Learning Languages "On the Fly"

Hello, everyone and happy Sunday! As I was thinking about what I would write about this week, I had several ideas, but today's topic didn't come to mind until I was sitting on a plane on my way to Copenhagen where I'm spending my final college Spring Break.

I don't know what it is about plane-rides, but they somehow give me a space where my creativity flows and I feel free. I'm not sure if it's the thrill of knowing that I'm going to another country, seeing clouds go on for miles and miles on end, the fact that I enjoy watching a movie or a TV show alone, or listening to music from different corners of the planet that gets me going. There's just something about being on a plane that feels liberating, which brings me to how this post came to be.

Close to the 3 hour mark, I noticed that the lights had been turned off and that I didn't want to watch a second movie in a row, so I decided to play some music. One of the playlists that you can listen to on a Scandinavian Airline flight is called "Meditainment", which is basically an hour-long compilation of jazz and meditative music. This started to relax me, so I let myself just think. For once I felt like I could think about everything and nothing at the same time, because I knew that a long week was long gone and that a new exciting week would soon begin.

To give you some context, my parents, my sister, and I are going to Copenhagen over break for a pre-graduation trip. I have always preferred trips to asking for presents, so my mom figured that going on a trip abroad would be a well-deserved graduation present, and boy was she right. Over October break, my mom and I were home alone, so we discussed my graduation and how I wanted to celebrate it. After some brainstorming, my mom started looking at both domestic and international flight options flying out of multiple airports close to home. After some searching, we found out that it was cheaper to buy tickets for 4 to go to Copenhagen, Denmark than to go to New Mexico, or Arizona, which are 2 states I have yet to visit, so our decision was a no-brainer. 

I'm very fortunate to have a mom who studied Hospitality & Tourism during her undergraduate career, so my family has already traveled to over 40 countries together, but always on a budget. The key word is on a budget. Copenhagen was also an ideal location for me, because I love the cold and it's still winter there. As some of you know, I get very ill when I'm in warm and humid places, so Scandinavia was very appealing to me. Furthermore, it has been my lifelong dream to experience Scandinavia first-hand, specifically Sweden.

Copenhagen is located very close to Malmo and to other towns in Sweden, so my mom assured me that we could go to both. I have also wanted to learn a Scandinavian language since high-school, shortly after visiting the Swedish Language Village at Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji, Minnesota (located in the northern part of the state). Swedish has been a language that I have been fascinated by every since. There's something about Scandinavia that gives off good vibes that I can't describe. Needless to say, I'm very excited about this trip!

At the beginning of the flight, I was in the mood to watch a movie. Due to wanting to find out more about Scandinavia and Sweden, I decided to watch a Swedish movie called "Unga Astrid" (Becoming Astrid) with English subtitles. This past year, I have been exposing myself to Swedish music, so my ear has become slightly more attuned to the sounds the language makes. While watching the movie, I was able to pick up on a word, or a few words here and there based on my knowledge of the 7 languages I speak, which was fascinating. Who knows? Maybe my dream of learning Swedish will someday come true.

The reason why I wanted to write this post is, because I wanted to encourage you to take advantage of what airplanes and specific airlines have to offer. The more you travel abroad with international airlines, the more options you will have to choose all kinds of entertainment during your travel journeys. I especially love watching movies, as they give you insight on a country's history and culture. If you already speak the language at a decent level, it helps you build confidence in understanding a language in your listening comprehension skills in that language. 

For those of you who are beginners, or intermediate learners of a language, I recommend watching movies with subtitles in English if you have minimal exposure doing so in your target language, but if you're slightly more comfortable and brave, then it's best to watch them in the language you're learning, so that you start training your brain and your ear to familiarize yourself with the sounds, pronunciation, cadence, and various dialects and ways in which people speak that language.

I know how tempting it can be to resort to your first language, but I promise that every victory counts, even if you only understand 5% of a movie the first time around. The more you watch movies, the more you will start to understand them over time. Trust me, it's a process that takes years, but the earlier you start doing this, the less strenuous the language-learning process will be.

What I like and prefer about movies over television series is that you know exactly how long a movie will last. In other words, you know that for 1.5, 2 hours all you will do is watch a movie and nothing else. I also find them to be more thrilling, because you don't have to watch 3, or 10 episodes of a television series in order to get the full entertainment experience. Don't get me wrong, I also love television series, but I personally don't have enough free time to consistently watch one as a full time student and worker in my last semester of college.

Even watching movies in languages you don't already speak is beneficial. Most polyglots I have followed on YouTube and successful language learners suggest exposing yourself to as much audio content as possible before "learning", or "studying" the language. Forcing yourself to focus more on how the language sounds and the musicality of a language is highly beneficial, especially when you have subtitles in your first language. After just 2 hours of watching "Unga Astrid", I feel like I have a better grasp on how Swedish is supposed to sound.

Aside from movies, feel free to also watch television series and to listen to international music at some point during your plane-ride. If you're going to be sitting on a plane for 7, or 15 hours straight, you might as well do something fun and productive, so why not practice your language skills for free while you're at it?

I hope that you enjoyed getting to know my family and I bit better and that you got some practical tips on how you can make the most of your plane-rides when traveling abroad!

Bis später,

Laura 

How To Practice Multilingual Worship

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! Though it has been a while since I last posted on here, I am excited to talk about a topic that I hold very dear to my heart: practicing multilingual worship to grow in my faith as a Catholic. No matter what your religious background is, I highly encourage you to read this post in its entirety, as it may benefit you, or someone you know.

For those of you who know me, I am very involved in our Christian and Catholic groups on campus. In fact, I am currently a Worship Team leader for our Intervarsity chapter on campus. So far, our worship team has sung songs in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and many different African dialects, but I hope to make our space even more diverse and inclusive during my last semester at Dickinson.

I have found that my faith has been spiritually, physically, and emotionally healing over the years, especially this past year, as I have been suffering from chronic migraines. That being said, I found worship music and specifically contemporary Christian songs to be my saving grace.

While I was abroad, I lost one of my grandfathers in Italy and had to pray for over a month for my health to get better in Cameroon. Though both of these instances were very emotionally draining, music healed me. It gave me hope that someday I would be cured and that I would feel better.

Given that languages are one of the most important parts of my life, I find international Christian music to be even more empowering. Not only am I increasing my vocabulary, but I am also working on my pronunciation, cadence, and tone. As I am sure most of you have noticed, learning a language is hard, but singing an entire song in a language that is not your first language is even harder, but even so, if you push through the highs and the lows throughout your language-learning process, you will persevere. You can even learn how to change your voice and the rhythm of a song when you become fluent in a language. That is one of the most rewarding parts of the process for me.

A lot of you have asked me what means the most to me and that is hands down my faith, so if you are currently on a faith journey, feel free to join me in this journey together. You may just be in the process of understanding what Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, or another religion means to you and to your identity, or you may be comfortable with that part of who you are. No matter where you find yourself, I highly encourage you to start incorporating worship music into your life.

You may be asking yourself, "That's great, Laura, but exactly how can I do that?" The easiest way to do so is by typing up "([INSERT RELIGION] worship songs" in your target language. Start listening to some songs that pop up. They will most likely be some of the most recent, or popular worship songs for your particular religion and once you start feeling comfortable with some of the songs that you listen to, make it a goal to learn a song by heart. 

Start off by looking up unknown words to slowly build your vocabulary. Practice it consistently and take it as slowly as you need to. It may take you a day, or three months to fully memorize a song, but the point is to never give up. Who knows? Maybe you will even develop a closer relationship with God, or with a higher being in the process.

As a bonus, I am sharing the link to my favorite Italian worship song that I sang while I studied abroad in Bologna, Italy in Fall 2017 (SEE ABOVE).

Grazie mille per tutto,

XOXO, Laura 

LingoDeer Language App Review

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! I hope that you have been having a nice month so far and that you have been staying warm during our cold winter days. For this week's post, I wanted to share my all-time favorite language-learning app. I have been using it for almost a year now for German, French, and now consistently for Portuguese.

LingoDeer is an app that I found out about from one of my favorite language YouTubers, Lindie Botes, who made an app review about it on her channel a while back. At first, I was not sure if I would like it, or if I could use it, given that I am not learning any Asian languages, but the more I learned about it, the more I started to use it. I completed almost the entire course for German in a few months, started using it for French, and have now completed 40% of the Portuguese course it offers.

What makes this app so great? Well, to start off, it is free, so you do not have to worry about spending a single cent to install it on your phone. It's also very practical, fun, and easy to follow. Unlike Duolingo that gives you very unnatural-sounding sentences and often robotic sounding voice recordings, I would say that the sentences you are asked to learn and then spell out, as well as the voice recordings, are very clear and logical. They are also made by native speakers, which helps you practice your phonetics and pronunciation.

It's a bit hard to describe how to use this app, so I decided to attach a YouTube video that shows you how to use it step-by-step. It also talks about many of the features that you can use that provide further vocabulary and grammar explanations that you do not get when using Duolingo. I am determined to finish the entire course for Portuguese within the next 3 months or so, which goes to show how much I love this app. I especially love how you can earn prizes after completing certain challenges, such as having a 30-day streak, or completing a certain level of the course.

This app offers courses in Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, French, German, and Portuguese. I have to say that I have been very impressed with the non-Asian language courses, but have never tried the other ones. Most LingoDeer app reviews talk about the Asian language courses, so they seem to be very thorough and easy-to-follow from what I have gathered.

Boa sorte com tudo! Good luck with everything!

Until next time,

Laura 

Documentary Review of "First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee"

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! I hope that you have all been having a good week so far. For this post, I wanted to switch things up. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to read more and watch more films and documentaries to inform myself more about problems that the world is facing. A few weeks ago, I had the desire to watch a language documentary, which lead me to the documentary called First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee.

This documentary intrigued me, given that it is about the urgency of preserving the Cherokee language. I have also recently been reading more about the active efforts that indigenous people have put forth to pass on their traditions and languages. I find the Cherokee language to be especially relevant in 2019, because many Cherokee speakers seem to be passing away every year. To our dismay, the Cherokee language is classified as an endangered language, having between 11,000-13,000 native speakers according to 2008 estimates. In North Carolina, where the documentary takes place, there are no more than 200 native Cherokee speakers left. This number made my heart sink, but even so, this short documentary gave me hope for a better tomorrow.

It’s truly inspiring to see native Cherokee speakers taking on the role of educators, especially in an immersion school designed to teach young Cherokee about their language and culture in Cherokee. Despite many obstacles that have come their way, including funding, support, and hiring qualified educators, there is now a new generation of Cherokee who is speaking Cherokee at a native level even though many of their parents do not know how to speak it fluently. What I found to be the most remarkable was how dedicated and passionate Cherokee teachers are. They realize that there are little to no textbooks, or resources that are published, or available in Cherokee, so they often spend sleepless nights creating original and translated material for their students in their native language.

Once you learn more about the devastation that the Cherokee have gone through for centuries due to boarding schools that many Cherokee were forced to attend to “learn the white man’s ways”, it makes you very upset. These children were given no choice but to stop speaking Cherokee in order to “perfect” their English, which was deemed to be the superior language. This led to the punishment and prohibition of speaking their “inferior” Cherokee language. Regardless of how you feel about this issue, I encourage you to have deep and meaningful conversations about this situation with your family and friends. I continue to believe that the best way to bring more peace to this world is through conversation. Words are much stronger and powerful than you would think.

Though this is a sad reality, many Cherokee children living in North Carolina are starting to speak Cherokee with the older generations after 60 years of not hearing many Cherokee children speak their so-called heritage language. Since this a documentary review, I don’t want to spoil anything else, so if this is of interest to you, make sure to watch it by clicking the video that I have attached to this post. Qué tengan un buen día!

Love,

Laura