What happened?

Image form wikimedia

This has been a crazy week!  I have less than a month to get as good at Spanish as I can get, and yet this week went by with hardly any Spanish being learned.  It started great and then next thing I know, I am looking at a week of very little Spanish.  No progress was made and it’s possible I went a little backwards?

How could I let this happen?  To be honest, at first I didn’t know.  Sure, I have been busy, but that has never been an excuse to not do at least something to move my progress forward.  It’s been bothering me all weekend.  And then suddenly, I realized what happened.  I broke one of my oldest rules!

What rule did I break?

The rule was find an opportunity to learn in everything I do!  

Where else to read

I am going to let you all in on a little secret.  I am not a professional linguist!  I know you are all surprised to hear that, but it’s true.  In fact, I don’t use ANY of my languages (besides English, of course) professionally nor have I EVER taken a class  in any language.  Everything I know and recommend comes from what I have learned as I have stumbled through the various ways to learn.

I don’t think I am always right, or at least that what I like and do is right for everyone.  There are a lot of view points on how to learn a language as an adult, and you know what?  They are all probably right.  I have heard an interesting quote once that intelligence is the ability to hold two conflicting thoughts in your mind at the same time with out going crazy.  I probably miss quoted it, but you get the point.  It’s important to learn and understand different view points so that you can be a more rounded individual.

Which Blogs I Read

That’s why I like to read the blog post from other successful language learners who may “seem” to be different.

You get what you get

Samuel Huntington, First President of the United States (Photo credit: Tony Fischer Photography)

 

Interesting thing to think about happened in the last 24 hours.  In the U.S. Elections, Barack Obama we re-elected as the President of the United States.  Now I don’t intend to write about any of the politics around that, but somehow I was able to connect that moment last night to language learning and in the most round about way, it’s weird.  I guess my brain functions in a weird way or I like to connect the dots differently than others.  Never the less, I still made a connection in the most round about, yet powerful (for me at least) way.  So let me bring you into the inner workings of my mind.

 

Somebody will always be disappointed

 

The thing with elections is that somebody, and in this case close to half the country, will always be disappointed.  If Mitt Romney would have won, it would have been there other half, but even though he didn’t, it doesn’t change that half the country will be disappointed.  If you are on the losing side and the person you voted for doesn’t get elected, what do you do?  The only thing you can do, which is make do with what you have been given.

 

This reminded me of a common phrase used by my children.  My daughter taught it to me, actually, after she learned it from a teacher in school.  The phrase is “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”  There is power in the simple phrase.  You can not control the cards you are dealt.  You do your best with what you have.  Making a fuss about it, will lead to know where.

 

How does this apply to learning a language?

 

Simple.  In a perfectly ideal world, you will instantly be transported to live and work in the environment which uses the language you want to learn.  At the same time you will have all the free time you need/want to study what and how you want.    Wouldn’t that be great?

 

For most of us, that is not possible. I don’t have the time and/or resources available to push myself into an immersive environment.  I don’t even have time to schedule a Skype call with any regularity.  I mostly have the time I travel to and from work.  So I could complain about my language learning situation as something horrible or I can do as my kids say: “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit!”

 

If there isn’t one, then make one

The flag of the neutral international language Esperanto and the movement associated with it. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started my Esperanto “vacation” from Spanish this week.  I decided to start from the beginning as if I didn’t know anything, because it’s been so long since I used it that I don’t remember much anyway.  So first thing I did was go to Lernu.net and I downloaded the MP3 files for the Mi estas komencanto course.  I had used the course before and since the course means “I am a beginner” I figured it would be the best one to use in my hour-long drives to and from work.

The thing is that now that I am a better language learner, I am way under satisfied with it.  It’s still a good course and I do recommend it, because it’s the only course that encourages one to speak, which is lacking in most of the courses of Esperanto you find on the internet.  Even though it does encourage speaking, it is not as often as I would like it to be.  I want/need one that encourages, not just how to speak the sentences that are in the course, but how to mix and match and combines the words and phrases in an improvisational way.  Essential that encourages natural speech construction.  Where do I find one? Well…

One might ask, how I can make a course if I am not fluent?

Fluent Like a Kid

Here it is, the leaked post title that came out way to early.  I finally have written what I was thinking about the subject.  I was half tempted not to write anything, I actually got a lot of views to my site and even a comment with that little title.  It seems it may some think, which is what I would hope it would do.

Ultimately I decided to put my thoughts down.  I’m a bit to arrogant not to let my own thoughts come out on the subject.  I do, however, encourage discussion and would like to hear how I am wrong.  My feelings don’t get hurt I promise.  Anyway, enough stalling:

So what do you mean, “Fluent like a kid?”

This may be a different meaning than some would think, but this comes from the perspective of a parent who has been a part of raising 4 wonderful children.

What to do with my Red Headed Step-Child

Esperanto Demonstration (Photo credit: Lennon Ying-Dah Wong)

 

I have a confession to make. I haven’t been completely honest with everyone.  It wasn’t an out right lie, more like an omission.   It’s not something I omitted with the intention to mislead.  In fact, it was never supposed to be apart of the blog.  Then the blog evolved into more than I thought it ever would be and this omission has stuck out, for me at least, like a sore thumb.  I could have continued on and non would be the wiser, but I just don’t work that way.  So I am opening up and being honest.  What is this huge omission?  Spanish is not the first language I have tried to learn since learning Thai, Esperanto is.

 

Esperanto estas lingvo por la tuta mondo

 

(Esperanto is a language for the whole world.)

 

I found Esperanto on the internet

How to practice input

Cover of Rules (Newbery Honor Book)

Awhile back, I wrote a post about my favorite and best output based courses to learn Spanish.  My intention was to turn around a write another post on the best input courses.  That never happened. Why not?  Well….It’s complicated.

Output based courses and output based practice are very straight forward.  You talk and learn new ways to talk.  There isn’t much more to it than that.  Even when talking about something you don’t know the words for, you learn what words you want to say, so you can go back later and learn them.  Not always easy, but it’s still simple.

Input, however, is not that simple and at the same time easier to get a hold of.  You don’t get to choose what is said, which colloquial expression is used and which accent they say.  You don’t get to choose if they say, sit down or take a seat or what ever other ways there are of saying ‘sit down.’  But there is so much of it free and very cheap that it’s hard to know what to do with it.

How best to practice with Input

With input, you can get what I refer to as the Oreo cookie effect.  

3 months and counting

Language (Photo credit: Jan Marlyn Reesman)

Last post I talked about which languages I’m not learning next year.  This means that there only 3 left that I could be possible learning.  Once again, for full disclosure, I’ve already chosen the language.  I know which one I learning, I just trying to build a little drama around the pick I guess.  On that note, don’t forget to take the poll on which language you think I will learn next.

Also on the right you will notice a big old count down calendar.  Thanks to a comment that was left of my fake post, I realized I had the year in wrong and now it’s counting down properly.  Not only are there 3 languages left, but there are 3 months left.  3 months to get as fluent as I can.  So I have reprioritized myself and set some goals to get me through the next 3 months.

More Speaking off the cuff

I have spent a good deal of my time, inadvertently  practicing my speaking in a very structured manner.

It’s so hard to say goodbye…..to another language

English: Flag of Portuguese language of Portugal-Brazil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s the end of the month and time to get rid of another language.  Each language I drop gets harder and harder to remove, but it’s not like I can effectively learn 8 or 9 languages at once!  It’s not like I am saying goodbye forever, I will be coming back to these languages eventually.  It’s still hard to say that this language or that didn’t make it to the end.  Okay, no more stalling:

And the next language to be removed is:

Portuguese! Yeah I know I have just gotten rid of all the romance languages now.  

Learning a language like a Kung Fu Master

Yesterday, many of you found out how I write.  Normally, I come up with ideas for what to write about and I make drafts with the titles.  Then when I have time to sit down to actually write, I have a whole shelf of ideas to write from.  Oddly enough, yesterday I accidentally hit publish and didn’t know until the next day.  Now you know, the secret is out.  What will I ever do?

This post is one of those posts.  I have had this post on my shelf for a bit now, but didn’t exactly know how to use it until recently.  The idea came about due to a child hood memory.  I found a way to get cable TV into my bedroom.  I used to watch all kinds of odd shows at night.  One night I watched a movie based on a true story about an American who went to China to teach English.  While there, he was taught Kung Fu from a master in China, despite the Chinese government doing all it could to hinder his access to the master.

Recently, I remembered that show, but I couldn’t remember who was in it or what it was even called.  I google searched and google searched until I found the Title: Iron and Silk.  Shortly after that, I found a version of it to watch and enjoyed it again.  That’s when I found a forgotten scene.

The Master becomes the student….kinda

During his studies, the master asks his American student to teach him English.