Language journaling

You all know these amazing, beautiful language journals that are so satisfying to see... yours probably aren't like that. Mine isn't.

Now, I have a serious journal envy here. Mostly because I KNOW I COULD DO IT if I tried. Or something. I know calligraphy, I can draw, I have all kinds of pens and I know how to use them :-D

So... why am I not doing it?

One of my problems is that most language journals are bound. Which means that I can remove a page that went wrong, or add information in "proper", "logical" place, but I have to start a new page for every piece of information, or have them mixed up in a mess one can't find anything from... :-(
And it will be like that anyway. :-(
(moping)

So... I think I'll just ignore that bit, and just toss them in a journal, and make pretty the parts that I can control. Like... you know... things.

1) make your journal a nice first page.

The title page of Isolde's Japanese journal

2) I like having the trackers and counters and calendars and plans and bucket lists in the beginning

Arthaey's language journal

 6 months' challenge tracking- Charlotte's language journal

Duolingo tracker - I don't know by whom. :-(
but I like it.

like in most language course books, the next page should be the alphabet and phonology, how to pronounce the language

from ...estar vivo es lo mejor...

3) the main body - some people know what they are going to write, which notes they'll make, like Chiazo, and has things like sentence structure, questions and so on. I like to learn those thing "in action". I think I would like to have a page for

- the numbers

- how to say the date; "It's Saturday, 29th of June two thousand nineteen"

- personal pronouns, conjugated

- how to say verbs in present and simple past tense.

- question words

- prepositions or case endings for common use - like, how to say in language "in the box", "outside the box", "over the box", "on top of the box" and so on. (Laatikossa, laatikon ulkopuolella, laatikon yläpuolella, laatikolla, in Finnish. Sometimes a postposition, sometimes a case ending... sorry. :-D)

by Tiny Bits of Swedish

- "I love you" is actually a very good sentence to learn, because it teaches you the object, accusative :-D I love thee, thou lovest him, he loves us, we love you, you love them, they love me...
Ich liebe dich, du liebst ihn, er liebt uns, wir lieben euch, ihr liebt sie, Sie lieben mich

I give my heart to thee, thou givest your heart to him, he gives his heart to us, we give our heart to you, you give your heart to them, they give their heart to me.
Ich gebe dir mein Herz, du gibst ihm dein Herz, er gibt uns sein Herz, wir geben euch unser Herz, ihr gebt ihnen euer Herz, Sie geben mir ihr Herz.

It is also an easy way to learn possessive pronouns and pronouns in dative - and to understand what accusative and dative are :-D
(And I usually use a book or letter instead of a heart. Heart just fitted "I love you" :-D)

- also some basic sentences, like "thank you", "you're welcome", "hello", "yes" and "no". Makes it a lot easier to watch tv-series and learn more. :-D

- colors - makes it really pretty :-)

by Dahlia

3) the vocabulary

No, that page with colors is not part of vocabulary. It probably could be, if you wanted to do it that way, but the best way is to do it like a dictionary,

This is an old German word book. The kids wrote the list of foreign words on one half of the page, and then a translation, and then the book was used so that the kid covered one side of the page and quizzed the words. You know the drill :-D

So, yes. A translation. Totally inspite of the fact, that most words don't have a direct, one word, literal translation, or one meaning. This word is just a clue, one word reminder of what the word could mean. It was never meant to be one word definite, literal translation, never meant to say "this word means exactly this, and cannot, should not, may not be translated any other way!"

I just read a well-meaning but idiotic article about keeping a vocabulary notebook, and I find it hard to think that there are still grown-up people out there, people who are old enough to try to learn a language on their own, WHO DON'T KNOW THAT LANGUAGES ARE ENTITIES THAT CANNOT BE LITERALLY TRANSLATED. What we are translating is the idea conveyed with the language. When you are studying vocabulary, you are studying ideas conveyed by the words, not direct, perfect, literal translations. We are not Google Translate or Babelfish. We are not an Universal Translator. We are not a computer, that doesn't understand that you can't put in a string of words, translate them, and out comes a perfect sentence in foreign language! What comes out is a "Google translation".

"One turtle walked over it street that eat one strawberry"

Well... the thing of course is that you can use your journal, notebook, any which way you want to, and if you want to write down every possible translation and understanding of the word, "What kind of word is it?", "How common is it?", "How do I use it?", "What does it mean?", "How is it pronounced?", "A useful and meaningful example", of course, you can.
Just remember one thing. You are supposed to learn several thousands of words. Are you seriously willing to do that with every one of them?
Nah... only do this with the most important words, and only note the interesting parts. You do not have to gather ALL information into your notebook! It is for NOTES. It is for JOURNALING. It is NOT a dictionary! USE A DICTIONARY!

BTW, I just realized that this might be what makes mathematically thinking people good language learners. We see patterns, correlations, associations, beyond the simple meaning, we are good at trying to convey ideas that are just ideas, not words nor pictures, and one language is just like another...

 Anyway, back to writing vocabulary in your language journal :-D
What ever I say, do it the way you like to do it. I'm not you, what might be stupid for me, might be exactly the right thing for you and vice versa. You might think some of the things I do are really stupid, and for you they would be.

Are You Addicted To Reading?

Asks  Idahosa Ness in Sound Rehab: A 5-Point Program for Kicking Your Visual-Addiction

Well... are you? ARE YOU?

Good for you, I say.

I am a writer. The best advice, the only advice that ever works is "If you want to get good at writing, write a lot and read a lot". Reading is enjoyable and painless language acquisition. That is basically the only way one gets good at one's mothertongue.

"Improved literacy can contribute to economic growth; reduce poverty; reduce crime; promote democracy; increase civic engagement; prevent HIV/AIDS and other diseases through information provision; enhance cultural diversity through literacy programmes in minority languages; lead to lower birth rates as a result of increased education; and confer personal benefits such as increased self-esteem, confidence and empowerment."

And then we have the Idahosas of the world. *sigh*

So, he advocates learning languages with one's ears instead of one's eyes.
I'm all for using ALL senses to learn everything one can learn.
I'm all against limiting one's options.
What's wrong with learning languages with your ears AND your eyes? And your mouth and hands and, heck, let's throw in nose, too. Olfactory memory is very strong, and way too un-utilized in language learning.

He claims this is flawed logic: “You can't just assume that everyone is an auditory learner like you. Personally, I’m a visual learner so I can’t learn a language unless I can see it.”

It's not. For several reasons.

The most important in this instance is that most languages do have a written form. If it has a written form, it is quite possible to learn that, without ever using one's ears at all.

Another reason is that Idahosa doesn't seem to understand how learning works. When one says "I'm a visual learner", it means that's one's strongest "style", but most people use all the learning styles when they learn. The thing is that a person really doesn't learn well by NOT using their strongest learning style.

What ever anyone tells you, what ever you think, LITERACY IS A GOOD THING.
Now, OF COURSE, you shouldn't rely solely on written text, but it is quite possible to learn a language through writing.
I DIDN'T HAVE ANY FRENCH AUDIO WHEN I LEARNED TO SPEAK IT, I ONLY HAD IPA. MY PRONUNCIATION ISN'T BAD.
There was, of course, several problems, but those were mostly about liaison. I'm certain that I would have gotten even that right, had I had better instructions.

We have hundreds of endangered and dying languages, and writing them down is the only way of preserving them. And we write them down phonetically to preserve the pronunciation. That's the magic of letters and sign and other "little black squiggles".

"Can you read better than you can hear? Can you write better than you can speak? If so, you are visually addicted, and this is your intervention."

Yes, I can. I also have Asperger's Syndrome, I am a musical/mathematical thinker, pattern thinker, if you wish - which means that verbally expressing myself is like a foreign language for me. I suffer from selective mutism. I also have some difficulties with hearing. I find his "intervention" insulting.

What about remembering that people really are different? And that "different" isn't synonymous to "worse" or "lesser"?
What about trying to see that even though you have a lot of great ideas and auditory learning is close to your heart, it really doesn't work as well for everyone, and not everyone has the same goals and aspirations as you do, or the same measurements and qualifications of what counts as learning or knowing a language?

"Here’s the basic model for acquiring and utilizing language in the script-centric paradigm:

Foundation: ortography
Acquisition: through seeing the words written down
Utilization: first visualize the written words, then convert the script into sounds, and then re-create the sound"

Er... No. Not really. Well... I suppose that's the way it works for some people, but I don't know anyone who does it that way.

This is how I do it.

I learn the alphabet, that is, THE SOUNDS of the language. All writing systems are basically phonetic. When a language gets a written form, it is writing down sounds. Every word is a combination of sounds, and a written word is a pictogram of the phonemes.

Then I learn some simple things, like the numbers and some general greetings. I learn the the way they are actually said, not the way they are written, because I understand that there is no universal writing. Every language has its own alphabet, because the alphabet is created to convey the phonology of the language, and all languages don't have the same phonology.

I never learn a word as just a visual thing, just a combination of letters, where the most important thing is how the letters are combined, and if I have the accent or cedilla in the right place. No, a written down word in a flashcard is always accompanied with the proper pronunciation. I read "chat" as /tʃæt/ if it's English, /ʃa/ if it's French and /ʃat/ if I don't know what language it is, because I'm Finnish.

Now, because I am a pattern thinker, I don't have a visual or auditory dictionary, card cabinet or phrasebook in my head. So, this theory is extremely irritating, this theory of those who advocate for non-traditional methods of learning languages, that we are stupid slow ineffective troglodytes, like some kind of geriatric monks because we have to go to the filing cabinet, and find the correct word first in our mothertongue and then go to another cabinet and translate it, and then go to a third cabinet and use grammar, and it all takes hours and hours, while the trimmed race horses who have learned the languages intuitively and auditory, like babies, have run around the monastery and had hundreds of discussions while we are still calligraphying the first word on the pergament. *sigh*

So - let's go through the "potential errors" Idahosa lists.

"Your native reading habits are deeply ingrained, so it can mess up your “script-sound converter“

No. My native reading habits are for reading my native language. As I said, I learn every word in the language I learn them, even if I used the word in my native language to understand the word. Like "Chat is cat in French". In real time it happens a lot faster. More like this:

In my head it's just... I just know it. It's not a sound or a picture or a word, it's... It's impossible to try to convey a pattern mind with words or images. THIS is how my mind works. Where's the cat?

And inspite of how you write the word, chat in French is never read chat in English even if you have been reading billions of words in English, because when you are reading French, chat is /ʃa/, not /tʃæt/. I don't know enough French to know if there even is /tʃæt/ in French.

"more than half of people’s pronunciation errors come from saying foreign words according to native orthographical conventions."

More than that, I would say... though perhaps they have been taught wrong, or perhaps they are physically incapable of producing the sound required. Nevertheless, I have thought it's accent, and that's totally fine. I mean, it should be fine for me to have a Finnish accent, I AM Finnish. And the point with communication should be communication, and not some "do you pass as a native" fluency test. 

 "Hearing and Speaking Can Become Inflexible"

Of course. But I don't assume the colloquial, spoken language is static and like writing. I don't always speak grammatically perfect or well-articulated, and I don't think anyone else does either. In Finnish the spoken language and the written language differ quite a lot. So why the heck would I limit my concept of the language to its existence on paper?

"A Meta-Thinking Habit Can Develop"

Sure, it can. It doesn't matter. Everyone thinks about things when they discuss things. It's OK for those things to be the nasty rash, that odd bird you saw, conjugation or spelling rules. It doesn't matter if the thing I'm thinking about is connected with the language. IT DOES NOT SLOW ME DOWN. It doesn't slow anyone down. The human brain is such an amazing thing that it can do those thoughts and calculations and everything necessary in nanoseconds. No-one will notice anything. It doesn't effect your fluency in any way. THE ONLY THING IT EFFECTS IS YOUR SELF-CONFIDENCE. Now, that is not good, but THE EFFECT IS THE SAME AS WHEN YOU START THINKING THE SHORT I IN TIJUANA IS NOT THE SAME SHORT I AS IN TICK, AND OBSESSING ABOUT YOUR PRONUNCIATION NOT BEING PERFECT.
The people will understand you even when you speak Rally English. BECAUSE SPOKEN LANGUAGE IS BASICALLY FOR COMMUNICATING AND TRYING TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER. People will ask if they don't understand you. It's OK to not sound like a native and still speak. It's better you sound like the foreign noobie you are, than that you sound like a native speaker. A 10 years old native speaker.

"Some people can balance the sound and script in their head well enough to avoid most complications, which is why it’s still possible for someone to achieve foreign language fluency in this model."

Most polyglots have learned their languages like that. For example Benny Lewis, Tim Doner, David Tammet, Matthew and Michael Youlden, Alexander Arguelles...

"In my experience as a language-teacher and accent-coacher for thousands of people"

I think you mean "a language teacher and accent coach"... But what do I know. English isn't my mothertongue. (It's Idahosa's, though, and I do know.) Uh. That was mean.

"In my experience as a language-teacher and accent-coacher for thousands of people, however, I’ve come to realize that the vast majority of people CANNOT achieve this balance so easily."

Well... I would say they need to do it the way I do it, but - what ever works for them is good.

Anyway, Idahosa then goes on to explain the "Sound-centric language acquisition".

Foundation: phonology
Acquisition: through hearing the words
Utilization: recall the sound and reproduce it

"You should notice right away that the sound-centric model is much simpler than the script-centric one (I guess that's why it's the preferred language learning model for babies)"

I don't see it as "much simpler".

Step 1) foundation: ortography/phonology
Step 2) acquisition: through eyes/ears
Step 3) remember the written word/remember the sounds that create the word
Step 4) read the word/repeat the word

What is with this obsession with babies? Babies aren't really that good at learning languages. First you are in a very sensory deprived space for 9 months, where you basically only hear what your mother says. Then you spend about a year just trying to control your mouth and repeating sounds. Then you spend a year trying to control your mouth and repeat specific sounds, and desperately try to be understood. After having studied the language for almost three years, you still speak 1-2 word sentences that mostly focus on your needs. You can say "hungry". "banana". "mom". All this time, you mostly hear only one language and most people deliberately use very simplified version of the language around you. Babies way of learning languages is extremely ineffective and really not something I would use as an attractive example of how good my method of learning languages is.

Quite a lot of parents have chosen to teach their children sign language, to give them a chance to actually communicate before they have mastered the sounds.

"On top of that, the Foreign Language Education industry has done nothing but nurture our visual addiction. They know people won’t buy their products unless they pump them full of eye-ball crack. In big-business, the goal of “produce as many fluent speakers as possible” will always be trumped by the goal of “produce as much revenue as possible."

Says the man who sells his language course (BASIC, mind you - this course is just the foundation. You'll learn to pronounce the phonemes of the language.) for $197.00
With that money, you'd get
Pimsleur WHOLE Spanish AND Portuguese course Gold Edition, or
Rosetta Stone Spanish course with Lifetime Access on iOS.
You could get 2 1/2 years subscription to +Babbel.
Assimil Spanish AND Portuguese Super Pack.
You could get six different language courses, from beginner to advanced, by Living Language. Including free online learning.
The same with "Teach Yourself..."

So... If I was he, I wouldn't say a thing about producing revenue.

But I suppose "Big Pharma" is a biggie here. Tell people there's a conspiracy theory and they are wasting their moneys, and they will come running to spend their moneys on your product.

Also, he might have wanted to look at these "Foreign Language Education Industry" products. I don't think any of them come without audio. Some of them are based on the "repeat after me" principle. The text is there to give the correct spelling, grammar and some additional information to those who want it.

Having said that, I think he has a good thing going, he's good at what he is doing and if you have 200 dollars to put on a speech coach, go for it. It is worth it.

"I always found it strange how language-learners know so much about obscure grammar concepts like the past plu-perfect bubonic subjunctive and the modular gerundial kryptonic splunk-dicative, but whenever I ask them to explain simple phonetic concepts like the difference between the /t/ sound and the /d/ sound, they act as if I were expecting them to know nuclear physics."

Mocking someone else's special terminology will most certainly make them willing to learn your  Vulvular Passive-egressive Ferengis and Glottalic Subape hissifits. Yes, special terminology is difficult, unless one uses it all the time. I'm not expecting you to know what the correct name for verb tenses is, and you don't expect me to be able to explain to you the difference of a voiced and voiceless alveolar stop, OK?

And, no, I don't need to know THE WORDS for what my tongue does where in my mouth. I just have to be able to do that.

He is right about "it doesn’t take much to develop a practical knowledge of phonetics and speech physiology." I am the first to admit I would not have been able to learn OK pronunciation of languages without phonetics and speech physiology. But - I need them because I learn from texts.

"For example, one can predict that a native Spanish speaker will have trouble with the /i/ vowel from English words like “bit” and “sit” since it does NOT exist in Spanish. That’s why pronouncing words like “bit” and “sit” as “beet” and “seat” are characteristics of the typical Spanish accent."

Now, I am not good at hearing the differences between sounds, but I really can't hear any difference between the i in pico de gallo and pickhack. I have also never heard anyone call the Southern neighbor of USA to "Meheeco".

"Similarly, an English speaker almost always articulates the /e/ vowel as a diphthong /ei/, so we can expect him to pronounce /e/ vowels in other languages this way too."

I have also never heard anyone having had seix in beid. But, as said, I'm Finnish, not Native English speaker.

Oh... there I go again. I do know. There is no difference. This guy is wrong, and that makes me very suspicious about his capacity to speech coach anyone. I mean... how could he not be aware of that there IS /i/ in Spanish? "Sí, mis cinco hijas son bonitas"? Has he seriously learned to say that "see, mees cheenco eechas son boneetas"? And he's supposed to teach me the proper pronunciation of Spanish? For 200 dollars? Seriously?

Uh. I really wish he didn't speculate like that. Because the advice he gives is very good.

1) learn phonetics, speech physiology and IPA
2) check out the phonology of your target language and compare that to your own, to catch the probably pitfalls. Note what causes you problems and work on that.
3) record yourself, and ask native speakers correct your pronunciation
4) To learn to speak, you have to speak. To learn to listen, you have to listen. Do what you want to learn.

"Personally, I never set out to “learn a language,” I set out to “learn to communicate with people of a different culture.” And as long as sound is what people are chiefly relying on to communicate with one another, then sound is what I’m going to focus on."

Personally, I love to learn new things, and languages are a big part of that.
I mostly want to learn to read and write, which is why I focus on reading and writing.
I also wish to communicate with people who don't speak my language, but I do that on the internet, in writing, because I have bad social phobia, I don't do social interaction. I am not going to travel, or go to a polyglot meeting, or skype with someone. I find it hard enough to call my sisters.

So - my "addiction to script" is not unhealthy, nor is it an addiction, and I have no reason to get rid of it.

P.S. The language community loves to speak about "his pronunciation stinks, so he doesn't speak the language", or "He only speaks very rudimentary, simple form of the language, has a very poor vocabulary and makes a lot of mistakes, so he doesn't speak the language". So, let's talk about "I speak 10 languages, but I'm illiterate in all of them". Do you KNOW a language if you can't read and write it?