Stop learning a language, start speaking it!

In my internet travels I came across the Lifehacker Blog. This blog refers to Language Hackers. One story tells is about a woman who did not speak anhything else but English when she was 21 years old. In the following seven years she learnt to speak another eight languages fluently. The blog argues that the key to actually learning a foreign language is to actually apply it.

Makes sense to me. The blog refers to Zenhabits -Simple Guide to speaking foreign languages. This site is full of tips and makes your mouth watery for language learning. Here is only a small selection of the tips mentioned:

Rather than downloading podcasts and buying too many courses, meet up with actual people and use the language! A few resources I like to use include:

• Meetup.com for language meet-ups in major cities. You can also read advertisements in newspapers and your local library to see if people meet up interested in speaking the language you want to.
• Join Couchsurfing and host foreign travelers in your home. The same site also has international meetings and a feature to search your city for people who speak a particular language.
• You can also find native speakers online and practice over Skype, through many language learning social networks available for free online.

International Mother Language Day 2011

Today is International Mother Language Day. It's the 12th time this International Day is celebrated worldwide. The Day is very special to the Bangla speakers, as it originates in the Language Movement Day, which has been commemorated in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) since 1952. In that year a number of University of Dhaka students were killed by the Pakistani police and army in Dhaka during Bengali Language Movement protests.

The main celebrations in 2011 be held in Paris. Theme is  "The information and communication technologies for the safeguarding and promotion of languages and linguistic diversity".

The Language Challenge 101 from Bilingual Families Perth fits spot on into the theme, as people are encouraged to learn languages using information and communication technologies, such as the internet and other digital media.

Today is my first day of learning Mandarin. I had a bit of a peak in the lead-up to the commencement and assisted collating several useful links:

• Language Challenge 101 website
• Language Learning Survey 
• Language Plan Template
• Language Resources Wiki

I have started by selecting the most suitable site for my needs. I will learn Chinese with Yangyang. My boy brought the link home from school. 10 free lessons are up on the web that suit my learning style, progress fast enough. Yangyang is great, funny, to the point and easy to understand.  A list of other useful Chinese sites is up on the project Wiki.

Can't wait and have decided to make time of at least 15min a day for the learning of Mandarin, my new language!

Language Challenge 101

The Language Challenge 101 down under is born. My personal commitment to learning Mandarin has provided enough motivation for a project that aims at getting more people interested in language learning.
Bilingual Families Perth will host the project, participation is free and more information is available from their website.  

Language learning is fun and not that hard when you do it at your own pace, within your own means but with the support of friendly people who are on the same journey.

• Have you ever wanted to learn a language but could never gather enough motivation?
• Would you like to make a serious attempt in learning the language of your partner, your parent or your friend?
• Are you planning a holiday overseas and want to be able to hold a small conversation?
• Would you like to refresh knowledge of a language you spoke or learnt in your childhood?
• Are you interested in picking up a language that was once spoken in your family but is now lost?
• Would you like to join your child who learns a second (or third) language at school? 

Please show your support by filling in a survey. Consider your participation. Learning languages by yourself is a bit daunting but if you have the support of other learners and can share free resources it is a lot easier.  What language you chose is up to you and there is no cost. The only thing you need is a working internet connection and that is often available at your local library.

The project is kicking off on International Motherlanguage Day 2011 -21 February! More information about the project Language Challenge 101 here.

Learning Chinese

My boy was accepted into the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Academic Languages Program at Mount Lawley Senior High School. School commences next week and we are getting ready through purchasing uniforms and school books.

My daughter has been a participant in this program in the past two years, going into year 10 now. She had the luck of being allowed to learn two languages since year 8. Tuition in German is part of the GATE program and she chose Italian as other language within the normal school curriculum. She is doing well and received highest marks for both languages, most likely assisted by the fact that we speak German at home.

Since 2010 only one language can be selected  by students in the GATE  program and there is only a choice between Italian or Chinese. As my boy has been learning Italian in Primary School for seven years and still cannot say much more than his name, age and what he likes doing after school, he decided to learn Chinese. He is a bit weary about this journey, especially since his sister told him that many students complain about how hard it is to learn Chinese.

I have been interested in the Chinese language since a trip to Hongkong and Guangzhou in 1985. I spent two weeks with a friend in Kowloon. To overcome important language barriers with cab drivers I was taught to say in Cantonese: "Please drive me to Kenedy Road number 37, at number 31 please turn right". I have never forgotten this sentence and practice it now and then with Cantonese speakers I meet in my life. Not always successful I might say, as my pronunciation surely changed significantly in the past 25 years with the experience in Hongkong beconing more and more faint. Also my teacher was a non-native speaker.

German is my mother tongue. Plattdeutsch or Low German, a dialect was spoken in our house during my childhood. I learnt English from year 5 and French from year 7 at school, later added some Iitalian in evening school as I liked the Italian life style and spent a few holidays there. At University after my law degree I studied Indonesian and even worked as a junior lawyer for the German Indonesian Chamber of Trade and Commerce (Berkumpulan Ekonomi Indonesia-Jerman) in the late Eighties. But all these languages are using the same script and work in a similar frame of mind. If a German speaker reads aloud an Indonesian text and pronounces each word as if it was written in German, an Indonesian speaker is able to understand what was said.

My decision to join Miles in learning Mandarin came from the heart. I will purchase the same workbook and use additional sites on the internet to speed up my speaking. My friend Dr Mandy Scott from Canberra has been involved in the Association for Learning Mandarin in Australia. She visited us with her mother on the last weekend and we had a chat about how hard it is to learn the language. Apparently the time to aquire comfortable language speaking levels have been estimated and contemplated for English speakers. People agree that Mandarin is among the most difficult to learn languages.

But I suspect that in our case the advantage of already knowing and speaking more than one language will be significant. Also I understand that the grammar of Mandarin is simple. However, the focus of tuition on acquisition of written literacy seems to be the difficulty for new students. If we keep up the conversation in our practice we should be right. Also my daughter's best friend is a native Mandarin speaker and we can get special tuition from her.

We have a plan and encouraging experiences are available from across the ocean. Multilingual Living, a network of multilingual people based in Seattle. They ran the Language Challenge -101 where people were learning a new language over 101 days. They had many participants and their experiences are documented on the website. People had fun learning another language, within their own setting and at their own pace.

This is an inspiring idea. I missed the boat that time but am now determined to take the chance and give it a good shot! I promise to post updates of the journey on this blog. If anybody wants to join me?! We just copy the model from Multilingual Living and give it a go! I am in it and will give it my best shot!