Sunday, September 25, 2016

Why the Hardest Language is the Easiest Language: The Attitude Approach

Whenever I tell people that I'm learning two languages they seem to think it is something incredible. The comments I get when I tell them the languages are Mandarin Chinese and Arabic are even more complimentary. People seem to think that these languages are the most difficult languages in the world and if I were to somehow try to learn both at the same time, I must be some type of genius. Let's stop right there. I am by no means a genius. Most the people I surround myself with I feel are much smarter than I am. So why is it that I can take on these two languages? My attitude.

Most people who know me, know that I like to stay pretty positive as I go about things. I try to look at the positives of any circumstance. I carry this same approach to learning a language: if you think a language is exceptionally hard, it will be. If you approach the language by noticing all of the ways that it is easy, you can have a better attitude about how you can go about learning it. For this post, I'm going use this approach to explain how the language I originally thought was the hardest language in the world is actually the easiest: Mandarin Chinese.

Pinyin

There is a whole lot of "pinyin" that will be included in this article. Pinyin is a phonetic medium of how to speak Chinese characters using English letters. It also marks the tones that you may have heard of as well. Most of it can be sounded out pretty standard with English. A few to note are "z" and "c". These are pronounced like the "-ds" and "-ts" at the end of "words" and "cats" respectively. Also, x-, sh-, j-, zh-, q-, and ch- all sound similar to each other except one is pronounced in the front and the other is in the back of the mouth.

Grammar

I'm going to start you off with my favorite part of Chinese that makes it SOOOOO much easier than most European languages: the grammar. You don't have to conjugate verbs! There are no genders with regards to different objects. The grammar is so simple to use. Here are some examples of how to say different things in English and Chinese:

English:
I am American
You are American
He is American
She is American
You (pl.) are American
We are American
They are American

Chinese
我是美国人
你是美国人
他是美国人
她是美国人
你们是美国人
我们是美国人
他们是美国人

Pinyin:
wǒ shì měi guó rén
nǐ shì měi guó rén
tā shì měi guó rén
tā shì měi guó rén
nǐ men shì měi guó rén
wǒ men shì měi guó rén
tā men shì měi guó rén

Tenses

If you noticed, the only word that changed was the noun. The verb was always the same. When you learn the verb for noun, you know it for all nouns. This also works with tenses. You don't have to change tenses for words as well.

English
This morning I ate breakfast
Right now I am eating lunch
Later I will eat dinner

Chinese
这早上我吃了早餐
现在我吃午餐
然后我吃晚餐

Pinyin
zhè zǎo shang wǒ chī le zǎo cān
xiàn zài wǒ chī wǔ cān
rán hòu wǒ chī wǎn cān

Questions

My favorite part though is that you can easily form a question with very little vocabulary. All you have to do is add a question word at the end of a sentence. The easiest translation for it would be to say "yes?" at the end of a sentence in hopes of confirmation. If instead of telling something they are American, I would ask them, "You are American, yes?" Obviously this isn't how we usually ask somebody in English, but it also shows why you may notice some people form questions to you in this manner.

English
You are American
Are you American? (You are American yes?)

Chinese
你是美国人
你是美国人吗?

Pinyin
nǐ shì měi guó rén
nǐ shì měi guó rén ma?

Tones

So let's talk about what people think makes this language difficult. People mention that they don't like that it is a tonal language because they aren't musically gifted of sorts. We actually use tones in English, we just don't realize it. "I'm Ron Burgundy?" is a perfect example of where a tone can drastically change the meaning of a sentence. In Chinese you have 5 tones: Flat, Rising, Dipping, Falling, and Neutral tone. The best example of how different these are is by using the word "ma"

Mother, hemp, horse, scold, question
妈麻马骂吗
mā má mǎ mà ma

All five of these words mean something very different. Making sure you use the right tone can be the difference between saying something or just utter nonsense. The good thing is that context can typically give you a good idea. If I was telling you about my breakfast and I said, "I ate with my 'ma' " but you were unsure of which tone I used, I'm guessing you could easily single out which word I meant to use.

Characters

By now you're probably realizing that the characters are pretty confusing. The reason pinyin was created was to help be a middle ground specifically because there is not indication of how to say a word based on the character. Honestly, when I come across a new word there is no easy method to figure it out besides looking it up. Chinese characters are graphical representations of the words. Basically, I like to think of them as cave drawings. The easiest one is for the words "person" and "big". If you look below, the first character is a very simplified stick PERSON. The second is as if the person was trying to explain how BIG of a fish they caught. These are the "simplified" characters as the "traditional" characters were much more complex and people would spend hours practicing how to write them (only Taiwan still uses the traditional characters as their native language).

Person

Big

Vocabulary

Lastly, the vocabulary is pretty entertaining. Any new words that have been created typically reside in one of two categories: loan words or combination words. A loan word is basically taking a word from another language and turning it into a Chinese word. I'll show some examples in the video below. The combination words are the ones that I really love. Basically as a new word is needed it is a combination of other words to describe it. Here are a few examples, try to see if you can determine what the full word is based on the other words that make it up:

diàn yǐng
Electronic Shadow
电影

shǒu yǔ
Hand Language (this is currently my favorite one)
手语

English:
Movie
Sign Language

Video

This weeks video I'm going to go through some of the stuff we mentioned here. I'll start by showing the difference of z-, c-, x-, sh-, j-, zh-, q-, ch- followed by the different tones. I'll finish off by saying a few countries that are loan words so try to see if you can guess which countries I'm saying without a translation.

Conclusion

When you approach a problem with the right attitude it can really effect how simple that problem may seem. We can't think that the "hardest" language in the world is the largest native language as well, can we?

Until next time.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Practice What You Preach (Arabic Week 10)

Each week I spend some time with a few graduate students, going over different interview questions and allowing them to practice how they would answer the questions. As we work through the questions I give suggestions about how to appear more confident in what you say. I've been trying to instill different methods of how to improve language learning lately but I haven't been following that same advice that I've tried to offer. It makes it a little more difficult to convince somebody to believe these methods would work if I'm not following them myself, right? Today, I'm going to take a look at three of them and how I plan to approach them.

Self-reflection after using a language. One good thing to do after using a language is to ask yourself how the interaction went. What worked? What didn't? Where do you see some areas of improvement to focus on? A lot of times I am so happy I was able to use a language that I immediately go running around my apartment in celebration. I forget a lot to ask myself some of these questions for improvement. This past week I noticed some improper words I had used in my Arabic chat due to tenses and plural forms of words. I've revisited some of these words this week in my video.

Refrain from using "umm" or other filler words. We do this because we are searching for words and at the moment we don't have them yet. The silence feels awkward to we fill it with something, "umm" What I've learned though is that when you are talking with another person, we don't feel these awkward silences as much when we are the listener instead of the speaker. I've encouraged people to become more comfortable with those silences as they actually become more effective speaking tools. I've yet to follow this advice when speaking in other languages because I always feel pressured to speak. This has caused me to keep speaking which has also lead to more grammatical mistakes when speaking because I'm not taking the time to form the proper sentence. My goal is to focus more on forming a correct sentence and allowing those silences to feel comfortable. My hope is that this will allow me to listen more and improve on that at the same time.

Lastly, maintaining eye contact is important for all communication. It's hard to really connect with somebody who is always looking away. I have a MAJOR habit of looking to the sides when I'm trying to find new words. This shows lack of confidence and can easily make the person you're communicating with lose interest in what you say. This is going to be a big goal for me in the upcoming weeks. This weeks video is all focused on that. I apologize if you decide to watch the video. My goal was to stare DIRECTLY at the camera as I worked through some phrases I struggled with this past week. One is to finally allow me to explain what I do at work in Chinese and the other are words/phrases I learned from my previous chat in Arabic.
I apologize for the audio on this one. Not sure what happened. I say two things in Chinese which you can note I am more comfortable saying "I am a mechanical engineer" than actually what I do.

Until next time!

Sunday, September 11, 2016

First Time Speaking? Here We Go! (Arabic Week 9)

So I did it. I had a conversation with a native Arabic speaker and I'm here to share my story of how it went.

Heading into the call, I was nervous. What will happen if they don't understand me? What will happen if I don't understand them? What if we literally just sit there and can't communicate because everything I've done in the past two months has been wrong?! Even after being told by a few people who speak Arabic that my accent was very good for a beginner, my confidence was in the gutter.
Trying to show how I was feeling with a face expression? Okay.
I've felt this way before though. I remember heading into my first Chinese call feeling the same way. I don't get nervous before a call in Chinese anymore because I have done it many times; it no longer is a new fear. Leading up to the call I went over the phrases that I intended to say and tried to predict the type of things that I would hear in response. Slowly, I was able to build up some confidence that I can get through this call.

The call started off really well. I was able to say hello and introduce myself. The phrases I was expecting to hear are what I heard. Obviously there came a point where I was pushing too far and had incorrect sentence structures. This could easily discourage you (which it at the later point of the call and afterward the call I was) but I was able to look back and realize a few things that did go well. First, I was able to understand and converse for multiple phrases without stumbling. Second, there were multiple times that I was able to determine what something meant in Arabic without actually knowing the translation due to context (I notice him asking whether I want something written in English or Arabic as well as realize when he says "good"). Finding these small successes can really help keep you positive when you hit a struggle.

Having a patient person to chat with is important. I was lucky to have Abdu who was able to slowly explain some of the things I was saying but correct them. I may have been saying the wrong tense, the wrong plural form, or a slightly incorrect pronunciation. The one thing that was really good was that he would have me go back and repeat a sentence in pieces, breaking down the pronunciation, and then bring it back to a full sentence. If the mistakes aren't corrected, they aren't fixed for later times. It also helps to have somebody to continually encourage you to keep trying instead of saying, "Let's just go to English because I can't understand you." It pushed me out of the comfort zone and helped me with phrases I didn't even know prior to the call.

We established before the call that we would stick to basic topics. This allowed me to work within my boundaries. I wouldn't have any random questions I wasn't ready for. I tried as much as possible to stay speaking Arabic which also made some things difficult as you can see. There are certain phrases that I just didn't have that I need to learn to be more beneficial for next time.
Some notes and phrases I wrote down during the call. Hopefully I can benefit from them in the future.
Overall, I was happy to have Abdu help me and I am hoping that in the coming chats I can improve to have a more comfortable conversation together.

Good news and bad news. I was able to record my first conversation with a native speaker. Unfortunately, his audio got lost somewhere during the recording so it mostly looks like I'm talking to myself. You can notice multiple times throughout the call that I have absolutely no idea what Abdu was saying but I did my best to keep going because had I just given up and decided that Arabic was too hard I wouldn't be able to progress. Nobody will be perfect and we have to accept that. If you're too afraid to make a mistake, you never will take a risk at all.

Until next time.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

How To Set Up a Language Exchange - Prepare for Success

Last week I talked about how I went about finding somebody to chat with but didn't break it down too exact on the details. This week, I'm going to get pretty specific on what I did. This is going to center around the first time I chatted with my friend, Jing. I had just learned of italki and was encouraged by a polyglot, Benny, that I follow a lot to use italki as a means of finding a language exchange partner. I posted a short entry in Chinese introducing myself and very shortly after posting it received a correction from Jing. I messaged her and thanked her for the correction. I then asked if she would be interested in a language exchange. She said yes and we started to prepare our first Skype call.

One thing that really helped me prepare was laying out a conversational outline. I sent her a message basically saying, "For this conversation we are going to talk about these topics......once those are done, we will be done."
  1. Self-introduction
  2. Family
  3. Work/School
  4. Hobbies
This allowed me an opportunity to do a few things:
  • Prepare specific vocab and questions
  • Be prepared of what to listen for from her
  • Have an easy way to keep the conversation flowing
  • Have an easy way out when suddenly the conversation stalls
When the time came for this call, I was terrified. When she said she was on Skype and ready, I still just sat there and stared at the computer. It took me a couple of pep talks to even push the call button. What happens if I literally can't understand a thing she says?! What if EVERYTHING I say is wrong???? This could go horribly wrong. What if she laughs at me? I finally mustered the courage to push that button and I couldn't be happier that I did. I got started by introducing myself and my family. Obviously, there were a few times that we had confusion but we were talking in Chinese. My confidence sky rocketed from this call. There were three moments that happened during this call that really stuck out for me:
  1. I really believe in learning your own vocabulary so that you can say what you need to say. For that reason, I know how to say Mechanical Engineer which isn't typically taught very early on in any Chinese course. As Jing was introducing her family, she said her brother was also a mechanical engineer and I understood her!!! I couldn't believe that I actually would be able to.
  2. While we discussed our hobbies she mentioned that she likes to go see movies and followed by asking me if I did as well. I said a Chinese phrase which means "a little" that I had learned and it actually worked in the situation. She then asked me why and luckily I had learned how to say "it's too expensive" from one of my coworkers so I could tell her why. We both laughed and it was extremely satisfying to be able to laugh with somebody while discussing something in their language.
  3. As we neared the end of the conversation I asked her if she wanted to speak in English. She said something that I couldn't understand and we had to clarify briefly. Basically she had asked that next time we try speaking English. To know that she was also nervous about speaking another language was an extreme weight off my shoulder. This meant that I wasn't the only person that was terrified of this situation.
I got off the call with so much excitement that I was running around the apartment; I had an actual conversation in Chinese! Was it perfect? No, but did we have a real chat? Yes! I was so excited that we quickly exchanged WeChat (Chinese messaging app) information and have been in touch ever since.

The big thing was that we planned for the conversation. As you get better at conversations it is easy to improvise but when  you start out you need a plan. Making a structure can really help creating success during that first conversation. You also have to recognize the smallest of successes, even if that means celebrating that somebody responded positively when you said, "Hello."

Currently, I have been stalling my first Arabic conversation because I want you to be able to watch it go down. I don't expect it to be pretty. There will likely be a lot of confusion during it. The problem is my current setup, when I tested it to record a Skype call, completely froze up and didn't work. I'm researching a few options and I fully intend to have a video next week of my first ever call. My progress is going well. I have been recording myself talking about myself and my hobbies. The phrases are coming better and I've now been able to ask if you like something in Arabic. Celebrating the small successes along the way are key.

For now, here is a video of me touring my apartment. I think it shows very well that certain phrases and words have become comfortable for me because I use them everyday. Things that are important to you will become easier the more you use them so learn what you need to learn.


Until next time.