Posted on by Ulrike Rettig

Language Learning: 5 Ways For a Great Start

Five booksGetting started is often the hardest part. It's easy to find reasons to wait until tomorrow.

Here are five suggestions on how you can stop procrastinating and get going.

1. Lighten up Your Inner Voice

Have you been circling around French, for example, but just kept thinking that the pronunciation or the verb forms are too hard to learn as an adult? It's time to change that inner voice and replace it with a go-do-it attitude.

- See learning French as an exciting challenge.
- Trust your ability to proceed step-by-step.
- Keep in mind that "doing it" is the journey.
- Remember all the benefits for your brain.

2. Use Easy Course Material As a Start

Different methods work for different people. But - you've got to work with something that's easy enough and which grabs you. Try things out until you like one that you'll stick with.

- A ready-made course can be an effective and convenient way to get the basics.
- Remember, no single course can "make you fluent."
- A do-it-yourself course plan (using a variety of materials) can be fun but takes time.
- Either way, commit to doing something daily.
- Make your language learning a habit - the language will be yours for life.

3. Set Up a Kickstart For The Next Day

Getting started on your daily language practice can be a struggle in itself. When you've finished a lesson, try setting up an activity for starting the next one.
By anticipating in some concrete way what you'll do next time, you'll make it easier to get started again. For example:

- Write a short list of words you want to review.
- Send yourself an article you want to read.
- Download a Podcast lesson you want to use.
- Schedule a time to do it.

4. Start Speaking Right From The Beginning

It's scary to hear yourself talking in a foreign language, but the sooner you get used to it, the faster you'll become fluent. The key to oral practice is to say things as often as you can - aloud.

- Do a lot of "Listen and Repeat" - aloud.
- Speak to yourself in your new language, aloud whenever you're alone.
- Record yourself; and if you can, play back what you recorded.
- Find a native speaker to talk to, a friend or an exchange partner.

5. Use Social Media For Early Reading and Writing

Twitter, Facebook, Google+ all provide a feed of foreign language texts that you can tap into for short periods at various times during the day.

- Add online newspapers to your social media account, and catch a quick read whenever you can.
- Add educational sites. They will often post a daily word or phrase, or a humorous quip.
- Join language learning groups and post comments and questions in the foreign language.

Deciding to learn new skills - such as learning to write, understand, speak, read a foreign language - is a challenging and exciting adventure. You'll not only embark on new experiences, you'll also learn a lot about yourself: your resilience, your openness to meeting new people, your inventiveness, etc.

Set yourself a goal, of let's say 3 or 6 months, and then reward yourself.

Posted on by Peter Rettig

Foreign Accent Worries? A French Emperor with a German accent?

Napoleon IIIDo you have foreign accent worries? Recently while reading David McCullough's fascinating book "The Greater Journey – Americans in Paris", I was intrigued by the following sentence (p. 202):

“Except in infancy, he had never lived in Paris. As a consequence of schooling in Switzerland and Germany, he spoke French with a slight German accent...”

Who was he?

Well, he was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (left, painting by Alexandre Cabanel [1823-1889]), the improbable president of the Second Republic, and later Emperor Napoleon III, who

“...in 1830, having tried and failed in a ludicrously inept attempt to overthrow King Louis-Philippe, he had been exiled to the United States, where he stayed only briefly before settling in London. (Like Louis-Philippe, he spoke English with ease and, as Thomas Evans had discovered, preferred conversing in English when he did not care to have others nearby understand what was said.)” (p. 203)

What? He had a foreign accent?

For History Buffs

If you are interested, you can read more about Napoleon III in the Wikipedia entry. Except for history buffs, not many English speaking language learners will know much about Louis-Philippe or about Napoleon III.

Clearly, both were quite adept in speaking more than one language. “The London Saturday Journal” (Volume 3 – Page 56 of January 1840, digitized by Google Notes) reports that Louis-Philippe, besides German and English, also spoke Italian:  “[he] speaks these three languages fluently, without the slightest foreign accent.” 

Both his and his successor's foreign language skills were acquired during their school years and during exile (the latter not necessarily an experience to emulate).

Fluency with a Foreign Accent 

As we've suggested in previous blogs posts, Don't worry too much about your accent, as well as Mouth Mechanics, and Fluency, a “native” accent may be desirable, but not necessary for being fluent in a foreign language.

There are plenty of examples of people who became highly successful in a foreign country even though they had a noticeable foreign accent. Similarly, McCullough describes the experiences of many American scholars and artists that had come to Paris by the 1830s:

James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel F.B. Morse, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Sumner just to name a few. They all had to learn French, and very likely, never lost their American accent. Still, they had no trouble communicating and loved their stay in Paris.

After all – if Napoleon III could become emperor of France with a (slight) German accent in his “native” French – you certainly should not give up learning the foreign language in which you want to become fluent!  

Do You Want to Practice Your German?

Our games and travel-story based courses are also a great way to practice your German. You'll learn useful vocabulary, hear conversational German in context, and practice your pronunciation by repeating words, phrases, and sentences by after a native speaker.

With our German 1 and 2 story-courses you'll learn and practice German for FREE - with stories of a young man traveling through Germany and - its sequel - solving a "Blüten"-mystery in Berlin. "The Story" and easy games will let you forget that you are actually learning German!

You can also listen to both Stories by clicking on German 1 or German 2 on our Podcast page.

If travel to Germany is in your near future, you may also enjoy our post: 4 Fun German Language Games Before You Travel.

Bio: Peter Rettig is the co-founder of Gamesforlanguage.com. He's a lifelong language learner, growing up in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. You can follow him on FacebookTwitter and Instagram, and leave any comments with contact.

Posted on by Ulrike Rettig

5 Reasons for Language Learning With a Travel Story and Games

We're often asked why we believe that learning with our GamesforLanguage stories is particularly effective. There are 5 simple reasons:

1. Relevant Vocabulary helps you remember

in an airplane When you start out learning a new language, every word is new and you need to remember it. You remember a new word or phrase more easily when it relates to items, activities, feelings, etc. that you know or use yourself frequently.

Many language courses ask you to memorize lists of words, many of which you may rarely hear or say.

Our travel story uses real-life vocabulary, words, phrases, and sentences that you are likely to encounter when you travel, meet people, and interact socially with them. For example, for our young traveler, practicing his foreign language begins in the airplane as he flies to Europe. 

2. Interactive Games engage multiple senses and speak to the whole brain                                                          

Memory Game _ Gamesforlanguage.comVideo games are non-linear, they use color, sound, and movement.You can hear, see, say, and type words and phrases and do so in various combinations of the four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking).

Games get you to identify and imitate foreign sounds, find the correct foreign or native word, translate English phrases and sentences, spell words and phrases. All of this makes learning more effective.

3.The Story Context helps you recall phrases and sentences

Dialogue Screen - Gamesforlanguage.comRather than trying to translate each word from English into the foreign language, you'll learn phrases and sentences in the context of a story. You'll not only remember them, but you'll be able to use them without even thinking. Here's an example:

Suppose someone asks you what you would like to drink, let's say in French. Rather than trying to find the translation for “I would like a ...”, you'll remember the phrase “j'aimerais un/une...” which you practiced, and you can apply it without even thinking about the first person subjunctive form of “to like.” 

Also, to both train your ear and memorize expressions, you can download the conversations as MP3 audio files or listen to the Podcasts. Learners who like a hard copy can download the PFR file of each lesson's vocabulary.

4. Games and Memory drills are fun

Shotout - Gamesforlanguage.comThere's no way around memorizing vocabulary. For vocabulary acquisition, an inverted cone is a good analogy: You start with only a few words, but as you listen, read, write, and speak more and more of the story, the number of words you'll learn and remember will increase dramatically.

Various memory and recall games make - what could be a onerous exercise - into a fun practice, with scores that let you know when you are perfect.

5. You want to find out “the rest of the story”

Deal no Deal - Gamesforlanguage.comOur travel story has a young man traveling to several cities where he meets with relatives and friends. Rather than using unconnected and often unrelated dialogues and topics to introduce new vocabulary, each scene of our travel story builds on the previous one.

The 16 new words of Scene 1 will grow to over 100 new words by Scene 6 and to over 700 by Scene 36. As a user completes one Scene she or he wonders what the next one will bring, and the story sequel adds more motivation to continue to the next Scene.

Practicing and improving a new language can be challenging, even for motivated learners. But with regular, ideally daily practice, learners will progress rapidly. We believe that combining games with a story – the German 2 course uses a 72 lesson mystery story sequel of the German 1 course, which we'll replicate for the other languages – we are making language learning fun, interesting, and effective.

Bio: Ulrike Rettig is the co-founder of Gamesforlanguage.com. She is a lifelong language learner, growing up in Austria, the Netherlands, and Canada. You can follow her on FacebookTwitter and Instagram, and leave any comments with contact.

Posted on by Ulrike Rettig

Accelerate Language Learning With Lingua.ly

Lingua.Ly Home Page [Updated 4-18-2018]  We are sorry to tell you that Lingua.ly is no longer active. It was a good tool while it worked.

I've found a great tool to help me take my Spanish to the next level - the Chrome extension Lingua.ly. (There is also an Android app which I have not used, with the iOS app in development, see below.)
 
When learning a language, the first step is to master basic vocabulary and to discover how the language works.

For many learners, a step-by-step "closed" learning system works well, one that has you practice all four skills. (For Spanish, I did this with our own online game-based Spanish 1 course.)

But what then? Language learning is like an inverted cone. Ideally, you start with a few words and build on these slowly. But once you have a base of a few hundred words and expressions, your vocabulary can easily expand dramatically - if you read a lot.

Enter the Lingua.ly Chrome extension. With this chrome add-on, you can turn any web-based text (news article, blog, email, etc.) into a vocabulary-learning adventure.

Find a text on the web (or take Lingua.ly's suggestion available for five major languages, English Spanish French Arabic Hebrew). When you come across an unfamiliar word, just double click it. (You can actually choose how to tag the word you want to look up; I use the double click.)

A window will pop up with suggested translations (supported by the Babylon.com dictionary) and an audio gives you the pronunciation of the word.

I've been using Lingua.ly for Spanish now for a week. In the last few of days I've chosen to read blogs and articles about the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márques. Getting an immediate translation and the pronunciation of unfamiliar words has made my reading efficient and enjoyable. And, as a bonus, each of the new words goes into a flashcard list for later practice.

Practicing Your Words

The "word practice" function has several cool features. Lingua.ly GreetingTo help you remember a word, you can click to add a Bing image that suits you. You can also add your own "word pack" of up to 30 words, or choose one out of a series that the program suggests.

You'll practice words in "smart intervals" of spaced repetition: words that are hard for you show up again sooner than easy ones.

Languages For Learning

Lingua.ly claims that the Chrome extension add-on works with 20-plus languages. Besides Spanish, I have tried out and (minimally) tested 10 of them, all for translation into English.

They are: German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, and Mandarin Chinese. In these languages, the occasional word doesn't have a translation, and some of the audios are missing. Still, I was amazed that, in general, all the various types of script work just fine.

In addition, I used a Spanish news article to test Lingua.ly's translation into the other languages I know or am learning: German, Dutch, French, Italian, and Portuguese. As far as I could tell, each of these work fine too.

I focused mainly on Spanish and tried out just a limited number of language combinations. You may find that Lingua.ly's chrome extension can be used for other languages with English, or with various other language combinations as well.

I recently spoke with Meredith Cicerchia, Director of Communications & E-Learning at Lingua.ly, and learned a few more interesting facts about the program:
• As you do your reading, the program tracks what you click on and what you've been exposed to.
• As you progress, a rating system starts to guess your level and the kind of vocabulary you're interested in.
• The program algorithm then pulls articles from the open web that correspond to the level of your working vocabulary and to your interests.
• The more you use the program, the better the article selection becomes.
• Lingua.ly also works on translations for phrases and word combinations.
• The iOS app for iPhone/iPad is expected to be released in June 2014.

Over the coming months, you'll see further refinements and improvements to a program that is already very useful to intermediate and advanced language learners that like to read online. My own lingua.ly practice always ends with me smiling, as I look at the last "congratulations" screen with its funny moving images.

Disclosure: Gamesforlanguage.com and I have no business relationship with Lingua.ly other than learning and practicing with its free Chrome extension. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further details.

Posted on by Peter Rettig

South Tyrol – A Multicultural Success Story?

South-Tyrol: Geisler Mountain RangeIn our travels we have always been interested in learning about the ways languages have influenced the history of a region or country. South Tyrol is an example that good things indeed can happen.

And while separatist movements are typically caused by economic inequities, power struggles, religion, etc. they can be further fueled by language differences – even if the language differences don't seem to be significant to a foreigner.

It's well understood that language unites the members of a family, tribe, community, state, nation etc. You can feel it yourself when you encounter someone in a foreign country who speaks your language: there is an immediate connection with that person, and the language is the link.

So it is no wonder that conquerors and kings, dictators, and victors in wars have tried to impose their language on the acquired regions. But generally, a NEW foreign language cannot be forced on populations without causing anger, resistance, and often bloodshed. There are many examples in history where such attempts were not successful.

A Brief Background

South Tyrol had been awarded to Italy after World War 1. By 1923, Italian became the mandatory language at all levels of local, provincial, and local government, and by 1928, the only language of instruction in schools.

Mussolini accelerated the Italianization by settling many Italians in a region which, in 1919, was 90% German speaking. When the region remained with Italy after World War 2 - with many of the pre-World War laws remaining - the German majority was not happy. 

I visited South Tyrol in 1965 as part a graduating class trip, and my class mates and I experienced first hand the friction between the German and Italian speaking population (which, at that time, still involved violence and bombings).

South Tyrol – Key Ingredients for success

With the many separatist movements in the world today, the recent article in the New York Times, Italy’s Historic Multicultural Compromise, gives reason for hope.

The article notes that the German-speaking population in South Tyrol is still the majority, albeit with 61.5% vs. 23.1% Italian, based on the 2011 census. About 4% speak “Ladin,” a language quite close to the Swiss “Romansh,” and 11.4% speak a variety of other languages. (See also: The Other Swiss Languages: Italian and Romansh)

It also appears that among the key ingredients that allowed South Tyrol to overcome its separatist past are both a willingness to compromise, embrace bi-lingualism and cultural diversity, as well as Rome's concessions on “home rule,” (i.e. strong local governance and retaining 90% of the tax revenues).

It's quite likely that it takes ALL of these “ingredients” to achieve success and continued efforts to maintain it. Let's hope that the lessons learned in South Tyrol can be shared with and applied in many other parts of the world.

In view of Russia “encouraging” Crimea's vote to separate from Ukraine just recently, possible plebiscites looming in Catalonia and Scotland, attempts by the Veneto region to separate from Italy - South Tyrol's recent history is a good reminder what it takes to overcome separatist movements.

On the other hand, Norway's peaceful separation from Sweden in 1905 was quite extraordinary both for its deliberate process and adherence to the law. It makes great reading for history buffs and has also some interesting language implications which we described in our 2013 post A Cruise and Norwegian language Politics

Posted on by Peter Editor

Foreign Language Maintenance & Improvements

Image of a WrenchRecently a post reminded me how important it is to maintain and improve my foreign languages.

Native Language vs. Languages Learned Years Ago

My native language is German, but I've been living in the US for many years. Without reading German newspapers almost daily, I would not stay current with the changes in the German language.

And, while I rarely have to look up any words and I'm not afraid of forgetting my German (I still speak it at home every day), I know that keeping up my French is more of a challenge.

I learned French as a young man when I lived in (French-speaking) Switzerland. I now read it quite regularly online, have conversations, and e-mail with French speaking friends and family members.

But with French, I am more aware of the need to constantly maintain it. If I don't have an opportunity to speak it in a while, I find that it takes me some time to recall vocabulary and to get comfortable again with my pronunciation and sentence structures.

New Language Improvements

Having started to learn Italian and Spanish only a few years ago, I am still working on improving both my proficiency and fluency. I can read both languages quite well now and my fluency is improving.

However, I am very aware of the fact that my vocabulary has to increase. I regularly play our own Italian 1 and Spanish 1 games and have recently started to use Lingohut to help me grow my vocabulary, especially in Spanish.

(I loved to practice with the browser extension Lingua.ly, not only get the translation of words I don't know, but also to practice & recall those words later. However, Lingua.ly had to close its doors and disappeared.) 

We're planning to do a more detailed review of Lingohut later, when we have gained more experience with it. But for now, I'll just enjoy maintaining and improving "old" and "new" languages! Postscript: In March 2017, Ulrike did a review of Lingohut Portuguese.