{"id":1148,"date":"2013-06-24T09:59:16","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T13:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:44:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:44:48","slug":"just-ask-alex-june-2013-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2013\/06\/24\/just-ask-alex-june-2013-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Ask Alex: June 2013 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s finally here! The very first edition of the<strong> Just Ask Alex<\/strong> series! If you&#8217;re new here, our friend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawlangs.com\">Alex Rawlings<\/a> speaks 11 languages, and he&#8217;s only 21 years old. Don&#8217;t believe us? Check out his introductory post on the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2013\/05\/20\/10-stages-of-language-learning-how-to-get-started-and-keep-going\/\">10 Stages of Language Learning<\/a> to see him speak them all! Each month Alex will be answering YOUR questions on language learning. Want Alex to answer your questions? Ask us on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/TLILanguages\">Twitter<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/transparent.language\">Facebook<\/a> using <strong>#JustAskAlex<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Just Ask Alex: June Edition\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ylmisG2yGWM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>1. How do you avoid mixing up all of your languages when speaking?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There is no simple answer to this question, and people try lots of different things to keep their new languages apart. It\u2019s a skill that you have to develop, and one that can be just as difficult as learning a new language in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>For me, however <strong>it\u2019s all about the way I feel<\/strong>. When I learn a new language I notice that I gain a new personality, and this is what I concentrate on when trying to keep languages apart. I say things differently, think differently, and express myself in completely new ways, regardless of whether or not the two languages are \u2018similar\u2019. Russian is such a rich language, and when I speak it I become pensive and expressive. Dutch, however, makes me jolly and carefree, and I feel like I\u2019m riding a bike through the canals of Amsterdam. French is about red wine, good food, and that sound they play at train stations before they make announcements. I love my newest language Yiddish for its humour, its shrugs and its hand gestures, and because it brings with it so much history and culture as well.<\/p>\n<p>If you also pay really close attention to the way a language is pronounced, that should immediately make thing a lot clearer. For example, there are a lot of sounds in Dutch that don\u2019t exist in German, and vice versa, even though some words might look similar on paper. \u2018Spreken\u2019 for example is pronounced totally differently to \u2018sprechen\u2019, although they both mean \u2018to speak\u2019: the German vowel is a flat \u2018e\u2019 sound like \u2018shpreh-chn\u2019, while the Dutch is open and longer and sounds more like \u2018spray-kuh\u2019. This is why it\u2019s really important to <strong>listen to the words first, before you learn to read them<\/strong>. If you misread something and pronounce it like you would in another language, that can become very difficult to unlearn. Listen carefully to the pronunciation of your new language. <strong>There is no sound or word that is the same in any two languages<\/strong>. Bear that in mind, and you won\u2019t have any problems.<\/p>\n<p>Having said that, the chances of you having to speak, say, Korean and Catalan on the same day are pretty low. It\u2019s perfectly acceptable to let one language slip while you need to concentrate on the other, so long as you have a way of maintaining the other at the same time. But that is entirely a different question, which we\u2019re about to consider\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. How do you maintain\/practise all of your languages so that you don\u2019t lose competency in any of them?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The truth is that while this is difficult, it\u2019s not impossible. Maintaining your languages does not mean sitting down and doing grammar exercises for an hour per language per day. You can keep them going without making too much effort, so long as you recognise that at some point you will have to go back and devote more time to learning them properly.<\/p>\n<p>I have languages that I\u2019m actively studying (German, Russian, and Yiddish), and those that I just keep ticking over. My day is divided into two different modes: \u2018active time\u2019 that I use for studying\/working, and \u2018dead time\u2019 which is when I\u2019m commuting, having a shower or buying groceries \u2013 in other words, the time that I would normally just spend staring into space. Keeping languages going is about using this \u2018dead time\u2019 to your advantage. I download French podcasts, I listen to Hebrew songs, I put on a Mexican soap opera when I\u2019m tired and try to follow what\u2019s going on, and sometimes when I\u2019m at the supermarket I practise my Dutch guttural sounds (I might look like a weirdo, but at least it means that no-one else is fighting me over the last pint of milk on the shelf). The point here is not necessarily to learn new words (although that might well happen), but to <strong>remember what\u2019s already been learnt<\/strong> and stay tuned into the sound of the language, and, of course, its personality.<\/p>\n<p>I believe that <strong>you don\u2019t forget languages<\/strong> if you don\u2019t use them; they just become dormant somewhere in the back of your brain. The task is to bring them back to life, and drag up all that knowledge stored away somewhere and activate it once again. That means that you might forget a grammar point, but look over it and you\u2019ll remember it in no time. You might also have moments where you can\u2019t for the life of you recall certain words; but you don\u2019t have to \u2018learn\u2019 these all over again: just <strong>revise what you once learnt and it\u2019ll all come flying back to you like a boomerang<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course there will always be languages that you feel more confident about and ones where you\u2019re more shy. Just don\u2019t say the words \u201cI used to speak\u2026\u201d. If you take a break and then go back to a language, you\u2019ll find <strong>it\u2019s far easier to pick up from where you left off<\/strong> than you might think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s finally here! The very first edition of the Just Ask Alex series! If you&#8217;re new here, our friend Alex Rawlings speaks 11 languages, and he&#8217;s only 21 years old. Don&#8217;t believe us? Check out his introductory post on the 10 Stages of Language Learning to see him speak them all! Each month Alex will&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2013\/06\/24\/just-ask-alex-june-2013-edition\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[542801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-archived-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1162,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions\/1162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}