Half Four

The Irish expression of time is very confusing for people who speak Dutch. Already in my first days here, I noticed that when Irish say "half 4" they mean 4.30. In Dutch "half vier", the literal translation, means 3.30!
However, after 3 months in Ireland, I have started to use the expression in the same way and the Erasmus people in my house completely understand me. I guess I'm really taking over the culture in all its ways!

New word!

A new word which I have very consciensly learned is the verb "to indent". I heard it first in the tutorial Critical Practice and I wouldn't have known what it meant, if it weren't for the context. After hearing the word, I stored it in my memory. But my knowledge of it was only passive, because when I was writing an essay I tried to think of the term but I couldn't recall it.
Luckily, a few days later it was mentioned again in the lecture of Critical Practice. Because I knew there was a chance I'd forget it again, I really focussed on it this time. And as you can see, I have now gained active knowledge of the verb "to indent"!

Word Challenge

In my last post, I stated that gaming can have positive effects on one's vocabulary. A specific type of games who will definitely help a language learner, are word games. A crossword puzzle can be seen as a word game, but nowadays, many more animated games are at our disposal.

An example one one of those games is Word Challenge. This game can be added as an application on the popular networking site Facebook and is all about vocabulary. The player gets a set of 7 letters and is challenged to make as many words as possible with them as fast as possible. Words which you would have never expected to be English pop up and find the way to one's memory. After all, a player will need them again when the same set of letters appears ever again.

I must admit though, this kind of memory game is not the best way to build up a vocabulary. Sure, a huge amount of words passes by, but you cannot see them in their context and often don't even discover their meaning at all. So perhaps a good old fashioned crossword puzzle with only 15 words, accompanied by their explanation might do more for us.

Truce!

I was having dinner last night when my housemate Arthur entered the kitchen and called to his friend Holger: "I call truce!" Now, Arthur is from France and studies computer sciences, so his English vocabulary is not that extended. I wondered how he had picked up the word "truce".
But when I entered the living room, I quickly understood. The boys were playing a war game on their computer and were taking a break. Many might say that gaming is not good for young people, but it can add something to our vocabulary!

Reading / Writing

How does one learn English or any other language the best? By reading or by writing? I think both methods have there language learning qualities and disadvantages.

The great learning benefit of reading English, is that you do it a lot! The reading list of the literature department of the UL is quite impressive. I think, all in all, I will have read 13 books, 4 short stories and a whole collection of poems at the end of the semester. Moreover, everyday I spend hours on English websites, reading away! While reading, one gets really familiarized with how others use language. Especially expressions get internalized after a while. Soon, a language learner will feel confident enough to use these collocations themselves.
The disadvantage of learning by reading is that you do not use language yourself. When a word is unfamiliar, I don't feel the urge to look it up. Mostly, I can just read on without missing the zest of the story.

This is different for writing. A writer has to use vocabulary and think of synonyms to make a text more interesting. By doing this, new terms stick much more easily. Of course, the input of language is rather limited while writing. You use the collocations and grammatical structures you know and only sometimes need a synonym. Writing is also not something you do so quickly as reading. Sure, I have to write 10 essays this semester, but all together they do not even add up to "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters, a 500 page book.

It is quite obvious that, to learn a language, one should combine the development of reading and writing skills to reach the best result.

Not English 6

English is not the only language I have been learning in my life. In a little "series", I will reflect upon how I studied other languages.

Let's cast a look out into the future. I have not learned Spanish yet, but I plan to take up evening courses next semester. Only a year ago, Italian actually interested me more and I wanted to go on Erasmus in Pavia, Italy. Unfortunately, as a language student English-Dutch, I had to choose a country with a Germanic language. The Italian dream was popped there.

There are several reasons why Spanish has interested me more and more these last months. I suppose my holiday in Spain last year, definitely contributed to my fascination. In Madrid, I got to experience such a warm culture and society, that I want to explore more. I went there with two girlfriends, one of who knew a girl from Madrid and studies Spanish at University. When she was talking to the Spanish girl, I tried to understand their conversation. And actually, I succeeded quite well! With French and some Latin in the back of my mind, I could easily draw parallels between the vocabularies. At the end of my holiday, I think I must have been able to ask a Spanish person for the time or directions.

Moreover, recently, I have discovered Spanish cinema. Films like Lucia y el Sexo and Hable con Ella do not only display a beautiful country but also a beautiful language. Watching these films, I try to interpret the words before looking at the subtitles. I am very happy that in Belgium, films never get dubbed!

Furthermore, I think Spanish is favourable to Italian because it is truly a word language. It is even more widely spoken than English! In my life, I would definitely like to visit Latin America once and the knowledge of Spanish would definitely be convenient then.

I hope Spanish will end up in the list of languages I have successfully learned. Only the future can tell!

Not English 5

English is not the only language I have been learning in my life. In a little "series", I will reflect upon how I studied other languages.

German is one of the national languages of Belgium, so obviously it is taught in secondary school. I didn't consider German to be a very appealing language, but I did look forward to learning something new. Unfortunately, the learning method of our teacher was not good, I think. We skipped the basic vocabulary, because German is similar to Dutch. So now I know that a "Radler" is a half-beer half-lemonade drink, but I do not know how to say "building" in German.

The language is also known and dreaded for its complicated inflected grammar. I remembered some aspects from my Latin classes, but the teacher left us in the dark about many grammatical aspects. For the exam, we could just use an inflection chart. After two years of German, my pronunciation had not advanced one bit and I wouldn't dare to use it in public.

It was really a pity and I even thought about taking German back up again in University, but eventually I chose English-Dutch and I haven't regretted it so far.

Not English 4

English is not the only language I have been learning in my life. In a little "series", I will reflect upon how I studied other languages.

Considering my failure in Latin, it might be surprising that I did take on Greek in the second year of secondary school. Actually, I only continued Latin after the first year in order to be able to learn the language of Socrates and Plato. I suppose this fascination stemmed from my love for Greek mythology and strange symbols.

I really enjoyed studying the Greek alphabet, but unfortunately, the vocabulary already proved to be just too hard. I did try to master it, harder than I had ever tried for Latin, but it didn't go anywhere. As in the Latin courses, the wordlists were extensive and we did not really use any exciting reading material in class. The only thing I excelled at was the Classic Culture part of the course, which did not really matter that much. The half year when I did Latin-Greek was definitely the most depressing period of my academic career.

However, I am glad that at least I tried. And strange enough, there is one aspect of the language I still remember completely and that's the alphabet, from alpha to omega.

Not English 3

English is not the only language I have been learning in my life. In a little "series", I will reflect upon how I studied other languages.

Not all my attempts to learn a language have been successful. When, at age 11, I left primary school and I had to make a decision what to do in secondary school, my teachers recommended Latin. No one really asked me. It was just what you were supposed to do if your grades were high enough.

At the beginning I was quite enthousiastic, but this changed when I had to start learning vocabulary. When I learned French, our vocabulary was expanded through different themed chapters with texts and a few new words. In our Latin textbook, however, we had to learn entire lists of words. And each word has three forms, so actually it was even more demanding. I tried to memorize them by linking the words to French words I knew or by inventing links, but we had a test at the beginning of each class and I just could not put that much effort in it.

When Latin grammar also proved to be a drag and I could not see the use in learning an extinct language, I quickly bailed. In the middle of my second year, I switched Latin-Greek for Maths and Economics. However, I still remember some of those very first Latin words and sometimes, because of this, I can retrace the origins of a Romanic words. So I suppose the study did help me in some aspect.

Not English 2

English is not the only language I have been learning in my life. In a little "series", I will reflect upon how I studied other languages.




When I was about 9 years old, I learned my first words of French. Each Wednesday, in the afternoon, I went to a language class for children. We didn't learn much more than words, nut it did give me an introduction. Also, by listening to French music, it made me appreciate te language. By going on a holiday there almost every year, I also started to love the country ants its culture.
In the fifth year of primary school, we started to learn French in school. In the first two years, we mainly built up our vocabulary. But from the secondary school on, grammar came into play. I don't like grammar in general and French grammar is particularly tricky. However, I had a feeling for it. This had probably to do with the language camps I followed in summer. From the second year of secondary school on, I went to France to speak nothing but French for two weeks. The language camps offered French classes, but also workshops and daytrips. I think my French really benefitted from them.
Since the end of secondary school, I haven't learned French any more and I feel that my knowledge of it is decaying. My accent is still quite natural and I could explain or ask something in French, but I couldn't write a decent text without mistakes. Perhaps I should watch some more French films in order to conserve the beautiful language.