Learning languages

Posted on November 2nd, 2008 by Sacha Chua

My recent trip to Tel Aviv was a good reason to learn a little Hebrew. I listened to the Hebrew I course from the Pimsleur language series (available in the Toronto Public Library!) while I was sewing clothes or doing dishes, and I printed out a few phrase lists I found on the Internet. I didn’t get to the point of being able to have a good conversation in Hebrew, but it was nice not feeling totally lost, and occasionally even recognizing some of the things that people around me were saying.

I like learning different languages. It’s like building with blocks: you collect different kinds of pieces, and the more pieces you collect, the more ways you can combine them and make sense.

W- and I have been watching Heroes. Yes, we’re very much behind the times. ;) My favorite segments are when Masi Oka shows up as Hiro and speaks in Japanese. I miss the rush of semi-understood syllables, the alien familiarity of a learned skill.

Maybe I should take that up again. I probably won’t be able to make much time for conversation practice, but it would be interesting to be able to read foreign blog posts and make occasional comments.

So I’ve bought Japanese Flip for the new iPod Touch (thank you, Slideshare) and I’ll be playing with it on the subway ride. =) I’ll also see about getting back to learning French…

More posts about: learning // 3 Comments »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/5321

Miguel

Masi Oka is awesome. He still programs funky special effects algorithms for ILM 3 days a week and is pretty much the role model for geeks who want to overcome introvertedness. It must be awesome to be on a talk show and be interviewed about a program you wrote; too bad I can’t see anyone ever saying “why yes Conan, I did fix ticket #53 in the salary tracking software.”
http://randell.ph/ randell

There is a glitch in the matrix.
http://www.keyboardphilosopher.com Cameron Desautels

Thanks for mentioning Japanese Flip; I use Kanji Flip, which I now see is by the same author (Andre Khromov), and I couldn’t be happier with it. It’s wonderfully convenient to always have a stack of (virtual) flashcards in your pocket. I fire up Kanji Flip whenever I can squeeze in even a minute of study (waiting for someone to come out to the car, etc.).

I also believe that words (and expressions) can serve almost like macros, being signifiers for complex thoughts, and by manipulating these signifiers rather than the signified, underlying, simple thoughts, we make it easier to think at a higher level; much like how using a variable to represent a complex expression in a larger expression can reveal higher-level patterns that we’re easily visible previously. My point being that through language study you learn words and expressions that don’t have direct equivalents in your native tongue, and (I surmise) knowing such expressions increases your reasoning capabilities.

On This Day...

2012: Business experience report: Filing taxes! — I filed my corporate taxes and HST today, well ahead of the deadlines. The money will earn negligible interest in [...]
2011: Planning an Emacs-based personal wiki – Org? Muse? Hmm… — I miss my Planner wiki! I think it’s time to organize things into a personal wiki again. Blogs are great [...]
2010: Book: Choose to be happily married: How everyday decisions can lead to lasting love — Bonnie Jacobson, PhD., with Alexia Paul 2010 Adams Media, Avon, Massachusetts ISBN 13: 978-1-60550-625-8 The book [...]
2009: Book: Closing the Innovation Gap — The best talent embodies the five core values and has the right combination of aptitude, skill, judgment, passion, and drive. [...]
2008: Weekly review: Week ending Nov 2, 2008 — This week was half travel, half catching up. I flew to Tel Aviv for a customer workshop at which I [...]
2006: Learning a foreign language — Another idea for the activity matrix: learning a foreign language. Japanese? Spanish? Maybe Spanish – I know a few people who can [...]
2006: Tweaked blog design — I tweaked my blog design slightly, using a real-life photo instead of my icon and taking a few things off my [...]
2006: In other news… — I’m back on the wagon of tracking every expense. There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that every cent is accounted for. [...]
2006: Hack Night — A few days ago, I posted a matrix of great ways to spend time. Simon liked the idea, so last night, we [...]
2006: Contact report — I started tracking e-mail sent on 2006.09.01 with a nifty piece of Emacs Lisp code I wrote just for the purpose. Now [...]
2006: Microsoft evangelism – tempting! — I had hot chocolate and a terrific conversation with John Oxley, director of community evangelism at Microsoft Canada. He told me about [...]
2005: More about teaching — Teaching is the most humbling of experiences. There is nothing like standing there in front of the students and finding yourself [...]
2005: ACM controversy — For the most part, Ateneo handled their first ACM Intercollegiate Programming Competition wonderfully. But there was one thing that perhaps could have [...]
2003: Oooh, Perl is cool — perl -e 'print "*" x 80 . "\n"' I didn’t know about x number…
2003: Intrams and Pisay Curriculum — This rant’s from Julius B. Legaspi III: Thank you for those who sent their comments so far. Rest assured I will try [...]
2001: Playing with planner (linux, emacs) — Today’s been a busy day. I don’t suppose I can get planner to nicely work with all the rest of [...]

sacha chua living an awesome life