Surface Languages

Sup doods and doodesses,

I hope you are all good, or failing that at least well.

I’ve just got back from a walk which depending on your perspective was dark, cold and unpleasant , or bracing, invigorating and full of interesting smells. 

My dog enjoyed it, and I on returning home did my Kettle Bells, which have been described as ‘an ancient russian weapon against weakness’ in Simple but Sinister (by Pavel Tsatsouline).

Kettle bells (in particular the swing) are in my opinion (combined with body weights) the ultimate workout. 

Not everyone agrees. 

Anyway, while walking and swinging my kettles (one arm obvs), I decided on my language objectives for 2020, so lets give you a clue with :- Happy New Year, Sretna Nova Godina x.

And now, while listening to Uptown Top Ranking (Althea and Donna), 54-46 Was My Number (Toots & the Maytals) and so on, I’m putting my language objectives for 2020 out there, sharing them with y’all dear readers.

Sretna Nova Godina is Happy New Year in Croatian, that most chic of languages will continue to be my primary focus during 2020. I reached some sort of A2 level last year and want to improve to some sort of B1 level before a hoped for holiday later in 2020.

By the way, my levels are an approximation and I’m only interested in speaking and aural comprehension. I  have been formally tested in Spanish and have a feel for the CEFR levels, although I freely admit that I could be way out.

I can more or less understand this in Croatian if this helps  anyone.

I do love Peppa Pig;)

In terms of time, I will spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day five days and an iTalki lesson lasting an hour on  Croatian. This works out at somewhere over 160 hours over the year, and I easily managed more than this consistently throughout 2019.

What else?

I will maintain my Spanish and Italian which I do through reading, language exchanges, music  and so on. If you do speak Italian and are interested in cooking check out Fatto in Casa da Benedetta

And …

… well this might be a little controversial considering the dismal ending previously but I’m going to spend a little time with Polish.

I attempted and failed entirely to learn any Polish over several years, in part because I lacked focus and in part because I hadn’t understood how to learn a slavic language.

Despite an active interest in languages, I don’t have a huge amount of time to spend on them (problem), and unless I am effective with the time I have, don’t make progress.

How then, you wonder, can I with previous form of being distracted, and limited time learn two languages at the same time?

Easy.

Firstly. Croatian always comes first (so no distractions). If I haven’t done my Croatian study, there is no Polish 🙁

Natch.

Secondly. I have a very precise objective with Polish.

This is too learn one Assimil lesson every two weeks. The lessons are not new too me, as I have (sort of) been through this process previously, so this should be possible.

I’m  going to learn the dialogs …

… by heart.

… two a month.

In other words, I’m going to totally over-learn the Assimil dialogs – which if nothing else should pass the time and stave off dementia in my dotage.

I’m interested in discovering whether over-learning a relatively small corpus of the language will enable me to communicate at all.

I will report back on this towards the end of the year.

Baci, Besos et Pax.

MF.

Sup?

How y’all doing?

I’m lying on the floor, listening to the torrential rain currently drenching my part of the west country while Max Gazze plays Sotto Casa in the background.

My evening has been for want of a better turn off phrase, well spent, firstly by watching Vintage Tran, secondly by cooking a mushroom risotto and thirdly by learning some Croatian.

And before continuing, I have to tell you that my risotto was cooked properly, with none of that pouring in all the stock onto the rice in one go rubbish. Believe it or not, some people in these ungodly times ACTUALLY do that.

Sigh.

Anyway, that’s enough about me.

How are you?

Are you sitting comfortably listening to the torrential rain somewhere? Or maybe sitting in the sun?

Are you also listening to Max Gazze? Statistically someone else should be.

Anyway, I digress, I wanted to remind myself (and you dear reader lying oh so comfortably on the floor), as to why I am attempting to learn five or six languages to a B1 level.

If you have followed by periodic ramblings you will know by now, that I have (had in the past) a woeful tendency to flit from language to language and learn more or less nothing.

This was becoming tiresome.

And so I made a change to my mindset (or chip as the Spanish sometimes say), and this was to reach a level of B1 in a language before moving on.

Why B1?

Why not say A2 or maybe to reach the dizzy heights of B2 or gasp C1/C2?

In essence, the time required.

I don’t have a lot of free time, but it is quite possible to learn a language to a B1 standard over two years (or so I believe), with quite a modest time investment – let’s say about half an hour a day of active learning.

Oh. Did I hear that?

Are you telling me that with my current rate of progress of learning Croatian I will need more than another year?

I don’t think so.

But you might be correct. It might take me two and a half years to reach a B1 level in Croatian (instead of two). So? Does that make a material difference?

I think not.

Half an hour? It’s not much is it? If this was one of those self blogs, I’d now write:

“now read on and discover how to free up half an hour each and every day …”

But it’s not.

How you find the extra time is up to you, but I’d suggest turning of the TV/Youtube/stop reading the news and so on and so forth.

So now you have the half an hour a day spend on learning a new language. Brilliant.

But …

… you don’t want to forget those other languages that you have already learnt (to B1) do you now?

You need to maintain a them – in your free time!

My Spanish and Italian is considerably higher than B1 and I don’t want to forget these, so I do language exchanges to maintain (and improve) them.

I like talking and I like getting to know people so this works for me. I also listen to audio books or music in French/Spanish/Italian on the way to and from work. I don’t maintain my spoken French, but will book a *lot* of iTalki lessons before my next visit.

The point I am getting at, is that maintenance can fit into your daily life. i.e. you don’t need to set aside extra time for it.

Thirty minutes a day (plus a bit of listening and chatting) is enough for me to scratch the language itch, make progress and generally feel more sophis and European.

I can say sacre bleu, boh, mama mia and joder with aplomb and dare I say it with panache and elan;)

I can also bust out a few handy Croatian phrases such as pada kiša as and when required.

I am, as we say in English (or rather as we used to say in the twenties in some specific cirlces) on the road to becoming an all round good egg in a chic multilingual european sort of way.

And thirty minutes is just not very long.

Thirty minutes doesn’t require a massive lifestyle change.

And so, you too, who I envisage lying on the floor listening to Max Gazze and the rain can do the same.

Besos and baci.

Pax,

MF

Sup Doods and doodesses?

Today it’s time to sit back, take stock and give  all of you an update on my Croatian after ten months, and if you are sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin.

Before the update, let me set the scene:-

I had as an aim the intention of learning  Croatian to a low B1 level from scratch this year (ready for a holiday to Croatia).

I naively thought that this would be achievable by spending around an hour a day on focused study, a lesson a week (carried out almost entirely in Croatian) and listening to Croatian audio while commuting to work.

I haven’t managed this and my realistic level is somewhere within the A2 range (currently).

In other words, I have put in a fair amount of effort to be able to string together some basic sentences.

The reason I am mentioning this, isn’t to discourage potential Croatian learners but rather to encourage them.

I’m writing this as an antidote to the language learning apps and blogs that promise fast results.

In my experience, the brain takes time to absorb new words and structures and it is not a quick process.

You may be different but I doubt it.

I am an average language learner, and you probably are too (by definition), and therefore our experiences are likely to be similar. I’d say it’s important to forget the geniuses and outliers for the purposes of this argument or you are likely to be disappointed by your slow progress and give up.

The internet is chock full of ‘fast learning strategies’ for languages and anything else that you can imagine,  but in my experience (I have several degrees and post graduate qualifations) learning anything to a decent standard takes time.

There are strategies that can help improve progress and obvious ones (as I am talking about language learning) are:-

Memorise responses to common questions (which is not a bad approach). This will help initial conversations (but you won’t understand the responses).

Learn common phrases that are relevant to you (but you won’t understand the responses).

Learn frequently used vocabulary which is relevant to you.

So, there are things that you can do which help initially and definitely help with motivation, but I am not convinced that these make much difference in the longer term.

You can also have a conversation of sorts quite rapidly (with a willing victim such as I am doing in my lessons), but this doesn’t equate in my mind to having  much of a grasp of the language.

The fundamental point is that learning anything (including languages) takes time, and by way of illustration let’s look at a Croatian words grad ‘city’, zena ‘woman’ and selo ‘village’.

Croatian has three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter and these three words are masculine, feminine and neuter respectively.

In English, we form the plural by adding an ‘s’ to a word (I know that there are exceptions), but in Croatian we have the following possibilities depending on the gender of the word and it’s function in the sentence:-

gradovi, gradove, gradova, gradovima, zene, zene, zenama, zena, sela, selima

I’m not saying this to put you off, as I think Croatian is a cool, chic and generally awesome language, but as a reality check.

It takes time to internalise grammatical structures.

You (if you are like me) are not going to do this quickly.

It takes time.

Your brain needs time to do this. I don’t know why or how this is the case, but it does.

As the somewhat cliched phrase tells us, it’s the journey not the arrival that matters, which is lucky in this case, as the journey will be a long one. If you carry on putting one foot in front of the other eventually you will get to where you want to go (if you are aiming in the right direction).

So, what about me and my Croatian?

I have already decided :-

hrvatski jezik je šik i nastavit ću ga učiti!!!

Baci and besos.

MF

Sup All?

I briefly created a site called Polyglot People to scratch a coding itch, and to experiment with a ‘different look’ and a more ‘mobile first’ style of design.

I then decided that it was pointless having a separate site for what was essentially a new front end to the sentences on Surface languages.

After all, there is no rule telling us that a website should be identical on every page, and there is a certain homogeneity about many wordpress sites that makes the internet a less interesting place.

So, warts and all, Surface languages, continues to be at the forefront of the anti style movement, and will over time proudly embrace its idiosyncrasies.

And with that justification out of the way, I’ve given Polyglot People a new home here on Surface languages itself.

Currently it doesn’t work, but I will fix this soon (ish).

Baci & Besos,

MF

Sup doods?

I have recently changed my language goals, and now seems as good a time as any to tell you why.

The short version is that I want my language goals to be fluffy and achievable, and they are to speak five languages (other than English) to a level of B1 (on the CEFR scale) or above.

If you don’t know what the CEFR scale is, look it up and return.

I’ll wait ..

You are back?

The obvious question you now have and that you want to ask me is why B1?

B1 is quite achievable in a reasonable timeframe, and is somewhere between 200 – 400 hours. There is a good consideration of the time needed on the blog how to get fluent.

The figure of 400 hours is probably more reflective of my learning speed, but still is not an enormous time investment.

So, we have a reasonable length of time and a level which is sufficient to get by, function and exchange pleasantries in most situations.

I like languages, but I am also interested in numerous other things.

Additionally I have a full-time job, run a few websites, have a family, friends, a dog and so on.

In other words, I live a normal life and have a fairly limited amount of free time to dedicate to what could be considered a fairly strange hobby.

But anyone (almost anyone) can find an hour a day to spend on a hobby.

And the other final reason is that I don’t like over-estimating my level at languages or anything else.  If I say I can speak a language at B1 level, I want to feel sure that I can communicate at that level or considerably higher.

BTW. I completely love learning Croatian and am spending considerably more than an hour a day on it.

Besos and baci,

MF

Sup?

I have now been learning Croatian for approximately four months, and now seems as good a time as any to report back on my progress.

My aim is too reach a B1 level before the summer.

I’d take this with a pinch of salt, but according to my language teacher, I am now approaching a B1 level. In the interests of full disclosure, honesty and so on, I’d be more comfortable with a description of low A2 (on the CEFR scale). Either way I’m happy with my progress, and have another four months or so before the summer (my arbitrary deadline).

I’ve finally found an effective method of learning languages that works for me, and I’m writing this as much for my benefit (so I remember what works) as for anyone who is reading this.

Now I am vaguely aware that in the language learning community there is a debate as to whether you should listen a lot before speaking, or start speaking immediately. Probably due to an inherent laziness and no particular sense of urgency, I’ve never put much emphasis on speaking initially.

I’m also sure that if you want to achieve a high level in a language that it makes no difference when you start speaking. You need to speak a lot to become good at speaking, and speaking from day one guarantees that you won’t understand the answer. Naturally need to listen to a lot of comprehensible input before you have any hope of understanding what people say to you.

So, in the long run, both are equally important.

But, my aim with Croatian, is too reach a B1 level in both speaking and comprehension by summer of this year.  This given the short amount of time forced my hand a bit and I decided to have iTalki lessons (where I speak) ab initio.

If you genuinely want to learn something, regardless if what it is, you need to learn actively not passively. In my  mind that means deciding on your own route, or plotting your own path. It is partly for that reason that I no longer have any affiliate links on Surface Languages (not intentionally anyway). It isn’t that I think all language products are bad, but more that we all learn in different ways and my way will be different from your way and so on.

My strategy so far has been:

Weeks 1 and 2.  I learnt as much as I could using Teach yourself Croatian.

Weeks 3 and 4. I used several different teachers to find one who suited my style.

Months 2 and 3. I have had a weekly one on one Croatian lesson.

During the lesson my teacher writes down the words that I try to use, and  I learn these over the following weeks. This is crucial.

I have listened to simple Croatian texts as I drive to and from work (which takes me about an hour each day).

I have analysed and tried to understand the grammar used in these texts. This is also crucial, as Croatian has a complicated grammar.

Month 4. I have started listening to the Youtube series Easy Croatian (which isn’t easy to understand) to try and get a feel for more natural speech.

I will continue with this for the next two months.

It has also helped that the weather in the west country has been appalling.

Besos,

MF

Sup doods and doodesses?

Plans. Plans. Plans. The end of the year is always a good time for them and here are some of mine.

Plan broj jedan (plan number one).  A new website called Polyglot People. – Now part of Surface Languages.

I have recently started working on this site.  If you click on the link, you will be able to see that as yet, nothing happens:) The clue was in the word recently.

It is designed to teach sentences in different languages.

I decided to do this on a new site and not by merely bolting something onto the appropriate part of   Surface Languages because:-

Surface Languages was never designed to be mobile first (you know for all you cool kidz who use phones/pads etc), and Polyglot People will be, and geek that I am, I wanted (needed) to scratch a programming itch.

I anticipate finishing Polyglot People by the end of March – assuming the  day job doesn’t sap too much of my energy.

Plan broj dwa (plan number two)

Carry on with learning Croatian until I reach B1 level. I still love it.

By the way I have absolutely no idea whether Plan broj jedan and  Plan broj dwa are the correct way of expressing this in Croatian.

I suspect not.

If you are a Croatian reader or someone who knows more Croatian than me, let me know what I should have writen.

I’d wish you all a Happy and prosperous New Year but I live in Brexit Britain so it seems unlikely for some of us.

So not too tempt fate, Happy New Year to you all, and I’m crossing my fingers that I am still employed in twelve months (really).

Baci,

MF