Kaip jus gyvenate?

How you doing?

Yup, I've stuck my toes into the water, and am having a little splash around with Lithuanian.

(Already I can see I'm going to need to learn how to use diacritics and stuff if I want to blog properly about this, because that 'u' in 'jus' should have a line above it. Help?)

I'm using a podcast series called Lithuanian Out Loud and I'm just going to go right ahead and compare it to Say Something In Welsh because - well, my opinons and comments about this series only make sense in the context of having done SSiW, I think.

Okay.  

Things I like about Lithuanian Out Loud

• the introduction to each lessons includes some cultural background about Lithuania. I think if you've never been to the country (I certainly haven't) and you're just starting to get into the language media, it's nice to see the language you're learning as part of some cultural context. I know the aim of SSiW is to get you speaking the language as soon as possible and time spent discussing the amber trade (or whatever equivalent) is time wasted on that objective - but, I do appreciate this about Lithuanian Out Loud
• (can I abbreviate it to LOL?)
• The lessons follow the more usual structure of starting with 'hi, how are you doing?' and so on. In some ways not the most useful thing to know because you only get to say it once to a person; but then I found with SSiW that I wasn't necessarily prepared to make all those pleasantries in conversation (even though I could then tell you very interesting things about what I was thinking or learning or reading)
• There are 'quick response' episodes every five lessons - nowhere near similar in scope to SSiWs all-quick-response-all-the-time approach, but at least LOL has something along those lines, so after I've finished lacadasically listening to the other lessons, I can do a quick assessment of what I know and what I need to practice
• I'm enjoying the extra focus on grammar (any focus on grammar is "extra" focus on grammar compared to SSiW :) ) because actually I just enjoy grammar. It's not going to help me speak, but it's interesting to learn

Things I don't like about Lithuanian Out Loud

• It's so slow!! Oh my gosh, I did an hour's worth of lessons this morning and by the end I knew how to conjugate the verb 'gyventi' (to live) - which doesn't even mean I can actually use those conjugations in speech. By the end of an hour of SSiW I'd be - well, I'd be unconscious, and then after I woke up I could tell you about twenty different things I'm doing right now.
• I mentioned I like the cultural background; but it also means I have to sit through that stuff again to get to the practice part of the lessons. (See: It's so slow!!)
• Even with the quick response episodes, there isn't much speaking practice. I'm learning - studying? - a language here, not acquiring it

What I'm going to do

I'm still going to use Lithuanian Out Loud as my base for learning Lithuanian - it's an extensive course that continues to have new lessons added, so that's pretty awesome. And because LOL follows a more common language course structure, I'm going to do it with a critical eye, see what I like, see what I don't like - that's good information there, I think, for teaching languages.

But I'm going to add some extra elements that I've found really helpful for learning Welsh (and which aren't actually part of SSiW either). I'm going to do my spaced repetition cards for practising vocab and stuff on the fly (because I just like them), and I'm going to tee up some conversational practise for Lithuanian much much sooner than I did for Welsh. I think it was seven or eight months before I had a real conversation yn Gymraeg, and it made such a difference. I might not go for the 'speak from day 1' approach exactly with Lithuanian - I still want some vocab and structures under my belt first - but definitely no more than two months, say?

Y Llinell

 

"If tired, servile and scared First Minister Carwyn Jones represents what Wales currently is.

Then this is what we should aspire to be – an unstoppable force running like a nutter through the streets of Aberystwyth to the sound of Genod Droog."

(http://www.welshnot.com/culture/music/genod-droog-breuddwyd-oer/)

Staring at the sea (staring at the sand)

Generally people say that learning your third language is a lot easier than learning your second. I guess there are a few reasons for this: better understanding of language structure, gained experience in how to learn another language, and increased confidence, for a start.

I totally agree with the first two reasons but I have a few quavering doubts about the third, “increased confidence”. Like definitely when you’re just starting to learn a second language, it's like staring out at this vast ocean and you have no idea how to navigate it or how long it will be before you get your feet on dry land and is your boat even seaworthy? You know.

(image: carolyncochrane.com)

When you’ve got a fair bit of your second language under your belt, though, it’s like “oh, okay, I've learnt how to row and I can see land and being able to hold a conversation in another language is actually possible.” So that’s a confidence booster, right?

Thing is... I know how hard I worked to get my Welsh to a stuttering, faltering, just-about-able-to-have-a-conversation level. Like, I worked hard. I mean not Benny the Irish Polyglot hard but at the point where you're doing two or three hours a day – including lessons, listening to the radio, watching a bit of Welsh telly, and reading the news in Welsh – it's super fun but also mentally exhausting.

Learning a language is possible, it’s worthwhile, and a lot of the time you feel like a horse in a glue factory. I'm not exactly sure I have increased confidence here.

So I’m standing on the beach, staring out at this expansive ocean of Lithuanian (I probably won’t push this analogy much further, don’t worry), and I know I can manage it, but also it’s nice to feel steady on my feet, and I want to rest here a bit more.

Stuff

I've been living in my new place, my own place, a place of my very own, for nearly a year now. So I guess this post is a bit of an anniversary look back at my relationship with stuff. But it's almost Christmas as well, which always gets me thinking about these things.

I don't know what Christmas is like where you are but I suspect if you have the internet connection to be reading this then you have some idea of how Christmas and Stuff are convoluted.

Which is funny because I don't know any one single person over the age of about eleven who really enjoys presents and the mental effort of thinking what to buy for someone who has everything and having the chance to fit fifteen new things they themselves may or may not want into their home. And yet there you are and there I am at "the mall" with everyone else a weekend or two before Christmas, trying to buy the least crappy presents we can come up with.

(As an aside, I stood through a brilliant and enthusiastic demonstration for some body lotion + nail buffer set yesterday afternoon and then had to explain I didn't want to buy it because I already own body lotion and I like my nails the way they are and I'm not actually going to purchase anything because I don't like stuff. Poor lad was just trying to do his job.)

This isn't going to become a post about the true meaning of Christmas, although there is that. But regardless of your beliefs, hasn't Christmas become such a retailers' conspiracy?

Anyway I think I've been pretty good about not Buying Stuff this year because my place is so tiny there isn't anywhere to put it; and there is definitely a sense of smug self satisfaction (hello, alliteration) in feeling in control of what comes into your home and staying on top of it.

The Tiny House movement has interested me greatly, because it has this near total clarity about the relationship between the physical structure of your space, what you put in it, and how that affects your life. That's something I want to blog more about, and I'm slowly working through other people's blogs and I'll add the ones I like to my sidebar.

It's either a Hobbit thing or a Moomintroll thing but to me this is a perfect house size. (image: tinyhousepins.com)

In the meantime I recommend anything by Kirsten Dirksen on youtube. She produces great videos about lots of different things that I find inspiring; here's two for starters.

Thoreau's Cabin Redux: Jay Shafer on tiny homes and happiness
Intentionally Small Home: Urban Living in North Carolina

I'd love to build my own tiny house like Jay Shafer's one day, but in lieu of having no building/construction skills whatsoever, I'd be more than happy to live in a tiny partment a la Nicole Alvarez :-)

Let's do this thing.

Our emails and e-calendars are down at work. Do you know how dependent we are on these? I literally don't know what I have scheduled for this afternoon and I can't continue on with work for clients because all the information is in my emails.

So, a quick blog post. Quick is good. Do it, get it done, rip it off like a band-aid.

I've been thinking about when I'm going to change, I mean really actually change, my life - work with a different organisation or work in a different profession altogether or whatever it is. The date I usually come up with isn't even a date at all, it's just "oh, vaguely by the end of the next year sometime probably."

Thing is, my contract is up in April.

So why not do it in April?

That's three or four months after Christmas - plenty of time to update my CV, do my electives, get a British passport (if necessary), get the leak in the shower fixed, rent my place out, work out what to do with my car, get a job lined up and just go.

On making language accessible.

I realise that most days I am not exactly a poster child for the joys of speech pathology, but if there’s one area of my job I really enjoy, it’s Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).

AAC is all about making language accessible in order to help a person communicate better. When speech isn't an option - for example, if a person has a physical disability that makes their speech unclear; or difficulty with putting their thoughts together, or with language itself - and keeping in mind that spoken language is already a symbolic representation of ideas - then AAC solutions often look to further represent symbolically an already symbolic system. This can involve using symbols for input, or output, or both.

That sounds complicated, but the idea is to make it easier, right?

So for example if I can't think of the Welsh word for 'cat' or 'milk' or 'Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust', I can look these up in a dictionary - I'm using a symbolic representation of the word as input to jog my memory and help me speak.

Or as another example if I go to a really loud concert and lose my voice and can only use text messages to get my point across, I'm using a symbolic representation - again, writing - as my output.

Symbols make things easier.

Kind of.

Essentially the problem for AAC users is that the twenty-six letters of the alphabet is a pretty excellent way of representing every word in the English language, ever, but if you can’t spell (and many of my clients are functionally illiterate), then writing is just not a great way of symbolising language. It doesn't make it easier. It doesn't make it accessible.


The Alphabet. Brilliant for writing, not so great if you're illiterate. (source: www.tyf.com)

This is where the great logistical nightmare and emotional joyride (I’m not joking) of developing a pictorial system for language begins.

You could represent each word with a picture, but who has room to store and capacity to learn a million symbols for the English language?

Okay then, a million is a bit over the top; following the 80/20 (or is the 95/5?) rule of language, you could encode 3000 English words into symbols and be able to express most things you want to say. That’s a much more manageable number. In a physical book of 20 pictures per page, that’s about 75 pages, double sided.

If you categorise your pictures, then you speed up the process of trying to find the word you want (as long as you’re capable of using categories). But you have to be thoughtful with this approach. Take a word like “apple”- do you categorise it under ‘food’, or ‘things for home’, or ‘things for school lunch time’ or ‘types of operating system’? Potentially your categories are going to blow out to more than the number of words you started with.

There are more efficient systems, though. Minspeak, for example, doesn’t use scrapbook like categories for words. Instead, it allows each symbol to stand for multiple ideas, and then the particular sequence of symbols determines the meaning produced.

This isn’t an exact example from a device that uses Minspeak but it gives you the idea:

The apple symbol can mean lots of things. When you combine apple with the symbol for noun, you get “apple” ; when you combine it with the symbol for verb you get “eat”; and when you combine it with the symbol for adjective you get “hungry”.

Three words starting from one symbol.

Add a bed symbol and you get:

• bed + noun = “bed”
• bed + verb = “sleep”
• bed + adjective = “tired”

An extra three words and you’ve only added one symbol.

Another example of symbol combination, in Minspeak. The paintbrush symbolises "adjective", I think.

A multi-meaning iconic system like Minspeak reduces the number of symbols you need to generate the largest possible set of ideas. It’s pretty brilliant. I’m in love with it, can you tell?

Unfortunately Minspeak can have – or be perceived to have – quite a steep learning curve, and I wouldn’t often use it with my clients who have particularly limited cognition. It’s much easier when a picture only symbolises one thing, right?

The question then is, if my client has capacity to use only a limited number of words (it may be cognitive capacity to understand; it may be physical capacity to access a device without fatiguing; whatever) – what words are going to be the most important, the most useful for them to say?

No really. If you could only use 100 words to communicate, what would they be? If you could only use 50? 20? 10?

This is a bugger of a question because often I find the most important words for a client are also the ones they’re already pretty good at communicating. Yes, no. Coffee, tea, food. Toilet. Go away. Unless someone has absolutely no way of talking, making sounds, or signing, these high-frequency, high-context words are surprisingly easy to understand.

So how do you organise the billowing mass of low-frequency, low-context words that a client needs to say but has doesn’t have capacity to sort through? To be honest, I’m not sure yet; a combination of a few approaches, I suspect, and something that I keep working on.

The English Behemoth.

(I quite like the word 'behemoth'.)

So I've nearly finished the 5-day in-class foundation course for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL, but you may know it as ESL or EFL or any number of other acronyms), and I'll have lots to say about that over the coming weeks when I've had a chance to work out what I think about it all.

In the mean time, a question of language ethics that was raised in today's class:

"With twenty five languages dying every year, how can we go around teaching English?"

It wasn't actually me who asked that question, believe it or not, but it's definitely one I've been thinking about for a while. Isn't teaching English the same as building a Starbucks on every corner, playing the Top 40 on every radio station, and giving someone an ipod for Christmas?

(Thanks for being incompatible with everything on my computer, ipod! I'm so glad I had to buy into the apple empire to use you and now none of my media work in their original format!)

But it's not a flippant question. Aren't languages, like independent coffee shops, interesting local bands, and original file formats, losing the battle against cultural behemoths? Why give more power to this giant?

The thing I wonder though is if there's such a simple relationship between the English language and other language loss?

I think certainly when English is promoted, whether by colonial force or the economy or world media or whatever, then a perceived need is created to speak the language.

They're English. They're cool. Who doesn't want to be like the Beatles? (image: www.theguardian.com)

This is an argument for teaching English, I think; I haven't personally created the need to speak English to gain viable employment, for example, but if that need exists then by teaching English I am potentially helping people to deal with the situation.

However, with such a situation in place, parents who are native speakers of other languages may deliberately choose to have their kids speak English only, especially if they don't see the possibility of raising their kids bilingually; or the kids may learn both languages but then make their own choice to speak English, in order to stand out or fit in, whichever one it is that kids want to do. This sort of thing seems particularly common when the kids are being raised in an English speaking country, and so the intergenerational transfer of the native language goes into decline.

On the other hand, I'm not sure - or rather, I'm curious - about the influence of language knowledge by itself, without external forces. Because as a general rule, knowledge of a language does not necessarily lead to it being spoken.

How many people in Wales know Welsh, for example, but never use it on the street, in the shops, or even in their own homes? Or, how many people in France know English, but continue to speak French? And why?

I'm about to go round in a full circle in my head, so just to be clear as mud: if other forces create a situation where English is required, but English language knowledge by itself does not necessarily lead to English language use, then a) what does? and b) where does that leave teaching English as a second language?

So, uh - more thoughts on these questions when I've caught up on some sleep, I think!

The Apparent Invisibility of English.

I had a really interesting conversation with one of my colleagues as we were driving back from a school visit (car trips are the best way to get to know someone quickly and then skip to the good bits) – about Aboriginal Australians, their cultures, the discrimination they face, and how their languages are being passed on but also changed, and in some cases, “eroded”

My colleague is a strong believer in supporting Aboriginal languages, and I found myself saying the usual thing about how languages are so important for sustaining culture, engendering confidence, etc. etc. You know. It was one of those great conversations where we agreed with each other the whole time but also learnt things.

But while I do think that language, culture, individual and community confidence, prosperity, and happiness are all linked in some kind of way thing and support each other and all that, I have absolutely no idea how. Not just intellectually because I don’t have the time right now to sit down and work out all those different connections and stuff. I mean, even if I intellectually understood it, I still wouldn’t personally know how. These kinds of questions just don’t come up when you’re a native English speaker in a predominantly English speaking country in the western (so western) world.

I’ve never had difficulty getting into university or getting a job because I didn’t meet the language requirements. I don’t get teased for speaking English. (Okay, I make some weird vocab choices sometimes but whatever, I’m posh innit.) I’m not the least bit concerned that my language won’t be spoken after one or two generations.

Furthermore from my world viewpoint, English is so widely spoken and printed everywhere that I don't even notice that I'm using it - I'm just getting (or refusing to get) the message being communicated. It's like English is so default, so behemothic and yet so insipid that you can't even see it.

That makes me wonder, then, if English gets to be a part of my culture, confidence, prosperity, and happiness; if being an English speaker is something I can enjoy being or if it’s just like wearing clothes – most people do, and it only becomes an issue when you don’t.

But then I remember that Calvin and Hobbes is written in English and I think yea – I have language pride.

Why Welsh III

Iawn te. Wedais i oedd mwy o resymau pam dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg, felly dyma ni.

Right then. I said there were more reasons why I'm learning Welsh, so here we are.

(Straight away I feel I should apologise profusely and point out that I don't regularly write yn Gymraeg so I think this is how I would write the above sentence; but possibly also how I would say the above sentence is wrong too.)

One of my curiously favourite things about Welsh which also sounds quite sadistic/patronising is that it's very much one of those minority languages the linguists are always going on about; and being (or having been) one of "the linguists", I'm all over that like a cat on a fly screen door.

According to UNESCO, who rate endagered languages from "vulnerable" to "critically endagered" based on the transfer of the language intergenerationally, Welsh is considered "vulnerable". This means that while lots of kids speak the language they don't do it across all areas of life. There are other figures out there of course, about the number or percentage of Welsh speakers in Wales and globally, but in the end if children don't speak the language then it will die out in a couple of generations.

Language revitalisation: one stinky, baked-beany, book-eating kid at a time (image: www.walesonline.co.uk)

This isn't a morbid fascination I have with a dying language though - it's a giddily optimistic eagerness to see a language kick ass and take names, and as a Welsh language learner I get to see this not just as a passing spectator but ever ever so slightly from the inside. I have something invested in this.

I think partly my interest comes from being a bit of a sap - I cry (bawl) when the ugly person on a talent show has the best voice, or the soldier's dog goes crazy over its owner's arrival at the airport, or the overworked single mum of five comes home from work one day to find Oprah has renovated her entire house and also here's a new car and a holiday. You know, that sort of thing. GO LITTLE LANGUAGE GO.

But I also have a slight but weird political bent (I'm sure I get this from my dad), in the sense of being interested in policies and people.

I love the idea that government has the potential to create policies that will have a positive impact on people's lives. For example, the Welsh Government/Llwyodraeth Cymru has its "Welsh Language Strategy 2012 - 2017" (which you can read here as a 53 page pdf). I think there is unfortunately already some backpedalling on this about whether certain targets will be met by 2017 and who's responsible for it, but that's part of the political game. (Even though it sucks. Which it does. But it makes victory sweeter, right?)

Following the Welsh political/language scene also throws a very interesting light onto the upcoming vote for independence in Scotland. Maybe it won't happen this referendum; it may happen the next. I'm guessing Scotland will have to do it before Wales does, and then what a game changer for Wales if when they become independent.

Of course rising to meet the challenge of the apparent hopelessness of the Welsh government to create any kind of positive language change (that may be hyperbole; I don't know. I write because I'm ignorant, innit) are the "grassroots organisations", by which I mean people.

People like the folk at Say Something In Welsh, the Welsh language course I'm doing (and a reason in itself to stick with the language), and FfrinDiaith (hosted at the SSiW website), who help language learners to link up with language speakers. I believe very strongly in what these people are doing and they give me a lot of hope for the future of Welsh.

So I'm very much looking forward to see how all these things interact and keep on interacting and growing to essentially rework the future of a language (and a nation?); I don't for a second believe that as a twenty-something year old living in Australia I can positively influence that change but nevertheless by learning Welsh I get to see that change as something that influences me and that's pretty cool.

Happy December!

The more I blog, the more things I want to blog about, but today I'm not even going to touch my "to blog" list - instead, I'm just going to make a note for posterity (or whatever) that today is December 1st and I'm totes excited about what's ahead.

First, my sister will be in town for Christmas. SO EXCITING ASDLKGJASDLGKJ.

Second, I start my Teaching English qualification this week - the in-class bit, anyway. THIS IS ALSO VERY EXCITING. I'm looking forward to starting to get my head around what teaching English to speakers of other languages actually involves; I'm looking forward to going back to study and swotting it up like a nerd; heck, I'm even just looking forward to a break in my regular routine. I'm expecting to be dead tired by Sunday night, but also inspired and full of ideas. (Are they the same thing? Possibly.)

Third, I'm not so much excited but definitely relieved that National Novel Writing Month is over. Now to be honest, I do quite like my characters in their own egotistical, narcissistic, ridiculous way, and I think the "themes" of my novel (are we really going to call them "themes"? oh well) are interesting. But I'm a little bit over Nanowrimo - I wouldn't mind focusing on writing quality over quantity for a change - and I'm glad to not have the (achievable, but ever present) word count looming over my head.

Fourth, CHRISTMASTIMEJOY. I love Christmas, I love Christmas traditions, and I really love getting time off work. I've still got a few things to think about for next year so it'll be nice to have the space to do that; I also want to spend a bit of time on my TESOL electives; and also I'd like to, you know, sleep. Sleep is good.

In lieu of a proper blog post ending, here, have a picture of me posing like Bear Grylls at the top of Snowdon/Yr Wyddfa. I'm not saying I'm as badass as Bear, I'm just saying we both took the train up and also I looked better than him doing it.

Bear and me.

on bilingualism

Those of us who haven't grow up speaking two languages I suspect have all asked ourselves the question "when do I get to call myself bilingual?"

I think this is a very personal question with as many answers as speakers and it's also something that's very important because ultimately we're not just asking about our skill level - we're asking about our identity.

My guess is that ~adult language learners who are primarily learning the language with the hope of one day speaking it - and this includes the majority of high school language learners - have a very high standard of what it means to be bilingual. I speak my first language with this level of (quite frankly extravangant) competency and ease; I can only be bilingual when I speak my second language with the same comptency and ease.

And this is a legit definition of bilingualism because isn't it basically what people who are bilingual from birth (or near enough) do?

Well, maybe. Without doing any empirical research whatsoever or even checking wikipedia I'm pretty sure that lots of bilingual-from-birth-ers do not actually speak both languages equally well. One language gets stronger from being used more often; one language has been used for academic things; one language is spoken with lots of code-switching to the other; etc.

Personally, I would love to be as fluent in Welsh as I am in English - which, let's be honest, is not exactly a perfect level of fluency at the best of times, let alone when I'm tired or excited or a little bit tipsy or wearing new shoes or its raining or I need to go to the toilet.

Nevertheless I am nowhere near that level of perfect dysfluency in Welsh. But, shortly after I came back from The Big Welsh Holiday Of 2013, I decided that I had had too many interesting conversations about a range of topics - regardless of how slowly I spoke, how slowly I was spoken to, how many repetitions I needed, or how many words I fudged - to not call myself bilingual.

My idea of what I considered necessary for bilingualism is different because I have been able to focus on "communicate now" rather than "speak one day".

I think of course there are some situations where you can sort of measure how fluent you are in your second language and there's a standard to be attained - for example, getting a job in your second language, or passing a particular language exam. But if you aren't fluent enough for that standard, it doesn't mean you're not bilingual - it just means you aren't fluent enough for that standard. (Yet.)

You can be bilingual with just a few words in your second language. I work with kids who are considered bilingual and who are pretty rubbish in both their langauges, and that's absolutely fine and it's also really important to acknowledge that they are still bilingual.

I think something happens when you call yourself bilingual - I'm not sure what yet, but it has something to do with how long some of us have been wanting to speak a second language and how it feels to be suddenly a member of the non-monolingual world and how important language is to our lives and given that importance, how we now see our linguistic identity.

So kids, when do you get to call yourself bilingual?

Why Welsh II

Yesterday I wrote briefly about my reasons for starting to learn Welsh - I like learning languages, and also I wanted to go to Wales for a holiday.

(By the way, I thought I would write less frequent, longer posts, but I think I might have a go at writing more frequent, shorter posts. Not that it matters to my readership of one (my mother). So we'll see how this goes.)

But as people have objected - "they speak English in Wales, don't they?"

This is true; I think you'd be hard pressed nowadays to find a single speaker of Welsh in Wales who didn't also speak English. Of course if you went to the Welsh settlement of Y Wladfa in Patagonia, Argentina, you may find Welsh speakers who do not in fact also speak English, but Spanish. Ha! So in that instance, if you didn't speak Spanish but you did speak Welsh, you would be thinking "what a useful language this is".

"What a pretty flag this is" - Y Wladfa flag

But yes - primarily Welsh speakers in Wales also speak English, so what's the point?

The point is that both English and Welsh are - officially - the national languages of Wales, and that Wales is its own country. It's not actually England. I mean, duh, but although Wales and England have been very much intertwined after centuries of British colonisation and post-colonisation, in perfect theoretical and ideological terms Welsh is absolutely as important as English.

Learning tipyn bach o Gymraeg before going on holidays to Wales is a way of recognising that Welsh is an official language of the country. To me, it's a socio-political statement. It's a sign of respect.

I realise that may sound incredibly patronising for reasons I can't quite put my finger on and to be honest, I didn't get to speak that much Welsh in Wales (other than meeting up with other learners), so my respect doesn't count for tiddly beans. But I made an effort to start most of my interactions with shw mae and end them with diolch and on a couple of occasions the person definitely did a double take before answering croeso, and I feel like in that tiny way I had been able to also say, you know what, this language matters. Your language matters.

Because obviously that's what this is all about, me feeling good about making you feel good - oh, there it is, that's what makes this patronising. Oh well.

Guess what? That's not even the last good reason I have for learning Welsh! There's more!

So, what do you think? How important would it be to you to learn a minority language in a bilingual country? How do you see minority languages in bilingual nations? How about Welsh national independence, huh? Ooh, now there's a can of worms...

Why Welsh?

When people ask why I'm learning Welsh, I think I brace myself a little inwardly, knowing that whatever answer I give will never be quite the right answer - they will nod, and smile, and say “Yes, but why?”

In all honesty, there wasn't much thought to it in the first place; but much like I started being vegetarian because I wanted to be cool like my sister who was vegetarian and then later on found lots and lots of other (actually good) reasons to be vegetarian, I now have a swag of reasons to learn Welsh - so let's try and answer this question for good, shall we?

The first thing I usually say is "Well, I really like learning languages" or "Wel, dw i really hoffi dysgu ieithoedd" depending on who I'm talking to. I think this is supposed to make me sound like some amazing polyglot with language notches all over my belt, but what I actually mean is I've got a long line of failed failed failed language learning attempts and forays behind me - including Indonesian, French, Italian, Chinese, Estonian, Lithuanian, Bundu Dusun, Spanish, Autralian Sign Language, and the lyrics to Sich Offnen by Australian indie rock band 'Not From There' (so, German?) - so at least the idea of having a crack at Welsh wasn't completely out of left field.

For people who don't buy "I want to learn it because it's there" as enough reason in itself - which is most people - I then add that I was planning a holiday to Wales so why not learn a bit of Welsh?

(Apaprently some people need a reason for that as well - really? have you seen Wales? Why would you not want to go on holidays there? But then I mess things up by saying I wanted to go to Wales because I was learning Welsh, and it all gets very chicken and egg.)

DO YOU WANT TO BE HERE YES/YES? (Criccieth at sunrise, by me.)

This is legit as far as my own thought process went before I was downloading some Welsh podcasts and dreaming of fluency. I like talking; I want to go to Wales. Okay then.

Of course the obvious objection to "I'm going to go to Wales so why not learn a bit of Welsh?" is "but everyone in Wales speaks English right?" That's when it gets very interesting and very political, very quickly. And that is the subject for another post.

how do you word?

Ahh, toothpastefordinner.com ...providing me with cartoons to illustrate my point when words won't do. (IRONY!! THIS IS ACTUALLY IRONY!! I DID IT! I RECOGNISED IRONY IN A SITUATION.)

Previously in my blog, I wrote about vocabulary explosions. Today, because I want to, I'm going to write about how I'm learning new vocabulary in Welsh.

The main thing I like to do is to read the BBC news in Welsh . The BBC have a really cute app on their site that allows you to hover over words that are highlighted in yellow to get a quick translation. I like to do this in the morning while I drink tea and look out at my balcony with the dead plants because I'm posh like that.

I pick four or five words from an article, and plug them into my Anki SRS flashcard app on my phone. (My phone is quickly becoming a language learning dream. More on that later, perhaps.) SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System, by the way - it's intended to make sure that you only practice a word "right before" you're about to forget it, but that's debatable - I think of it as basically a way of practising hard words more frequently and easier words less frequently.

I try and go through my flashcards every day, and it only takes about five minutes, so no biggie there.

Anki also helps me remember what words I want to remember, if that makes sense - I'm reminded to use some of this new vocab. Well, that's the idea anyway, though I usually don't use a word straight away, unless I'm very deliberately going to be talking about a particular topic. What I've found instead is that I start using a new word after I hear someone else say it  - maybe that's the last bit of the learning process that cements the word.

I also get new vocab from skyping in Welsh - usually by the end of a conversation I'll have at least half a dozen new words that I've asked to have spelt for me, and I put them in the Anki app as well. I've started downloading some Welsh flashcards for my Memrise app, but I'm not sure about that yet.

I don't get much vocab from listening to Radio Cymru, to be honest - usually because I listen to it in the car and then I forget the word before I have time to look it up.

....and this is an awkward end to a blog post.

on vocabulary explosions

As we aaaaall know, toddlers are linguistic geniuses who learn like 3000 new words every day whereas adults are veritable cretins who can't string two words together in another language to order a cup of coffee. (There were extenuating circumstances; I didn't know it was culturally weird to order a takeaway coffee in Italy; it all went downhill from there.)

Thing is, I don't think this is entirely true. Okay, yeah, most kids have the kind of capacity to pick up language subconsciously that makes the slow, laborous task of adult language learning seem, well, slow and laborous - except that actually I think we get a few breaks along the way.

I've been thinking about how much easier (easier? really? am I allowed to say that? it's a relative term; it's staying) it is for me to pick up Welsh vocabulary now than when I first started learning the language.

(People like to complain about Welsh mutations (treigladau), and sure, they're fun, but I just wish every word in the Welsh dictionary didn't start with a 'c'.)

As a totally unscientific observation, the more vocabulary I learn, the quicker I pick up new vocabulary. I have a few ideas why this might be so:

• Words are related. When you can start to pull words apart - with prefixes and suffixes and the like - and you can see how those parts are put back together, suddenly it's not so hard to remember that anghyfreithlon means 'illegal' when you've seen the 'freith' bit in other words relating to law, and the 'ang' bit in other negative words, and the 'lon' bit in adjectives or whatever they're called
• Improved memory capacity/capability. Just throwing it out there. Right? I'm sure you improve your ability to remember things the more you use it. I read that somewhere, I just can't remember where. (ha ha.) But seriously, they (whoever "they" are) talk about neuroplasticity as something that continues throughout your lifetime and is not just the magical elixir of screaming three year olds so probably right now I am forcing my brain to make new neural pathways that are better able to retain new vocabulary - albeit at a slower rate than when I was a kid.
• More accessible grammatical structures within which to put your new vocab. Legit. What I mean is that through practising other language stuff, like grammatical structure, I get better at those things which means that when I'm speaking Welsh, I use less mental resources on trying to put a sentence together which frees up some room in my brain to dig up some new vocab.

Is adult vocabulary explosion a real phenomenon? If so, what other reasons might there be for it? How do we optimise it and stuff?

Linguistic Real Estate

or, the logistics of learning two languages at once.

So this is my metaphor for learning a language.

You start with a handful of words and a smattering of grammar, and you build yourself a little mud hut that may or may not survive an unexpected sneeze, let alone the winter. But slowly - or quickly - you build up this crappy little mud hut until it becomes a kind of granny flat, and then a tiny one by one house, and then when the foundations are a bit stronger you kind of start adding rooms with new areas of vocabulary and suddenly there's a whole new gable of the pluplerfect subjunctive blah coming off one side and you're doing a bang up job of decorating that place with all sorts of cute adjectives and expressions and everyday slang.

Linguistic real estate, right?

But as home owners know, when do you ever stop? You don't stop. It's never finished. You'll be doing home renovations and touch up jobs for the rest of your life, if you let yourself.

The question is, then, when do you redirect some of the energy you're putting into beautifying this one piece of lingustic real estate, into a whole nother pile of sticks and mud? Can you work on both places at once? What if you put all your energy into this new shack of language and then you go back to your old place and now your interior design is so last year and also the whole west wing has collapsed because your supporting wall wasn't that supporting after all?

Okay, enough with the analogies, you get the picture.

So here's my problem in real terms. I'm feeling pretty good about my Welsh ar hyn o bryd. I can have an interesting conversation without relying too heavily on English and without asking for every second word to be repeated (just every third) so long as my conversation partner is... talking... like... this... I mean, I really feel like I've come a long way. I'm even sometimes starting to think of myself as bilingual (NO WHAT? ADDING THAT to the list of things to blog about).

And now I'm starting to dip my toes into Lithuanian (there's a reason, legit) but I don't want to stop learning Welsh but I'm not sure I can do both at once or you know, hey, how do I do this?

• is there a point where I can say "yup, my Welsh is at this level and this is a good place to take a breather"?
• can I learn two languages at once?
• if so, how?
• do I study them on different days of the week? different settings? one at home and one at work? (no I don't sit at my desk going through vocab what who said that?)
• do I even have the energy to start over with a swamp hut?
• what if one language inteferes with the other?

Answers on a post card, please. 

so close, so far

After having spent four and a half years at university (bachelor of science with honours in linguistics thank you very much) telling anyone who would listen and anyone else as well that I would not, could not, was not ever going to be a speech pathologist - I found myself a few months after graduation, applying to do a masters of speech pathology.

There was a good reason for this change of heart. I'd been working with a little autistic kid who was having a bit of difficulty with language and in the structure of the programme that I was given to follow, I was basically teaching him English - first pronouns, then nouns, then present tense verbs, until one very exciting day when I looked at the updated programme and saw that we were going to be starting on past tense verbs.

I don't think the kid cared much to be honest but I thought it was probably the best thing ever. It meant that he was going to be able to tell me not just what he was doing in that moment, but what he had done every moment before that. Like this whole world of conversation - heck, this whole world full stop - was going to open up for us. Very exciting.

So then I thought, hey, yeah, I want to do this for a proper living. Not really knowing what speech pathology was - yes, I decried an entire profession without knowing very much about it and now you should know to expect that sort of thing from me - I decided that being a speech pathologist was probably the best way for me to get to do this language teaching thing, like, all the time. For a living and stuff.

The thing about speech pathology is - well, it's a lot of things. It's one of the most broad ranging and varied and misunderstood jobs I know (doesn't everyone think they're the most misunderstood?) - but it really is at least broad ranging, from stuttering and accent reduction to articulation to language to voice to swallowing to literacy to sensory stuff and as far beyond that as people will stretch your job description.

But the one thing it kind of really isn't, is language teaching.

I can help a kid acquire language. I can help an adult regain their language. But what I was doing with the autistic kid, sitting with him and giving him words and showing him how to use them and stuff - teaching language - I just don't really get to do that as a speechie.

And maybe there's something in that. I mean, there is. Language educators could take a couple of pages from the old speechie guide book and instead of just teaching languages in this sort of provisional manner, they could be supporting people to work out how to get language themselves. There's a lot to be said for that approach and I'll put it on my list of things to blog about.

In the meantime, though, at least for me in my situation, it feels like I'm so close but so far from doing that thing that got me going with that little kid. So here we go, then; this is what the blog is all about, with a few meanderings along the way. Me, our loveable protagonist, getting back - no, going forward - to language education.

in which I write my first blog post and try to think of just one thing I want to say

my blog, take two. I tried to do this all over on wordpress but apparently it and my computer don't get along so here we are, back on the ol' blogger, and I've just spent 15 minutes tyring to extricate this blog from all my other google stuff (include other, older blogs I've written - oh, the horrors) so this better be the one.

It feels silly to rewrite my last first blog post even though y'all don't actually know that this is the second first post. But I know. So instead, I'll just finish this post quick smart with the list of possible things I might blog about and then we'll tally ho onto the third first post in which I actually write something with, you know, content.

THINGS WHAT I MIGHT WRITE ABOUT AND STUFF

• language learning
• language teaching
• teaching English
• Welsh/Cymraeg
• Lithuanian
• also Estonian
• and possibly Spanish?
• hiraeth
• travel
• stupid nicknames
• the power of public accountability
• bilingualism
• (you get the picture that there’s going to be lots of language stuff, right?)
• tiny houses
• music
• breaking kettles and sinking boats
• hiding under my bed and wishing this was all over
• does that give you any idea of what I’m going to be doing this year?
• this is the end of the list now