Strange marks in foreign languages

Diacritics

When I first study a new foreign language, I admit to ignoring the various written marks above and below letters.   Although I am not proud of that fact, it is human nature to pay attention to what seems to be most important at the moment, and the sounds, structures and words of a language consume my thinking.  After the initial rush of becoming acquainted with a language, however, details start to stand out, and I wonder which language clues I may be missing.  Diacritics are one of those important clues.

Written marks added to letters are technically called diacritics.  We often refer to the more common ones as accent marks.  The diacritics that I find most often in Romance languages are the acute accent (é), the grave accent (è), the circumflex (ê), the tilde  (ã), the trema (ë), and the cedilla (ç).  I  took a look at the four Romance languages that I study (French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish) to see how certain diacritics may help me in acquiring those languages.

In French, I found that the acute accent and the grave accent are guides to the correct pronunciation of the e.    The (é) with the acute accent is an "ay" sound. The  (è) with a grave makes a sound, like "ehh."  Also, the (ç) lets you know when to use a soft s sound rather than a hard k sound, as in the word français.

In Italian, I learned that some accents are obligatory and others are optional!  What a slippery path for the beginning language learner!  The most useful accent I found was the one used to tell the difference between two words with identical spelling but different meaning.  Dì  means "day," but di means "of," ; è is a verb, but e is a conjunction.

For the Portuguese language, the acute and circumflex accents indicate not only stress on the syllable for all vowels,  but also the open or closed quality of the vowels a, e and o. Á, É and Ó  are open vowels. Â, Ê. and Ô are closed vowels. Open vowels are produced with the mouth open wider, as the name implies.

The tilde ((ã) is placed only on vowels in Portuguese and gives them a nasal quality, with the air going out through the nose.  One other diacritic, the cedilla, is used as in French to give the "c" a soft pronunciation.

Finally, Spanish language diacritics are fairly straightforward.  If you see an acute accent ((é) on a word, stress that syllable.  And sometimes the acute accent will help you distinguish between two words that have the same sound but different meaning.  For example, Sí means "Yes," but Si means "If." Spanish uses the tilde (the wavy line) to pronounce the "n" as "ny,"  as in the powerful weather system, El Niño .

We did not do an exhaustive study of Romance language diacritics in this post; otherwise both you and I would be exhausted.  But I think by looking at the diacritical highlights in each language, we have made a beginning.  Now we can at least notice those "strange marks" in other languages and use them in our quest for language acquisition.

Say What? The World of Baseball Vocabulary

This fall's major league baseball season opened up a new lexicon in my brain — baseball jargon.  It all began with a recent opportunity to see the Dodgers play on their home field in Los Angeles, California.

Dodger Field, Los Angeles

When the Dodgers began playing for the National League Championship, the excitement of watching the team play on TV made me eat my words about not enjoying baseball on the screen. 

I soon discovered that although English is my native language, the baseball announcers often used words and phrases that were not communicating any meaning to me.

Baseball vocabulary

At first I would ask my husband, Wayne, to interpret, but making him pull off his headphones every few minutes to hear my questions was not a solution to my vocabulary problem.  I decided to start a list of baseball terms to investigate.

Many terms already have a meaning in the non-baseball word and have acquired the following additional definition in the world of baseball (my amateur definitions!).

Walk Batter is allowed to advance to first base after the pitcher has failed to strike him out.

Strike Pitcher delivers the ball in a defined area (strike zone), or batter swings at the ball.

Ball  Pitcher delivers the baseball to the batter outside of the strike zone.

Tag  Opposing team member touches a runner or a base to force an out.

Out  Batter or runner is not allowed to continue at play.

Retired  Batter fails to achieve a hit after three strikes.

Slide Runner tries to reach a base by diving toward it.

Triple Runner hits ball and reaches third base.

Dugout Structure that houses the players' bench

Choke up Batter holds bat further from knob end for more control.

Bull pen Location for pitchers to "warm up" (prepare to take over pitching duties)

Grand slam Batter hits a home run, allowing himself and runners on three bases to run to home base for a total of four runs.

Whew!  Those terms were hard to explain in a few words or without referring to other baseball terms. Thank goodness I'm not trying to explain the game of baseball to a Martian!  And sometimes baseball announcers use colorful and even metaphorical language to describe action on the field. Here are some phrases I heard recently, some of which required a bit of interpretation.

"the big guys delivered"

" all the way to the wall"

"dropped in the basket"

"go ahead, three-run homer into the short porch in right field in the second"

"a bloop single to center"

"intentional walk"

"maybe the batter struck out because he was feeling bee stings"

"the batter missed because the ball was upstairs"

I have only made a start in discovering baseball jargon. Needless to say, I am looking forward to watching the Dodgers play in the World Series next week.  And I'll have eyes on the scoreboard and ears tuned in for more baseball jargon, which Google informs me is unbelievably extensive.

A quick glance at the Catalán language

Do you speak Catalan?

I'm sure you have seen or heard, as I have, recent news reports of the independence movement in Catalonia, Spain.  How little I know about this autonomous region of Spain, and how little I know about the Catalan language!

A previous spark of interest in this language hit me several years ago during a family trip to Barcelona, the capital city of Catalonia (see "So many languages, so little time" in this blog, 2/10/16).

Barcelona

But as usually happens with me, I visit a country, get super-hyped about learning the local language, and then let my fickle language learning self put it to one side when I return home.

Now Catalan is calling to me again, although I am realistic enough to know I will never be a Catalan speaker.  But I would like to become better acquainted with this language that plays such a large part in cultural identity.

First, some basic facts about Catalan.  It is a Romance language, descended from Latin, like its sister languages French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, among others.  Nine to ten million persons currently speak Catalan.

Romance Languages Family Tree

Catalan is spoken in the small country of Andorra, where it is the national and official language, and in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia (called valenciano), and even a town in Italy and some regions in France.

Catalan-speaking regions

Beware of calling Catalan a dialect of Spanish!  It is a separate language. Monolingual Spanish and Catalan speakers cannot readily understand each other. Also, Catalan itself has six different dialects, evidence that it is a separate language. The written versions, however, of both Spanish and Catalan may appear similar enough for the reader to make an educated guess at meaning.

Because Catalan sounds like a mixture of Spanish, French and Italian (closer to French and Italian than Spanish), and I study those Romance languages, I am lulled into thinking that I should be able to at least understand Catalan.  Not! So I turn to my favorite online language learning program, Duolingo, to investigate Catalan.  It is available as a language for Spanish speakers to study.

Duolingo Catalan Lesson One

I tried out the first Catalan lesson on Duolingo. If you are acquainted with Spanish, see if you can guess the meaning of these Catalan words and expressions that I encountered.

un home
una nena
una dona
un nen
Sóc un home.
Jo sóc un nen.
Jo sóc una nena.

Some words look comfortingly familiar.  Un and Una are indefinite articles (a or an in English). Home looks like a shortened form of hombre (man), nena is close to niña (girl), and nen is fairly close to niño (boy).  Jo looks like yo (I), so  jo sóc  probably means yo soy (I am).

The spoken language may be more of a challenge, however.  A web search revealed some letters that  take special attention.  The letter combination "nya" is equivalent to the Spanish ñ, which is why you will often see the province name of Cataluña (in Spanish) written in Catalan as Catalunya. 

The "x" is a distinctive letter.  Can you guess the meaning of xocolata, one of my favorite comfort foods? The ç is an "ss" sound, as in the Catalan word for "to begin," començar. The "ny" is like a Spanish ñ, but with no vowel sound afterward, so baño (bath) becomes bany in Catalan.  And I also discovered that the "ll" is a different, harder sound than  the "y" sound those letters make in Spanish.

I'm going to leave Catalan on my list of Duolingo languages to study daily. The allure of using knowledge from other Romance languages to make quick progress in Catalan is too strong to pass up.  What an enjoyable way to learn about another culture!

 

When bad things happen to good language learners

"Into each life some rain must fall."  I'm okay with that, but I wish downturns in life didn't have such an adverse effect on my language study.  So far I have managed to keep a month long bout with bronchitis from ruining a 1223 day streak on my favorite online language learning platform, Duolingo. Many of those days were earned by me lying in bed, bleary-eyed, fumbling for my cell phone and completing a quick set of exercises in Spanish, which I can pretty much do automatically, just to get credit for the day.  Other languages I had been following on Duolingo were left by the wayside like sad unwanted pets.

And I don't think language study necessarily equates to the common wisdom about riding bicycles, for example, that once you learn how to ride, you don't forget.  If languages are not practiced daily, they begin to fade in our brains, until finally, it is just too much trouble to go searching for them. I've got to get back to those other languages, TODAY!

Other bad things can happen to good language learners as well.  Have you ever been stuck at what feels like a plateau of a new language?  

You keep trudging along, but the scenery remains the same.  You don't feel you are making progress in your language. You know a little;  you want to know a lot more.  How good it would feel to finally master a new language.  (Note:  You probably won't!  Once you decide to truly learn another language, it will always be in progress in your life.) 

The Irish language is my plateau at the moment. Shall I study a new grammar topic, practice pronunciation, or try to read a Facebook message in Irish? I need to give serious thought to what efforts I can make to take me across the plateau  so that I can climb the next mountain.

Another pitfall for language learners is the very common phenomenon of loss of interest in a language or culture.  A while back, I got very excited about studying Romanian on Duolingo, partially because it is a Romance language.  I could readily recognize some vocabulary and grammatical features in the beginning exercises.  Then it got difficult.  I got impatient when I couldn't whiz through an exercise.  So I started rationalizing, telling myself I will probably never have the chance to travel to Romania, and that I have other fish to fry.  Now I have left this perfectly lovely language for so long that it will be just a memory, a fleeting moment of a peek into another culture.

Romanian Castle

Then there is the case of Italian. Big plans were being discussed for a family trip to Italy next summer, complete with a rented villa, trains excursions in Switzerland, and an international motorcycle race.  I can do Italian, I thought, and raced through the Duolingo exercises.  Plans change, as life does, so we may now be going to the Netherlands or Germany.  Duolingo makes it so easy to add new languages without deleting old ones, which appear like ghost icons on my start-up page. I'm resisting the urge to click on Dutch or Germany until travel plans become more concrete. but I hear the siren call of a new language. 

We all start out with the best of intentions of being good language learners.  With a little more discipline and a little less complaining about the vicissitudes of life, we can get back on the track and enjoy language study every day of our lives.

Five ways to sabotage your language learning - Ranked

If you are reading this post, you probably have experienced a mind set similar to my present one. I am enthralled with the Irish language.  I want to make it one of the languages I mention with pride that I study.  But I have reached a learning plateau that is starting to feel like Mt. Everest. 

So this post is really me talking to me, not Ms. Fitich, the bossy Spanish teacher you may have had in seventh grade, telling you how you should learn a new language.

Do you sabotage your language study in these ways?

I Only study when you are really in the mood.  After all, you chose to study the new language, right?  It should be on the fun list in your life, not the duty list, right? Why ruin perfectly good leisure time by studying, when you could be checking your email again, browsing a new clothes magazine that just came in the mail, changing the cat's water (you can continue this list).  

With language study, slow and steady wins the race.  A small amount of study every day produces better results than longer, less frequent (and probably guilt-driven) longer sessions.

Doing something, I might say, almost anything with the new language will keep it active in your brain so you don't have to dig so hard to find it again.  You can use any of the language skills, listening, speaking, reading or writing, just as long as you do something that forces your brain to engage in the new language.

II. Give in to the need to master every grammar bit before moving on. My husband, Wayne, whom I have turned into a duoLingo addict, complained recently that he couldn't do the exercise on Spanish adverbs and was feeling discouraged.  My advice was to forget adverbs for a while and move on to something else.  After all, you can do a good bit of language and never encounter an adverb. Just because a program or a book or a teacher thinks it is time for you to master a certain grammar point may not be the right time for you to master it.  

III.  Don't worry about how the new words are pronounced.  Oh my, did I ever sabotage my Irish learning by doing this very thing.  I started Irish on duoLingo several years ago.  I was fascinated with the composition of the language and completely ignored how to pronounce the words.  In my defense, duoLingo does not give as much audio support to Irish as it does to other languages, so I felt no compelling need to know the sound system.

When I traveled to Ireland last year, I could understand a few signs, but I couldn't speak, not one word, of Irish.  I'm now backtracking and working with a program on Udemy to learn Irish sound/letter correspondence.  My hope is if I know what a word sounds like, it will stick better in my brain.  I was making up my own crazy pronunciations for those Irish words!

IV.  Spend too much time accumulating study resources.  Ordering dictionaries and grammar books online, bookmarking web sites, joining Irish Facebook groups, even finding clean notebooks to take notes may all be useful, but these activities don't actually teach you any language.  They just make it possible for you to study.  So study resources are helpful, but they don't substitute for sitting down and putting something about the new language into your brain's memory.

V. Beat yourself up because you will never be a native speaker.  We adults are too hard on ourselves about how much we should be able to accomplish in a new foreign language. We  have to go back and take baby steps and even talk like babies sometimes, which isn't great for the ego.  You are a successful native speaker of the language(s) you were born into.  You will probably never be mistaken for a native speaker of your new language.

I hope this post has given you encouragement if you are bogged down in your current language learning goals.  Writing it has certainly made me reexamine some of my language learning habits. 

Happy Language Learning!  It's worth the effort!

Trying not to speak Irish with a Spanish accent

I'm trying to learn how to speak Irish.  Well, that may be a bit of an overstatement.  I'm trying to learn to pronounce Irish words.  My first hint that Irish pronunciation was not going to be a pushover was learning that the greeting Dia duit  (literally "God be with you")  is pronounced [jee-uh ghitch].  That pronunciation was quite a shock. My mind had been silently sounding the letters as [dee-a do-it]. Silly me!

Another obstacle to learning oral Irish is that I speak it with a Spanish accent.  Spanish was the first foreign language I acquired. My Spanish accent is not native-like, but it is acceptable. When I try to speak other Romance languages, Portuguese, French or Italian, they all come out with a bit of a Spanish accent.  But since all of those languages belong to the same language family, my funny accent is not so noticeable. Have you experienced the same phenomenon in your language learning?

Well, enough of excuses.  It is time to make a plan for pronouncing Irish.  If I don't suspend my study of Irish grammar right now and learn to say the words correctly that I am writing, I fear I may be digging myself a deeper hole.

My first step was a short investigation of the Irish sound system in my new book, Speak Irish Now. The authors explain that the six Irish vowels are a, e, i, o and u.  Ah now that sounds familiar.  On the next page, however, they explain that the vowels can have a short or long sound, with the long sound indicated by an accent on the vowel (á,é,í,ó, ú). For example, "a" sounds like "uh," as in the English word "up."  But á makes the sound of "aw," as in English "paw."   Well, fair enough.  English also has short and long vowel sounds, and it doesn't even bother to mark them with a written accent.

Another key concept of the Irish vowel system is the identification of broad vowels, that is "a," "o," and "u"  and slender vowels, "e" and "i."  Whether a vowel is identified as broad or slender may affect the pronunciation of consonants.

The thirteen Irish consonants are  b, c, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, r, s, and t.  The consonants may have two different pronunciations, depending on whether they are surrounded by broad or slender vowels. Take the letter "d" for example.  When "d" is surrounded by broad vowels, it is pronounced as an English speaker would expect, like the [d} in "dot."  But when the "d" appears with slender vowels, the sound changes to the [dj] sound of English "edge."  Now I understand why the Irish word for "god," "Dia" sounds like "jee-uh."  (See first paragraph of this post.)

And more changes to consonant sounds lie in wait to trip up the unsuspecting student of Irish. Some consonants can be softened by putting an "h" after the consonant.  For example, "fh" surrounded by either broad or slender vowels, becomes silent!  And "bh" with broad vowels is [w] while "bh" with slender vowels is [v].  I wonder if the softening is what gives Irish its lyrical quality?

Are you glassy-eyed yet?  Finally, some consonants can be "eclipsed" by other consonant sounds.  If you see the letter combination "gc," the "g" is eclipsing the "c," so you will make a "g" sound, not a "c' sound.

Oh, my!  The phonetic and phonological rules of Irish are fascinating but formidable. I will probably have more success with being given an approximate pronunciation, as in this sentence that translates as, "Are you here?"

Will I ever be able to pronounce Irish without a Spanish accent?

Do I REALLY need to learn grammar?

About two years ago, I added Irish Gaelic to the list of my languages on DuoLingo, a popular on line language learning site.  DuoLingo has the best motivational program I have found, on or off line.  I wouldn't think of failing to do my daily DuoLingo any more than I would fail to feed the cat.

Wow!  I have a great streak going on DuoLingo!

I had made a vow to myself that if I started a new language on DuoLingo, one that I had no previous experience with, that I would try a  natural approach, that is, no grammar study.  I would do the practice exercises and try to deduce how the Irish language works from the material presented. DuoLingo does offer grammar explanations, but I was not going to read them.

A fierce debate about grammar study has been raging in the language learning world for some time now, with neither side claiming a clear victory.  Grammar proponents, many of them traditionalists, insist that learners study grammar as a first step to learning a new language. Grammar opponents, on the other hand, believe that language learners should be introduced to a new language, mainly through listening and reading, before formal grammar study begins.  

I am currently at Level 16 (out of 25 levels) on DuoLingo in Irish, and I have deduced many structural elements of that language—the verb, subject, object (VSO) word order; the use of prepositions to say "have;" the placing of adjective after nouns, to name a few.  I can even recognize the subject of most verbs by their endings.  But recently I had two experiences that made me long for, yes, an Irish grammar book.

My husband, Wayne, and I spent two weeks traveling around Ireland by train and car. 

Sunbathers on a warm day in Galway City, Ireland

It was a memorable trip, but I found that I had no functional ability in Irish. When we returned, a blog post I wrote about my new Irish dictionary connected me with a lovely Irish lady who offered to help me learn Irish!  As I was struggling to communicate with her via Messenger, I discovered that I couldn't express myself in Irish without some grammar assistance.

Two grammar sources are now giving me support and a modicum of peace of mind.  The grammar explanations offered on DuoLingo are looking a lot more appealing.  And Speak Irish Now, ordered on amazon.com, offers tantalizing chapter titles such as "Regular Verbs in Irish," and "A Little About Attributive Adjectives." 

Have I answered my own question, "Do I REALLY need to learn grammar?"  Unfortunately, no.  As they say nowadays, it's complicated.  What I do know is that if I would have had to learn the information on this DuoLingo chart when I first began to learn Irish,

I probably would have given up.  Now that I have some Irish under my belt, the chart is proving to be very useful, even fascinating  (Yes, really!).

My best wishes to language learners throughout the world who wrestle with the complexities of language acquisition. It is a struggle, but oh the rewards!