108

After doing useful amounts of German and Japanese listening, I did a little research into thinking and learning styles. 

There are questionnaires that you can do online. (I did some.) There are papers you can read. (I skimmed through this one.)

My conclusion: It seems to me that people employ mainly left-brain methods. However, I’m more of a right-brain person. I don’t learn well if I ignore that and push myself to do the same things that others do.

Not only that, I actually believe that most people would learn languages better by incorporating some right-brain activity into their schedules.

107

Here and there on the Internet you can find blog posts by language enthusiasts on the topic of learning more than one language at a time. Most are cautionary. Many discourage the practice. I haven’t found anyone that has the same attitude as me.

Which is that I’d be quite prepared to dabble in ten or more languages at once.

Now, that might not be very efficient. I would probably not progress as quickly. But here’s the proof of the pudding: it would in no way stress me out. That’s the telling difference between my method and that of ‘Norm’.

106

I organized our bookcase yesterday. One shelf is devoted to languages. Very easily and cheaply, I’ve accumulated around 60 items within a couple of months. More than a metre’s worth in over 15 languages.

German books were the easiest to obtain. Next comes Dutch.

Once, Dutch immigrants made up 1% of New Zealand’s population—30,000 out of 3 million. Dad arrived on the 2^nd ship in 1951, Mum a couple of years later. In Wellington they met.

Dad passed on a few years ago. Mum has surpassed him in years. She forgets things, but can still read Dutch and German.

105

With regard to simply listening without a book in my hands—as when walking into town wearing earphones—or headphones—I need to be able to understand at least 50% of what I’m hearing (as compared to the 95% that is often quoted with regard to reading).

I can relax sufficiently to tolerate such a degree of ambiguity.

This means that I can currently use anything in Dutch, a familiar book in German, or HP1 in Japanese.

With French or Spanish, I would need to do some preparatory activity for specific stories so as to get them up to speed.

104

Ten days ago I mentioned a post by Donovan Nagel on his website, The Mezzofanti Guild (great name BTW!). I read it, thought about it, and then came to the conclusion I disagreed with Donovan (and with what I’d formerly believed too).

I’ve since written a little more (than 100 words) elsewhere, expanding on my thinking.

In a nutshell—in case you’re not into hyperlinking—is that when you allow ‘motivation’ to enter your vocabulary you have already decided that the thing you need the motivation to do is, to some degree, a form of drudgery. 

What do you reckon?

103

I realize that I’m not being entirely honest with you. Indeed, I’ve a bit of a confession to make. It is this: learning languages is not my main priority in life. I’m only mildly interested in learning them.

I have a greater passion, I must admit. 

To tell the truth, the thing that really excites me is the ‘how’ of learning languages. That’s what I love to spend my time on: the guts of how humans learn. Yes, it’s a related interest, but it isn’t the real McCoy.

I just wanted you to know that before we go any further.

102

I asked Sachi to tear the plastic off Michel Thomas’s Hindi course. Then both of us sat down to listen.

For me, a lot of vocabulary, syntax and grammar fell immediately into place. After all, I did spend 18 months in India, even if it was 34 years ago.

As for the MT approach, there are aspects that I enjoy, and others that I don’t. For example, listening is good. But the insistence on reproducing the language from the start doesn’t sit as well with me. 

Oh well, it’s early days. Let me listen right through a couple of times.

101

My thoughts these past few days have not been about how to learn languages per se, but rather on how to share my ideas about it. I’d like to do that effectively so as to reach the greatest number of people who might benefit from said ideas.

That would take time and effort. The only way to be able to devote enough would be  to turn the enterprise into some sort of a business. And because I think of myself as an idealist with certain scruples, it would need to be an ethical one that doesn’t purely focus on profit.

100

It’s not the last day of the year. And yet, having reached my 100^th post, I feel the itch to set some sort of resolution. Let me announce what it is.  

It is to be a double-banger.

I’ll comment on each of my first 100 posts in order. Secondly, I want to document one language through, from the word Go. Well, almost from the outset. I once learned the Hindi alphabet, and I picked up the odd phrase from when I worked in the Punjab 34 years ago to the day. 

I remember that Xmas tree in my Delhi hotel.

99

On Christmas Day, tomorrow, my 100^th post happens to fall. Fortuitous too is my acquisition of Harry Potter books. Yesterday I got ‘Goblet’ at an Op shop, but then later saw the same—slightly tattered—in the free basket of another. I now own 5 of the series on actual paper.

I have been recommending them as a resource despite only a mild interest in the stories themselves. In fact, I haven’t yet read them all—maybe 2 or 3. I’ve just used the first one fairly intensively. Perhaps it’s time for me to do some extensive reading these holidays.

98

To tell the truth, I haven’t done much in the way of languages recently. I’ve been working. And it’s amazing how much time and energy work consumes. 

I suppose most people know that. I needn’t spell it out. But I’ve been fortunate enough not to have had to work much these past 5 years.

Some might be shocked by that. However, the ancients Greeks (or was it Romans?) regarded it as selfish to work, since such people are unable to contribute to the community.

Luckily I have holidays for the next two and a half weeks. So watch this space!

97

In the same library where I found no adult reading matter in Maori, I discover a wealth of children’s books written, or translated, into that language. What does this mean? Do Maori adults stop reading at a certain age? Or, more likely, do the Maori have more of an oral tradition?

On the topic of abundance, I discover three German books in a short space of time. Two of them are still wrapped in plastic. German seems to be the most commonly available foreign language in these parts, even more than Dutch. Do they originate from schools, residents, or tourists, I wonder?

96

In ‘The Star Beast’ (1954) Robert Heinlein mentions language several times:

“The brute isn’t as bright as a good bird dog, even if he can parrot human speech a little.”

“But he must have had [his own language]; it’s a truism . . . that speech centers are found only in nervous systems that use them.”

“Assuming that an E.T. is stupid because he can’t speak our language well is like assuming that an Italian is illiterate because he speaks broken English”

“Use of language almost on the instinctive level is perhaps the reason why they find other languages difficult.”

95

Recently, I was at an international potluck dinner. Almost everyone was studying for a PhD in Psychology, or already had one. Naturally, the conversation was interesting.

One fact that I learned was that Hebrew and Arabic are very similar. It should be easy to learn one if you knew the other. But because of Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis, people are ‘blocked’.

I got a book recently because it is written using Arabic script. However, no one in my class of Arabic speakers could tell me the title. That’s how I learned that other languages use Arabic letters too, e.g. Farsi.

94

Counting down to the first 100 posts, it may seem as if I’m treating this whole business as a bit of a game. Yes, so I am.

While it’s important to demonstrate that my theories work, I refuse to get ‘serious’ about it all. Frivolity is, after all, a key difference between study and unlearning. Therefore, although I must ‘walk the talk’, that talk needs to appear somewhat silly for it to be authentic.

Here Donovan Nagel discusses the motivation needed to learn a language. But to my mind, motivation is never an issue if one's approach is sufficiently silly.

93

Having misplaced my physical HP1, I asked on Facebook if anyone had a copy they could loan. That led to an offer from R. And so yesterday both of our families shared a meal, an evening, and lots of interesting discussion about language learning etcetera.

How’s that for Potter magic!

Now I’ll load my mp3 player with chapters in Dutch, German, Norwegian, Spanish, French—whatever I can find on Youtube. I’ll listen to them all while following along upon the page in English. I’ll do that as I go about on foot—it beats fiddling with a Smartphone in public!

92

Of course, when I open up two windows to the same story, one in English, one in Spanish or French, and mute, first one then the other while reading along once or twice, everything becomes easier.

“Well, duh!” as Homer Simpson would say.

A great improvement in return for a teeny bit of input—I wouldn’t even call it work. It’s something I can do while waiting for my daughter to finish breakfast before I take her to school. (It was the final day of the year for her, by the way. “Today we clean up!” she told me gleefully.)

91

I’ve noticed that I’m getting a bit ‘stuck’ with French and Spanish purely listening while I walk (without the reading component). Oh sure, I find that I’m improving, but not very quickly. It’s not going optimally. So I’ll need to read at the same time, or carry out my language familiarization in a stationary location (and using, um, stationery).

My plan today:

I’ll run through my transcripts once or twice, therefore, and report back what a difference that makes. Once I have the details of that flying elephant under my belt, I’ll soon get to grips with that story’s language.

90

I enjoy listening to one language after another on my mp3 player on my way down to work. It’s a very pleasant hour spent on foot, through the Ross Creek Reservoir bush.

To make the exercise better I’ll print off a sheet, say a couple of sides, of each text and slip them all inside a clear file folder in listening order. That will enable me to read along as I listen. (It’s good that I can read while walking.)

And as soon as possible I need to find another HP1 in English to replace the one that I lost.

89

I’ve made the decision to do Hindi. I had the chance to do so 34 years ago, when I taught in the Punjab, but didn’t take it up (blaming my inaction on the fact that Urdu and Punjabi were also being spoken in my environment.

Having received the Hindi material I wrote about the day before, and having today picked up a Eureka Software package, Languages of the World Volume 3, my arm is twisted.

Said package contains instructions for German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Flemish, Urdu, Bengali, Somali, Swahili, Zulu and Hindi.

Now, if I can only manage to install it. 

88

Oh no! I’ve lost my first Sue Barton book in German. I could make a start on volume 2, but that’s not the same thing. Oh well.

I’d read 3 pages of it at a sitting—about 1000 words. It only took me about 10 minutes, so that’s a useful rate of language processing. 

Oh yes! I got something in the mail that I didn’t expect. Gaston Dorren, the author of ‘Lingo’, sent me some Hindi material. I’d Twittered him not to worry: the postage was pricey, and you can’t easily send money to Europe from NZ.

Swings and roundabouts.

87

Two of us, my 7-year-old daughter and I, listened to the second chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (why is it the ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’ in American English?). Luckily I have a ‘Y’-shape thingy cord connection.

I read the English while Sachi reads the Japanese. Both of us learning.

This will enable Sachi to maintain her Japanese in an English environment, and I believe this practice will improve her written Japanese too. A pity—only 2 of the 7 have been turned into Japanese audiobooks.

It was a lot of fun, us both giggling over the same funny bits.

86

Let me put you straight. I’m not a super-duper languages machine. Some days I do nothing. Most days I do little.

I do languages like a game, just as I approach work or even my entire life. I need to live in this manner, since that is my nature.

When you learn a language, you’ll succeed unless you stop. Guaranteed. As long as you don’t quit you’ll get there, by using any method at all. However, different methods may take different amounts of time, and involve different amounts of fun.

When life is a game, it’s worth living. Only then.

85

We had friends round for a potluck. Luke sees my Norwegian Harry Potter on the coffee table and asks, “Can you read it?”

I tell him that, knowing the story, I can get the gist. I can guess the meaning of 50 percent of the keywords.

“How about ‘takk’?” he asks. It’s the last word of the first sentence: Herr og fru Dumling i Hekkveien 4 var heldigvis fullstendig normale, takk.

No problem. It means ‘thanks’. They have something similar in Swedish too, I believe.

Luke’s mother adds that in the UK dramas in Norwegian with English subtitles are popular.

84

In Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher novel, Night School, there’re two references to language learning.

The bad guy listens to language tapes for 20 minutes every night to improve his Spanish. He lies in bed wearing headphones, “listening, repeating, learning, until his brain got tired and he fell asleep.” He does this because he cannot expect his future workers to learn English.

Later in the book, Reacher addresses a group of Germans. He asks them, “You speak English?” When one of them says yes, Reacher responds, “You ever wonder why? Why you speak my language and I don’t speak yours?”