Slow Learning: French and Hindi

[jeffers]

My life and languages in a nutshell
I'm an American, born in New York, but my parents went to teach in India for two years when I was 9 so the first other language I ever learned was Hindi. Back in New York for middle school I failed 3 years of Spanish, and then returned to India for most of my high school in which I studied Hindi again, with mixed results. During college ("university" to my British friends) I decided I'd rather study Ancient Greek than a living language, and I found I really enjoyed it. Back to India again for two years, and I took private lessons for a few months while working there.

In India I met and married my wife, who is from Northern Ireland, and we moved to Philadelphia where I got a Master of Divinity including further study of Greek and the addition of Hebrew. Towards the end of these studies I began to study German independently because I felt like a living language would be a welcome break after 4 years of Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew. A couple years later we went back to India for 4.5 years to teach IT at the school I graduated from. While there I spent a lot more time learning Hindi, and this time I did all I could to make it fun. I got into Hindi films and Hindi music (which is mostly music from Hindi films), read a lot of children's books, comics, etc. I made a brief attempt to revive my fading Hebrew, and more successfully spent time reading Biblical Greek from time to time.

I have now lived in England since 2005, where I have been teaching Religious Studies, ICT and Computer Science. After a couple of years I picked up and dusted off the German I had worked on for a year 10 years previously, and began to really enjoy it. To my annoyance my children began to study French in school, and I couldn't help them with their homework. I certainly didn't want to add another language to learn, but as my eldest was struggling in school, I decided to work on a book with him. That's when I discovered HTLAL and the community I found there drove me more and more into my language study.

Recent issues
At the beginning of 2015 I was in the middle of trying to do the Super Challenge in French, Hindi and Ancient Greek (Koine), manage the TAC French team, and prepare for a summer trip to India. So obviously I bought Assimil Sanskrit (in French) to get ready for India. The 4 1/2 weeks I had in India was one of my best summers ever, but I think I burnt out on language study like never before. I took Hindi lessons for 3 weeks, attended a few Sanskrit lessons, watched a Hindi film almost every evening, and had loads of conversations. While there I tried several times to use the HTLAL website, but every time it was down. Combined with the burnout I was beginning to feel, when I got back home I just dropped HTLAL and most of my language study. I say most because I've still kept watching my favourite French TV series and have listened to French music almost every day.

I was always going to come back to regular language study. In particular I was going to make another attempt to finish a French Super Challenge, but I think I needed the break I've had.

The road forward
I have signed up for the Super Challenge in French, Hindi, Ancient Greek and now German. I don't expect or plan to finish the latter three, but I think I have a good chance of finishing the French one. The term we are in right now is the busiest time of the year for secondary school teachers in the UK, but after the 15th of May things will lighten up and I expect to dive back into language study and the new language learners' forum like I'd never left it!

[jeffers]

The slow learning philosophy

Just reserving this post to write about the philosophy of slow learning.

[jeffers]

French

Before the summer of 2015 I had gotten to the point where I could read Le Petit Nicolas stories for pleasure (with a bit of help from my Kindle dictionary), catch a lot of the words in French music, and understand something like 60% of dialogue in a French policier without subtitles. That 60% estimate means that I understood more than enough to know what was going on, who was angry at whom and why, etc, but not enough to quite understand the clues and twists of story. In preparation for going to India I worked halfway through Assimil Hindi and did about 10 chapters of Assimil Sanskrit, both of which are only available in a French base. I was pleased that I was able to comfortably read the introductions and understand the explanations, translations and notes throughout, only needing to look up a handful of words. To me, that was a definite proof of my progress in French: the fact that I could use it successfully in learning another language. In addition, when I first arrived in India I impressed a French teacher by having a 10 minute conversation with him about learning French, and I really didn't feel like I struggled to find words.

Since that summer I haven't done much "formal" study, and I stopped recording anything for the Super Challenge. But I have persisted in doing something in French almost every day. Mainly I have listened to French music (surtout Jean Louis Aubert) and watched some French policiers with subs (surtout Caïn). Towards the end of November I started working through Pimsleur 3 again while driving to start reviewing in preparation for the next Super Challenge, and I did most lessons 2-3 times.

I'm not sure where I want my French to take me. My learning has mainly been passive, and I have had few opportunities for conversation. I would love to visit France for a holiday, and I'm sure that I could be quite chatty after a few days, but it doesn't look like that's happening any time soon. So in the meantime I just plan to keep doing things I enjoy in French: watch TV shows and films, read books and comics, listen to music.

Following is a list of resources I have found helpful and enjoyed over the past few years:

Books
Le Petit Nicolas I can't describe how much I have enjoyed this series. The stories are short and amusing, both of which make them good for learners. Most stories end with a punch-line which isn't very funny, but the real humour comes in the stories themselves, the way Nicolas narrates his world is wonderful. The best thing for learners is that the stories are funny even if you only catch 50% of the text, and they bear re-reading. I think I've read the original book 6-7 times, and read the other four I own 3-4 times each. The audiobook for the original is brilliant, and although it is read very fast it makes the stories come alive.

Les orpailleurs by Thierry Jonquet is the first and only "serious" novel I've read in French. Even with the French dictionary on my Kindle it was a struggle to read at times, but the dark events contrasted with the banter between the police inspector and judge kept me going. Towards the end of the book it was keeping me up late to get to the end.

TV Shows
I don't watch cop shows in English. I like Sherlock and Elementary, but that's about it. But for some reason, I've really loved French policiers. Of course there's Engrenages, and I hope the next series comes out during the Super Challenge. I've quite enjoyed Candice Renoir about a policewoman who has recently left her husband and has moved to Marseille with the kids. She balances work and home (definitely the balance is on the work side), and uses what I would call "wifely common sense" to get into the mind of witnesses and solve crimes. Light-hearted but well made. Another fun but good series I've enjoyed is Cherif, about an arab police captain in Lyon. The complication is that his ex-wife is a defense lawyer and Jewish. His "thing" is that he constantly quotes old American cop shows, or steals tricks from them, and that he always approaches everything with a winning grin.

On the more serious side, one of my favourite shows has been Caïn, about a police captain in Marseille recently in a wheelchair (due to events just before the beginning of the series). He's an angry jerk and he knows it, and he uses his disability to get away with stuff. I finally figured out in series 3 how he drives his car: there is an accelerator and a brake built into the steering wheel.

My favourite French TV series is still Boulevard du Palais, although I warn you that the first couple series are dreadfully cheesy at points. For the Super Challenge, a great thing about this series is that each episode is about 90 minutes long. And for those burnt out on cliff-hanger driven series (yeah, I'm thinking of Braquo and Engrenages), most episodes of Boulevard du Palais are self-contained.

Podcasts
I almost didn't post about podcasts, but I have to admit that in the last 2-3 years podcasts have probably done more for my progress than TV shows. First mention is L'avis de Marie http://www.podclub.ch/sendungen/l-avis-de-marie-f, designed for learners from A2-B1. Marie speaks a bit slowly and precisely, but she discusses interesting topics in current events, culture or her own life, and the effect is quite charming and engaging. She stopped recording in December 2015, but there are 157 episodes waiting to be listened to. The variety of topics is brilliant for learning a wide range of vocabulary and expression. Unfortunately, at 12-14 minutes, these podcasts are too short to count for the Super Challenge. The other podcast I listened to a lot was Au coeur de l'histoire http://www.europe1.fr/emissions/au-coeur-de-l-histoire?page=2, and these definitely count for the SC.


Once the Super Challenge gets rolling, I'm sure to dig up more materials and post about them as they come up.

[jeffers]

Hindi

Hindi is my first love among my foreign languages, and my biggest bugbear. My 2015 summer in India was a wonderful and enjoyable experience, during which I reconfirmed my love of Hindi and moved it forward in leaps and bounds. Best of all, I was briefly interviewed by a reporter from the Times of India who said that I "speak Hindi like a pro"! Here's the proof: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/All-cultures-mix-at-Landour-Language-School/articleshow/48644279.cms (search for Jeffery Lehman... my name is Jeffrey but never mind ). My friend and I (the Brian mentioned in the article) watched Hindi films with subs almost every evening, and we went to the cinema to see Bajarangi Bhaijaan. The cinema experience felt like a real triumph because I was able to understand everything that was going on without subtitles. A few jokes passed me by completely, but humour is difficult in any L2.

There were three things that really helped prepare me for that summer, and I'd recommend anyone to do similar things if they are going to a semi or full immersion experience:

1. Shadowing Assimil I bought Assimil Hindi (French base) to review the language, and while listening I started shadowing the dialogues. I've read a lot about shadowing on HTLAL but it's not something I ever tried. In this case it just felt natural to do it and I feel that the time spent doing shadowing really loosened my tongue for when I arrived in India.
2. Listening to the news In the months before I went I listened to the BBC news podcast नमस्कार भारत (Namaskar Bharat, Hello India) once or twice every day. Sometimes I felt like I could only get the gist of a story, other times I understood most. The most important thing was that it sharpened my listening to the point that I could listen to conversations fairly well.
3. Reading + vocab I worked through about half of the Routledge Intermediate Hindi Reader in the months before going. I treated each chapter a bit like an Assimil lesson: I listened to the audio a few times first, then read the text. In my first pass through each chapter I would not stop to look up words, but instead underlined words I didn't know. Then I read the chapter again checking the glossary. Any words I felt I still didn't know went into and Anki set which I worked on every day. Whenever I finished a chapter I would go back and review the previous 5 chapters or so. This was brilliant for improving my reading and understanding, and the fact that I was learning vocabulary in context meant that it really stuck. I also read a brief biography of Gandhi (for 12 year olds) and two Tintin comics in Hindi, adding key vocabulary to another Anki set as I went. One different thing I did with Anki is that I only made L2 -> L1 cards, and frankly it made the experience far less frustrating, less time-consuming, but still just about as effective.

A trip to the home country of an L2 would not be complete without loading yourself down with native learning material. While in India I attempted to purchase the entire series of Tintin in Hindi. I was able to get most of them, and one goal I have for the Super Challenge will be to read through most of them. I got copies several Amar Chitra Katha comics (mostly Hindu religious stories) in both Hindi and English, so I can read them in parallel if necessary, and I got a nice copy of the Bible with English and Hindi in parallel. Of course I brought back about 6-7 Hindi films on DVD as well.

[jeffers]

German

While I was studying Ancient Greek and Hebrew in seminary, I would browse the language learning section of bookstores and find myself very jealous of people learning French, German and Spanish, with their shelves and shelves of language learning material. After graduating I decided to learn German because it is the language of my grandparents on both sides, and because it is useful in two areas of study I am interested in: theology and Indology. Back then I worked through Living Language German, some other book + cassette series the library had, Pimsleur I (again from the library) and InTense German (audio review of verb tenses... very good but hard to find nowadays). I also found the Lyric Language songs very useful to listen to. I spent a lot of time during a little over a year learning and making good progress, but I let it all go when I moved back to India. After moving to England I began to study German again, inspired by the fact that Borders Books was having a 75% off sale on Michel Thomas. I bought the whole set and worked through the foundation course. At the same time I discovered GermanPod101 and the Slow German podcast (http://slowgerman.com/). The Deutsche Welle website was a wonderful discovery with its wealth of free material, and one of my favourites was Radio D http://www.dw.com/en/learn-german/radio-d/s-9671. However, I dropped it all once again when I started studying French.

I had been toying with the idea of picking German up again for the upcoming Super Challenge, and I was pushed over the edge by the fact that my high school class from India is having our 30th reunion in Germany. I decided that even if I only get to use it a bit over the weekend, this was the motivation I was looking for. Since booking my flight I have worked again through the Michel Thomas foundation course, begun the second series of Radio D, and begun reading the German Easy Reader by Brian Smith. I'd like to get the first 2 Pimsleur courses from my local libraries and work through those as well before I travel. I've also dipped into Deutsche Warum Nicht? by Deutsche Welle.

For Super Challenge reading in German, I intend to start with some easy readers, and I might get the entire series by Brian Smith. I also have a few of those short books "mit mini CD" published by Langenscheidt. German is not a priority for me, so I doubt I will get beyond easy books, but reading them will take me further than before and prepare me for bigger things later. For the film half I will probably mostly use audiobooks and podcasts.

EDIT: I have to mention the album Weit weg von fertig by Von Brücken, which I purchased recently. The main draw for me was ex Jupiter Jones singer Nicholas Müller, and it is an album that has grown on me with each listening.

[jeffers]

Koine Greek and Sanskrit

I began studying Ancient Greek in college with the JACT course Reading Greek. This opened up a new vista of language learning, with its emphasis on reading substantial amounts of text from the very beginning. I enjoyed it from the very beginning, but I was still stuck on the idea that language learning was essentially learning a lot of vocabulary and hoping you could piece it together in the right way. If I had taken a quarter of the hours I spent reviewing flashcards, and spent it rereading the texts I would have made much more progress. After that course I did a class reading 1 Peter (in Koine Greek, e.g. New Testament Greek), and again spent too much time learning every word for each chapter and too little time actually reading the chapters. Later on I wised up and spent more time actually reading Greek, and it's something I've continued to do in fits and spurts. My approach now is to read a chunk of text (a paragraph or chapter) without stopping to look things up, in order to get an overall sense of the passage. I then go through it again and look things up as needed.

During the upcoming Super Challenge I intend to read a lot of the New Testament, I might even finally finish reading the whole thing (I've read about 1/3 of it in Greek). After that, if there is indeed an "after that", I intend to read section of my old Reading Greek textbook, and some books of the Septuagint (the Old Testament and Apocrypha in Greek). For the film half, learners of Ancient Greek are a little stuck. I have an audio copy of the Greek New Testament in which I find the narrator's American vowels rather irritating, but I might use it in alternation with reading any way. The Cambridge Greek Play is a long running series of performances of Ancient Greek plays which is put on every three years at Cambridge University. Their 2016 offering is a double bill of Antigone, by Sophocles, and Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, which will be taking place in October. I'd definitely like to go and see it, possibly twice, and so I'd like to study both texts over the coming summer in preparation. Given the scarcity of films in Ancient Greek, I would count these viewings as films in the Super Challenge (I do believe live plays were approved previously anyway).

I don't have much to say about Sanskrit at the moment, except that it's a language I'd like to learn a bit of. The fun of studying it before I went to India was that I had no illusions that I was going to master it, I had no intentions to try to speak to anyone in it, so it was just a bit of fun without any real pressure. The relatively recent Assimil textbook is an excellent offering, and the audio is very well done. While in India I purchased a copy of the Bhagavad Gita with parallel text in Hindi, and another copy with parallel text in English, but I have no immediate plans for using them. I also purchased both volumes of Thomas Egenes' Introduction to Sanskrit since it is much cheaper in India. The major disappointment with Egenes' books is that all of the verb tables are written in transcription without Devanagari text. How irritating!

[Komma]

Hey jeffers and welcome back to 'HTLAL' and welcome to the new forum. Though we never really chatted much at the old forum I think, I still remember your name pop up here and there

I am really looking forward to you slow learning post. Sounds interesting. And also I wished I had though of reserving all these posts in the first part of my log as I started it Now I just have links to those post in the middle of it...

Good luck on your learning

[PeterMollenburg]

Dear Jeffers,

And I say 'dear' as you've been sorely missed my friend. Many a time have I caught myself wondering what good ol' Jeffers is up to in the world out there. It's great to see you back Jeffers and nice reading about your experiences in the past with your language learning adventures and where you are now. I'll definitely be following your journey and hope you progress well during the Super Challenge. Sounds like you had a great time in India! I'm also curious about how you find the Deutsche Welle series Deutsch - Warum nicht? as it is a series I own and have every intention of doing some day in the distant future. I was only re-organising some files the other day of this very program (wow what a coincidence! ok, just a hint of sarcasm there). Anyway of course, French is my main focus still and so it goes without saying that I'm particularly interested in your French journey of course. However despite not being a language of interest for myself personally (i'm sure it would become so were I to take it upon myself to learn some- but I won't run that risk!) I truly hope to see you progress in your favourite- Hindi, as I (as most of us here) truly know what it's like to have one language (or even two, three, four or more) which we truly adore and goes to our heart. All the best Jeffers!

PM

[Peluche]

Namaste Jeffers, good to hear from you again. I'm glad you had a blast in India.

I have unfortunately lost a lot of my Hindi, and I want to regain what was lost.

Here is a resource link that was posted by someone here:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/mideast/hindi/stories.html
(My current level is somewhere between intermediate and advanced.)

There are also some Indrajal comics scans here:
http://indrajal-online.blogspot.de/
Some in Hindi (look under Hindi IJC)

[jeffers]

My main focus right now is German, partly because I had neglected it for so long and partly because I have an upcoming trip to Germany. I still listen to French music almost every day, and I poke around on Hindi news or blog sites on an irregular basis. But until the 4th of July I intend to keep 90% of my language study on German.

I'm acting like a beginner even though I've studied German before, because right now I'm just trying to ramp things up from a state of neglect. I'm doing 2-3 lessons of Duolingo most days, listening to a lesson of Warum Nicht? twice each day, and when I walk the dog I've been listening to 2 lessons from Radio D Teil 2. In my previous German studies I did almost no reading, although I had always intended to, so I've been reading the German Easy Reader by Brian Smith, which is built around the 500 most frequent words. The stories are, as you might imagine, awfully dull, but it's pretty easy to read at a good pace and it only takes about 10 minutes to read a chapter. In addition I've been listening a lot to the music of Von Brücken and Jupiter Jones.

Radio D and Warum Nicht? are two Deutsche Welle radio courses by the same author. Warum Nicht? is more like a traditional course, building grammar and vocabulary at a steady pace, but Radio D feels a bit more random in this respect; one lesson we have the perfect tense explained, the next lesson the dative case. I think Warum Nicht? will be more useful to a beginner because it is more systematic, but Radio D is an excellent course for other reasons. Although it is narrated in English, it reminds me of French in Action in the sense that it immerses the listener in German conversations clearly above their level and so gets you used to learning to listen for clues to meaning, context, etc, in order to get the gist of a conversation rather than word for word meaning. In addition, as it follows the reporters around the country they introduce you to different regional accents and cultural practices. It is also more recent than Warum Nicht? and has a more interesting story and higher production values. If I had to choose one it would be Radio D because it's more interesting, but as they are both free, I'm happy to use both.

Once the 1st of May rolls around, I intend to switch the balance from German courses to Super Challenge activities of reading and watching. I'll probably start the Easy Reader from the beginning, and then go on to the same author's Pre-Intermediate Reader (based on the 1000 most common words). For listening I'll start with the audio from the Easy Reader, and then see what else I can find.

Here's a question for other learners of German. When I studied French, my greatest discovery was the book and audiobook of Le Petit Nicolas. Although both were well above my level at the time, the stories were so engaging, and the audiobook was read so well that I found myself laughing out loud often. This really "broke the seal" for both listening and reading in French which soon became my main study activities. Can you suggest something similar in German? The most important criteria are that there should be a book and audiobook available, and the stories should be accessible even if they aren't particularly easy. If they are really funny and also well-known cultural icons, so much the better!