First, here is an article about a study that showed a cognitive advantage for bilingual toddlers:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110119120409.htm. And why not? Codeswitching is mental exercise…

This next study was fascinating, suggesting that bilingualism could delay dementia in old age.http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/dn10954-bilingualism-delays-onset-of-dementia.html.

This third one is not so much related to cognitive abilities, and it’s the first negative one. This study found bilingual children more likely to stutter.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908215938.htm.

Looks like bilingualism is today seen as a benefit to your brain. Like chess. Excuse me, I need to go get talking…

This has left not a lot of time for language learning. Most of my language activity has been keeping my hand in with my German, French and Italian by reading news articles online. A bit of Spanish too – my Spanish is not really at newspaper-reading level but it is not as difficult because of the similarities to Italian.

I have particularly been enjoying cafebabel.com recently. It is a European culture online magazine. They have articles in English, the four languages I’m maintaining (above) as well as Polish (which I don’t know at all).

Next year I will be tackling a small research project as part of the completion of my Honours. I will probably take a language class for part of the year, as I have come to believe that the classroom situation is a good place for introvert to get speaking practice – it is a controlled environment, everyone is there for the same reason as you, and at least you know it will only last about two hours.

Apart from that, I hesitate to make new language-learning goals for this year, as I think I may disappoint myself. I think maintenance is going to be the way to go for now.  No pressure, I do it because I want to, I don’t want to make a chore of it.

If you are into reading the news for your language practice, I find it quite quick and easy to go to Google News and then change the country. Since I mostly use my Blackberry for foreign-language news-reading, and I’m usually doing it when I have a free moment in between things, Google news is great because it’s quick (no long loading times), and then I can just pick a story I want to read.

Do you have a New Years resolution?

I am an introvert. I can also be quite shy. But these are two different things. When I am at a social gathering and I’m not introducing myself to new people, it’s usually because I don’t particularly want to. I like being around people and enjoy the company of a good friends, but return to introspection and solitary activities. As an indication, I have on many occasions been asked that ridiculous question, “Why are you so quiet?”

While I’m not going to lump all introverts together, there is a certain difficulty in being introverted and wanting to learn foreign languages. When people say I’m quiet, this is even in my mother-tongue, English.

The self-taught polyglots who are vocal on the internet may have different methods, but mostly seem to have the goal of speaking to new people in their language, in some cases giving the advice to get out there and start speaking.

Where does that leave me? And surely I cannot be the only abberant introvert who is passionate about foreign languages…

Well, I would suggest that if you are self-teaching, lots of input is the only thing to do, really. Read and listen and watch, wherever and whenever you can. Always situate your language learning in something enjoyable to you – read things you are interested in. That is standard.

But now I would also suggest that possibly, for an introvert, a class, particularly a small class, may be the way to go. A class is kind of like a social gathering that is controlled. You know you won’t be there for more than, say, two hours. You get practice actually speaking with less pressure. Of course, teaching methods may differ, so it may depend.

These are just my thoughts lately. I have been reading so much from the perspective of extroverts, who insist you have to go and find people to speak to, and becoming more critical of myself. But now I want to forge a new way forward to pursue my passion without beating myself up.

Hlonipa is a Xhosa word, a verb. The ‘hl’ is pronounced as the welsh ‘ll’ (according to Teach Yourself Xhosa, I know nothing about Welsh myself). The only way I can describe it is like a combination of the ‘ch’ from loch, and ‘l’.

I had never heard of hlonipa before I read about it recently, and I don’t know how widely it is practised. It refers to a Nguni practice of avoidance of saying certain words because of taboo. For example, when a woman marries, she has to avoid saying the names of her husband’s male family members. As Xhosa names have meaning, this means avoiding saying those words. I belive there is a set of replacement words for this.

The power of words seems to be quite a big aspect of Nguni culture. See this link for some interesting info on the issue of taboo as it relates to HIV/AIDS – http://www.africanvoices.co.za/research/aidsresearch.html

1. Input

Are you immersed in the second language environment? What kind of input are you getting? Obviously the more the better. If you are teaching yourself, as I am, remember the L + 1 idea: your input at any given time should not be too much beyond your current level. For example, it is said, by such people as Paul Nation, that to maximise ‘incidental vocabulary acquisition’ from extensive reading, you need to understand 98% of it. Then it is likely that you will be able to figure out what the additional words mean from context. On the other hand, if you have to look up 50% of the words, you won’t remember them, and probably won’t understand very well what you are reading.

2. Motivation

Motivation is important. And sad to say (for me), being immersed in the second language environment is probably a pretty motivating factor.. I also find from a self-instructional perspective, finding the right materials that work for me, interest me and/or aren’t so much work I get tired, is quite important. If I don’t WANT to, I probably won’t.

A comforting thought

Another academic in the field, Vivian Cook, has pointed out that it makes more sense to compare a second language learner to a bilingual than a monolingual native speaker. Bilinguals’ languages affect each other. Think of any bilingual you know; they don’t sound like monolingual speakers of their less dominant language. I find that a rather comforting thought: unless you’re training to become a spy, don’t worry that you don’t sound exactly ‘right’.

Rather, understand that the mistakes you make are part of your ‘interlanguage’ on your way to being a successful polyglot. In partially understanding another language, you are already more than a monolingual!

I think it’s time to stop. Or at least to pause. I have enough languages begun to keep me busy for a long time improving my understanding of them. The only other language I definitely want to make a start on first is Portuguese. It should be fairly easy, since I have a bit of a grounding in French, Italian and (very little, self-taught) Spanish. Portuguese is a pretty widespread language and I would like to include it in the group I go forward with.

So there, a new resolution, to improve on the languages I’ve made a start on until they are as good as my German (B1 level). And, of course, I wouldn’t want to neglect German. Try my best to forget, for now, about Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Swedish, Polish…. oh let me not even continue.  “Jack of all trades, master of none” – much as I hate to admit it (I want absolutely everything, is that too much to ask?).

Now there is a whole new issue. When I got to the library on Monday, there were two ladies sitting at the door doing renewals – nobody allowed in. They have been offline for two weeks and the backlog is too much, so they are not issuing any more books. According to the newspaper, the service provider of the new software has halted service due to an issue with their service level agreement with the municipality (and it was suggested they haven’t been paid yet for the past few month).  Very frustrating.

One of the books I have out at the moment is Teach Yourself Russian. I have renewed it probably three times now ( which means I have had it for over three months) and I am only about halfway through the book. I feel very acutely that I have not progressed much. Oh the shame! The terrible thing is that every time the due date comes around again, it just reminds me that another month has passed and I cannot yet read Russian.

Yes, read Russian.  That is my main end goal in learning languages. I’m an introvert, so I’m not likely to talk to many foreigners, but I do love the written word.  My end goal generally is to be able to read the news in that language.  (It’s also my main form of practice for French, Italian & Spanish). Understanding the spoken word and getting the pronunciation correct is also important to me. But reading is probably more what I would end up doing with the language.  Also, if reading books in your native language can improve your vocabulary, then surely the same is true of foreign languages!

So yes, my learning process is a bit slower than some, but I’m happy with just understanding something new today that I would not have understood last week, or a month ago. I love the feeling of seeing or hearing some foreign word out of the blue somewhere and actually understanding it.

I bought it because I wanted the audio, and in that sense it is useful, but I think it could have been done much better. It seems to be aimed at the lowest common denominator. There is not a lot of vocabulary in the book, in fact, there is plenty more vocab in the phrasebook. That is my first problem – you won’t get far with the audio series.

The audio has so much time wasted with the voice saying “if you want to say … in Russian then the word you would use is …”.   Too much of the audio is taken up with english. The book should be doing that job.

What I would have appreciated from this course would have been: a conversation for each chapter, in audio, and the book should make it clear what the conversation means. A little bit more explanation of grammar (though I don’t think too much is necessary). They could have gotten a lot more spoken Russian into the same two CDs, and a lot more vocab into the same size book.

The phrasebook on the other hand, is great. They know how to do a phrasebook. I find the pronunciation guide very logical; each phrase is transcribed into the roman  alphabet, in a way that makes sense to an English speaker. Well, it makes sense to me anyway. There is plenty of vocab, like a list of body part names, list of menu items, list of shopping vocab, etc. You can’t really learn Russian properly from that alone, but it is a great extra resource. And I think it would work really well as a phrasebook if that was all you wanted it for.

A useful resources for Russian is Master Russian. The site doesn’t look like much (I’m ashamed to say a boring looking website can put me off – what can I say I’m a graphic designer for a living), but it does contain some useful stuff.

Then there is a website of a university in Sussex that has some Russian texts online with the translation (prioritizing word-for-word accuracy) and a glossary, as well as exercises (which I have not yet tried) and audio (which I couldn’t get to work). But it’s great because you can start getting into Russian literature, while still learning Russian.

Happy learning!

So the correct way to hang a flag vertically is to keep the upper left hand corner in the upper left hand corner. Which means you can’t just rotate 90 degrees; you have to then invert it along the vertical axis. But what about all those flags that have crests on them? I assume they would need to stay right-way-up… And then some like the Brazilian flag leave the mind somewhat boggled. Information on how to deal with these specifics does not appear to be that readily available on the internet. The good flag websites I found often referred to some obscure book or text.

But enough about my flag troubles. World Cup™ is nearly over and what an interesting one it has been (she says as if she actually follows soccer).

The Sun of May in the title of this post is an object of my recent curiosity. I noticed that the Uruguay and Argentina flags shared the same sun emblem and I just had to know why. Apparently, the origin of the image is an Inca sun god (info here and here). But the reason for the name and it’s appearance on the flag is related to it being a symbol from the South American May Revolution – the beginning of the fight for independence from Spain.

So I learned a little something about South American history. Not that I would really go into any more detail here. I am interested in history, but only really the big picture. Even reading a Wikipedia article about history makes my eyes cross. But I see this as a challenge!

A couple of sites for practicing your reading. Firstly EuroNews. Each news piece has multiple language versions, so you can read it in English as well as in whatever language you want to practice. Another cool one – though this may just be me – is the European Space Agency portal. It helps to be interested in Space exploration. I’m sure there are plenty more multi-lingual sites out there, whatever your interests. And if you need to look up a word here and there, WordReference is a pretty good online dictionary.