Forced Immersion

Aren’t hiatuses lovely?

I know I said that I wouldn’t have this long of a break, but life got life-y. New job, new opportunities, new languages, and new things. You understand...and if not, well, BYE.

I wanted to talk to you all today about Forced Immersion. For those of you new to the language game, Forced Immersion is where you placed in a situation where you are completely taken out of an area where your language is spoken and dropped into a new area where you’re essentially an alien. It’s the same kind of situation you’d be in if you took a trip to a foreign country and didn’t think to learn the language before you arrived (which would be incredibly stupid…in-cre-di-bly stu-pid).

Even though I’ve never been outside of the United States, I do believe that Forced Immersion is one of the best ways to learn a language, because you don’t have a choice. You’re going to learn that language or else you’re going to be homeless, hungry, and have to use the bathroom on the street, which would probably wind you up in jail. In your own country, you have the option of studying it, or not, because when you go outside, no one is going to be screaming in a language you don’t know (in most cases). At home, you’re the majority. In other countries, not so much.

What’s the point of all this? Well, I’ve been fortunate to have been working at a brand new job, and thank goodness because the job I used to work at was one of the most nonconducive places to promote positive mental health on the face of the planet. Anyway, now I’m an editor at a university, and not just any editor. I’m a freaking bilingual editor. I get to work with English as well as Spanish courses. My direct supervisor is a MONSTER at Spanish, and on day one, I felt what Forced Immersion really was. I haven’t been doing a lot of integral stuff with the Spanish courses yet, because I’m not completely fluent, but I am working on some minor projects right now, and let me tell you, I’m learning between 30-40 new words a day, and it is fantastic. The words are sticking…why? Because I don’t have a choice but to know them.  Another perk is that my teammates and I are getting free Spanish training to boost our skills, so we’ll watch videos, do interactive Spanish teambuilders, and spontaneous other activities…completely in Spanish.

For example: This past Monday, our supervisor called us into a room, and told us to have a seat. He pulled out a bunch of pieces of paper and set them face down on the table. We all were instructed to pick one, and we then saw that each piece of paper had a verb tense on it. Then he told us to pick a number between one and 18. Each number corresponded with a verb. Feel where I’m going with this? We had to conjugate each verb with that tense 7 ways off the tops of our heads. It was insane, but I loved it.

In addition, I added another degree of my form of Forced Immersion. At my job, we all have this instant messenger service that we’re all able to use, so I told him to not speak to me English for a week, which ALSO was an extreme help, because you not only learn new words, but you also learn slang too, for instance if you want to rudely say that you don’t care, you can say “Me importa un bledo,” which means something like IDGAF. You’re welcome.

If you’re interested in learning a language, I’m begging you to immerse yourself, no matter how miniscule your immersion may seem. Follow a foreign language speaker on Twitter, go to a foreign restaurant, watch TV shows on Hulu, or whatever else you can think of. Just do it.

It’s good to be back, and I look forward to writing more posts for you.

Your Favorite Polyglot

Twitter: @mistercapoeira

Guest Post: LangSurfer

I've had the privilege of getting to know LangSurfer. We randomly met on Twitter, and have been friends ever since. He has been gracious enough to write a guest post for us. You can reach his blog at http://languagesurfer.com !

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The Importance of Rhythm in Language Learning

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mistercapoeira on Skype. (I’m going to call him MC from here on out.) One of the languages he’s studying is Arabic. Since I studied Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) for several years and worked as a translator, I was happy to give him some tips.

MC has some great language learning instincts, and he does a lot of little things right. One of the first questions he asked me was, “How do you say ‘How do you say?’ in Arabic?” So I told him, and now he uses that expression in conversations with all his Arab language exchange partners all the time.

But one thing he did that really stood out to me was that after he repeated a word or phrase after me, he immediately tried to say it at its natural speed.

To people who don’t study many foreign languages, this might not seem like that big a deal. But Arabic has sounds that don’t exist in English, MC’s native language. Trying to pronounce something with completely foreign sounds is difficult, and it’s natural to go slowly to give the muscles of your tongue and diaphragm time to make the connection. In fact, I’ve known American students who spoke unnaturally slow for as long as they were studying Arabic.

But they were doing themselves a disservice because by speaking so slowly, they were ignoring the language’s rhythm. And a language’s rhythm plays such a vital role in its...in its very existence.

Linguists call language rhythm “isochrony.” This term refers primarily to how long each syllable is; how long a vowel is held (short, as in the word “rut,” or long, as in the word “glad”); and the amount of time between stressed syllables.

How does paying attention to rhythm help you learn a language? Well, a few ways:

•  You pronounce words correctly. You’re not going to put the stress on the last syllable of “carpenter” for example.

• You pick up natural patterns in the language and get clues from those. In Spanish, for instance, you’ll notice that in words ending with a vowel, the second-to-last syllable is usually stressed. So you’ll use this pattern to help you understand what speakers are saying.

• You activate different parts of your brain in learning. This gets into some complicated neuroscience territory, but basically the part of your brain involved in processing music gets invoked when you pay attention to a language’s rhythm. You know how you can remember tunes effortlessly and get songs stuck in your head? You can take advantage of that same phenomenon by tuning into a language’s rhythms.

So yeah, MC definitely knows what’s up. By paying attention to the language’s natural speed, and therefore to its natural rhythms, he’s basically unlocking the language for his brain, the way you’d unlock an iPhone. If he keeps this up, I think he’ll reach his language goals for sure.