Thursday, July 21, 2016

Alex goes missing (Arabic Week 1.5) - Getting up to speaking

So this post is a little early due to I won't be near my computer this weekend (or the next following). You can try to understand me via the video as I tell you why or you can just click here. This is a pretty good example of watching me struggle as I try to come up with what I'm trying to say. It isn't perfect but I get the message across, hopefully.


It is very obvious that my Chinese is much more comfortable than my Arabic. This wasn't the case back when I first started. Like I originally said, it took me a while to finally get the courage to try to speak Chinese. For the first six months I wasn't really able to do any conversation beyond saying hello. Finally, I hit a break through when I started approaching situations I could prepare for. This may sound a little confusing so I'll explain the first attempt I ever had speaking Chinese: at a restaurant.

Going to a restaurant to speak the language I knew what the conversation would likely be based around: food. I could prepare phrases and words I expected to hear. "Are you ready to order?" "What would you like to drink?" "How if everything tasting?". By doing this it allowed me to practice the language but also be PREPARED to hear what was likely to come.

As much as I would like to say I rocked this event, I didn't. At one point during the meal I apparently implied to our waitress that my girlfriend is hungry because I never feed her. I knew this instantly because when I tried to say, "She hasn't eaten yet." The waitress responded in shock as if I said something along the lines of, "She isn't allowed to eat." When it came time to order our food I was so ready to order chicken that I made sure to say it with the best pronunciation and tones as possible. The problem was, I wasn't prepared for her to ask me "How do you want the chicken cooked?" I panicked and the only word I knew was fried........so we ate fried chicken wings at a Chinese restaurant.
Some of the words I prepared for my first attempt at ordering in Chinese.
The big thing I got from all of this was the small successes. I was able to understand the staff when only a little bit, but that was still more than nothing. They also were able to understand me. Going in expecting to be some master fluent speaker on your first try to going to put you right back where you were before with a deflated confidence. The other great part of the experience was the actual interaction. The waitress we had was so happy that I was willing to try to speak with her that every time she brought out something new she would present it and then say it in Chinese as a way to help me associate. A lot of times we are worried when we speak somebody else's language they are going to be like, "How dare you butcher my language!" But it is actually the opposite. People are thrilled to see you trying.

Being able to prepare and anticipate how a conversation will go can make it go A LOT smoother for you. Next time I'll talk a little bit about my first ever Skype call with my friend who lives in Tian Jin, China but for now I should probably pack!

Until next time.
再见

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Arabic Progress Week 1 - Setting Some Goals

So it has officially been a week since I started trying to learn another language.

One of the big challenges that people face when learning a language is goal setting. When I first started getting serious about learning Chinese I set some goals for the year:
  1. Have a 15 minute conversation using ONLY Chinese.
  2. Be able to speak a 5 minute monologue in Chinese.
I was able to meet the first goal within 6 months so now I've added two NEW goals to try to reach by the end of the year:
  1. Have a 15 minute conversation using ONLY Chinese.
  2. Be able to speak a 5 minute monologue in Chinese.
  3. Have a 40 minute conversation using ONLY Chinese.
  4. Have a 15 minute conversation with somebody who DOESN'T speak any English.
The last one is going to be REALLY interesting. I'll make a whole post about that experience later. For now, I need to set some goals that I can use for both my languages that I am learning. This is my new UPDATED goals for the year!
  1. Have a 15 minute conversation using ONLY Chinese.
  2. Be able to speak a 5 minute monologue in Chinese.
  3. Have a 40 minute conversation using ONLY Chinese.
  4. Have a 15 minute conversation with somebody who DOESN'T speak any English.
  5. Watch an episode of a Chinese TV show and be able to understand what is happening.
  6. Be able to read and pronounce a full page of Arabic whether I know the words or not.
  7. Have a 30 minute conversation with somebody that is a mix of Arabic/English
  8. Listen to an Arabic song and be able to explain it in Chinese
We will see how it goes in the upcoming months. Here is an update on how my first week of Arabic went:

Learning to write from right to left is taking some adjustment.
Things started out pretty well. I was able to learn to write the letters as I learned their pronunciation. I wanted to start by learning the alphabet as it is a phonetic language whereas Chinese is not, unless you refer to pinyin. Some of the letters are still difficult ("th" is different than "th"?!) but I know that I won't sound perfect in a week.  The goal is to make progress along the way!

I hit a rut on about the third day. I took on too much an suddenly my head was spinning. Luckily, I was able to talk to a friend of mine who has been studying Arabic for years and helped me with the pronunciation of the letters from an English stand point.

My big focus is on learning the words I will use in my life. In the video this week, I prepared words about myself (I learned brother but not sister for that reason). As I need to say and understand more things, I can learn more vocabulary but learning the specific words that I will need has proven to be really helpful in the past.

My videos are done in one take, without reading a script. My goal is that this will show me struggle, as I did twice in this one, as I try to remember the words I want. Nobody is perfect but the importance is on trying to communicate. Whether somebody's grammar is perfect if they came up to you and said, "Me.....bathroom......where?" You would understand pretty well what they're looking for. This is the mentality that I am trying to approach this with. Anyways, here is the video.


Even listening to the video I can see words that I've mispronounced. Better on day 7 than day 0 though!

Next week I will hopefully be able to upload a video earlier in the week where I will explain in Chinese what I will be doing for the next week and a half!

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Alex Begins Learning Arabic (Week 0)

Hello all!

This is my "language learning" blog that I created with the purpose of letting other people who are also trying to learn a language to see the struggles that I go through as I try to learn some of the "most difficult languages in the world". My hope is that you can see that it doesn't matter how much you struggle, as long as you make an effort, you can progress in your goals.

First, a little bit about how I've come to where I am:

In high school, I took four years of Spanish but never got much better than saying "Hola, Como Estas?" About the best thing I could come up with was "No hablo espanol" because it got the point I needed across pretty quickly.

So last year I set myself a goal to learn Mandarin Chinese as I felt that in ten years having a foreign language would almost be a requirement. When I began, I felt that I wouldn't be able to "use" the language successfully until about five years in. After using different learning softwares, classes, and just reading a bunch of stuff, I finally said "screw it" and tried to see what would happen if I just tried to use it with people.

That was December of 2015. Since then, I have been able to use my Chinese in places wasn't expecting to use it (metro, ski slope, HomeAway, etc.) I now skype with a friend who lives in China once a week and this past spring I worked with a few graduate students from China with their English pronunciation while they helped me with my Chinese.

To say learning a language has changed my perception on things is an understatement. I hope you can find some enjoyment through my struggles to keep learning, or to begin learning a language if you haven't started.

I'll share some stories I've encountered along the way, but for now I will leave you with a video (which I hope to do each week). All my videos will be done in one take with no script so that you can see the struggles and watch me try to think on my feet. Next week I will give speaking Arabic a try for the first time ever!


I said the wrong thing for "next week" as it should have been "xia zhou" not "xia tian" (summer).