At midnight tonight I will have successfully completed 28 laps of the entire solar system. That’s about 26,264 MILLION kilometres! Phew, it’s exhausting! But I’m ready for much more!

So, I will take this short off-topic break from saving the world from being doomed to a a boring monolingual fate, to asking for a birthday present from you!

If you’ve enjoyed any of my blog posts in the past, then this will be hugely appreciated as a thank you! Best part is: it’s completely free and will take you 20 seconds max. Although those of you willing to treat me to a non-alcoholic cocktail (or mocktail as I prefer to call them) for my weekend celebrations, can certainly do that too!

My birthday request: 1982 clicks

Don’t worry, you don’t have to personally click anything 1982 times – once will do But I’m hoping that the RSS subscribers, Language Hacking League e-mail subscribers, and everyone I am spending the day writing to personally, can combine their click-powers to give me a total of 1982 clicks (any guesses why I’m aiming for that number? )

The best part is that you can follow the progress for yourself! Check out the page I want to share with a video of me speaking in 8 languages. The page also talks about the Language Hacking Guide, but people have told me that it’s fun to share simply because the video is cool, even if they aren’t interested in the book. That page has the Facebook share link on the top-right and that is what I would like people to click this weekend!

I have augmented the page with the latest advanced web 7.0 technology: a cheesy guilt-filled message and a ridiculous giant arrow just so there is no confusion about where I want you to click! When you click “share”, a page opens up for you to put the link on your Facebook profile (you may have to log-in first). Write a wee message saying how crazy this Irish guy is, how bad my accent in French is, how cheesy my pathetic plea for attention is, or whatever you want to say, but share it! You can also click the arrow to select a nicer white image to display to represent the page.

All the link sharing will bring more interested and cool readers to my site, give me lots more interesting comments and e-mails, and perhaps make an extra sale or two to make sure that I have enough Orange Juice to power my language learning missions! The next one is going to be quite the challenge and I’ll officially introduce it next week!

That’s it! So if you have 20 seconds to spare for your favourite Irish polyglot, please click ‘share’ on the top-right of this page. For every click I receive, I guarantee that I will smile in appreciation, or you get your click back no-questions-asked. Multiple clicks mean multiple smiles so spread the message, and for bonus points (or if you don’t use Facebook) you can e-mail 3 of your friends learning languages and tell them to read this blog, and let me know about it so you get your well earned smile-credit!

My birthday request is to take over the (Facebook) world… for the weekend You know what to do to help make it possible!
Similar Posts:

• Results of survey and planned changes to the blog
• Videos: Baker, David Walsh & Cody McKibb interview Benny
• Why learning a language is like learning a musical instrument

I had the pleasure to do this interview with him in Thailand, and we discussed some aspects of language learning that I write about on this site, for almost 40 minutes! Some readers of the blog might be interested in watching a few minutes of it – I’ve included it and several other video interviews in this post.

For those coming from Baker’s blog, check out a funny video I made with him and others on the beach in Ko Phi Phi. His family and he himself are really cool in person and I’m so glad that I got to spend some time with them!

Some budget relevant posts on my blog that Baker’s readers may be interested in include Why you don’t need to be rich to travel the world, and even if travel isn’t for you, you can definitely learn and practice a language for free without traveling. You can see some language relevant posts by checking out the most popular list on the right. Like Baker, I have a debt that I have to pay off too, but I’m not letting that stop me from living my dreams

The videos are originally in this post on his site, but I’ll add it here too (in two parts):

Cody on Thrilling Heroics

I was actually quite active in Thailand getting to know other bloggers and several of them wanted to sit down and record a chat about language learning with me. One of the coolest people I met in my time was Cody McKibb, another location independent worker who tries to encourage others to live a similar life, and on this post he shows another video with me, that I’ll also share here. Some topics we discuss are the same as those in Baker’s interview, but there are other questions of course. This one is half as long though:

Cody and Baker and several others work together on an amazing site called Untemplater, which discusses how young professionals can try to break free from the usual trend and live their dreams. It has some inspirational and practical advice and discusses the kinds of principles that I’ve applied myself to have the freedom to travel etc.

David Walsh & Benny

One last interview is with David Walsh, a very active entrepreneur that I enjoyed chatting with, and you can check that out on his site. This one is different – rather than discussing language learning strategies I discuss the mentality I’ve had as a blogger and how I think this will help me to try to be able to earn a little bit from this site, to ease financial pressure, when I make my Language Hacking Guide available.

The idea to write the guide and some changes in how I’ve been blogging were highly influenced by these amazing people that I met while travelling through Thailand. They are good friends and I look forward to meeting them again some day!

——–

Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed these videos!
Similar Posts:

• Results of survey and planned changes to the blog
• Benny’s birthday request: 1982 clicks!
• Friday fun: Learning Na’vi for your Avatar
• Why learning a language is like learning a musical instrument

Here I am, at the starting stages of speaking a language once again, and I’m reminded of how it felt taking a similar first step into playing the piano and other instruments I’ve learned.

Since my feelings would likely be shared by others, I asked my friends on twitter how learning a language is like learning a musical instrument and I got the following interesting replies:

• Both are about listening carefully and learning how to reproduce the sounds you hear. Then you add your own style (@pocketcultures)
• You need persistence at first, and the rewards increase the better you get (@pocketcultures)
• Schools are surprisingly crap at teaching it (@VladDolezal)
• FUN!! (@VladDolezal)
• To learn a language or instrument you need to keep at it. Practice every day, even if only for 10 minutes. (@Erinzita)
• You can be terrible at it and still find it enriching. (@foxnomad)
• You need to immerse, listen, produce, practice, understand unique patterning of sounds (@smittytabb)
• With both, the more you learn the more you realise you have left to learn! (@Radioclare)
• Both learning a language and playing a musical instrument take patience (esp. from parents/partners) but are so worth it! (@mikeo_s)
• Practice every day / Practice vs. Use dichotomy / Much fast progress possible with dedication / Personally edifying (@markitecht)
• Many people say of both that you must have “special talent” can understand/master the info. Silly in both cases. (@TropicalMBA)
• Perseverance. Life changing. (@shaunchurch)
• Because both require repetition and practice, and you get better at both with time! Also, because music itself is a language you have to learn before being able to play an instrument! (@iestudiolangues)
• Both take just hours to start with and years to master (@ikll)
• ’cause first: you give the unrecognizable sounds, then: you begin to miaow, finally: you play the real music = you speak (@transenter)
• Like music, you learn rhythm and tone, even harmony, and then put your personality into it. (@randem)
• You best learn with a good – human – teacher in both cases. (@translatrs)

Thanks to everyone for their interesting responses! A few I’ll add myself:

• Some musical instruments are quite similar, as are some languages. Learning a new one of these can make it easier, but don’t forget to keep practising the old one!
• Just because you can read it, it doesn’t mean you can produce it
• It seems that those who do it well just “pick it up so easily”. What you don’t see is the many many hours of work they put into it to reach that stage
• Commitment is way more important than natural talent, which simply doesn’t exist for getting the basics and even a pretty good idea of both music and languages. It’s actually just an excuse used by those who both can’t and don’t really want to put real work in
• When you can do either, doors of opportunities are flung open
• The sense of achievement when you play… or speak it in public for the first time are unparalleled.

I’m sure there are more – let us know how you see the similarities between these two amazing fields, in the comments!
Similar Posts:

• Friday fun: Learning Na’vi for your Avatar
• Videos: Baker, David Walsh & Cody McKibb interview Benny

Preface

Na’vi is the language spoken by the fictional aliens in the currently very popular movie Avatar. Even though it’s “just a movie”, Na’vi is an “actual” (constructed) language. It has vocabulary and grammar and was developed by linguist Paul Frommer. He’s hoping it will become the new “Klingon” of movie languages.

Since the whole point of this blog is to show you how any language can be learned very quickly, I am taking it a step further today and claiming that even an alien language can be learned in no time if you have the right approach and attitude (presuming we are physiologically capable of pronouncing the words, which luckily we are for Na’vi!!)

I’ll be simplifying and clarifying the information on the Wikipedia article about Na’vi, and re-stating it and filtering it for non-linguists. After studying the article and related links for just an hour, I watched the movie a second time and actually did understand several things being said without relying on the subtitles!

For the rest of this article I will presume that you are ready to enter your Avatar and join the Omaticaya clan on the life-sustaining moon deep in space known as Pandora.

Na’vi for dummies

So, you’ve decided to move to Pandora! If you are among the lucky few that has had their genome sequenced and combined with the Na’vi natives so that you can become a “driver” of this amazing 3m tall blue humanoid and live in the forest among the Na’vi tribe for the rest of your life, good for you!

However, to really get the best out of your experience, don’t be a typical English-speaking skyperson! You should learn the Na’vi language. It’s true that some Na’vi in the Omaticaya tribe have already learned some English, but to really immerse yourself in that world you absolutely must learn their language! At first, some of them may prefer to talk to you in English, since the Na’vi get frustrated easily, but there are ways to convince them to always talk to you in their beautiful language!

In this article I’ll give you some tips on how to look at the language, and how to start learning it, to greater improve your chances of eventually becoming a man or a woman in the second birth ritual and become truly accepted by the people.

They may be a primitive tribe with limited technological capabilities, but don’t let that fool you into thinking the language will be easy! It has a very complex grammar system, including case declensions (genetive, dative etc.), and an entirely new set of vocabulary to learn! But don’t worry, if you start learning this language with the right attitude, you can master it very quickly!!

Even a complex language can be easy!

If you look at Na’vi from the right perspective, you won’t get discouraged by it’s grammar and vocabulary. My research tells me that the case declensions are extremely consistent. I found Czech’s 7 cases were not that bad once you see the patterns, and Na’vi has much simpler patterns that you’ll master very quickly!

To give one example; the accusative only has 3 possibilities: -it, -t, -ti and these only change depending on the letters surrounding them in consistent ways. So, if you wanted to say a nice typical beginner phrase like “Let my spear strike the heart”, heart is in the accusative case. Heart is txe’lan, but in the accusative it becomes txe’lanit. So the entire phrase would be “Oeyä tukrul txe’lanit tivakuk“.

Now, I know some of you may be quite intimidated by a strange looking phrase like that, but don’t worry! It will all come naturally very quickly Since the Na’vi haven’t developed writing systems yet, you are very lucky that you do not need to learn how to read strange alien symbols (although even if you did, that would only take a few hours if you did it right), and our earth linguists have devised a very straightforward way of reading and writing Na’vi using the Latin alphabet we all know and love!

You can actually read it pretty much as you would read English, with just some slight exceptions; for example, an x after a letter is not pronounced as in English, but represents an “ejective consonant” for the preceding letter. For the early stages, all you need to do is have a very slight pause whenever you see this x and  you will be close enough! For example, if some clumsy child steps on your tail, you can say skxáwng! (moron/idiot!) as sk’awng. Easy isn’t it!

Na’vi isn’t a tonal language, so you can raise your voice and shout teasing exclamations at your skxáwng friend who can’t mount his Pa’li (horse), in the same tones as you would in English! Although it’s also important to learn that in Na’vi we use an infix syllable to represent the attitude of the speaker (positive, negative or formal).

A useful example of this is Oél ngáti kámeie, which is of course the famous and beautiful greeting “I see you“. “Káme” is to “see” (not a direct translation, but deeper, since you also see into/understand a person), so when you greet someone, you are obviously glad to see them, so you add the positive attitude affix ei to give the word kámeie. You can do this with all verbs; after a short time you get used to it and wonder why we don’t do it in English!

As far as vocabulary goes, you can use image based memory techniques to learn many words very quickly! You’ll also be glad to hear that Na’vi can borrow foreign words, so you already speak some before starting! For example kunsìp is “gunship” and toktor is “doctor”. And you thought this was going to be hard!

Similarity to Earthly languages

The good news for those of you who already speak languages is that you will have given yourself a head start over monolingual English speakers! Here are a few examples of commonalities:

ESPERANTO

• This can also use the x writing system, for altering the previous consonant, however it’s only necessary on unconfigured computers. So cxu, and sxtatas are actually ways of writing ĉu and ŝatas (pronounced chu & shatas respectively). This certainly helped me to see past the ‘x’ as an unpronounced letter at first.
• Word order is completely flexible! This is great news for those of you sick with remembering if you have to put the verb at the end or not in hard Earth languages. Since Na’vi uses cases (like the Accusative mentioned above), you can pretty much put your words in any order you like and it will be a fully correct sentence (as in Esperanto)

THAI/PORTUGUESE/FRENCH

• Although the grammar is more complex than Asian languages, if you speak Thai (or Portuguese/French) you have one of the few sounds difficult to some English speakers already. The nasal sound (ã in Portuguese, on in French, ง in Thai) is very common in Na’vi and can start sentences, unlike in English. Those speaking those languages, especially Thai, will be better equipped to start words with this sound. This is written as “ng” (and as the sound we have in words like sing), but starts words like “nga” (you), which can be used in a phrase like Txo new nga rivey, oehu! (Come with me if you want to live!), always a nice icebreaker when meeting a stranger being charged at by a Angtsìk (rhino-like beast).

IRISH/GERMAN/GREEK/SLAVIC and many other languages

• It may take some getting used to for those unfamiliar with cases like the Genetive, but those who have learned languages that use them will be in for a treat! As I mentioned above, the rules for applying them are much more consistent and simpler and it is believed that they have no exceptions, unlike Earth-based equivalents. You never have to learn a new word, you just have to apply the common affix to the word.

SPANISH/ITALIAN/Other romance languages

• Double negatives! You never have nothing to fear when you don’t have no time to not go nowhere to not learn no double negatives!! If you speak these languages you are already familiar with them! So fiketuwong ke nayume ke’u is This alien will learn nothing (ke is not and ke’u is nothing).

Other important tips

The ‘r’ in Na’vi is rolled, so you should work on that as well as generally getting rid of your English accent.

Even though lots of Na’vi speak English, you should try to stop speaking English as soon as possible, or you may never improve your level. This would lead to you never being accepted among the people, since chants in Na’vi are necessary for rituals such as giving thanks to Eywa for the body of an animal you just hunted (although I’m a vegetarian, I have ways to convince this other culture to accept my alien eating habits!)

Make sure you have a good plan of action for learning the language, and you will easily achieve fluency in no time! Don’t get too daunted by the huge task ahead of you; have mini-goals to be proud of your achievements and you will be confused for a native in no time!

Make sure to leave comments to give other tips to those wanting to learn this language, or share your story of your dreams of being a permanent resident of Pandora. When you learn a foreign language you are always one step closer to your travel dreams Iráyo (thank you) for reading!

Kìyeváme!! (Bye, see you soon!)
Similar Posts:

• Why learning a language is like learning a musical instrument
• Results of survey and planned changes to the blog

[No language/travel tips here; just a summary of the survey results and plans for the website next year]

Last week I requested that a few of you fill out a survey to help me improve this site for next year; I was expecting perhaps a few dozen responses at best, but I’ve actually gotten 130!! (That’s almost 20% of my subscribers) Thank you!!

There was so much information to get through, but I’ve analysed it and will definitely be applying lots of your suggestions! I’ve also learned a lot about the type of people who read my blog; knowing my audience better definitely helps

So, I thought that I would share my conclusions from the survey with you here; any further comments, be sure to write them at the end of this post!!

Content

Something that quite surprised me is that a huge amount of you said that what you most enjoy in my posts is the positivity and humour I convey in writing. This is funny to me, since I consider my posts rather factual, and any positivity and humour just comes naturally as my style of writing and thinking. Based on this feedback, I’ll think of more topics to discuss relevant to the attitude necessary to learning languages and travelling.

The huge amount of encouraging comments (a lot of which I’ve written personal thank-yous for) has made me feel great over the holidays! It’s amazing to see how my blog has inspired a lot of you to take on the task of learning a language or considering travelling as not-so-impossible and realistically reaching these goals by seeing me prove how it’s possible.

Some of you also listed your favourite posts. The one that stood out by far was the smartest decision you’ll ever make to achieve fluency. I’ve gone back to that post and edited it for readability by splitting up the extremely long paragraphs (great advice from Scott Young, an experienced blogger who has been helping me a lot lately). I agree that this is the most relevant post of the year, since not speaking English has been the deciding factor in achieving my language goals. I will expand on that concept more in the coming year.

The second most popular post was the more recent getting rid of your English accent, where I got more technical on specific aspects of speaking a language. A lot of you said that you like it when I get technical, so I will be going into more detail on such posts in future!

The third most popular post was the one telling you not to be scared to meet new people; this one surprised me somewhat since this post has much fewer comments than other ones, but it corresponds to what you said about attitude being an important aspect of this blog. I can only tell how much you like a post based on number of comments, as well as retweets and links from other blogs or shares on facebook (all of which I get notified of), so if you appreciate any post in particular, please do let me know so I can write more like it

People also mentioned that you would like me to go into more detail on mission updates. While I do not want to turn this into a travel blog (you can get my daily updates of what life is like in the country on my twitter account), I will try to give more regular updates on my thoughts on the language and culture that I’m currently immersed in!

Finally, a lot of you enjoy my clear way of writing, especially as a means of practising your English if you aren’t a native. While I do make the occasional mistake, I always carefully proofread my posts for quality and I agree with those who mentioned that a lot of blog posts out there are very sloppily written. If you see any mistake, feel free to contact me and I’ll correct it.

Post length

I’m glad to see that the length of my posts do not deter most of you, and some of you pointed out that going by “suggested standards” of snappy posts for an impatient general Internet user (or those with the “attention spans of hyperactive gnats!” as one of you amusingly put it) is not always that great.

Some did point out that posts can go a bit too long, but going into detail is just my style. I believe I do not ramble and do give lots of information. This post for example is quite long, but I know that those who aren’t interested in this topic will simply skip the post, and that’s fine with me.

I’m interested in giving full details in all posts to anyone who may happen to enjoy that post and I’m fully aware that it’s impossible to write every post to be interesting to absolutely everyone. More people will read snappier posts, but they won’t give the same amount of information and will thus be lower quality in my opinion.

I’ll only spread it across several posts if I think it would enhance reading about the topic. I like one page (and hence one Internet link) to entirely discuss a message, so that I can refer to it later as just one link, or so that others may share the link too.

Nevertheless, I definitely do have some quick tips that I will share in posts that are much shorter, since they do not require in-depth explanations or much background information.

Post frequency

Quite a large number of you said that you would love to see more posts each week. I’m afraid that this depends entirely on pure availability. If I could, I would love to write in this blog full time and post daily, but I work full time (or am travelling) so it’s just not possible, since I do put several hours into each post and do research to make sure I provide the best links for those who want to find out more.

If I can start earning a little money from this blog, while not destroying the site with annoying advertisements, or sacrificing content, then this would allow me to write more frequently, so I will investigate this possibility in the coming year.

For example, I saw that 15% of you didn’t even notice that I have a “treat me to an Orange Juice if you liked this post” at the end of each post (and on the side of the blog). When I get enough OJs, I specifically take a break from work and devote that time to blogging (after going out for a nice cold one!), so feel free to click and send just a couple of euro my way if you’ve enjoyed any posts. I’d rather people think of it as treating me to a drink as a thank you for a helpful post, rather than it being a “donation”

I’m not travelling the world because I’m rich (I put that response in as a joke, but sadly, a few of you actually think that it’s true). Last year I reached my credit card limit (i.e. several thousand euro in debt) twice, and had to work 80 hours a week for a month (that’s 30 consecutive days with no break each time) to pay it off. [Queue sad violin music]

I’m not trying to create a sob-story, since it is my own fault from bad financial management that got me into debt each time, but it’s important that my readers know that I actually do appreciate even tiny extra boosts, and that they do make a difference Remember, you don’t have to be rich to travel the world!

One other issue with post frequency is Internet access. I had hoped to introduce the next mission before the end of the year, but there is no Internet in the room where I am staying this week (despite misleading advertisements…), so writing in public with lots of distractions slows me down and I won’t be able to introduce it until hopefully the weekend. I’ll try to not make a promise to make a post by a certain date again unless I’m absolutely sure that I can make it.

Otherwise, I will continue to write at least once a week (and sometimes up to 3 times, whenever possible). I have enough ideas for blog posts relevant to travel and languages for all of next year and always make a note of a good idea when it comes to me.

Site background theme

40% of you agreed on the use of the theme that I had suggested, while 6% of you pointed out that the colour style used with Black hat has more personality (while the rest of you don’t care either way since you read it through e-mail/RSS or see it as much less important than the content).

The different colour was one of the reasons that I chose this theme, but unfortunately it does make it a little harder to read some text, and the dark colour doesn’t go so well with the upbeat message I try to convey in posts.

However, I will edit the default theme that I’ll apply next, to my own style, so it will still be unique! I’ll change themes as soon as I get the chance to make the edits that I want (I am currently having an issue with compatibility with the Disqus commenting plugin. If anyone with WordPress/java familiarity could give me a hand, it would be great!!) Edit: the new theme is live! Hope you like it

————-

So let me say thanks again to all the amazingly positive feedback that you have all given me!! There are actually several other points that I haven’t discussed here that were brought up that I’ll also be applying. I always appreciate your comments and can honestly say that I feel like I’m going through these missions in good company thanks to all my readers

My next post will be some practical advice on the plan of action to take in order to achieve a New Year’s resolution of learning a language, since I imagine a lot of people will be making such a commitment to themselves.

Then I’ll finally start discussing the next mission (hopefully this weekend before I fly out on Monday); ooh, the suspense!! Those of you linked to my facebook page or twitter already know what that language is of course!

All the best for everyone in the new year!
Similar Posts:

• Videos: Baker, David Walsh & Cody McKibb interview Benny
• Benny’s birthday request: 1982 clicks!
• Why learning a language is like learning a musical instrument
• Friday fun: Learning Na’vi for your Avatar