In case you're wondering

This whole "language" thing is well on hold:  I'm having enough trouble remembering how to speak English the way things are going these days.  Someday I'll get back into it.  That and Sudoku and Crosswords.  I'll rock it old school.

Little Pim and Rosetta

I got a Groupon-style thing from Savvy Something and it was for a huge discount on Little Pim language DVDs. So I got both Spanish and Chinese in the hopes that my children will begin to show an interest in the world of foreign languages. So far we've done disc 1 Mandarin twice, and Bella has stared at the screen, unresponsive. She claims to like it, but seems shy about actually trying the words.

From my language loving perspective, the Little Pims seem very cool, and a nice gateway to a kids first 200 words and basic sentence structure. I'm going to keep trying a few times a week. I think we'll get somewhere.

In other news, I actually sprang for a legit copy of Rosetta Stone - I had been trying a library copy which was older. Having the full install and the latest version actually does make a difference. I'm creeping through Japanese, and I REFUSE to use Romaji, but alternate between Kana and Kanji. I just want a few of the key Kanjis, so I don't wind up like Mater in Cars2.

Ok a tiny update. Whatever.

Getting back on the horse...

Yes, it's been a year since my last updates, and frankly there was no room in my brain for language learning. But things are changing, and I have a new push to make this happen. I have a Chinese coworker who will speak with me, AND I have another coworker who is Liberian, and we've been tossing a little French back and forth... Though I may not have the energy to learn Mandinka, I think that having a multilingual office should be fun.

Earlier this summer, I did 5 lessons of Pimsleur Italian to drop some phrases to my Italian-speaking South Jersey clients, but I lost energy on that... I think that I may be burning out on the Pimsleur method and may want a new way of doing things. But I am going to keep Italian off the table for the moment. Chinese and French are my opportunities.

As I surfed the web looking for resources, I found "Rocket Languages" which seems to follow both the podcast model and the pimsleur model with a little "BYKI" thrown in - 31 lessons, each 20-30 minutes, with each focused on a subject area... I listened to parts of the sample podcasts and they sounded sort of Praxis-y (Chinesepod) with a lot of guiding english, plus some software downloads (which they didn't make clear if it ran on Mac).

It might be ok software, but when I did a search for reviews, there were no fewer than a dozen "zombie sites' out there that purported to be "review" sites, but that did nothing but talk about how great Rocket software is. Some had ridiculous names like "RocketLanguageReview.com" - total astroturf. At that moment I decided that even if the lessons are ok, that marketing isn't. It feels dishonest, and I don't understand why they'd think it works.

In the meantime, for French I'm going back to my archive of Learn French by Podcast... and for Chinese I'm sticking with Pimsleur, and adding in a textbook "Integrated Chinese". After a few weeks of refresher, maybe I'll hit my other languages again...

Say WHAT?

Oh, this is a total zombie blog allright. So sorry.

The new job does involve some travel, but for various reasons I haven't been hitting the lessons quite as hard during the travels as I thought I might be going into it: As most I'm doing 1 unit of Rosetta per flight, and 1 pimsleur per city. I can totally improve on that, I know.

Today I was talking with a cousin about Chinese and Japanese and I came up with a key distinction between languages: "Interruptible" versus "Uninterruptible". Languages where key verbs are at the END of the sentence are Uninterruptible.

In japanese, not only is the verb at the end, but whether it's positive or negative is at the END of the Verb. For instance: "As for me, very much cats I... [like not at all] [like] [eat] [desire]." So if you stop a Japanese person mid-sentence, you will never know if they do or don't like the cats, or indeed WHAT verb they'd attach to cats (Eat? Pet? Exercise?).

Similarly, in many of the tenses of German (past, conditional, and future) the action verb is at the end: "I will next year a fine film [make] [see] [purchase] [eat]". Stop them mid sentence and you'll never know.

Now, with these short sentences, you wonder "why would I interrupt?" Consider that all manner of modifiers and sub-clauses will also be loaded into these sentences before the verb: "I will [next year in May together with several friends with whom I had gone to school] a film make."

In contrast, in French, English, Chinese, and other Interruptibles, you can say "I'm going to make a movie [next year with som...]" and brother I'm going to cut you off right there. Because I know you're not going to make that movie. You're always saying you're going to, and it's just never going to happen.

I know it's a strange distinction, but it just might lead to greater understanding between the peoples of this Earth.

In English,

I'm still around!

I just need to remember that the Xmas season is always so busy, and more so with kids. It hasn't helped matters that work has been pretty evil too. But there's light at the end of the tunnel: My new gig starts next week, along with more airport and hotel time, which means more language study time!!!

I recently had an email exchange in mostly-Svenska, and learned just enough Nederlands to have a chat with a Dutch cousin. I'm catching up on my German and Spanish podcasts, and am enjoying a little French in there too. Right now, Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese are on the back burner... but they'll be back in the mix soon enough.

I'm just in a Germanic mood I guess - I have been doing comparisons between German, Dutch, Swedish, and English, and am finding it pretty easy and fun to switch between them. The Dutch sounds are just crazy - rolled R's and lots of "cch" gutteral rumbles. My favorite word is "Graag" which means gladly or please - you use it a lot when ordering food - and it starts with a throat clear, going right into a rolled R, then the aaaahh and ending with the throat clear again. It's tempting to roll all the way through, but no, the R is only at the beginning. The whole effect is so satisfying to say that it truly seems to convey a PRIMAL desire for what you're asking for: Who could deny the requester a coffee or pastry when accompanied by a miniature tiger growl?

NHK Videos

The interweb has delivered to me a number of video learning courses in French and Japanese: The French are the Annenberg "French in Action" series of 52 30 minute shows... and the Japanese are 30 various episodes of NHK (Japanese national TV network) Japanese learning videos from the 1980s... The fashion alone is great viewing, as are the "futuristic" bluescreen sets.

But these things do require TIME to do, and unlike audio learning courses, you can't really watch one of these while driving to work or walking through the skyways. Believe me, I've tried. (ok, not really). But as an adult learner, there IS some advantage to hearing it, seeing lips speaking it, and seeing the word at the same time - the Japanese word for pencil (enpitsu) stuck after just 3 repeats in this method, as did eyeglasses (megane) and cigarette (tabako).

I'm at lesson 76 of Pimsleur Japanese now, so close to the end... But I'm still learning great stuff. We just had the illness section. I was watching the Japanese movie "Paprika" - a GREAT Anime about a detective who dives into people's dreams, and a villain who is taking control of dreams - and I was happy to discover that a lot of the dialogue was somewhat understandable to me: Not enough to really "get" the movie without subtitles... but phrases here and there! It was very cool to realize that.

With the stress of the holidays, Japanese is pretty much my one focus for now... But I'll need to get Mandarin going (and maybe some Cantonese) because in my new Job, I'm angling for a conference in Hong Kong in May. I really want to go!!!!

Good old number nine

As noted in an earlier post, the Pimsleur series has a "tradition" of presenting a comic interlude around lesson number 9. In Sept, I enjoyed the Swedish one. Today, I was treated to one in Korean.

These Pimsleur short courses (10 lessons) are under $20, and really do help train your ear to hear languages... But this Korean series has been pretty hard to listen to: The two speakers have very different voices and I wonder if I'm hearing things right: The male has a breathless style, as though he just ran around the block just before recording the phrase.

On the plus side, with two very different sounding voices, it's easy to place yourself somewhere between the two and be confident you'd be understood.

As a language, Korean is really sounding very much like Japanese - between the politeness levels, the verb a the end, frontloading the sentence, and some of the vocal sounds. A lot closer to Japanese than Chinese for sure. But that said, it has a sound all its own - no mistaking it for anything else!

Update

Lesson 59 of Pimsleur Mandarin was knocked back today, and it hit on lots of earlier vocab as well. I barely need to hit the pause button to knock out the dialogue now. It's very nice.

I'm going to make a blanket statement: If you're going to learn ANY language, it is very worth your while to do the 10-lesson Pimsleur starter set for that language. I had been doing KoreanClass101 for 5 weeks, and sort of was into it... but now I'm 5 lessons into the Pimsleur Korean starter class, and I have a much more natural grasp of the SOUND of the language and how the rhythms work... and I can come BACK to KoreanClass and use it for vocabulary and grammar, while now my "korean ear" is stronger.

I don't know that I recommend doing all 90 lessons of a Pimsleur for everyone... but the first 10 really will create a confidence in the language that can't be beat.

As I was having Pho yesterday, I listened around me and was able to start to recognize the distinctive sounds of Vietnamese - there are a couple of sounds that are unique to that language as far as I can tell - a "gyoom" that is way up in the nose, and a very open mouthed "Bah". I still have my "survivalphrases.com" membership for Vietnamese, and before my next Pho run, I'll be sure to remember "xin" for please, "gam ung" for thanks, and "jao" for hello.

I'm starting to work on my 'big trip' for 2008 - sometime in my 40th year. I'm thinking 2 weeks - one in Japan, and one in China. It would be amazing. The only issue is that Pamela really has very little desire for travel east as far as I can tell... and part of it is a fear of the cuisine. Perhaps it's my fault, being as fixated as I am on raw fish and whatnot. So I'm going to work on those plans (and obviously hit that Japanese again sometime soon to freshen up!).

A last bit - for all Mac users, I'm amazed by a little application called "iFlash" - it's flash card software, and you can load it up with anything you like. But there's a public library of flash cards made by other users too... and I've found German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and other language sets... and it's great fun. It doesn't do audio (no spoken drills, I guess), but it does all manner of foreign fonts (as the Mac is so good at doing).

Och nü, jag skulle vilja studerar mig svenska.

Must be strong

So while I have had not so much time to work on language, I have had 5 min here and there to look on the web at things... and it is a hard thing not to get addicted to buying and finding language TOOLS: This falls into two categories

1) Extra tools for languages I'm working on. Chinese character workbooks. Flash card decks. Colloquial language books. Podcasts.

In all of these, I need to step back and take stock: With Swedish, I just have the one "Teach Yourself" series and a dictionary. I don't NEED MORE... at least not until I've finished Teach Yourself and want to target more learning areas. With Chinese and Japanese, I have several books and flash card sets: Until these are mastered and complete, there is NO REASON to get more.

But still, these tools are tempting. I wander through a bookstore at lunch and the books just look interesting... perhaps this one will have some cool new way of teaching?

The one temptation that is too strong is to upgrade my ChinesePod membership to the one where they call you every day for 10 minutes to practice your Mandarin. That would SERIOUSLY turbocharge my learning. BUT, with the holidays coming, AND given that I have a good 37 more Pimsleur lessons on tap, why not just wait until next year and come at it even stronger?

2) The eternal temptation of OTHER LANGUAGES: Ok, seriously, why am I hovering around Dutch books? Why? There was no good reason to start with Korean, other than the fact it was a new site and I was curious about it and wanted to help them grow.

I need to stop looking at language products as commodities and do a cost-benefit on each: It's the same as getting programming language books or upgrading computers - it's easy to be impulsive, and it's a lot easier to shop for 10 min and click buy on a book than it is to memorize another 10 Kanji.

So help me be strong, people. By writing this, I'm putting my confession into the electrons, and I have named my addiction. This will help me refocus my efforts and make use of the tools I already have...

After all, I'm a language addict, not a language products addict. Right?

I'm a horrible disappointment

To both people who read this: I'm sorry about not posting. Really in the past two weeks, all I've done is continue with my Pimsleur Mandarin II: I just finished Lesson 52 of 90 (Level II, lesson 22), and can confidently say that:

The express train is faster than the bus:
kuai4che1 bi3 gong1gong4qi4che1 kuai4 (FastCar compared to PublicGoingCar fast)

I can also say that Mister Chen's son never writes letters.
Chen xian1sheng1 de er2zi cong2lai2bu4 xie3 qin4

This is good stuff.

Come the evening, I have very little brainspace remaining for my language ambitions - I'd like to spend an hour a night focusing on grammar for one of my other active languages, or drilling myself on reading Hanzi, Kanji, or Hanguk... but the fact of the matter is I'm working on a maximum of four hours of sleep these days, thanks to the little squawking son, and have taken to vegging out and reading recreationally in my spare time. I know, that's crazy talk.

So as things progress, I'll keep updating. Rest assured, there IS progress happening, but I'm not seeking new challenges just yet. I feel like I'm successful because I AM doing at least 30 minutes a day of learning, in with everything else.

In Podcasts I Listen To News: Sounds like SpanishSense.com is getting some re-doing. That's a good thing: I have enjoyed them, but somehow it never fully clicked for me as an essential service. Instead I listen a fair amount to BBC Mundo Hoy - a latin newscast which I actually can track pretty well...

And poor KoreanClass101: I love them to pieces, but I have fallen behind. Perhaps when I hit Mandarin Lesson 60, I'll take a break (as I have with Russian) and spend a few weeks in Hanguk.

That's the geeky update for the night. I think I might now go play a round of Katamari Damacy... since it's too late to start a movie... and a little too early for me to cash it in.

Oh the fun of Typos

As Ant notified me, I had written something QUITE different from "You have taken bad medicine" in that previous blog post (now corrected).

Somehow, what I had written actually roughly translates to

"You angrily made love to chinese cream".

or perhaps...

"You baked red sex".

So my apologies to any chinese readers who were confused by the previous blog post. I will be sure to doublecheck my pinyin doublethrice in the future!

Mo Mandarin

Back on the horse: Finished lesson 39 - finally back to where I stopped back in August, and it is burned in much better this time. After a funny lunch, Uncle Ant accused me of "ni3 chi1 cuo4 yao4 le" - "you have taken bad medicine", a colloquialism that means you've gone soft in the head. (Thanks to Ant for the re-correction - obviously I have been chi'ing cuo yao)

Turns out the Swedes are NOT coming over, which would have threatened to evaporate my desire to know that language, but Annika has re-iterated that even though they're not visiting, she wants to help me with Swedish. So I'm still plodding along there.

All these languages, they're like puppies wanting attention. I focus on Chinese, and suddenly there's a man in an elevator speaking Russian. I focus on Korean, and suddenly I'm arguing about the difference between Chikai and chiisai in Japanese with Ant.

Like riding a bike

I got one lesson of Mandarin off this week... but now my Palmpilot is dying which is my player for the Audiofy bookchips. So I need to somehow get that content onto an iPod (there's a way with a little janky bit of software... but I need to figure it out). But that one lesson was 4 lessons BACK from where I stopped months back, and it was good to review, because I had forgotten quite a lot... But by the end of the lesson I was feeling confident again.

Tonight I had Chinese food delivered, and kicked out a "xiexie", and got a bow with a "bu ke qi", so I felt successful. I'm also realizing that I really need more Hanzi practice, so I'm working through the Integrated Chinese set: This was recommended by ChinesePod actually. And I think one of my 40th birthday presents to myself will be a few months of the Chinesepod Practice Plan - with daily 10 minute calls from Shanghai.

Allright, that's the update. I'm a bit tired, so nothing too clever.

Back to Mandarin

Ok - I'm pausing on the Russian and hitting the Mandarin for a while. And sticking with the Korean, and taking a stronger focus back to the Swedish, since Thanksgiving IS coming and I want to be able to chat up the Swedes.

But as I was walking with Uncle Ant (allright, his name is Rich really) I realized that boy, if I just spent more time on Mandarin, I'd have a willing and geeky language partner right at hand. Rich is ALMOST as much of a language geek as I am, though truth be told, his language love is usually based around practicality: He learned Greek to prepare for a trip. He learned Mandarin because he was managing a project team of Chinese nationals. He learned Spanish because that's what people did in high school.

So, watch for less Russian and more Mandarin in the weeks to come.

Japanese... will hold for a while: I discovered that my Pimsleur Japanese III chip is corrupt and a replacement will take a few weeks....

Later

Oh Pronouns!

I'm just done with Pimsleur Russian 59, which is quite exciting. As I approach the end of level II, I wonder if I should barrel through into Level III, or take a spacer and work on Mandarin for a while...

Two interesting bits today:
In Russian it's considered bad form to use the same personal pronoun twice in a sentence: You'd never say "I'd like to invite you to my house" - 'I' and 'my" are variants of the same pronoun. So you say "I'd like to invite you to one's house". Other variants, "She was staying with one's friend" or "You are driving one's car".

You can mix pronouns no problem: "She was driving my car" is just fine. So it's not entirely inscrutable.

In Korean, the pronoun for "You" is rarely used - it's considered a bit too direct. So to start taking about "you", you say the person's name. But fear not, it's not as though they're saying names all day and night - there's a second rule that works with this: The "Topic Marker" (neun) is said after the name, and it's assumed that all conversation relates to that person until a new market is set.

While this sounds complex, it's pretty easy.

"As for you, Jim, how are you doing?"
"not bad."
"still going to school?"
"yes - and it's a pretty tough semester"
"Think grades will be a little lower?"
"Maybe. As for you, Keith, how is your school going?"

Where it gets complex is if, in the same conversation they would add "me too", which would reset the topic marker, requiring the person to say the name again to ask the next question. So I think that Koreans must be good at letting one side tell the tale, then letting the other go.

The English tendency to agree with a statement and offer a personal perspective to each question must be suppressed, or you need to say that person's name a lot.

That's it for today!

Updates

1) To follow up on the "lack of question particles in Russian" being fundamentally different from English, I offer up that so far in Korean, I have not found a negative particle (like "not")... instead in the 2 main verbs "To Be" and "to Have", they have matching negative verbs "To Not Be" and "To Not Have". So if someone asks "do you not-have any money?", you would say "Yes, I not-have.", or "No, I Do-Have". So that's pretty different.

I'm glad that KoreanClass101 is just starting up: I feel good to be "keeping up" on the lessons, and working on my Hangul reading skillz. The glyphs are getting a lot more familiar to me.

2) On the Pimsleur Tip: I am flat out amazed at how well the Russian Lessons are structured. I'm at lesson 53 right now, and I'm positive we're doing constructions that I do not know how to do in Spanish or German after 90 lessons... and Russian is so complex! The dialog from Lesson 53:

"I invited you to my house last night, but you didn't come... why?"
"I couldn't find your address, and it was late, so I went home"
"Really?"
"Yes, and I couldn't find a working telephone, so I couldn't call!"
"I was talking to Marina, and she said you were at a restaurant with her last night."
"Well... Yes. But after that, it was too late to come over."

I can only think that they're trying to prepare you for the sorts of guilt-laden conversations you may have with those stormy Soviets. It's remarkable.

In addition, given that there are around 6 different cases of personal pronouns, when you learn a new thing to say, they do coach you with another phrase that uses the correct pronoun case, so for as much as they try not to weigh you down with "grammar", they are doing a good job of teaching the "rules" of the language.

Yes, this is a very good set of lessons.

3) That's it for now.

A possible source of misunderstanding

In Russian, there are few interrogative constructions - where, who, how, why... sure, the language covers that. But almost all yes/no questions are exactly the same as statements, only with different stress.

вы сиберайетес вместе с нами
(and again, sorry about the phonetic spelling - this is all audio work right now)
Vooy see-ber-aye-e-tye vmye-stee suh na-may.

If spoken in a level, steadily declining tone, it means "You are coming with us."
But if you stress the first word, it means "Are YOU coming with us?
If you stress the second word, it means "Are you coming with us?"
If you stress the last word, it asks "Are you coming with US?"

In all cases, even when asking a question, you never raise your tone at the end, like an English question. The tone always falls at the end.

So you see that the exact same sentence can be one statement and three questions, with no indicator words that it's a question, and no English friendly rising intonation at the end. You can see why perhaps there have been some misunderstandings with the Russian people: How many times do you suppose people may have thought they were demanding something when in fact they were asking a question...?

Очень интересно... Very interesting.

Where have I been?

Alas, if there is anyone who actually reads this that is not a regular reader of my "rest of the life blog" JimVentions, I must sadly report that a good friend of mine was murdered 6 days ago, and today we laid him to rest.

As a result, blogging about language has been far from my mind... but I will likely be updating again in a few days, because I have been doing work - I need to do things to keep my mind busy in these sad days.

So that's the update - sorry!

Una historia

Otro día, cuando estaba en el trabajo (en un hospital), vi a una vieja mujer. Ella tenía un papel en su mano, y se parecía ser perdida. Le acerqué et pedí: "can I help you?". Ella contestó "no habla ingles...", y me parecía que ella necesitó ayuda. Entonces, le dijé "Señora, puedo ayudarle."

Ella me dio el papel, y vi que tuvimos que ir cuatro sueles abajo y dos pasillos a través. Era demaciado difícil, com mi Español si limitado, para dirigirla allí. Recorrí con ella a su cita... y la introduje a su enfermera.

En verdad, no hablé mucho español en todos... pero creo que entender la idoma era provechoso.

Bueno. Ésta es mi primera historia en español en este blog. Si Ud tiene comentario para mi, lo quero. Gracias!

The Vibe

안녕핫서요! 젼는 지미 임니다!

Folks, that's Hangul (Korean) for Hello! I'm Jimmy! Yes, I'm keeping to the program, learning this fine language... I'm pretty good with basic intros - who I am, I'm American, I'm an office worker... Fortunately, at my level, KoreanClass101 has just 2 lessons a week for me, so I can keep up along with all of my other language fascinations.

Russian continues - I'm at lesson 45 of 90, and I swear there is stuff in there I never ever learned in college. "if you want, you can have more coffee" езли ты хочешь, ты можешь быпить ешо кофе. Also, can you tell I'm loving learning how to type in other languages? The Mac... so brilliant. I'm also using the Penguin Guide to Russian to help with the "rules" and the spelling (My apologies for the above... there's probably a typo in the Russian).

My neighbor, a Fed, was lamenting that I'm 2 years too old to be useful to the FBI - they only hire up to age 37, so that people have a chance to get 20 years in the service prior to mandatory retirement. He said Russian skills are VERY in demand these days, what with the Russian mafia so prevalent. Perhaps I could consult for them... ;)

My sister issued a challenge: If I'm going to be such a language nut, why not learn Hmong and Somali, which are very in-use in the Twin Cities? Well, one reason is that there are few resources for learning these languages available to me... but as an alternative, I've started a little Vietnamese (and there are TONS of Vietnamese here):

The JapanesePod/KoreanClass people have truly been busy, and created a site called survivalphrases.com - where you can sign up for 50+ 4-7 minute classes in one of 6 (soon 7) languages, with Vietnamese being one of them. So I'm learning the very basics... Not any rush here, but I'd like to show up my sister at a Phô joint in town by greeting, ordering, thanking, and paying in Vietnamese.

Well, that's the basic update: I do want to say that I feel like I'm in a crazy groove with language right now, where every new thing I add in one language cascades across to my other ones, and I'm feeling truly polyglottish... I'll be ready to start paying attention to Japanese and Mandarin again... though maybe I'll wait until the end of September when I'll have this Russian thing behind me (meaning just that I'll have it "refreshed" and ready to use... not that I'll be fluent or anything!)