GermanProgress is steady with German, although not as fast as I would like. But it feels great to learn a language with zero actual pressure to use it, for the moment.
I stopped using DW’s Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten a couple months ago, as it is became too easy. In fact, the host speaks so painfully slow that, at times, he sounds weird and borderline patronizing – like a grown man baby-talking me.
I am more and more comfortable working with Alltagsdeutsch. That is, as long as I have the transcript in front of my eyes. Take it away and I find myself lost and wanting to run back to the creepy newsreader of Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten.
I did a little statistics and found that I can recognize about 85 % of all words in a given Alltagsdeutsch podcast. The missing 15 %, of course, includes all the interesting words, “the best words”, to quote a former statesman.
I finished Pimsleur German III and Assimil German 2013 and I am overall very satisfied with both. I did not do a second wave, opting instead to start Perfectionnement Allemand immediately. It is great, although quite a steep level up from Assimil German. Dialogues are funny, witty, voice actors are good, they speak fast and clear. I am actually looking forward to the next lesson – not to learn German, but to discover the next topic, like looking forward to the next chapter of a good book.
I got to about 3000 out of the 4000 or so cards in my Anki German frequency deck. My goal was about 40 cards per day for 100 days, but it fell apart about midway. Anki being Anki, I feel a mix of intense frustration, accomplishment and despair when I look at my stats. I stopped reviews for a few days and cards immediately began piling up. It’s been two weeks now, and I am not sure I can find the courage to reopen the app and check how many cards are due ever again.
I activated DW news alerts in German on my phone, so if it come to that, I will probably learn about the annihilation of the world in Goethe’s tongue in exclusivity.
KoreanI watched the series Naegwa Park Won-jang, which was funny enough and easy to understand. Subtitles are a big help, of course. I can still read hanggul fast enough when it appears on screen. I still remember when deciphering a 4-syllabe word was hurting my brain. Time flies.
MandarinSame old, same old. I still do some translation work as a part time job, which keeps characters fresh in my mind. After two years of not using it, any speaking skills I had left are probably dead by now.
ArabicI toyed a bit with the idea of learning some fusha. I started by watching videos from Western Kentucky University to learn the alphabet and it was surprisingly easy. I highly recommend them for anyone who is intimidated by Arabic alphabet, like I was. The teacher is very “no-nonsense” and engaging.
I read Que sais-je La langue arabe, which gave me a very enlightening explanation of the relation between dialects-MSA, that is not as a diglossia, but as a register continuum. According to the author, Arabic speakers of different dialects are not becoming more and more segregated. On the contrary, rising education levels throughout the Middle East have made MSA more present and more alive than perhaps at any point in the history of the language.
I did a few lessons in Mastering Arabic 1 and Assimil Arabe sans peine. I did not go very far, but learning MSA seems to go a bit like this: let’s learn about dual, a bunch of crazy exceptions and all of the endings with their detailed rules. Then followed by a note: but no one actually talks like that, so don’t worry too much about using any of that! Even the teacher at WPU said something like: we will learn the complicated rules about the “nun” ending now, but please don’t be a weirdo and go around using it in the real world. Right… So I guess I won’t use the thing that took me hours to understand!
Assimil goes the extra mile and everything is fully vocalized until lesson 28, after which endings are gradually omitted. The last lesson is supposed to be real MSA as spoken by “the Arab street”. I shadowed the first few lessons for a month, so I guess I probably sound like a weirdo now. And it’s funny how Assimil describes the Arabic rolled R as in “le R du Québec”. I am not sure that’s the most accurate parallel.
I also worked a bit with Cours de langue arabe of Andre D’Alverny. I haven’t gotten very far, but it looked like a very solid and comprehensive resource focused on the written language, with a Levantine focus for pronunciation. But it is no walk in the park. The author sets the tone with the very first sentence of the book: « The author of the present manual does not believe in Arabic without toil in 30 days. » Haha! Me neither, buddy! What a change from all those positive pep talks about language learning being easy.
RussianThe big, fat elephant in the room. This is not the place for politics, and there is nothing I could say that hasn’t already been said in a better way. And nothing I could add about that “Russkiy mir” that would be acceptable in polite society anyway.
As soon as the bombs started falling, I got back to my favorite sources of news: reading Novaya Gazeta and listening to Ekho Moskvy. Then the tough guys in Moscow shut down both Ekho Moskvy and Novaya Gazeta (!). Bummer. I tried reading Kommersant – but couldn’t finish a single article… It used to have such good journalists. What a shame.
So I turned to Meduza, an independent Russian-language media based in Riga. They have a great app in Russian with a daily live feed of news, some longer articles and a nice podcast. All from a Russian point of view. Their English editor has a podcast called “Moscow Guy” which is also great. I also started following some Telegram channels, where conversations are more free than in Russian media.
One thing that I find fascinating since the start of the war is the astonishing amount of content that is produced every day, in all possible languages. It is literally overwhelming. It reminded me of a scene in Bonheur d’occasion, by Gabrielle Roy, published in 1945. The whole book is about how people in Montreal saw and lived through the Second World War, and they had an infinitesimal access to information compared to us. They would learn about the fall of Paris days after the actual events. Now, I know how many BTGs are surrounding Mariupol and I can have access to horrible videos from Bucha hours after its liberation… In terms of accountability, I guess that’s a good thing? In terms of my mental health, not sure.
EnglishOn a related note, I read the first tome of the Memoirs of George F. Kennan, a fascinating account of American diplomacy in the Interwar period.
Kennan apparently spoke German as well as English. He lived and studied in the German Reich many years as a young man and then later as a diplomat – under the NS regime. In fact he was among the US embassy staff in Berlin when Germany declared war.
He also writes about how the State Department sent him to study Russian in independent Latvia. He was part of the small US diplomatic staff responsible for monitoring Soviet economy and politics from abroad, as the US did not have a presence in the Soviet Union at the time. Kennan describes the way he learned Russian: he hired a native speaker (a Russian refugee who had fled the Bolshevik revolution to Riga) and had him listen as he read Russian literature aloud for hours at time. He asked his Russian tutor to stop him every time he misplaced stress. That requires admirable dedication to the language. I can imagine the results were quite good, and Kennan was later posted in Moscow and the rest is history.
FrenchMy partner has completed the government-sponsored French classes with some of the highest grades in her group – which is pretty awesome! Again, this shows that efforts and consistence can go a long way, even for learners coming from a different language family.
After 10 months of full time study, her French is now basically functional: she can shop, order, discuss and argue with people in French. She orders at Starbucks and manage to get her coffee just the way she wants it, which I have a hard time doing. She is even starting to develop an ear for Quebec, European, African accents.
She is now preparing to apply for a degree in advanced French at the local university. But first, she needs to take a test based on the book Le Français Apprivoisé. And sacre bleu, it is hard!
I consider myself a fairly competent native speaker and I don’t think I could pass that test without putting some serious efforts. It seems that every single question is a trap. There are even questions about subjonctif plus-que-parfait and I have no idea. I mean, I know it exists, it’s there somewhere, but I have never used it. I have seen it in classical literature, for sure. But there is no actual need to learn it as an active skill, unless you plan on going back in time to converse with Hugo or becoming 18th century French literature translator.
It’s one thing to learn to recognize it and understand the nuances it carries, but quizzing people on this? Pfff. More likely than not she will never, ever have to use subjonctif plus-que-parfait in her lifetime. It reminds me of the pre-HSK advanced Chinese tests, where you were expected to handwrite characters – in the right stroke order – that even educated native speakers find baffling and confusing.
Let me just say this whole exercise has been a lesson in humility. Nothing like having a non-native speaker asking scarily specific questions about your own native language to make you resent the Académie française. I have nothing but respect for anyone who has the resilience to tackle a language with such an archaic and rigid approach to grammar. French learners, I salute you.
SpanishBut my real focus has been Spanish.
In mid-March, Ottawa announced it would lift pre-entry test requirements. Minutes later I was booking tickets to Mexico.
It will not be my first trip to a Spanish speaking country, but it will be my first after I seriously started learning Spanish when I created this log in November of 2018.
My goal is to speak nothing but Spanish from the moment I step off the plane in CDMX. If that means making a fool out of myself or inflicting my terrible syntax on unsuspicious tortilla sellers, so be it! I can take it. I am ready for Mexico, and I just hope Mexico is ready for me.
To prepare myself and get my spoken Spanish back to a decent level, I have been doing a number of things. Back when I first started using FSI and Pimsleur, I used to isolate the exercises and lessons that gave me more trouble to review them at a later date. I found the files on my computer, put them on my phone, and I have been walking around my neighborhood doing FSI drills and parroting Pimsleur dialogues for the last few weeks.
I did a complete review of all Assimil Espagnol lessons, but I found them too peninsular. I also shadowed Glossika Business Spanish but quickly stopped, as some of the translations were just laughable.
Overall, I estimate around 40 hours were spent on this “active” phase. The hardest for me seems to be substituting “le” for “se”, as in “se lo he dado a el”. My instinct is always to say “le lo he dado a el”, which sounds so much more natural to my French ears. My present subjective is somewhat fine, although past subjective is a real pain, but not sure it will be a problem for everyday conversation.
Then, I have been listening to solely Spanish podcasts. While looking for “fresh meat”, I made a few nice discoveries. My favorite by far is Expertos de Sillón, in which two Colombian hosts talk about a specific passion/hobby/obsession with a guest. Very eclectic and interesting content.
Of course, there are classics such as Radio Ambulante and El Hilo, always nice, but I also found out about Así Como Suena, with a focus on Mexico and more on the political side.
Se Regalan Dudas is very clear, easy to understand, while Psychologia al Desnudo has similar content, but with a nice Argentinian accent.
En Defensa Propia is also great. Erika De La Vega has a very clear pronunciation and her guests come from all over the place, so you get a nice mix of accents. Her shows with Isabelle Allende and Édgar Ramírez were nice, wholesome content.
Historias del Más Acá sounds very funny, and I want to enjoy it, but the Mexican slang and grosserias make it hard to understand. I can get about 85-90 % of what the guys say, but the missing part is what the joke is all about, so I kind of miss the point.
I used to love Vidas Prestadas, but they changed their microphones a few months ago and the audio quality has gone down so I can’t listen to it anymore.
Sexópolis is a Mexican podcast where guests come to talk about aspects of their sex life in a casual, funny way: very nice to pick up new words and expressions, and never boring.
I started re-reading “El amor en los tiempos del cólera” in the original, but was distracted by “The Maya” by Michael Coe, which acts as a superb guidebook to Yucatan. Not sure I will have enough time to finish “El amor” before departure, but I might take it with me.
Finally, I used iTalki to record and get corrections on my accent and pronunciation from native speakers. I recorded a short text that goes like that:
Hace 2 años que estudio el español. Ahora entiendo más o menos todo lo que quiero escuchar o leer, pero lo de hablar es todavía difícil. Es que no tengo muchas oportunidades para platicar en español aquí en mi país. Tampoco no sé como sueno cuando hablo, o sea, no sé si tengo algún acento específico. Tal vez sueno como un gringo o un gabacho. ¿Que piensan ustedes? ¿Se nota une influencia norteamericana en mí manera de hablar?
Responses were unequivocal: everyone can understand everything I say, but they all agree I sound like a Brazilian speaking Spanish. I did not know what to make of this, so I took it as a compliment.
I'll try to take some notes about my Spanish adventure down in Mexico and post them here upon my return, if things are not too humiliating.