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! 

More fascinating facts about Spanish accent marks

If you read my previous post about Spanish accent marks and decided to try your skills at placing accent marks on the ten words given, please find answers below to compare with yours. 

If you are ready to become an advanced user of Spanish accents, keep reading!  Some Spanish words require accent marks, not for purposes of pronunciation, but to differentiate two words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. 

Tú means "you;" tu means "your;"  él means 'he;" el means "the;" té means "tea;" te means "you-object;" mí means "me;" mi means "my;" dé means "give;" de means "of."

And you probably would rather not know at this point that adverbs made from adjectives that carry an accent mark retain the accent mark, as when fácil (easy) becomes fácilmente (easily).  Whew!

It's amazing that one tiny mark running from bottom left to top right (the acute accent) can be the cause of such consternation to language learners.  English speakers find the marks annoying because they are not a feature of the English language, except for a few words borrowed from other languages, such as sauté from French.  Placement of accent marks is just one more thing to have to learn.

But you may be surprised to learn that written accent marks are often troublesome for native Spanish speakers as well.  If you think about it, they already know how to pronounce words, so whether a word uses an accent mark or not is of little interest to them unless they are required to write the word correctly. Spanish teachers for decades have marked down Spanish-speaking students because they just were not interested in putting on those little marks.  

Recently, I found myself leaving off Spanish accent marks, but not without some feelings of guilt.  I learned my Spanish in the classroom where a forgotten or misplaced accent mark was always corrected in red ink!  But on my favorite on line language learning program, Duolingo, the web version has a special feature.

If you beat the clock, you receive 20 points instead of the regular 10 points.  I was not beating the clock very often because I was taking time to write accent marks. (Yes, I know how silly that may sound!) Then I remembered that Duolingo does not count accent marks usage as an error!  The program informs you that you have made an accent error, but the answer is accepted anyway. I was on my way to doubling my point count!  

Now that we have exhausted the topic of when to use Spanish accent marks, do you know how to write a vowel with an accent mark using an electronic device?  The method you use will depend on which device you have, but my life became a lot easier when I started using an iPad and an iPhone. When composing, a quick swipe up on any vowel will give you options, one of which is the acute accent.

Best of luck with placing Spanish accent marks. They are truly not so elusive, and just think of how superior you will feel! 

ANSWERS:  1. apellido 2. aquí  3. árido  4. dócil  5. dogma  6. dogmático  7. eficaz  8. ejecutivo  9. duración  10.  estrés

Are you ready to conquer written accents in Spanish?

Learners of the Spanish language have a lot to deal with — new words, new grammar rules, and new sounds.  Once they get over the shock of all of this newness and begin to write in Spanish, they notice that some written vowels (a, e, i, o, u) have a little mark, technically known as the acute accent, above them. One example is the name of our nearest Spanish-speaking neighbor, México.

"Do  I really need to put those little marks?" and "Do you count off for missing accent marks?" are questions I heard often as a Spanish teacher.  "Yes," and "Yes," were my usual replies.  The accent mark is part of the correct spelling of a Spanish word.

This can be a complicated topic.  Let me try to break down accent use to a few easy steps.

1. Much as I hate to say this,  two pronunciation rules must be memorized (or preferably internalized) before the crucial decision about placing a written accent can be made.  And here they are:

Rule 1: Words ending in a vowel, n, or s are normally pronounced with the stress on the next to last syllable.  Like:  CAma, PLUma, LIbro, VERde, HAblan, muCHAchos.

Rule 2: Words ending in a consonant, except n or s, are normally pronounced with the stress on the last syllable.  Like:  coRRER, desiGUAL casualiDAD, obfusCAR, permisiviDAD, laBIAL

2. The good news is that these two rules will help you pronounce the majority of words in the Spanish language.  The bad news is that if a word, when pronounced correctly by a Spanish speaker, breaks one of the rules, you must write an accent mark over the vowel in the syllable that needs to be stressed.  And the accent mark is often crucial to the meaning of a word.  For example,  paPÁ  (dad) is not the same as PApa (pope).

Ready for some practice?  According to these rules, which words in the opening list would normally be pronounced with the stress on the next to the last syllable?  If you wrote 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10, then you are correct, because these words end in a vowel, n, or s.  Which words would normally be pronounced with the stress on the last syllable?  Yes, numbers 4 and 7, which end in consonants other than n or s.

Now, if you are still with me, here's the rub:  you must hear a word pronounced correctly to make a decision about the written accent. Put very simply, if a word is pronounced according to the rules, it does not need an accent.  However, if the pronunciation of a word breaks one of the two rules, a written accent tells you which syllable is stressed.

Take a look at No. 2, aqui.  Which syllable should be stressed according to Rule NO. 1?  Yes, the next to the last, in this case, the "a." But the second syllable is stressed when the word is pronounced correctly.  To let everyone know that the word for "here" is aQUI, not Aqui, the word is correctly written as aquí, with a written accent on the "i."

Are you ready to practice?  Here is the list of words above with the syllable capitalized that carries the stress when pronounced correctly.  See if you can determine which words break either Rule 1 or Rule 2 and need to carry a written accent on the vowel of the stressed syllable.

1.  apeLLIdo

2.  aQUI

3.  Arido

4.  DOcil

5.  DOGma

6.  dogMAtico

7.  efiCAZ

8.  ejecuTIvo

9.  duraCION

10. esTRES

By the way, I hope you are NOT feeling No. 10, "stress" over written accent placement.  After some practice, the process becomes fairly automatic.  Answers provided in next language blog, plus some additional observations about the fascinating world of written accents in Spanish. Please feel free to leave questions or comments.

PS:  I suppose you could look up every word in the dictionary to check to see if it carries a written accent, but that would seem to be even more tedious than the above-described method!.

I bought an Irish Dictionary. Now what?

I couldn't resist buying an Irish dictionary in a gift shop on the road from Galway to Clifden, in the Connemara Region of Ireland.   My husband, Wayne, and I were on an unforgettable road

trip in Ireland, and our spirits were soaring.

The clerk at checkout looked at my purchase and said, ""Ah, you'll have to come back in a couple of years and tell me how you are doing with Irish." How many such dictionaries had he sold to enthusiastic tourists with similar high hopes of learning to speak Irish?  

I told him I had already been studying Irish for about two years on a regular basis.  Granted, the study is on my favorite online language learning program, Duolingo, for probably less than fifteen minutes a day (I study other languages as well), but I wanted him to know that I was well aware of the complexities of the Irish language.

The sheep outside the gift shop paid no attention to us as we hopped in our rental car, stored our purchases,  and headed to Clifden.

Now I am back home in the States with my Irish dictionary joining other foreign language dictionaries between the bookends on my desk.  Will this new addition help me make progress in Irish?  Hope springs eternal in the language learner's heart.

I wish I could honestly say that I am going to examine in detail the dictionary section on phonetics (pronunciation).  Even with a degree in Linguistics, the charts with Irish letters, IPA symbols, Irish examples, and nearest English equivalents look formidable.  But since the Irish sound system has proven elusive to me so far, maybe I should take a closer look at the charts and learn a few sounds a day.  That's doable, right?

The Irish-English, English-Irish word entries look more promising. 30,000 words are included, many with usage examples.  The entries also include a phonetic pronunciation guide.  Ah, that phonetic chart I was dissing in the paragraph above may be useful after all.

At the back of the dictionary are tables for regular and irregular verbs, sure to strike fear into the hearts of language learners.  I can still remember being required to conjugate pages and pages of Spanish verbs in my very traditional high school language class.  Through the years, I have come to believe that verbs are best learned in context, not in verb tables. But I suppose having verb tables readily available can serve as a useful reference.

As I picked up the Irish dictionary for the first time the very straightforward lists of geographical names and languages caught my eye.  Búdaipeist, Iostanbúl, Lucsamburg were all comforting by their familiarity.  And it was fun to identify the languages I study—Spáinnis, Portaingéilis, Fraincis, Iodáilis (Italian), Rómáinis (Romanian), Breatnais (Welsh) and Gaeilge (Irish).

And finally, perhaps best of all, the dictionary lists four useful web sites as linguistic resources, one which promises "full pronunciation guide with sound files."  I can certainly use those!

Despite my moaning and groaning, being a beginning Irish language learner has been an exciting challenge.  I'll probably never be able to strike up a friendly conversation in a pub with an Irish speaker, 

but just experiencing a language very different from English, my native language, has been satisfying. 

I hope in several years, when we return to Ireland, that my Foclóir Póca (Irish Dictionary) is well-thumbed and annotated with my notes in the margins.  And maybe I can return to that gift shop and dazzle the clerk with a short conversation in Irish.  Wouldn't he be surprised?