“52″ – Subversive e-book for subversive teachers

First, I saw this:

Then, I thought ‘wow, I really need this e-book’. And run to a friend of mine to buy it (thanks, Olek!). Now, I can say ‘WOW, YOU really need it too!’.

The full title of this little pearl is “52 – A year of subversive activity for the ELT classroom” and so it was meant for English teachers. But I think there’s a great message the authors, Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Meddings, have sent out with this collection of activities. We, the language teachers, cannot confine our students to a sterile classroom enviroment. It’s not where the learners will be using the language for the rest of their lives (hopefully!).

This is actually what bugs me lately, my sheer unability to overcome the textbooks and classes. The fear of pushing myself forward, to the real world, at least in terms of receptive skills for now. Two of my Japanese students lately asked me about passages of text they were translating after classes. For themselves! One was listening to a song, the other was reading a novel in Japanese. Then I’m not that bad in the pursuit of making the foreign language a part of their lives. What about myself?

But back to the book; it has 52 short chapters, one for each week of the year, introducing an activity or a set of activities dealing with a rather difficult topic. You’ll see why “every potato is the same”, what the way you dress conveys to your students, how to phone a CEO you recently broke up with to beg for a second chance and when should you reconsider believing an advert.

I think he authors did a great job with finding inspiring, authentic material and creating engaging activities. This makes me wonder – should I teach about call girls or homeless in Japan? Maybe I should talk about the history of how Ido was born out of Esperanto in my Esperanto classes? Polish classes with alcohol abuse and domestic violence? I already remember big lectures I gave on Japanese curse words and the language of Japanese hentai and porn industry. Those felt great, but I was younger then. Do I still have what it takes to teach topics like that?

A small booklet like this can be, as you see, really, really inspiring. I recommend it for every teacher out there, regardless of what language do you teach! You can [buy it here] for only 6 bucks ! There’s also [a blog] dedicated to the ongoing evolution of this project and you should read it too! You’ll get a better idea about what you are investing your money in.

Podcast on my Motivation Shift

Please bear with my voice (with it’s umms and aaahs, this was a spontanous recording) for 3-4 minutes and tell me…

…what do you do to take your language away from your classroom and textbooks? I’m eager to listen to everything you have to say! (Or read everything you might want to write ;D)

Breaking The Shame Syndrome

OK, I wonder how many people out there can relate to my situation.
I’m overwhelmed (there’s a great sign for that in ASL) and afraid this year more than I have been anytime before. This year is a total disaster – I spend too much time at hospital and doctors’ offices. I’m a mess at work and at lectures, I failed to get another job to repair my miserable budget. Then, cherry on the top, my fiance dumped me out of the blue.

I really refrained from foreign languages. I even resigned from my Esperanto course. I shun away from blogging and ask myself 100 times a day what it is I really, really want.

Do male polyglots even struggle with situations like this? Is anyone really bothered?

Anyways, here’s what I’m up to lately, after slowly getting my s*** together:

• Learning German – and with a tutor like Robo there’s absolutely no way I can fail at this attempt.
• Translating another Aaron’s e-book – this time I’m working on Polish version of “Getting Started Guide” (Polish working title: “Przewodnik na Dobry Początek”)
• Publishing my own book on Japanese Sign Language – you can view the announcment about “Wstęp do Japońskiego Języka Migowego” on my publisher’s page. It’s gonna be out later this month!
• Writing an e-book on Japanese particles – with Michał Moroz, one of my students. We barely started, but the first version of “PARszywe PARtykuły” (ang. “Those Nasty Particles!”) should be out in a month or two.
• Changing everything about my graduation thesis – please, don’t throw rocks at me!
• Preparing for an upcoming student conference on linguistics – more about this in May, probably.

Especially for Kamey: SMILE!
At least it won't make things any worse!

Duolingo – The Story and The Rant

Out of the online tools for independant language learning Duolingo is the most promising.

First of all, I am a person who thinks that 1 or 2 hours of classes a week in your target language is not enough. You need constant contact with the language (although I am very far from Khazhumoto’s AJATT approach). But apart from movies, cartoons, songs and talking with the natives you also need some core language training, at least in my opinion. This is the most difficult to achieve as even choosing textbooks with answer keys sometimes is not enough. This is where Duolingo comes into play.

The Story

I was mesmerized by the sole story behind this service. Luis von Ahn, the guy behind CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA technology (this one is interesting too! Browse around!), sat down with his students and started to think why isn’t access to information equal. The answer to that is simple: despite the illusion that the Internet is an English-dominated plane, it isn’t. There are tonnes of pages not translated into English and even more users who never even learned how to say “I love you” (the common saying among linguists goes it’s the most popular English phrase). To bridge this inequality von Ahn’s crew came up with the idea to translate the web, yet we all know that’s quite a costly feat. Hence, they had to think up a way around it; making people around the web do it for free… but how? It went smothly with Wikipedia, but they wanted something more.

Duolingo was the service that Luis von Ahn created with his students to answer aforementioned problem. It’s a language learning enviroment that teaches languages and incorporates translating short sentences on a given level of language mastery into each lesson or chapter. Therefore, users not only translate the web for free in a nearly professional standard but they learn their target language for a lifetime! And all of it for free!!

The Rant

My Duolingo Profile - feel free to add me!

I used similar tools during my language learning journey. The one I liked the best was old iKnow / smartFM (changing it’s name back and forth, giving less quality for more money in the end). But Duolingo and their cute, green owl mascot Duo won my heart. I’m head over heels in love with Duolingo even though it’s not perfect yet.

Because I fear this rant might get lenghty, here’s a list of what I did’nt and did like in this service:

BOO!

- Signing up – Duolingo is still in private beta. You provide them with your e-mail and wait and wait and… yes, wait. I waited for a couple of months and forgot I had ever signed up for the beta.
- Few languages to offer – Duolingo still developes and now you can only learn German, English and Spanish. I’ve started to learn German last year, so it was perfect, but for the rest of you, people learning Turkish, Japanese or Swahili – nothing can be done but to… erm, yes, wait.
- Buggy sentence translation system – The whole concept behind it is great, but sometimes you get just one random word to translate or English quote from the German article due to your level being low. Still counts as translating a sentence.

WOW!

- RPG-like skill tree and level-up system – That’s my favourite part. I see the best of edutaiment here! I got hooked head on. Getting EXP points for what you learn, unblocking skills and mastering them gives a very addictive touch to the process of learning.
- Design – If it’s pleasent for the eyes it’s user-friendly. I demand my tools user-friendly!
- It trains ALL needed skills – By this I mean: Writing, Reading, Speaking and Listening. With some grammar and translation thrown in.
- Short lessons – And you decide how many you do in one sitting! One lesson takes me around 2-10 minutes depending on how much new material I want to attain.
- Daily practice sessions – To repeat what you learned. Duo the owl is sad when you forget to do reviews. You can opt into having it mailed to your inbox when it’s time to do it. Another bright side is that the sessions don’t overaccumulate – there’s one and there’s another and that’s it. Even when you get back after a week in the hospital (*wink*) you have only 2 sessions waiting for you. Oh, and a sad owl !
- Community – The community now is so-so, not so many people but rather active. You can compete with other students, ask them quations and share you insights. Needs more people, but it’s rather cool even now.
- Reciprocity – You’re actually helping somebody by those translations. Apart from your own language mastery, that is. Ain’t that great?
- Works well with Facebook and Twitter – I use only the latter, but I’m giving thumbs up for the integration with those two popular social platforms.

Probably the best summary for how much I like Duolingo is the fact that for the first time in my life I am considering learning Spanish because it’s the other language that Duolingo offers and I am a little excited to try it out. But no sooner than in summer, I have a lot to catch up with in my Esperanto studies.

Sickness, E-Book and Medical Japanese

Sorry for this longish hiatus. To be completely honest with you: I am a sickly and puny person. Since I was a little girl I am suffering from type I onset diabetis. Apart from that, there’s always something wrong with me. Last two weeks I spent at either a hospital or doctors’ offices. There’s always a probability that’ll happen now and then and sometimes twitter is my only way to let you know – so follow my twitter – I try to keep it full of useful content and links with some personal updates thrown in-between.

While I was at the hospital though, one fantastic thing happened – just before I had been hospitalized, I finished the translation of Aaron Myers “Sustaining” as a part of I-586 Project. You can find my Polish translation [at the bottom of this page]. It’s immensly fun to work with Aaron and I hope we can get all his guides translated at one point. We’re planning to work on “Getting Started Guide” next and we’ll definitely let you know when it’s up. Please spread the word through any media you find suitable. I would also love to hear from you – any comments, insights, reviews will be more than appreciated!

I also wasn’t SO lazy as to do nothing, but lost count in my linguistic diet process, so I’d probably better start it over. While making all those tests done, I learned some nifty new words in Japanese. All with the theme of hospital in them (I chose 20 for this post):

• 点滴　（てんてき） – a drip
• 痣　（あざ） – a bruise
• 血液検査　（けつえきけんさ） – a blood test
• 車椅子　（くるまいす） – a wheelchair
• レントゲン　- X-ray
• 面会時間　（めんかいじかん） – visiting hours
• 処方箋　（しょほうせん） – a prescribtion
• 血圧　（けつあつ）　－ blood pressure
• 吸入器　（きゅうにゅうき）　－ an inhaler
• 失神する　（しっしん）　－ to faint
• 胃痛　（いつう）　－ stomach ache
• 脈拍　（みゃくはく） – pulse
• 包帯　（ほうたい）　（を　する）　－ (to apply) a bandage
• 診察　（しんさつ）　－ medical examination
• 膵臓　（すいぞう）　－ a pancreas
• 神経系　（しんけいけい） – the nervous system
• 黄斑　（おうはん）　－　macula lutea (macula of retina)
• 血糖値　（けっとうち）　-  blood glucose level
• 高血糖症　（こうけっとうしょう）　－ hyperglycemia
• 外来患者　（がいらいかんじゃ）　- an outpatient

Do you strive to learn new words as you come across daily situations?

Charles Darwin Day

Today is Charles Darwin Day! This led me to a short research on the word “evolution”. Please, have a look at my findings.

My first thought was that “evolution” is an internationalism, a word very similar across languages, but then I realized that it has a Latin pedigree (pardon a language joke here, I ment “origin” of course) where “evolutio” means developement. It must be spread across North America and Europe, but nowhere else. This was my thesis and below you may find how I verified it across known or semi-known languages:

English: (an) evolution
Polish: ewolucja (fem.)
German: der Evolution
French: l’évolution
Spanish: la evolución (often more specifically reffered as to: evolución biológica)
Czech: evoluce
Russian: эволюция (evolyutsiya)
Esperanto: evolucio (or evoluismo)

Pretty, huh? Everything according to plan. Let’s look at some other continents

Swahili (Africa): mageuko ya spishi
Tagalog (spoken in Philippines): ebolusyon
Japanese: 進化 (しんか / shinka) – first sign here means “developement, going forward”, second “a change”
Korean: 진화 (jinhwa)
Chinese: 进化 (Jìnhuà)
Bahasa Indonesa: Evolusi
Quechua (South America): rikch’aqyay (or iwulusyun!)

So isn’t that interesting? Seems that each country that had a lot to do with European dominance in education has a similar root for “evolution” in their speech. This is clearly seen in Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesa and even in Quechua! But in the Chinese domination plane – so in Korean or Japanese we find the same stems as well. I wonder if there’s any other “dominant planes” like that? Maybe in Arabic languages there’s also a common stem, similar in all Middle East languages? Swahili (AKA Kiswahili) is spoken widely across countries like Kenya, Kongo or Burundi (and many more) – does is prevail there, too? Isn’t “spishi” derived from “species”, as “mageuko” is evolution or fluctuation? How is it expressed in languages like Toki pona, Hausa or Hebrew? How’s “evolution” in your language or languages you know?

For your viewing pleasure, I also include a nice and simple evolutionary tree of Indo-European language family that I found yesterday at www.scienceinschool.org Nifty, huh?

What’s the deal with ogonek?

ogonek

Among all the diacritics (signs modifying basic letters) I know, ogonek is the only one that has a Polish name worldwide (although in Lithuania they call it nosinė). Literally that is a diminutive of “ogon”, so it means “little tail” and indeed, it looks like one.

In Polish, it denotes nasalization. In other words, air produced while speaking should escape through nose and mouth simultaneously, so in Polish it never occurs during onset (= at the beginning of a word).

The biggest WTF for Polish language learners is in fact, why (the. hell.) is Ę a nasalized E, but Ą is nasalized… O?! Why don’t we write it with Ǫ that can be found in Old Church Slavonic or many native American languages (Navajo, Apache, Dogrib and more)?

Of course, we can find the answer in the history of Polish. There were 3, not 2 nasal vowels in Polish long time ago (I have no knowledge on when it happened approximately). Ą was a long nasal A, and there were a letter for a short nasal A, sounding more like nasal O, and the difference dissapeared at one point.

Tell me if you have learnt any othe language that uses “ogonek” and what it denotes in those languages, because I’m simply curious.

For all the people trying hard to master Polish pronounciation me and my fiance (Krzysztof, you’re amazing!) prepared a short recording to show similarities and differences in those five vowels: E / Ę , A / O / Ą (and similar in speech: -om- / -en- ).

That’s the script:

E Ę
A O Ą

BAK BOK BĄK

LĘK LEK

ON KARZE / JA KARZĘ

BYĆ KOBIETĄ / DAĆ KOBIETOM

TO BENZYNA / TO BĘBEN

That’s the translation of the recording:

E Ę
A O Ą

fuel tank, side, gadfly

fear, medicine

he punishes / I punish

(to) be a woman / to give to women

it’s petrol / it’s a drum

Hope it helps! Anyone out there interested in Polish?

3 Similarities Between Dieting And Language Learning

Ok, I know, first of all, there’s a huge difference: when you are on a diet you want to LOSE something (fat) and when you learn you want to GAIN something (knowledge). But apart from that, is it really so different?

1. Motivation!

There’s one easy way to motivate you in the course of your diet. It requires only a pen and some paper – and I’m going to try it for a month or so for my language learning. You have probably heard that the key to success are (more often than not) information. When you want to become slim it’s useful to write down EVERYTHING you eat. Therefore, you know how many calories you get each day and if your diet is balanced or not. Who cares if you eat only 1000 calories when all you ate were 2 hamburgers? It motivates you to actually eat less and compose healthier dishes. I think it might be the case in learning foreign languages too. I shall write down what I actually do to learn languages each day (e.g. 2 lessons on Duolingo, 1 chapter of a book in target language, 2 grammar activities etc.). Hopefully, if you try it out as well, it will give you the impression you do very little and will motivate you to do more. Also, it should help you to find balance – maybe you do too much vocabulary tasks and no listening? Or you always treat watching movies in your target language equally to full-fledged lessons and activities? Maybe you so much attention to one of your pet languages that you left out others? I will try to keep a list like that and I challenge you to do the same!

2. Sustainability!

If you don’t want that nasty yo-yo effect in your life, you cannot simply go on a diet once in a while – you need to introduce healthy food to your life on a regular basis. It’s the same with languages, is it not? Once you remember new words and constructions you should try to introduce them in you speech and writing as soon as possible. At first you need to force yourself and it comes out awkward, but then you keep it forever! No more reffering to “kettle” as “the thing you boil water with” (note: it’s a very important speaking strategy to be able to define words that you don’t know like that, but it’s also more efficient to use precise terms whenever you can!).

3. Simultaneity!

Diet is more effective when accompanied by exercise routine. Learning is more effective when accompanied by fun. You need to make some breaks often, so your brain has enough time to sort new data and store them in long-term memory. Some bloggers out there claim that your fun should also be spiced up by language learning, but it shouldn’t. You need to make something totally different like manual tasks (repairing a bicycle, crocheting, baking some muffins for dessert…), social tasks (having a chat with you friend, playing football, phoning your mum…) or having a lazy time (playng an easy computer game, having a nap, eating something you like…). There’s really no harm in NOT learning languages (or rewarding yourself with a chocolate bar each weekend after sticking to your menu for the whole week!).

NOW – CALL FOR ACTION!

Join me in the analysis of your learning habits! Keep writing down what steps you took on your way for learning your target language(s)! Write what you did, in what language and how much time did it take. I’ll keep a similar list myself and we will try to analyze them next month!

And if you think I missed a point in my entry, please add your ideas in the comment section below!

Wisława Szyborska (1923-2012)

Well, I planned a post on Esperanto today, but today is definitely not my cup of tea, so I had to change my plans. I’m blue today because one of my favourite Polish poets died – Wisława Szymborska. Maybe you’ve heard of her as she won a Nobel Prize back in 1996. If not, please google her poems. I will write a longer note on Esperanto later (because @RokuTW asked me to!) but today, let me just post a translation of “Nic dwa razy” by Szymborska – my personal #1 in her whole writings.

“Nenio dufoje”

(translated by Jarosław Zawadzki – who is a translator between a Polish-Chinese-English-Esperanto bundle)

Nenio dufoje okazas,
Kaj ne okazos ja pro tio,
Ke sen sperteco ni naskiĝis
Kaj mortos ankaŭ ni sen scio.

Se gestudantoj de la mondo
Ni estus, diras mi la veron,
Neniam povus ni ripeti
Iun ajn vintron au someron.

Neniu tago denoviĝos
Ne estos du noktoj similaj
Du samaj kisoj ja ne eblas
Du vid-al-vidoj samtrankvilaj.

Hieraŭ kiam iu laŭte
Ekdiris ĉe mi vian nomon
Mi sentis kvazaŭ tra l’ fenestro
Ruĝrozo flugus en la domon.

Hodiaŭ kiam ni kunestas
La muron mi rigardas feble.
Ruĝrozo? Kiel roz’ aspektas?
Ĝi estas flor’? Aŭ ŝtono eble?

Ho kial vi malbona horo
Miksiĝas kun la tim’ kruele.
Vi estas, do vi devas pasi
Vi pasos – do ja estas bele.

Ni ridetantaj, brakumantaj
Al konsentoj provstreĉu futuraj
Kvankam estas ni du similaj
Kiel akvaj du gutoj puraj.

Why you need to love bushu to learn Japanese?

Bushu (部首) – also known as radicals (and in Polish as radykały, klucze, pierwiastki, elementy składowe etc.) – are the main component of any given kanji. Nowadays we also use it for any sub-component of an ideograph (such as kanji or hanzi).

Top 4 Reasons You Really Need To Study Bushu:

1. Most kanji dictionaries are useless without it.
Japanese dictionaries offer several ways to find specific sign in them: number of strokes (kakusuu), meaning (imi), readings (onyomi and kunyomi) etc. But most often you use kanji dictionaries to find an unknown kanji you came across in a text. You don’t know its meaning, let alone reading and there are plenty of 11-stroke kanji! You’d better get to know your dictionary and which system of classifying bushu it uses. Most commonly, there’s a table of 214 radicals, but there are different systems ranging from approx. 190 over 300.

2. They give you a hint on reading.
Some kanji use the same component to determine the reading.
For example in kanji for a language 語　（ご） with following bushu: 言う  (to speak) and 口 (mouth), those are obvious in a sign for “language”, and　五 (five) which has nothing to do with speaking whatsoever (except the “At-Least-Five-Minutes-A-Day” rules of learning a new language) but is read the same as 語 – yomikata for both is ご!
You need to learn the easier kanji first, as Japanese children learn them, to make use of such hints.

3. They give you a hint on meaning.
Sometimes a lot of us know (or can guess ;D) what a kanji means – the reason for that being the semantic richness each ideograph carries. For example, here’s a kanji for tree 木 (those who learn(t) from Basic Kanji Book or Minna No Nihongo Kanji Book are struck with the similarity of this sign to a real tree!). Now, this component can be found in 595 kanji (according to Wakan) or even 1300 kanji (according to tangorin.com) and those will include (examples given only):
- how trees are situated – 森（もり） is a thick forest and　村（むら） is a village (one unit of area surrounded by trees)
- parts of a tree – 葉（は）　is a leaf and 本 （もと） is a root.
- types of trees – 桜（さくら） is a cherry tree and　松（まつ） is a pine tree.
- things made of wood – 机（つくえ）　is clearly a table, 床（ゆか） is the wood you lay indoors so a floor and　柱（はしら） is a pillar or post.
- things that can be done with a tree – so you can rest by a tree 休む（やすむ）, you can plant a tree 植える（うえる） or you can gather a lot of wood 集まる（あつまる）.

4. They help you create mnemonics.
Well, as Koichi pointed at Tofugu lately (point 6 of this article), you have to be aware that not always a meaning of a certain bushu will be all that helprful if you stick to a literal meaning or its reading. Sometimes you have to be more imaginative, but with radicals – YOU CAN! Nothing stops you. For example – in my early days of learning Japanese I couldn’t remember how to write 悪い（わるい） – “bad” – because I had no idea what it stands for actually. Then my friend came over to me and said “Hey, see that… *he pointed the the upper part of the sign* this is a tank. And the thing below?”. “That’s kokoro, a heart” I replied. “See? It’d BAD when a tank would ride over your heart, wouldn’t it?” – I remember this even today. A lot of kanji books take advantage of this fact and teach you weird or funny mnemonics – just don’t forget the best mnemonics are those you create yourself. Personalized knowledge is the best knowledge.

This is a poor scan of an excerpt from "ストーリーで覚える漢字３００"

This article is dedicated to @jpkit (Jasmine-san) who was the first to help me make my mind on which language to write about today ! I also promise to start adding a blogroll and links to Kantan datta today or tomorrow!