Af-Soomaali, continued.

You may remember that I have been studying the Somali language -- here are a few previous posts about it.

I took a series of twelve two-hour continuing-education classes at  the closest community college.   The pedagogy was... all over the place?  The instructor didn't really come in with a detailed syllabus, a pre-existing idea of what one should learn,  or a plan with more than minimal structure. 

But what he was, and this I think is more valuable than an organized syllabus, was friendly, approachable, generous, patient, and interesting.  After the very first class, when he had a lecture prepared about the historical, geographical, and cultural background of the language, he took a very casual approach. He came in and chatted with us.  We had a textbook, we asked "how do you say such-and-such a thing?" and he answered.  We took notes.   We learned about the culture of the Somali diaspora.  We heard his views of the challenges facing members (especially children) of that community here in Minneapolis.  We talked about the vocabulary needed by health care providers, elementary school teachers, and social workers.  

It wasn't like other language classes I have taken, and it wasn't what I thought I wanted  going in, but I think it had the most important things I needed. 

I can, after all, study grammar from books and written material, pretty well on my own.  But I was stalled without a chance to have a real conversation with a native speaker of Somali.  I'm not going to accost a random person at the YMCA or bus stop and ask them to do free labor, and (not being all that fond of small talk even in English) I'm not confident enough even to break out  the "please" "thank you" "I'm so sorry I stepped on your foot."  

So it was really helpful to be able to pay someone to set up a formal relationship where I could ask very basic questions, and where I could hear speech, slowed down for my benefit, while the speaker wrote the words on the board and showed where the syllables began and ended.  

+ + +

Having got a dose of interaction with the spoken language, and a sense for the flexibility of the grammar and spelling in natural language, I feel ready to invest time in working on vocabulary and grammar independently.   If I manageto reach a point where I can't get any farther without additional instruction from a native speaker, I'll look for another tutor. 

(Meanwhile, I have the email address of the previous instructor, who implored us to email him if we have any questions later.  I do not take the value of this invitation for granted.)

+ + +

Studying Somali has already paid off for me as a homeschooling parent, I think.  I love languages, and some of my children have progressed very well in Latin and even gone on to dabble in other languages for fun with free resources like Duolingo; but not all of my children. 

I have one young person who seems not to be able to hold vocabulary and grammar in his head, nor to recognize cognates when he sees them.  It's been very frustrating for all of us, not the least for me because learning Latin (at least in the early stages) was easy for me.  So it's been very hard for me to understand how to help him; what worked for me hasn't worked for him, and it's tempting in the moment to believe it's because he has the wrong attitude, unhelpful study habits, poor work ethic, etc.   It's also tempting to just stop teaching him, but unfortunately persisting through a couple of years of world language classes is an entrance requirement for pretty much all colleges around here.  To give in to either of those temptations would be to do him a real disservice.

I have to say, starting from scratch in an almost totally unfamiliar language with few recognizable cognates gave me a necessary dose of empathy and humility.  I had almost forgotten how hard it can be to learn something completely new.   It's probably not enough empathy -- I still like working on hard learning for fun, and I can't easily put myself in the shoes of someone who is being made to learn something they aren't interested in learning*, but it is a start. 

I remember reading the teacher-philosopher John Holt's recounting of this side effect of taking up the cello as an adult.  I hope it helps me help this particular kid.**

 + + +

A general resource for language learning that's a quick read and contains all the obvious advice as well as some novel tips is Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner.  (He also has a website with lots of free helps, and apparently is trying to get an app backed on Indiegogo.)   

I read Wyner's book because I was looking for new ideas, and also because a classmate in Somali 1 mentioned he had a master list of 600-some words that he suggested learning in any target language as a start. 

The 625-word list is here --- I think it could probably be improved on, but it's not a bad place for anyone to begin, especially if they're willing to adapt it to languages coming from different cultures (e.g. where it makes sense to have the word for "camel" on the list of common animals).

The most helpful things the book has introduced to me so far: 

• the very well-designed flashcard application Anki
• the pronunciation website Forvo.

Anki:  You can read about, and download, Anki here.  The desktop application is free, supported by a relatively expensive mobile app (worth every penny to me).  There are other, cheaper, and quicker-to-learn flashcard apps out there---I've been using Quizlet with the kids for Latin for a long time---but Anki is so much more powerful and l that I'm probably going to switch at least some of my homeschooled language students (such as the kid who's having difficulties) as soon as I can teach them how to use it.  

Although it doesn't (yet?) have game-like aspects, Anki is superior to free Quizlet for two big reasons:  first, because it allows you to include photos and audio files (more on those below), but second and most importantly, because it automatically presents flashcards to you at variable intervals based on how well you have learned them; you don't have to have the discipline to work out the schedule yourself.

Furthermore, Gabriel Wyner is offering among his free resources a few templates for useful Anki flash cards which helped me get very quickly up to speed.   These range from simple picture-word cards for learning concrete vocabulary terms, to more complicated flash cards that have you insert the correct ending for a partly-blanked-out conjugated verb.  The template for creating an "all-purpose card" looks like this:

All you have to do is fill in the fields, and it generates at least one card for you, plus the "reversed" card and (if you wish) a third card that presents an audio file and asks you to produce the correct spelling.

Forvo:  Speaking of audio files, the website Forvo.com has downloadable audio files of native speakers producing individual words.   Not only is it fun to browse, but you can insert the sound files into Anki flash cards to practice your spelling and pronunciation.  You'll have many more words available to you if your target language is widely spoken (Forvo's searchable Swedish lexicon numbers more than 114,000 words; its Somali lexicon, small enough to be presented as a list, has only 165), but even a small collection can help your ear.  I made several dozen audio flash cards in Somali.  

+ + +

So I've been using Anki daily to make and review vocabulary and grammar.  I'm drawing a lot of the grammar examples from my (sadly, rather expensive) textbook, Colloquial Somali by Martin Orwin.

It's a pretty standard grammar text designed for self-study, with exercises (all the answers are in the back), accompanying audio files available for free download from the publisher, and a decent if limited glossary.

One thing I've been doing differently is turning most of the exercises into flashcards.  I don't know why I've never done this before.  It's really, really helpful.  Wyner's book has some advice about how to make flashcards to learn grammar concepts, and I've been putting them into practice here for the first time.

+ + +

I'm sure someone will want to know by now what I've learned so far.   I've been introduced to a fair amount, but I would say that what I've learned can be summed up as follows:

• how to pronounce words from their spellings (granting that I can only approximate the pharyngeal fricatives)
• a dozen or so verbs, maybe a hundred nouns, and a handful of stock phrases ("good morning," "what is it?," "here you are")
• the endings for the present progressive tense and the general past tense in the first verb conjugation 
• how  to form plurals in the first three noun declensions
• how to make simple questions and declarative statements using subject pronouns with verbs and direct objects

The next thing up for me is how to use the definite article. 

I'm also occasionally looking at text written in Somali and trying to pick out words I know, or identify verbs and nouns; browsing Somali Wikipedia and the Somali-language online resources of Minnesota Public Radio; and I'm trying not to be noticed while eavesdropping on unwitting bystanders who are speaking Somali into their phones within earshot (the words for "yes" and "no" jump right out to me***, but nothing else does at this point).

I'll update this now and again, I hope.  Practically speaking, I've turned a corner:  I've started picking up the Somali book and thumbing to the flashcards in order to procrastinate some other task I ought to be doing, which means I'm likely to keep moving forward daily, or at least every day that there's laundry to be done.

Now if only I could transfer that last skill to my reluctant language-learning child.

____

*there was that one time I had to take a graduate course in rheology thanks to having passed my oral prelims "with reservations" expressed by the department's chief rheologist

** Next year, we're switching him from Latin to a modern language, probably Swedish.  I look forward to writing about how that goes.  Also to learning Swedish.

*** "haa" and "maya"

 

Comments

[Christy P.]

This inspires me to at least acquire the list of 600 words to learn. I have spent a lot of time in Korea the past few years and can say shockingly few words. My ear can understand even fewer. My eyes can recognize lots more - even with a different alphabet! - than my ears can hear or my mouth can pronounce. I want to blame frequent ear infections and/or some genetic difference because I can't really hear music either, but in reality I could probably overcome it with practice.

[bearing]

Christy: Try Anki and Forvo!

One of the things suggested for ear training is looking for lists of word-pairs that sound nearly alike, obtaining recordings of the two words, and making pairs of flashcards to learn to distinguish them. Wyner even has a template called "Minimal Pairs" that's all set for you to fill out, and it'll generate cards -- actually cards to compare triplets of sound-nearly-alike words.

There are more than 50,000 recorded Korean words on Forvo.

I feel like the time I spent making cards was useful in and of itself, and it continues to pay off every day that the cards come up.

[Kathy]

Thanks for pointing Anki out to me! And also Quizlet. I'm trying to keep an eye out for 'tech tools' to help my reluctant reader/speller over the summer. It looks like I might at least be able to use Anki to play audio clips and get him to type the word. If only child-voiced-letters weren't such a challenge for computers!