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.