This trip had been interesting. Simultaneously moving at a blistering pace but with a languid posture. This night I decided to go out shopping for gifts to bring home to the lady. I’d visited my local friend down the street again, went for another beach walk, and for a while there my eyes were pretty dry and red (forgot the drops from the other night). It’s always interesting hiding among people, trying not to subject them to your particular idiosyncrasies and decisions. Whenever there’s something about your face you’d rather not make a spectacle of, take advantage of cultural differences and congregate among Japanese. They have a wonderful cultural custom of not looking you in the eye all the goddamn time. Duck through from the beach to get out of the sudden tropical drizzle, choose a hotel known in Waikiki to be patronized mainly by those from the far east, and you’ll move through it’s lobby like a spectre. Just don’t mess it up by getting cocky or obnoxious. Don’t do that— be responsible. “Be good to the game and the game will be good to you” is what Filmore Slim always says.
I needed eye drops, a pen, and a writing pad. This ABC store was tripping me out— I expected it to be hectic and insane but this new-age, liquidy acid jazz was playing and the alien, detached feeling made me think I was in Japan again. I was swimming through this place, walking through Jell-O, like I was in the world of Toejam and Earl, bouncing along through the aisles.
Just passing along a blog I often read. It is a goldmine for users of Ableton Live, one of the most, if not the most flexible DAW out there. I’ve used it for 3 or 4 years now and still haven’t scratched the surface of the things you can do, but this blog has really helped with the aforementioned surface scratching.
Plus, Anthony (the author) sees like a real cool guy and it comes through in his writing. There’s a sense of “I’m a guy who likes this, check this out,” a tone which really helps when I’m trying to absorb some of this info.
Check’eem out! Click here.
Just figured I’d pass this along— It’s a book on body language called What Every Body Is Saying
It really is amazing to read about the multitude of things people automatically do when under stress or feeling confident. The more you can become sensitive to these things, the more robust your communication skills will be, in any language and situation.
I don’t think I need to say how useful it is— I can see it being utilized in pretty much ANY situation. Click on the picture or the link to check it out!
Also, it wins the award for best header of a section in a book: “From Facebook to Disgracebook”
Hello all. I’ve been in Hawaii for the last week and wasn’t able to do that video update on my language mission. Expect it by the weekend! I’ll also be writing about my times wandering the streets of Waikiki.
I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who speaks a bunch of languages (polyglots, for those who want a term). My life goal is to be able to speak AT LEAST 3 languages other than my native language. I’ve been able to get a pretty good grasp on Spanish and I’ll continue working on it forever (for example, I’m going to see if I can read The Alchemist in Spanish…pshh wish me luck).
I’m also going to begin my mission to learn Brazilian Portuguese to fluency.
Here’s what fluency means to me:
- Be able to speak with a native for at least 30 seconds without messing up or getting lost
- Be able to watch a movie in Portuguese and be able to explain what happened to someone else in Portuguese.
- Be able to read a book in Portuguese and be able to understand it after a second read-through
I’m giving myself until May to get there which I think is a good amount of time since I already have some Spanish chops which will presumably help me. The other important goal here is not to mix up Spanish and Portuguese. I’ve been speaking Spanish for a while now so I don’t think it’ll be too much of a problem.
First stop on the mission: I’m going to learn the names of the parts of the body in the form of “This is my hand, this is my arm, this is my leg” etc. I’m going to give myself two days. In two days I’m going to do a video post in Portuguese (which will be very short since I won’t know too much). See you then!
Bom Dia!
Ya acabo de comer mi lunch. Yo estaba pensando…por que no hago unos posts en español? Tengo que practicar mas y además, si ustedes ven algo en que me equivoqué (gramática, vocabulario, o si hay algo que suena mas natural que lo que puse), me pueden ayudar.
Voy a tratar de hacer un punto de practicar español mas en todos lados de mi vida y empiezo aqui. Yo espero que ustedes que hablan español me pueden ayudar y quien sabe…tal vez yo ponere unos posts de video para que me pueden ayudar con mi accento.
Primera que nada, como se dice “posts” en español….no quiero sonar pocho…
P.s Estoy estudiando el español de Mexico…entonces si yo digo una palabra de España o algo asi, avisa me! Luego, yo quiero aprender mas accentos de varios países pero ahora, mejor concentrar en uno por uno!
Buen dia vatos y vatas
For the last year and a half I’ve been learning Spanish. I grew up around Spanish and took some in high school and although I would say I’ve had an advantage in that regard, I really only started learning it functionally a year and a half ago (and I could have worked a lot faster than I did). As far as my proficiency, I’d say by now I officially “speak Spanish” and can carry on a conversation pretty comfortably. I definitely have a lot more to learn, some of the more obscure tenses and vocabulary that will come through more use of the language, as well as making my delivery more smooth and less broken.
I used Rosetta Stone briefly and got about halfway through part 2 of the series but it quickly fell to the back burner once I started following Benny Lewis’ Language Hacking Guide on his site www.fluentin3months.com. Not to oversimplify his approach but basically, he says to just talk. Just use the language, even if you only know a couple words and use it every chance you get. I’m lucky because I have a Mexican girlfriend and although we’re more used to speaking English with each other, she’s been an invaluable resource. Speaking really is the most important thing you can do to learn a language and should be your first priority. Think about it, why would I read about pole vaulting and just expect to be able to pole vault via book knowledge alone. Imagine if I tried that with MMA…just read a couple books and got in the ring…to learn to fight you should probably practice, not read. Why should it be different with language? You want to learn to talk, you have to talk. The books (even the Language Hacking Guide) supplement this, not replace it.
Another extremely valuable resource to supplement speaking is movies. This is not a new idea— movies in your target language can help you hear it as it is more commonly spoken. I remember when I first started, my girlfriend told me I sounded like a radio announcer or some kind of narrator (i.e. like a square). My accent was good, she said, but I sounded like I had no personality (which brings me to another point: make sure the people you practice with are patient and understanding but also that they will correct you when you’re wrong and tell you if you sound like an idiot). I knew my square-bear accent was just because I’d been imitating the perfectly clear native speakers on Rosetta Stone. I started netflixing movies in Spanish (dear Netflix, your instant streaming Spanish-language collection is super weak) and found a couple that I really enjoyed. This is key— you must enjoy the movie enough to watch it a million times, even if it is to make fun of the movie.
Here’s the breakdown of what I did (feel free to adjust it to your learning speed). First, watch the movie a couple times with the English subtitles. Don’t memorize the subtitles but watch it enough times so that you know the plot and can get into the movie. After a while, leave the subtitles on for comfort but start trying to follow the target language, only looking down to the subtitles every now and then. After you’re relatively comfortable with the plot of the movie, as if you could watch it with the sound off and still get a basic idea of what’s going on, switch to subtitles in your target language.
Spend a lot of time watching this movie with the subtitles in your target language. Watch it a billion times. A billion trillion times. Watch it with your language buddies with whom you should be in regular contact and practicing with anyway. Watch it until you can pretty much say the lines along with the actors, even if you have to read along with the subtitles. Watch it until you say to yourself “Man, I don’t even need subtitles!” Turn the subtitles off. You should now be able to watch the movie and understand it without subtitles and for the most part, understand exactly what they are saying. Watch it again with your language buddies (if they want to watch the movie again for the trillionth time) so they can tell you what some of the idioms really mean, and clarify any cultural context or references, etc. Watch it until you know the lines, just like you know the lines to Toy Story or Cool Runnings (both movies I know by heart).
Now you can watch a movie in another language! That’s pretty cool in itself. Here’s what else happened in the meantime:
- Conversational Language: You now should not only have command of a lot of new conversational phrases and idioms, but you know the exact context in which they can be used. If you talk to yourself in your target language in your car and have a propensity for repeating movie lines like I do, you can practice these and sound extremely convincing after a while.
- Grammar: Along the way, you’ve undoubtedly learned new grammar, or at least better understood some of the stuff that’s been confusing you. I can’t count how many times I’ve said to myself “Ohhh ok, now I know when/how you would use that.” I’ve been able to correctly and confidently use grammar that I wouldn’t have even seen for a long time if I was studying the conventional way.
- Vocabulary: You’re listening to the same set of a few thousand words a billion times. Before this, you may have learned one word for “lunch” but it may not be the commonly used word, which they might conveniently use repeatedly throughout the movie.
- Image Association: You now have built in situational images to associate with your newly learned phrases, words, and grammar. It’s easier to know that barretta means crowbar if you immediately remember the scene in the movie where they’re trying to get someone out of a trunk and someone says Pasa me la barretta!. Also, what book or computer program has the word for crowbar anyway?
When you use all of this newly-learned ammunition in your next conversation, you will sound confident and more natural than if you’d spent all that time listening to some guy saying Me llamo Edgar, como esta usted? You’ve heard it as it would naturally be said, at a natural speed. You’ve had a chance to hear a more diverse set of voices saying the same things, and all the while it is reinforcing the basics of the language, the bread and butter phrases that are used the most. The stuff you learn by this method will probably be used more often than when you learned how to ask if there was an English-speaking hospital nearby.
The whole point of it is to be able to study a series of natural conversations at any speed you want, as many times as you need. Remember though, once you pick this stuff up, you have to go out and use it!! You’ll be so excited when you’re in your next conversation, and you nonchalantly throw in a line that you learned from the tragically hip protagonist in the movie you’ve got on repeat at home. No one has to know your clever retort was something you heard a guy in a white-on-white tux yell from his helicopter during the climax of a low-budget foreign heist film! Once you get a better grasp on the language, you can start taking these things apart and making your own sentences (::gasp::…actually speaking the language organically).
I hope this little tidbit helps you out if you are trying to learn a language. The first priority is speaking but a movie is a goldmine of resources to help you round out what you know.
