Rare Languages and Getting Practice

[eido]

I'm sure someone's brought up this topic before on HTLAL (or LLORG too).

I researched it a bit beforehand as well and got some hits, but not many. However, I'm more interested in people's personal experiences.

I'm studying a lot of what might be considered uncommon languages, even if there are a fair amount of speakers and the language isn't endangered. These could include anything from Korean to Navajo.

I, however, was wondering how I could practice these languages in the absence of getting live input or corrected input to help me through humps.

I used Lang-8 a lot when I was first learning Spanish and it played a big part in my self-learning. But that's kaput, and italki took away its notebook feature. Most other sites of a similar vein are pretty inactive, too.

I have an exchange partner that could correct me in one language, but we speak at irregular intervals as he (like me) is still in college and has many tests, an internship, and non-language-related hobbies he has to work with each week. It seems like quite the imposition to ask him to correct short bodies of text, so I only text him in his native language when I think I can do it quickly and without too many errors, and without disrupting the flow of conversation so everything seems natural.

I have languages on my list like Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, and Maltese, and all these come from places where English is a strong (or official) language. A while ago I had an Icelandic exchange partner, but I wasn't as ready to study the language as hard as I am now, so we had a falling out. Officially he's the only person from there I've talked to and been able to speak with since. But when we did talk, it was almost exclusively in perfect English.

I know many people on the forum are attempting and have attempted the same thing I am: to learn a rare and/or uncommon language. If you're aiming to get active fluency in the language, what have you done to get practice despite difficulties in finding people to help you? (If there were any, of course.)

Should I just settle for passive fluency, or should I search harder? What advice would you give me?

Again, sorry if there have been posts like this already on the forum. Feel free to link to them here with keywords so others can find them

[Cèid Donn]

Looking back over what's worked for my with studying several less commonly studied languages, I find the approaches I honed while learning Scottish Gaelic (while living thousands of miles away from where it's spoken) work the best every time:

1. Extensive listening: Listen to as much audio of speakers talking normally as you can. Don't worry about comprehension. You want to develop an intuitive grasp of how the language sounds. In some cases this may be just recordings of dialogues for learners. That's fine. If you're lucky you might be able to find your TL on 50Languages, LingoHut or another site when you can get more audio files. In other cases you might be able to find audio you can use from other media, like radio or TV, in that language (hint: Audacity is your friend). With other languages, especially languages like Navajo, you'll going to have do your research and hunt around. Whatever you can get your hands on.

2. Learn the phonology: Make the effort to really learn the phonology and learn it well. You don't have a teacher or a tutor to correct you or explain things to you, so this is up to you. You simply have to do the work. I feel phonology is something a lot of self-learners avoid or neglect. Perhaps some do so because output isn't a part of their language goals, but it seems many learners simply do not realize the importance and value of learning the phonology. But if you're an isolated self-learner (something I have a lot experience with) knowing the phonology is critical.

3. Read, or repeat audio, aloud: Whatever reading materials you got, read them aloud. Whatever audio you have, repeat what you hear aloud. Regularly, like drills. If you can find a study partner who wants to read through something with you, taking turns reading a sentence or paragraph, even better because you can practice both reading aloud and reading along with a speaker. I've done that in the past with some of my TL and it's really beneficial, but I know how hard it can be to find people who are willing and able to do that with less commonly studied languages.

I believe with practicing these will give you a foundation with the language that will be very beneficial if you want to pursue a higher level of fluency, if that's what you want to do. While there can be rare cases where the amount of available materials and media in a particular language is so limited that you can't make much progress as an isolated learner, but in most cases, I do not think you should limit yourself before you actually try.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Short answer: I rarely use any of my target languages (rare or common) - English is the only exception. I maintain them through reading and listening. Rarely writing. Very rarely speaking.

I still consider myself functional in perhaps half a dozen languages. If need be, I know I can brush up anything to a historical "best" level.

[iguanamon]

Having learned a couple of uncommon languages, there are opportunities to use them. Ladino/Djudeo espanyol is not any nation's language. There are only about 70,000 or so people alive who can speak it as a native language. There's nobody that I know of who is a native-speaker who lives here. Travel to Seattle, Turkey, Greece, Israel is a long way away and not possible right now due to covid restrictions. The language is dying... but... it lives online. There is an online forum and a growing presence on twitter. I don't participate very much on the forum, as I respect the Ladino forum as a gathering place for the aging native-speaker community. I'm more active with it on twitter, but I am still cognizant of the fact that I am not Jewish, let alone Sephardic. I have some people with whom I can write in the language and I enjoy it when I do. I have been treated with much kindness and even respect for having learned the language as a non-Jew by the Sephardic community.

So, my advice is to always be aware and mindful that you are an outsider. Show respect and consideration in your interactions with native-speakers. Know that while to you it is great fun to learn a language like, say, Navajo, but to the Navajo the preservation and passing on of their language to other Navajos means the continuation of their people and the historic cultural knowledge that their language transmits. That is a critical part of who they are as a people. It is deserving of respect, especially as a representative of a people who have persecuted and continue to hold them in lesser regard. Much care and consciousness is required when interacting with speakers of Native American languages.

So, my response is that yes, you can indeed interact with speakers of rare languages, just remember to do so with respect. Don't expect to be discussing what you would do with speakers of a big language like Spanish or Korean. These are people who are not out there for a language exchange. Most speakers of uncommon languages are not monolingual. Sadly, it goes with the territory these days. Accept what you can get and you will be better off in your language endeavors. It helps to have a high level in the language. Most speakers of uncommon languages aren't going to take you seriously unless you do. Expect something else out of interacting with them and you will not be happy.

[eido]

I still consider myself functional in perhaps half a dozen languages. If need be, I know I can brush up anything to a historical "best" level.

As I'm still quite new to language learning, I have never experienced such a thing. Could you give me more detail on how that goes? The process of brushing up? My best language is still quite at a poor level, so I have no idea how that would work. Thank you for your response and insight. I'm taking it into consideration.

2. Learn the phonology: Make the effort to really learn the phonology and learn it well. You don't have a teacher or a tutor to correct you or explain things to you, so this is up to you. You simply have to do the work. I feel phonology is something a lot of self-learners avoid or neglect. Perhaps some do so because output isn't a part of their language goals, but it seems many learners simply do not realize the importance and value of learning the phonology. But if you're an isolated self-learner (something I have a lot experience with) knowing the phonology is critical.

So knowing the IPA pronunciation, perhaps? Is that what you're getting at? If so, that's sounds like a banger of an idea.

So, my advice is to always be aware and mindful that you are an outsider. Show respect and consideration in your interactions with native-speakers. Know that while to you it is great fun to learn a language like, say, Navajo, but to the Navajo the preservation and passing on of their language to other Navajos means the continuation of their people and the historic cultural knowledge that their language transmits. That is a critical part of who they are as a people. It is deserving of respect, especially as a representative of a people who have persecuted and continue to hold them in lesser regard. Much care and consciousness is required when interacting with speakers of Native American languages.

I agree. In all ways able to be conceived, I would be respectful. I was mostly using Navajo as an example of a rare, endangered language for which speakers are hard to find, perhaps precisely for such the reason of preservation by the Navajo tribe itself being the primary goal. I do not expect to ever speak Navajo or any of the other Native North American languages I am studying and fully leave their preservation in the hands of the tribes in question.

Learning Navajo is great for an intellectual challenge, but I treat it no differently than I would the first L2 I tried to conquer, which is a FIGS. They are both enriching (in different ways, but enriching nonetheless). They are both deserving of respect.

With Korean, I am happy I even have one person to speak to, and I'm happy to speak to him in English. I long stopped caring that our exchanges were only in that language because we got along so well. I just worry at times that I'm not coming across the dividing line of respect enough by not speaking his native language when it's called for.

From what I gather of the responses to this thread, I should perhaps start to not focus on speaking anymore except in a bigger language where language partners are easier to find. Is that the general impression I should be considering and using for my base in further learning?

[iguanamon]

...From what I gather of the responses to this thread, I should perhaps start to not focus on speaking anymore except in a bigger language where language partners are easier to find. Is that the general impression I should be considering and using for my base in further learning?

No, speak, even if it's just to yourself. The mind (at least mine) needs all the connections it can get to a language to make it real inside the mind. The more connections you have through all the skills of a language- reading; writing; listening; speaking, the more chance you have of learning the language better... even if it's a "dead" language.

In a language, you never know when you may run into someone who speaks it. You'd feel pretty ridiculous if you knew the language but couldn't speak it. Plus, there are features in a language that exist because of it's pronunciation. To me, it's always worth learning to speak.

[tangleweeds]

2. Learn the phonology: Make the effort to really learn the phonology and learn it well. You don't have a teacher or a tutor to correct you or explain things to you, so this is up to you. You simply have to do the work. I feel phonology is something a lot of self-learners avoid or neglect. Perhaps some do so because output isn't a part of their language goals, but it seems many learners simply do not realize the importance and value of learning the phonology. But if you're an isolated self-learner (something I have a lot experience with) knowing the phonology is critical.

So knowing the IPA pronunciation, perhaps? Is that what you're getting at? If so, that's sounds like a banger of an idea.

I encourage you to join in on this thread about Catford's Practical Introduction to Phonetics, practical being anatomical descriptions of how to actually execute the phonetics. I've struggled for years with retention while studying the IPA, but as I slowly work my way through this book, having an in-depth physical experience of what's being described really helps things stick.
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=15855

The first edition can be checked out from the internet archive if you want to explore before purchasing:
https://archive.org/details/practicalintrodu00catf
But as textbooks go, it's actually pretty affordable--currently a bargain at $20 from Blackwells below (shipped!). I got mine for about $33 on Amazon.
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9780199246359

[jeff_lindqvist]

As I'm still quite new to language learning, I have never experienced such a thing. Could you give me more detail on how that goes? The process of brushing up? My best language is still quite at a poor level, so I have no idea how that would work. Thank you for your response and insight. I'm taking it into consideration.

Take German or Spanish (my two "strongest" languages after Swedish and English). I've studied them in school (a long time ago), not at the same time, not to the same level, but both are in my conscious part of the brain. I have gone back to them now and then, via Assimil/shadowing/selftalk/textbooks/easy readers/podcasts/audiobooks/books. That's it. In the hypothethical scenario that I'd travel to Germany or Spain and knew I was going to use the language in monolingual settings, I'd probably go through some resources depending on the kind of the trip. Maybe filling the MP3 player/phone with audio in the target language is enough. Bring a book in the language? Maybe. Go through two volumes of FSI? Probably not, but if I knew about the trip six months in advance - who knows?

Generally, the better I am at a skill (any skill, really), the less time I have to "warm up".

For a really rare language which happens to be on my list - Irish - I've been listening to podcasts every day since Jan 1st 2020. I do Anki reps. I sometimes copy lessons from a textbook, long-hand.

[Iversen]

I am getting slightly annoyed with for instance Low German because even the local people in the area where it is (or was) supposed to be spoken don't care the least about keeping it alive. They don't write in it, and if there is a tourist in the neighbourhood they are definitely not going to admit that they can speak it... well, actually it is quite likely that they can't anymore - they have all forgotten it.

Similarly one of my reasons for temporarily postponing my Irish studies is that the language may die out before I have learned it well enough to speak to anyone in it. However it is still waiting on the shelf because I would like to know at least one Celtic language.

Even Latin and Esperanto are spoken by more people...

[rdearman]

However it is still waiting on the shelf because I would like to know at least one Celtic language.

Learn Welsh, it isn't going to die out.