Bakunin's log

[Bakunin]

Hi Bakunin

It's late in coming but I wanted to share with the world that I've always thought you were super mega awesome. It's just that your language pair is out of this world and so different than mine!

Thanks
If you're that Reineke, and I guess you are who's got a blog and got banned from HTLAL at some point, then let me tell you that many of your entries on the old HTLAL and also on your blog were a great inspiration for me when I crawled out from under the coconut shell of grammar-translation! It really annoyed me when they banned you. I'm glad you're back!

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[reineke]

Is that the artist's impression of me being muzzled? Thank you, love that pic. I don't know much Latin but I believe I am what they call Vulpes vulpes i.e. a vulgar red fox. They have called me other names, too. I was not banned from HTLAL or anywhere else and no moderator has ever warned me on any subject. Given that I nipped a few ankles here and there some people assumed I had been banned. I took a break from writing. I changed my avatar to something appropriate - a picture of me napping - and I also changed my email address. Given that the old HTLAL forum was really "glitchy" this locked me out. Iversen was kind to reestablish my access.

Keep up the good work and don't worry about posters and posting.

[Bakunin]

I’ve made some progress developing a new idea to support my future learning of spoken languages (without an established writing system), and I would like to get some feedback on the concept as I’m still able to make changes.

I want to be able to do recordings which don’t rely on a second language because English might not be spoken by the people I want to work with and the local lingua franca might not be known to those interested in learning the language. With that setting in mind I’ll have to stay monolingual in the target language, that’s a fixed constraint for this project.

I’ve got a set of picture stories under development (“SEA Illustrations”, 70% done, the first 30% are recorded in Khmer and Thai, available on my website) which are good for intermediate and advanced learners. What I lack is something at the beginner stage.

So here’s the idea: I’ve got a curriculum of about 300-400 basic terms (nouns, verbs, adjectives) which I’d like to cover. To cover means to develop aural recognition, not mastery, obviously. The beginner phase is a stepping stone.

I want to do a series of pictures which cover the curriculum. The pages look as follows:
- there are a few groups (shaded) “featuring” one term each (chopsticks, cat, bowl, flip flops)
- each group contains 2-7 frames showing various situations featuring this term; these frames aren’t related and don’t combine to mini-stories, they are just very simple situations involving the term
- I’m keeping track of which terms are used how often and try to cover each term about 5 times at the minimum; this can be as part of a group, or distributed over several groups… for instance, the verb “to break” will probably not have its own group but show up in isolated scenes
- I will present featured words “at random” and not in thematic groups (colors, animals, furniture) because I find I’m getting confused when I attempt to learn all words of a thematic group at the same time



With these illustrations, I envisage the speaker to describe them in simple terms, using the little numbers in the upper left corner to guide the listener. Because of the groups, the featured term should become clear very quickly through listening alone. Once recognition of the featured term is established, other words might be guessable because many scenes are really simple and contain only one or two other terms. As these other terms are encountered in subsequent pictures, they can be acquired. Reviewing recordings will fill in more gaps, and my hope is that the recordings of all pages will ensure the acquisition of the full curriculum (as in “aural recognition”), plus basic sentence structure.

From that base, a lot more is possible. I would gravitate towards more complex recordings next, but I can also see how speaking could now be introduced, using the same set of basic pictures.

These materials are of course only meant to complement other activities, I’m not trying to come up with a self-contained course here. The project is about providing materials for total beginners in a language which isn’t written and doesn’t have textbooks to help developing very basic listening comprehension.

I haven’t tried the language part yet (I need to do the pictures first), so I don’t know whether this concept will work at all, but I’m eager to try it.

Anyone here with an opinion?

[iguanamon]

I like this. It can start simple and work its way up to more complexity. Let's take the cat.

1) The cat
2) The cat jumps on to the chair.
3) The cat sleeps on the chair.
4) The cat jumps off the chair.
5) The cat eats a fish.
6) The cat is walking.
7) The cat sees a bird.

If I were using this to learn English, and just using voice and the illustrations, I would know the word for "cat", "chair", "fish" and "bird". The verbs for the concepts "jumping", "on" vs "off", "eating", "walking " and "seeing".

I don't really know what I contribute of value to you in this. I am not a Second Language Acquisition expert or a trained linguist. I'm just a guy who has managed to learn a few languages on his own. For me as a learner, repetition is key. I would probably want to next see a person doing these actions and, if important in the language, both a male and a female version. I would think that something like the most common basic vocabulary (along the lines of s_allard's "300 word strategy" or "Swadesh list" which may not exist for any given language) might be a good basis to start from. In a poorly documented language, I think these illustrations serve as common vocabulary- everyday items and actions.

One of the things that annoys me the most about some courses is using too much English in the early going. Yes, I know it's more efficient to use the learner's own language as a base from which to learn, especially to understand some crucial grammatical elements and concepts much more quickly and easily. Observation is a funny thing. For someone experienced with language learning, it is almost second nature. I believe this "observational skill" of knowing how languages "work" is one of the "advantages" an experienced learner has over a monolingual beginner in a language. This can be difficult to quantify.

As obvious as this may appear to us as experienced learners, those new to or inexperienced in learning a second language may not grasp this concept so easily. For example, there was a recent post from a member who said they had difficulty learning "through context". So, I think in the beginning stages, it wouldn't hurt to be overly redundant in hammering the points home. Those who "get" it straight away can simply skim through the extra redundant examples/illustrations and those who may be a little slower to understand the concept will have a greater opportunity to learn from it.

I have yet to learn a non-written language, though St Lucian French Kwéyòl (Creole) comes close- most speakers don't know how to write it because they were never taught to write it. Haitian Creole is in a little bit better position with some literature, websites and even browser dictionaries available for spell-checking. Still, the majority of HC speakers don't know how to write according to the official standard in their own language. Ladino as well. At least a written form does exist for these languages, though.

There is something to be said for jumping straight into the language, and I believe these illustrations coupled with audio recordings could be "the next best thing to being there". If I were in a Northern Khmer-speaking village in Thailand and a there were a patient and kind native-speaker were there willing to teach me, I could learn a lot from that. Since that isn;t always possible- people may be too busy making a living to do that for someone, these recordings could be a good, and highly portable in the electronic age, learning system to substitute for a course.

So, to sum up, I believe that it may help to put yourself in the mind of a monolingual beginner and that in this case, "you can't be too redundant". You are the one who knows what needs to be accomplished, so I defer to your vision, Bakunin. . I admire your work.

[Bakunin]

Many thanks for your thoughtful response, iguanamon, that’s really appreciated!

Your example with the cat sequence is perfect, that’s exactly what I have in mind! When a total beginner listens to this a few times and looks at the pictures (assuming they know the numbers already to keep track of where the speaker is), they will for sure pick up the words you’ve identified, or at least establish good guesses.

I fully agree with you that repetition is key. My concept so far is to repeat the words used throughout the whole collection of pictures: there will be more cats, more chairs, more fish, more birds, there will be more jumping, eating, walking and flying. Unless these words are “featured” in a color-shaded group, they will appear in isolated other scenes. For instance, there will be an airplane flying, a mosquito flying and certainly more flying birds. I would hope to get the necessary repetitions that way.

Your suggestion to be “overly redundant” is great, but I’m afraid too expensive to be applied throughout since it would easily double or triple the number of pages (50 planned). But what I could do is to have a few “overly redundant” pages at the beginning to ease the listener into the process!? These first pages could feature some very important terms like those for people (man, woman, boy, girl) and maybe basic movements (to walk, to run, to sit, to lie). What do you think about that?

Yes, these materials are not intended to replace a course, but they might be quite useful for underserved languages, in particular when you’re not in the area where the language is spoken. They could also be used with a tutor to get things going when no textbook is available to provide structure.

Thanks again for your feedback, you’ve raised a really good point!

[Bakunin]

Is that the artist's impression of me being muzzled? Thank you, love that pic. I don't know much Latin but I believe I am what they call Vulpes vulpes i.e. a vulgar red fox. They have called me other names, too. I was not banned from HTLAL or anywhere else and no moderator has ever warned me on any subject. Given that I nipped a few ankles here and there some people assumed I had been banned. I took a break from writing. I changed my avatar to something appropriate - a picture of me napping - and I also changed my email address. Given that the old HTLAL forum was really "glitchy" this locked me out. Iversen was kind to reestablish my access.

That's the artist's impression of a frog under a coconut shell. It's a Thai proverb; the frog thinks the world is this coconut shell, he's got a very limited world view. It was a reference to my former grammar-translation-crazy self It's much better to be a vulgar red fox than a frog under a coconut shell.

I really assumed you had been banned Apologies!

[druckfehler]

I would love to try out such a picture book with recordings. Maybe there would be some ambiguity, e.g. does the cat jump on the chair or simply get on the chair? But I don't think that's a problem, as the picutres are simple and evident enough to reduce that ambiguity to a minimum. And whether one thinks a word means 'jump on' or 'get on' doesn't make such a huge difference anyway. I'm sure it will become clear with more exposure to the language and that will bes oon enough. Only sort of knowing the meaning of a lot of words I encounter in Korean reading has not hindered my progess in any way, I think.

[Elenia]

I also believe that ambiguities will work themselves out. Maybe to make things more accessible to absolute beginners the first recordings can be a little Rosetta Stone style, with just the first picture of each set and the spoken word for the image. If possible (although this might push current constraints), you could commission plural pictures for each object. So, as there is a stack of bowls, there can be a group of cats, and so on.

[Bakunin]

I would love to try out such a picture book with recordings. Maybe there would be some ambiguity, e.g. does the cat jump on the chair or simply get on the chair? But I don't think that's a problem, as the picutres are simple and evident enough to reduce that ambiguity to a minimum. And whether one thinks a word means 'jump on' or 'get on' doesn't make such a huge difference anyway. I'm sure it will become clear with more exposure to the language and that will bes oon enough. Only sort of knowing the meaning of a lot of words I encounter in Korean reading has not hindered my progess in any way, I think.

Thanks for your feedback, that's appreciated! I don't worry about that ambiguity. Whatever the speaker chooses is the right word, and near-synonyms etc. will sort themselves out by itself over time. Furthermore, each language has different lexical boundaries, and I could only reflect these if I would design pictures specifically for one language. But I want to have a set of pictures which works at least in those parts of South East Asia I'm interested in.

This brings me to Elenia's feedback - thanks as well

I also believe that ambiguities will work themselves out. Maybe to make things more accessible to absolute beginners the first recordings can be a little Rosetta Stone style, with just the first picture of each set and the spoken word for the image. If possible (although this might push current constraints), you could commission plural pictures for each object. So, as there is a stack of bowls, there can be a group of cats, and so on.

Two interesting points here. Firstly, I indeed show the object in isolation in the frame of each sequence: chopsticks, cat, bowl, flip flops. This should make the "featured" word crystal clear. Or did you suggest something beyond this?

Secondly, plural marking is not mandatory in the language families I'm interested in, so I haven't given plurals any thought so far. But the problem you raise is much more general. Most languages have some complexity, but where this complexity resides is different from language to language. Ideally, one would have a set of pictures resolving the complex areas of that language's grammar at the appropriate level of detail. In a language with plurals, you want to see singular and plural. In a language which has different verb endings for male and female, you would want to see both male and female characters doing the actions, etc. etc. That I can't accomodate at all, and it probably limits the usefulness of these pictures to some extent... but not much, I hope, because the curriculum is really basic (80%-90% applicable to all modern societies, only a few "chopsticks" and "flip flops" which are more specific to one single region). Maybe there will be enough variety in the pictures that the listener will already notice that something strange is going on, and then follow up separately.

Actually, I did a test run today with a Romanian colleague. I don't know any Romanian, but of course it's rather accessible with my background, so I need to find someone with a truly exotic language to test it. But this test was succesful. I always knew where he was, and I had lots of strong guesses about many of the non-featured words. And, coming back to the plural thing, I noticed (I believe) that the plural of bowls sounds a bit different from the singular in a way which surprised me.

He gave the feedback that the cat sequence was more fun than the bowl sequence because it's a bit like a story whereas the bowl sequence is rather random. I agree but don't see how to come up with neat stories for all these words. Often, I'm glad to find 3 or 4 frames at all which aren't too ambiguous.

I've tried to specify a "first" page with man, woman, girl and boy doing more or less the same 6-7 actitivies (not everybody doing eveything, but mostly), based on iguanamons feedback. But I'm still unsure how to make the pictures easier and more repetitive without massively increasing the number of pages or reducing the curriculum. It's a challenge.

So, to sum up, I believe that it may help to put yourself in the mind of a monolingual beginner and that in this case, "you can't be too redundant".

[Elenia]

[quote="Bakunin"Two interesting points here. Firstly, I indeed show the object in isolation in the frame of each sequence: chopsticks, cat, bowl, flip flops. This should make the "featured" word crystal clear. Or did you suggest something beyond this?
[/quote]

Well, I had thought of just the first images without the rest of the sequence, but thinking again it's not really necessary.