Latest from All Polyglottally Blogs

I've Been Nominated!

Extreme Language Learning — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:14:11 +0000

I've been nominated! The Top Language Learners 2013 competition, hosted by the bab.la language portal and the Lexiophiles language blog, has officially begun. They are looking for the best 100 language lovers in the following four categories: language learning blogs, language professionals’ blogs, language Facebook Pages and language Twitter accounts.

Of the four possible categories, I've been nominated for the Language Learning Blogs category. Okay, I wasn't really "nominated," I mentioned last year that I keep missing the deadline to nominate myself and so the good folks at bab.la registered me last year for this year's competition. Thanks guys!

This will be their sixth year holding this competition, and it's getting bigger and bigger every year. They had over 900 participants last year, so competition is stiff. Any support is greatly welcomed! My goal is to rank at least 99th.

Note: Voting doesn't start until May 22nd. After that, you'll have until June 9th to vote several hundred times for my site.

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Top Language Lovers

Monolingualism versus Bilingualism

Planning and Design — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:12:18 +0000

Another infographic, this time pitting monolingualism head-to-head with bilingualism. Pretty much random factoids about the relative benefit of each, but this time actually pointing out some of the advantages that monolinguals enjoy over bilinguals, which is plain heresy in the language learning community!

Monolingual VS Bilingual infographic

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Infographics

The Business Risks of Language Barriers

Planning and Design — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:03:08 +0000

Infographics are often thinly-veiled marketing tools that takes (carefully selected and biased) evidence in support of your position and makes it look aesthetically pleasing. Propaganda eye candy, really.

I'm not quite sure what the creators of this infographic are trying to achieve. The topic is risks that your business can face due to language barriers. The lessons I take from this infographic are that U.S. companies should (a) hire more foreign speaking customer service representatives (or outsource it to other countries); (b) get their materials translated professionally; and (c) teach their employees English to improve workplace safety. None of these support Rosetta Stone's business model of convincing English-speakers to learn other languages.

Nevertheless, the stats are interesting, and the topics completely relevant to today's marketplace.

The Business Risks of Language Barriers infographic by sramzee.

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Infographics

Connect with Your Infant through Signing

Extreme Language Learning — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:01:08 +0000

One of my stated goals of 2013 is to become competent in American Sign Language. To date, my only exposure to ASL has been through baby signing. We attempted with our first child, and he though not a prolific signer he does still remember many of the signs we taught him. Our second child hasn't taken to it as well as the first (the sign for 'milk' can also mean 'gimme,' and a pointing finger works for everything else). That, though, is our fault for not exposing her as consistently as we should have.

I was asked by the folks at Newborncare.com to share an article of theirs on using baby sign language to connect with your infant. Chock full of useful tips, they discuss the hows and whys of teaching your little urchin to sign.

Of all the touted benefits, though, there is one that is never mentioned: Baby signing is a great way for the parents of newborns to communicate with each other, especially when out and about or in polite company. "Monkey pooped, needs change, your turn."

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ASL

Foundation for Endangered Languages

Social Justice — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:47:10 +0000

The Foundation for Endangered Languages supports, enables and assists the documentation, protection and promotion of endangered languages. The aims of the FEL are, among other things, to raise awareness of endangered languages, both inside and outside the communities where they are spoken, through all channels and media, and to support the use of endangered languages in all contexts: at home, in education, in the media, and in social, cultural and economic life.

In addition to monitoring linguistic policies and practices, the FEL also offers financial assistance to support the documentation of endangered languages. Their website describes their activities, as well as houses their informative newsletter Ogmios and details about the conferences they run.

FEL holds an annual conference in different locations around the world, with up-to-date themes reflecting the latest issues affecting the world's endangered languages. I haven't had the honour of attending one of their conferences yet, but the proceedings look fascinating. The latest was held in Auckland, New Zealand (or I should say Aotearoa), and the theme was on the effect of globalisation, technology and new media on language endangerment in the 21st century.

Visit the Foundation for Endangered Languages website.
Browse their catalogue of past issues of Ogmios.

Happy New Year! Now Get Back to Work

Extreme Language Learning — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:46:11 +0000

David Snopek of LinguaTrek asks three simple yet important questions that should refocus you and get you back on the path to effective language learning. The questions are:

What is your current situation?
What is the biggest problem you face?
What is ONE thing you can do everyday for the next 30 days?

These are very similar to the questions posed by Aaron Myers in The Everyday Language Learner’s Guide to Getting Started:

Where do I want to go?
Where am I right now?
What do I need to learn?
How will I learn it?

Whichever set of questions you ask, it's all about defining your destination and then performing course correction as you go. If you're trying to swim to an island, you need to pop your head up every once in a while to see if you're on track, then making short-term plans to move towards your target.

Practicing What They Preach

Applying this to my own language goals for 2013, let's take for example the first one, learning Mandarin to a conversational level.

My current situation is that I have a basic grounding of Mandarin grammar and some stock phrases, probably more than I think I know.
The biggest problem facing me is a lack of practice in speaking.
One thing I can do immediately is connect with some Mandarin speakers to practice chatting. I can rehearse some dialogs every day for the next 30 days to etch them into my muscle memory.

And the other set of questions:

I want to be comfortably fluent (not necessarily perfect) in everyday chit-chat in Mandarin, able to hold my own for at least 10 minutes.
My current situation is that I have a basic grounding of Mandarin grammar and some stock phrases, probably more than I think I know.
I need to learn (a) vocabulary; (b) vocabulary; and (c) vocabulary. I have enough sentence patterns to be able to stitch together something, and I'm sure I'll be corrected as I go.
I will learn it through practicing with native speakers, and using SRS software.

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Language learning

Language Goals for 2013

Extreme Language Learning — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:44:09 +0000

It's a brand new year, and traditionally I optimistically make resolutions for how I'm going to do better this year. And then I periodically remember that I made resolutions and panic a bit before letting them slip again.

Looking Back at 2012

If I go back twelve months and look at my language learning goals for 2012, I see that I accomplished none of them. I worked on a few, but not to the point that I would call success. Still, something is better than nothing.

A language of the BRIC nations: I dabbled in Russian, then dabbled more in Mandarin. Part marks awarded.
An official language of the UN: Mandarin satisfies this category as well. Part marks awarded.
A language spoken by immigrants in my city: Once again, Mandarin counts, but I also made a concerted effort to learn Filipino. Part marks awarded.
An exotic language for the fun of it: Zero points here. Didn't do a thing.

So overall I give myself 37.5/100 on my report card. Rather embarrassing.

Looking Forward to 2013

Let's try this again, shall we? I'm going to put down my three language goals for the year and then ignore them for the next twelve months:

Mandarin to a fluent conversational level where I can talk about most general topics and hold my own for at least 10 minutes.
American Sign Language to a basic level where I can watch the news or eavesdrop on a conversation and get the gist of what's being said.
Speak French to my kids every day for at least a little bit, something I regret not doing up until now.

Three modest and achievable goals for the year.

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Language learning

The Language Conservancy

Social Justice — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:34:21 +0000

The Language Conservancy believes that all languages have an inherent right to exist, and the organization is dedicated to rescuing the world's endangered languages, restoring them to vital use and safeguarding them for future generations.

Through raising funds for research, providing technical support to groups engaged in language revitalization, and increasing public awareness, The Language Conservancy is helping to prevent language extinction.

Current projects of theirs include:

"Rising Voices," a documentary that exposes the social consequences of Native American language loss and rescue.
Language program grants for research and advocacy programs, along with technical assistance to grassroots-level language preservation efforts.

Visit The Language Conservancy website for more about this organization.

25 Days of Free World Music

World Music — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 19:58:40 +0000

World Music Network, the fabulous website dedicated to the international world music scene, is giving away its version of an advent calendar.

Each and every day in December leading up to Christmas, you can download another world music tune for free from this web page. Set up a calendar reminder to check back every day for the next available song, because once the day is over, the song is gone (or no longer free, which often equates to the same thing).

So far, the first three days have featured Greek folk music, New Orleans funk, and African psychedelica. Way better than little chocolates from a real calendar!

Soosan Firooz - Our Neighbours

World Music — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:04:25 +0000

Song of the week for November 26th, 2012.

Soosan Firooz (or Sosan, or Soozan, depending on the transliteration) is being celebrated as "Afghanistan's first female rapper." Using the power of music to spread a message of hope and defiance, she raps in the Dari language about her troubled past as a refugee in both Iran and Pakistan.

Being a female rapper in Afghanistan (and one who dresses in her videos in Western clothing sans headscarf) can't be easy. I'm guessing the Taliban are not rushing out to buy her album. She reports daily death threats, but that doesn't stop her from being a popular role-model for Afghan women.

The Dari language is essentially Afghan Persian, mutually intelligible with but separate from Iranian Persian. Along with Pashto, it is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. Dari, though, is the most widely spoken and acts as a lingua franca among the various linguistic groups in the country.

Latest from All Polyglottally Blogs

I've Been Nominated!

Monolingualism versus Bilingualism

The Business Risks of Language Barriers

Connect with Your Infant through Signing

Foundation for Endangered Languages

Happy New Year! Now Get Back to Work

Practicing What They Preach

Language Goals for 2013

Looking Back at 2012

Looking Forward to 2013

The Language Conservancy

25 Days of Free World Music

Soosan Firooz - Our Neighbours

Links