Tiếng Việt & Español

Buenas tardes mis amigos?!

Tonight, I'm happy to say that I accomplished the monster that I owe you all. Annnnnnd I decided to double up for you for the hell of it. Yes...I know you love me.

Spanish is up first. I've been studying Spanish since I was in the 9th grade. Because of the sheer amount of time that I have been exposed to the sexiness that is Spanish, the words that are supposed to be "new", that of course would be for a newbie, were usually nothing more than review for me. I'm almost on Unit 2, and I have only picked up maybe a few things I didn't know from before. However, I do think everyone should learn Spanish because the Hispanic population is becoming more a force each day. The upside: the language is easy...The downside: there isn't one! Learn it.

I always imagine myself in the position of one of those guys from this hybrid car commercial where they start a language course and are barely speaking Spanish, and by the end, when they pump gas, they're speaking it fluently.

Now...For what you've all been waiting for..Vietnamese..

A: I feel better about it.
B: It's still pretty damn hard.

Vietnamese is like Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin, in that it's a tonal language. Meaning that an incorrect tone can give a word a completely different meaning. The upside is that they generally use the same letters that we use in the English alphabet. The downside to that is that there are lots of little dots and lines that can go above or below certain ones that alter the pronunciation.

The only resource I had to help me write was Google Translate. If it weren't for that, I would never have known where the modifiers for letters went. Aside from that, it wasn't so bad. It's just going to be tough charging it all to memory because there are lots of little words and the grammar can get awkward at times. It's not easy, but I think it's definitely worth learning. I even used some earlier today when I went with my girlfriend to the nail salon!

Adios,

Your Favorite Polyglot
Twitter: @mistercapoeira

Polski

Dobranoc!

I'm not going to lie. I was a little disappointed with my Polish lesson tonight, but it's for reasons that I should be proud of. I learned about zero new things...The most important was how to use the word "but" (ale). The only other things I learned were how to say I'm Polish for a man and woman.

Polish is already easy because I've had experience with Serbian and Croatian. All of the languages of that area sound pretty similar. Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Polish, and even Russian...They all borrow words from each other.

Pimsleur, I love you to death, and I know this lesson was super easy for a reason. Maybe Polish is going to get really rough and they want me to go into it with more confidence, or, rozumiem  po polsku bardzo dobrze.

I will say though...I love Polish..If it remains this easy, then I will undoubtedly become fluent in it..Some words get complicated (spelling-wise) because there are words with major lacking of vowels, like "przepraszam", which is how you say "excuse me". It looks like gibberish, but it's surprisingly easy to spell.

Don't let Polish terrify you. It's really easy. Go learn it!

I didn't need any dictionaries or anything because I had my notes from a previous lesson, so I know how the phonetics work!

If the lesson gave me more, I'd be able to give you more..But this lesson was basically a quick way to kill a half an hour.

Do widzenia,

Your Favorite Polyglot

Русский + Ελληνική

Τι κάνετε?

I doubled up again for you all tonight! Two of my favorite languages!

Drumroll........Russian and Greek!

I love these languages...In all honesty, I never thought that I'd be learning these two (or anything other than Spanish) 
because I'm from Nowhere, USA. No one really cares about foreign things there. 

Let's begin with Greek. Tonight's lesson was lots of review, but I got to learn some important words, like when (pote) 
and now (tora). I'm surprised that I did as well as I have since it's been a while. For anyone thinking of pursuing Greek,
don't be afraid. The only think you'll have to worry about is the alphabet, but even that isn't as hard as it seems 
because each letter is phonetic! So once you know what sounds each letter makes, you are GOLDEN. Lots of the 
letters look similar to the ones we use in English, with the exceptions of a few, but they take no time to get down.

Tonight, I also decided to try something that I never have done before..I left out the English pronunciation totally. I 
stuck strictly to the Greek alphabet. Nothing more. It was easy because I knew the sounds, but I know it will only
make my Greek stronger without having to picture the English pronunciations in my head.

Greek is an awesome language...You truly are speaking the language of the gods.

Onto Russian.

Let me first say, that Russian was brutally intimidating to me before I ever got started it way back when I was on 
lesson one. It had a weird alphabet, super-long words, and all of the "Mother Russia" jokes that are associated 
with a great country. I didn't know where to start. That was twelve lessons ago. I still am not totally solid on the
Azbuka (alphabet), but I have a good idea of what letters make which sounds, and I can even read a little bit, 
even if I don't know the words yet. I can sound it out like I'm in kindergarten again.

Tonight, I began to get into some bigger numbers, ranging from tens up to thousands, in order to be able to handle
myself in situations where I need to buy something. I also learned the national currency of Russia, which is the Ruble!
Everything else was review (things like telling time), and that was surprisingly easy, yet refreshing, also. Russian is
a really good asset to have. Just make sure you can understand the alphabet too!

For resources on both, I just used notes from the past and Google Translate. I had two dictionaries sitting next to me
which I've never opened, and they remained that way tonight. I didn't need them at all. I think that shows a TRUE
sign of progress and skill. 

This whole polyglottal "journey" I'm on isn't just something that's limited to me. ANYONE can do it. You just have
to go for it. 

I'm sorry this one is a little lackluster as far as detail goes, but look at the time. It's late, and I'm tired. 

I promise I'll do Vietnamese tomorrow! 


до свидания,

Your Favorite Polyglot

Nederlands

Goedemorgen! Hoe gaat het met u?

I tackled Dutch tonight..And in all honesty, it wasn't even tackling..More like mauling, destroying, obliterating, vaporizing, or basically choking it out.

Dutch has by far been one of the EASIEST languages to pick up, and here's why: it has some Germanic roots. Don't know any Germanic languages? No? You're lying. If you can understand what you're reading right now, then you definitely know a Germanic language, because English is one!

Also, let me clear something up, because I used to be in the same boat. Dutch is spoken as the official language of The Netherlands. There is no country called Dutchland. Norwegian is spoken in Norway, Danish is spoken in Denmark, and Flemish in Belgium. Got it? Heel goed.

Tonight's lesson dealt with greetings, such as "How are you?", "very good", and basically anything to get me in and out of a short casual conversation. But I really wanted to focus on how easy it was. Because English is Germanic, and because Dutch has Germanic roots, a lot can be understood just because some words look and sound the same.

For instance:

English - I speak.
Dutch - Ik spreek.

English - Thank you.
Dutch - Dank u.

English - Not so well.
Dutch - Niet zo goed.

See where I'm coming from? There are differences when it comes to pronunciation, and there is the breathy 'g' sound for words like 'goed', but it's nothing that's impossible to anyone. It almost felt like I was a child in nursery school learning to speak English all over again. Dutch = Super easy. Learn it.

Resources to help me spell: None except Google Translate. Once you understand the sound words make with a "oe" and with a "g", you really barely need to use it. A lovely language from what I am sure are an equally lovely group of people. Can't wait to learn more.

And before you say anything...Yessssss I know I need to do Vietnamese for y'all...It's coming..It's coming..Chill.

Tot ziens,

Your Favorite Polyglot

Tagalog

Magandang tanghalian!

I was feeling froggy, so I wanted to give you another one tonight.

Soooo...Remember how I said that Tagalog was a monster? And how scared I was of it? Man...I almost slapped myself at how wrong I was. This was superrrrr easy. Maybe it's because I'm still in the beginning stages, but if apprehension is easy now, it should remain that way later on right?

Let's hope so.

Anyway...Tagalog is the language of the Philippines..So if you have any Filipino friends, this might be something to look into. It might sound a little like Spanish because there are some loan words like "Ingles", "Nakakaintindi" (Entender), and "Amerikano".

I attribute the fear to my stupidity and not paying attention the first time I tried Tagalog. And I wasn't writing what I learned either. Once I solidified the word order and what each word really means (I was under the impression that nakakaintindi was at least three words), I was golden.

No dictionaries for this language yet. Just Google Translate, which did a good job of giving me the word I needed the spelling for!

Tagalog by FAR, has my favorite way to say yes: Oo. That's pronounced oh-oh.."Oh" as in the "au" sound in "automobile."

Tagalog, you're cool.

Paalam!

Your Favorite Polyglot

Double Whammy (Português and Հայերեն)

Oiiii! Tudo bem, meu amigos? Espero que tudo esta bem com você!

I wanted to have some form of compensation for the delay, so I decided to give you TWO language updates in one. I know you love me for it.

First up, I'll take care of one of the, I guess, minor languages as far as popularity, and that would be Armenian. I always had the impression that the language would sound like a mix of Turkish, and I was partially correct. It sounds like a hybrid of Turkish AND Hungarian, even though Hungary is not too close to Armenia.

Since it was my first lesson, I got the basics. You know..Excuse me...I'm American...Do you understand English/Armenian...Etc. That stuff I got down no problem. The wrench that got thrown in my gears is the fact that Armenian has its own alphabet. When I found that out (because I write in whatever language I'm studying), I was like, "What the hell, man?" I thought that because it would sound like Turkish and Hungarian, that it would have at least semi-Romanized letters. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

The Armenian alphabet system is made up of alterations and adjustments to the letters T and U (uppercase and lowercase). Sometimes you'll need to add a little marker to a letter to give it a different sound, and quite frankly, it looks...Well..Weird. I've never seen any kind of alphabet system like that, nor have I tried to write it in, and believe me, I've seen a ton of systems.

There isn't much more to say about it. It's a cool language, one which I'll keep studying. We'll see where it goes.

Nowwwwww...For what I really wanted to talk to about. POR-TU-GUESE! Excuse my language, but I fucking LOVE Portuguese. Not only because I teach the Afro-Brazilian martial art of Capoeira (Shout outs to O Grupo Floreio Fenix), but because the language just sounds so engaging. I love Spanish too, but Portuguese just sounds much smoother with its -zh and -ch sounds.

I'm currently at a point where Portuguese is not hard at ALL. I think this is what it feels like when you're close to fluency. I ripped and tore through my lesson, barely pausing and barely writing notes because I knew how to spell and sound out everything, even when I learned a couple of new words. I don't know what it is...I just took to Portuguese like a fish to water.

One day I'll be like this with every language I know, but for now, this is DEFINITELY my strongest language. I love it so much. I'm planning on taking my girlfriend and I to Rio in 2016 to the Olympics. It will be a BLAST to finally get to speak Portuguese basically all the time. I'm confident that I can survive and then some. My lovebug even speaks a little (she really doesn't have a choice, lol..she lives with me, and also does Capoeira).

Portuguese WILL be my second fluent language. I promise you. If you don't know any, learn some. I guarantee you will never ever go back. It is my favorite. I curse in it, teach in it, converse with my Brazilian friend in it, and attack any opportunity to use it with gusto.

That's all for tonight...I think.

Maybe I can knock out another one for you..Tagalog? I know I still owe you!

Boa noite,

Your Favorite Polyglot

日本語

こんにちは！

Let's get down to business. Japanese kicked my ass tonight.

I don't know if it was because I haven't done it in a while, or what, but it was rough. Some of the things in the lesson were NOWHERE in the preceding lessons, so I was super confused.

You'll have to forgive me if this one is a little short...I'm kind of discouraged.

I took phonetic notes, and wrote in the Japanese script, but I'm going to wake up tomorrow and, for lack of a better phrase, talk to myself. I was sooooo good in the beginning, but tonight...I was just off. It doesn't help that Japanese is a weird language anyway.

I had some help with the writing. I've got the Random House Japanese-English/English-Japanese Dictionary. It is a BEAUTIFUL piece of work. Of course all of the conjugations aren't there, but once you learn how to write 'imasu ka' and 'desu ka,' everything begins to stick, and it becomes a matter of "copying and pasting". Some of those characters took FOREVER to build. I don't know the proper way to write them just yet (stroke orders and whatnot), so tonight, it was as if I were drawing lots of pretty pictures.

Japanese is just like Thai. Don't look for many spaces. Look for lonnnnnnng lines of characters.

Tomorrow I deserve a break. I'm thinking Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and/or French. Romance languages all DAY.

さようなら,

Your Favorite Polyglot

ภาษาไทย

สวัสดีคร้บ!

Today, I took on the MONSTER, that is the Thai language. New alphabet, tonal language, and sheer fear.

Here we go.

While I was raring to get to started, I was terrified, because I had already gone through this lesson once, and I was appalled at how horrible I did. This time around, I actually felt comfortable, and that I didn't have a reason to be scared. Just like my girlfriend said, "Thai won't bite you."

This lesson was the essential bare bones and most basic of the basic. "Excuse me," "I understand," "I don't understand," "I understand a little Thai," "I understand English," "Yes," "No," and "Are you American?" For those of you who don't know, based on your gender, Thai has a word that you will be adding to the ends of most of your sentences just to be polite. For the ladies, you would add "Ka". So saying hello for you would be "Sawasdee ka". Guys would say "Sawasdee krub". The trickiness comes from simply raising the mandatory things about the language.

Tonal requirements + Ka/Krub + irregular word orders + lots of one syllable words = Difficulty.

Despite all that, I do think I have got a hold on what I covered. Part of me even wants to go back and do the  lesson all over again.

For Thai, the only extra resources I had to help me write in Thai were Google Translate and Thai2English. Both are websites, but the latter was of greater help because it broke down what each word meant, so I'll definitely be using it again.

That brings me to writing in Thai. The letters are weird, and there are a ton of them. It appears to be phonetic, but that doesn't help too much because there are multiple letters for similar sounds (I think there are three for the "Th" sound. Tweeting in Thai was MUCH harder. I'm sad to say that I gave up trying. The letters overloaded my BlackBerry keyboard to the point where some keys had more than one letter in addition to having a whole new page of letters. That's a battle that I will definitely have to pick up another time.

Oh yeah..Thai doesn't seem to have spaces in between words like we do. Either that, or I'm not sure what in the world serves as a marker.

Really..Go try and read something in Thai, and it'll look like a line of characters.

This isn't my favorite language, but I'm forcing myself to learn it. Maybe I'll love it one of these days...


ลาก่อนคร้บ,

Your Favorite Polyglot

안녕하세요!

안녕하세요!

I hope everyone is having a great Friday night (depending on your time zone). Tonight, I chose to work on my Korean. In my city, this is the Asian language that you should learn before Mandarin, Cantonese, or Japanese. There just so happens to be an influx of Koreans here, especially on my old college campus. The ones I've met have been nothing short of respectful and willing to speak to me in Hangul. There were also a bunch of students at the summer camp which I worked who also were Korean and helped me out. In fact, if it weren't for one, I probably would be more lost than I am now, but we'll get into that more later in this post.

Before I started tonight, I thought I was further than I actually was, so I was disappointed, but now I know I have a long way to go. Tonight's lesson was a 30-minute audio lesson, combined with writing the Romanized pronunciation as well as writing in Korean letters. The speaking wasn't too hard at all. Korean is a very smooth language. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish when a word ends and when another begins (to those who don't know any Korean). But while practicing, it actually makes working on it easier because you don't get caught up in hard K, T, or B sounds. I particularly like saying goodbye!

But I ran into an issue tonight, and it was an issue that I expected. As I told you before, my audio course doesn't teach how to write, so of course, I have a resource to back me up. I have the Berlitz Korean Concise Dictionary: Korean-English/English-Korean. It might be the language, or it might be the dictionary, but there were lots of times where I could NOT find the word I was looking for. In fact, there were times where the word would have about eight definitions, and none of which were the one I was looking for. For instance, the pronunciation I learned for "excuse me" is "Sillyhejiman," and that's probably a bad attempt at Romanization, but that's all I can do, lol. There were some similar looking words, but none were the exact one that I needed, so for some words I only was able to spell (in Korean letters) pieces of the word. And it doesn't help that there are some tiny words at the ends of root words like -ga, -ka, -da, etc. that aren't attached to the words in the dictionary.

Luckily one student from the summer camp I worked at said I could send him a list of the words I couldn't get and that he would translate them for me. That kid is a GODSEND.

Material for tonight: asking for directions, you do/don't speak well, addressing a "you" in for formal way, here, there, not here/not there, and some review from before. Pretty easy stuff.

Korean is definitely one of my favorite languages, and I'm excited to get to the next lesson. I just hope I have a better grasp on the country's letters and spelling.

I've still got Thai, Tagalog, and Vietnamese on my radar...Don't worry!

안녕히 계세요,

Your Favorite Polyglot

עברית

שלום!

So...It's almost 3 in the morning..And I JUST finished my Hebrew lesson. I started approximately two hours ago, and now, my head is SPINNING. I've been doing Hebrew for awhile now, but now that I have the resources to write what I'm learning in the actual Hebrew letters, I'm taking the time to master the Aleph Bet. 

That's also why it took me an extra hour and a half and not just a half an hour. Tonight I learned how to say "at the hotel", "with you" and "with me" (they differ based on who is speaking), refreshers from before, more verbs, and of course, the writing.

In case you didn't know, Hebrew (like Arabic) is written from right to left, so I had to get used to switching everything. Now I know how lefties feel. It was awkward, but I got the hang of it after a while. Since my audio course doesn't show me how to spell what I'm saying, I've had to be a little more enterprising. I purchased two books: Webster's New World Hebrew Dictionary by Hayim Baltsan and Teach Yourself to Read Hebrew by Simon & Anderson. I had to look up each individual word, write down the proper phonetics, and then write the proper Hebrew spelling. 

You can imagine how much time that took, but like I said earlier, if you want fluency, go get it. I'm not fluent in any languages yet, but I promise you I will be fluent in at least 7 by the end of next year.

The two books are incredible. The Simon & Anderson book shows you each letter, the sound it makes, and gives you exercises to practice. It uses a vowel system that apparently is only found in prayer books, which is different than the Hebrew you would write with. It gives the reader a great grasp of the Aleph Bet, and I'll definitely be going to it again and again.

The dictionary is well..a dictionary. It is HUGE, and I love it. It has phonetic pronunciations, Hebrew spellings, and two dictionaries (Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew). It's really helpful when you think a word starts with a letter only to find out that you were wrong. If the book wasn't bilateral, I would have been stuck searching, which would have probably caused me to be still working. 

My throat is dry from all of the "ch" sounds, but discomfort has to correlate to SOME progress, right?

I'm going to get some apple juice (Mott's all the way!) and head to bed. You all be safe, and hopefully I can tackle Thai, Tagalog, and Vietnamese tomorrow, which are monsters in their own regard.

לילה טוב,

Your Favorite Polyglot

P.S. If there are typos and grammatical mistakes, you're just going to have to let me be. It's now 3:15 and I could care less about if it could get past my old English professors, lol.

номер два

здравствуйте! Как дела?

I think this first legit exploration of learning languages is the main question I get asked: How do you do it??

Being that I'm in a city with a typical demographic of people, African-American, Caucasian, and Hispanic, with small amounts of other ethnicities, it is extremely hard to find people to practice with. My girlfriend speaks a few foreign languages (She just so happens to be Mexican, so I go to her for Spanish), so she is a big help, but when we go out, we typically don't hear anything foreign unless I'm at the nail salon with her or randomly in Wal-Mart. This is unfortunate, because as you know, conversational practice is VERY important.

What to do, what to do? IMMERSE YOURSELF. Just because you might not be in a typically diverse neighborhood doesn't mean that you can't practice speaking and learning. You can immerse yourself by following people of foreign languages on Twitter (You'd be surprised at how it helps your reading), going to ethnic restaurants and speaking their languages (You never know...You might get free food...Not like I'd know anything about that, lol), walking up to ethnic looking people and striking up a conversation, writing in foreign languages in your spare time, joining LiveMocha.com, and countless other ways.

There's a new Thai restaurant in town, so you already know I'm going to test what little Thai I know there.

If you want fluency, go get it. Forget trying to let it come to you. Seek it out. Immerse yourself the best you can. It's gotten me pretty far.

How am I learning? Well..Aside from the paragraph before, I've found that using a program called Pimsleur helps out a lot. I was a fan of the Rosetta Stone, but then I got tired of sitting in front of a screen only learning words and not learning how to be conversational. With Pimsleur, I can be walking around, sitting in the library, lying in bed, or at the gym, and just have it playing on my iPod. And because I'm an aural learner, it sticks so much more. I remember the first time I tried Hebrew. I thought I was going to forget it ALL, but I woke up the next morning and remembered it all. That's not to discount the Rosetta Stone. I just don't have the time to be stationary for that long.

To keep you from having to read more blocks of texts (because I was going to go over a lot), I will continue in the next post!


До свидания,

Your Favorite Polyglot

Numero Um!

Bem-vindo! My girlfriend gave me the idea to start this blog today, and I am jumping all over it. For the past few months (longer in some cases), I have been studying a veritable cornucopia of foreign languages. Why? Well, the answer is simple. America is America, and we can agree on that. We can also agree that the national language of this country is American English. Lastly, we can agree that The United States is a melting pot; there are countless people from other countries residing here, and many of them have a first language other than English.

I do love my country and all that jazz, but my interest comes from the fact that no one should have to completely give up their native language in order to make it here. That's not fair by any means. In fact, I think we should do more to make the transition from one's home country to the USA, i.e., learning languages. It's fine if I'm the only one who chooses to branch out to every possible culture, but for those of you who don't, you're missing so much.

I've QUICKLY come to find out that people appreciate it so much when you try to speak to them how they're used to. It definitely has its perks.

The languages that I am currently studying are Eastern Arabic, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Dari, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Norwegian, Ojibwe, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Western Armenian!

...Crazy, right?

I'll be posting things that I learn, things that interest me, books I recommend, and various linguistic resources! I am open to feedback, and learning languages that are not on the list!

Muito obrigado e boa noite,

Your favorite Polyglot