We have a contest going at LingQ, where we ask people to submit an article no longer than 400 words long, on the greatest rewards of learning another language. I am not going to compete in this, but I am going to add my two cents worth.I will do so after the competition closes on July 20.
If you have not already submitted an article, it is not too late to do so.Check it out here.
An important local organization that helps immigrants, part of the Skills Connect program in British Columbia, has accepted LingQ as a useful language learning resource. This means that LingQ expenses may now qualify for partial reimbursement from the government. This is a first for LingQ.
If you are an immigrant to Canada, or elsewhere, you might want to look into whether your LingQ payments could qualify for reimbursement.
Language and culture are at the core of education, or should be. With all the debate about language learning methods, the definition of "linguist", input versus output versus grammar, the role of the Internet etc. it is sometimes useful to take step back.
What is the most useful thing we learn at school and in life? Language and culture. If we have a deep understanding of our own language and culture we feel secure. If we read well, and are good listeners, with a wide range of vocabulary and general knowledge, and if we express ourselves confidenty, in our own language, we will do well in the tasks that we face as life long learners.
If we can do the same in one or more foreign language and culture, we expand our range of experience, increase our knowledge of the human condition, and make friends of people from many more backgrounds and origins.
So it is not a matter of technology or method. It is a matter of acquiring advanced skills in language and culture. Like so many other things, this boils down to interest and motivation.
I have never been that interested in learning Arabic, or learning about Arab history. I mean we can only do so many things. I have acquired skills in the language and culture of China, Japan, Russia and various European countries. But I have just finished a very interesting book called The Great Arab Conquests by Hugh Kennedy. Fascinating. I had a sense of the Roman Empire, the Russian Empire, the development of China, the modern history of Europe, but I had little exposure to the storied saga of Arab expansion and the development of this international cultural space. Now I have a start. Can the language be far behind?
We intend to provide our newcomers with an encouraging
introduction to the language they are planning to learn. I have drafted
up some ideas of what this might consist of for French, Chinese and
Japanese.
I look forward to comments. Is there anyone out there who wants to do one, either for these languages or for other languages?
Chinese can seem quite exotic when we first start out. No phonetic
script. Everything is written in characters. Tones, wow! Can I really
learn to sound like that? Let me assure you that Chinese is not only
quite accessible, it has many features that make it easy to learn.
But
first let's look at the difficulties. Yes it is all written in
characters. I recommend that you use the romanized or phonetic script,
pinyin, to help you get started. Lessons at LingQ are all in
characters, but you can find pinyin converters on the Internet. Move
your LingQ text to Print mode, where you can copy and convert them to
pinyin.
If you are serious about Chinese, you should take the
plunge and learn the characters. We do not have a specific character
learning program at LingQ but there are many such systems available on
the web. What LingQ offers is content and a way to get used to the
language through a lot of listening, reading and word learning.
Tones,
ah yes. It is difficult to remember the tone for each individual word.
You just have to get used to the music and rhythm of the phrases. Like
so much in language learning, focus on your listening first. Do not try
to produce the tones until you have had a lot of exposure. Remember,
though, that most languages, including English, have tones. It is just
that in English, tones are used for emphasis in a sentence. In Chinese
they are used to differentiate the meaning of words. You can do it.
Because
of the tones, and the absence of a phonetic script, it can be a little
difficult to get the hang of spoken Chinese, when you first listen to
it. All the more reason to do a lot listening. Listen while reading
pinyin on the screen. Then listen while reading characters. Then go
away and listen, over and over to the same content. And don't worry
about what you don't understand. If you have a favourite text or two,
where you like the voice and the
speaker and the subject matter, listen to them over and over again. The
brain will gradually get the hang of it
When you start
speaking, be confident that you will get better. Don't be afraid of
making mistakes with the tones. You will gradually improve and never be
perfect.
Now that the tough stuff is out of the way, let's get to reasons why Chinese is easy.
No masculine, no feminine, no plural forms. Nothing changes.
Verbs
don't change. "I go today". "He tomorrow go" . With the addition of a
word in front of your verb, you can easily indicate intention, or the
future, or a range of tenses and moods that are so complicated in other
languages. A little "le" behind the verb and it is the past tense.
That's it. Verbs looked after.
Chinese is the original lego
language. Words consist of two and sometimes three or more characters.
Once you learn the characters, you can put them together to form
compound words, in a great variety of combinations. Often you can
take a stab at the meaning of new words, and they are quite easy to
remember. There may not be any common vocabulary with languages that
you know, but you can quickly build new vocabulary with your character
"lego blocks".
Negatives are pretty straight forward. Usually the word "bu"
or "not" is used. "I go", " I not go", "tall", "not tall", "yes", "not
yes". You just have to remember that with things that happened in the
past, you have to say "have not" as the negative. "I yesterday have
not go". Negatives looked after.
When asking questions in
Chinese, it is more like a multiple choice test with two options. "You
go, not go?" "you eaten, have not?". It seems a bit clumsy at first,
but you quickly get used to it and wonder why other languages don't do
this.
There are few other wrinkles that are best left for you to
discover on your own, but none are difficult to remember, once we get
used to them. Often there is a work around. One example is the way
Chinese uses counters. Just like we say a sheet of paper, or a flock of
geese, Chinese have specific counters for many things. But there is
also a general counter "ge" and it will usually fill in if you
don't know the counter that is normally used. I found that it is
difficult to make a grammatical mistake in Chinese. You can almost say
things however you want.
The key to learning Chinese is to learn
phrases. Perhaps more so than with most other languages, be wary of the
complicated grammar explanation. Focus on phrases and patterns. Save
lots of phrases
at LingQ and watch them appear over and over. When you first start with
Chinese it can appear more difficult than certain other languages. Once
you are over the hump, it is a delight to have entered this fascinating
culture, one that appears so distant, and yet can become quite familiar
and certainly enjoyable.
We intend to provide our newcomers with an encouraging
introduction to the language they are planning to learn. I have drafted
up some ideas of what this might consist of for French, Chinese and
Japanese.
I look forward to comments. Is there anyone out there who wants to do one, either for these languages or for other languages?
Japanese is a flexible language. It seems that there are always a few
ways of saying things, and each way conveys a slightly different tone.
But you cannot really offend anyone if you stay with the simplest forms
at first. As you become more familiar with the language, and have
enough vocabulary, you can start exploring the world of polite
language. Then as you start striking the right mood with your Japanese
language, you start to feel as if you have arrived in this unique and
rich culture. But to start with you just need to learn to understand.
Things
may seem tough at first. Take the word for "I" for example, pronounced
"watakushi". This really is quite mouthful for a beginner. Furthermore
it is only one of several possible ways to say "I", each with its own
mood or flavour. On top of that, the personal pronoun is often left
out. But do not worry, all these initial difficulties just fade away
with enough exposure.
Japanese has relatively few sounds and
therefore is quite easy to pronounce. However, this means that a lot of
words may sound alike at the beginning. Again these are just initial
difficulties and it is important not to let them bog you down.
Looking
on the bright side, nouns do not have gender, no masculine or feminine.
What is more there are no plurals really. You just kind of tell the
number from the context. It all works fine, and we find that we do not
miss the plurals. You just need to expose yourself to a lot of content.
Do not worry if things seem a little unclear at first.
You will
soon realize the importance of the little words that come after every
noun or pronoun. They help to direct traffic. Watakushi (I) can take a
"wa" of "ga" if it is the subject of the phrase But if it is the
object of the phrase, it takes a "ni" and so on. I recommend you LingQ
these little words to see how they work. That way they will always be
highlighted in yellow on your screen.
It is a good idea to learn
to read the kana or Japanese phonetic writing system fairly early. Each
symbol represents a syllable. There are two parallel systems, hiragana
and katakana. The hiragana is more useful. The katakana is for foreign
words or words that represent sounds. I would also start learning
characters, which is a whole job of itself. There are lots of helpful
website on learning Japanese Kanji.
The approach to verbs in
Japanese is unlike European languages. First of all the verbs come at
the end of sentences. Once you are aware of this, the language will be
easier to understand. Not a bad system, you always have to wait till
the end for the punch line, so to speak.
There are fewer tenses
than English. Furthermore, the verb forms do not change for person and
this simplifies the learning of verbs considerably. On the other hand
there are various form of verbs reflecting levels of politeness. Don't
even try to remember the rules for what to use when, you will gradually
get used to it with enough exposure. What is more the rules are really
not hard and fast, and you will not offend anyone regardless of which
form you choose.
Endings of verbs are extremely important. They
determine the tense of verbs, the politeness level, and can convey
meanings like "if" or "in order to" etc.. Verb endings also determine
whether a statement is positive or negative. Make sure you save the
many forms of the verbs that you come across. You can tag them for
later review in the LingQ vocabulary section. What is more you can
search all of your saved LingQs by different endings. This will really
help you get used to them.
One handy aspect of Japanese is that
questions usually end in the little word "ka". It is sort of like a
verbal form of the question mark. Really quite convenient when you want
to ask something.
Of course, there is a lot more to Japanese,
but that should help to get you going. From time to time, it may be
useful to refer to some of the Japanese language resources you can find
on the web or a small ( I repeat small) grammar book. But do not try
too hard to remember all the rules. You will get used to the language
gradually. As with most languages, initially the obstacles seem
insurmountable. Do not try to nail things down when you start. Just be
confident that with enough listening, and by LingQing key words and
phrases, the picture will start to become clearer. Good luck.
We also intend to provide our newcomers with an encouraging introduction to the language they are planning to learn. I have drafted up some ideas of what this might consist of for French, Chinese and Japanese.
I look forward to comments. Is there anyone out there who wants to do one, either for these languages or for other languages?
French is, to my ears, a lovely language, with its pleasant
nasal sounds. In a way, part of what makes it pleasant is the fact that
not only living things, but all objects, have to be either masculine or
feminine. This is called gender. There is no rhyme or reason for the
gender, except that the Romans did it. There are rules to help you
remember which things are masculine (words that end in consonants for
example) and which are feminine ( words that end in "ion" for example),
but there are exceptions, as with most rules. You can find these rules
on the Internet but it will be hard to remember them. It will just take
time to get used to all of this and you will continue to make mistakes.
Don't worry about it. I still make mistakes with gender and I do not
worry about it.
Gender seems to influence a lot of things in French, but the good thing
is that getting the gender wrong will have little affect on meaning. In
any case you will need to focus on listening and reading and
understanding at first. You will notice that words will have a
masculine form and a feminine form. You will gradually get used to it
by doing a lot listening and reading, and especially by saving phrases
when you create LingQs.
French verbs, with all their endings, can seem a challenge at first,
but I can assure you get used to them. You need to realize that the
form of the verb, that is to say the endings, change with each person.
"Je parle, tu parles, il parle, nous parlons, vous parlez, ils
parlent". Since one of the delights of French is that letters are often
silent, you may not hear the fact that the endings are different. This
is great since you can fake it a little when you speak.
But there are other problems. There are many irregular verbs. So when
we talk about going somewhere, we get "je vais, tu vas, il va, nous
allons, vous allez, ils vont". Nowadays it is easy to Google "French
verbs" and find tables with all of the forms of any verb you want. So I
will not give any more examples here.
There are two very important verbs in French that are used to form the
past tense. The verb which means "to have" , "avoir", and the verb that
means "to be", "etre". The French do not say "I ate". They say "I have
eaten" "j'ai mangé".. They do not say "I went". They say "I am gone"
"je suis allé". Just be aware of it and watch as the forms of some of
the verbs change. If you are confused you can ask on the LingQ forum.
I
recommend that you save every form of the verb that you come across at
LingQ. Each form is a different tense or person, and the phrases that
come with it are different each time. Do not be stingy with your
LingQing. The more you LingQ the better you will learn.
A few more comments and you are on your way. To ask a question in French you can either reverse the word order, much
like in English, or use the pattern of "is it that you are going?"
"est-ce que vous allez?".
As for saying "no" in French, the French are not happy just saying "I am not". They like to add
another negative word. So they say "Je ne suis pas". Watch for the
double negatives.
There are lots of French grammar resources on the web, or you may
want to buy a small grammar book. Refer to these resources from time to
time, but don't spend too much time trying to memorize rules. With
enough listening, reading and LingQing things will start to seem
clearer and clearer. Eventually, even the grammar rules will make sense.
There has been a little discussion at this blog about LingQ. Here is a draft of three part introduction to LingQ that we are thinking of making available to all newcomers to LingQ, in audio format, and in the learner's language. Once the content is decided we will of course translate it all. Comments welcome.
Welcome. You are about to embark on an enjoyable journey of language learning and discovery. LingQ is different from most language learning systems. At LingQ you will not do grammar drills and exercizes. Instead, most of your time will be spent on things that are easy to do and effective, such as listening, reading and gradually increasing your vocabulary.
As someone who has learned a lot of languages, I cannot stress
enough that language improvement is gradual and unpredictable. You
cannot be a perfectionist, at least not at first. The kind of people
who are successful language learners are people
content to wander in a fog, bumping into the odd
tree, or tripping on the odd stump.
This willingness to explore and embrace the unknown, not talent, is what separates the happy linguist from
the frustrated learner. Don't worry about how to pronounce each word. Don't try to master each lesson, and all the new words. Just plan to enjoy the journey. It will all come together before you know it, if you just put in the time.
When you want to speak and write, sign up for discussions with
tutors, or submit writing for correction by our tutors. Get to know the
people in our community.
Happy LingQing.
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