My time in Istanbul is officially over – for the next two weeks I’ll be with my family in Ireland before hitting the road again. (To find out where I’m going and clues of what the next language will be, see Facebook and Google+)

But to wrap up my time in Istanbul, I’d like to share this video I made!

I took the famous song, which was in my head all summer; Istanbul not Constantinople (originally sung by The Four Lads, but also known by the more modern They Might Be Giants take on it), translated it to Turkish and sang it myself! The lyrics are more or less the same, based on the latter version so no subtitles are required

Here it is!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrmEpDKpJnA

You’ve heard me sing in French, Spanish, German and Tagalog, and by now you’ll have figured out that not having the most beautiful singing voice in the world is definitely not going to stop me from doing it anyway In fact, since this song was harder to sing than normal, I think I did a pretty bad job at singing and you may want to press mute after a few seconds, or at least laugh at how badly I do it

Rest assured that I make up for it with decent video editing skills and funny and very Turkish scenes!

Two great friends in Istanbul, Timur & Burcu (dancing in a scene together near the end) joined me to film some experiences and places that makes Istanbul stand out for visitors. Once you ignore my clumsy Turkish and bad singing, it’s actually a pretty cool video.

I hope you enjoy it If you do, please share the video link! Click here to copy to your clipboard for pasting into Facebook (Facebook will open automatically and you just have to right-click and paste into your status update ), and go directly to Youtube to click the thumbs up or to leave a comment! I’d really appreciate it! Otherwise, comments welcome below as always!
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• First week in Istanbul, where I live & first (video) attempt at Turkish!
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Istanbul not Constantinople, Benny’s music video in Turkish is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

It’s been a fun summer in Istanbul, but it’s time for me to head onward! Those in the Language Hacking League e-mail list already know where I’m going (after a couple of weeks back in Ireland) and I’ll reveal more details about September’s language mission in the next weeks in the email list well before I start blogging about it!

Soon enough I’ll be sharing what is by far my favourite video of the entire year, to showcase how amazing Istanbul can be. The video will be in Turkish of course! But first, I thought I’d share my summary points of the Turkish language with you!

It won’t be as detailed as my usual language summaries, since I ran into a few (non linguistic) problems this summer, but I learned enough to definitely get by in Turkish and have a great understanding of sentence structure and how the language works from my part-time studies.

Turkish in a nutshell

As always, my stance is to stand by the certainty that there is no such thing as a hard language, once you have the right learning approach and attitude.

And along the same lines as other language summaries, I’m titling this as “Why X is easy / not hard” (as I did in Hungarian, German and Czech). Most of the time I have to do this when natives or learners are so religiously devoted to deluding themselves that it’s the “hardest language in the world”. After hearing that for over a dozen languages, it starts to get quite tedious, as well as dreadfully illogical.

Luckily that’s not so necessary with Turkish because locals are extremely encouraging when you try to speak some Turkish. They are a proud people, and usually only refer to the “gossip” case to prove that the language is hard (but it’s as hard/easy as the subjunctive mood in Spanish for example), and will be thrilled to see you trying to speak it.

As well as this, many features of the language are very logical and consistent, even if they are of course different enough to make you feel the language is weird at first glance. In this post, for example, I explained how rephrasing of Turkish sentences is quite logical indeed.

Having said this, Turkish is not linguistically related to anything I had learned previously. This means there will indeed be a bit more work involved as you learn more vocabulary than other languages would have in common with yours, as well as get used to new grammatical structures. But a language is different for a reason – if everything was the same it wouldn’t be a foreign language, would it?

Because the Ottoman empire had such an extensive reach over the centuries, there was definitely some influences from Hungarian in the language (or vice versa) that I could recognise easily, as well as some features that may have been similar by coincidence (simply because it’s the opposite way in many European languages), for example the use of postpositions (instead of prepositions) and the agglutinative nature of the language for word formation.

Even some Hungarian vocabulary is the same in Turkish – one that stood out for me was elma (alma in Hungarian / apple) – although, as shown below this is eclipsed by other borrowings. But generally Turkish is a very unique language, and is very interesting to learn because of this!

My recommended study material: Colloquial

After browsing some other materials for a few days, the winner, hands down, in presenting Turkish in the clearest and best presented way was Colloquial Turkish: The complete course for beginners (Amazon US) (UK link).

It presents useful vocabulary in the best order, soon has you reading entire passages in Turkish, mixes vocabulary and grammar in a nice balanced way, and still manages to be interesting. As well as this, it focuses on Turkish spoken in the street as well as a beginners’ book can do, rather than formal Turkish.

Answers and translations are not always given once it has been explained already, and this encourages the learner to use what (s)he has already learned to start thinking independently. I’ve recommended Colloquial before among my general language learning resources, and for specific languages, but it was my favourite learning material out of everything I used this time.

Easy to read

The first thing to point out is that Turkish is a phonetically written language and uses the Latin script. Up until Atatürk made some revolutionary changes to the language in the last century it was written using Arabic script.

Each letter has one sound, and there are no confusing double consonants (like sh, ch, ght and so on), so each letter is pronounced separately. The pronounciation is as you would expect, except for the following:

• c is pronounced like an English j (in jam). So sadece (only/just) is pronounced sah-deh-jeh
• ç is pronounced like an English ch (in charge) – not s as in Latin based languages.
• ğ is silent (elongates previous vowel sound)
• ş is “sh”
• ı – looks like an i without the dot. Confusingly when capitalised it is I (English i capitalised), but Turkish i capitalised is İ – so the city I was living in was actually İstanbul, not Istanbul). ı is pronounced as a schwa.
• Umlauted ö/ü vowels work as in German.

After learning these differences, you can read Turkish directly, although natives may pronounce things slightly differently. I found that ‘e’ sounds in words were pronounced as ‘a’ by many people for example.

Vocabulary

I was very happy to see that there were indeed lots of familiar words that I recognised instantly. As with all languages, you tend to start off with a base of thousands of words before you even begin. Turkish uses many brand names, and technology terms from English, as most other languages would.

But from this I found it curious to see that Turkish had a huge amount of loan words from other languages, the most surprising (and helpful for me) being French. One source I found cited 5,000 words to have come from French. As a comparison, 6,500 come from Arabic, 1,400 come from Persian, about 600 are cited to come from Italian, 400 from Greek and 150 from Latin. In many cases there is a Turkish equivalent, that has become favoured for standard use, but in other cases the loan word is the one in standard use, and sometimes they use both (like şehir & kent for city, where kent is the “non-Turkish” word).

A Turk I met who had visited Paris said that she had surprising ease in understanding many words she saw or heard without ever having studied the language, so French has definitely left its mark!

To give you an idea, here’s a list of some French loanwords (click “show table” in the pop-up window), although it includes some that were replaced in standard use by Turkish equivalents (indicated where relevant).

Other ones I personally came across myself (not in that list) include kuaför, şans, büfe, lise (lycée), bulvar, asensör, aksesuar, kartuş, ekselans, sal… and I’m sure there are many more. Of course these are written phonetically in Turkish, but once you pronounce them they resemble the French versions very closely (apart from French nasal sounds). Even if you don’t speak French, you will definitely recognise many of these words, as in many cases they were loaned to English too.

Interestingly enough, I even recognised a Spanish word, banyo in the language!

For the vast majority of vocabulary that does indeed look unique – you can learn it surprisingly quickly if you simply apply some image association techniques or download Turkish decks of essential vocabulary to a spaced repetition system. Word roots tend to be short, and this really helps to make them easier to learn.

Suffixes

For native Turkish words, I found that I could de-construct any large words very easily once I understood more of the structure of how the language worked. In this way vocabulary and grammar are quite intricately tied together, as you simply cannot look up most words in a dictionary directly, but if you recognise basic grammatical structures you’ll instantly see what the root is.

One of the quickest ways to expand your vocabulary quicker is to learn some standard suffixes. Many of them consistently perform the same action such as turning nouns into adjectives (or vice versa), or verbs (-mek/-mak ending being infinitive, and conjugations being very regular), or to express a person with a profession like -ci/-cı (öğrenci = student from öğrenmek to learn).

Another one is the possessive (or simply ‘of’) that is used for word combinations. You see it everywhere, and it makes more sense once you recognise it. For example, Istiklal is the name of a major street/avenue “cadde” I lived near, so the street is called Istiklal caddesi. The ‘si’ suffix here just means ‘of’, and Istiklal means independence. (i.e. they prefer to say Avenue of independence than Independence avenue). In the same way all the universities (üniversite) in the city have üniversitesi in their title.

They are otherwise natural parts of sentences that would be separate words in other languages, such as the possessive (-m for mine, -n for yours etc.) or the negation, etc.

One thing with all suffixes and words in general that does take some getting used to is vowel harmony. I came across this in Hungarian too, and it works very similarly in Turkish but is still something we don’t have in other languages that you have to train yourself to apply correctly. Like many aspects of the language, it’s actually very straightforward, but just requires time to get used to using the right choice (which is always obvious). When speaking you may make mistakes with this initially, but people will still understand you in most cases.

Creating words and sentences

One point that requires some sentence rephrasing in your head (as explained here) is that there is no verb “to be” or “to have” in Turkish. This may sound intimidating, but the rephrasings (simply saying it as you would in English without is/am/are etc. or “my car exists” instead of “I have a car”) are surprisingly easy to get used to.

Another “weird” aspect of this language is the word order – for example, verbs tend to go to the end of sentences. So you say Türkçe öğreniyorum for “I am learning Turkish”. I like to think that this is actually smarter than English’s order as the most important word in the sentence is what you are learning followed by the fact that you are learning it. It’s important to remind yourself of this rather than give in to becoming a crybaby that the language is different in the first place.

These kinds of differences are explained very well in any course, and will very soon become second nature to you. When you think about certain phrasings for a moment it makes perfect sense, and soon you won’t have to think much about it. For example:

Nerelisin(iz) means Where are you from? Breaking it up you have Ne-re-li-sin(iz): -sin = you, -siniz = you (polite/plural), -li = from, -re = place suffix, ne= what (or simply nere= where). Since no “to be” is required, each individual component of the word contributes to the meaning.

In the same way, nereye means “Where to?” (nere + e [to] and ‘y’ to connect vowels).

Grammar

After this, I found that Turkish grammar was incredibly logical. There are so few exceptions, and conjugation and word formation is very consistent and there are no complicated temporal additions to get used to; a nice past tense, two present tenses (one analogous to English’s continuous, and another to the standard present, although grammar explanations will expand on that better), future etc.

One use of the present case, using the present -er ending for example, with the verb dönmek (to turn) is the very familiar third-person singular conjugation döner (it turns) that the Turks are famous for.

Yes it is different, but based on my experience with other languages there are way fewer annoying exceptions and pointless structures to deal with.

As well as this, there is no grammatical gender, no complex cases like in Slavic or Germanic languages (generally these are rendered as simply one suffix, not affecting other words), no definite or indefinite articles (a & the) to worry about, as well as no irregular plurals (in many cases you don’t even have to add the plural suffix -ler/-lar if it’s clear from the context, such as when used with a number).

The only case that could cause you some problems initially is the accusative. I could never quite figure this out when I was learning German in school, especially since German applies it (to nouns, not articles) so inconsistently, depending on the noun’s irregularities. In Turkish you can be more confident of when to use it, since it’s only a noun issue and very consistent/logical.

If the idea of accusative is confusing to you, I highly recommend you learn Esperanto for a few weeks – use of it in that language helped me understand the accusative better than any technical explanation, as it’s almost the only different/”complicated” grammatical feature of the entire language.

Use of Esperanto’s ĉu also helped me intuitively understand Turkish’s question suffix/particle mi/mı/mü instantly. This term is added in for yes/no questions where we would simply indicate it with intonation in English. This is actually very easy to understand, but tricky to get used to, so learning it in an easier language first for just a few weeks can really help give you a boost.

For example, you have çalışıyor – she works, and çalışıyor mu? - does she work?

Mentality is everything

As always, you can reply to this with a list of reasons why Turkish could be hard, but when reframing things it’s very easy to decide if you will be an optimist or a pessimist. The latter approach has no use whatsover to language learners. Demotivation never does. When you go into it with a “my language is half full” mentality, you’ll always learn quicker thanks to this positivity!

You can accept that the language is different without having to give in to believing that it’s difficult. Hopefully some of these tips from my short number of weeks in Turkey help a little too

Let me know what you think in the comments as always!
Similar Posts:

• Why Hungarian is easy
• Why Czech isn’t as hard to learn as you think
• Istanbul not Constantinople, Benny’s music video in Turkish
• Learning Brazilian Portuguese if you already speak Spanish
• German is easy, and so is any other language. Here’s why

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Why Turkish isn’t as hard as you think! is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Today’s guest post is from Mars Dorian who writes over at I luv Empire – which is his online comic and project to make the world a more epic place. Mars is German and we hung out while I was living in Berlin (and talked together in German of course).

This post shares his Japanese learning story and strategy… presented in his Japanese Manga-like drawing style with himself as the main character! It’s over to you Mars!

————–

1) Since my early childhood, I was OBSESSED with Japanese culture. I loved the animation, the food and everything that came from that odd, little country on the other side of the globe. I knew in my guts that I was DEFINITELY going to go there someday. It was only a matter of time.

2) Then in my early twenties, when I was in Australia, it came to me: I was living with Japanese peeps in China town, and I said to myself: Hell – I’m going to Japan next… and I’m going to dominate this language in less than a year!

I knew this was going to be a tough challenge, but I have a passion that’s strong enough to melt the moon, and the focus of a Terminator hunting down his target. And you know what? I did indeed succeed in this mad quest.

This is how I did it:

3) Total immersion:

Since I was going to live in Australia for almost a year, I had to bring Japan to ME. And that meant buying Japanese books, listening to Japanese music, eating Sushi, consuming Japanese cartoons and animation…hell, even getting a Japanese girlfriend. I completely surrounded myself with my target language, in order to get the MAXIMUM input.

Lesson: Do the same. Bring your target language into your daily life. Change the language settings of your browser and mp3 player, eat that food, watch online videos…your imagination is the only limit here!

Well said Mars! Dance like a monkey on fire, but do it in the target language Check out more of Mars’ great comics on I Luv Empire, and leave your comments below about his tips on this post!

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• First week speaking/reading/writing Chinese
• Tagalog: a fun language to learn in the Philippines!

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Learning Japanese in a year: Manga-style explanation! is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

This is a guest post from Nina Yau who writes at Castles in the Air. You can follow her on twitter here.

I met Nina at the WDS in Portland and was immediately impressed by her immense energy and enthusiasm. She was my favourite person of the whole North American trip, which was quite a feat considering all those present!

When I heard that she was born and raised in the United States, but currently speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and a wee bit of Japanese (as well as English of course), I invited her to guest post here to share her encouragement and positivity with my readers for a language that I know has been posing many of you a challenge because you keep thinking it’s hard, when it isn’t. When the time is right, some day I’ll be writing my own follow-up post to this

When done reading, definitely check out her blog for some great ponderings on life and minimalism! It’s over to you Nina!

—————–

Napoleon Hill wrote in his bestselling book Think and Grow Rich, “There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.”

Do you say to yourself, “I am too old/young/fat/skinny/rich/poor/educated/uneducated/white/black/gay/straight/hairy/hairless/sheep/goat to be learning a new language [or insert any formidable-sounding thing].”

Realize this kind of negative talk is self-defeating and that you are your own worst enemy.

For instance, for a long time, I felt like going to China because I had never been there. I am half Cantonese, half Taiwanese, born and raised in the States. With a fierce determination to not suck at Mandarin (I already spoke fluently in a dialect of Cantonese at home), I told my parents I wanted to study abroad in Beijing, China, and the moment they agreed (they were, after all, fronting the tuition and plane ticket), the rest is history.

There doesn’t need to be a huge practical reason why you need to learn a language

Let me repeat that, for the world tends to focus on the practical and rational versus the heart reason: There doesn’t need to be a huge practical reason why you need to learn a language.

Spoken language itself is made to be an active communicative dialogue between two or more persons. People don’t speak to each other solely because it’s the hot language of the month, it’s a business advantage that one needs to have, it’s the only way to stand out in the piles of university applications, and so forth.

If you feel like learning Mandarin, let your heart feel it, embrace it, then do it.

———-

Let’s break down learning Mandarin, shall we?

Here are the 5 ways to get you started saying, “Ni hao ma?” instead of the usual, “Sup dawg. I’m feelin’ some bao zi and bubble tea now, wanna hit up Chinatown?” Though that, of course, is also useful, naturally.

1. Tones are not limiting. You are.

Mandarin, a stress-timed language, has 4 tones whereas Cantonese, a syllable-timed language, has 9. Vietnamese has 6 tones in the North, and depending on other regions, it could have just 5. The Jul-hoan language of Africa has some 30 click consonants. There are many, many more tonal languages in the world.

So in all honesty, tones are not the real problem here. Have some faith in yourself!

Even if you completely mess up on asking where the bathroom is, the locals will probably be able to decipher bits and pieces of your jumbled Mandarin, enough to point you to the hole in the ground (squat toilets) before you pee your pants and look like a fool.

The 4 tones in Mandarin are:

Tone 1: Level Tone (ping) –> –
Tone 2: Rising Tone (shang) –> /
Tone 3: Departing Tone (qu) –> V
Tone 4: Entering/Stop-Final Tone (ru) –> \

So, if I write a sentence in pinyin (the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet) to say, ‘Hi, my name is Nina. You’re very pretty.’ I would write it as, ‘Ni3 hao3, wo3 jiao4 Nina. Ni3 hen3 piao4 liang4.’ Which, by the by, you are. Don’t you just love how that worked out?

Now, what this means for you is tones matter when learning how to speak Mandarin. One word in Chinese can mean completely different things when you change the tones.

For instance, for my first oral examination at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), I wanted to tell my teacher that I went to Wangfujing Night Market and ate fried scorpions. Verdict: try it sometime. Not as scary/creepy/disgusting as you think!

Scorpion in Mandarin is xie1 zi. But I said xie2 zi, which means shoe.

After I was done with my little conversation, I noticed my teacher had a funny look on her face. She asked me, “So you went to Wangfujing and ate fried shoe?”

Oops!

Tones matter. But don’t be limited by them. Have a good sense of humor and take it easy on yourself when you do mess up.

2. Know your best and favorite learning medium. Then use it and be in it.

My favorite way to learn a language, and as a result, the culture itself, is to be immersed in the country where the language originates.

Mandarin is primarily spoken in mainland China as well as Taiwan (R.O.C.) where one of my home bases is at. You will also notice at your city’s Chinatown (if you have one) that the owners and workers there will speak either Mandarin or Cantonese, usually.

I didn’t want to live in Chicago’s Chinatown so the next best thing was to go abroad and live in mainland China (where they use simplified written Chinese) and Taiwan (where they use traditional written Chinese). Suh-weet!

What is your favorite learning medium?

Are you a classroom-textbook-contextual-teacher-student learner? Perhaps signing up for Mandarin classes at your local community college is a good option.

Are you a one-on-one private learner? Perhaps finding a tutor to speak Mandarin with is a viable option.

Are you a drop-me-on-the-Great-Wall-from-a-helicopter-and-see-if-I-survive type of person? Aka deep and immediate immersion? Then perhaps living in China (or Taiwan) is a preferred option.

You know yourself best. You also know how you learn new languages the best.

And even if you don’t, try out all the various learning methods out there. See what works. It’s never too late to start learning a new language in whatever medium you prefer. Never.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice!

I arrived at BFSU in fall 2005 with mediocre Mandarin skills and barely any written or reading comprehension. I was, in effect, a baby Chinese with diapers and all.

The only way I was able to improve and step up my language skills was to practice. Incessantly. And with driven persistence and determination.

Like with any challenges in life, it takes time and habitual practice in order to overcome such challenges and thrive on your success over it.

The practice of speaking Mandarin does not need to be like pulling teeth.

You can practice speaking by:

a. Hanging out with your Chinese friends and asking them to speak Chinese with you. Even a 5-minute conversation with simple greetings is better than nothing. A good friend who doesn’t mind speaking with you is all you really need. Treat him/her to a simple meal or bubble tea, chat it up for a while, and if you do that enough times, you may start to realize you can speak more than you thought you could.

b. Going to Chinatown and eating at the local restaurants there. You know the ones. It’s the places with menus all in Chinese and nothing is in English. Most of the patrons are Chinese folks too. These places are usually good options and have tastier, more authentic foods. Go there.

c. Watching Chinese movies or TV shows. Though I don’t watch TV, this is one of the best ways to continually hear Chinese being spoken. You need to hear it, hear the proper tones, hear it in context to the storyline and in relation to the human connections being made, in order to really encompass more of the language as a whole. Just reading about Chinese won’t make you start speaking it like a native. You need to hear it too.

d. Listening to Chinese songs. I listen to some of my favorite Chinese/Taiwanese artists because I think Chinese is really beautiful. I swear I’m not being biased. (Okay, maybe a little …) You can learn a lot by listening to popular Chinese songs. If you need suggestions, just ask me. On top of that, try karaoke! Don’t let embarrassment of messing up or your frog-like voice prevent you from a fun evening out with a small group of friends at the local Chinese karaoke bar. It’s truly entertaining and a great way to learn the language.

e. Teaching English while living in China or Taiwan. Many foreigners enjoy teaching English in these places, where they are supported by the organization or school they are teaching for, as well as taking Chinese classes all the while. This is a great way to combine immersion in the country while still supporting yourself. Various programs abound, depending on the city/province/country you want to teach at. Google ‘Teach English in China’ or ‘Teach English in Taiwan’ and start your research from there. On top of that, ask your friends who’ve done it for their opinions, experiences, thoughts about it. But don’t let their views solely determine your decision to apply and go. Do it only if you want to do it.

f. Visiting and traveling throughout China or Taiwan. Absolutely fun and a wonderful way to experience the country itself, backpacking through China or Taiwan will leave you wanting more. Besides being forced to speak Mandarin (most locals do not speak English and even if they did, it can be quite broken and minimal), realize that simply by being in the local element, you are already learning, every single minute, every single day.

It’s a process, not a destination. You’re not aiming to speak perfect Mandarin so you can be an interpreter for the United Nations or a secret agent for the CIA (unless you really are trying for that, in which case, cool!). You’re aiming to experience Chinese in all its majestic beauty, language, food, people, culture and all.

4. Never, EVER stop learning.

The moment you stop learning is the moment you start dying.

People mistake learning for what they did while in formal education. This is a short-sighted viewpoint, for learning is a daily process, a daily activity, a daily habit, a daily exploration and discovery.

Your thirst for knowledge is only secondary to what the knowledge contains. And that is, the potential POWER it has to transform your life, your world.

Learning Mandarin is no exception.

There is always room for improvement, sure. But is that all we aim for? To have absolute perfect tone, pitch, accent? Or is it to feel at one with the language? To feel comfortable speaking it, conversing with the locals?

Learn by doing. Learn by trying. Learn by making mistakes but not letting those mistakes stop you from continuing on.

Once you believe you can’t do something, can’t speak Mandarin without sounding like a bumbling tone-deaf idiot, once you believe in this defeating self-failure, you won’t ever be able to grow, you won’t ever be able to learn.

5. Empty Your Head. I Am Ready to Pour.

I am reminded of a beautiful Zen tale which I want to share with you here:

Once upon a time, there lived a Zen master named Nansen.

There also lived a professor of philosophy and he was walking wearily in his travels and came across Nansen’s cottage.

Nansen invited the professor into his home and said, “Wait a little.”

The professor looked to be in a hurry, but Nansen said, “I will prepare tea for you. You look tired. Wait a little, rest a little and have a cup of tea. And then we can discuss.”

Nansen started boiling the water and at the same time looked over to the professor. While the water was boiling, he saw the professor was boiling within, too.

Not only was the teakettle making sounds as the water boiled, the professor was making more sounds within, chattering and continuously talking. The professor was preparing himself — what to ask, how to ask and from where to begin.

Nansen smiled to himself while watching the professor and thought, “This man is too full, so much so that nothing can enter him. The answer cannot be given because there is no one to receive it. The guest cannot enter into the house — there is no room.”

Out of compassion, Nansen wanted to become a guest in this professor. He knocks from everywhere but there is no door. And even if he breaks down a door, there is no room. The professor was so full, he cannot even enter within himself. He sits outside of his own being, just on the steps, unable to enter.

Nansen poured the tea into the cup. The professor became uneasy as Nansen continuously poured the tea into the cup. It was overflowing; soon, it would be spilling onto the floor.

The professor then said, “Stop! What are you doing? This cup cannot hold any more tea, not even a single drop. Are you mad? What are you doing?”

Nansen smiled at the professor and replied, “The same is the case with you. You are so alert to observe and become aware that the cup is full and cannot hold any more, why are you not so aware about your own self? You are overflowing with opinions, philosophies, doctrines, scriptures. You know too much already; I cannot give you anything. You have traveled in vain. Before coming to me you should have emptied your cup, then I could pour something into it.”

What Nansen was saying to the professor was, “Empty your head. I am ready to pour.”

Do not assume you know everything. Do not assume you know anything until you’ve tried things out yourself.

You learn through trial and error, through experiments, through experiencing, through self-exploration. Empty your head with preconceived notions of what learning Mandarin ought to be, so that you can fully receive.

Leave all judgments at the door. Leave all criticisms where you found them. Take up nothing from your past so that you are ready to receive in full in the present.

This is how you learn. This is how Mandarin is actually easy, rather than difficult. This is why you can and WILL do it.

I believe in you. Do you?

———

Feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comments below. And don’t forget to check out Nina’s blog!
Similar Posts:

• First week speaking/reading/writing Chinese
• Reading Thai and its tones isn’t as hard as you think
• Learning Japanese in a year: Manga-style explanation!
• Learning the Irish language (Gaeilge)
• Learning Brazilian Portuguese if you already speak Spanish

----------------------------
Learning Mandarin Chinese Is Easy; You Just Think It’s Hard is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Dutch is a fascinating and unique language, and you can find many good introductions to it online. (See the links at the end of this page for a nice collection of resources).

What can be most interesting about the language is how it is one of the closest in the world to English, while also being in the same language family as German. So if you speak both you will clearly have a huge advantage. Linguistically, it’s more or less half way between the two (while leaning more towards German).

Saying that it is just a mixture between the two is terribly inaccurate though; there are many unique aspects of the language that set it apart, and in today’s post I want to discuss the similarities and the differences.

But the similarities certainly give you a huge advantage! For example, I don’t think I could have pulled off 25 completely unique speed dates and a professional interview just over a month after starting to learn most languages. I hate it when people dwell on difficulties and become cry babies that they have to learn the “hardest” language in the world, but I am also quick to jump on any advantages I have when learning particular languages, and I certainly had them with Dutch!

I could progress very rapidly into speaking Dutch comfortably thanks to these advantages! I had aimed for fluency in two months and I didn’t reach it, but that is due to cultural issues leading to lack of consistent intensive speaking opportunities that I’ll be discussing in another post, not difficulties with the language.

As “English” as a foreign language can get

What strikes me immediately as making Dutch stand out is how many similarities it has to English, especially if you think in terms of older Shakespearian English, and even Irish English. I’d also pronounce the as de and add in an extra syllable to the word film, and even random other things like conversationally (pejoratively) say “whore” as “hoor” (same pronunciation as in Dutch hoer).

Also, some dialects of Dutch have an exact replica of the English R! This combined with a strange antiquated version of English, almost makes it seem like they are speaking English sometimes as they pass you quickly in the street! (Although I never used this R as part of my strategy to make sure they wouldn’t speak English with me). This is only at the end of syllables, never at the beginning!

You will see “OPEN” in shop windows, as this is simply how it’s written in Dutch (it’s not copying English, it’s just the same word in both languages), although it’s pronounced differently.

People say Sorry (although this one could in fact be an English borrowing; it’s used both to indicate that you didn’t hear what was said and as an apology if you ram your bike into someone else’s in the middle of an intersection), and there are (as in other European languages) many loan words directly from English. However some native Dutch words sound and mean the same thing, like “do” (written “doe”) and “since” (written “sinds”). Many words are written the same, but pronounced differently (like week).

In fact, by taking any typical Dutch text and using your imagination a little like changing some vs to fs, removing double vowels and adding -e to the end occasionally (such as maak –> make), changing gs at the end to ys (vrijdag) and a few other tweaks, you could almost guess from the context what is being discussed, even without German to help! You’d need a lot of imagination though!

If it hadn’t been for the Norman conquest of England (Frenchifying English vocabulary quite a lot), Dutch and English would likely be mutually intelligible along the lines of Spanish and Portuguese.

Head-start with German

But at the end of the day, what really made Dutch make lots of sense for me right from the start was the fact that I speak German (at the C2 level).

I could communicate so much better than I usually do when I start a new language (since speaking from day one is always my priority) because I had a vast amount of vocabulary and a lot of the grammar structures (such as second verb to the end of the sentence, main verb always in second position, general order of the phrase is Time, Manner then Place etc.)

Listing all of the similarities would be somewhat pointless because there are so many of them. So many in fact that German and Dutch are mutually intelligible (to a point).

There are certain complications that are not there in Dutch, which could make it comparably easier, however I think the scale of “difficult languages” is too superficially presented by too many people. Yes, the grammar and vocabulary are easier in Dutch than in German, however I found it easier to learn German in Berlin.

In my opinion if I had started both from absolute scratch (no school background, and not having the other one already), I would have learned German quicker in Berlin than Dutch in Amsterdam because of the cultural differences, which people ignore far too quickly in cold humanless point by point comparisons. (This says nothing about learning German or Dutch in other cities or countries though).

But since I found it hard to actually find one of those point-by-point comparisons, I thought I’d create one myself to give you a little list of what struck me as the most obvious differences that stood out!

[Note that apart from somewhat regular conversations, I also learned my Dutch from the same books that I usually use for other languages, as described and linked to on this site's language learning resources.]

Differences between Dutch and German

• G is always guttural. In German G is like in English go (never like in general) but in Dutch it’s usually the guttural sound like the ch in loch.
• Also ch is guttural in exactly the same way (in the Netherlands, not in Belgium), but has various possibilities in German depending on the dialect.
• Different vowel sounds. I was warned about this, but told that I could actually mimic the ui sound pretty accurately when I was focused. (It’s like “oy” but said in the front of your mouth)
• Quite different spelling rules. In Dutch you must never end a (non-loan) word with two of the same letter. Even though ga (to go) has an “open” a sound you cannot write it as gaa. And wil (want, as in German) cannot be written as will. Also ‘c’ is used in Dutch at the start of words (corrigeren, certificaat etc.), and only ever done so in loan words in German.
• Capital (uppercase) letters follow more or less the same rules as in English (with some exceptions like days of the week), unlike German which capitalises every noun.
• Different phonetics. oe is the “oo” sound in Dutch (like in English boot), sj is the English “sh” sound (unlike in German sch), and somewhat confusingly for German speakers, sch is simply an s sound followed by a (guttural) ch sound (So Amsterdam’s well known airport Schiphol is S-[guttural]-ip-hol), w is almost like half way between a German and an English w (v & w) depending on the dialect. And n at the end of words/syllables is not pronounced in many dialects. So verbs like lopen, spreken, gesproken, ziekenhuis etc. are [lope, spreke, gesproke, ziekehuis].
• Easier plurals. In German, the irregular and quite varied plurals can be quite difficult for learners, but in Dutch it is consistently -en or -s, and the rules for which to use are easy to learn.
• Only two “genders”. German has masculine, feminine, neuter. Dutch has common and neuter, where common simply corresponds to both masculine and feminine. If you already speak German, this means that most of the time if you know the article in German you know it in Dutch (das Haus –> het huis). However, since common is twice as likely you can get by pretty well at first by guessing it will be common until you have learned which words are neuter. And indefinite (a/an) is always “een”. [Edit: one exception to masculine & feminine basically being the same for nouns that was pointed out in the comments is when referring back to nouns using the possessive, such as "De regering en haar leden" however most Dutch people do not apply this themselves. Belgians on the other hand may do it.]
• No cases! This one is great news for learners, as it operates exactly like in English, with no cases ever applied to articles, adjectives or nouns. In German you have tables of der, die, das… den, die, das… dem, der, dem etc., but in Dutch it’s always just de & het (plural always de). No need for accusative, dative, genetive etc. In het huis, over de computer.
• Lots of turns of phrase: today/tonight/this morning are all phrased as “van” (of) the word. Vanavond, vannacht, vandaag, [From avond, nacht, da(a)g] and of course many other expressions and a lot of vocabulary will be totally different.
• Use of gaan for future. Like in English you can say “go to” to express the future in Dutch. This is not possible in German, where present tense (plus context) or future “werden” (will) is used.
• Verbs ending in -eren require a ge- prefix in the past, unlike their corresponding -ieren verbs in German. So noteren –> genoteerd, activeren –> geactiveerd
• Different end-verb orders. While the second verb does go to the end in a lot of situations in both languages, Dutch is a lot more like English in some cases of the order of these end-verbs, like Hij komt niet, omdat hij vandaag moet werken (He is not coming, because he has to work today). In German this would have to end with arbeiten muss, which is reversed. Also in Dutch, in some cases you can do both, while you must do only the second form in a similar German sentence: Zij zei dat ze het niet (heeft gevonden)/(gevonden heeft) (She said that she hasn’t found it).

Now of course, there are a huge number of differences between both languages, the vast majority of which I haven’t touched on here. Each language is very unique, with its own history and evolution from when they broke up from a common ancestor.

There is no way I can summarise all the differences, or even a considerable percentage of them in a small article like this. But I hope this superficial look over the major differences that stood out for me in my short time learning Dutch in Amsterdam will help others!

If there are other differences that stand out for you, or if you have any thoughts on the Dutch language itself, share them with us in the comments below!

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----------------------------
Learning Dutch after German (and English): What are the differences? is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

There are many myths about language learning that I’m trying to dispel as nothing more than lazy excuses on this blog.

The fact that you are too old, your destiny (genes, background etc.) is against you, you can’t afford to travel and there are no opportunities to speak where you live or systems to speak with natives online, you can’t roll your Rs, you already spent years learning and got nowhere, and many many other excuses.

But there will always be more excuses. Lazy people are imaginative in that way!

Today I want to tackle one that isn’t quite unique to Northern Europe, since English speakers will be lazy everywhere despite the advantages of English-free travel, but it is especially prominent here: “Northern Europeans will only ever speak English to you. Why bother even learning their language?”

While I will be focusing on my Dutch experience, I have been talking to other successful language learners living in Scandinavia who confirm that these observations work there just as well.

Yes, it’s true that you can live mostly by English here

The first major reason to not even try is that they all speak English anyway.

Although I have barely used any English at all, I can confirm from seeing tourists using it with them that their level is generally excellent.

Pretty much all of them still make mistakes, many of which I recognise as Dutch-influenced (such as I am sitting here/in school etc. instead of simply I am here/in school , since “to be” is used way less in Dutch) and if they haven’t lived abroad they still have an accent, but this will never hinder conversations. So yes, you could live your life entirely through English here.

And many do; I have met a staggering number of foreigners who have maintained the most impressive collective English-bubble I’ve seen anywhere. I met a man in Prague who had lived there for a decade without learning Czech, but here that actually seems to be more the norm than the exception!

The reasons for this working so well (apart from people’s downright laziness to learn the language of the country they live in), are actually an interesting long-term aspect of Dutch culture that I’d like to discuss in another post; basically they are very welcoming and open minded about world cultures, but leave them to do their own thing with no pressure or encouragement to integrate.

The philosophy of living apart together seems to be huge here, so people not learning their language is not just tolerated, it’s accepted as almost the obvious thing to do, by the locals themselves.

Because of this I met very few foreigners seriously learning Dutch (mostly Germans, Eastern Europeans etc.). It’s no wonder locals were shocked when I started speaking to them in their own language.

Once you try, there is no resistance

Yes, they were surprised, yes some of them were confused at why I’d want to learn Dutch, and yes they were amazed at how quickly I could speak at the level I was.

But you know what? Despite hearing the excuse for years, and people warning me many times in advance when I announced plans to come here, if I spoke Dutch to someone they NEVER replied in English. Not once. Not even a SINGLE time!!

I’ve heard this excuse for years about Northern Europeans. I didn’t get it my first week in Berlin either.

After 8 entire weeks here, there’s no way this can be pure luck. The 25 people I met in one night, those I’ve talked to in the street and in restaurants and bars, the many people I’ve met in parties and various social events, and even the few friends I’ve somehow managed to convince to squeeze me into their agendas on a more regular basis; they’ve all spoken just in Dutch with me.

There are exceptions, but these were when I didn’t begin in Dutch. For example, after a quick intro with some English, I only spoke Dutch with one flatmate who was away for my first week. However, with the other flatmate, I started speaking in English with him and continued for the first and second week and found it incredibly hard to get out of that routine with him for the whole stay.

I also met up with a good Dutch friend of mine from Esperanto meetings shortly after I had arrived, as well as another language blogger who is Dutch and didn’t even try to speak Dutch to the two of them. I was used to using other languages with them in the past.

But this just proves that if the learner is lazy, they will get no results. It is also incredibly hard to break a routine with someone once you have set it and “what language our relationship will be in” is an incredibly important decision to make from the start! So I’m really glad that I got into the routine from the start with the vast majority of people.

The only other times I spoke in English with the Dutch was at Couchsurfing meetings, while other foreigners (who know no Dutch) were present. To speak Dutch in this case, even when there are five Dutch speakers and one foreigner, would be very un-Dutch-like.

Why some people MAY get answered in English, and what to do differently

I didn’t get answered back in English (apart from the examples above where I wasn’t even speaking in Dutch) because of a few factors that are entirely up to the learner. Do not blame the local culture for this!

There are many good ways to learn to speak quickly and it’s up to you to be convincing. The following points are especially what I did differently to many other foreigners here:

1. Work on reducing your accent, especially your R!!

I’d say this is a priority; way more than when you should study grammar. I spoke terrible Dutch from the start, and slightly less terrible Dutch after a few weeks, but I did it with no strong accent.

People here simply associate an English-accent with laziness or unwillingness to learn and may make the switch even if you are genuinely trying, because they have met so many others with your accent in the past who simply were not really interested in learning.

This is even true when they know you are an English speaker! I pretty much always told people I was Irish, but the accent told them otherwise and that’s what helped keep them from switching. I’d say this is more of a subconscious tendency than a conscious decision.

The Dutch R that is rolled at the back of the throat is quite unique, and I didn’t put in the work to learn it this time. But I found my rolled R from Spanish/Italian to be a useful substitute, especially since they do use this R in some dialects of Dutch. I’ve been told that my accent sounded Icelandic or Italian or Eastern European, and since the tendency is to not speak English with these groups (at least the latter ones), they didn’t with me.

2. Speak in Dutch from the start!

There are many reasons I suggest a “speak from day one” approach. Efficiency in learning quickest is the obvious, but one I don’t mention as an important reason that really needs to be emphasised in this case is that it is very hard to change the language you are used to speaking with someone. As shown in the very rare examples above, I am as prone to this issue as anyone else, and I’m really glad I was very restricted in who I did use English with.

Yes, it will be frustrating – to be honest my time in Amsterdam has indeed been quite frustrating because I know that a huge amount of the city is partying in other languages and I could have simply joined them, and it was a challenge to make friends with the Dutch (more on that in a later post).

Not speaking Dutch would have been the easy road, but then I would not have made genuine cultural discoveries. If I was living here long term, the sacrifice of a few months of intensively learning Dutch would enhance years living here dramatically. It’s worth the sacrifice. I made it before in my first foreign language and the pay-offs have lasted me almost a decade so far!

Start as you mean to go on; speak in Dutch (or whatever the language may be) with everyone you meet! And one way to do this is:

3. Give yourself a head-start

If you are already in the country, then you have to make the tough switch as soon as you can, but if you aren’t, you have a HUGE advantage of time to be able to prepare yourself!

While I like to move to a new country with zero preparation (I’m doing it again mid-June!) this is one aspect of my language learning that I highly discourage others to copy. I do it for the adventure and for the challenge, (it’s fun) but it is definitely not helping me learn the language. You will never see me advise people to wait until you get there before you start. When people email me and say “I’m moving to Spain etc. in six months” I always reply to say, then why haven’t you started speaking already now??

While I didn’t do it with Dutch, I had an interesting head-start anyway thanks to my German, which I could use as a crutch to get me into the flow of a similar language (I won’t have this advantage with my next language). That was my head-start; although I certainly wouldn’t suggest you learn German in order to learn Dutch The point is that you need a head-start. If you are going to these countries, try and study the right basic materials, and then when you have some ground-work, after a few hours or a few days, look for online or in-person spoken opportunities immediately to get you into the flow of using it with a native.

The secret is to hit the ground running when you get to the country. As a polyglot, I have a different head-start in that I’ve done this before in general so I have no hang-ups about the whole experience, but you will find it incredibly hard to arrive in a country and just switch to a foreign language with no experience in doing so already. If you have time to prepare, use it. Do not squander months before moving; use them to speak now.

4. Be convincing and confident

Even in my first days speaking Dutch, I could still keep people interested in following me as I desperately tried to think of simple words to use. My strategy is to inject a lot of personality into my conversations. In my first weeks I generally don’t have a clue how to say so many things, but I say the little I do know with incredible confidence.

Hesitating, umming, second guessing yourself, thinking too much, squirming and generally showing through your body language that you are having a terribly uncomfortable time speaking their language, will mean that since they are nice people they will speak English to you! It’s them being generous to save you from this torture.

Don’t torture yourself, think of something quickly that may have some mistakes in it and spit it out. The only people I find that grammar mistakes in natural conversations truly annoy are some language teachers or pedantic other learners. The vast majority of the population you will meet are happy with hearing you try hard and don’t mind if you make mistakes as long as you do it well enough to get the message across.

When you start well and keep up this flow, within a few months you’ll be making dramatic progress towards fluency!

————-

My time in Amsterdam is coming to an end! I still have a few other observations to share though, about the Dutch and their language. Hopefully this point about how they will NOT reply to you in English if you do it right will be taken into account by other learners; if you try a little harder you can speak in their language to them all the time!

When you do this, you will open doors to many cultural discoveries that are simply not possible through English alone. I hope more try; despite frustration in trying to get to know Dutch, who tend to be more closed off than other cultures I am used to, I am very glad I stuck to it. I’ve learned so much in the last 8 weeks, and will share some of that with you in more posts soon.

Your thoughts on this appreciated in the comments below!
Similar Posts:

• Learning Dutch after German (and English): What are the differences?
• The Pareto (80-20) principle in language learning
• 6 easy ways to roll your R
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• Learning Brazilian Portuguese if you already speak Spanish

----------------------------
Another myth busted: Northern Europeans DON’T only speak English to you is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Two years after my experience in Paris, I decided to get back into French and move to Montréal (in 2007). It was a drastically different experience to my time in Paris! Everyone was so incredibly nice to me, people were much less formal and more open to making friends, and they especially had more patience to help me with my French.

Montréal and Quebec in general are among the most favourite places I’ve lived in, in the last decade of travelling. I still think very fondly back to my time there with my amazing and hilarious flatmates (Je m’ennuie de vous, Marie-Ève et Marlène!!), the parties, the Jazz fest, Juste pour rire and the amazing city and its open mind and warmth.

I especially liked Saint Jean (which I went to Quebec city for) – an incredible celebration which is comparible to other world festivals, but with the bonus of everyone coming up to you and wishing you Bonne Saint-Jean! Even the Carnival in Brazil didn’t have that level of interaction!

The Quebec spirit is one I definitely agree with and I highly recommend people go there (especially Americans due to proximity and likely easier bureaucratic visa etc. process) if they’d like to learn French.

Interview en français avec ma Couchsurfeuse Geneviève

The reason I’m bringing this up now, even though I’m in Amsterdam, is because I’ve been hosting a Québécoise for the last couple of days via Couchsurfing. As I’ve described in detail before, I use Couchsurfing as a means to maintain and practice all my languages on a regular basis, no matter where I am.

Since it’s been four years since I’ve lived in a French speaking country, I should technically have totally forgotten my French, but luckily I have been maintaining it thanks to hosting francophones.

Geneviève agreed to let me test out my new camera (which I’ll be using to interview those I host and come across in my travels in various languages in future) and ask her to share some thoughts on Quebec and Quebec French, and even share some frustration we both had Parisians (which luckily hasn’t been my experience elsewhere in France).

[Correction: She said that outside of Quebec they only speak English, which is of course forgetting about New Brunswick and many strong francophone communities throughout Canada.]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw5Re7k1KBA

Hopefully you liked the questions I asked her! The 13 minute video goes as follows:

• Intro 0:00 – 0:36
• [0:37] What’s different between Quebecers and the French?
• [2:21] Some unfairness about preference for English in Montreal and the need to preserve French
• [3:27] How foreigners are very much welcomed in French-speaking Quebec
• [4:00] The history of where Quebec curse words come from and some examples
• [5:30] Things to do to be more Quebecois
• [6:27] Difference in use of “les anglais”
• [6:53] Differences in how “a” is pronounced in some words
• [7:41] Spending time with Quebecers to get used to the accent
• [8:11] General vocabulary that is different in Quebec French
• [10:55] Geneviève’s travels and thoughts on travelling to keep an open mind
• [12:41] Wrapping up and me saying “I miss Quebec” in Quebec French

Hopefully my rusty (but still fluent) French doesn’t slow the interview down too much As you can imagine, my preference will be to share interesting videos like this rather than using my languages as a dancing monkey for no good reason. This is what languages are all about for me; interesting conversations with people. Expect more of these to feature on the blog

Any thoughts on how different Quebec French sounds? Have any of you been to la belle province? Let me know in the comments below!
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• Is long-term solo travel… lonely?
• Two months in Budapest

----------------------------
Differences between French in Quebec and France: accent, attitude & curse words [vidéo en français] is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

I hope you all liked the blog’s April Fools’ joke yesterday

Now I can finally share this video with you – it combines clever ASL videos I keep seeing online that sign lyrics to songs (one example shared here), with my need to have the entire Internet hear me sing in as many languages as possible

I give you, 6 languages, 1 singer, 1 signer: (or 7 languages including ASL)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iMnrUxXX0g

[If you liked this video, I'd really appreciate it if you would go to Youtube and give it a thumbs up & share it with your friends on Facebook!!]

In this video I sing 6 songs that are among the most well known ones for the languages I know best, while simultaneously signing the lyrics using ASL! I also added subtitle translations so you can understand what the songs you have likely heard some time before are actually about!

This demonstrates what I was discussing earlier in the week about ASL being so visual. I decided not to simply sign the lyrics directly (so you will notice some disagreement with what I’m signing and what the English translation of the song says), but to try to visually represent the song as best as I could.

I made sure to do the audio completely separately, so that I wouldn’t need to think about singing during the video. This also meant that I could sign differently to the lyrics and not get confused with English (or foreign language) word order. Although since I had only put a total of about 2 weeks into ASL at the time of recording, there are likely several mistakes

Sandra, who was helping me with my ASL over the last 2 weeks, helped me prepare the signs. Hopefully I remembered most of what she taught me when recording the video!

The songs are (in the order they appear in the video):

• La camisa negra – Juanes (A recent pop song that has become popular internationally) [Spanish]
• Poupée de cire, poupée de son – France Gall (Belgian winner of the 1965 Eurovision song contest) [French]
• Buachaill Ón Eirne – Corrs (They didn’t write the song, but it’s a good candidate for internationally recognised song in Irish since it’s on one of their albums) [Irish]
• Nel blu dipinto di blu – Domenico Modugno (Also known as “Volare”) [Italian]
• 99 Luftballons – Nena (Sorry for the obvious choice, but it is the most famous German song!) [German]
• Aquarela do Brasil – Ary Barroso (A well known song when you think of Brazil. Donald Duck first got me interested in my favourite country using this song!) [Portuguese]

Nothing in English or Esperanto this time!

Many thanks to my cameraman Markus, walk-in and props Jenny and Audiologist (i.e. official music “play button” presser) Karol.

Since I think the video is quite unique, I hope you think it’s worth sharing with your friends! Even if you aren’t interested in ASL, it may be cool to discover (from the subtitles) what parts of those songs you know are about!

As always, I look forward to reading your comments (both here and on Youtube). This video wraps up my brief, yet (clearly) fun first encounter with ASL and I’ll be ready to introduce my next language mission here on Tuesday!
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• Istanbul not Constantinople, Benny’s music video in Turkish
• Cool sign language videos
• Singing in French & Spanish, dancing salsa & working efficiently: A day in the life of an Irish polyglot in Colombia
• Settling in, first impressions of American Sign Language & video tour of my house
• American Sign Language: It’s not all in the hands

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6 languages, 1 singer, 1 signer