How to Anchor Your Languages to Your “Mentors” So as to Avoid Mixing Them Up

A friend of mine, an English / German / Spanish / Japanese / possibly other languages I forgot / possibly I taught him a few words of Hebrew once asked me to write this post. Thank you, Mitch, with great wishes for your continued success!

Do YOU have a topic you’d like me to write on? Let me know!

I’m recovering from an illness so I hope that this will be good nonetheless.

Many people have told me that they sometimes intend to say one thing in one language and end up saying something in another, or otherwise the general mix-up that many polyglots, even veterans, know all too well.

Believe me, even native speakers sometimes suffer from this. This is why code-switching is a thing, as well as the fact that many people from India / Oceania / Israel / Northern Europe / American Hispanics mix in English with their native languages. Even in the Arab world this is common with French words instead (in various Arabic varieties spoken in former French colonies, such as with Lebanese Arabic).

That said, there are some people who feel as though they have an “unhealthy dosage” of it, to the degree in which they want to speak Hebrew or Japanese and then Spanish comes out instead, not also to mention those who study similar languages may also suffer from this as well.

Here comes the solution:

Among “dialect continuum” areas (in which the boundaries between languages are unclear and there is a large amount of variance between a language as spoken in a particular country or geographical area), as well as areas of the Internet dedicated to the culture of these areas, you’ll notice something: some people flaunt their national flags with what could almost be described as aggression.

There’s a reason that Norwegian flags are commonly featured on clothing (especially coats and winterwear), and that’s to distinguish their wearers from Swedish or Danish people (the former of whose language closely resembles spoken Norwegian and the latter of which closely resembles the written variety).

In Crown Heights, which I believe is the largest Afro-Caribbean expatriate community in the world, I see Jamaican, Trinidadian, Grenadian and Barbadian flags (among others) VERY commonly. The reason why? So that people don’t mistake them for one from belonging to one of the other nations (despite the fact that many of them share many aspects of culture).

Listening to music from Melanesia, I’ve noticed that a lot of music from Vanuatu tends to show the Ni-Vanuatu Flag in the thumbnail and Solomon Islands music does the same. Bislama and Pijin (their national creoles) resemble each other very closely.

What’s the point I’m trying to make here?

The same way that these people anchor their native identity with imagery and mementos, YOU need to be doing that with the languages you speak as well.

The first time, which is the easiest one, is find “mentors” for each of your languages. No, I’m not saying “go find a private tutor for each one”, but rather a certain native speaker or a set of native speakers whose voice you tend to imitate most. These could be friends, radio hosts, YouTubers, or even voices from an online app.

Here are some of the “mentors” I’ve had:

• The Irish Language Transparent Language Voice
• My Welsh-Speaking Friend named Ivan
• The Vincentian Creole Bible-Redux Narrator (from a set of mp3’s I got from a Bible site that one time. Yes, a lot of them mention Jesus; no, I am not Christian nor do I have any intention of being un-Jewish).
• A number of Swedish-Language Let’s Play-ers who deserve an entire post written about them (coming soon! And no, PewDiePie is not one of them. I’m glad that he’s brought awareness about the Swedish language and culture to many fields of popular discussion but he crossed the line too many times last year. Also, he uses a lot more English than Swedish in his videos.)
• Too many of my Yiddish-speaking friends to count, but if I had to pick one it would be Baruch, probably the one I spend the most time with (we attend a lot of the same events).

For your native language, you sort of don’t have any choice for your mentors—they were your parents or guardians. But for languages you learn in adulthood you’ll need to find “adoptive parents” for them.

Obviously if you have a LOT of friends who speak the language (as is the case with languages like Yiddish and Polish for me), your “mentor” will be sort of a blend of all of them although mostly the influence of one or two will overshadow all of them.

I couldn’t imagine Baruch speaking Vincentian Creole English (although maybe one day he’ll learn it, I have no idea). Similarly, I can’ t really imagine the “Vincy” narrator speaking Yiddish or even standard English for that matter (although the latter I would imagine he certainly would know).

Another thing that you very much can do is have different vowel and consonant textures for your languages. Once you get a mentor for any language and start imitating him or her, this will come naturally. Think about the automated voices in your language course—how do they pronounce “a” or “l” differently from the way you do in your native language? Investigate these feelings in detail and mimic them accordingly.

People who are often praised for their accent often do exactly this, and note the differences as to what they hear between speakers of various languages. Once you get good at it, you’ll even be able to keep extremely close languages separate. While I encounter with dogged consistency people who mix up Spanish and Portuguese way too often (precisely because they haven’t gone through this), I can keep straight German and Yiddish, the Scandinavian Languages, and very similar Creole languages—granted there are rare occasions in which I mix them up, but overall I’m in a good place because my “mental discipline” is very honed.

We all have separate identities. Jared the teacher is very flamboyant but he has to tone it down when he’s Jared the student. Similarly, you’ll have to do the same with your languages—allot each one a different set of feelings and a role, as well as, most importantly, ways of talking.

Happy learning!

Each of my Language Learning Journeys, Summarized Humorously in One Sentence Each

I’ll be posting something about my underaccomplishment with the 30-Day Challenge in Greenlandic in the coming days, but I thought it would be very humorous for me to try something else for a change.
By the way, my Fijian is getting FANTASTICALLY better with each coming day (I still have some blind spots that will be weeded out in the coming weeks, not also to mention the fact that I’ve been focusing mostly on speaking rather than listening or reading right now, given that I’ll be doing most of THAT when I’m in Fiji. Listening, reading and writing will no doubt follow, and I’m not even sure if writing exercises for Fijian would be effort ideally paid off because the only people I know who have lived in Fiji have been expats that only know a few words / sentences of Fijian.)

 

My list to be cleared with Fijian includes:

 

– numbers up until 1 billion

– FULLY mastering the complication plural pronouns (they come in four persons, singular, dual, paucal and plural — indicating 1, 2, a group and a BIG group)

– Family member words (significantly more complicated than in the languages of Western Europe)

– Grammatical kinks to be ironed out (especially politeness tiers and transitive suffixes on verbs).

 

Anyhow, you’ve come for humor so that’s what you’re getting. Please don’t take any of these too seriously 🙂

 

English – Even if you speak me natively, there will always be one proper noun that throws you off–so deal with it!

Ancient Hebrew – the closest a language ever got to resembling the mechanics of alphabet refrigerator magnets.

Bislama – Most people found out about this language through either a friend, a phrasebook or most likely of all…a Polandball meme!
Pijin – It’s Bislama without any French interjections. 🙂

Tok Pisin – What do you get when you cross Australian English with 800+ languages?

Trinidadian Creole English – Good luck trying to find written resources for this one.

German – The language that you realize is dangerously similar in many ways to Shakespeare’s English, but you only realize it if you’re beyond the intermediate stage.

Spanish – How many layers of slang would you like with your language? (I almost wrote “the language that people learn to say that they’re learning a language.”, but I decided against it. Or did I?)

Yiddish – you’d be surprised how much American English slang borrowed from me, but you’ll never know unless we spend quality time together.

Norwegian – exactly the linguistic kaleidoscope you would expect from a country that is 96% uninhabitable land.

Swedish – be prepared to learn EVERYTHING about syllable stress if you expect to be friends with me!

Danish – rumors of my difficulty have been very greatly exaggerated.

Icelandic – the language whose future everyone likes to freak out about.

Salone Krio – it’s like what American English would be if it were grammatically consistent, had regular spelling and made sense.

Hebrew – the language of the Bible, sprinkled with influence from French teachers, Russian emigres and American TV, among others.

Finnish – don’t let the big tables intimidate you, a lot of those forms you’ll almost never use in conversation.

Fijian – Wait, if there ARE enlongated vowels, how come they’re not written out? What do you mean, you’re just supposed to know? WHY?!!!?

Jamaican Patois – If you want to find out how open-minded someone REALLY is, mention the fact that you’re either learning this language or speak it fluently as an L2….be prepared!

Hungarian – Native speakers will love you for this…100% guarantee or your money back!

Polish – one of two langauges that caused me to nearly throw my computer in rage (the other one is below this one)

Greenlandic – How long do you like your words? 15 letter? 26 letters? 62 letters?

Lao – we disguised our Indo-European loan words really well. Come and find ’em!

Kiribati / Gilbertese – And you thought Dominican Spanish was fast.

Irish – Frightening learners with its orthography since time immemorial.

Myanmar / Burmese – There are four tones. Make that three tones. Make that two tones.

Tajik – Contrary to popular belief, Tajikistan is NOT a fictional country…Farsi’s little sibling lives there!

Palauan – Consonant jumble jamble!
Vincentian Creole English – I’m actually not a tonal language.

Re-Evaluating My Language Learning Priorities (and Dropping Languages): February 2018 Edition

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.

 

So my current list reads like this:

 

A0 – Guarani, Fiji Hindi, Uyghur, Tuvaluan,

A1:  Palauan, Mossi, Vincentian Creole, Tajik

A2 –  Burmese, Irish, Gilbertese, Fijian

B1 –  Greenlandic, Lao, Hungarian, Polish

B2 – Hebrew, Finnish, Krio, Jamaican Patois, Icelandic

C1 –  Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Yiddish, Spanish (EU), German, Trini

C2 – Bislama, Solomon Islands Pijin, Tok Pisin

Native: English, Ancient Hebrew

 

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!

May you only know fulfilled goals!

Is Learning a Language With Few Resources Frustrating?

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.

 

I hope all your dreams come true!

What No Outsider Really Understands about Polyglotism

January 2018 is about to close, and it seems that I did myself a great disservice at the beginning of the month.

Empowered by the fact that I did achieve a significant amount of my 2017 goals, I DRASTICALLY overshot for both the whole year as well as for January 2018.

My goals were to focus on:

 

Hungarian (modest success)

Gilbertese (modest success)

Vincentian Creole (virtually no progress whatsoever)

 

Not also to mention that I greatly neglected the “CleartheList” challenge that I set out to do at the beginning of the month. I seemingly neglected every single task.

If this were a high school report, January 2018 would have given me a barely passing grade.

But interestingly, I’ve notice a HUGE change from my school days to now, the fact that the combination of failure and trying again is more powerful than merely succeeding on the first try.

Surprisingly I felt (and this is the first time I’m saying this) that my college grades weren’t up to par. While some people found themselves on the Dean’s List and Phi Beta Kappa I struggled GREATLY (granted, this was in part because I felt pressured to continue my classical studies long after I lost interest in dead languages in general).

But do I think about it now at all? No. If anything, I think that I saw organized education as deeply flawed actually EMBOLDENED me. It made me want to go on the different path, stand out and be rebellious. And you’d be surprised how little your previous failures matter when you speak 17+ languages very well (even if a good portion of those 17 are English Creoles).

And then, there are the polyglotism failures.

 

Times I haven’t lived up to my standards.

Times I felt compelled to run away from a conversation with a native speaker because I was just too self-conscious even if they said outright I was speaking very well.

Times I was asked to speak a language that I’ve had rusty practice with and didn’t deliver.

Times I’ve fallen to my own limiting beliefs.

Times I’ve made grievous errors, regarding word choice, grammar, tones or something else entirely.

Times in which I’m tempted to compare my native English to any of my other languages and they, for obvious reasons, fall short (I tested in the 99th+% percentile for English vocabulary usage, so my speech in English is EXTREMELY well developed.)

 

But with each one I’ve become further emboldened after the fact. Sometimes I’ve had to call a family member or confide in a friend that I felt that I used a certain language so weakly that I “ought to have been ashamed” (and yes, sometimes ENGLISH was that language!)

I think that there are some online polyglots that try to deliberately hide their vulnerability on their blogs but from my experiences at conferences we really all have that vulnerability…not just polyglots, but any high achievers.

As to what I did wrong with “Clear the List”, well…I was feeling invincible after the Polyglot Conference and after having looked back at what a success 2017 was for my life, and I just took on too much.

Let’s revise my plan for February 2018 accordingly:

• Greenlandic 30-Day Speaking Challenge (I just think COMPLETING it would be a good idea)
• 30 minutes of Fijian Every Day (this is something I NEED to get done)
• Caribbean Creole Project in honor of Black History Month, perhaps uploading at least one video on that Creole once every three days at least.

I haven’t decided which Creole gets the “honor” yet, I put it to a poll on my Facebook page but it seems that the personal poll feature still has yet to be worked out (it didn’t show up on people’s News Feeds for some odd reason).

Anyhow, the Hungarian 30-Day Challenge in complete (there will only be 28 recordings because two of them involve songs that I can’t post on my YouTube channel if I want to monetize the videos. Despite the January 2018 changes that will render my channel demonetized until I reach 1,000 subscribers AND 4,000 hours of view time in the last year, I want to invest in it eventually, so make sure to subscribe!)

In the meantime, here’s the previous Greenlandic 30-Day Challenge Video from December 2017, I’m curious how my next one in February will go!

My First Post of 2018: Looking Inside My Soul (+Happy Birthday, Slovakia!)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Let’s just do the lazy thing and get the list of goals for 2018 over with. Yes, it’s large, but I set very high standards for myself. Even if I don’t make them, I’ll ensure that I’ll still do very, very well!

• Master Hungarian, Lao and Greenlandic (B2 or higher)
• Get the Scandinavian Languages to C2 (understanding virtually EVERYTHING written or spoken)
• Make significant gains with Hebrew, Finnish, French, Breton, Icelandic, Jamaican Patois and Sierra Leone Creole.
• Gilbertese and Uyghur at B1 or higher
• Learn Comorian to A1 at least.
• Vincentian and Antiguan Creoles at C1 or higher
• Brush off Russian, Irish, Cornish and Ukrainian (B2 in them would be great!)
• Tongan, Palauan, Mossi, Welsh, Persian and several Indian languages to A2 or higher.
• Learn Swahili, Khmer, Haitian Creole, Basque, Fijian and Fiji Hindi in earnest.
• Colloquial Arabic dialects (esp. Sudanese) to A2
• Diversify my language practicing materials.
• Gloss articles in languages I speak and read and put versions of them online for learners making them “learner-friendly”.
• Continue that same work of throwing away limiting beliefs and practice all of my languages for 3 minutes a day at least one day a week.
• Come out with a new polyglot video every season (Winter / Spring / Summer / Autumn). They don’t have to showcase ALL of my languages at once, but at least show something.
• Start a “Coalition Blog” with folks like Kevin Fei Sun, Miguel N. Ariza and Allan Chin and … anyone else I forgot! Guests welcome!

Also, no new languages for 2018. I will make exceptions for picking up new languages for travel, business purposes or relationships that sprout up as a result of various happenings.

Anyhow, with each passing year it occurs to me that what becomes more and more important is not so much learning new words and expressions but rather developing mental strategies.

I could be fluent in a language but if I’m in a negative headspace words will elude me. I’m certain that anyone reading this has also had them happen when speaking their NATIVE LANGUAGE.

Anyhow, here are some difficulties I’ve been noticing;

• I remember from “Pirkei Avot” (a Jewish text about ethics and life in general that I’ve periodically mentioned on this site) that it is said that “the reward for a good deed is another good deed, and the reward for a bad deed is another bad deed”. Namely, positive feedback ensures that you’re likely to continue to speak and act in your most optimal manner, and negative feedback will drag you down in a similar way.

I’ve noticed this at Mundo Lingo. I speak the Scandinavian Languages “very, very well” (that’s what Richard Simcott told me, so I believe him). So when there’s a Swedish native speaker who shows up, I’m in a good head-space and then I speak languages that I usually am not so good at (French, for example) better than I normally do.

 

On the other hand, sometimes I’ve heard racist comments at Mundo Lingo (yes, it does happen!) Or people disparaging me for my choice of languages. As a result, I’m in no good headspace to do anything, because it feels like I’ve been “wounded” and will act accordingly.

 

I think one way to counter this is to usually start the day with some good feedback. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to post daily in a closed group called “Polyglot Polls” (you can join if you’d like! Just let me know) Given that a lot of open-minded and curious people are in that group, ones who mutually support each other with their missions, it helps put me in a good headspace. It is a good thing to start any day with.

 

• Imposter syndrome in the polyglot community runs a bit like a fear of turning out like Ziad Fazah, the polyglot who claimed to fluently speak 59 languages and, on live television…well, he was asked what day of the week it was in Russian and said that he couldn’t understand it because it was Croatian.

 

Only this past weekend I was asked to count to ten in Tongan (a language that I am weak at) and, sadly, I couldn’t do it. But I don’t claim to speak Tongan fluently. But still I felt down.

 

I think moments like these are good for recognizing my weak points. Even in our native languages, we have them. It’s not a reflection that you’re a fake, it reflects on the fact that you have something that needs patching. That’s what life is. Telling you where you aren’t doing well and bringing you on the path to recovery.

 

Unlike Ziad, I don’t claim to have any divine gift for languages. I just spend a lot of time struggling with things until I get them. The contemporary schooling modules have taught us that learning isn’t supposed to be about struggling. That’s not true in the slightest, certainly not at the advanced levels of anything.

 

• The last one: sometimes I feel that I’m falling into the trap of thinking that I became a polyglot for the sake of others rather than for my own sake.

Again, to tie in Jewish themes, in studying holy texts and observing ritual we use a phrase “Leshem Shamayim” – literally, “To the name of Heaven”, figuratively, “for heaven’s sake” and more figuratively “doing something for love of the subject-matter rather than for acquiring validation, reputation, praise or any other contemporary form of social currency”.

Every dream chaser has felt poised between doing something “leshem shamayim” and doing something for the sake of personal gain or admiration of others. I have to resist that, now more strongly than ever.

Professor Alexander Arguelles (right) and yours truly, Jared Gimbel (left)

On a side note, I’d like to wish my Slovak and Slovak-speaking friends a happy Independence Day!

May 2018 be full of blessings, everyone!

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!

Overwhelmed and Defeated: My Decision to Drop Out of the Burmese Challenge and What It Means

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!

Speaking of darkness, I think today would be a good day to admit something:

Not everything goes right in my world.

A lot of people hear about me, see the MundoLingo stickers on my shirt, or otherwise get out of me the fact that I am a hyperpolyglot and assume that I have an “easy” time picking up new languages.

Well, with the exceptions of those very closely related to ones I know already, the answer is…no, I don’t have an easy time with it. I would venture that no one anywhere actually does. Usually, as was the case with some of my languages like Hebrew, Finnish and even Sierra Leone Krio earlier this year, it was a case of “doing something that you’re not very good at until you find yourself slowly leveling up until you’re reasonable and, then, eventually, very good”.

True, learning additional languages does enable you to detect patterns more easily and find uncanny similarities between even the most distant of languages (The Creoles I’ve studied and languages of Southeast Asia, I’ve noticed, share similarities in grammatical forms). But despite any advantages one may or may not have, it becomes an issue of grit and determination.

Alas, for my 30-Day Burmese Challenge too many things got in the way. The path to developing my video game required extra investment on my part. I felt as though a lot of the tasks in the last ten days were just too hard given my current level of Burmese. What’s more, I actually had a friend of mine die earlier this week.

That said, for January 2018 I will continue with a renewed plan keeping in mind “what I did wrong”.

For one:

• I may have overestimated my level of Burmese.
• I may have overestimated what “willpower” alone can do.
• I may have been affected by the seasons.
• I may have been affected by transitions (a video game that I’ve tested is scheduled for a release in the near future).
• I may have just chosen to do TOO MUCH.

That last point is important. The Lao project was a success because I felt that it was the right amount. With Greenlandic AND Burmese at the same time, I reached my breaking point. It would be one thing if one of them were a European Language with a lot of cognates to English and political power on the web. (I expect my January 2018 Hungarian challenge to be a LOT easier than anything I’ve done with my 30-day Challenges for non-Western languages thus far).

No one succeeds all of the time. If you think that someone is, you’re just looking at the surface.

I think the “beginning of the end” may have been when I watched a Burmese film with a lot of monk characters and I found myself unable to understand a lot of what was being said (by comparison, even with Lao which I had significantly LESS experience with, I was capable of understanding a good 30%, and for Greenlandic roughly a bit more).

Will I give up Burmese? Definitely not.

Am I glad I did this? Most certainly. AND I am likely to do the restaurant challenge next week AND put together the final video, most likely over the course of the weekend.

But I’m going to have to redo my plan for January 2018:

January 2018: Hungarian 30-Day Speaking Challenge. I think this will help a lot with my vocabulary gaps.

Also January 2018: Vincentian Creole 2-Week Challenge. Expose myself to Vincentian Creole (of St. Vincent and the Grenadines) every day from January 1^st until January 14^th. Then afterwards I’ll do one of the following:

• Antiguan Creole for second half of January 2018
• Grenadian Creole for second half of January 2018 (if I get the book)
• Review Caribbean Creoles I already know well for the second half of January 2018 (Jamaican Patois, Trinidadian Creole and including Sierra Leone Creole as an honorary member).

Already I’m beginning to listen to Vincentian material every day during my commute. I’ll tell you more about it in another post. Although it has been interesting so far.

It’s been the first language I’ve been learning with literally NO resources for it that I can find. I’ve found religious materials for Christians and have been listening to them and NOTING the differences between Jamaican Patois and “Trini” to the best of my ability.

What’s more, the Grenada Market responded enthusiastically with my desire to find more materials to learn Grenadian Creole. Let’s hope I have luck.

Obviously in February and beyond I’ll turn my focus elsewhere other than Hungary and the Caribbean.

In the meantime, I’m drawing up an ambitious list of what I want done for 2018. And boy, will I dwarf every other year with what will happen!

May light be ever-present in your life!

The 5 Languages that Changed My Life the Most

Yes, I know, polyglots don’t play favorites. Or at least that’s what we say we should do. I’ve noticed with great consistency that polyglots get attached to certain sets of languages a lot more than the rest of the group.

For example: I have a greater affinity to Jewish, Nordic, Celtic and Pacific Languages than I do global languages like German, French or Spanish. I have friends that focus on Balkan languages, Central Asian languages, Official Languages of the UN, Germanic Languages, languages of East Asia, and too many other types to list.

Today I’ll write about the five languages (note that I do not say “language learning journeys”) that changed my life the most.

And if I were to write a post about “The five language learning JOURNEYS that changed my life the most”, that would result in something different. The reason? Because the processes you undertake during a journey is very different from the benefits you reap from it. These discuss the benefits.

 

5. Krio

 

“Jared, I don’t want you to learn this language. It makes you sound like an idiot.”

That’s what someone said to me once about two years ago when I was discussing my parents’ journeys in Sierra Leone and the conversation turned to Krio and how to learn it.

Suffice it to say that I was not of that opinion in the slightest, aware of the fact that my parents needed interpreters at times when they were in up-country Sierra Leone.

Learning Krio truly enabled me to understand African-American culture in ways that I hadn’t before (this may surprise some of you that don’t know it, but the African-American culture in the US, the Afro-Caribbean Culture on the Islands [and places like Belize and Guyana], and the Krio culture of places like Sierra Leone and Liberia are actually linked to each other and have ties of solidarity and cultural mindsets).

Elements from Krio and its relatives from these three areas I mentioned entered American English not only in its informal registers but also its sentence structure. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” is one such sentence that may have Krio influence, as a speaker of Krio would say  “na ya a deh tok!” And, of course, we haven’t even discussed jazz jive, which exhibits way too many elements from Krio as well as native African languages to list coherently

The proverbs and idioms are also extremely colorful (as they are in all languages in the world and Creole languages especially).

In listening to Salone Krio speakers on YouTube, they find themselves poised between many aspects of their identity that they describe in a heartfelt matter, including the Civil War in recent memory, the hope of the country moving forward, as well as the solidarity ties to their cultural cousins on the other side of the pond (and in the rest of Africa as well).

The people of Sierra Leone seem to carry an extraordinary fortitude that someone like me can’t possibly understand, and my parents also remarked on the collective cultural work ethic and willingness to hang on as something that continues to inspire them to this day!

Krio speakers in the past century or so have been emphatic in making their language a symbol of Sierra Leone as well as a language that wasn’t just seen as “broken” or “mislearned”. You can even access Google Search in Salone Krio as well! (google.sl and press “Krio”)

Also one of my favorite rappers, who lays down a lot of realities and pains of the developing world, Bone na Throat, is very much worth checking out! (He uses Krio and English, not also to mention his performances alongside guest stars from other parts of Africa).

 

4. Modern Hebrew

 

I knew Ancient Hebrew as a child, and when I saw what happened to it as a result of one Eliezer ben-Yehuda and millions of determined people, I was stunned.

For one, my previous knowledge of English and Russian made it clear how much foreign influence was present in Modern Hebrew, right down to the verb structure.

But despite that, the charm of Hebrew that one can feel from reading the Hebrew Bible in the original is still kept very much intact. The verb system is not only kept in place but expanded upon to as to include words related to SMS and Facebook, among many other things.

(For those unaware: Semitic languages use a system in which a set of consonants form the basis for a verb stem. These letters, known as the root word or “shoresh” in Hebrew, will dance around in various forms that differ in terms of activity / passivity, as well as in verbs-turned-to-nouns. “l’kabel” is to accept, “kabbalah” is something accepted, which is not only the name for the Jewish mystical tradition [accepted from a divine source] but also a receipt you would get in an Israeli store).

Hebrew’s development found parallels in my own life story, in which my mannerisms and even my accent (not to mention my personality) changed as a result of hopping around the world. Jews hopped around the world as well, and Modern Hebrew, with its abundant influent from Slavic languages, English, French and many others, shows it, all while retaining its primeval charm.

 

3. Greenlandic

 

A language with HUNDREDS of suffixes!  The hardest language I have attempted to date! And, then as well as now, my overall favorite language of them all!

Greenlandic, above all, was different. No other language I have studied (with the obvious exception of the closely-related Inuktitut) has worked in a similar manner.

It confounded me to no end. I had dreams of becoming fluent but no matter what, it seemed that understanding the radio or a lot of songs was always out of reach. And my writing abilities were in the trash (and sometimes they still are).

However, I decided that I was going to do SOMETHING. And the decision to do something , however small, with consistency—it edged me closer and closer to gaining a vocabulary that will probably serve me well during my trip to Greenland in October 2017.

What’s more, the culture I gained insight into actually inspired me to make my first video game, “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures”. That’s not nothing!

I’d say more about it, but there’s only so much I can spoil for a product I haven’t released yet, right?

 

2. Tok Pisin

 

Up until I studied Tok Pisin, the languages I had studied in my life had been tongues of the developed world. Tok Pisin changed all that, and in encountering it I felt that I had encountered a time capsule.

The world that was captured in the cultures of PNG felt stuck between the present and whatever our ancestors were before many forms of technology made (and continue to make) our genuinely human side closed off to us.

Tok Pisin taught me how to be a human again, how to think in a language that was minimalistic yet expressive, and also gave me access to a culture that knows all too well that we are poised on a precipice in which either our desire for profit or our humanity will win (the time is not too far off in which we cannot have both!)

It also showed me that, even if I never intend to visit “the country”, I can feel a great resonance with “the culture” from a distance, sometimes even stronger than for countries that I had actually visited once!

 

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

 

Irish

Ah yes, a language more commonly used by non-fluent speakers than by native speakers…or that’s how it seemed to me when I first encountered the way Irish is used on the internet.

Given how many non-natives were using it enthusiastically online and in speech, the many usages of the Irish language, from those who speak a handful of sentences to full-on TV shows and YouTube series, has captivated me. The Irish-Language sphere on the internet is one of enthusiasm and acceptance, one that many other language learning communities, endangered or not, should take note to emulate.

 

Trinidadian English Creole

 

My first language with no standardized writing system, it truly made me think about code switching more deeply than in any other language. Trinis will often shift between standard English and Trini Creole very quickly, and listening to informal radio programs with a substandard knowledge of the latter requires you to be on your toes.

What’s more, this was a language I chose in part because I live in Crown Heights (and I’m writing this article from there). I learned this language enough to have conversations in it, and suddenly my neighborhood came to life in a way I didn’t even think possible (although my knowledge of other Caribbean Creoles, such as Vincentian, Grenadian, or Jamaican, remain weak as of the time of writing).

 

Finnish

 

The language everyone tried to tell me was impossible. Finnish made me think about how distinct formal and informal language can be. The various “grammar games” that are played in Finnish’s more informal registers made it easy for me to switch from the colloquial variety to a formal one. A useful skill to have if you ever want to learn, let’s say, East Asian languages in great depth.

Finnish music can be heart-wrenching, but also some of the edgiest music I’ve ever heard, one that truly causes me to embrace my darkness and fuel it into my missions of peacemaking and bridge-building. The great pride that many Finnish speakers take in their culture and language is also something that profoundly affected me, and it made me realize that all cultures and languages have it—they just sometimes need more coaxing to get it out and fully expressed.

 

AND #1…

 

YIDDISH

 

I bet none of you is surprised at all right now, right?

Yiddish was the first language I became fluent in as an adult, and for the rest of my life it seems that I will be of the opinion that it is an excellent choice for the first language I definitively mastered. (That said, I’m still learning new things about it and at times, if I’m rusty on practice, I’ll slip up, but given that I do that in English too…I’m okay with that, I guess…)

Yiddish showed me that a language could be a community.

Yiddish showed me that a language could echo a culture in ways that reading from a guidebook or even holy texts just couldn’t.

Yiddish showed me that a language can serve for a depository of cultural memories, as “Yiddish-Taytsch” wandered off further East, picking up words along the way from Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and many others. The people groups you encounter rub off on you (as an individual AND as a nation), and that became clear with the story of Yiddish.

What’s more, the enthusiasm of the Yiddishist community all throughout the world is, I have to say it, unmatched.

The songs and stories of the Old Country are coming back to life, even among non-Hasidic Jews.

Certainly there may be some light tension (or sometimes not-so-light tension) between the secular and religious Yiddish speakers, but hey, when it comes down to it, we’re all “Klal Yisroel” in a sense (even if you happen to be a gentile Yiddish speaker, I would say! The time wasn’t long ago in which even non-Jewish Yiddish speakers were honorary Jews, as well as non-Yiddish speaking Jews as an oddity)

Yiddish showed me what the true prize of fluency in a language is, and even when I wasn’t fluency, I was still getting plenty of prizes. Yiddish made me a better Jew and a better human being through its proverbs, songs and, above all, the community and friends that I’ve acquired through this fascinating tongue that will probably not only remain with me throughout my life, but  I hope to raise my children speaking it one day! (Of course they’ll have other languages, too!)

What languages have changed your life and how? Let me know!