Tag Archives: language learning

The State of the Russian Language

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Where is Russian spoken? Official language (dark blue) and unofficial (light blue)

Where is Russian spoken? Official language (dark blue) and unofficial (light blue)

I’ve encountered the idea occasionally that learning Russian is a useless endeavor because it is a “dying language”. Proponents of this thesis allege that since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian has been in decline because no one outside of Russia is forced to learn it anymore.

Of course, there are the cases of the Baltic countries – Estonia comes to mind first. Due to draconian anti-Russian language policies, use of Russian has declined in that country.

And then there are the cases of other post-Soviet countries, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan. In both of these countries, Russian remains an official language. (In fact, in Belarus, the majority of the population speaks Russian in their daily lives.) In Ukraine, Russian is not an official language, but it is very, very widely used and understood.
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Are You a Different Person When Speaking Different Languages?

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flag-russia-usa

I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while but finally decided to write about it when I stumbled across a post on Alex Rawlings’ blog. Alex, who is studying German and Russian at Oxford, was named most multilingual student in Britain in a contest. In the aforementioned post, Alex asks whether he and a friend acted differently when they spoke three different languages (Russian, Hebrew, and English) in a video he recorded for the post.

Sometimes I feel like I’m a different person when I speak Russian. I talk more in Russian than I do in English – or rather, I talk more with random people in Russian that I do in English. When I’m speaking Russian, I have no qualms about going up to random Russian speakers and saying hello. To be honest, I don’t often talk to random people when I’m speaking English. (I actually wish I were the sort of person who did this!) In Russian, though, I randomly ask people if they speak Russian and if they do, then a whole conversation ensues. Luckily Russian people really seem to like meeting random Americans who speak their language, so I’ve never had any bad experiences that resulted from talking to random people.
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What is the Best Language to Learn?

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I don't like Ukrainian quite as much as Russian, but it's a close second.

I don’t like Ukrainian quite as much as Russian, but it’s a close second.

Corinne McKay, a translator whose blog I’ve been reading for a while, has a post on which language is “the best” to learn. She approaches it from a translation perspective (no surprises there, since she works as a translator), but the entire post got me thinking about the question from a more general perspective.

There are definite advantages to studying what I call world languages – those that are spoken by such a large number of people are widely studied throughout the world. Examples would be Spanish, French, and German. To a lesser extent, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese qualify, too. I know from personal experience that the first three are very commonly taught in the United States and the latter three commonly taught in other parts of the world (or so I’ve heard). These world languages have a wealth of learning materials available and one can often meet speakers of these languages around the world. (Of course, English qualifies as world language, too. But since I’m an English speaker, I wasn’t really thinking of learning English when writing this article.)
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Afrikaans!

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photo of cape town

Cape Town. Or, as they say in Afrikaans, Kaapstad.

Well, people, I’m doing it. Remember how I did that six-week challenge with the Afrikaans language? And how I fell in love with it? But then I didn’t have enough time to properly devote myself to the challenge? And then the challenge was over, and I stopped studying Afrikaans? Yeah, that’s a brief recap of my relationship with the Afrikaans language.

What I haven’t said on this blog is how I’ve been pining for this language. Sure, I’ve had loads of stuff going on in my life this year (I’m in two classes right now and the material is becoming quite difficult), but I have lamented my lack of language learning this year. I don’t want to just be language learner (admittedly, it would be nice if someone would pay me good money to learn languages all day, but that’s not going to happen), but I do not want to give up language learning entirely, either.

So I’m going forward with my Afrikaans project. It’s okay if I learn more slowly than I did with Russian (this time, I don’t have a very demanding professor assigning homework every day, as I did in Russian!). At minimum, though, I want to do something in Afrikaans every day, whether it’s learning vocabulary, grammar, or doing some listening.

I have already met some very nice Afrikaans speakers on the internet who have been very helpful. They all were quite curious to know why I decided to learn Afrikaans. Admittedly it is a bit hard even for me to understand. I just really like the way the language sounds and what little speaking I’ve done so far feels almost like speaking my native English. (In comparison to Russian, that is. Even after four years, moving my mouth around those Russian sounds can be very difficult.)

Photo credit

Reading Your Way to Fluency

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This, this, a thousand times this.

That link is to a very long and detailed post by a Canadian living in Korea that details his experiences learning Korean. It’s epic, but definitely worth a read, as it’s the one of the best language learning posts I’ve read in a while.

A few caveats: first off, I don’t believe you can become fluent in a foreign language just by reading. (In this post, I use the word fluent to indicate a very high level of competency in a language, a level at which one can read and understand material that an educated native speaker reads, engage in a conversation with a native speaker without making many grammatical errors or needing lots of repetition to understand what is being said, and communicate effectively with native speakers in writing.) Academics often have what is called “reading knowledge” of a language; that is, they can read scholarly work in the language, but not speak it. Some of the more arrogant academics I’ve met have claimed fluency in a language of which they really only had reading knowledge.
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The Plateau in Language Learning

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Yesterday, I was reading Aaron G. Myers’ excellent book Activities and Strategies for Everyday Language Learners (I talked more about this book here but please note the book is no longer free) and one thing in particular stood out for me. On page 37, Aaron writes that the most common reason we reach a plateau in language learning is we get comfortable.

In more detail:

I believe there is a truism in language learning that you reach where you need to reach in the language. If you need to be at a low intermediate level of proficiency, you will get to that level and perhaps a bit past that level. But pushing forward toward the summit requires extra effort and that effort requires more than most of us want to give.

I needed to reach a certain level of Russian because I had to take an advanced conversation and grammar class at my university. Russian language & literature was one of my areas of study at university and I had to take a certain amount of classes and reach a certain level.

However, since graduation, I feel that I have stagnated a bit in my learning. For a little while I even felt like I had regressed in my knowledge, but now I just feel like I’ve hit a plateau. I can read just about any news article, I can have conversations, I can listen to radio programs and understand just about everything. But I feel like I haven’t learned any truly new vocabulary in a while. (To be honest, I know pretty much everything there is to know about Russian grammar, thanks to my dear professor M at my university.)

So my question is: what does one do when one hits a plateau? So far, Aaron hasn’t really touched on this in his book (though I have not finished reading it yet, so perhaps he does later). I have a few ideas for getting out this plateau.

  • Find some new books to read. More books means more reading, and more reading means more vocabulary acquisition.
  • Learn specialized vocabulary in a genre you’re interested in but don’t know. For example, I’m interested in business, economics, and finance, but I do not know the vocabulary related to these topics in Russian. As if asset-backed securities aren’t hard enough already – now I’m going to study them in Russian too!
  • Do a 1000-word challenge. I saw this on the internet – regrettably, I do not remember where – and it means learning 1000 new vocabulary words in a month (about thirty words a day).

Keep in mind I’ve never actually tried these tips before. I am looking for suggestions to get away from this plateau, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts below!

Calling All Language Learners: FREE Language Learning Resource Book

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Screenshot from Aaron's website

Screenshot from Aaron’s website

Just a quick note about this for all language learners who are interested: Aaron G. Myers, the blogger who writes The Everyday Language Learner, has released an ebook with strategies and tips for language learning. The book is called, appropriately enough, Activities and Strategies for Everyday Language Learners and is available for free download here. (Technically, I think you have to click a small button to “pay with a tweet”, but that’s certainly a small price to pay for such a fantastic book!) Update, February 16: Aaron informs me that the book will be free until February 20, after which it will be available in the store, for a price.

What I like most about Aaron’s writing is how he has tips for regular people to learn languages – by regular, I mean those who have jobs and families and the assorted responsibilities that come with being an adult. Students have an undeniable advantage when it comes to learning languages, as they often have the free time to do it. (I had an epiphany recently that all students, whether in school or at universities, should study a foreign language until they are at a decent conversational level at the very least, but this will be the subject of another post.)

Recently, I feel like I have stagnated a bit in my language learning. I intend to focus on improving my Russian this year instead of trying to pick up another language (sorry, Afrikaans!), but I haven’t actually done much work so far. I’ve started reading Aaron’s book, though, and I hope it will help me overcome this stagnation I’m feeling.

Blast from the Past: Language Lust

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This post pretty much describes my entire thought process today. Basically, I really, really want to study the Serbian language because:

  • I have an interest in the history and politics of the region.
  • I want to travel to Serbia and Croatia.
  • I want to do research with Serbian-language materials.

The only problem is Serbian words often are similar to Russian, but have a different stress pattern, and after spending so much time and money to learn Russian, I really don’t want to confuse my Russian with Serbian.

The Afrikaans Challenge

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The Houses of Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa.

I just realized I never posted a follow-up to my six-week challenge for Afrikaans, which was over last month.

Of course, six weeks isn’t enough time to come fluent in a language. To actually make progress during such a time period, one must devote a large chunk of time to the challenge, and I did not do this (for various reasons, mainly due to other personal projects I had). But what little time I did devote to learning Afrikaans made me realize that I really do love the language and hope to continue studying it in the future.

A dearth of resources

Another thing that struck me while I was learning Afrikaans is the absolute dearth of resources for this language. There are so many resources for learning Russian (if you want a list, leave me a comment and I’ll start working on a post with a list of Russian resources). There are a fair amount for Ukrainian, a ton for Spanish (even more than there are for Russian), a lot for German (not that I’ve studied German, but my friends who have say this is true), and a lot for French. For those less commonly taught languages like Afrikaans, finding adequate resources to using for learning is really half the struggle.

Luckily I did find some good resources – my initial post about this challenge has a short list at the bottom.

Why do a six-week challenge?

My experience with this six-week challenge (my first, hopefully of many) has emphasized something important: you cannot learn a language in six weeks. (I am ignoring certain exceptional cases, of course. I think it could be possible to learn Afrikaans in six weeks if you are a native speaker of Dutch, for example.) But for most people, learning a language in six weeks is impossible.

However, a six-week challenge is useful for “test driving” a language, so to speak. Sometimes, you know you love a language before you even start learning it – and sometimes, you simply don’t know, and in the latter case, trying out a language for a set period of time can be helpful. That way, if you hate it by the end of the test period, you can abandon it and find another language to try.

I loved Afrikaans, so I am happy to have realized that during this six-week challenge, and I plan to continue the language in the future, perhaps even using the technique I wrote about earlier.

Using One Language to Learn Another

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Update, 19 December: Aaron of The Everyday Language Learner has very kindly linked to this post in his link roundup for the entire year of 2012. I’m so honored! Welcome to all readers from The Everyday Language Learner and be sure to stick around for language-related posts.

I admit, I am skeptical of people who learn two languages from scratch at the same time. Usually, this does not work. My good friend L. was learning two languages during our undergraduate years (and not just any two languages – she chose Korean and Russian, which are notoriously difficult languages for English speakers). Now, a mere two years after (her) graduation, she is burnt out from languages and does not study or use either at all. (Okay, fine, I think that some people might be able to handle this in certain situations, as mentioned in this post by Mithridates at Page F30, but that is a very specific scenario  – i.e. the article in question examined simultaneous learning of Spanish and Portuguese, which are related languages.)

Anyway, my advice to language learners is to stick to one language at a time, unless you have a really, really good reason for learning two languages at once. However, once you have achieved a reasonable level in one language – let’s say at least a B2 level on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages or at least an ILR Level 3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale – it can be beneficial to start learning another foreign language through the foreign language you’ve already learned.
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Learning Asian Languages (in Australia)

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I’m not Australian, nor do I live in Australia, but I avidly follow a blog written by a young American woman named Jennie who is doing her PhD in an Australian university. She has a great post up today about “Australia in the Asian Century” that has really interesting thoughts on language learning, especially in regard to the government policy of promoting Asian languages.

Australia is not the only country to promote Asian languages. If I remember correctly, Sweden recently made Mandarin Chinese compulsory in schools. In the United States, Mandarin Chinese programs have grown exponentially in the last decade. (Even my high school is offering Mandarin Chinese now, though luckily it’s not compulsory.) The most interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that the Chinese government has been a major force behind the push – if you haven’t heard of Confucius Institutes, I strongly recommend searching the internet (Wikipedia has a substantial article about them).

Getting back to Jennie’s post, this part especially resonated with me:

So while I am happy that the government encourages language learning, I feel that focusing on Asian languages only is not necessarily the way to go about it. There are many other languages spoken in Australia, and students have many reasons for learning foreign languages, which include living abroad.

I fully agree. While there is nothing wrong with learning an Asian language if you want to, it is important to recognize that there are other important languages in the world, too. French is a world language – it’s widely spoken in Africa. And Spanish will help you travel and work in South America, if that’s where your interests lie.

Jennie also rightfully points out that motivation is the most important trait a language learner must possess. Without motivation, you’re not going to successfully learn the language. That’s the main reason I oppose making Mandarin Chinese compulsory – it is so difficult that if you’re not motivated, you can spend years studying it in school and not actually know anything at the end of your schooling. Thus that time learning was wasted. Admittedly I was not that motivated when I took Spanish class in school, but since it’s an easier language, I actually learned quite a bit and have a decent foundation in the language.