A New Age for Language Students, Teachers and Schools (2)

I always say why not start with Spanish because it's more interesting than Latin, for most people, unless you're interested in ancient Rome.

Personally, because I have yet to meet a resident of Esperantia, I'm more motivated to learn another language and with every language you learn, of course, you get better at learning languages. Maybe Esperanto is faster, but the effort you put into learning Spanish, Russian and Korean is also going to prepare you for then learning other languages. So I think Esperanto should be part of the mix, but I would not like to see a situation where the school says, okay, in primary school everyone does Esperanto because we think that's good. I would not be in favor of that.

Lindsay: That's very interesting.

The only reason I learnt Esperanto is I met some friends, probably last year, who spoke Esperanto. I then found a book last year and I thought, oh, this is kind of falling into my lap. It was on Duolingo and I was like let's get Duolingo again, let's see how this goes. That was it.

As I was going through the course there were things like I would like to order a pizza or whatever and you're thinking I would never be in a situation where I'm in a restaurant, me, a waiter or waitress and the only common language we'd have is Esperanto.

Where's that going to happen because, like you say, you have yet to meet a native speaker of Esperanto. Of course, there are native speakers now, well, probably not just now, probably over the past few decades even.

But, yeah, I did find that as I was working I'm thinking this is cool and it's very interesting that I'm picking this up.

It's a new language and it's happening so fast, but I couldn't see an opportunity in my life when I would use it, which was curious.

Steve: For example, it depends how we're motivated.

If I hear a foreign language around me, my ears prick up and I want to go over there and see if I can talk to them. If I'm on an airplane, I'm always hoping the person sitting beside me with be a speaker of some other language.

Now, for example, with my Ukrainian I've been listening to some really interesting stuff about Ukrainian history in Ukrainian and I do the same with Polish, it doesn't matter, Chinese.

When I started learning Chinese, you get involved in this whole phenomenal world of China, its history and stuff like that. To that extent it may be that I could learn Esperanto very quickly, but I'm just not motivated. However, for those who are motivated that's fine. All I'm saying is to impose that as sort of all kids shall learn Esperanto in the primary school, personally, I wouldn't think that would be such a great idea.

Lindsay: I can see that.

I can see why.

Steve: By the way, you have experienced Duolingo.

You should get on LingQ sometime and work on your Korean, for example.

Lindsay: Yes.

Steve: Although, Korean is a tough one on LingQ.

What I find so difficult in Korean is there are so many words that have so many different meanings. I look them up in my Naver Dictionary and I'm no further ahead. In fact, we have a Korean girl in the office. For three months here we had this LingQ Academy Live where we got a learner from Taiwan, a learner from Korea and a learner from Hungary and we're interacting with them and working on their English and stuff. She's going to help me with my Korean and I've got a list of words that I've saved in LingQ where the Naver, which is an excellent dictionary, provides no clue at all as to what the meaning is.

Lindsay: Oh, wow!

Steve: I find that in other languages the dictionary is pretty good.

Depending on which language, you'll find the dictionary that you like the best and we link up to it at LingQ and I'm working my way through the text and I understand it. But Korean, to that extent, is more difficult.

Lindsay: It is because you do feel that kind of, well, I've learnt this language so now it's going to be easy from here on.

I've learnt X number of languages, so I know what I'm doing now. But, yet, Korean has been interesting. I don't know. I'm wary to say it's the hardest language I've ever learnt. I always kind of hold that to German because at the time when I learnt German, everything before had been a romance language. Then all of a sudden it was cases and I'm thinking hang on a minute, what is a case. It really took a long time for me to get my head around that concept, but once I got it it was easy. So maybe in that sense Korean is now taking over German as that title for me as the hardest one I've looked at.

Steve: Can I ask what your motivation was to learn Korean.

Lindsay: To learn Korean?

Steve: Yes.

Lindsay: I have a friend, Shannon, who has a language blog and we wanted to learn a language together.

She had some resources for Korean, I have nothing. I'm going completely from sort of free resources that are available, whereas she's got some books and dictionaries and all of this stuff. There's kind of this interesting contrast, so we wanted to learn it together. She lives in California on the other side of the world, so it's a nice way that we can connect and study together in that sense.

Steve: Right, right.

In the case of Korean, we have some beginner material at LingQ and then I went to the Talk to Me in Korean material available. Are you familiar with Talk to Me in Korean?

Lindsay: Yes, it's very good.

Steve: So I used a bunch of that.

Now, a lot of members have contributed content in our library in Korean and then as I advanced in Korean I needed something with more substance, so I found two podcasts which I paid a lady to transcribe. So I'm now learning from those, but they're just a little difficult for me. I struggle to find something that's kind of intermediate, even slightly advanced intermediate, yet interesting.

Like with Ukrainian, I found all this interesting stuff about Ukrainian history and the same with Russian, Czech and so forth.

So part of it is finding interesting material because that will motivate you to fight your way through all the vagueness and uncertainty and stuff like that.

Lindsay: Definitely.

I think one of the big mistakes I made was when I started Japanese I started with a tutor straightaway and it was a fantastic tutor. I learnt so much, I was able to put together really kind of basic sentences and then questions and it expanded.

So with Korean I thought I'll do the same thing, I'll get a tutor early on.

I'll get speaking, it will work. We spent about seven-eight lessons on pronunciation and I was bored to tears. I'm not someone that can study pronunciation for a prolonged period of time. I made that mistake and from the beginning it became not as fun, so I had to then kind of almost shake things up, restart, make it fun and find things that did work for me. I think I'm getting there now in that sense.

Steve: See, that's interesting.

My approach is I'm going to have so much trouble pronouncing at the beginning that I don't worry about trying to pronounce or trying to say anything until my brain has become much more familiar with the language. The fact of the matter is we don't hear the pronunciation. We don't hear it, how can we reproduce it if we can't hear it. It's interesting.

The reason I know we don't hear it is one of the functions we have at LingQ is dictation, where if you save a bunch of phrases you can then review these phrases one by one in sort of cards and there's text to speech.

So you hear it and then you've got to type it out in Polish and what I thought I heard and what was actually said were two different things. We really have to train ourselves to actually hear what's said, in my view, before we can hope to be able to pronounce it. Once we hear it better, then we have a better chance of pronouncing it correctly.

Normally, I don't even worry about pronunciation until several months.

I don't really worry that much about output until I have built up a certain amount of vocabulary. To that extent even the cases, say with German or Russian, normally there's sort of a redundancy of words so that, in most situations, you can figure out the meaning like 70-80% clearly, somewhat vaguely, without really being able to nail the cases. So you can read stuff, it has meaning, it's interesting, more or less, then once you become familiar with certain patterns, you then go back in and really try to understand how the cases work. You now have some experience, something to refer to. Otherwise, you start from ground zero and you're trying to remember case endings and stuff like that.

To my mind, I think the emphasis on output, pronunciation, all those things too early, for me at any rate, is unnecessary pressure.

I prefer to sort of get it in, get it in and now I'm really ready to go for output and pronunciation.

Lindsay: Yeah, it is a pressure and I think it's a pressure easily can flow you.

If you're really trying and you just can't because, like you say, you can't hear it in those early stages, then why would you carry on. I do prefer that idea of almost the input, sort of absorbing the language and kind of getting familiar and then gaining confidence with that. It's quite refreshing to hear someone else.

Steve: People underestimate the difficulty of remembering things.

People think because I learned how to say buenos dias, como estas that I'm going to remember. I can say it once or twice, then when I'm all of a sudden confronted with someone where I have to say even the most basic things like buenos dias, como estas all of a sudden I'm frozen and that's just something very simple like hello, how are you. It's so difficult to remember things. In fact, my view is that we don't remember them, we gradually get used to them.

I see so many people, say friends of mine, who have been studying Spanish and they still can't get past the most basic phrases and expressions because all they're trying to do is to train themselves to produce these phrases, whereas if they devoted the same amount of time and effort into initially getting to a stage where they actually could read a novel in Spanish.

We use LingQ to access the text, but they can use online dictionaries, import these as eBooks.

There are so many different ways that you can engage with the content and just have this very pleasant involvement with the language and at a certain point you say, okay, now I'm going to go after speaking. Then you've got some point of reference, some experience, some confidence, comprehension.

How can you even talk to someone if you don't understand what they're saying?

That's why I'm kind of that way oriented rather than hoping in a short time… Like Korean, you can go at Korean for a year before you start speaking. I find it very difficult to understand people with far less effort in Ukrainian. I can listen to a Ukrainian history professor talk about what happened a million years ago and in Korean people are saying stuff that I know and I can't pick it out.

At any rate, the main thing is to motivate people.

So a quick question here because it's very topical -- Brexit. Sitting here in Canada, we have this impression of a country that's basically split down the middle.

Lindsay: That would be correct.

Steve: You hear that so and so is having buyer's remorse and they were lied to and stuff, I don't believe that.

I think that the majority of those people who voted to leave want to leave.