Illustrations for language learning

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Bakunin
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Illustrations for language learning

Postby Bakunin » Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:49 pm

I don't usually cross-post, but in this case I think the topic might be of broader interest, at least the concept I'm experimenting with, and maybe shouldn't be tucked away in my log. Let me know if what I'm doing is against the rules...

I've just launched my new website with an illustration project and two related recording projects for Thai and Khmer. I want to use this post here to discuss a bit the background and also my plans; this forum, if any, is the right place for this more in-depth discussion, I guess.

The general idea should have broader appeal, so even if you’re not interested in these two languages, check out the website and have a look at the concept.

South East Asia Illustrations - Khmer
South East Asia Illustrations - Thai

The concept in a nutshell
I’m developing a set of illustrations specific to South-East Asian culture - the four Buddhist countries Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. These illustrations, about 60 in total, depict everyday life and range from basic activities like "getting up", "eating noodle soup" or "taking a motorcycle taxi" to more complex ones like "alms round" and important festivals like the "water festival". The illustrations can be used stand-alone with tutors to learn basic vocabulary [beginner/input] or to stimulate speaking [intermediate/output] and maybe even discussion [advanced/conversation]. I will also provide a set of recordings (Thai, Khmer) as well as written descriptions plus recordings of those texts (Khmer only), targeting learners* at the intermediate level.

*… targeting mostly myself in the case of Khmer :lol:

How this idea came about
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. I had been using Action English Pictures for Khmer but was often frustrated with the many limitations - mostly cultural - of that book. It's still a good book, and probably quite useful for English and related languages, but it doesn't cut it for Khmer.

Some thoughts on culture
We still live in a world where cultures and ways of life are quite different from region to region. Daily activities, everyday objects, habits, social customs, they all vary a lot. They also make up the basic vocabulary of each language. For us language learners, it's as important to get familiar with the target culture as it is to learn the language. You can't separate these two. When using picture-supported learning, it's therefore important to work with culturally neutral stories (animal stories, global adventures etc.) for some basic vocabulary development, and then get your hands on culturally appropriate material. Given the economics, it's clear that there's a huge bias towards Western culture, at least that's my experience with Khmer. I found a few books in Thailand and Cambodia with pictures suitable for language learning, but nothing as deep and comprehensive as, for instance, Action English Pictures (USA), or any of the excellent story-telling “busy books” like "Ein Tag in Wimmelhausen" (Germany).

With my project "South-East Asia Illustrations" I'm trying to fill that gap to some extent. I'm totally aware of it's limitations, and also that these illustrations are biased by my personal view on South-East Asian culture and may differ from a local understanding or miss important bits. But they go a long way, I hope, and they’re really fun to design.

Minority languages
Now here's something I'm really excited about. I haven't pushed this point too often, but I'm really passionate about linguistic diversity. I believe that every culture has intrinsic value and the right to be protected and preserved. I also believe that culture is intertwined with language, and you can't keep your culture if you can't keep your language. Languages are constantly changing and adapting and will thrive if the speaker communities have positive attitudes towards their own culture. I hate seeing dominant national languages destroy minority languages (Thailand is a sad case in point, systematically going after their minority languages; it’s not as bad as it used to be, but the damage is unfolding now). As I'm neither a linguist nor working in the humanities (I’m a mathematician), I can't do much about it, but I would like to use these illustrations to give a few languages a presence on the web. These illustrations can be used to record easily upwards of 15 hours of descriptions, covering a wide range of basic and relevant vocabulary. Languages I have in mind are: Northern Khmer, various Tai languages like Northern Thai, Shan, Lao, and other Mon-Khmer languages like Kuy. For most of these languages, there's basically nothing of substance available, and some are drifting towards being endangered.

Funding and license
The entire project is self-funded. I provide everything under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. I hope to see derivative uses, in particular for other languages in the region, and I'm also willing to host such projects. The funds actually come from - and use up - a lucky punch I was able to make with a short-term bitcoin investment two years back. Once this project is done, funding for follow-up projects will be more difficult.

How does this fit in with my own learning?
Khmer: The materials I publish for Khmer are exactly at my current level. I will be my best customer, I guess, for Khmer.
Thai: Even though it is the best-served language in the region, Thai is still short of materials. I'm providing recordings aimed at intermediate learners who want to take the next step after maybe having completed one or two textbooks. As I’m writing the vocabulary lists (not really transcripts, but key words and phrases as they appear in the recording), I’m also getting something out of it: spelling, the odd word here or there, and many interesting phrases/chunks.

Finally, I have to say that this project is a bit a shot in the dark. I don't know if there is much interest in the materials I put up. I do hope it, of course, but it may turn out that learners’ needs are different. In any case, I’m getting out a lot, and I really enjoy the creative process :D
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby emk » Fri Oct 23, 2015 7:10 pm

This is a really cool project!

Bakunin wrote:I don't usually cross-post, but in this case I think the topic might be of broader interest, at least the concept I'm experimenting with. Let me know if what I'm doing is against the rules...

Your post is entirely welcome and not against any rules at all. :-)

As a general rule, established members of the community are invited to share any cool language learning resources they've created. If there are any new members reading this, however, you should probably introduce yourself before linking to your stuff so that we don't mistake you for a spammer.
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby iguanamon » Fri Oct 23, 2015 8:49 pm

Something like this is sorely needed. I can definitely see how this would be useful for any language where there are few resources available but there is access to native speakers. It would even be useful for languages where resources are available. To a large extent, in my opinion, language-learning is about pattern recognition. In this case, there is no translation, and that's ok. The illustrations are the context and that should be enough, combined with more exposure in other contexts to learn.

Anyone who is a fan of Star Trek knows about the "universal translator". There's an episode called Darmok and Gilad at Tanagra that illustrates this well. The alien race communicated by metaphor. The words were translated but the situations to which they refer could not be translated. So, in essence, there was no dictionary. By the end of the episode, communication of a sort was established. Picard managed to understand some of the critical metaphors well enough to persuade them to go in peace. He managed to learn enough of the language by observation and interaction. Of course. that's how we, the audience, learn what the metaphors mean as well. I think anyone interested in language-learning should watch this episode.

With this method, the illustrations serve as the frame of reference- the bilingual parallel text. I am going to play around with what you've created when I get some free time soon. It looks like fun. Well done, Bakunin! Did you do the drawings yourself?



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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby Bakunin » Sat Oct 24, 2015 4:24 am

emk wrote:Your post is entirely welcome and not against any rules at all. :-)

Cool, thanks :)

iguanamon wrote:Something like this is sorely needed. I can definitely see how this would be useful for any language where there are few resources available but there is access to native speakers. It would even be useful for languages where resources are available. To a large extent, in my opinion, language-learning is about pattern recognition. In this case, there is no translation, and that's ok. The illustrations are the context and that should be enough, combined with more exposure in other contexts to learn.

Yes, that's the idea, and that's how I've been learning Khmer. Visuals are really powerful!

Thanks for the Star Trek links, it's always fun to watch these 'aliens' :D The lack of cultural homogeneity on our planet is the main reason why I had to develop a set of illustrations for South-East Asia. There's just so much difference in the details, in the objects people use, in their habits and social norms, that it's impossible to come up with a universal set of illustrations which works for all cultures. Or if you try to, you miss out on a lot of basic vocabulary. The word for chopsticks, for instance, is basic in Thai but advanced in German. Turkey and Thanksgiving are an important cultural concept in the USA but don't carry much meaning in Thailand. We eat using knife and fork sitting at a table, Thais often sit on a mat on the floor and use fork and spoon. I've never seen a motorcycle taxi in Germany or Switzerland, but it's a common form of transport in Thailand. Small things like this add up.

iguanamon wrote:Did you do the drawings yourself?

Of course not! I wish I could draw like this myself. No, I hired an illustrator on the other side of the world, more like in your part actually. But I come up with the exact content of the individual frames, so there's a lot of me in these illustrations ;)
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby rdearman » Sat Oct 24, 2015 12:58 pm

Bakunin wrote:
iguanamon wrote:Did you do the drawings yourself?

Of course not! I wish I could draw like this myself. No, I hired an illustrator on the other side of the world, more like in your part actually. But I come up with the exact content of the individual frames, so there's a lot of me in these illustrations ;)


When I first looked at your method in your log I was intrigued. But being cheap I didn't want to buy a huge amount of picture books. So I looked at various other options. Since you mentioned funding and you only have a limited amount there is a method you could use to generate the pictures yourself, with the help of friends and an opensource program called "GIMP". One of the ways I thought of creating some custom picture books was to get a couple of friends and get them to perform the scene I want, greetings, eating, ordering lunch, etc. Take a photo of them doing it, then using the photo editor GIMP to modify the image and even "cartoon" it. So I knocked up an example by downloading a free image from morguefile.com

DSC00405.JPG

Then I used gimp to cut out one of the people, then overlay his image on himself twice to create a photo of "Triplets", then I used a filter to "cartoon".
Cartoon_Triplets.png

Now obviously I'm not a graphics designer but if you've got photos of people doing exactly what you want, then it becomes a lot easier. You'd just need to simplify and cartoon the image. I realise your artist is probably doing a better job of illustrating the action and it is probably a better method, I'm just suggesting something which may be more cost effective.
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby astromule » Sun Oct 25, 2015 6:32 am

I think the idea is excellent. Have you tought about difunding it through Reddit and eventually launching a crowdfunding campaign? http://www.crowdfunding.com/ (list of popular crowfunding sites)

So you're a Mathematician... I was sort of convinced that you were a Linguist. Am I the only Lawyer here?


Bakunin wrote:I don't usually cross-post, but in this case I think the topic might be of broader interest, at least the concept I'm experimenting with, and maybe shouldn't be tucked away in my log. Let me know if what I'm doing is against the rules...
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby Iversen » Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:39 am

I ran into something like this yesterday when I updated some minibiographies attached to my music collection and ran into Tyagaraja. Boff!

With composers from the European sphere you can write down where they where born, which conservatories they frequented in their youth, which posts in society they had and their works can be listed as a series of opus numbers in chronological order - although some opus numbers by Baroque composers comprise more then one work in the modern sense of the word. But then you come to Indian music, where the only thing you can go by seems to be names of ragas - and heaven knows how much they differ between each performance! Furthermore the whole bunch of instruments is different from anything in a European orchestra, and most of the things I hear with my ears are impossible to notate on a normal note sheet with five lines and a key to the left. But it is still music, and it is both interesting and pleasant to listen to it.

I even have a problem with the name of this composer. Wikipedia writes this: "Kakarla Tyagabrahmam (4 May 1767 – 6 January 1847) or Saint Tyagaraja, also known as Tyāgayya in Telugu, Tyāgarājar in Tamil, was one of the greatest composers of Carnatic music or Indian classical music." I have retained Tyagaraja for easy reference and "Kakarla Tyagabrahmam" as the mans real name. But in some cultures there may not even be a real name, or it is only used by the bearer him/herself - is it then a name in our sense of the word, where it is something like a public 'tag' attached to a person for the purpose of identifying that person? Nearer to my world: should I put the Hungarian "Kéler Béla" under K or B in the alphabet? "Kéler" is the family name, which is placed first in Hungarian. Should the Italian baroque composer "dall'Abaco" be alphabetized as a D- person or under -A? But what then about "de Falla", where the "de" isn't attached to the main family name? By Spaniards I put composers under their known family name, but they mostly have one name more, like in this case "Manuel de Falla y Matheu". But this second name (presumably from the Mother's side of family) is almost never used. But what then about Italian renaissance and early Baroque composers like "Lodovico Grossi da Viadana (usually Lodovico Viadana, though his family name was Grossi" (quote Wikipedia). I think of him as "Viadana", but his real family name apparently was "Grossi", and he just happened to be born in a place called Viadana. And then we haven't even spoken about the American habit of using abbreviated first names or the Russian habit of referring to people by their first and middle name.

It may be hard to illustrate such intricacies in naming conventions in pictures, but you have exactly the same thing with physical objects. Which motorized vehicles do you see in the streets of Delhi or Jakarta? Well, some of them look like our cars, but in between they have weird contraptions which I don't see in the streets of my own country. What are they called, and what does each kind of vehicle look like? Here pictures actually may be better than descriptions in words, also because you remember things better when you also have a picture of them in your head.

Good luck with your project.

Motorized-thing-seen-near-Kalaw-in-Myanmar-F4317a01.JPG
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby Bakunin » Sun Oct 25, 2015 1:23 pm

@rdearman: That's a cool idea! It would be great to have a library of picture stories like this for many cultures (maybe even here on ALLF*?). It also seems to be a lot of work, though, especially the acting and taking pictures part. Without the same faces you won't get a coherent story. But I believe what I'm doing can be leveraged to some extent for other languages. Of the 60 or so topics in the end, many will be useful for other cultures, especially if the learner is willing to ignore a few SEA specifics.

*Is that now the established acronym?

@astromule: Thanks, and no :) I'm fortunate to have the funds, and I'm not going to go through the pain of raising funds elsewhere. I'm planning to turn to crowdfunding for minority language documentation projects later on (e.g., Kuy language) using my set of illustrations, but that's at least one year in the future.

Iversen wrote:With composers from the European sphere you can write down where they where born, which conservatories they frequented in their youth, which posts in society they had and their works can be listed as a series of opus numbers in chronological order - although some opus numbers by Baroque composers comprise more then one work in the modern sense of the word. But then you come to Indian music, where the only thing you can go by seems to be names of ragas - and heaven knows how much they differ between each performance! Furthermore the whole bunch of instruments is different from anything in a European orchestra, and most of the things I hear with my ears are impossible to notate on a normal note sheet with five lines and a key to the left. But it is still music, and it is both interesting and pleasant to listen to it.

That reminds me of one of my Khmer tutors who mistook a baguette in a shopping bag of a woman in one of my picture stories for a native Khmer instrument of similar shape :lol:

Iversen wrote:It may be hard to illustrate such intricacies in naming conventions in pictures, but you have exactly the same thing with physical objects. Which motorized vehicles do you see in the streets of Delhi or Jakarta? Well, some of them look like our cars, but in between they have weird contraptions which I don't see in the streets of my own country. What are they called, and what does each kind of vehicle look like? Here pictures actually may be better than descriptions in words, also because you remember things better when you also have a picture of them in your head.

Yes, that's exactly the challenge... and motivation for the project. Thanks for the good wishes! :)
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby rdearman » Sun Oct 25, 2015 3:00 pm

Bakunin wrote:@rdearman: That's a cool idea! It would be great to have a library of picture stories like this for many cultures (maybe even here on ALLF*?). It also seems to be a lot of work, though, especially the acting and taking pictures part. Without the same faces you won't get a coherent story.

I don't know, with three friends and a digital camera you could easily get a couple of hundred pictures in a day. Especially easy stuff like eating, walking, riding a bike, driving, walking, fishing, etc, etc. Gimp cartooning is simply clicking on the filter "Cartoonize" and save the result. Since you'd use the same friends you'd get the same faces. It would be a great project for people here I think. Mainly because if people were to do scenes like "Bob meets Sarah and says hello" in front of Tower of London, or Eiffel Tower, etc, etc, and we have some many people from such different places.

:D
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Re: Illustrations for language learning

Postby astromule » Sun Oct 25, 2015 7:01 pm

In return, you could try to eat that Khmer instrument next time that you're there.
Where did you find your illustrator? What search portal/community did you use?

Bakunin wrote:That reminds me of one of my Khmer tutors who mistook a baguette in a shopping bag of a woman in one of my picture stories for a native Khmer instrument of similar shape :lol:
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