653

My Kindle serves to do the job of making language acquisition more fun. With German, I make a point of highlighting words that to English eyes appear comical. With Spanish, I highlight the first word of every sentence (of HP1) that I feel I’d recognize out of context. With Italian, I highlight words whose context and similarity to English make me go, “Aha!” With Polish, I simply highlight every sentence with 6 or fewer words.

What should I do for French? Is there anything I ought to do to make Dutch more interesting, or can it stand on its own? 

652

A couple of things. Or, as they say in the USA, couple things.

All I need to do is to pin an addictive activity onto each language—one that links with the glossing, forging ahead style of reading an HP type of text. I more or less have those for Spanish, Italian, German etc. I’ll describe them in days to come.

Second thing. I’m changing the name of my blog slash non-course. I’ll retain Languages berserker mode as the subtitle or descriptor. But the main name’s going to be The Play Fool Tongue.

That captures the essence better, I think.

651

Semester end break-up of English language school. Speeches about struggling and difficult, hard work. That’s the mental association people have with learning languages—students, staff and administrators. So sad. So wrong.

I’m happy to glean an understanding by skipping through a foreign-language book. The only “difficulty” I have is that I love reading too much. I become diverted toward books in English. 

The trick is to incorporate some activity that makes the other language more fun. That’s the thing that I have going these days with HP2 in Japanese. The story itself—meh. But kanji coding adds to the excitement.

650

I’ve a book for children in Japanese. It contains chapters each about some biographical figure. One is on Vincent Van Gogh. So I’m reading it.

If I do so slowly, painstakingly, it’s not much use. I understand nothing, because my brain doesn’t see the patterns at that speed.

However, if I skip along quickly, then I make more sense of it. I obtain 20, 40 or 60 percent of the information depending on my level.

Since I move quickly, I cover more ground. The exercise is more useful and productive. You just have to let go and trust the net.

649

From Jack Reacher in Swedish, courtesy of Lee Child, I switched to Harry Potter in Swedish thanks to J K Rowling. Because, when I looked at my Swedish resources, I discovered that I possess the audio of all 7 books. In duplicate!

Although I only have HP1 as a pdf.

Since I know the story well, and since the text is written with the alphabet, I can listen follow along on screen in dual Swedish. And so I did for almost half an hour, at Marsh.

That and coffee is a nice way to spend the morning when snow threatens.

648

For no reason, or some reason, I worked with Swedish today. I had my Kindle with me. I checked out my copies of Logner and A wanted man (by Lee Child). Now, doing a Heinrich maneuver with them should be easy. However, the functionality whereby books are arranged according to when they were last accessed doesn’t work. Therefore, there’s a lot of back-and-forthing required.

It would be better to work with a Kindle and a laptop. I’ll try that today. Or if I had an actual book. On my bookshelf there’s Never go back and Killing Floor.

I’m a playfool.

647

Languages come up. Just as Baby Steps in Japanese had Indonesian and French subtitles, yesterday another Youtube clip had Spanish subtitles, even though it’s in English. Rick Beato’s music channel. So you make use of the opportunity.

I took along a pile of Dutch books for my mother to choose from. Her response was to share them with a Dutch friend. Well, why not? What goes around, comes around. That friend used to babysit me, my brother and sisters. She introduced me to Siddhartha which now I own both the English and Dutch translations. Herman Hesse wrote it in German. 

646

I spent a little time looking at some Maori terminology. I’ve 2 words I’m to write a couple of paragraphs about: ako and kaitiakitanga. So do the other 4 people on this course. We’ll then present those orally to the group, and the video of the ensuing discussion will count as evidence toward one learning outcome.

It’s an expiring unit standard. The last date for assessment is the last day of this year. Develop adult learners’ literacy and numeracy skills within a workplace training or education programme—that’s what it’s called. It includes design, delivery, assessment and evaluation. Riveting stuff.

645

Without really trying, or making any special effort, I read, listened to and explored French, Dutch, German and Japanese. 

This time, Baby Steps episode 4 had French subtitles. Somehow that distracted me a little. There was that subtle difference of knowing a little more French. Also with French, I viewed a Youtube clip: when Hendrix met Clapton. All very poignant.

But no Malay? Malaysian? was on show at the place, formerly known as The Little Hut where Mami and I had dosa for lunch. Pity, as that would have rounded off the day very nicely.

What’s on the cards today?

644

Although we did not get to 4 in a row, I will continue with the discussion. As I said, it’s interesting when the subtitles to a Japanese anime are in Indonesian instead of English. I’ll try to explain why.

As I follow along, trying to pick out an Indonesian word or two, I realize that I’m putting far less pressure on myself, or, more precisely, on my Japanese. I’m sort of subconsciously attending to it while my conscious mind is focussed on Indonesian. In that sense, then, learning a new language utilizing an intermediate language may well be the answer.