Learning random languages - not so random after all / Aprender idiomas al azar
Hace 10 meses que no escribí una entrada por aquí. ¡Increíble! ¿Qué estaba haciendo? Estaba muy, muy ocupada con mi trabajo, pero al mismo tiempo participé a algunos desafíos, por ejemplo Language Diary Challenge, 90 Days with Drops, My Language Challenge y el Language Jam. Ya describí mi experiencia con aprender griego moderno con el Language Jam (https://lingotopia.blogspot.com/2018/09/jamming-in-greek.html), pero hoy quiero contaros de los tres siguentes veces que participé a este desafío. Además quiero reflexionar sobre la pregunta, si aprender un idioma al azar tiene sentido.
Oh my gosh, it's been 10 months already since my last entry here. What I've been up to? I've been very busy at work but at the same time I also participated in several language challenges like the Language Diary Challenge, 90 Days with Drops, My Language Challenge and the Language Jam. I already wrote about my experience with learning Modern Greek with the Language Jam (https://lingotopia.blogspot.com/2018/09/jamming-in-greek.html) but today I'd like to tell you about the three following rounds I participated in this challenge.
Hausa
Aprendí algo sobre Hausa durante el Language Jam de octubre 2018. No puedo decir que "aprendí Hausa", debido a que no tuve mucho tiempo ese fin de semana y solo aprendí muy básica grammatica. Como tuve un poquito de conocimientos de lenguas semíticas como árabe y amhárico, hausa no fue la primera lengua afroasiática para mi, sino la primera lengua chádica. Tiene más o menos 44 millones de hablantes nativos, pero como es una lingua franca en la África Occidental el cantidad total de hablantes de hausa es aproximadamente 63 a 85 millones personas. Hausa es un de idiomas oficial de Nigeria aparte de Inglés, Yoruba y Igbo. Es hablado en otros países también, por ejemplo en Benin, Burkina Faso y Ghana.I learnt something about Hausa during the Language Jam in October 2018. I can't say that I actually "learnt Hausa" because I didn't have time that weekend and only learnt some very basic grammar. it. As I have some basic knowledge of semitic languages like Arabic and Amharic, it isn't the first Afroasiatic language for me but it's the first Chadic language I ever looked into. It has around 44 million native speakers and as it has lingua franca status in West Africa, the total number of Hausa speakers is around 63 and 85 million speakers. It’s one of the official languages in Nigeria next to English, Yoruba and Igbo but it’s also spoken in other countries, e.g. Benin, Burkina Faso and Ghana.
Es interesante que hay muchos préstamos de árabe en hausa. Es posible escribir hausa con las caracteres árabes, el alfabeto árabe por hausa se llama ajami, pero hoy en día boko, el alfabeto romano por hausa, es más común. Sin embargo la influencia de árabe es obvio:
Interestingly, there are quite a few Arabic loanwords and expressions in Hausa. It’s possible to write Hausa with Arabic letters, the Arabic alphabet for Hausa is called ajami, but nowadays it’s more common to use boko, an alphabet based on Roman letters. But still the Arabic influence is obvious:
Hausa
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Arabic
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Arabic (transliteration)
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English
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Spanish
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Litini
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Monday
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lunes
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Talata
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Tuesday
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martes
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Laraba
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Wednesday
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miercoles
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Alhamis
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Thursday
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jueves
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Jumma’a
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Friday
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viernes
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Asaba
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السبت
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Saturday
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sábado
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Lahadi
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الأحد
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Sunday
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domingo
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He encontrado recursos interesantes como el libro bilinguë alemán/hausa "¿Soy pequeña?".
I found interesting resources like the German/Hausa bilingual book "Am I little?"
¿Y ahora? What now?
En julio hice una presentación para niños sobre la diversidad de idiomas y entre otras cosas conté de lenguas joisanas y bantués que usan chasquidos o "clics", por ejemplo el xhosa. Practicar los clics con los niños fue muy divertido. En septiembre voy a dar una presentación sobre los idiomas africanos y por eso voy a investigar más sobre esos idiomas. Me interesan especialmente el suajili, el lingala, el wolof, el tamazight y el oromo. Además, como tenemos una cooperación con dos universidades en Benín, me interesa a los idiomas de Benín, por ejemplo las lenguas gbe, el fon y el yoruba. Por eso, aprender hausa durante el Language Jam solo fue un de primeros pasos para descubrir los idiomas africanos.
In July I did a presentation for children about the diversity of languages and among other things I also talked about Khoisan and Bantu languages that use clics, e.g. Xhosa. It was great fun to practice the clics with the kids. In September I will hold a presentation about African languages during an African cultural festival. That's why I'm going to do more research on African languages, I'm especially interested in Swahili, Lingala, Wolof, Tamazight and Oromo. Also, we have a cooperation with two universities in Benin and therefore I'm interested in the languages of Benin, for instance the Gbe languages, Fon and Yoruba. Thus, studying Hausa for the Language Jam was only my first step in to exploring the African languages.
Mongolian
En febrero 2019 participé a dos desafíos. El Instagram Language Challenge que tuvo el objetivo de investigar idiomas indígenas en este febrero y el Language Jam. Comparto dos de mis entradas por el Instagram Language Challenge por aquí:
In February 2019 I participated in two language challenge. The Instagram Language Challenge, that had the objective to learn something about indigenous languages in this February and the Language Jam. Here I share two of my posts for the Instagram Language Challenge:
03.02.2019 Kalmyk
I’m currently researching heritage language schools in Germany and yesterday I dreamt that I found a Kalmyk language school. I didn’t read anything about Kalmyk before so, I asked the teacher in my dream if Russian and Kalmyk were mutually intelligible but I woke up before he replied. So, this morning I looked up the language first thing in the morning to fight my ignorance. As part of the Instagram Language Challenge #IGLC by @lindsaydoeslanguages I’m summing up some of my findings here:
- Kalmyk is a variant of the Oirat language which belongs to the Mongolic language family (thus not mutually intelligible with Russian) and is spoken mainly in Kalmykia, an autonomous republic in the South of the European part of Russia, Kazakhstan and in diasporas in France and the US.
- Oirat languages are also spoken in parts of Mongolia, China and Kyrgyzstan.
- Kalmyk is endangered with around 80,500 native speakers according to a Russian census.
- Kalmyk is written in an adapted Cyrillic script since 1924 but has been written in the Clear Script (Todo Bichig) that was developed based on the Mongolian Script by the Oirat Buddhist monk Zaya Pandita in the 17th century. The script is still used by Oirat speakers in Xinjiang, China. - Kalmykia is the only European region where Buddhism is the most practised religion. Chess is the national sport.
- The language of the Ewok in The Return of the Jedi was based on Kalmyk.
- The Kalmyk community in New Jersey has teamed up with the Enduring Voices Project in order to promote Kalmyk and raise awareness for it.
8.02.2019 Buryat
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| Frozen Lake Baikal by Alexey Trofimov (Source: http://en.trofimov-photo.com/baikal) |
- Buryat is a Central Mongolic language like Mongolian and Kalmyk.
- It has around 265,000 native speakers in Russia and 65,000 in China.
- The script changed several times. It was written in Classical Mongol, in a script called Vagindra, in Roman letters and since 1936 it’s written in an adapted Cyrillic alphabet.
- Vagindra was a script developed by the Buryat Agvan Dorzhiev in 1906 and it was an alphabet based on Classical Mongol. But only ten books were published in this script and it was abandoned after 1910.
- During Soviet times, it was forbidden to speak Buryat at schools and now many children don’t speak Buryat anymore. Only a few schools are teaching Buryat now.
- The singer Midigma Dorzhieva helps to preserve the Buryat language by making rock music with it: https://youtu.be/H4ae_hX_Hys.
Así que, después de haber investigado dos idiomas mongólicas centrales, aprendí el idioma mongol por el Language Jam. En la universidad tomé algunos cursos de estudios mongólicos, por ejemplo un curso sobre la "Historia secreta de los mongoles". Como estudié el chino pero no el mongol, leí la edición china, y en otro curso hice una presentación sobre este libro. Siempre me ha encantado el canto de garganta mongol y en mis clases de literatura intercultural siempre presento a Galsan Tschinag, un escritor mongol de la minoría tuvana, que escribe sus libros en alemán: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galsan_Tschinag. El mongol ha estado en mi lista de deseos por años. Ya era hora de empezar a estudiarlo. Estoy seguro de que escribiré más artículos sobre mongol en el futuro, así que compartiré este artículo de Instagram aquí por ahora:
So, after looking into two Central Mongolic languages, I did Mongolian for the Language Jam. I've been fascinated by the Mongolian culture for a long time already. At university I took some courses Mongolic Studies courses, for instance a course about the "The Secret History of Mongols". Since I studied Chinese but not Mongolian, I read the Chinese edition, and in another course I held a presentation about this book. I always loved Mongolian throat singing and in my classes about intercultural literature I always introduce Galsan Tschinag, a Mongolian writer of the Tuvan minority, who writes his books in German: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galsan_Tschinag. Mongolian has been on my wish list for ages. It was about time to start studying it. I'm sure that I'll write more posts about Mongolian in the future, so I'll just share this one Instagram post here for now:
15.02.2019 Mongolian
So, I just wanted to install the Mongolian script on my phone. Turns out my phone doesn’t provide that and I’ll have to use the Russian keyboard. In Mongolia the Cyrillic script is used, while in Inner Mongolia the traditional Mongolian script is used. During the langjam I’ll focus on resources using the Cyrillic script though. Mongolian has two additional letters that the Russian keyboard doesn’t offer: Үү [u] and Өө [ö,o]. Үү is not to be mixed up with Уу [ʊ ] which also is part of the Mongolian Cyrillic script. Wikipedia explains: “Үү and Өө are sometimes also written as the Ukrainian letters Її (or Vv) and Єє respectively, when using Russian software or keyboards that do not support them.” Hm, I think I’ll use the Russian keyboard and just copy and paste the missing letters. Let’s start.Сайн байна уу? Би герман хүн. Би багш. Би бас оюутан. Би монгол хэл сурна.
(How are you? I’m a teacher. I’m also a student. I study Mongolian.) I’m using this resource:
https://media.turuz.com/users/bey-2016-1/0642-Modern_Mongolian-A_Course_Book_John_Gaunt_And_L-Bayarmandakh.pdf
¿Y ahora? What now?
Como estoy investigando sobre las escuelas de idiomas de herencia en Alemania, estoy planeando visitar una escuela de idiomas mongol junto con una estudiante mongola y luego decidir cómo incluirla en mi investigación. Además, me encantaría aprender más sobre la escritura tradicional mongola.
As I'm doing research on heritage language schools in Germany, I'm planning to visit a Mongolian language school together with a Mongolian student of mine and then decide how I include it in my research. Furthermore, I'd love to learn more about the traditional Mongolian script.
Kurmanji
De hecho, mi idioma en el Language Jam en julio 2019 fue feroés, pero no me apasioné por él. Por eso elegí la alternativa kurmanji. Fue amor a primera vista. La música kurda atrae a mi corazón. Como todavía aprendí un poco de árabe y persa, y me interesa a turco, las regiones en los que viven los kurdos y las relaciones entre todos los idiomas me fascinan. Hay una gran diáspora kurda en Alemania. Por eso espero que pueda conectar con la comunidad kurda en Alemania y aprender más sobre su cultura y idioma. He empezado escribir un blog separado sobre mi aprendizaje de kurmanji: https://ezkurdihindibim.blogspot.com.Actually, Faroese turned out to be my challenge language for the Language Jam in July 2019, but as I didn't feel any passion for it, I chose the "white card", i,e, the alternative Kurmanji. It was love at first sight. Kurdish music speaks directly to my heart. As I already studied a bit of Arabic and Persian and am interested in Turkish, I'm fascinated by the regions where the Kurdish people live and the connections between all those languages. There is a big Kurdish diaspora in Germany, so I hope to connect with the Kurdish community here and learn about their culture and language. I started writing a separate blog about learning Kurmanji: https://ezkurdihindibim.blogspot.com.
03.08.2019
After the #langjam I went visiting my parents and let them guess my newest language. I said something in Kurmanji. My mom: “An Iranian language?” My dad: “Sorani?” And then my dad showed me the German-Sorani dictionary he got this year for his birthday. My parents never disappoint. There are no random languages for them. My dad almost always has a dictionary or a textbook for this language or some story to tell. I think only when I did Odia he didn’t have a book at hand. I enjoyed looking through the dictionary and comparing Kurmanji and Sorani. Some words were the same: dil (heart). Some had a phonetic shift: av (water, Kurmanji), aw (Sorani), ab (Persian). Some were different: ez (I, Kurmanji) and min (Sorani) [man in Persian]. In Kurmanji min is not used in the nominative but only in the oblique case. It’s so fascinating. I should study Kurmanji, Sorani and Persian together. So many languages, so little time.
¿Tiene sentido aprender idiomas seleccionados al azar por un fin de semana?Does it make sense to learn randomly selected languages for a weekend?
¡Creo que sí! Por lo menos en mi caso, no hay idiomas al azar. Siempre puedo encontrar una conexión con el idioma e incluso si es un idioma que no ha estado en mi lista de deseos hasta ahora, puedo tener un vistazo fascinante de una cultura. Lo que más me gusta es conocer música de diferentes culturas e investigar las conexiones entre varios idiomas. Siempre hay algo con lo que puedo identificarme. Además, hacer un idioma al azar durante un fin de semana es sólo el primer paso para explorar un idioma y una cultura. Por supuesto, no puedo aprender un idioma a nivel conversacional en un fin de semana y no siempre me apego tanto a un idioma que inmediatamente sigo estudiándolo como en el caso del griego moderno y el kurmanji. Pero como se puede ver en los ejemplos de Hausa y Mongol, nunca dejo los idiomas por completo, sino que continúo explorándolos o trabajando a mi propio ritmo. Vosotros podríais preguntarme "¿Por qué sigues añadiendo idiomas? ¡Nunca perfeccionarás a ninguno de ellos!" Bueno, la perfección no es mi objetivo. No soy perfecto en mi lengua materna, el alemán. No soy perfecto en inglés o español. Pero soy lo suficientemente buena para escribir este pequeño blog. Me interesan mucho la lingüística, los sistemas de escritura y las culturas. Todo lo que aprendo sobre una lengua o cultura amplía mi horizonte y me permite conectarme con otras personas. A menudo el Language Jam ha sido justo el signo que estoy buscando para empujarme a empezar a estudiar un idioma determinado. Ya estoy deseando que llegue el próximo Language Jam. Si también queréis probarlo, añadid esta página a vos favoritos: http://languagejam.net/.I think so! At least in my case, there aren't random languages. I can always find a connection to the language and even if it's a language that hasn't been on my wish list so far, I can get a fascinating glimpse into a culture. What I enjoy the most is to get to know music from different cultures and investigate the connections between various languages. There's always something I can relate to. Also, doing a random language for a weekend is just a first step into exploring a language and culture. Of course, I can't learn a language to a conversational level in a weekend and not always do I get so attached to a language that I immediately continue studying it like in the case of Modern Greek and Kurmanji. But as you can see from the examples of Hausa and Mongolian, I never completely drop languages but continue exploring them or working them at my own pace. You might ask "Why do you keep adding languages? You'll never perfect any of them!" Well, perfection isn't my goal. I'm not perfect in my own native tongue German. I'm not perfect in English or Spanish. But I'm good enough to write this little blog. I'm very much interested in linguistics, writing systems and cultures. Everything I learn about a language or culture broadens my horizon and lets me connect with other people. Often the Language Jam has been just the sign I'm looking for to push me to start studying a certain language. I'm already looking forward to the next Language Jam. If you also want to give it a try, bookmark this page: http://languagejam.net/.
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