Tag: target language culture

Fun With Texts : Travel Edition

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I came across an ancient video this week that took me right back. The video in question  was from a series of video diary entries I made on a trip to Austria in 2004. In this particular segment, I was proudly showing off the stash of free leaflets I’d cached from Klagenfurt town hall – treasures of authentic texts to take home for my teaching materials box.

German-language texts from Austria - leaflets about the EU in 2004

Austrian leaflets about the EU (2004)

A still of Rich West-Soley showing some leaflets from Austria in a video from 2004

Showing off my Austrian leaflet haul in 2004 in a video shot on a phone just a little more sophisticated than a toaster, judging from the quality

Fast forward 19 years, and I’m approaching the end of a wonderful, extended trip around Greece. It’s been a holiday full of wonderful sights, amazing food, and of course, lots of language practice. Incidentally, Greeks must be amongst the most encouraging people on the planet when you try to speak their language.

But what links this trip with that early noughties vid is that continued fascination with curating authentic texts. It’s a polyglot obsession that’s lasted well beyond my classroom teaching days; there’s no longer any teaching materials box to fill, but I’m still on the hunt.

Hunting Texts : Then and Now

The format has changed, naturally. It’s less about free brochures and leaflets now. Alas, my EasyJet baggage allowance won’t quite stretch to that any more. This time, it’s digital – and I’ve been going to town collecting text samples for my virtual Greek learning box.

Of course, Greece has a tradition of texts that stretches back a little further than many fellow European countries. It’s been particularly fun looking out for inscriptions on the many ancient monuments, and spotting similarities and differences between the ancient and modern languages.

A stone tablet in an Ancient Greek ruin, with a partial inscription in Greek

Authentic Texts in stone!

An Ancient Greek artefact


But it’s the modern examples that really hit the spot – the more everyday and prosaic the better. From bags of crisps to public notices, every bit of writing is a potential new word learnt, and an extra peep into the target language culture. It’s addictive.

A notice to save water on a Greek ship

Save water, and save those words (in Anki!)

A washing machine control panel with Greek labelling

It’ll all come out in the wash

As far as I’m concerned, there’s never any going over-the-top when collecting digital texts. Knock yourself out with as much target language as you can! The criteria for what makes an authentic text are wildly broad – it can be the odd couple of words, a text-dense poster or an entire book. It all has worth to us as learners, no matter how long.

The only rule I try to stick to is one of practical use; I aim to try and use the images somewhere, be it a blog post (like this one on German political posters) or by scraping the language for Anki flashcard entries.

A bag of crisps with Greek labelling

Language snacks

Are you a curator of authentic texts in your target language? How do you collect them, and what do you do with them afterwards? Let us know in the comments!

Five stars - what you hope to get from your TV picks in a foreign language! Image from freeimages.com

Joyful, Joyful TV for Maintenance Language Impetus

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I type this fresh from the jubilance of seeing my favourite Stjernekamp (Star Fight) contestant sail through to the final of the popular Norwegian TV series. Alexandra Rotan, known to many as one third of Eurovision act Keiino, sang her heart out and won a place in the final two.

Watching light entz and pop culture in your target language is always a popular tactic in polyglot circles, and for good reason: it’s just plain fun. I spotted a recent #langtwt tweet cheekily polling people’s favourite ‘trash’. And while I’m far too nice to call it that, I do get the sentiment – it’s content which is far from high-brow, but unthinkingly, unchallengingly cosy and feel-good.

So it is with the wonderfully joyful Stjernekamp.

The Sun Always Shines on (Target Language) TV

The thing is, I’ve not been making a deliberate effort to get more of it into my life lately. Norwegian is one of my most beloved and strongest foreign languages, but currently, I’m just maintaining it rather than working actively on it. The reason it keeps budging its way in, hitching a ride on Stjernekamp and other vehicles, is impetus.

Back in my active learning phase, I’d done the groundwork already. I’d followed norsk favourites like Stjernekamp, Skal vi danse and Maskorama on all my social media channels, filling my daily scrolls with target language. I’d downloaded on-demand apps from Norway, and set up notifications for all those shows. And they’re all still there, popping up in my line of sight, without any effort on my part.

And that is the very essence of maintenance.

Keeping It Light

Granted, it’s getting easier and easier to do this today. A click of the Subscribe button, and you’ve forged a pipeline supplying language input 24/7. With international TV franchises, a lot of that input is warmingly familiar, too.

But a word of caution: I’ve found the tone of what you choose really colours your attitude towards the language. Stjernekamp – much like other musical reality shows, like the BBC’s Strictly – is a thing of pure joy. Frivolous, fanciful fun. In my Norwegian fallow season, it has become what the language is to me. My heart leaps a little when a notification pops up.

On the other hand, for some languages, I ignored those instincts. I added – gulp – serious news feeds instead. Now, I’ll backtrack a little here, as I’ve sung the praises of adding current affairs feeds in the past. That’s because in some cases, it does work a treat. For instance, many apps, like NRK’s news service, allow you to select the topics to be alerted on. Science and technology? Tick for me. And other services, like podcast series News in Slow and Radio Prosty Polski, break the stories down into short, manageable chunks.

On the other hand, the Polish TVP Info app just gives you everything in all its shocking, miserable detail. And, especially lately, everything in the news can be a bit… hmm… depressing? That’s not to mention the elevated style of news articles and frequent pomposity of style. Give me singing, dancing celebs over that any day. Needless to say, I dejectedly swipe away most of those TVP alerts. I clearly need to spend more time streamlining my Polish apps and socials to redefine what Poland is to me in a much happier light.

The moral here, of course, is be mindful about your media. It can make the difference between switching on and off to your target language(s).

What pop culture media helps you stay switched on to your target languages during a maintenance phase? Let us know in the comments!

 

A picture of a freshly cooked chocolate brownie. Image from freeimages.com.

Baking up a distraction

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Such a thoroughly  strange week draws to a close. The first of many weeks, no doubt, by the end of which strange will be normal. After the first run of stay-at-home social distancing, I expected to have blitzed my languages. Instead, what have I been spending my excess time on? Baking. Yes, consuming home-made cake instead of grammars. What sort of procrastinating distraction is this?

A simple sponge cake on a plate with a blue rim pattern

Cake by Rich – it doesn’t look much, but it was mighty tasty.

A bit out of the blue, too. A long-time lover of fast food conveniences, I was as surprised as anyone to find myself whisking and whirling in the kitchen. But then, strange things happen in strange times.

I guess that in unusual, stressful periods, we reach out for ways to feel in control. Given the scare stories in the media on supermarket supply lately, cooking from scratch has seemed a good way to feel in command of my personal food chain. That makes baking quite a useful distraction, actually. And, after all, beyond the languages, cooking is one thing I decided I could do with spending more time on in terms of self-improvement during these isolated weeks.

But could it be… well, a bit more languagey?

A cultural distraction

As ever, the online polyglot community came good. For some reason, baking and languages intersect quite neatly for a lot of my friends and colleagues on social media. In fact, I am the one who is late to the party; many have been sharing baking pics for as long as I have followed them, their culinary posts nestling surprisingly comfortably amongst the motivational language learning anecdotes.

And why not? Food is a cultural journey in itself. Instagram attests to the appetite for food stories from trips overseas. If anything, the connection had been staring me in the face for years. One of the biggest treats of exploring somewhere new is, for me, the food. While the planes are grounded and the borders are closed, I will really miss that.

Or maybe, I don’t have to. Within minutes of proudly sharing my tasty (but rather flat) sponge cake creation on Twitter, I had a recipe for Scandi-bread (in Swedish, joy!) and directions for Polish egg bread in my DMs. Yum.

Now this I can see myself incorporating into my language learning regime. Baking – and eating – my way through the cultural landscape of my target languages.

Cake is the spice of life

Variety, of course, is something to strive for in both language learning and everyday life. And it has rarely felt as important to follow that rule as now.

And that leads me excitedly (and rather unsubtly) on to #LangJam! No, not cake filling, but my first time taking part in the annual surprise language dabbling weekend. As well as the international baking, this seemed like a great way to inject a bit more sugar and spice into my routine.

As for the flavour, the great jam sorting hat gave me Ukrainian for my first taste. Now, where are those recipes for yabluchnyk?

Have you rustled up your own language learning / baking crossovers? Any recipes you’d recommend? Please share in the comments!

Hotspot for politics: inside the cupola of the German Reichstag in Berlin

Hot Politics: cooking up language learning opportunities from election posters

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It’s European Parliament election time all over the European Union – even, perhaps, in the UK after recent developments – which means that Europe is awash with slogans and soundbites again. And politics, not always a dirty word, can be great for linguists.

Political sloganism is a tightly-packed linguistic format that lends itself well to brains looking for new vocabulary and structures. As you walk through the placard-plastered streets of Berlin, Paris, Madrid and other European towns and cities, there is much to learn from the language used on all sides and across all arguments.

Billboards have blossomed over Berlin in recent weeks, illustrating the point nicely. I spent last weekend walking around the very sunny German capital, which right now serves up rich pickings for linguistically-minded politicos (or politically minded linguisticos?). A selection of them below give a taste of how voter-targeted, snappy political discourse can double as excellent source material for the language learner. *

Politics on the street: FDP poster in Berlin

Politics on the street: FDP poster in Berlin, “Europe remains our future”

Putting politics to good use

So why is this kind of language so useful?

Language microbites

For one thing, the language of political campaigning is satisfyingly bite-sized and concise. It often includes colloquialisms and phrasing that you can easily reuse in your own speech.

One way to view them is as micro-stimuli for vocabulary learning. They contain just enough content to provide new material to the learner, but are short enough not to overwhelm. That makes them perfect for language learning on the go (especially with Google Translate and Wiktionary handy to look up new words, and Anki ready to add them to your personal lexical bank). Phone in hand, you can positively milk those streets for vocab.

Politics on the street: FDP poster in Berlin

Politics on the street: FDP poster in Berlin, “Learn from people instead of just from books”

Opinion boosters

What’s more, political language is particularly rich in opinion-formulating language. You can synthesise this into your repertoire to spice up your own target-language conversations. Political slogans aim to get quickly to the point. By integrating the same kind of structures into your own speech, you can add flow to your speaking without getting bogged down in over-complex sentence construction.

In fact, that formulation of to-the-point, persuasive language still draws on ancient tricks of the political trade: rhetoric. This ancient art of arguing the case still has a lot to teach foreign language wordsmiths, and you can pick up plenty of tips from street sign politics.

If you can understand Norwegian, a recent episode of the ever excellent language podcast Språkteigen unpacks the political rhetoric behind a recent speech by Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General and former Norwegian PM. Well worth a listen!

Politics on the street: DGB poster in Berlin

Politics on the street: DGB poster in Berlin, “Worked a whole life long – that deserves respect!”

Talking points

For the same reason, poster text can act as a great, opinion-triggering stimulus for speaking with language learning peers or teachers. Do you agree with the sentiment? Why (not)? Truly, the printed messages around us cover all sides of political discourse. Let them prompt you to respond with your own, authentic reactions and counter-opinions.

Politics on the street: Die Grünen poster in Berlin

Politics on the street: Die Grünen poster in Berlin, “Only a social Europe is a strong Europe.”

Zeitgeist barometers

Finally, political campaign slogans also offer a unique snapshot of the current cultural landscape of your target language country. The hot topics of the day can be quite different from those in the world back home. Studying campaign material on the street can help you to read the Zeitgeist of your countries and cultures of interest.

Likewise, learning from material in the now is also a great way to bring your vocabulary up-to-date (especially if you used a rather old text to learn the basics from!).

Politics on the street: FDP poster in Berlin

Politics on the street: FDP poster in Berlin, “Let’s not leave digitalisation to the rest of the world.”

 

Election watch

All kinds of elections are happening all the time across our target language countries. Be in the watch-out for campaigns and the language they engender. You don’t even need to travel to far-off streets to get your fix, either. Websites and social media feeds can be a goldmine of polemical vocabulary. Very handy for those quiet periods between elections, too!

Not sure what to look out for online? Wikipedia collates useful political party lists for most countries. Here are a few to get you started:

*I should add that the sample of placards I photographed is not meant to imply any political bias – just the route I happened to walk along on that sunny day in Berlin!

Pot pourri

Pot pourri : my week in languages

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Pot-pourri is a lovely French term, usually applied to a mixture of herbs and spices, or fragranced wood chips. I’ve appropriately appropriated the French for this week’s blog post, which is a bit of a mixed bag. The past seven days have thrown a few interesting things my language-learning way, so here is my digest of the nuggets most worth sharing.

Chocolate-powered language learning

I’ve been revelling in the joys of globalism this week. Namely, this has involved using my Polish language project as an excuse to stock up on edible goodies in the Polish section of Tesco. Covered in target language (slogans and ingredient lists are particularly useful vocabulary mines), and providing a taste of Polish popular culture, what more could a chocoholic linguist ask for?

It might seem utterly normal to kids these days to find products from overseas markets on the shelves these days. But it wasn’t so long ago that there was nothing like this in your local supermarket. As a lad, I would have found this stuff completely fascinating – a fascination that obviously remains with me, as I crammed chocs into my basket earlier this week.

It’s not just about new words. Filling your life with tokens from your target language culture is the perfect way to truly live your language. I recall friends of mine who have brought Japan into every corner of their home. Foreign language grocery products help to create a bit of a special buzz and vibe around your polyglot project.

If you’re not lucky enough to find a whole aisle in the supermarket for your target language, all is not lost. A look around the local discounter store reveals a huge array of products covered in all kinds of languages. A pack of biscuits, for example, had the ingredients listed on the packet in 8 different languages. Granted, they can often be off-the-beaten-track languages rather than mainstream French and Spanish, but these shops are worth a mooch!

For the record: Advocat bars are absolutely delicious.

OverDrive for public library ebooks

The next addition to my linguistic pot pourri has reminded me of the wonderful, often untapped service that our public libraries are. Whilst re-registering for my local library, I’ve also rediscovered the incredibly handy OverDrive app for online library access. Using your library details (card number and passcode / pin), you can set the app up for e-borrowing. Books will depend on the library, but there are quite a few of interest to linguists on there.

I enjoy wider cultural background reading around my target language too, and there are some great titles on there for that – some very recent. I found Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, for example, which is a very accessible way in to a lot of the Icelandic saga material. Bagging the e-book from the library saved me a few pounds (which I’ll probably spend buying more Polish Advocat bars).

Free target language listening material from Teach Yourself

This one surprised me, I must admit. But then, I grew up as a language lover in the 1990s, when Teach Yourself books were X pounds on their own, and almost double that with the accompanying CDs.

The amazing thing is that Teach Yourself now offer nearly all of the listening material for their language books online – for free – at library.teachyouself.com.

Now, this may not be new to anyone else. Apologies if I’m late to the party. You may be eye-rolling as you read this, thinking “get with the picture, Ritchie!”. But now I have found it, I’ll be a regular visitor, at least for the next few weeks.

It’s not a perfect resource, of course, as the book material is not included. But even without the written page, the recordings offer some great, graded listening practice on their own. It might just be that little extra you need to improve your audio comprehension.

As seems the case so often, many of these language learning boosts were lying right under my nose. I hope you found them useful too! And, as a final favour, please share your recommendations of overseas goodies in the comments – maybe you’ll help me find something even tastier than a Polish Advocat!