#and I’ve also done a few others in french german and swahili

[ravenlesslangblr]

So I did all of the Duolingo placement tests

Related to this post I saw a few requests to post the results of all my placement tests, so let's go! Long post and a lot of rambling ahead! So my friend and I did the tests chronologically (leaving the High Valyrian and Klingon out until the end in case we got too tired), but I'm going to group them up here in an order that makes sense.

Each of the numbers means the number of skills I've tested out of/the number of 'crowns' I got in each language. Since I got to complete the placement test 37 times in total, I could actually find out how it works. It is pretty hard to try and cheat your way through it with a language you don't know, because if the test picks up on a fact that you messed up a 'beginner sentence', it immediately sends you back to the basics. Due to this, some results were a tiny bit upsetting, but later on, I realised that this is just how the test works and is not necessarily reflective on one's language skills. Another thing that is super important - the test reflects your knowledge of the Duolingo course rather than your actual language knowledge. I could actually prove this 'theory' to myself later on with some results.

My 'main' languages aka the languages I did well on and I kind of expected to:

Irish 48 French 42 German 51 Honestly, I was a bit more open not to do so well on French since it's become quite rusty and I'm experiencing some kind of a mental block with it, but I still did quite well! As for German and Irish - I would have been so upset had I gotten a single mistake. And it has not happened in either case.

My native language: Czech 31 This one honestly made me lol, because I have made 2+ mistakes and the Duolingo course is just strange. It called me out on my use of nějaký and některý where I was like 'There's a difference? o.O' and at one point it used the verb 'left' for 'forgot', which I did figure out correctly, but it was yet another sign that the course/placement test isn't very accurate yet when it comes to Czech. Languages I did well on because they are similar to a language that i already speak: Spanish 12 Italian 14 (well, I briefly studied Italian, so some credit there as well) Portuguese 3 (surprising since I mostly guessed) Polish 24 Ukrainian 17 Yiddish 5 (I LOVED the Yiddish placement test! I will definitely try the Duolingo course)

Other languages I have done before: Welsh 3 Esperanto 9 I was quite disappointed in both of these (Welsh broke my heart!) but I think this is just a testament that the placement tests aren't reflective of your language knowledge, but of your Duolingo topics knowledge. I haven't done much of Welsh or Esperanto on Duolingo since I studied them at university. I'm not fluent in either, so it really boils down to what I was taught. More proof are the next languages Dutch 22 Scottish Gaelic 20 These are the two lanuages I have studied almost exclusively on Duolingo only. I also definitely have a better knowledge of Welsh and Esperanto than Gaelic and Dutch. But the tests went much much better for these, because I already knew the topics that Duolingo was going to ask me. And now for the Nordic languages: Swedish 18 Norwegian 16 Danish 7

Honestly, I think it's hilarious that I did better at Swedish than Norwegian, when the only reason I did well at Swedish was because of Norwegian. Also, the articles are still super confusing to me and it was a source of many frustrating mistakes! Speaking of mistakes - I don't think that the test takes into account what kind of mistakes you made. It could be a missing article (which imo is a pretty minor one) or you could pick an adjective for a verb and both of the mistakes will be marked down the same. This one was pretty frustrating and prevented me from doing well on languages that I was actually okay at. Languages I've failed and it was quite upsetting: Korean 0 Russian 0 Latin 0 I have been learning some Korean on Lingodeer (mostly reading Hangul), so I expected to utilise some of these skills on Duolingo. Not the case. My Russian - I can read and understand - just like Ukrainian that I did pretty well on in comparison.... and it all boiled down to me confusing some things and not knowing what 'a horse' was. Boom, 'let's start from the basics'. Same with Latin - I have studied it briefly and was able to understand, but I haven't touched it in a while and completely forgot some minor things, which the placement test picked up on immediately. Also! When you're not doing well, the placement test almost taunts you! They keep giving you the same stuff over and over until you remember it and it feels like there's some hope for you. But no, still back to basics! it's quite mean! haha And here's the languages I have also failed, but it wasn't surprising:

Japanese 0 Mandarin 0 Hindi 0 Arabic 0 Turkish 0 Greek 0 (this is an example of the one I thought I was doing well on) Vietnamese 0 Hebrew 0 Indonesian 0 Hawaiian 0 Finnish 0 (bit sad since I really want to learn Finnish) Romanian 0 (I was super surprised here since I somewhat expected to be able to understand it more) Swahili 0 (again I really enjoyed it! Will check out the course on my actual account) Hungarian 0 (another one i thought I did well on haha) Navajo 0 (also will check out the course!) And the fictional ones - no one's surprised, even though High Valyrian was giving me some hope: High Valyrian 0 Klingon 0 Also, is this a testament of how eurocentric my language interest is? Yep, pretty much. I am quite aware and I'd like to broaden my interests, but then again, it's not that easy. Still all in all, this was so much fun, even though it was a bit tiring and frustrating at times. However, once you find out that there's no point in trying to bs the languages you don't know/recognise anyway, then it gets a bit easier. Let me know if you try and honestly, congrats if you've read up until here, I don't even have the patience to re-read this post :D @dutch-polyglot , @anthropologicle and everyone else who liked/reblogged :)

#language learning #duolingo #polyglot #multilingual

[budo-bujo]

Language Update: 2 months

I have given myself the task for 2021 to learn as much Spanish as I can to prep for coursework at an intermediate level. I need to have reading fluency for my degree, so that’s where my focus is right now, but being able to speak/listen will obviously also be important to develop at some point since I’m aiming for eventual full fluency (or at least conversational competence).

I started in January with almost 0 knowledge outside of the general osmosis that comes from living in an area where Spanish is the most common native language other than English for my whole life.

Today is March 3, so it is my first of 6 updates for the year, and I’ll be giving a rundown of the resources I’m using alongside my fluency progress.

Resources:

Duolingo: I know, Duolingo gets a bad rep among language enthusiasts, but honestly I think it is a useful starting point and a simple way to get daily practice as a true beginner. The Spanish course especially is designed quite effectively compared to the others I’ve tried in the past (Looking at you Swedish), and I particularly enjoy the Stories feature since it feels like I’m actually reading. They’re also usually pretty funny and it feels great to understand the joke. They also have a podcast, which I haven’t started yet but plan to before the next update.

Language Transfer: I don’t know if I can recommend language transfer highly enough. All of their audio lessons are free to access on Youtube or through their website. The host is bilingual, and they work with someone else who is a complete beginner, guiding them through the process of sentence and word formation without using technical grammar terms, so it’s very accessible to less academically experienced people. The method is based on getting you to think in your target language and search for the words based on what you already know instead of memorizing vocab lists and grammar tables. I am about halfway through the Spanish lessons and I will probably listen to them all again when I’m done. They also have courses in French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, Arabic, German, Turkish, and English for Spanish speakers. Definitely check them out. For a free resource you can’t really get much better than this.

Textbooks: I picked up the textbook my university uses for it’s beginner/early intermediate classes so I could direct my learning in a way that would make it easy to jump in if I decided to take classes at a lower level (once I don’t have deal with online class), and it’s really not a very good book on it’s own without the $200 online workbooks and audio files. I won’t even put the name of it bc it’s so clearly a cash grab for the publisher and not actually a great learning resource I also have a couple grammar books on pdf which are more helpful, but I haven’t spent too much time on just because the grammar I’m working on right now is very basic.

Other: I’ve also been working on small amounts of immersion for additional practice. This is mostly just reading tweets and listening to tiktoks in Spanish when I come across them, and I’ve watched a few shows with Spanish subtitles. This isn’t the most intense form of practice, but it is nice to see words I learned showing up in real life.

Progress:

I definitely haven’t made as much progress as I probably could if I spent all my time on studying, but I’m also in a PhD program and teaching a class which takes up a lot of my time. On top of that I’m trying not to go crazy in isolation. Still, I have taken a couple assessments and I’m at a fairly confident beginner level (solidly A1). That’s not a whole lot, but I feel pretty proud of it, and it’s certainly a huge improvement from where I started in January.

I’ll post another update in May, and I’m hoping to be much closer to A2 by then, but we’ll see if I can keep up this pace through midterms and finals.

#langblr #languages #español #spanish #update #studyblr #grad studyblr #grad school #language learning

[salutonriano]

Language Journey Tag

Vielen Dank an @deutsian fürs Verlinken!

1. What languages are you/have you studied?

Umm that depends on what you mean by study. I’ve paid thousands of dollars to take classes in French and German. I've done free courses and read books in Esperanto, as well as gone to the 100th World Esperanto Congress and attended dozens of local meetings. Dutch is probably my next best language. I completed maybe half of the Duolingo tree, maybe more, and spent 10 days in the Netherlands. I have one Dutch friend but tbh we mostly speak in German. Woops!

I also have books for Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Klingon (a gift from my sci-fi-loving teacher), Arabic, Yiddish and Swahili, but I’ve never really done much with them.

2. How long have you been studying?

French - 7 years

Esperanto - 7 years

German - 2.5 years

3. Did you learn through class or self-study (or both)?

French - 5h / week for 4 years of high school, and now I major it in at university.

German - It’s kinda complicated. When I was young, I did three years of “German School” i.e. 3h each Saturday mostly with German expats’ kids but gave it up. Then I picked it up again in university, taught myself using loads of online resources, then I signed up for an intensive class at university, then I did

4. Why did you decide to learn this language?

French - My best friend in grade school’s dad was from France, it kinda wasn’t really a choice.

German - My grandfather was born in Germany, I‘ve always felt a connection to Germany and its language.

Esperanto - My French teacher was an Esperantist, I loved how international the language was, and how quickly I saw results.

5. What was a major highlight/milestone in studying this language?

French - Last semester, 4/5 of my classes were 100% in French with native French speakers (I study in a bilingual francophone-anglophone city). One of these classes was Histoire de la langue française, in which I was the only non-native speaker. I wrote a 20 page academic paper on the linguistic development of Alsace since the Second World War and then presented it as well. I got an A+.

German - Hmm.. I dunno! A few times where I haven’t said really long sentences, Germanophones have thought that I was German. Other than that.. I guess reading my first novel in German and no longer needing subtitles for German movies (which I LOVE now because it’s so hard to find subtitles).

Esperanto - To be honest, I don’t take Esperanto as seriously as I used to, so there aren’t as many milestones. I guess I remember after one year of Esperanto that I could read basic books meanwhile I only knew the French présent.

6. What was the hardest thing about studying this language?

French - I find French slang extremely frustrating. I get the basics of verlan, but I hate having to prononuce everyword backwards in my head to figure out what it is.

German - The regional variations, I guess. I find it very difficult to understand people who don’t speak Hochdeutsch. At the same time, I find it super interesting.

Esperanto - Esperanto doesn’t have enough native speakers to have a reference to look at when using expressions that are forumlated different in each language, like idioms and slang. For example, how could you say “to play someone”? While an English speaker might understand ludi iun, a Mandarin speaker may not. Another example is how to say “you don’t have to”. I’d say “vi ne devas” because in English that’s how it’s constructed, but a German or French person might understand that as “you musn’t,” because that’s what it would literally mean in their language.

7. What resources did you find most useful for studying this language?

French - The program Antidote is my life. It has the most comprehensive dictionary I have ever seen. It knows regionalisms, what register it’s used in, and usage examples.

German - Deutsche Welle, Goethe Institut, Deutsch.info, Mediathek.. there are SO many good resources for German. I don’t wanna list them all here cause I wanna make a post about them later. ;)

Esperanto - Lernu.net is THE site for Esperanto courses. I used that long before Duolingo was out, and now they redid the site and added new courses and functions. They have courses with exercises, forum to chat with other members, a dictionary and even jokes and poems in Esperanto!

8. Any top tips for studying this language?

Start speaking as early as possible! I honestly find that when I make mistakes in front of native speakers, I remember them a lot better.

9. What’s your next major language goal?

Hmm.. I’d like to read another novel in German, watch a French TV show and well I’d like to finish the Dutch tree on Duolingo at some point haha

10. Anything we can do in the tumblr community to get you there?

Any French-language TV shows anyone can recommend? I’m currently watching How to Get Away with Murder in French but I’d like to watch something original.

--

I tag @historyandlanguages @francaise-de-coeur and @jaevla-underbart :)

#personal

[nozdogan-blog]

Assignments week 2

2.1 origin of language

Developmentally,  dialogue  comes  before monologue,  both  for  the  human  species  and  for the human individual.

-Explain  where  language  comes  from,  including possible consequences  for L2 teaching (what does this mean for your teaching?).

Peters (z.d.) tells us that learning and/or acquiring a language is a life-long process. It all starts during pregnancy where babies develop their hearing and they start to hear sounds and sayings from “outside”. When the baby is born the real process of learning a language has started.

 Language comes from a long process where we connect items and proceedings with sounds. I’m always thinking about a picture of a caveman who makes sounds and points to a campfire. The sounds that he makes indicate that he has given an item a certain name. This might sound stupid, but language is communication and this sounds logical to me. For L2 learners, one has to realise that the best way to learn a language is to master all the grammar rules and then be thrown to the lions in the country of language origin. If you want to learn German the proper way, make sure you master the German grammar rules and travel to Germany. This enables you the chance to talk in your L1 language and you are forced to communicate in German (Peters, z.d.). For a teaching practice this means that we have to find a way to create an environment similar to the country where the language is spoken. A teacher has to push his students sometimes and act ‘stupid’, as in: “I don’t speak Dutch. Could you explain to me what you mean in English? Take your time!”

 2.2 Thought language

-Do you think  language? If so, what language? L1 (your mother tongue) or L2 (for instance English)?

Thinking language is also a form of communication: self-communication. It is the process of being aware of a lot of things around you. Your brain is sending out signals, so, yes, I do think we think language. I usually think in L1, but lately more and more in L2 and sometimes in German. I do this all the time. There are moments where I think in L2 and moments where I think in L1. It does not change my ways of going about.

-What  goes  faster:  thinking  or  speaking?  Why? Discuss.

I think that there is no difference between thinking and speaking when it comes to what is faster. There are some people, maybe scientists, that claim that both speaking and thinking are done in the same pace. This might be true, but I think the reason why it might look like we think faster than we speak is that we think ‘earlier’ than speaking. It has nothing to do with speed. I usually think very fast of what I want to say and the process of thinking has already begun before I answer a certain question. I think it is really hard to tell if one goes faster than the other. What does happen is that I usually restrain myself saying things. But even that is a process or outcome of thinking. I don’t believe one goes faster than the other. I believe that there is a certain order: first thinking, then analysing and then speaking.

2.3 Dreams

-Do  you  dream  language?  What/how  do  you dream?

I think we dream in a very different kind of language. I think it is a combination of pictures, images and your L1 language. I never had a dream where I spoke in L2, but I remember quite some dreams where I talk in L1. Furthermore, I’ve heard many times that dreams can be interpreted, which I think is bogus. This means that people are able to interpret your subconscious and I don’t buy into that. I had a dream that I was shopping in the Albert Heijn XL in Tilburg where one of my old friends lived and where we use to do a lot of our shopping and suddenly, one of my current-day students shows up riding a bicycle. Now what does that mean? That my past and present are still connected? Bogus, if you ask me. Evidently, there also is no scientific proof to interpret dreams. Then again, that’s why they call it ‘interpretations’. I don’t dream that often. Well, maybe I do, but I can’t remember most of my dreams. The dreams I do remember are all spoken in pictures or L1.

-(How) Do blind/ deaf people dream?

This is quite a difficult question and there is no straight-up answer to this. It all depends on a number of things: one dreams are made on the count of our senses: hearing, smell, touch, vision and taste. When people are deaf or blind, one of those senses are gone, but the way they dream depends on when they have lost their ability to see or to hear. If one lost his ability to hear or see between the ages of 0 till 5 to 7, it is likely that they well never have dreams based on sight or hearing. But, when the have lived long enough to have had sight and hearing and they lost their hearing or vision later on in life, that’s a different story. People who had vision can dream with images and people who had hearing can still ‘hear’ sounds in their dreams. Something remarkable: blind people who never had real vision tend to have four times more nightmares than people who can see. Even their eye movement during their sleep is different. The E in REM-sleep stands for eye movement and tests show us that people who never had sight don’t move their eyes during their sleep and that people who lost their sight later on in life do have a lot of eye movement during their sleep.

In conclusion: people who are blind/deaf do dream, but differently than us. It all depends on when they lost their sight/hearing.

Source: Top Trending, 2015, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke5Is2cs4Rc

2.4 Language Myths 1 and 2

The book that you purchased for this module, Language Myths, contains some remarkable examples of language awareness in practice. Read, summarize, and comment on Myth 1 and 2. The number of words you use per chapter can vary from 20 to 200. Show that you have read the chapters and that you have thought critically about them.

 Myth 1 The meanings of words should not be allowed to vary or change

In this chapter, Peter Trudgill discusses that there is happening something inevitable: languages are changing and it is a process of time. A lot of words have different meanings in different contexts, such as ‘affair’, ‘state’ and ‘interest’. There are people who think that the meanings of words should not be allowed to vary or change, but the bottom line is that it will happen, no matter what. If we look at the English language a couple of centuries ago, we seem to notice that the word ‘silly’ had a very different meaning and context back then, opposite to what it means nowadays. We’ve also noticed that languages do not change only from within, but also external. For example, English has taken over some words from Old French. Furthermore, languages are self-regulating systems which can be left to take care of themselves. They are self-regulating because their speakers want to understand each other and be understood. If there is any danger of misunderstanding, speakers and writers will appreciate this possibility and guard against it by avoiding synonyms, or by giving extra context.

I agree that language is a self-regulating system and that it is bound to happen that our language changes as time goes on. It is inevitable and unstoppable. But I don’t think that it is something we should stop, even if we wanted to. How many words in Dutch that we use today are derived from French? Rotonde, portefuille, et cetera. The word ‘tsar’, as in, a Russian King, comes from the German word ‘Kaiser’, meaning emperor. In Swahili it is even more different: they have influences from Dutch, German, French and English. Or even take Flemish for example: the Flemish word for ‘tie’ and the German word are basically the same: “kravatte’. Language will always change and I don’t believe it to be a wrong process. Everything around us changes when time passes on. People cling on to these things and say it is ‘tradition’: something that should never change. My opinion? It is also tradition that times, people and our world must, and do, change.

 Myth 2 some languages are just not good enough

In this chapter, Ray Harlow discusses why some languages are not good enough for some people. When we look back at chapter 1, there are a few things that we should still keep in mind: English ‘borrows’ a lot of words and has also evolved throughout time. There are three reasons why some languages are not good enough for some people:

1 In some instances, it is features of the structure of a language which are picked on as the reason why another language is to be preferred for a particular function.

2 Some people prefer a language because they disapprove of the other language spoken by the people they don’t like. Dante did not see the Romans as cultured people, but as savages. That’s the reason why he saw the Roman dialect as savage: it holds a connection to the people who spoke it.

3 The third reason is the argument that language X is not good enough because you can’t discuss nuclear physics in it.

The real matter is that, just as we discussed in chapter 1, this is a matter of time and evolution. It is because the English had to create new words for inventions like computers, nuclear atoms, et cetera, that English might be a ‘better’ language to discuss these topics with. The development of a country and its people also determined the development of language. Old English is no better or worse than Modern English, but it is different. We could not discuss computers in Old English, mainly because there was no situation to create the words needed to discuss the situation. In Old English, they were not as modern as we are and they don’t know about computers. This does not mean that Old English was backward and Modern English is better. If history was different, maybe English was ‘just not good enough’ and languages as Maori were better because of their scientific advantages. Some languages are ‘better’ because they developed their vocabulary faster from ‘within’!