Arabic Q&A: Kick-off

I had so much fun speaking, teaching, and discussing Arabic language at the recent Polyglot Gathering. It was great to see how many people were also enthusiastic about the language!

I noticed that some repeated questions come up at the gathering. In the upcoming weeks, I'd like to go answer these questions here in more detail. Here are the ideas I have so far:

-How I learned Arabic

-Should I learn MSA or a dialect? Which dialect should I learn?

-The dialect(s) I speak (and why this is not a straightforward question)

-Is Arabic grammar difficult?

-Review(s) of my favorite resource(s)  

I'm also thinking of covering some material I went over in my talk, such as "hacking" Arabic dialects (especially from MSA, but also from other dialects), the style/culture of Arabic greetings, and how to read Arabic script. You can see the slides from my talk on this site. 

What questions do you have? What would you like to see answered here?

Stay tuned for the next posts!

Anecdotes from Polyglot Berlin

WOW that was fun!! Five days of languages all day every day! The duolingo summit was great, it was a real treat to get to take part. The contributors are all wonderful, and upon meeting the Norwegian team representative, it was obvious why they made such great progress in their course while having fun at the same time! I may just have to do the Norwegian course just because it seems so fun!

If I talk about everything, this blog will never end, so I'll just post a sample of “favorite moments" from the gathering so you can get an idea:

-When preparing the meal tickets, pretty much all 5-6 people at the table were proficient in both Spanish and German. We'd switch back and forth regularly. 2/3 were also proficient Esperanto speakers, so whenever an organizer would come to ask a question, they'd ask in Esperanto. So cool!

-I got to see a bunch of interesting talks, as well as learn some basics in Hebrew, Irish, and Cantonese.

-The speaker who gave the workshop on Hebrew and I shared mutual excitement as we saw how similar Arabic and Hebrew were during each others' presentations. We need to come up with a catchy "Scando-nerd" equivalent for Semitic languages! Learning more about the Hebrew language, both the linguistics and the history of its development, has solidified its place in my language wish-list.

-There were a solid number of learners who were SUPER enthusiastic about practicing the Arabic language, and had a high enough level to carry on extended conversations!! 

-We had a whopping 80+ Esperanto speakers at the gathering!! I regretted that I still don't know enough Esperanto to function in everyday-life situations; for example, my bunkbed-mate asked me “Do you have sheets?” in Esperanto, but I didn't know the word for “sheets,” so she had to resort back to English. I seemed to be one of the few intermediate speakers, as the rest gravitated towards beginner and advanced.

-Another participant observed that a surprising percentage of the people there were, like me, actually working in technical fields, not language-related fields like translation.

-A (Chinese-Malaysian) guy gave an awesome talk about Native American languages. A few nights later, I was asking him a bit about Navajo, and I sensed he really wanted to say more but didn't want to bore me by going on about grammar. I encouraged him to let loose, and he excitedly told me about its crazy 15-part agglutination, and the metaphorical, almost toki pona-like way that words are formed. I shared his feeling – how wonderful it was to spend a few days with people who also share your interests, to geek out over languages together! I think most all could relate whenever someone told a funny story about how a friend/relative got confused/bored with our passion.

-On that note, when Brian from Add1 talked about motivation, he mentioned that he thought grammar study was boring. Right away, several people called out from the audience: “But I like grammar!!”

-We did a 29-language round of “Brother John” which included most all major languages but also minor languages like Northern Sami and conlangs like Esperanto, Toki Pona, and Klingon. The two Klingon enthusiasts even sang a drinking song!

-After I braved to play and sing and dance at my intermediate-level of Irish cultural proficiency during the multicultural evening, three other Irish music lovers came out of the woodwork – turns out the founder of Omniglot.com plays the tin whistle too, and had some handy! That made any embarrassment on my part totally worth it; we continued with a jam session for about the next hour that night.

-I got to chat and hang out with Benny, Olly, Judith, Chuck (/Amuzulo, duolingo Esperanto course creator), Ellen Jovin (love her blog, wish I got to chat with her more), Brian from Add1, a bunch of the other add1challengers (though not enough time together!), and countless other wonderful people!

There's really too much to say, and I owe a huge thanks to Judith, Chuck, Martin, and all the other organizers. They did fantastic work with the event and it was awesome to get to meet them all in person.

It's already quite a jolt back to reality, where not everyone (read: no one I know) is as interested in/excited about languages as I am... What a treat to be in an environment with shared interests! I'm already looking forward to next year!

Welcome to the blog!

Hello everyone!

I'm finally starting a separate language blog! Until now I've essentially been "blogging" in the forums over at fi3m. I prefer to share progress updates on specific language goals within a community setting, so I'll keep doing so over there. That said, my posts have gotten so long lately, I hope it will help to put some of my language ramblings on a different site!

I also noticed that I had some repeated questions asked to me at the recent Polyglot Gathering, especially about Arabic language. I hope I can use this space to answer them in more detail.

I would like to say from the start that I am no "expert." I've spent a number of years learning languages and I really hope I've learned something useful along the way, but I am still far from perfect, if that even exists; I may or may not learn in the most efficient way, and in fact, I have quite an addiction to learning languages up to B2 level then stopping. One day, I will finish my "wish-list" of new languages and start focusing only on improving the languages I've already studied, but I have a few years yet to go!

I am also a huge advocate for the idea that the "best" plan for learning a language will depend on people's specific goals an interests. What works for me may not work for you, or may not even be relevant to your language mission. I do hope that the ideas I share here will generate some good conversations, and that we can all support each other in achieving our goals.

I feel privileged to be a part of a greater community of people striving to learn languages. Thank you all for your contributions, and all the best for your language journeys!