Mango Languages’ 31 Days of Language (January 2018): A Reflection

I missed the last few days thanks to a flood of new students and other difficult factors, but aside from that, I’ve completed the 31 Days of Language Challenge that Mango Languages put forth in December 2017 to build language learners’ momentum in January 2018.

Here I am at the conclusion of it all (despite having missed a number of tasks, again, although this article is the final piece for the 31^st day).

Let’s have a look at the task list now, shall we?

One thing that actually made this list significantly lower-pressure than other challenges was the fact that many of them just would take a few minutes to complete. However, despite that (or perhaps because of it), they created a certain curiosity that really caused me to look into my target language in detail.

The language that I chose for the challenge was Kiribati / Gilbertese (yes, I’m fully aware that Mango Languages doesn’t have it! Not only that, but they actively ENCOURAGED me every step of the way! Yes, the Mango Languages staff!)

Let’s discuss where I was in December with Kiribati and where I am at the end of January:

In December, I was nowhere near the 600 “core words” of a language that I required for everyday conversation. I also had pronunciation issues, grammar holes and while I was capable of having a VERY predictable conversation, it was a conversation nonetheless.

But after the challenge, I had notice the following changes:

• My knowledge of the core was fortified
• My cultural knowledge was VERY fortified
• Kiribati felt like a place that I actually visited rather than a place I daydreamed about while using language learning apps.
• My grammar, while not perfect, was significantly stronger.
• My pronunciation was a little better.
• Alas, my listening comprehension wasn’t really improved (I’ve notice that Caribbean Spanish varieties and languages from Micronesia are the QUICKEST I’ve encountered in my life! Kiribati is going to be an uphill battle in this regard, although songs have been significantly more merciful).
• I’m not yet fluent. But that’s okay. Am I conversational? Maybe after doing this three more times. But depending on what happens, fluent Kiribati IS in the cards for 2018 if I do everything right and am ultra-careful with my focus!

 

In light of this, I think that it would be wise of me to summarize the advantages and disadvantages of this challenge:

 

What I liked:

• A lot of the tasks were SIGNIFICANTLY low-pressure, very few of them required me to upend my schedule in order to complete them.
• It really enabled me to publicize my progress regularly, even though there may have been some of my Facebook friends that were annoyed by it (Oh great, those islands AGAIN!)
• It drew together the understanding that a language is truly something to be experienced rather than learned.
• It involved multiple senses, disciplines and the “separate intelligences”
• The tasks were satisfying to complete.

 

What I disliked:

Very little, actually. If there would be one thing I would add, it would be the possibility to either “up the ante” with a given task or to do a simpler version of it. (After all, some days you may find yourself significantly bored, or otherwise completely overwhelmed).

Another thing is the fact that it should be customizable to complete in other months that are not January 2018.

 

Above all, I really enjoyed having the opportunity to learn this language and contribute to the study of Kiribati (which is quite a scant field of study as of the time of writing).

This is my last article for January 2018.

For February 2018, I will be focusing on Greenlandic with Huggins International (the Hungarian 30-Day Challenge went by well although I actually have 28 recordings because two of them involve me singing copyrighted songs that I’m not putting on YouTube!) and I will have a personal project with Fijian and a YouTube series with Bahamian Creole / Dialect (lovingly voted on by the members of Polyglot Polls) in honor of Black History Month!

2018 is a great time to be a language enthusiast! Go get your dreams!

Kiribati / Gilbertese: The Easy, the Hard and the Future (January 2018)

More than three weeks into 2018 and I’ve found my Gilbertese drastically improved. That said, with the 31 Days of Language challenge today’s task is to reflect on what makes your language challenging.

But first, that wouldn’t be very helpful without recognizing what make Kiribati EASIER than many other languages.

For one, the pronunciation is straightforward with the primary difficulty at first being the pronunciation of the “ti” combination, pronounced as “si” (or “s” at the end of word). Hence “Kiribati” is not pronounced “kee-ruh-baa-tee” but rather “kee-ruh-baas” (have the “aa” on the side of a short-a sound to sound more authentic).

The verbs are also significantly simpler than those of the majority of languages I have learned throughout my life. In no instance in Kiribati does a verb change depending on the seubject. I roko – I came. E roko – he came.

Granted, there are some more complications that become relevant at the intermediate level (where I’m now at) so expect this video of mine to explain almost everything:

The fact that I’ve been able to see similarities throughout other languages I know is also helpful. In Breton, as in Kiribati, you also put the adjective before the noun (English can also use this pattern as well, hence “strong are the ties that bind friends like us” — note that “strong” goes before “ties”)

The absence of a verb “to have” is also not striking, given that I’ve seen this with Finno-Ugric Languages and with Hebrew.

From the video above we have:

iai am boki? – is there your book? (=do you have a book?)

OR

iai te boki iroum – is there the book with you? (=do you have a book?)

Now let’s get to the harder stuff:

Listening comprehension outside of songs has been difficult. Often I hear a big blur of words with a lot of slurring and then I think “HAWWGGH!??!”. Luckily, much like I had this problem with Danish, I think that songs will serve as a segway into the spoken language (which was how I solved the problem with Danish in 2013/2014).

I don’t feel as though my accent has the right texture quite yet. And this is something I’m going to need to really think about and apply to my existing languages as well as ones that I’m still at the beginner or intermediate stage for. Just because you can pronounce each individual vowel correctly or passably doesn’t mean you have a fluent accent. The missing piece is still something I’m working on.

I feel as though I speak slowly and like a learner. That’s obviously not the worst thing, given that Kiribati is one of the faster languages I’ve heard spoken. (For warmer climates, Lao was the most forgiving in terms of its tempo although Kiribati and some forms of Tok Pisin were the ABSOLUTE WORST).

I feel that there’s a lot of grammar I still have yet to apply and cover. This does have a lot to do with the placement of commonly used small words. I remember having this similar struggle in Swedish as well. The fact that Kiribati has a lot of the aspects that would make a language “easy” on paper doesn’t necessarily translate it to being easy in practice, and the lack of resources makes it even harder.

Right now, I have a solid basis in Kiribati. I just need to assemble the interior pieces of the language puzzle until I get something that I’m proud of.

And about listening comprehension, maybe I just need to get exposure to it until it sinks in. Obviously I’ve been getting a lot of musical exposure, but the spoken language is a lot more merciless in its speed and its scope.

I remember having this struggle with Hungarian and Finnish as well. What I usually did do was that I did apply audio, and tried to see how many words I could recognize. From then, it became an issue of using my applied knowledge to fill in the gaps until I understood 80% (I’m not there with Hungarian or Kiribati quite yet…but I’m on my way!)

Some concrete steps I can take in order to patch any weaknesses:

(1) Recording myself more often
(2) TRANSLATING YouTube comments in Kiribati (YES, they exist)
(3) Applying audio (NOT songs) so that it’s not scary and avoiding that temptation to CLICK AWAY.

This is just the beginning of something sweet that will only continue to grow!

Why I Learn Kiribati / Gilbertese, and Why I Think Other People Should, Too

Day 5 of 2018 and it seems that my goals are coming into place. Already my Hungarian and Gilbertese have been making fantastic progress, in both grammar and vocabulary.

Today’s task for Mango Language’s 31 Days of Language (for which I chose Gilbertese, despite the fact that it isn’t yet available on Mango Languages) is to relate what place your language is spoken in and what it is known for:

Kiribati is the only country that has no overseas territories that is located in all four hemispheres (in the Pacific Ocean) and is the first country to “see” the near year on any given year.

What’s more, it is also known (by virtually ANYONE who knows about the islands at all) that they are at EXTREME risk concerning climate change and rising sea levels, with the under 30 generation projected to be the last generation to live on the islands before relocation (if current trends continue).

The videos that I’ve seen of rural Kiribati are very, VERY much unlike Brooklyn, often more closely resembling structures (and sometimes clothing) of bygone eras (or what most Americans would consider to be bygone eras. Sadly, in some Native American reservations there are even worse conditions).

No wonder I am the ONLY person I’ve not only met in person but met online who has even tried to learn the language. The one thing that people associate with Kiribati is something most people don’t want to think about. And in the West, there’s that guilt present knowing that decisions favoring petroleum (more relevant to North America, of course) have led to the wholescale destruction of HUMAN habitats and, unless we do something, it may lead to the destruction of entire countries. Indeed, in some respects, that destruction is already here.

No language has broken my heart as harshly as Gilbertese has. Despite the fact that there are music channels that show that there is a vibrant human culture that even people who have never heard of Kiribati can relate to, I have to live with the reality that the people here feel as though their country has spit them out (or is on the verge of doing so). Reading Lamentations on the evening of Tisha B’av, I told my rabbi on the night afterwards that a lot of the thought processes present in the Book of Lamentations were ALSO present among the many I-Kiribati being interviewed about their “dying country”.

Despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, there are stories of resilience and hope, not to mention many personalities that make me realize how strong the human spirit really is (I am reminded at this juncture that, on the other side of the planet, Nanook, one of Greenland’s most famous musical acts [who I had the privilege to MEET last year!] began one of their best-selling albums with singing the words “I recognize that Greenlandic people possess great strength”).

For me, learning Kiribati was a moral imperative and was for a long time. It’s a pity that only in mid-2017 I began to take is seriously and it is now tied for my favorite language (along with Greenlandic).

There are a number of reasons for this:

For one, late-stage capitalism has successful distanced ourselves from our deepest human urges. We humans are cooperators by nature, more so than competitors. We care for ourselves, our lands and our planet. Capitalism unfettered serves to undermine every single one of these aspects.

But in places like Kiribati, Greenland, and many other places in (what is mostly) the developing world, the old spirit is very much still alive. Even among American Jews I find that people who are not very religious are turning to some form of religious study because it contains many aspects of wisdom that our nomadic ancestors had but our grocery-store, smartphone-addicted globalized selves do not.

By living in this country, I realize that I have, whether I like it or not, participated in a system that has crushed and destroyed many other places throughout the world for the shallow name of profit. Kiribati, while still alive thankfully and also not at war, is one of these affected places. To most Americans, I-Kiribati might describe themselves as being “from a tropical island”. But to me, I have learned more about their culture than most HUMANS ever will.

Maybe if I could relate the sort of things I see about Kiribati online, which will only continue to grow with my Kiribati getting stronger, then I could also help my friends with realizing the issues of climate disruption more deeply than they had, even if they have no desire to learn any other languages (and that’s okay).

Scientific articles show a technical side to climate change but in reading about Kiribati I learn about it in a whole other way, one that may sadly continue to be relevant for us: how it impacts humans who have had their world thrown into turmoil because of rising sea levels.

But despite all of this, I think, just like everywhere else, I-Kiribati want other people to view their country as “a normal country” (a desire I’ve heard, for example, among Israelis and citizens of the former Yugoslav republics). Kiribati is sinking but there’s more to the Kiribati story than sinking. Having both been on the American and Japanese colonial frontier, it has impacted the popular culture of both more than you realize (the Maneaba, the traditional meeting house in a Kiribati village, may look familiar to you):

This picture is from trussel.com, without which I wouldn’t be able to learn this language.

Nowadays I’ve only met a handful of people who know where (or what) Kiribati is, but unless we as a species do something very quickly, everyone may know what this country is…when it is on the verge of no longer existing. If that is the case, you may think back to these posts and realize that I have, sadly, been validated with my choice.

With my choice of languages I can make statements. I can use them in order to bring bits of the world to my companions, my blog and everyone around me. This is one area of the world that people need to know a lot about. Most definitely now.

 

2017: A Final Reflection

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.

May you have similar fortune as well!