My first few days in Cairo.

So I am finally here. My degree is over, and I am currently sitting amidst the whirling mass of Egyptians that people call Cairo. My first impressions were that Cairo isn't nearly as hot as people were making it out to be. I was told countless times not to visit Cairo in the summer because it's so hot you can't function, especially if you're white. But the heat is actually quite manageable, and I have done a lot of walking around the city with no trouble at all (except the time I got lost down some side streets and was stopped by a traffic jam of goats).

But enough about that, this is a language blog.

Egyptians speak quickly. That is a problem for me. I have to really concentrate to work out what people are saying, and so when they speak at half the speed of light I really only have the option of nodding and agreeing regardless of what they are saying. BUT! I have been able to understand a lot of what taxi drivers etc have been saying. I had a short conversation with some kids who stopped me to practice their English but I only spoke Arabic to them, which was nice because I understood everything they were saying.

I have been keeping count of every random stranger on the street that I have talked to, who didn't end up trying to sell me something. The count stands at two people, in three days.

Sorry if this post seems a bit muddled and poorly written, but I need to go out to buy a phone and I am very aware that places close for prayers around 12. Or maybe that is just on Fridays. I really don't know.

I have begun to keep a new word dictionary. It's a little notepad, and I write down every word I don't understand and look it up later. I went to watch football yesterday, so the words in there at the moment include 'Foul!', 'Off-side', and 'Penalty!'

I have had a lot of compliments about my Arabic, which is nice considering that before arriving in Cairo I had only managed to talk to three Arabic speakers. Can't wait for my Arabic classes to start tomorrow.

Alternative places to learn languages.

For some reason I used to be very interested by minority languages in other countries. It interested me that there were these little enclaves and pockets of culture hidden away within otherwise relatively homogenous societies.

The idea of learning Italian in Poland, or Hebrew in Brazil, was incredibly interesting to me for some reason. Anyway, here is a list of some alternative places where you can learn an interesting language.

Italian in Toronto.


Italian is the 3rd most spoken language in the largest city in Canada, with over 160,000 L1 speakers. Many of these Italian speakers reside in Torontos' Little Italy and Corso Italia districts. Canada even has its own Italian language channel, based in Toronto, called Telelatino.

Kurdish in Istanbul.


There are 2-3 million ethnic Kurds living in Istanbul, more than any other city in the world. This is mainly due to the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, and the push for an autonomous Kurdish state within Turkey and Iraq. In 2006 the Turkish government allowed the broadcasting of shows in the Kurdish language, as long as they weren't aimed at children or the teaching of the language. With a change of heart in 2009, a state-controlled Kurdish language TV channel was started. If you leave Istanbul and start heading towards cities such as Diyarbakir, then you will see signs in both Turkish and Kurdish, due to the large Kurdish populations.

Japanese in Sao Paulo.


Want to learn Japanese but Japan is too expensive? There are apparently some 1.5 million Japanese speakers in Brazil, and many of them reside in the city of Sao Paulo. If you venture in the Liberdade district then you will find it a bastion of Japanese speakers, with the McDonalds sign famously being written in Japanese. The Japanese language newspaper 'Sao Paulo Shinbun' has been in circulation in Sao Paulo since 1946.

Arabic in Paris.


While it is hard to get exact numbers, it is well known that many Arabs and North Africans have made their way to cities in France, mainly Paris. Along with them came their particular dialects of Arabic. Most are from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Indonesian in Amsterdam.


Dutch-Indonesians make up the largest minority ethnic group in the Netherlands, with estimates reaching 2 million. There is a large population of Indonesians living in the east of Amsterdam, almost certainly due to the historical proliferation of the Dutch East India Trading company. They are credited with being the ethnic minority with the lowest crime rate in the Netherlands.

The similarities between Dutch and Indonesian are hard to miss, with some 10,000 Dutch loanwords in the Indonesian language!

Urdu in London.


London is one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world, and one of the few places you could find a native speaker of almost any language still spoken today. So the fact I chose Urdu is fairly arbitrary. The top 10 immigrant languages spoken in London are (in descending order of popularity) Polish, Bengali, Gujarati, French, Urdu, Portuguese, Turkish, Spanish, Arabic and Tamil. Take your pick.

It is also worth mentioning that with 38,000+ native Iranians living in London, it wouldn't be hard to find a Farsi teacher either.

Arabic Update.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do a lot of Arabic in the last few weeks because I have been busy with other things.

But I have noticed small improvements. I have reached the end of my Arabic book, meaning that I have finished all of the Arabic books I own. I also noticed that Arabic videos I used to have great difficulty understanding, are now much easier (or even effortless) to understand. Which is a huge plus for me because I have been super worried about my listening ability.

I am going to start using the internet to find more complex grammar rules and more abstract vocab. 
I noticed that some of my vocab is dropping out of my brain due to lack of usage. The other day I even forgot the word for 'chicken'. Hopefully my vocab will get reinforced once I am in Cairo.

A small side project that I have been working on is that I have been spending about 45 minutes to an hour every day for the last few days learning to read Chinese characters, with the long term goal of being able to read a book in Chinese.

I tried to learn to read Chinese about a year ago, and since I am a visual learner I could easily memorise 100 characters a day. But now I am having to put in a lot of effort to achieve the same results. If I really concentrate then I can still remember 100 new characters in a little over an hour. But I normally do it on my phone while watching TV, and stop early after about 75 character.

As for my impending move to Cairo, it depends on a lot of things. As it stands, the ETA for my departure is the 10th of June, but this isn't written in stone. I have to wait for my exam results to make sure I don't have any retakes, and then have to book the Arabic course, accommodation and flights Excited, but impatient to get my results and hopefully the green flag to leave for Cairo. 

Reasons to learn Latin.

Why would someone want to learn Latin?

Firstly, its a dead language. As in, no-one grows up learning it as their first language anymore.

Secondly, its pretty difficult. Latin it not an easy language that you can pick up casually over a weekend.

Why bother spending a significant amount of time learning a language that no-one speaks?

So in this post I am going to try to convince you that it would be a good idea for you to learn Latin.

Boring reasons to learn Latin.

- Learning Latin makes you smarter - Sounds like a joke, but is absolutely true. Schools in England used to ONLY teach Latin. You would go to school and have Latin lessons all day, and then you would pick up all of the other subjects (English, Biology, Geography) in your spare time. And surprisingly the educational system didn't suffer for it. In fact, England prospered and led the world in technological achievements.



The reasons for this are many and confusing. Basically, Latin is like Sudoku on crack for your brain. It helps with mental acuity, helps you spell and write better. And studies have consistently found that if you take two groups of students, teach one of them Latin all day but let them pick up the other subjects in the evenings and on weekends, and teach the other group about the other subjects but not teach them any Latin. Then the students who were only taught Latin will do better in every subject, even though they had to pick them up in their spare time. Crazy or what!

- Helps you understand Romantic languages - What did the Romans ever do for us? A whole bunch of languages are descended from Latin. They are called the Romantic languages, because 'Romantic' comes from the Latin word 'Romanicus', which means 'Roman-made' or 'Roman style'. Basically these are languages the Romans can take a bit of credit for. So you can see where certain things within those languages came from.

For example, the word 'And'.

Latin - et
French - et
Italian - e
Portuguese - e

So you can see how they are similar, although the similarities run a bit deeper than that. But, I will leave that for you to discover on your own.



- Bragging rights - I am only including this one because it appears on almost every 'Why Latin is awesome' list on the internet. You can brag to your friends about your ability to read, write and if you really want to, speak Latin. If that's something you think will impress people, then by all means learn Latin for this reason. I bet you're a really cool person.

Actual reasons to learn Latin.

The reasons above are logical reasons as to why a person would learn Latin, but they are not the real reasons people learn it. Or at least, they are not the reasons I find to be most compelling. Below are the reasons I personally think people should learn Latin.

- Latin sounds amazing - I am always drawn by the sounds of a language. I want it to sound good before I will even think about beginning to study it. Latin doesn't really have a spoken sound, since it's a dead language and people disagree on how you should pronounce it. In fact if you learn Latin in classroom today, you will be taught four different ways of pronouncing it (English Latin, Church Latin, Restored Classical Pronunciation, Incorrect Latin). Those aren't actually the names of the pronunciation types (except for Restored Classical Pronunciation), but I don't actually know the names of them. And it doesn't really matter for now.

Latin doesn't have a definite sound, so I can't inspire you to learn it with an epic monologue. Or can I?

See? Latin sounds awesome. Like nothing else really. Almost like an Arabic Italian.

- The literature - Latin literature is one of the largest in the world. At its height there were 85 million Latin speakers in the world! You can read things that were written before the time of Jesus in their original language. You can read people like Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Nero, Seneca, Juvenal, Francis Bacon, etc etc. The list goes on. And, if you can find some works that have never been translated into English, then you can be the very first person on earth to do so!

 

 - It's fun and challenging - If learning and studying languages is your thing, then Latin is a good place to go. The resources are plentiful, it's difficult, but not so difficult that you will be put off, the words are often familiar, and the rewards are huge. You can be (probably) the only person you know to be able to speak Latin, you can read stuff in their intended forms, you have enough untranslated material to last you a lifetime.

- Latin speakers get all the ladies - Ok, so maybe picking up girls in Latin won't work out so well (unless you invent a time machine). Although Augustus was pretty prolific with the concubines, so maybe there is hope yet. 

- You can become the Pope - If you are like me and your aspirations include one day becoming Pope, then you will probably want to learn Latin. There are many unofficial requirements that a Pope candidate has to tick before they can be considered. Being a certain age, being a man etc. And a mastery of  English, Italian and Latin is another.

How to stay motivated.

One of the most common problems for language learners is having to stay motivated for a long period of time.

I have never had this problem. I have always had the motivation to study a language for a long period of time. So I will share how I stay motivated, and hopefully you can take something away from this that helps your own language learning.

1 - Progress occurs incrementally. Think of learning a language like going to the gym. You won't notice a difference between days, but if you work hard every day then you will see improvements over weeks and months. Learning a language is the gradual acquisition of grammar and vocabulary, so to expect it to arrive quickly at your door like some sort of pre-packaged set is to expect too much of your brain.

2 - Don't have a schedule. I know that lots of language learners like to have a schedule. They do an hour of German a day, or three hours of Somali on the weekends etc. I don't think this is a good idea. Sure, it might sustain your progress and quantify your efforts, which is motivational for some people. But soon it becomes a chore. You lag behind one week, and then you feel compelled to catch up by working twice as hard, and then you start to dislike it. And, if you're not enjoying learning the language then what's the point?

3 - Remember why you are learning the language. Peoples reasons for learning a language vary greatly. From Jewish students learning Hebrew, international businessmen learning Mandarin, anime fans learns Japanese, history buffs learning German or Greek, Oxford students learning Latin, conservation workers learning Thai or Burmese, etc etc. The list goes on for as long as you can be bothered to read it.

Keep your reasons always present in your mind. Think forward to the level you want to be at, and concentrate on it. Realise that for as long as you put the effort in you are on the highway to that level of fluency. If you put in the time, concentration and effort, there is no way on this earth that you won't be fluent after enough time.


4 - Watch videos of people speaking your target language. One big thing that motivates me is seeing people speaking Egyptian Arabic. When I see a native, or someone who has learnt the language speaking with real ability it makes me go 'Wow. I want to be like that.' And I almost always immediately go and pick up my Arabic book to do some studying.

 

I have watched this video of Timothy Doner speaking Egyptian Arabic an unhealthy quantity of times for motivation. 

In conclusion, language learning is a marathon not a sprint. You won't see change immediately, and that can be disheartening. But you just need to realise that if you keep going then you will keep improving to the point you want to be at.

A flood is made up of raindrops.
                                                  - Tom Bailey.

The Tim Doner Challenge.

So today is actually Wednesday the 7th of May, not Saturday the 10th of May. I am doing this challenge ahead of time, because I might not have a full day to do it later in the week.

What is the Tim Doner Challenge?

To memorise 100 brand new words in a single day.

Tim Doner claims that he can retain 'up to 100 new words a day', and I am going to put it to the test. I think the most new words I have added before is about 16, so this should be pretty interesting.

How?

What I did was to create a vocab set on the website Memrise of 100 Egyptian Arabic words that I have never learnt or maybe even heard before. These ranged from the word for 'personality', 'civil war', 'to fart' etc etc. It's a real huge mix.

The challenge begins.

10:11am - I started.

11:22am - First 3 levels completed for the first time. Having difficulty with some of the longer words. 

12:10am - Taking a break for lunch after going over the first 50 words just once. 

2:14pm - I have been through all 100 words at least once now. I probably only about 25 of them, but I am going to keep testing myself on them until they are all in my long-term memory. If you were wondering how many Memrise points 100 new words gets you, it's 36,865.

5:24pm - Oh my days. My brain hurts. I am going through the sets of words one by one. I just did a run through of all 100 words and I got 83 correct. That's really good going. I am going to find the words I got wrong and try to commit them to memory.

10:31pm - Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. I feel like I have a tentative hold on quite a lot of the words I have learnt, and that many will be gone by tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning I will be testing myself on the words I learnt, and this is how I will know whether I have learnt them or not. 

08/05/2014 - The next day.

8:20am - I tested myself on every word and got a score of 91/100

So I haven't learnt them all, and in all honesty I think some of them were a fluke. The amount of vocab that will actually get recycled from this into my working memory and usable vocab is probably around 35-45.

This challenge has made me feel more confident about learning more words in a single day. Learning 20 or 30 words now seems like a much more simple task.

Many more even bigger and much more ambitious challenges on their way!

Blog is restarted. (And Arabic update)

Blog news.

Apologies for the extended pause in posts. I have been inundated with work since I was in my final year of university. But this week I finally finished the degree which absorbed 4 years of my life.

I am unhealthily obsessed with languages. It is almost all I think about. So I think it would be good to continue this blog. I plan to post every Saturday.

I have continued with my Egyptian Arabic. The Anki flashcards in my phone now number in the hundreds. I have very almost finished the Colloquial Book, so I will give it a review when I have finished it. That book has pretty much been the backbone of my learning, especially the grammar.

The only thing keeping me in the UK is a TEFL course I have to complete. Taking a TEFL course is something of a right of passage in our family. So I should get that finished quite soon, and then the official plan is to go to Cairo and spend about 2 months learning Egyptian Arabic intensively. The hope is that I will be very good by the time I finish.

Arabic Update.

My Arabic is getting much better, although having been neglected for the last few weeks during my exams.

I can now form much more complicated sentences, and speak faster (which I like, because it makes me feel more fluent).

(Apologies in advance for the poor Arabic script. I am writing it off the top of my head. It's a dialect anyway, so sue me).
I can say sentences like -

Can you show me where the Pyramids are?
Mumkin tiwarini il-aHraam fein?
ممكن تواريني الاحرام فين؟

There were protests here, and I think the people were from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Kaan Feeh IHtigaagaat hina, wei ana aftikir in-naas kunt min il-ikhwaan il-muslimeen.
كان فيه احتجاج هنا و انا افتكر ان ناس كنت من الاخوان المسلمين

I am getting used to the heat. Like today, there's not a cloud in the sky.
Ana at9agib 9ala il-Harara. Kida enaHada, ma feesh siHaab fil-sama.
انا اتاعجب على لاحرارة. كدا النهارده, مافيش سحاب فل سما

New post every Saturday :)