Reading Sara’s post on Soviet Winnie the Pooh truly inspired me. As a beginning Chinese student, I love watching C-dramas, but sometimes it’s a bit challenging to understand what’s going on, especially with the complex love triangles! Children’s cartoons are a great way to introduce yourself to more Chinese media, especially because they’re designed to use elementary-friendly language. Even if they don’t have captions in English, the animation style can make it easy to pick up on the story and characters. Here are some recommendations I’ve found, plus a bonus C-drama recommendation!
Practice your French and learn some science!
Sometimes the best way to practice a language is by just passively listening to it. This could be in a movie with subtitles, or just an interesting video on YouTube. I see it as letting your subconscious absorb the language through osmosis. Is that even a thing? Maybe there’s a science channel that talks about science-y stuff like that. Wait… there is!
C’est Pas Sorcier is a TV show available on YouTube that explains all kinds of science-related stuff in French. They’re meant for middle and high school students whose first language is French, so they do speak a little fast. I would recommend it for intermediate French speakers (A2 level). My personal favorite is “Comment fonctionne notre électroménager?”, it’s very interesting and the characters are really funny. This show is shown A LOT in French high schools, it’s very nostalgic and even though they’re still releasing new videos, they’ve kept their vintage essence. Go check it out!
Here’s the link to the channel! https://www.youtube.com/@Cestpassorcierofficiel
Resource for A1 German Students!
Do you want to practice your German over break but are tired of Duolingo? Do you also get the feeling that every movie in German sounds like a long, incomprehensible sentence? But more importantly… do you like to watch really bad movies that make you scream at the screen?
Nicos Weg is a movie made for learning German that has all the vocabulary you need for A1 level. You can find it on YouTube, but I added the link at the end of the post! The characters talk slow, but not too slow to the point where it’s annoying, and the storyline is (kind of) great! It’s an entertaining movie, that’s for sure. While most characters are really likable, the main character Nico will make you want to pull your hair out. I was watching this movie with a friend who doesn’t speak any German and we were both incredibly entertained, mostly because of how ANNOYING the main character is! We kept complaining about the plot holes of the movie and next thing you know we watched an hour and a half of it. Time flew by and I actually learned so many new words. Did you know that elevator is Aufzug in German? It makes no sense but it’s true! It’s such a great resource for hearing all the A1 words in a movie that moves at a pace that beginner students can follow, and I highly recommend it even if the general cinematography isn’t the best. I would describe it as the German version Twilight. Tschüss und schöne Pause!
Unique ideas to practice your target language over break!
Without classes, it can be challenging to keep up with daily language practice over breaks. You may have heard the typical suggestions (all of which are great!), such as watching movies, listening to podcasts, or reading books in your target language. Here are some unique ideas to help you integrate your target language into your everyday life over break!
Continue reading “Unique ideas to practice your target language over break!”Non-trivial way to improve your Russian and make everybody believe you’re a native speaker (sort of….)
It’s never been a secret — Russian is notoriously challenging, filled with confusing conjugations and challenging slang that leaves even the most experienced learners crying, screaming and pulling their hair.
But you don’t have to jump straight into banging your head with a thick Oxford dictionary — there are multiple easy – perhaps even childish – ways to upgrade your Russian skills.
1. Watch Peppa Pig and (Soviet!) Winnie the Pooh (the brown one)
Watching cartoons in Russian is a great way to advance those basic level speaking and comprehension skills if you’re a beginner and just starting your journey. It’s helpful to start with a form of media that incorporates straightforward, simple phrases that are yet widely used in a day-to-day speech of native speakers. For me, Soviet Winnie the Pooh is perhaps one of the first cartoon I became familiar with — it’s an easy-going, kind and relaxing animation filled with witty comedy that will help you to accustom yourself to basic-level phrases, and pronunciation.
Leaving a link for everyone interested!
2. Read fan fiction!
If you’re like me, you understand the frustration of finding a really-really good fan fiction after hours of scrolling only to discover it’s in a language you don’t understand. How about we use it to our advantage? Go to your favorite fan fiction website and search up anything related to your favorite fandom. It’s a slightly more advanced technique than the one described above — as fan fiction are mostly written by native speakers, you might find yourself learning new slang or word order that you never encountered in your formal Russian textbook!
3. Crosswords/Table games
This one is rather self-explanatory — grab some friends, get a scrabble in Russian and learn as you go! A little hint: playing Monopoly in Russian is even funnier and I find it helpful to avoid conflicts typically caused by this infamous game when 80% of those involved are still learning how to curse 😉
The Duolingo French Podcast: Découvrez l’histoire de Joséphine Baker
Are you looking for more ways to immerse yourself in French? Podcasts are a great way to implement French into your everyday life. It’s especially important to engage with the language outside the classroom. Whether you’re taking a walk around the canyon, getting lunch in Commons, or trying to fall asleep, a podcast can add a lot more French exposure to your life. It’s a simple way to improve your French comprehension, vocabulary, and cultural knowledge. At the same time, it can be difficult to find the right one. For beginning to intermediate students, I have a recommendation for you: The Duolingo French Podcast!
Continue reading “The Duolingo French Podcast: Découvrez l’histoire de Joséphine Baker”Is Culture Shock Inevitable When Abroad?
Find out in the interview with Henry, the Chinese tutor!
Patricio: Can you tell me about what made you want to learn Chinese?
Henry: It was actually kind of random. I was taking a gap year between highschool and college and I didn’t have a lot going on, so I picked up a bunch of hobbies such as archery and Chinese. I found a really good Chinese teacher and I really enjoyed learning a language in my free time. I was learning French in high school, but I really struggled with that because I was being forced to learn it, but it was a completely different story when I started learning Chinese because I actually wanted to learn it.
Did the French stick at all or did you lose it completely after high school?
I’m sure it would come back if I practiced it a bit, but I wouldn’t call myself a strong speaker. I’d say now my two strong languages are just English and Chinese.
Would you say you’re fully fluent in Chinese?
No, I wouldn’t say so. It’s a really long process and it really depends on what I’m talking about. There’s so many words to learn that if I’m speaking about an area I’m not used to talking about it can sometimes be easy to phrase things weird. I’m pretty comfortable going through life just with Chinese, I’ve done that both at the Middlebury Summer Program and when I studied abroad in Taiwan.
Can you tell me more about the Middlebury Summer Program?
It’s a program I did when I first started learning Chinese. It’s 8 weeks over the summer where basically, starting from zero, you sign a language pledge to only speak Chinese. It was a pretty interesting experience because even though it’s pretty academically intense, I found it really relaxing because there were no expectations other than just socializing in Chinese. I had a lot of fun doing it and I think it’s a great program, and everyone from my group went from being level 1 Chinese to fully being able to live in China and Taiwan afterwards.
You mentioned that you studied abroad. Can you tell me more about that?
I did my first year at Reed, and I decided I wanted to major in Chinese literature, and really before I could get into that I felt like I needed to live somewhere where they spoke the language. Especially because at this point I had only been learning Chinese for a year and a half. So I went to Taiwan for the academic year through the ICLP, the International Chinese Learning Program. All of my classes were Chinese learning classes. The main goal was obviously improving my Chinese, but it was also just such a great experience to live somewhere else and talk to people and stuff.
Did you experience any culture shock while living in Taiwan?
I feel like people ask this a lot, but really no. I feel like it reasoned with my expectations of what the experience was going to be like. And it was in a lot of ways very similar to the US. Especially Taipei. It’s very safe, comfortable, and the food is great. I never had a moment where I felt uncomfortable, it was very cosmopolitan. There wasn’t a lot of shock. There were definitely barriers. In the first couple of months I had to figure out when it was appropriate to have a conversation with people because obviously I wanted to practice. There’s a lot of difficulties in communicating, but never to an extent where I felt very out of place.
So I remember you mentioned that Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet, and I was curious about how the language works. Could you explain how Chinese is written and read without an alphabet?
Yeah, I’m not a linguist and there’s definitely a specific term for it, but essentially each character is monosyllabic. The meaning and the sound are separate, so you can look at a character and there’s no definitive way of how it will be pronounced, and you also have to know like a thousand different characters, as opposed to the 26 we have to know for English.
Note: it’s called a system of ideogrammatic characters
Well that sounds very difficult to learn. Do you have any tips for people who want to learn Chinese?
You definitely need to set a routine. Otherwise it’s so slow. It’s a balance of finding new tips and tricks to learn the language and then actually just spending a lot of time learning it. If you just go head first with no plan you’re probably going to waste a lot of time. There’s a lot of hours you have to put in. One of my teachers always says that to achieve proficiency you need 2200 classroom hours, as opposed to 600 hours needed for a native English speaker to learn Spanish. I think you just really have to have a passion for learning it. In my experience, the people who do the best at learning a language are those who aren’t seeing it as a tool to learn, but those who see it as something fun and interesting to do. Then you should go to tutoring, office hours, language scholars, language houses, which are already five ways to go speak it outside of class.
Ok two more questions. Do you have a favorite word in Chinese?
I have a favorite phrase. Can I go with that?
Yeah of course go with the phrase!
It’s 江山易改本性難移 (jiāngshānyígǎi, běnxìngńanyí). It literally translates to it’s easy to move mountains and rivers but it’s hard to change your nature.
In what context would you use it?
You wouldn’t find people going around saying that, but I just think it’s a true statement! You go through life facing all these hard challenges and then you have the simplest thing about yourself that you simply can’t change.
Do you watch any movies in Chinese and if yes do you have any recommendations?
Yeah I watch a lot of Taiwanese new wave cinema. A City of Sadness is one of those movies Americans might know if they’re into film, and it’s great. But there’s a couple of really interesting movies that are less common. One of my favorites is Cape No. 7, which is the highest grossing Taiwanese film domestically. It captures the island vibes and the influences in Taiwan. And recently there was a really good movie about a family and queerness called Marry My Dead Body. It’s a comedy but it had some touching moments.
And then books, I started reading Dream of the Red Chamber, which is this 2500 page book about the downfall of a rich family. I’ve had a lot of fun with that one.
Ok great thank you!
Be Shameless When Learning a Language!
This week I interviewed Emilio, a Spanish tutor who’s eager to help people out with Spanish. In our interview, we covered topics such as feeling disconnected from one’s culture, what it means to have a diverse cultural background for one’s identity, and how to sound natural when speaking a new language. Emilio’s advice is to be shameless when speaking! The interview is posted below and was edited for length.
Continue reading “Be Shameless When Learning a Language!”
Speaking Ancient Greek in modern-day Greece?
Today we are interviewing Basil-Anne, our Greek and Latin tutor. We talked about starting a language from scratch at Reed, the GLAM department, and studying abroad as a speaker of ancient languages!
Leilani: Would you like to talk a bit about your background, why you chose to study Greek and Latin?
Basil-Anne: Sure! I have studied Latin for a very, very long time. I started officially in fourth grade, but I think my first real Latin class was in seventh grade. So I’ve been taking it for a really long time. And I came into Reed undecided but I was very strongly either going to be a GLAM [Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies] major or be in the Sociology department. I went to the GLAM open house during O-week and fell in love and was like, “This is where I want to be.” So I dropped Intro Sociology and switched into another GLAM class and have not looked back.
L: You mentioned taking Latin prior to Reed. Did you have the same experience with Greek, or did you start with Intro Greek?
B: I started with Intro Greek, and Greek was a lot harder than Latin because I was starting from scratch. But it’s a very cool language. My favorite thing about just Greek and Latin in general, and I don’t know if this is true for all language learners, is the kind of peak you hit where you’re thinking of every single thing and all of a sudden, you’re just not thinking of every single grammar thing anymore. That’s a really fun moment for me. It corresponds with the course load, like you switch from language classes to literature classes, and that’s just such a fun transition for me, of being able to be like, “OK, I know what I’m doing, and now I actually get to talk about literature.” Which is why language is so fun. So with Greek, I really got to see that process condensed from freshman year to now, senior year. It was great.
Continue reading “Speaking Ancient Greek in modern-day Greece?”Meet Reed! (Spanish)
¡Hola! My name is Reed (he/him) and I’m a native Spanish speaker. I’m Argentine/American. My mom being a Spanish teacher made me sit through her lessons since I was a toddler, so I learned how to teach Spanish as a second language. I’ve taught all levels of Spanish in the past, including grammar, spelling, vocabulary, reading, and pronunciation. I’m happy to work through any questions and exercises you might need help with! I have a pretty flexible schedule so feel free to reach out if you’d like to arrange another time!