Irish language has arrived on Duolingo!

Duolingo Irish Program

Okay.  I know what some of you are thinking.  Why did I do a little happy dance when I saw that Duolingo has begun offering Irish language study?  At first glance, it may seem to be a rather silly way to spend my leisure time.  But offhand, I can think of three good reasons to include Irish in my list of languages to keep up with.

Reason No. 1. Challenge.    Irish is a VSO language.  This means that in a typical Irish sentence, the verb comes first, the subject next, and the object last.  The languages I am acquainted with, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French,  all place the verb in a different position, the middle position.  They are known as SVO languages, and the SVO  language pattern is seared into my brain.  

The majority of the world's languages are either SOV or SVO languages, so the VSO pattern of Irish will be something very new to me.

 "I see him" is going to become "See I him",  translated into Irish vocabulary.  It will be great brain training to make myself think of the action word first in Irish. And it is harder than you may imagine (I failed miserably several years ago trying to learn another VSO language, Scottish Gaelic).  I hope to create some new brain synapses with a new way of thinking.

Reason No. 2.  A New Language Family.    Up to now, I have only explored two of the world's language families, Germanic, the origin of English, and Latin, the origin of French, Portuguese and Spanish. Irish is a Celtic language with ties to Scottish Gaelic and Manx, as well as Welsh, Cornish and Breton.  Can you find the Celtic branch on the tree?

   

Reason No. 3  Cultural Ties.  Vague family stories have led me to believe that at least some of my ancestors were Scots-Irish who migrated from Scotland to Northern Ireland in the 1600's and moved on to America in the 1700's. Since I have no further details, I am free to create romantic stories in my mind, all of which are probably far from realistic.  But I can dream of castles, sea waves crashing, and green as far as the eye can see, can't I?  I have always felt a pull towards the British Isles.  Could it be something in my genes?   

Ireland

I'll try to keep those romantic images in my mind as Duolingo is taking me through the sometimes painful babysteps of acquiring a new language.

Why do we hate to make language mistakes?

"Acquire language like you were a child!"  "Don't be afraid of making errors!" "Talk to as many native speakers as you can!"  There is certainly no scarcity of advice nowadays when it comes to how to acquire other languages. But how easy is it to follow that advice?  Why is it so hard to allow yourself  to make errors when learning a foreign language?

Let me say up front that I understand that mistakes are a natural part of the language learning process.  I accepted communication as the main goal of foreign language learning many years ago.

Communication is the goal!

I am familiar with the concept of  interlanguage, a term that linguists use to describe a version of the new language that a learner speaks on the road to becoming a native-like speaker. And every learner's interlanguage is rife with errors. Errors are a good thing, I keep telling myself.

Now let's go from theory to practice.  Making errors in another language (surprisingly more than making errors in my native language, English) embarrasses me to death.  And I have met very few adult learners of other languages who feel differently.  Both my husband Wayne and I have been faithfully completing Duolingo language lessons each day.

Duolingo

Both of us murmur an interjection (or in Wayne's case, more probably an expletive) when the program informs us that we have erred. And to add insult to injury, the program takes away a heart (serious business!), accompanied with a few bars of lugubrious music.

Don't lose all three hearts, or you are dead!

After every conversation I have in a foreign language, even in e-mails or text messages, my mind goes over and over the message long after it is gone, checking to see what errors I may have made.  And if I discover one, I blush.

I try to remember that making errors is a positive step in language learning when I am helping Wayne with his Spanish study.  I don't correct him when we are conversing.  I subscribe to the doctrine that correcting speakers when they are trying to formulate language in their minds is not only counterproductive, but possibly discouraging to them. But he persists in asking me, "Was that right?"  If I respond with, "Do you feel like you communicated what you wanted to say?", he says, "Yes, and was it right?"  

Why do language mistakes loom larger than other mistakes we make in life, like taking a wrong turn, calling a wrong number, or forgetting to lock the back door?  Maybe it's because language is something very personal to humans.  We create it from our minds.  And we hate doing it wrong!

 

How to learn those pesky Spanish verb forms

Duolingo Owl

I am having such a great time practicing languages on Duolingo recently that my husband Wayne became curious (he hates to miss out on any fun).  So several weeks ago he enrolled in his own account on the Duolingo Spanish program.  Wayne doesn't admit to being hooked on the program, but I see him working on it fairly frequently on his laptop or iPhone.  And I hear some fairly strong language when the program gives him an incorrect answer signal!

Lately Wayne's frustration with Spanish verb forms have caused me to think about how difficult it is for English speakers to conquer Spanish verb forms.  Why is this?   And what techniques might make learning Spanish verb forms more accessible?

To look at the why question, a possible answer may be the difference in amounts of English and Spanish verb forms.  If you want to say 'talk' in English in the present tense, it generally doesn't matter who the subject of 'talk' is.  It's 'I talk', 'you talk', 'we talk', 'they talk', with the only slightly different forms being 'he talks' and 'she talks'.  So when you speak English, you don't have to pay much attention to the verb form.   Yes, there are some  irregular verb forms, like 'I am', or  'he is', but the regular forms are a piece of cake.

Now enter Spanish, a daughter language of Latin, with seemingly endless verb endings.  More often than not, when the subject changes, so does the verb ending.  To speak Spanish, you have to constantly be aware of matching the ending to the subject.  For the verb 'to talk' in the present tense, the forms are,  'yo hablO', 'tú hablAS' ''él/ella/usted hablA, 'nosotros hablAMOS', 'ellos/ellas/ustedes hablAN. The English-speaking brain isn't used to having to put attention on verb endings.  That's why I believe that Spanish verb forms seem to be a hurdle for English speakers.  We are required to pay close attention to an aspect of language that is not required to the same extent in our native language.

Spanish verb conjugation

Be that as it may, when all of the analyzing and complaining is over,  Spanish verb forms must be conquered in order to communicate in Spanish.  Some English speakers try to circumvent the Spanish verb system by using the main verb form without any endings. So they say 'yo hablAR' (which  translates to 'I to speak"), which sounds pretty strange to the Spanish-speaking ear!

When I first studied Spanish in school (back in the Dark Ages), we were required to write out  full conjugations of Spanish verbs, both regular and irregular, in a seemingly endless number of tenses.  That was the traditional method of making sure we knew which verb forms matched each subject.  I can still remember pages and pages of two-sided notebook paper filled with my handwritten verb conjugations.  We weren't allowed to actually use Spanish for communication until we knew all of those verb forms.  Whew!  Only the most dedicated language students made it through that obstacle course.  Fortunately I was one of them and continued to study Spanish.

Intellectual torture may be good for the mind and soul, but I believe there is a better and less painful way to learn Spanish verbs.   It  involves using the forms for real communication, not just learning the forms in the abstract. So, since we like to talk about ourselves so much, just getting used to putting an 'o' on the end of verbs when using the subject  "I"   would be a good start.  And then putting an 's' on the verb when talking directly to another person might be the next step.  I can imagine lots of simple conversations using just the 'I' and 'you' forms.  Then we could move on to more complicated communication.  Eventually conversational situations could be set up so that all possible subjects could be used.

Would there be Spanish language learners who would eventually want to see a full verb conjugation written out? Possibly, depending on their learning style. But I would like to suggest that the conversation practice should happen first and the abstract learning should follow as a synthesis.

I wish I would have been taught Spanish with a more conversational approach.  My mind gets very tired having to mentally run through a whole verb conjugation to select the right form.  And I know the person I am speaking to gets really tired waiting for me to do those mental gymnastics!  

What's getting in the way of language learning?

Many people say they want to learn another language.  Fewer people ever reach the second language proficiency goal they are dreaming of.  I realize that "there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip," but what does that slip look like in language learning?

Working diligently on Portuguese and Spanish on Duolingo, I've been thinking about one of the main hazards on the road to mastery of another language--overly lofty goals. Here are three of those high-flying goals that you may want to reconsider.

(1) Achieving native language speaking proficiency  Are we ever going to speak another language with a completely native accent?  Only a lucky few of us with special talent and opportunity will probably ever pass for a native speaker.  I think it would be a great lark to fool someone into thinking I come from Mexico or Brazil, but the chances of that happening for more than a sentence or two are (as they say in West Texas), slim and none.

A more practical approach is to be content with communicating well.  If native speakers can understand you speaking and writing in their language, shouldn't that be enough?  Isn't the fact that you, as a non-native speaker, have taken the time and effort necessary to learn another language something to earn you a few gold stars?

(2) Always using correct grammar  Yes, I know that we all want to communicate correctly in our second language.  There is a strong human desire to get things RIGHT.    But if we wait to communicate until we have mastered every nuance of the new language (an impossibility), we will be tongue-tied forever.

For example, I know that in Spanish there are two words that mean 'for', por  and para. I have read the long list of rules for use of each and have done grammar exercises to practice the rules.  And I still choose the wrong form fairly frequently.  As a non-native speaker, can I live with that problem? Probably.

(3)  Thinking language learning happens quickly  There are some life skills that we can imagine mastering, like cooking a great pot of pinto beans, posting a blog, or packing light for an international trip. But trying to acquire another language is a lifelong commitment, somewhat like feeding the stray cat that has adopted you at the back door. 

There will always be more of the language to learn, more words, more sounds, and more grammar. And just when you think you may know it all, language will be shifting under your feet.  The word for 'great' in both English and other languages will probably change every few years.  If you don't track the changes, you may be saying the equivalent of  'groovy' in your new language.

Language learning is not for the faint-hearted, the short-hitters, or the fast-trackers.  But it can be a heck of a lot of fun.