Re: Omar Sharif

Up to now, I've been rotating my languages in an order that, though it is not rigidly fixed, tends to cycle. But this morning, walking, I started thinking. I reviewed what I'd been doing. 

If I did one language per day, one cycle would take me a month. Four a day, a week. Six days for five languages; five days for six languages. I would revisit languages every 3 days, if I did 10. It would require me to do 15 languages if I wanted to do them every other day.

And then I came to an op shop. It was the first time for me to enter one since the lockdown started 5 or 6 weeks ago. I bought a book: Monsieur Ibrahim und die Blumen des Koran. It's in German, translated from the French.

It was only at home, when I searched for an image, that I realized I knew the story. There had been a movie with Omar Sharif. I think I watched it with my father. Omar was once one of the best bridge players in the world. I got the book he wrote about it for Dad, but I doubt he ever read it. In his late 80s, all he did was watch TV.

So anyway, I'm going to read Dutch, German and Japanese at will. And I'll freely change the order of the rest. It's time to mix it up a little! (Maybe even include a little TV.)

Herge

I got side-tracked on the Internet today, as one does. I ended up searching for Herge books I read at the age of 6, in Holland. The Tintin ones are easy to find. But I knew he'd done a few books with other characters. 

Eventually I hunted them down. I was able to download them from the Internet Archive (see link below). They are in French, so I'll enjoy them in that language.

Internet Archive

The Bad Sister

I've added a little something extra to my French repertoire - a movie. On Youtube I discovered by chance the 1931 film: Bad Sister. with Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogarde, etc.

I added it to my French channel. The movie is in English, but it has French subtitles. Something to spice up my regular fare!

French - 18 April

Light relief today, reading a comic in the same series as the one above. But usually I am happy with John Steinbeck's Á l'est d'eden. It is rather a literary work, which is both a point in its favor and against. I have a number of easier resources that I could use instead, but overall I will probably stick with John's novel. I want to know how the story develops.

As with Spanish and Swedish, I started collecting sentences at the end of January, a month into my acquisition experiment. And I have also accumulated between 700 and 800.

Tipping point

A half-filled glass. Drop by drop the water level rises. It takes a certain number.

In terms of language, it's the same: it takes a certain number of exposures to a vocabulary item (or grammatical structure) before it sinks in. Maybe 12, 15 or 40, depending on who you believe. And at some point along the way you reach a tipping point. You feel that you 'know' that word.

The notion of tipping point applies elsewhere also.

Maybe it is the 'i' in i+1 (from Krashen).

With me, with French, it happened when I came across the music of Serge Gainsbourg.

I also look forward to reading about French Impressionism in French (especially about Paul Gauguin). Or the original letters of Vincent Van Gogh (I understand that he wrote his letters in 3 or 4 languages).

French thrills

What I do in French is to read a screen's worth at a time in English - roughly 100 words. I then switch languages and read the same passage in French. I'll then go on to try the next sentence 'naked', then refer back to see how I did.

That gives me a little thrill. It generates a little momentum, and encourages me to make progress.

And as I've previously hinted, Steinbeck can certainly string sentences together!

Cool French

I was never any good at French, though I took it as a subject at school. I hated it. But then a few years ago, I discovered the music of Serge Gainsborough. After listening to him, French now sounds quite cool to my ears.

But at 25% (in spite of my resistance, 2 years' of schooling did leave an impression), is it possible to use a novel to progress it further? Well, there's only one way to find out.

I'll oscillate between two versions of the same book. I'll read a screen or two (from my Kindle) in English, and now that the story is fresh in my mind, I'll go over the same bit of story in French.

I do that without pressure. I simply gloss over the territory. I do it quickly.

Doing the above, I find that the greater fraction of what I read makes sense. How, I don't know exactly. I may not know all of the words - probably less than half of them - but I 'recognize' most of the content.

In other words, French is a 'go-er' as well as Dutch, German and Japanese. Fantastic.

Vive la France!

The ABCs of multi-lingual-ism

It happens to be the start of 2020 as I put pen to paper (well, it was). The time feels right to start a new blog. It's time for a New Year's resolution. It's time for a challenge. A language acquisition challenge.

Initially, I thought of setting a 365-day goal. But I feel that would be too gimmicky - it doesn't feel authentic. Plus, I have life that I'd like to live alongside of this project. Life-work balance and all that.

So I'll take it fairly easy. I've no problem with that - I've already opted to work only part time (0.6). And in a couple of years I'll be eligible to retire. All in all, I'm not going to turn this into a big deal. I wish to spend no more than a couple of hours per day on this exercise. In terms of language-learning, therefore, I'll see how I fare with just a few languages, not too many. I'll settle for an even dozen.

I've selected them according to the alphabet. They each start with a different letter, so that'll make it easier to name and keep track of them.

• A is for Arabic
• C is for Chinese
• D is for Dutch
• E is for English (which I don't count as one of the 12)
• F is for French
• G is for German
• H is for Hindi
• J is for Japanese
• M is for Maori
• N is for Norwegian
• P is for Polish
• R is for Russian
• and S will be for Spanish

I think that's a fair swag.