Those who study non-written languages, how do you spend your time with the language?

General discussion about learning languages
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thevagrant88
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Those who study non-written languages, how do you spend your time with the language?

Postby thevagrant88 » Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:05 am

I started to think about this while looking into some of the Mandarin vs. Cantonese or MSA vs dialect debates and I should mention that I don’t only refer to languages without any writing systems at all. Cantonese, Navajo, Egyptian Arabic, Neapolitan, and droves of others have ways of being written down and, consequently, read. But generally speaking these are all languages that don’t *really* have a large body of literature or any other kind of written media. Cantonese and Arabic dialects are especially weird to me because even spoken media such as films and tv series are subtitled in Standard Chinese and MSA respectively, so the subtitles don’t even necessarily reflect what’s being spoken.

Even with the primary goal being to speak, it’s hard for me to imagine staying motivated to learn languages. With the majority of world languages, I have the luxury of being able to engage with it however I like and one of the biggest reasons for that is the fact that a written tradition is already established. More than anything, I try to imagine what studying languages like these must be like and it seems like it would be so much work. With my Spanish for example, reading gives me a low-stress, low-effort form of engagement that I can basically do anytime and anywhere. The written form of a foreign languages gives the learner the opportunity to take their time with it, to be analytical, just really kind of ruminate on it if need be. Wikipedia, books, articles, news outlets, texting, etc.

Now if I lived in Hong Kong or Cairo I’m sure I’d have a different opinion, but from the perspective of a hobbyist language learning it just seems so daunting. For those of you who are hobbyists like myself and who do study languages like these, what does your 1-on-1 time with the language look like? Do you find yourself having to be more creative in how you study or use the language when not speaking?
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RyanSmallwood
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Re: Those who study non-written languages, how do you spend your time with the language?

Postby RyanSmallwood » Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:40 am

I'm not currently focused on Cantonese or at a level where I can enjoy native media, but I do plan to make it my main focus after I get Mandarin to a comfortable level. I'm partly hoping that my Mandarin knowledge will somewhat transfer over to Cantonese, they're not mutually intelligible, but in my experience so far study of one helps a lot with study of the other. Cantonese has both an FSI and DLI course available, so there should be plenty of beginner/intermediate audio to build a listening foundation. Besides having a rich film and television history Cantonese has a bunch of long radio dramas including adaptations of classic texts. I haven't tried it to see how it will work out, but I'm hoping that studying a book in Mandarin + having a strong Cantonese listening foundation will allow me to follow the radio drama adaptations in Cantonese and pick up vocabulary from context, and then see if I can listen to original radio dramas in similar genres or watch television and movies with the help of visual context. Not sure exactly how it will end up working out, but Cantonese films are some of my favorite parts of film history so I'm eager to deepen my appreciation of them and explore more of the surrounding types of media to whatever extent I can. (And there are some places where Written Cantonese is used as an option, though those wouldn't be my personal priority.)

I don't currently have plans to study Egyptian Arabic, but if I by some miracle ever found time for it I think the situation would be a lot similar. I would learn MSA first, use the DLI Egyptian Arabic course for beginner listening and then try to dig into the rich history of classic film, television and radio.

There may be plenty of unwritten languages that aren't as heavy hitters in terms of audio and audio-visual media history, but I'd guess someone might look into things like youtube channels, videogame streamers, making friends to talk with online (timezones permitting) as possible options.
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Re: Those who study non-written languages, how do you spend your time with the language?

Postby thevagrant88 » Mon Jun 27, 2022 3:44 pm

Those seem like perfectly reasonable learning paths. Idk where you live but I know the Chinatown in my city has historically had many more Cantonese speakers than Mandarin and frankly, HK films are way better generally (don’t hate me!).
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Re: Those who study non-written languages, how do you spend your time with the language?

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:20 pm

Several of the languages that interest me, or even aspects of language I've learned, correspond to primarily non-written languages or colloquial registers. If you think about it, the majority of languages do not have a standardized written form representing spoken forms.

Mostly I spend time with languages while listening and speaking.

When available, I learn neighboring written forms and then try to move away from them.

Or I try to listen to recordings, or find a tutor, etc. But I can't say I've particularly succeeded.

But my focus with Ladino, Yiddish, Ladakhi, Setswana or Arabic has been to try to get good audio sources and use them along with standard written forms to get to some spoken independence. I generally fail.

Looking forward to hearing what others have to say.
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Re: Those who study non-written languages, how do you spend your time with the language?

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Jun 30, 2022 2:30 pm

A language (well, the natives call it a dialect, but there are so many word and grammar differences that it might as well be its own language) that surprisingly belongs in this category would be Swiss German. There is no standardized way of writing Swiss German, they just spell it the way they think it sounds, and High German is actually the written form of the language.

I've been learning it very slowly through immersion, and I'm actually trying NOT to learn too much until I pass my exams, so I don't confuse my speaking. However, as soon as I pass my last exam, I'm going to start listening for more than just general comprehension. I have the advantage of being married to a native speaker, and we live near most of his family. There are also lots of tv shows and radio programs in Swiss German.

I have definitely found that the more High German I learn, the easier it is to pick up Swiss German. I find myself translating words from Swiss German to High German, and that helps comprehension a lot. So I definitely second the idea of starting with the more prevalent language and then moving on to the unwritten form. Nearly everyone in Switzerland says it's better to learn High German first, then build Swiss German off from that.

Ryansmallwood, my plans after Mandarin are identical to yours. I have a Cantonese friend who only speaks Cantonese with her children, and I want to be able to communicate with them better. But I decided to learn Mandarin first (I have more friends that speak Mandarin, and could help me) and then apply my knowledge of dialects and such to (hopefully) more easily learn Cantonese. I don't know if it'll help, but I'm going to try anyways!
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