I am a native English speaker, with a reasonable understanding of Spanish (used to be fluent in my teenage years and I could be a lot better), and a very very beginning understanding of Russian (used to be better but I lost it) and about 6-10 words in Vietnamese. I think languages are a fascinating gateway into the minds of the people who speak them. I have always wanted to be fluent in multiple languages. And I have all sorts of excuses why I am not. I think that if I was fluent in a diverse set of languages, then I might better be able to see the one-ness of the world, read insights from other countries, understand other cultures, and I suspect that there is some singular truth at the basis of all of our languages if I can just dig deeper.
The thing is, language learning has never been exciting for me. Focusing on one language at a time, I would feel like there is a whole amazon world out there that I was missing out on. Then it hit me… what if I did the opposite of what regular, sane people do? What if I learned several languages simultaneously? It occurred to me that I am a very spatial thinker. I might be able to make memorization more fun and interesting if I could see the English word in the middle of a matrix of words such that I can see the connections between these various languages’ versions of that same word. Then, a sentence or phrase is just a stack of these matrices, with a vector through the cells for that language (nerd!). If I always put the same language in the same position on the matrix flash card, then this might be possible. So I decided on 9 languages, in order to put English in the middle of a 3×3 matrix, surrounded by 8 other languages.
The Languages
I chose my languages very carefully after a lot of research. Based on use and content on the internet, percent growth in usage online, number of worldwide speakers, and a little bit of fun and personal interest, I will focus on:
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Spanish
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Portuguese
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German
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Russian
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English
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Arabic (MSA)
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Chinese (Mandarin)
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Vietnamese
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Hindi
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I am aware that I have chosen some very exotic alphabets and some languages that may be considered the hardest to learn but I have never liked the easy path. I do already speak English so that takes the hardest one off the table. Based on the languages I have already studied or dabbled in, I am not afraid of exotic alphabets or tonal languages. These languages will give me access to billions of people across the world, new friends when I travel, and countless bits of wisdom new and old. And the wide variety of tonal, non-tonal, logographic, alternate alphabets, right-to-left and left-to-right writing, and new sounds I have never made before will be an amazing challenge. NO FEAR! Should I fail, I am still better off than I am now with new insights to share. Should I succeed, the sky is the limit!
For the record, it was a very hard decision to make. In the end, I had to leave off Italian, Tamil, and Malay or Indonesian BUT space was limited. If all goes well, maybe I will add a row to my matrix and learn these as well.
The Method
Learning words this way will take me much longer (I believe) so I will have to carefully choose my words.
Initially, I thought that I have a list of the 5,000 most commonly used words in English that should do nicely. I will go in order and for each English word, I will make a matrix flash card like the one above, and store it as a photo in my phone. I will make the flash card matrices by hand in one of my journals because writing is a great way to trigger memory and make it real.
However, if I want to get a point of real utility, I think I will have to focus on words that are going to be specific to my expected situations. The ultimate goal is this: I travel to another country, navigate the airport, get a taxi to the hotel, check in, sight see around town a bit, enjoy time at a coffee shop, meet with the wisest people of that region and seek their advice, give a speech/concert in that language, take questions and give answers, meet and greet. The subject matter is basic travel and self development, spirituality, and related areas. These scenarios make it very topic-specific and that should help narrow down which words I should focus on first.
Regardless, I will focus on one word at a time, rather than one language at a time. By focusing on one word at a time across all 9 languages, I hope to see what, if anything is common to how we develop and shape languages and therefore what is common to our cultures. I do not expect the words to look or sound alike at all. But I just get the feeling that there is something underneath it all to be discovered and I am going to dig!
Other than straight up memorization of words, I will need to do some separate work on alphabet, pronunciation, sentence structures and grammar in each individual language.
I will start with alphabet and pronunciation in each language; then make flash cards and write them out repetitively to memorize the first 500 or so words, then try some sentence structures, move up to 1000 words, then worry about grammar toward the end.
Meanwhile, I will listen to each language while I workout using my favorite myTuner app. This app can pull in radio stations from anywhere in the world, for free! I will have to work a little harder to collect a list of news websites that I can bookmark in these languages for reading practice.
Diary of First Steps: Alphabets
Holy fuck. What have I gotten myself into?! I was feeling rather upbeat through Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian. Then I hit Arabic. Only 28 letters. Neat! I can do this! Oh, but each letter has 4 forms based on where it is written in the word. What? Oh, and there is no separation between the letters. Sigh. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Let’s go look at Chinese (simplified). Each syllable has a character and a pronunciation based on Mandarin. Thousands of characters. Yikes. That is not going to be a quick thing… let’s try Hindi. OMFG. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can f-ing DO this. I WILL do this. Let’s try some words. 3-4 word matrices later I am questioning my sanity and my ability to memorize. It’s been a long time since I had to memorize anything.
A Better Idea: Proof of Concept
There are a lot of assumptions here, the largest being that I can memorize a matrix of words rather than a single word, and actually recall the words separately by language later. I needed to prove to myself that I can do that. (warning: it’s about to get nerdy)… If I can learn ONE word matrix, and recall it the next day, then I can learn ONE MORE matrix and therefore, by induction, I can learn THOUSANDS OF WORDS! Never mind the math… I just needed to prove to myself that I can do ONE. I chose to start with the word “yes.” Yes went so well that evening that I also threw ,’no” into the mix. I wrote each matrix out, made sure I understood the sounds that each letter was making and the overall word pronunciation, then I wrote each matrix 17 times. That’s just when I ran into writing and mental fatigue on the exercise. Yes, it is an amazing coincidence that it was 17 – my lucky number. I take it as a great sign. A few hours into the next morning, I took out a different notebook and challenged myself to write out both matrices. SUCCESS!! I remembered them both correctly in all 8 languages. AND I started to understand the alphabets along the way. This is not so scary! This is going to work!
Even better – this is FUN and INTERESTING and EXCITING. The whole world in every word! That’s the motivation I needed.
GOAL: 900-1000 words (basic beginner competence) in all 8 languages by October 1st, 2020. That’s 30 months from now. That comes down to 1-2 words a day (which technically is 8-16 words a day) plus alphabets and basic grammar. I WILL have basic competence in 9 languages in the next 30 months.
I will report back as it develops : )
~ Love, KC
