The Dialect Project

Although I am not yet advanced in Spanish and Japanese, I found out that what I’m learning is one side of those languages.  Hypothetically, if you are at an advance level or fluent in a foreign language and you talk to some people who speak that language, is it possible that you may not understand the words that are coming out of their mouths, more or less? If you have learned by textbooks and/or taking classes, then you just may have a shock of your life.  Unsurprisingly, just as the English language, language isn’t completely one sided. There are four factors to really consider when you are learning a language: Standard, dialect, colloquialism, and accent.  In most textbooks and classes, the standard dialect is taught.  The four factors are:

• Dialect – If a language is a tree, then the dialects of the language are its branches.  It’s one of the varieties of language differing in vocabulary, syntax (word order), and morphology (structure of words),and pronunciation.
• Standard — How do I best describe this: One source states, ” a standard language is a particular dialect of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status”.  Basically speaking, it’s language to bring common ground to the masses and have all these enforced  grammar rules to bring order and clarity for all to use and understand.  Some countries, there are many groups and each have their own dialect that others groups might not understand. China is one of them; Mandarin with Beijing dialect is the common speech.
• Colloquialism – This is, no doubt, the “real” language—the common speech; the informal and familiar speech without any regards to standard grammar rules and speaking proper.
• Accent – Linguistically speaking, the manner of pronunciation. It’s sometimes based on dialects or geographic regions.

I decided to make it a project to collect as much info about dialects of any language that I can and even give a basic facts along the way.  The purpose for this is to bring awareness of the richness and complexity of the language and pick up where some textbooks and classrooms overlook.

Along the way, I don’t mind getting help with the project.  One person cannot do it all alone and it’s best to hear it from those who are more familiar with any language that I choose.

A Proper Launch

I activated this blog about a year ago and didn’t post anything until January 2009 kicked in, and so far it’s obvious that I’m not a good blogger.  I had my intentions to blog at least twice a week and be active with my studies regularly.

So why do I bother having this blog if I’m a procrastinator? Because my love for languages and the desire to be multilingual are too strong to ignore and I feel that I can share a lot with what I learn and observe.

I came across Aspiring Polyglot about 2 years ago and I have been following it since.  It is inspiring for me because it seems that I was the only one to want to be multilingual, i.e. know 10 plus languages, and generally people would say that that’s unrealistic in which I have to turn a deaf ear to.

So here’s my official launch post, after 3 posts and 14 plus months since activation. I am going to continue on, I got loads of stuff waiting to be posting.

Enjoy!

OMG! Nani desu ka!

This is kinda awkward.

Y’know, the bathroom is really a private area to do private things in privacy. Anyways, I wish I can interpret this…

A little background info, this is Andy Lau. I’ve seen a couple of his movies and after watching The House of Flying Daggers with Zhang Ziyi and Takeshi Kaneshiro (my two favorite actors) last year, I decided to look him up.  Turns out, he can sing too (Takeshi sings).

Current Update

In much dismay, my pursuit in passing the challenge I set for myself is a failure. I am about two-to-four weeks behind in my studies. For the reason for my slacking off was pressure. It seemed that whatever I was learning wasn’t sticking.  So I took a break, which lasted three weeks. During that time, I was out of town and the environment I was in Spanish was everywhere.  I was literally taking a break from Spanish. I thank God many times that my cousin didn’t converse to me Spanish.  Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Mandarin—it was everywhere, besides Hebrew, Arabic, and Hindi and some German here and there.

So, I returned home and slowly started back my studies, taking it slow so I won’t “crash” again.  I simply review what I was struggling with and progress to the next lesson in matter of weeks

The only thing I’m going to do is extend the challenge to August 1^st.  I am more than determine to be fluent in Spanish that set high expectations of myself to make a decent progress and be at an advance level by the deadline. But don’t worry, I’m not pushing too hard. I never push too hard.

Currently, I’ve pretty much covered the pronouns and prepositions and getting to dive into the sea of verbs.  I know a couple of verbs in present and preterit tenses, and I got the basics, I just need to go all the way.  I can speak some Spanish yet I can read it better.

It seems that any language enthusiast have a habit of studying not one but two or more at the same time.  I’ve heard that that is a reckless stunt bound for confusion on the learners part, which I plan to talk about in another time entitled “Mindset.” Well, I happen to be just that.  In the midst of my Spanish studies, I am learning Japanese participles, verbs and katakana, the tones of Mandarin, and some Vietnamese that my coworker is teaching me.

And dare I not stop there. I have a brother who’s interested in learning Italian and another brother learning German. So I’m helping them both with those.  I had no plans to learn Italian yet, not when I’m still learning Spanish, but as an English major, I can help them with those. Just as my Spanish teacher once said: If you have a strong foundation in your English grammar, then learning a foreign language shouldn’t be too much a trouble. I agree every word of it.

The Foreign Language Challenge

Since the New Year rolled in, I decided to take on a challenge: learn a foreign language in less than what is it takes to become advance.  On average, it takes about 3 years to learn a foreign language, so I minimize the time to less than a year.

Now most people probably will think that is totally impossible.  Impossibilities is what I do.  I challenge myself to this because I’m tired of being monolingual. It’s on my New Year resolution to learn a language and that’s been on my list for years, only because I unintentionally put it off.  Why was it put off? The answer is simple: procrastination.  I have procrastinated on quitting procrastination. But this year is different.  I am committed to never be a procrastinator, ever.  If I hadn’t procrastinated from the beginning, then I’d be able to read Dragon Ball and Naruto comics instead of watching them on TV. I’m sure that the producers were faithful to the original materials. But come on, the shows are adapted. It’s like Spider-Man or X-Men movies, and everyone knows that Rogue is Gambit’s woman (I was bugged by that).  If I hadn’t procrastinated, I would enjoy watching Jackie Chan’s best instead of being stuck with corny dubbed versions of his films. And I can comprehend the sexy words coming out of Takeshi Kaneshiro’s mouth and not rely on subtitles (it distracts his sexiness).  If I hadn’t procrastinated, I would have read the Three Musketeers, Gabriel Garcia Máquez’s renowned novels, and I would be studying Russian at this time so I can read Anna Karenina. Alas, I procrastinated and I pay the consequences of being monolingual. Therefore, as you can see, procrastination is evil and I hope this inspires anyone to avoid it at all cost.

So it’s either now or never.

The language I chose to study is Spanish.  Yes, Spanish. It is an easiest language to learn for an English speaker, yet hard because it’s foreign, as my Spanish teacher used to say. I heard that it takes about 200 hours to be fluent. Let’s see, to do the math, if were to spend 8 hours a day studying, then I’ll be fluent in 25 days. But I’m not going to do that. I have within 5 month, i.e. 20 weeks, to learn Spanish.  So my deadline is May 20^th, a couple of days before my special day.

Of course, along with my study, I also have hiragana, katakana to polish, and some English root words to review. So that could be a burden…