)
Despite the fact that I sometimes have an abrasive style in both writing and in real life, people who have met me in person do rightly think that I am very friendly.
Here’s the time for me to examine each of my languages and how I could improve:
On top of my fluency list are the Creoles of Melanesia, Tok Pisin, Pijin and Bislama. I have a very good grasp of vocabulary and I can listen to songs, radio and other forms of entertainment in these languages without flinching. In conversations I can manage to say everything, but I tried filming a Let’s Play video in Tok Pisin and my own self-doubt and self-freezing (that were an issue with me making videos even in English earlier this year!) got in the way.
What I’m going to need to do from this point on isn’t as much vocabulary building, but sheer immersion. I have to become one with the Pacific Islands, I have to live and breathe the cultures of Melanesia as though I were raised in Lae city myself.
The same is also true with my other very good (or almost very good with some consistency) languages: Trinidadian Creole, Yiddish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, German and Spanish (the last two being the weakest of the bunch).
Next up in the “lower levels of fluency” line are Hebrew, Finnish, Krio, Breton, Jamaican Patois and the two that I am sometimes good enough in Icelandic and French. Polish and Irish used to be up there but fell down.
These are the hardest to diagnose because each one of them has a very unique problem. Finnish and Hebrew are definitely my strongest of that group, with Krio and Breton being next up.
Okay:
Hebrew – listening with immersion (I’m going to need to find films and use them. Often! If Hebrew were as similar to English as Danish was I’d probably speak it at C1 right now).
Finnish – continuing with teaching it as an L2 certainly helps but I’m also going to need to do some writing and translation exercises. Luckily I have a project lined up for that in 2018!
Krio – same as Finnish above, minus the teaching aspect. Written material in Krio is harder to find than in Finnish (not a surprise, despite the fact that more people in the world speak Krio fluently than speak Finnish [!])
Breton – I need more TV shows (luckily I found a number of good ones thanks to Reddit. Also a Let’s Play Channel of sorts!)
Jamaican Patois – Translation exercises would be helpful as long as I learn to READ OUT LOUD. I have to use all of my senses otherwise it’s just going to be passive understanding. I can’t afford to have just a passive understanding (even though that in of itself is very good), given that I’m practically living in Jamaica given where in New York City I live.
Icelandic – the Anki deck. I have to continue with that. It’s been solving almost every single one of my problems!
French – The grammar needs brushing up. I need to detect my weak points in conversation (past tense is a big one) and patch up the holes.
Next we have Greenlandic, Lao, Hungarian and Polish. They are all weak across the board in many regards and have full of holes. My biggest holes in them are: vocabulary for Greenlandic, Lao and Hungarian, grammar for Hungarian and Polish. I guess it’s just an issue of “keep using them”.
For Greenlandic I have the Memrise course and for Hungarian I have the 30-Day Speaking Challenge. I also have Anki decks for all of these languages except for Polish.
In its own category is my new project with Vincentian Creole (of St. Vincent and the Grenadines). The first language I’ve learned with no resources to learn it (that I can find), I’ll detail what I’m doing another time. It will be VERY interesting to read about!
The rest of my languages are too weak to judge with the exceptions of Burmese, Irish, Cornish and Kiribati / Gilbertese.
I have a good grasp of the grammar of all of them, I just need to use it in exercises, especially speaking exercises.
It’s a little bit hard to diagnose things when there are CONSISTENT problems across the language. But luckily usage will be enough to patch them up.
In light of the #CleartheList challenge hopping around Social Media at the moment, here is my list for January 2018:
For Hungarian:
Recordings every day
One episode of Pokémon dubbed in Hungarian every week
One full-length Hungarian movie every week.
Read out loud one lesson from Colloquial Hungarian once every week.
For Kiribati / Gilbertese:
Do the tasks for the Mango Language January 2018 challenge every day.
Acquire new songs in Gilbertese every week.
Film a new episode of “Jared Gimbel Learns Kiribati” every week.
Write a status in Gilbertese every week.
For Vincentian Creole:
Listen to one Bible story audio once every day.
Find and translate (into English) an article in each of the following languages. Write word-by-word translations for each sentence:
Bislama
Pijin
Tok Pisin
For Greenlandic / Lao (Bonus points!):
Record the speaking challenge prompts in these alongside the Hungarian challenge.
I look forward to making another list for 2018 and beyond.
I’ll publish my FULL LIST of goals for 2018 TOMORROW!
2017 was the best year of my life in a professional sense. And 2018 promises to be nothing less of continuing that miracle.
One of my big goals for 2017 was to become more focused in my goals. Granted, in a sense, for all of us living in the developed world in the 21st century, it is getting both easier and harder. Easier because the maturity we have makes us focus more on what we really want as time goes by, and harder because the petite distractions seem to be multiplying.
A friend of mine, Naoki Watanabe, wanted me to write this post. He is a hero in many online language communities, having truly brought polyglots together from all throughout the world in online for on Facebook, not also to mention his admiration of many minority languages throughout the world. Also a fellow Hungarian enthusiast! (Congratulations on getting B1 in Hungarian, by the way!)
Let’s begin with rule 0 about building mental discipline.
Even if you don’t take steps to give yourself mental discipline now, you will grow into it eventually. Your mental discipline will get stronger with each new “milestone”. This could be getting degrees, passing a semester, completing projects, getting a new job or a raise, or any variety of transition.
However, 2017 was a good year for me in the respect that I am realizing that I have, more than ever, realized how mental discipline can be “hacked”.
Let’s hear some of my newfound revelations, shall we?
Use REALISTIC promises to bind you to your commitments. Post them in public places (such as your Facebook Status) or, if you come from a culture in which giving your word is binding (this could or could not be religious), say “If I don’t do X, then I will do Y” (where Y is a negative consequence).
In June 2017 I took it upon myself to learn Krio. Too much time spent with my family who lived in Sierra Leone, and it was important for me to connect to a culture that my parents were a part of. What’s more, given as it is almost certain that my parents will never return there, I will also get to see the face of the modern Sierra Leone (even if I don’t visit there, given the whole Internet thing).
I met my goal in being able to have conversations! I still have a long ways to go (it is currently my weakest Creole Language, with the Melanesian Creoles of Tok Pisin, Pijin and Bislama being my strongest).
I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t do this:
“30 minutes of Krio, in some way, every day. If you don’t, you have to delete your Facebook account” (!!!)
There was one time I sadly needed to walk away from a party that I really enjoyed so that I could go home and meet my quota. Cruel? Yes. But hey, I speak Krio.
Maybe not as well as I would like (my super-high standards get the best of me sometimes), but it’s not “a few words” or “a few sentences” it’s being able to speak it in a capacity that I would be able to navigate Sierra Leone without using Standard English much like I did in Greenland without using English.
Have an Ego
I have a bit of an “Ash Ketchum” complex when it comes to my life. I have this overwhelming desire to be the best and to let the world know. I had this understanding since I was seven years old that my life was going to be unique, that I was going to try everything, explore everything, and share everything with everybody.
In my 20’s I found out that there are a lot of people who will not put more effort into their life any more than they absolutely have to. Also there are a lot of people who will spend a lot of time talking about nothing, not exploring, nor on any great quest for self-improvement, much less wanting to “SHOW THE WORLD” anything.
I don’t understand people like these. But I think I may understand their vantage point.
I was raised with a strong idea, since early childhood, that I was the most brilliant person ever who HAD to use his gifts for something. A lot of people were raised with the idea that they were average, and that average was good, if not in fact preferable to being a “star”.
How does this tie to mental discipline?
You have to imagine yourself as the hero of your TV show, someone who people look up to and see as a role model.
Even if you’re not there, you will be. Try to tell yourself that!
Simply put, “if I don’t write this blog post about Bislama, I don’t see anyone else who will!”
I was fed this idea that I was and am a hero and that, if I am lazy, the world suffers. We all need that mindset.
IF you must take a break, do it in a way that will build value for other people.
Sometimes you have to watch TV, play a game or read something mindless.
In the mid-2010’s I discovered a way I could convert my “downtime” towards practicing my languages. Why use YouTube in English when I could do it in Norwegian? And even then, there are a lot of well-known YouTube channels that have fan-added subtitles in many other languages as well!
But if you need to play a game or watch some TV or what-have-you, feel free to transform it into something that other people can enjoy…what if you write about what you saw, like in a review, and then publish it on a blog? What if you record yourself playing the game with commentary instead? If you speak a language natively that isn’t English, could you contribute fan-made subtitles towards your favorite video?
You can’t be working all of the time, and I’m fully aware of that, but with some small tricks like these you can set yourself in a more productive headspace. And once you have these patterns locked into place, you’ll find the need to keep creating instead of spinning time away. And the world will be better off for it.
Be Aware of Emotional Traps Online
The corporate world wants to manipulate you and distract you from your goals. It also wants to toss your emotions into clicking and buying products.
Recognize when links are doing this to you, recognize when AUTHORS are doing this to you, and then tell yourself firmly. “I, (name), am above these forms of manipulation”. And don’t click on the video and/or link.
Sometimes I used to get worried about a lot of things (especially with last year’s US election). But interestingly now, I’ve learned to see patterns in which my emotions are being played with. If there’s clickbait of any variety, or any variety of manipulation any product pulls in order to get you invested, I imagine the announcer in the NYC subway system:
“If you drop something on the tracks, LEAVE IT”.
You’ll forget about whatever link you didn’t click on in a matter of hours. I can almost promise you that.
Imagine You are a World Champion or a World Champion To-Be
One time I significantly messed up leading a service at a synagogue when I was 13-14 years old. I was quite upset about it. But one of my friends told me afterwards that “you’re not Michael Jordan. The world expects the best from Michael Jordan. You’re just a kid”.
More than a decade later, I find myself that person who people expect the best of. And as a result, I can’t let them down. Even if I may have to at some times (such as the fact that I dashed away on the 30-Day Burmese Challenge yesterday on account of personal circumstances. I’ll still be doing the restaurant and the final video thing, though!), I realize that my overall behavior has to be that of a global role model.
Pretend you have that role, and then you’ll grow into it. Even if people doubt you have “what it takes” at first, you’ll sway (most of) them eventually with enough willpower.
EPILOGUE:
I also realize that there is such a thing as bad days, illnesses, and personal setbacks. Keep in mind that mental discipline isn’t something you need to have ABSOLUTELY all of the time, just most of the time. I know I couldn’t have possibly had mental discipline when I got Lyme Disease in November 2015. But your primary goal is to ensure that you have it on the AVERAGE day (most people usually have it on their good days, only).
Did you find this advice helpful? Let me know!
Here’s hoping that you, the Champion, can show the world just what a fantastic beacon to humanity you really are! Onwards!
Here we are with only a handful of weeks before a new year comes in, and looking back at 2017 it seems that I got a LOT of my goals dealt with accordingly (with the primary exception of reviving my comic book projects). The biggest victory that I made was, of course, choosing to revive this blog after it “went to sleep” after I got Lyme Disease in late 2015 until January 2017 (when I began writing posts again).
It seems that for 2018 I will need to make TWO lists, one for language-learning goals and the other for personal development goals outside of language learning. The first one, predictably, has pretty much already been decided on, and the biggest surprise is that I have a list of languages that I would seek to learn, one that would (pretty much) cover me for the rest of my life. I am likely to unveil it at some point this month or very early next year.
Anyhow, I’ve recorded myself speaking Greenlandic for 15 days now (about to make it 16) and have carried through successfully with the Burmese 30-day Challenge with Eurolinguiste (and the next fifteen days are proving to have tasks quite tough, so much so that I even considered giving up).
Anyhow, I’ll give some reflections for both before I upload a bunch of Gilbertese songs into my phone and actually have a meal.
Greenlandic
This challenge could really go in any direction, and I have a feeling that I’ll be reaping the full results of it after I gather the 30 recordings and put them in a video. Sometimes I’ve made some stupid mistakes (e.g. mixing up vowels at one point, and dreadfully mispronouncing a Danish-import “number” word). I think that once my native-speaker friends give me full feedback (and the video I’ll publish, probably as the last one this year, will be the means for them to do so), I’ll reach new heights.
Until then, I should say that the challenge actually really helped me put together new words in constructions that I could recognize passively and tell you about, but often I couldn’t use them with significant skill.
Am I glad I did this? Most definitely, although I think the prompts are significantly harder this time around (for some reason) and sometimes when I’ve had birthday parties, events or, as is the case now, Hannukah, then I’ll take “shortcuts” (I think one of my recordings was literally “I’m singing tonight and I have to practice my songs” and that was IT! I did this a few times in the Lao recordings but I don’t remember doing it as often)
I still have trouble with the “if” construction (hey, if any Greenlandic-speakers would like to help!), but aside from that it’s clear that I’ve memorized the grammar and all I really need to do now is keep on building vocabulary. What’s more (and this is something that I believe will remain a sticking point for the foreseeable future), I sometimes limit usage of my suffixes. Greenlandic native speakers usually put a lot more suffixes on their words than L2 Greenlandic speakers (e.g. Danes living in Greenland). Don’t really know how to get over that, and the fact that I was understood in Greenland without unleashing the full “suffix zoo” doesn’t really…fix things, because it means that I could continue with a simplified form. But maybe that’s okay for now.
My Greenlandic journey remains my hardest language to date, one in which, I feel, I have literally thrown EVERYTHING at it in order to stick (that is to say, that I have used WAY too many methods to learn the language), but still I struggle and it is nowhere NEAR being my strongest language, despite the fact that it and Gilbertese are my overall favorite languages in the world!)
Burmese
The biggest advantages I’ve had is the fact that, sometimes, I upload videos with the challenge and making those have been BY FAR the most helpful task I’ve had in helping me cement my memory of various words. The posts on this blog relevant to 30 Days of Burmese have also been helpful, too.
However, part of me worries that maybe I should have chosen a language that I spoke at a higher level instead.
Sometimes I find myself, much like with Greenlandic, using shortcuts, especially when I am busy (e.g. taking a silly question in Burmese that I found in the Tatoeba Sentence Database and posting it as my status to fulfill the “write a Facebook post” requirement. Normally I would write something original, but I was so drained that I just wasn’t up to it.)
On the other hand, I also find that this challenge is very much like the creative process, in the respect that often there are huge bursts of inspiration followed by mellow struggling.
Has it helped? Most definitely. Perhaps rote studying would have been more helpful given where I was with Burmese, but luckily I think that I should use this challenge in the future with languages that I study too much and don’t tend to USE as much. With Burmese, I’ve had the opposite situation. I’ve used it quite frequently (although in speech only) despite the fact that I never really STUDIED it in detail, aside from paging through grammar in books. It’s mostly been a process of phrase acquisition (much like how children learn languages), but also there are advantages to studying a language as well (given that it acts as a type of “polish”, which is evident from some of my videos in my Eurolinguiste playlist).
The true revelations and reflections will come at the end of the month. Stay tuned!
A World With Little Worlds 