Duolingo - You can have it your way

How can I best learn a new language?  Oh, if I only knew the answer to that seemingly innocuous question.  Lots of us want to learn another language, but few of us succeed.   My best advice is to give DuoLingo a try.  DuoLingo is a web-based language learning program available for desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.  Two of the pluses of DuoLingo are that it has a perfectly acceptable free version and that you can tailor it to your own needs.  Is it the panacea for all language learning problems?  No, sorry.  But I have been using it for about six years and still look forward to using it on a daily basis. Here is the advice I would give a friend who wants to acquire another language using DuoLingo.

First, choose a language that is meaningful to your life. DuoLingo offers a wide variety of languages.You may be planning a trip to a foreign country, have friends who speak another language,, enjoy the music from a certain country, want to connect with your roots, or learn about a new culture.  I study Spanish and Portuguese because I have taught those subjects, French because I have French-speaking Canadian friends and enjoy traveling in Canada, Italian because a good friend has just bought a flat in Venice, and Irish and Welsh because I am intrigued by Celtic cultures.  And if you find that you chose the wrong one, you can quit it and start a new one.  I once began Catalan and  Romanian because they are Romance languages, but I quickly lost interest, probably because I didn't have a personal connection.

Next, set a daily goal ( a small one is fine) or let DuoLingo set one for you.  The program can be instructed to send you reminders if you don't meet your daily goal. I used them at first to develop the habit of doing some bit of language every day, but after a while, the reminders began to feel like a nag.  Now my strategy is to gain ten points every day, which is really easy.  I have a streak going of over 1800 days.  You may laugh, but I go to great lengths to maintain my DuoLingo streak.  However, in addition, my personal daily goal is to do one exercise in six different languages every day without making five errors.  Duolingo lets me know when I make an error by losing one of my five available hearts. So, my advice is to play around with your goal so that it fits your lifestyle.

Now to the content that DuoLingo offers.  You will choose topics to work on, some based on life experiences, like travel, and others based on grammar, like past progressive verbs.  Once again, you are in charge here.  The topics are arranged from easier to more advanced, but you don't have to necessarily work through them in a lock step fashion.  Remember, language learning can be a truly enjoyable experience. Language Acquisition experts talk about the important role of Language Input, that is, getting lots of language into your head in a comprehensible way. Duolingo offers an impressive amount of content.

Another piece of advice is to allow yourself to explore what DuoLingo offers.  There is no one right way to use it.  DuoLingo is constantly changing,  so you may log in one day and find new features.  I can compare it to learning how to use an iPhone or an Apple Watch.  You will discover capabilities you want to use and others of no interest.  On Duolingo, I have explored grammar explanations (pretty boring), jump ahead quizzes (great), vocabulary count (not useful), online discussions (pretty interesting if you have time), and adding friends to compete with (not so interesting anymore).  Just keep clicking around in the program until you find features that suit you.

Now back to the thorny question of how to learn a language.  I can only say that DuoLingo will help you along in your journey.  The program gives me an opportunity to maintain Spanish and Portuguese, helps me feel that I am not losing the French I learned in school, gives me hope that the next time I am in Italy I can use more Italian than the last time, and provides an intellectual challenge figuring out the workings of Irish and Welsh.   

My plea to Duolingo is: Please bring back the 'bots'.   The bots carried on a conversation with you to which you replied speaking or in writing.  Talking to the bots was very close to having a conversation with a real person, which means that you were creating language in your own head.  I loved talking to them.   But the bots unfortunately only made a brief appearance in the program.

Is DuoLingo the ultimate answer to the question, "How do I best learn a language?" No, but it is a flexible, motivating way to study language. And I look forward to a future where language learning is even more accessible. 

 If you are a DuoLingo user or want to be, I look forward to reading your comments and observations on language learning!

What's with that t sound in Beto?

Finally, my home town of El Paso, Texas is getting some positive attention, thanks to Beto O'Rourke. 

 

Beto, an El Paso native, announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for US President in 2020. Now people I meet have something to chat about when I say I am an El Paso native.  "Oh, yes, Beto is from El Paso too, right?" 

It's almost amusing how the name "Beto" rolls off the tongue and is easy to remember. His name is not a campaign trick. "Beto" is a common Spanish nickname for anyone named "Roberto."  Pat O'Rourke gave that nickname to his son, Robert, when he was young.  (It is not at all unusual in a bilingual border city like El Paso to have Spanish names and nicknames.)

As I began hearing Beto's name said by a variety of acquaintances and the national media, I noticed that often the pronunciation sounded just slightly off. I learned Spanish as a second language and hear Spanish spoken on a daily basis in El Paso. One important way to avoid having the much maligned "American accent" is to pronounce the "t" differently in Spanish than we do in English.  What a great excuse Beto's name is for a brief investigation into the linguistic fields of phonetics and phonology!

At first I thought the strange pronunciation of Beto was caused by the fact that the usual Spanish t is pronounced with the teeth touching the top teeth, which creates a softer sound than the English t, in which the tongue touches the roof of the mouth to make a more explosive sound. Say the word "top" in English and put your hand in front of your mouth.  You should feel a slight puff of air from the t.  But the answer did not lie in the t sound, because what I was hearing was something more like "Bedo."  

Further investigation cleared up the issue.  An American English speaker pronounces a t sound between vowels as a sort of d sound. (Linguists identify it as a "flap" in which the tongue touches the roof of the mouth quickly.)  Think about the pronunciation of the t in the word "water."  It is more like a d than a t, isn't it?  Try the word "data."  The t in the middle sounds like a soft d.

So, mystery solved!  An English speaker looking at the name "Beto" naturally pronounces the name as it would sound in English.  Hence, "Bedo."

I'm sure more weighty issues will come to the forefront as the race to the presidency continues, but for now I am pleased to have Beto (or Bedo) O'Rourke as a publicity maker for my home town.  

Are you a victim of Language Attrition?

The term "Language Attrition" has a fairly unpleasant ring to it, doesn't it?   I hesitate to admit it, but falling victim to Language Attrition has risen to the top of my personal worry list.

Attrition is defined as the wearing away of something.  Language Attrition is the term linguists use to describe a natural decline in a person's language skills due to insufficient use or environmental changes. (In other words, "Why is it that I used to carry on a conversation in Spanish but now find myself groping for words?")  I'm not concerned with losing my first language, English, because I use both the oral and written forms all day, every day. But I am becoming very concerned about the loss of Foreign Language skills.

An inordinate part of my life has been devoted to learning Foreign Languages.  Through the years, I have taken countless language courses, completed college degrees in languages, and taught languages and linguistics. I would have thought that given the amount of time and energy I have devoted to Spanish and Portuguese that at least those two languages would have a permanent place in my brain. Surely the languages I have been most intimately connected with are not beginning to recede in my memory! But I fear they are.

The first hint of trouble appeared as I was doing a daily round of exercises recently on Duolingo, my favorite free, online language learning program.   I have worked on Duolingo with at least one of six languages every day for over 1700 consecutive days. On some busy days, I have completed just a Spanish exercise.  On others, I have plowed through Spanish, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Welsh and Irish. I typically do Spanish and Portuguese back to back to avoid mixing the two Romance languages.

When you get the right answer on Duolingo, you receive a pleasant sound as a reward.  When you make an error, the correct answer appears in a red box at the bottom of the screen, and, depending on which version of the program you are using, you lose a segment of the much dreaded "health meter." (Loss of too many health segments potentially stops your progress for a period of time.)

I noticed that I was making more and more errors in Spanish and Portuguese.  And the errors weren't with big issues, like obscure vocabulary items or intricate grammar points.  The mistakes appeared with commonly used words and concepts.

Who would have thought I could mix up the Spanish and Portuguese words for "the"?  Spanish uses "el" or "la" for singular "the" and Portuguese uses "o" and "a" for the same concept. How could I forget that the Spanish word for "bus" is autobús but ônibus in Portuguese?  How often did I have to remind students that the "they" form in Spanish ends in "n" (ellos beben) but in "m" in Portuguese (eles bebem)?  I feel Language Attrition setting in.

I can recommend to myself many paths for maintaining languages to keep attrition at bay.  Unfortunately, I no longer lead a life style that allows frequent practice with native speakers of other languages. (Granted that living on the border with Mexico in El Paso, Texas gives me some contact with Spanish, but we are in truth a bilingual city.) Of course, videos, movies, radio, music, newspapers, and novels could fill the void if I would just make time to use them. 

I'm not sure I like the conclusion I have arrived at in writing this post about Language Attrition.  Counteracting it is going to take much effort on my part, along with losing weight, exercising, practicing the baroque recorder and guitar, not to mention decluttering the house.  

But instead of whining about being one of the many victims of the disappointing phenomenon known as Language Attrition, I'm going to begin reading a Graham Greene novel translated into Spanish, Nuestro Hombre en La Habana (Our Man in Havana). It's one small step, but at least I feel like I am doing something.  Now on to those other life challenges!    

Does Speaking a Language merit the Gold Medal?

"I'm studying French."  "Really?  Can you speak it?" Most people think that knowing a language means speaking the language. But is speaking a language truly the only worthy goal of language study?

No one, least of all me, can deny the thrill of successful conversation in another language with a native speaker.

I can still remember a few of those exchanges in my past and the satisfaction they brought me. For example, the customs inspector as I was leaving Brazil after six weeks of language immersion told me I spoke Portuguese "bastante bem" (quite well).  A fellow party-goer in Mexico City where I was studying Spanish didn't realize at first that I was American.  And, even in my home town on the border, El Paso, Texas,  I still get a kick out of rare times when I am speaking in Spanish to a native Spanish speaker who doesn't  immediately switch to English. 

Recently, however, I have been taking a more practical approach to language study, which I do mostly on Duolingo.

Duolingo is a language learning program, available in a wide variety of languages on the Internet in web based and mobile platforms at no cost.  It isn't perfect, but it is the best program I have found to date for doing a bit of language study faithfully every day.

My thirty-minute morning goal is to successfully complete one exercise in six languages.  I study Spanish and Portuguese in order to maintain speaking proficiency because those languages were my teaching fields.  I also study French, Italian, Irish, and Welsh in order to ...what?  Will I have the opportunity to use those languages in conversation?  Much as I like to dream of extended vacations to Canada, Italy, Ireland and Wales, happily conversing with natives of those countries, let's get real here!  And I know of no French, Italian, Irish or Welsh speakers in my hometown of El Paso, Texas, who want to meet up for coffee and conversation. 

Unfortunately, Duolingo does not at present provide enough opportunities for creative language use, although a promising feature was available for a short time in the past. With that feature, you could communicate orally with a "bot,"  which came very close to a real-life situation, because you truly had to create language.

 I have hopes that Duolingo will continue to introduce innovations for the speaking skill.  

In the meantime, though, I must be content with learning ABOUT some languages rather than learning to SPEAK them.  And is that worth my time and effort?  Yes, and here's why I think so.   

* I enjoy the mental gymnastics of language learning (a term coined by the linguist, Stephen Krashen).  Surely the effort it takes to analyze another language qualifies as one of the methods of keeping the brain active.

* I feel a connection to the countries and speakers whose language I can at least read, which makes international news a lot more interesting.

* I believe that analyzing the various ways in which other languages express meaning makes me more in tune to how speakers use English, my native language. Random overheard conversations, radio, TV and signs are all fodder for thinking about language in general.

* I think about language study as an enjoyable daily activity, something I can use to reward myself for completing household duties.

So, is speaking a language awarded the gold medal for language study?  Yes, it is.  But  I will be very content with the silver and the bronze medals for reading, writing, and understanding the structure of many other languages.

Taming the Language Monitor

A chance conversation with an acquaintance reminded me of one of the most important concepts in foreign language learning — the role of the (subconscious) Language Monitor.  

I think of the Monitor as a tiny strict language teacher sitting on my shoulder when I speak another language, constantly checking what I say to make sure it conforms to grammar rules.

What's wrong with that you may say?  "I would love for someone to make sure I am speaking a language correctly." Here's what's wrong.

The acquaintance asked if I spoke a lot of Italian on a recent trip abroad.  "Not much," I complained., "I could read lots of the language but when it came to speaking....." 

 "What has happened with my Spanish," the acquaintance confessed, "is that I have been studying for two years, and I know so much grammar that it is slowing down my speaking ability.  I used to speak Spanish fairly fluently," she added, "but now my mind is checking everything that comes out of my mouth."  

How about it, reader, have you had a similar language learning experience? Do you have an overactive Language Monitor in your brain holding you back?

A first step in taming the Language Monitor is accepting the that fact that language errors must be viewed as helpful rather than disastrous. 

I know.  No one likes to make mistakes in life. But the idea that you are always going to speak perfectly is not even logical, even in our native language.  We expect babies learning their first language to make constant language "errors."  So will we as adults make many errors as we learn a new language, and it will be a good thing. Our minds will begin formulating our own subconscious idea of how the new language works (its grammar).   

Given the fact that language errors are inevitable in speaking a new language, why not let the Language Monitor clean things up before you speak?  Sounds logical.  But the reality is that specific conditions must exist for the Monitor to do its job. 

-The speaker must know the rule well in order to apply it. Remembering all of the written rules of a language is a difficult task, and many rules remain unwritten and not available for learning.

-The speaker must be focused on form rather than meaning.  (Have you ever made a conversational partner wait until you conjugated a verb in your mind to get the right form?  I have.)

-The speaker must have time to apply the rule.  I am picturing an impatient listener who just wants to get on with the conversation rather than waiting for you to stumble around trying to express yourself in error-free language.

So how about loosening up a little and patting yourself on the back for communicating successfully rather than formulating a perfect sentence?  Did you succeed in getting directions to the train station in Paris?  Were you able to ask for the check and pay with a credit card in Mexico City?  How was your chat on the Via Rail train in Canada with German-speaking dinner companions?

Tell your Language Monitor to cool it until you are writing an email to a new Portuguese-speaking friend whom you would like to impress with your perfect language.  Then you may use your Language Monitor that has been waiting in the wings, red pen in hand so to speak.

Beating a Language Study Slump

Most of my posts to this Language Lover's Blog are filled with enthusiasm about studying other languages. I have published 155 posts over the past five years extolling the virtues of foreign language acquisition.  I promised readers they would fall in love with languages, develop a lifelong fascinating hobby, and perhaps even ward off dementia for a few years.  

Now I find myself in the embarrassing position of not being excited about languages anymore. Yes, I have said it.  Just like my favorite major league baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, I am in a slump.

 And just like the hitters who can't connect with the ball like they used to or the pitchers who can no longer throw strikes, I can't put my finger on what the problem is or how to solve it. I wish I had Yogi Berra's philosophy.

The problem of maintaining motivation looms large in the field of foreign language acquisition. You may have experienced it yourself.  As you start to learn a new language, you are on an uphill trajectory.  You promise yourself to study every day, sign up for a course, use online apps, and plan a trip to use your new language.  Ah, I remember those innocent days! Reality soon makes hash of your good intentions, and to paraphrase Yogi Berra, you aren't in a slump, you just aren't acquiring the language of your choice.

Take my desire to learn Italian, for example.  With plans for a summer trip to Tuscany with friends and family, I felt fairly confident that I could learn a lot of Italian before the trip.  After all, I have degrees in foreign languages, I have taught foreign languages, and Italian is a Romance language similar to Spanish and Portuguese, which I know fairly well.  What could go wrong?

I signed up for a six-week Italian class at an institute on a local university campus.  The details are irrelevant, but suffice it to say that the only thing I learned about Italian was that "ci,","ce," "gi," and "ge" were going to give me lots of trouble.  I did not sign up for the second six weeks.

My next effort was to sign up for Italian on Duolingo, a popular online language learning course, available on the web or as an app on mobile devices.  I had been using Duolingo for several years to study a variety of other languages and thought it was great fun.  About this time, though, Duolingo made a significant change in the program.  In the old version, you were allowed to make mistakes and keep trying to answer correctly with no penalty.  It was a relaxing way to learn.

The new version of Duolingo allows only a certain numbers of errors before your "health meter" runs out of segments.

Note health meter in top right hand corner

Unless you can buy back your "health," you have to wait more than four hours to regain it and continue practicing.  Needless to say, I found nothing motivational about the new rules.

Another change in Duolingo that I missed was the absence of "bots."  At one time, you could hold an actual conversation with a bot by typing or saying your answer.  I loved talking to the bots and learned a lot about conversational language in Spanish, Portuguese and French.  Sadly, though, I did not have this opportunity in Italian.

You probably know where all of this complaining is going.  We had a great trip to Italy, but I spoke virtually no Italian and understood less.  I found myself gesturing and pointing like a first year language student to even order a gelato.  

What do baseball players do when they hit a slump?  They keep on swinging and pitching.  I'll keep studying languages on Duolingo because I have a 1561 day streak going, and I hate to be a quitter.  Maybe, just maybe,  the thrill of language learning will return to me one of these days.

 





 

Oh those pesky Italian "c's" and "g's"

After a summer vacation in Tuscany, now back home in El Paso, Texas, I wonder what memories will stay with me? First would be the Italian landscapes that are even more praiseworthy than their depictions in travel books.

View from our villa, Le Due Volpe

The Italian people are friendly and helpful.  And they appear to truly enjoy life, something I forget to do from time to time.

Charming Italian guide leading wine tasting

But my first steps attempting to communicate in the Italian language may be my most long-lasting memory.  A note of caution:  if anyone tells you that everyone in Italy speaks English, do not believe them.  We did find a few people in the hospitality field who very kindly spoke English to us, but for the most part, our communication was done using sign language.  Two notable exceptions were our hosts at the villa, Cinzia and Aldo, who were always ready for a chat in English. In addition, I had  been assured before leaving the U.S. that I could get by in Italy using Spanish.  Wrong, again.  I'm sure there are Italians who speak Spanish, but I failed to locate them.

I had been studying Italian using DuoLingo, my favorite online free language learning program, for about six months in preparation for our Italian adventure. I was encouraged because I could read in Italian fairly well because it is similar to Spanish in its written form.  And the grammar wasn't too daunting.

But, oh the pronunciation of those Italian "c's" and "g's" proved to be the death of me!  I even wrote a blog post, "Just enough Italian pronunciation," several months prior to the trip pointing out rules for changes in "c's" and "g's'  before "i's" and "e's."  I soon discovered that knowing the rule is not the same as being able to apply the rule. (How many times have I preached that to my former language students?) As other travel memories fade, what I may remember about Italy is being gently corrected by smiling Italians when I continually mispronounced  "c's" and "g's."

My first language lesson was in Tirano, Italy, where we stayed several nights after riding the Bernina Express train through the Swiss Alps. The bright red cherries at an outdoor fruit stand looked luscious.  Unfortunately, the Italian word for cherries is ciliegie. The "c" before the "i" makes a "ch" sound.  Everyone knows how to say ciao, right?

And the "g" before the "i" makes a sound like the first and last sounds in "judge."  Now try putting those two rules to work on a busy Italian street with a vendor waiting for you to make a purchasing decision.  He patiently corrected my pronunciation and put the cherries on the scale.

My next Italian language lesson came during a lunch meal at a restaurant in Borgo San Lorenzo. I had been missing an iced drink in the hot, humid Italian weather, so I was inspired to order a soda with ice.  The Italian word for ice is "ghiaccio."  Oh no, more "c's and "g's"!  This time the "g" was followed by an "h" which changed its pronunciation back to a hard "g" (like "go").  And the "ci" still kept the "ch" sound, but not before you pronounced another hard "c" (like "cat") before it.  The waiter gave me a big grin and pronounced "ghiaccio" three times until I got it right.  Mamma mia!

Can you see the ice and lemon in my coke?

At least I got some occasional comic relief in the language category.  The same waiter described above was naming meats offered on the luncheon menu and proudly announced that they had "cinghiale"  (wild boar meat).That word in Italian, correctly pronounced, sounds very close to a Spanish curse word (always good for a snicker).  My husband, Wayne, and I exchanged startled looks.

Italy was an unforgettable experience—one of our best trips we have decided.  But my goals before I visit Italy again are to conquer the elusive sound variations of "c"and "g" and to learn to ask correctly and politely for ice in my drink and maybe even a vegetarian menu!