#polyglottery

[thepersonalwords]

Pop is about speaking everybody's language. The imagery and iconography we instantly recognize. When you can rely on things that the public already knows, you're dealing with Pop.

Nuno Roque

[prototumblinguist]

is it prescriptive to react to professional polyglots calling themselves linguists by saying "you keep using that word...i do not think it means what you think it means"

(the answer is definitely yes but i was just aggressively suggested a magical become fluent in less than a year video on youtube and i had a lil twinge of frustration)

[ilikelanguages]

New language aleeert!

Today I got to talk with a kurdish friend of mine... I guess it is time to learn some kurdish now.

[ilikelanguages]

Reflecting on my approach to learning languages - learning vs using

I started to fall for the idea of being a polyglot back around the summer break of 2014 - which was when I decided to really go for Arabic. I read the polyglot project about all these awesome people and their experiences with language learning, checked out their Youtube videos etc. I came across Moses aka Laoshu50500, which I consider the greatest polyglot of all time. That guy is an absolute beast when it comes to languages, and his videos are highly inspiring.  So soon I went from Arabic to include some Esperanto, then some Chinese, then some Tamil (because I have a bunch of Tamil friends, and BTW their reactions were amazing), then to Bosnian... I think I got around to learning something in at least 10 languages at different levels (nothing impressive for most) within the next couple of summer holidays - just for the love of learning languages. I was also, and still am, very fascinated about languages in general. I couldn’t really focus on them during the semester, so I went hard during the summer holidays. The most important language of all these has been Arabic though, since it has been a lifelong ambition to learn it at some point. 

Now it is 5 summers later, and looking back i definitely did learn A LOT, however I’m not sure this is where I wanted to be 5 years later. I wanted to be fluent in Arabic by now, and although I can understand most of the basics the fluency lies far ahead. I am still struggling with understanding a lot of the context in children cartoons in Arabic. I am still quite slow when it comes to understanding and especially speaking. Back then, I also wanted to be conversational in most of the other languages by now - most importantly Chinese. 

I have recently come across articles and quotes such as “ Life Doesn't Reward You For What You Know, But For What You Do” and “To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.” — Dr. Stephen Covey, which led me to reflect on my language skills and why I haven’t progressed as much as I would like. It sort of reminds me of many of the questions from my friends had, when I told them about a language that I was learning - usually these were like “but, what are you going to use it for”. I honestly just loved the idea of learning them, and thought I might just use them one day. I realized that most people only learn stuff they HAD to learn, and not just because they like learning and knowing about it. Usually when it comes to languages it is for a job, travelling or for relationships. Many of the people speaking different languages have also had some travel experiences. 

I think that learning all these languages have been fun, but I have also forgot a lot of what I used to know, and now when I think about using some of it... it is unfortunately packed far away in a forgotten corner of my mind. I think it is because I didn’t have a practical purpose to use what I learned. What Laoshu50500 does, is to go out and use all the senteses he has learned with a person who speaks that language, comes home and reviews it, and then goes back out again. The point of language learning is communication, and the best way to learn is through practice with others. I had some practical experience during my Chinese course, where there was a teacher and other student, and I can honestly say I improved faster, than I would from studying by myself and not using what I learned. My few encounters with people who are natives to the language I was using, have also been the most challenging yet important to get the phrases to stick in my mind. Prioritizing apps like HelloTalk more than hours and hours on apps like Memrise, Cram etc. would probably be better in retrospect. I used to think I was not ready enough for interactions, and although it might have been true to some extend, since the studying part is important to have a good conversation, I think I missed out on a lot of learning possibilities. Regardless, nobody says they have now finished learning a language, there is always more to learn, so might as well go and use the little you know in practice anyways while studying. 

I guess my whole realization lately is that: although obtaining a lot of knowledge is important, using it is much more important. This is probably why I didn’t really feel like learning more in the languages I used to study during this summer. Because I had a very limited usage for it. Once I find a more practical purpose for the languages, the experience will be much better. The motivation and focus might also be much better, and thereby I would probably be more efficient as well. Maybe I will just stick to HelloTalk, maybe I will just interact with people more randomly whenever I see them like Laoshu, or maybe something else. Regardless I think I will always learn more, it just needs to be more practical.  

[ilikelanguages]

Esperanto

I keep coming back to Esperanto when I'm learning languages. I truly think of it as a masterpiece of languages. It's amazing how a language can be so easy to learn and so logical in the choice of word and grammar. I enjoy not having to learn unnecessary grammar that are followed by more exceptions than rules itself.

[ilikelanguages]

Dari

Today I learned a bit of Dari - a variant of Persian spoken by most afghans, since it is one of the official languages in the country! I learned it because I was going to my barber who is also my afghan friend. Like I always do, I just typed in "learn" and the language I wanted to learn in Youtube. The phrases were very basic and I also learned to count. It took about 15 minutes before I had to go. While I was fetting my haircut I got to use every single phrase that I had learned. He asked me how was the haircut - I said "maghbul". He was surprised because it seemed like I knew a whole lot, when in reality I had just learned a few conversational phrases - they were just relevant to the situations. I said "tashakaar" and after he responded, I said "khuda hafiz". It was a very smooth experiense! I can only advise to use what you have learned in any language when it is possible. At the end of the day, that is the goal after all 😃

[thusisawug-blog]

Ttxolil yol Mam

“Mam Grammar”. If you’re coming from English, Spanish, or almost any other European language, it’s definitely a strange thing. But if you don’t let the differences scare you off, you’ll discover it’s really quite simple.

I mentioned in my last post that Mam clauses are verb-initial. It would be more accurate to say that they’re predicate-initial. If we divide them by personal inflection patterns, there are four classes of words that can act as predicates in Mam: common verbs, the existential verb, statives, and the predicative demonstrative. Any of these may be followed by a subject, and then (in the case of transitive verbs alone) by an object.

Today I’m going to go over just inflection for person, as some form of the same system is common to all predicates, and for the existential verb, statives, and the predicative demonstrative, it’s all you need to know to start using them. Because this is system is complicated by other factors affecting common verbs, I’ll discuss those separately later.

Person marking in Mam happens in two steps. First, unique forms are given for the first person singular, the non-first person singular, the first person plural, and the non-first person plural.

For the existential verb, each form has two or three alternatives. The most common choices are starred when known:

1S - atiin / tiin 2/3S - ata’ / ta’* (2) / at* (3) 1P - ato’ / to’ 2/3P - ate’ / te’*

For statives, which may be derived from all nouns and adjectives by suffixation, the forms are:

1S - ...qin 2/3S - ...a 1P - ...qo’ 2/3P - ...qe’

For the predicative demonstrative, the forms are generally given with no initial consonant, but I have only heard this word (in its third person singular) with initial /χ/:

1S - aayin / jaayin (?) 2/3S - aa / jaa 1P - aaqo’ / jaaqo’ (?) 2/3P - aaqe’ / jaaqe’ (?)

Then onto all of these forms we add a set of clitics to distinguish between the second and third person and exclusive and inclusive first person singular forms. When following vowels, they are preceded by /j/:

1S - ...(y)e’ 2S - ...(y)a 1Pe - ...(y)e’ 2P - ...(y)e’

In dialects like that of Todos Santos Cuchumatán, these are all pronounced /ə/, and so are sometimes all spelled ...(y)a. In these dialects, all may also apparently be dropped under certain conditions, but I’m still not sure what those conditions are. Any ...y triggered by these clitics seems to stay when the following vowel is dropped.

It seems that originally, the first person forms were different, with no clitic in the singular and ...(y)o’ in the exclusive plural. Some dialects may retain one or both of these forms.

Now, the complete patterns:

tiine’ - “I am” ta’ya - “you are” (bonus phrase: Ti’n taya? “How are you?”) at - “he is” to’ye’ - “we (but not you) are” to’ - “we (and you) are” te’ye’ - “you all are” te’ - “they are”

winaqqine’ - “I am a person” winaqa - “you are a person” winaq - “he is a person” winaqqo’ye’ - “we (but not you) are people” winaqqo’ - “we (and you) are people” winaqqe’ye’ - “you are people” winaqqe’ - “they are people”

jaayine’ - “it is me” jaaya - “it is you” jaa - “it is he” jaaqo’ye’ - “it is we (but not you)” jaaqo’ - “it is we (and you)” jaaqe’ye’ - “it is you all” jaaqe’ - “it is they”

[thusisawug-blog]

Nchin xnaq’tzaane’ tu’n tb’ant nyooline’ toj yool Mam

(Or something like that): “I’m learning to speak the Mam language!”

Or rather, I’ve already been learning this fascinating member of the Mayan language family for the past three months or so, as I’ve been staying with my grandparents in a small town in the pacific northwest with a large (primarily Mam-speaking) Guatemalan population.

I’m back home now, which means my continued progress in Mam may be a bit hampered for the time being, but I want to share some of what I know so far with you guys.

Like most Mayan languages, Mam is characterised by a colourful consonant inventory, lightly agglutinative morphology, ergative-absolutive alignment, and verb-initial clause structure. Mam is unique, though, in its development of retroflex sibilants, its reörganisation of the Mayan verbal system, and its use of intransitive verbs of motion as auxiliary “directionals”.

I’ll be posting in more detail about Mam’s phonology, morphology, and syntax soon, but for now I’ll leave you with its phoneme inventory and modern orthography: