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.

come back when you can put up a fight

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?)

Polyglot Report Card, March 2015 Edition, and Diagnoses (Part 1)

With the constant notion that the Polyglot Conference is coming up in October, I have to be mindful of how I focus my energies with my projects from now until then.

Having a routine is good. Keeping the routine is better. So I published this post to reflect, as well as to “poke” me into following that routine.

English: I have to get that true American accent back. Somehow. Right now it sounds like a “mixture”, and almost everyone I know has remarked on that fact. People that knew me from before my big trips abroad and met me afterwards have noticed that my voice has changed. But can I change it back?

That’s worthy of another blog post in its own right…

Hebrew: Thanks largely to a lot of classes, I feel very confident. It seriously slipped when I was living in Germany, but thanks to the JTS folks I feel good about it again…

What I need to do: just browse the dictionary at points. I’ve had enough exposure to the language that I should be able to think of contexts without trouble…

Yiddish: Almost the exact same situation, except for the fact that on very rare occasions I worry about mixing up German and Yiddish, although it almost never happens now. (A friend of mine said that his professor said that when he wanted to speak German, he just used Yiddish with a British accent…hmmm…)

So what I also need to do for Yiddish is browse dictionaries and keep a good exposure with books and texts. The fact that I’m enrolled in an Advanced Yiddish texts class right now ensures that I have that.

With German, it is pretty much the exact same thing.

And now comes Spanish, the language that I feel I screwed up on more occasions than any other. As a very sensitive person, I have difficulty separating it from some of my failures involving it (not passing an AP exam during my senior year of high school has been a sort of never-live-it-down moment).

Right now, I know what I need:  my passive understanding is very good, and so I can watch television without problems. I need to convert that into active understanding by ensuring that I watch that television more often. Oh, and somehow divorce the negative experiences I’ve had with the language. Otherwise I’ll never get good at it…

Danish, in part because of my obsession with Greenland, has surged with progress ever since I got back to the United States. I never thought that I would get this good at the language while I was living in Sweden! I’ve had enough exposure via television that watching Danish TV now seems like as much of a waste of time as watching TV in English.

Now I’ll need to turn my attention to reading. And not on the computer! Print the articles or find books and get readin’ em.

Norwegian is a bit similar, although I’m not really as confident with it. I don’t believe that Norwegian TV is as much of a “waste of time” as watching English TV, so I still have to get to that ultra-confident point yet. In the meantime, using the same strategy as I have for Danish (getting articles) isn’t going to hurt at all.

Swedish has weakened. Significantly. I’ve just been lazy. On a side note, I do encounter a LOT of Swedes in New York City. I can’t really say that I can be proud of my progress in that language. And my accent still needs improvement…

My core vocabulary is strong, however. A lot better than it ever has been, especially when I was living in the country…I need to watch a lot of television in Swedish, and then, when I feel as good about it as I do with Danish, then I get more reading practice. I remember buying a Swedish-language book about seals when I was there. It is probably somewhere in that book stash in Connecticut…that would be just what I may need!

Dutch. Neglected. I almost considered forgetting it altogether. But the fact that it is similar to German and Yiddish ensured that it was pretty much a non-option. If I want to get better, then I know what I need to do: get a dictionary, and browse it. And watch TV in Dutch.

I only have one real problem with Greenlandic at this point: I need a stronger vocabulary than what I have. My accent is really good, I can get the flow and I’ve had a bit too much exposure to the language. I found the vocabulary for this language the hardest to acquire out of any of I’ve studied. I’m going to have to break out comprehensive vocabulary lists and start putting them into Memrise!

Northern Sami: I’m not as used to the flow of this language as I am with Greenlandic. My grammar could also use some brushing up (the cases I’m good with, I don’t even need to worry about consonant gradation anymore…if you want to know what that is, just go to the tag categories and click “Northern Sami” and read until you encounter something about it. Or ask me in the comments). My vocabulary could use some strengthening, primarily by…exposure to more Northern Sami language media.

I just turned on NRK Sápmi as I’m writing this. I could read vocabulary lists, but it would be BETTER if I were to expose my brain to the language more often.

And one last language for the time being, Faroese. Grammar is my biggest issue. And sometimes listening comprehension. I have more reading practice than I know what to do with. Listen, listen, listen…and find those scholarly works on Faroese grammar and know it as well as you can.

To be continued in Part 2

kegn dem shtrom

Fun Media from Winter Break 2015

Over the course of the break, I made significant progress in some of my projects (Northern Sami, mostly) and not so significant progress in some of my others (Celtic Languages), but while seeking to apply my languages I did come across some things that I thought I should share with you.

From the Sami department, I encountered a TV show on NRK’s website, “Pulk Klinihkka”, which is…I kid you not…a Sami sitcom (for those of you unaware of what Sápmi is, I intend to write a blog post about it in the style of this one about the Faroe Islands).

Language is Northern Sámi with some Norwegian (and a bit of Swedish), with Norwegian subtitles. Even if you don’t know any of these languages, this may be somewhat amusing for you…I hope.

Here is the third episode, with a particularly amusing incident involving baptism:

http://tv.nrk.no/serie/pulk/SAPR69000313/sesong-1/episode-3

Obviously, important issues about minority identity come into play, and I see the same sort of “underdog” humor that I tend to associate with Yiddish theater in this show. Funny how that works out, eh?

From a somewhat warmer place, allow me to introduce you to another television show, “No Béarla”, an Irish-Language show from Ireland in which a native Irish speaker tours the island without using English. Interestingly I think that he does use English in some episodes, but maybe they were filmed…before he made the commitment? I have no idea…

Endless issues about endangered languages and language as it is tied to identity surface beautifully in this program. Here is the first episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyll-bBZzyk

And last, but not least, allow me to introduce you to some music I encountered over the break, this time from a very cold place.

The Jerry Cans produce songs in Inuktitut and in English about life in Nunavut, Canada’s youngest province. Quite eclectic and catchy music that may remind you of American country songs…I first discovered them on KNR (of all places…oh, you need to know what that is? Greenland TV) and then I followed the trail.

Here is the SoundCloud account:

https://soundcloud.com/thejerrycans

And here is the video I saw on KNR. “Mamaqtuq” (it tastes delicious) is actually a song about…seal meat stew…you can imagine the look on my mother’s face when I showed it to her. Watch the video and see why:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DueVqYKWQxE

What sort of interesting things have you done over your Winter break? Share them!

Northern Sami: What? Why? How?

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Something to think about: the person who designed the Sami National Flag is only a few years older than I am. Sobering…but comforting, because the Sami Flag is one of my personal favorites anywhere!

One fine day at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, I was walking around and I was very hungry, having traversed each of the four stories of the very large museum. (Yes, there was a restaurant, but it was expensive and it didn’t seem that it would have too high quality food. And besides, it was on the bottom story and I was on the upper floors when the hunger hit!)

The Nordic Museum is a fantastic place, complete with a journey through Swedish fashion throughout the ages, and an in-detail description of the life and writings of August Strindberg, possibly the best known Swedish author of them all (okay, Astrid Lindgren also deserves a mention).

The top story of the museum had an array of Sami crafts and clothing, not also to mention a history of Swedish-Sami relations. For those of you who have ever heard of “Lapland”, “Sami” is the politically correct term for the people who live there, with the word “Lapp” and “Lappish” being considered offensive in some circles, despite being used on multiple translations of Wikipedia. (These words still make me cringe when I hear them spoken…)

The indigenous people of Northern Scandinavia, the Sami have a host of languages to their name, the most prominent of which is Northern Sami (Davvisámegiella), in which the National Anthem of Samiland (Sápmi) is written.

Thanks largely to the Sami people being on the recieving end of a host oppressive campaigns of many sorts, as well as the fact that the Sami people and languages have been influenced by Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, and that these cultures have been influenced by the Sami in return—there are many resources for the learning the Sami Languages, especially Northern Sami, with the most popular being Giella Tekno at the University of Tromsø: (http://giellatekno.uit.no/)

I cannot speak about the other Sami Languages right now, although it should be noted that a significant amount of them have become extinct and a host of others are still living. The Sami Languages are not mutually intelligible, but since I have only put serious effort into one of them I cannot comment on the similarities between them (or lack thereof).

If you are a Finnic Language buff, you may recognize that the word “Giella” in Northern Sami resembles that of “Kieli” in Finnish and “Keel” in Estonia. Northern Sami is Finno-Ugric, and as a result resembles Finnish and Estonian not only in cognates but in other regards:

(1)   The accent is always on the first syllable (a hard-set rule throughout the language family).

 

(2)   No articles!

 

(3)   Consonant Gradation is a thing. Note in Finnish: “Katu” = “a/the street” vs “Kadulle” (on the street)—the “t” changes to a “d”. Other times this gradation doesn’t happen: “Pomo” = “a/the boss” vs. “Pomolle” = “to/for a/the boss”

 

In Northern Sami, it isn’t as intuitive (Remember that with the lack of articles, “the” can be also translated as “a” in the example):

 

Jávri = the sea (subject)

Jávrri = of the sea, sea (direct object)

Jávrái = to the sea

Jávrris = from the sea, by the sea

Jávrriin = to the sea

Jávrin = such as the sea

 

Note the nominative with the singular “r” and the other forms with two. Now for this:

 

Sápmi = A Sami person

Sámi = of a Sami person, Sami person (direct object)

Sápmái = to a Sami person

Sámis = from a Sami person, by a Sami person

Sámiin = to a Sami Person

Sápmin = such as a Sami Person

 

In this example, the nominative has the “pm” and then is gradated to “m”. Hence, Finland in Northern Sami is “Suopma”, of Finnish/Finland would be “Suoma”.

About Northern Sami itself, I have heard people asking why I even bother to invest my time in it every single time I bring it up! In other cases, I’m even lucky if I’m asking people who know what it is. If they do, however, the fact that I know even a bit of Northern Sami is very, very heartily appreciated.

I cannot understand why many people overlook the fact that very rarely spoken languages can reap huge rewards when you run into the right people—or even with commanding a significant respect from many others who have never even heard of it! Even if you know only about one page’s worth of vocabulary! (This was particularly true about a year ago when I had a non-serious flirtationship with Greenlandic. Now that relationship is serious…)

So that’s your homework: get learning a very rare language. There are lots of them. And more resources for them that you realize. Start today!

Back on topic…

The primary reason I chose to invest in Northern Sami was because I have an interest in Nordic Culture and I wanted to investigate the linguistic interplay between the Northern Sami Languages and Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, and Russian (and I look forward to dragging Russian out of my “Forgotten Language” zone).

One fine day at a pool party I brought my very trusty Northern Sami notebook (the words “Ale Stuža!” [Do not splash!] were very useful!), I had to explain what sort of language this was and why I was learning it(for what was not the first and what definitely will not be the last time).

Why? Understanding Scandinavia better, through its more unheard voices.

What? Picture this: Norwegian and Swedish have a baby, and then that baby grows up and has a baby with the Finnish Language. That is what Northern Sami is…very, very roughly.

What do you do with it? Well, that’s up to you. There are translations to be done, there is the Bible in Northern Sami, there is even a Learn Useless Northern Sami Page on Facebook (which has been inactive for a while but is still useful). If you learn by association (the way I do), the other Nordic Languages become easier to memorize and learn (especially Finnish).

Of course, it is also a vital piece of history as well, and in many tourist attractions in Sweden you can see Northern Sami being used in Museum media. It is, after all, one of the official languages of Sweden, and one of the official languages of NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.

There is also a Sami kindergarten in Helsinki and in all four countries which make up a part of Samiland, there are efforts and usages that will reward you, not also to mention “Ođđasat” (the Sami News channel), a Kubuntu translation, and a handful of Northern Sami video games that you can find it you look hard enough!

And for those of you who scrolled all the way to the bottom in order to find out how many speakers the language has, I’ll place the estimate at around 20,000, a number which is probably either from UNESCO or Wikipedia.

As to what I used, the biggest piece of it was a Northern Sami-Swedish Course called “Gulahalan” (I Make Myself Understood), which has twenty lessons all for free! I will review the course on another occasion!

Until then, I hope that this post inspires you to take up a study, however serious, of some small language that you may have had your eyes or heart on for a while!

What’s stopping you?