learning a spoken-only language

[root]

im curious as to how i could, with some level of confidence, go about about learning a spoken only language with no script and no existing resources.

id like to keep this question generic if possible; although im immediately thinking of a version of sgaw karen in northern thailand. i originally tried learning the script and vocabulary used elsewhere, but the vocabulary seemed to be different enough that i lost confidence in it being a useful approach.

next time around i want to only focus on the language in this particular place (of which i can regularly visit, and record dialogues), and create resources myself.

if this was lanna / northern thai, then id be fairly confident to record dialogues and build up the language that way because it's so similar in structure to thai and my passive northern thai vocabulary isn't terrible. but with sgaw karen it's a very different language.

my initial thoughts are to record dialogues, translate them into thai, turn them into manageable sentences, take a sort of glossika approach to starting with simple structures and work up in complexity, and then lots and lots of speaking and listening repetition ... over many thousands of different sentences.

(side note. i now think learning the scipt wasn't pointless as it gave me a good intro to the pronunciation, but i think id be better to leave the script aside and only use ipa instead, if anything ... unless i planned one day to interact with people who could also use the script).

clearly, i should try it out myself... try an initial dialogue, sentences, speaking and listening repetition, and evaluate ... but im curious as to how people with confidence to learn this way would approach it.

ps im particularly lacking in confidence around the no script element. i learnt thai in the uk before moving to thailand almost exclusively through reading (and later listening and speaking). im experimenting with mandarin now using skritter and glossika and couldn't imagine being able to remember anything (in glossika) without visualising the characters (learnt through skritter and mnemonics). but i feel it could be a very useful thing to do to be scipt independent.

[rdearman]

We did have a member who did a similar sort of thing. I think he was doing it in Lao or Cambodia but anyway what he did was he paid a cartoonist to make a lot of cartoons about simple interactions. So somebody cooking rice, somebody meeting their friend, introducing their wife etc etc. He had all of these cartoons released as open source public domain so you could use those if you want to. I believe what he did was he would ask someone to describe the situation and to come up with the dialogue in the empty speech bubbles and he just recorded everything and then taught himself from the recordings.

[tastyonions]

If you're referring to Bao, I think his recordings were for Thai, so not a scriptless language. Still a cool project, though: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 76EN7jjWok

[Edit: the user is actually Bakunin, as mentioned below.]

[jeffers]

If you're referring to Bao, I think his recordings were for Thai, so not a scriptless language. Still a cool project, though: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 76EN7jjWok

Sadly the webpage linked from the YouTube videos is a dead link. I imagine the pictures could be really useful for working on a scriptless language.


Regarding the original question, for many scriptless languages Bible translations might be a useful source. Wycliffe Bible Translators is a group that is working on making a Bible translation in every human language. From what I understand the translators on the ground will use IPA for scriptless languages, and will often borrow the script from a related language with a script. So it might be possible to find an IPA Bible translation for a scriptless language one wants to learn.

[iguanamon]

We did have a member who did a similar sort of thing. I think he was doing it in Lao or Cambodia but anyway what he did was he paid a cartoonist to make a lot of cartoons about simple interactions. So somebody cooking rice, somebody meeting their friend, introducing their wife etc etc. He had all of these cartoons released as open source public domain so you could use those if you want to. I believe what he did was he would ask someone to describe the situation and to come up with the dialogue in the empty speech bubbles and he just recorded everything and then taught himself from the recordings.

That would be Bakunin. Here's a copy of a post I made in response to a similar query

Our member Bakunin successfully learned a non-written language and developed a series of illustrations to elicit help when the only resource is native-speakers of the language. His website with the illustrations is here. He wrote about how to use the illustrations here. Granted, Bakunin was "in-country" when he learned

...Nothing comes out of thin air. I've been using picture-supported learning for quite some time as people here know well. I was introduced to picture-supported learning through the so-called Growing Participator Approach, a self-contained method to learn any language exclusively with native speakers (even languages which don't have a writing system). The workbook Action English Pictures gave me the idea to develop a set of illustrations specific to my target cultures and also expand on this by providing recordings, another of my favorite language learning techniques. ...

When you lack resources but have access to a willing native-speaker, these pictures can help a learner develop their own course. Obviously, this is only an outline. The "course" has to be developed and created by the learner, but it at least gives the learner a place to start. A learner can write their own transcription phonetically or in IPA. They should record the speaker. Then, after the basics are acquired, they should acquire "language islands" and engage other native-speakers. It's a hard task but not an impossible one.

I wish you good luck!

[Cainntear]

We did have a member who did a similar sort of thing. I think he was doing it in Lao or Cambodia but anyway what he did was he paid a cartoonist to make a lot of cartoons about simple interactions. So somebody cooking rice, somebody meeting their friend, introducing their wife etc etc. He had all of these cartoons released as open source public domain so you could use those if you want to. I believe what he did was he would ask someone to describe the situation and to come up with the dialogue in the empty speech bubbles and he just recorded everything and then taught himself from the recordings.

That would be Bakunin. Here's a copy of a post I made in response to a similar query...

The site can be viewed on the Wayback Machine, and the JPGs of the cartoons are there.

It isn't about filling in speech bubbles -- you can record spoken clips to accompany the images too.
The transcriptions and sound files for the languages previously done aren't mirrored on archive.org though, so one option is just to go back to the original concept and let native speakers come up with the most obvious thing that occurs to them.

[jeff_lindqvist]

You might find something interesting in Bakunin's log as well.

[rdearman]

That would be Bakunin. Here's a copy of a post I made in response to a similar query

Yep, that's the one!

[root]

thanks everyone for the links, pointers etc ... there's some great ideas there.

[golyplot]

Back in 2016, I spent a year trying to learn American Sign Language, but eventually gave up. I concluded that the lack of a written form and limited content available just made it completely infeasible to self study the way I did with French (I actually did take ASL classes with actual instructors and went to lots of events and so on too, but I wasn't getting anywhere). And of course ASL is a best case scenario - it has far more resources available than other sign languages.