Lingotopia

Photo by  Baher Khairy  on  Unsplash  (Graffiti in Cairo) So, yesterday (16.06.2018) was the second day of the World Cup 2018. The matches were Egypt vs. Uruguay (0:1), Morocco vs. Iran (0:1) and Portugal vs. Spain (2:3). Egypt (Arabic) vs. Uruguay (Spanish)  Of all the countries participating in the World Cup I know the least about Uruguay. The only things that come to my mind are Montevideo, Luis Suarez and José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica. Mujica has a video column on DW world: Conciencia Sur . He speaks slowly and there are Spanish subtitles, so it's perfect for learners. I know a little bit more about Egypt but of course, the usual pictures come first to my mind: pyramides, the sphinx, hieroglyphes and the pharaohs. Just clichés but not much about life in modern Egypt (apart from political developments in recent years of course).  I tried to find something to connect Egypt and Uruguay and stumbled upon tango. Tango originat...

Today, the 14th of June 2018 marks the start of the Soccer World Cup in Russia. I'm looking forward to exciting matches, I love learning languages, I'm interested in other cultures and I enjoy taking part in challenges. So, why not combine all of that and take up a World Cup challenge? Starting from today I want to post every day a couple of sentences in the languages of the participating countries, some fun facts about them and of course links to music and resources in those languages. I know it's a tad crazy but I won't write whole essays but keep the blog posts rather short. And a lot of countries share the same official languages so I can group them together. My knowledge in the following languages goes from tiny little bit (Serbian), basic (Arabic, Portuguese) over intermediate (French, Spanish) to advanced (English). Spanish : Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain, Panama, Peru, Uruguay. Arabic : Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia French : B...

Sometimes people ask me how I manage to find so much time for language learning. Honestly, I don't. I have a job and a family, am always busy and always tired. So, it's a constant struggle to make some time for language learning, especially because  I'm trying to learn several languages at the same time. But how to do that, if one has no time whatsoever? I can't give a definite answer to this because I'm still looking for an answer myself but I'd like to share some of my ideas and steps for getting more structure in my language learning. 1. Get your priorities straight There are so many things I'd like to learn but as my time budget is limited, I have to think about what's really important for me, right here and right now. So, the languages, I really want to make progress are Spanish, Arabic and Russian. I'm intermediate in Spanish and this is my focus language. I take classes, do a language exchange, record videos of me speaking Spanish, corre...

This is a follow-up to my previous post  Learning Shanghainese like a Child , in which I described how I learnt Shanghainese as an adult like a child. In this post, I'll elaborate more on why we don't learn languages like children as adults but at the same time on how we can adapt the language learning tricks of kids to our needs. Many adult language learners dream of learning a language like a child again. It seems so effortless. Children seem to pick up languages quickly, learn to speak accent-free and just happily chat away. But in fact, language learning means a lot of effort for children. We just don't remember it. It takes a year until kids can utter the first words. Another year until they talk in simple sentences. By the age of four, they already have impressive linguistic skills but in general, can't read or write, still have pronunciation problems, and still make many grammar mistakes. When they enter school, they start to learn about grammar, fin...

Often language learners hope they could learn a language like a child again. It seems so effortless and effective. Even though I don't agree with this view, and say that learning a language like a child is neither effortless nor effective for an adult, I, actually, did learn a language like a child as an adult: Shanghainese ( Wikipedia article on Shanghainese ). In this post, I'd like to introduce Shanghainese and my relationship with it and in the next post, I'll discuss my take on "Learning a language like a child". Get a taste of how Shanghainese sounds on Wikitongues, a great site, where you can find recordings of an abundance of languages:  Ivy speaking Shanghainese .  I started to learn Shanghainese at the age of 31 when I moved to Shanghai for the second time. I stayed for five years and learnt the language in an immersive environment, my husband's Shanghainese speaking family, together with my kids. Ok, I cheated a bit. Before the birth of our...

The first time I learnt something about sign language was when I visited a dormitory for deaf youngsters who pursued a vocational training in Munich. The director of the dorm explained that German Sign Language (GSL, Deutsche Gebärdensprache) was a language completely independent of spoken German. I learnt that GSL had its own complex grammar and even dialects. After the tour through the dorm, the visitors could have drinks in the dorms café and suddenly I felt mute. How was I supposed to communicate that I wanted a coke? I didn't know any sign language! It was an interesting experience and since that time I was fascinated by sign language and by Deaf culture . Yes, Deaf people have their own culture. A world that is unfamiliar to hearing people. But I love it that the Deaf community embraces their own culture rather than seeing themselves as disabled. "Able-bodied" or "disabled" are just terms defined by society, but not necessarily how people feel themsel...

This week I finally started my new job as a lecturer in a masters studies program called "Germanistik und Interkulturalität/Multilingualität " ("German Studies and Interculturalism/Multilingualism"). As you may figure, this seems to be just the right thing for me and I'm excited to go back to teaching again. Interestingly, a new colleague asked me, if I was from New Zealand. It seemed that I looked a bit Maori to her. Not long ago, I talked to another italki user and told him, that I was mixed-race to which he replied that he always thought of me being American Indian. This prompted me to conduct a little experiment on stereotypes and I posted this discussion on italki:  https://www.italki.com/discussion/165794 . If you're not an italki user, you can't read the whole discussion, so I'm going to summarize it. My initial post was:  I had some discussions with other users that it seems to be difficult to guess my ethnicity and my age from...