Learning a new language - sounds
When learning a new language, one of the most vital things is getting familiar with the sounds of that language. Every language has its own set of sounds that are “normal” for the speakers of that language, and there are usually a couple of them that will trip up people who speak a different language. Some sound difficulties are on the level of vowels and consonants, while other problems might occur with tones or rhythm or other subtleties. These are things that you’ll become familiar with after you’ve listened to hours and hours of native speakers
At the start, though, what you want to do is get those vowels and consonants under control. What i like to do is find a diagram that lists all the possible sounds in that language and find out how they differ from the sounds in English (my native language). You’ll probably find that some sounds are totally different and don’t exist in english, while others are quite similar to your ear but have some subtle difference that you can’t quite figure out yet. This gives you an abstract theoretical overview of what to expect, but it only teaches about the sounds, it doesn’t teach you the sounds themselves.
At this point, it’d be helpful if you knew the meanings of the linguistic terms used to describe the way these sounds are made. I’m still learning these terms myself, but i know some of them. They can be quite helpful for figuring out the subtle differences. Knowing where your tongue goes to make certain sounds is key. You probably don’t actually know where your tongue is going when you make sounds in your native language, so you should spend some time just talking to yourself while you pay detailed attention to your tongue positions.
Next you want to find some samples to listen to over and over and over again. You need to get them stuck in your brain, like certain other things. Years ago, my saxophone teacher used to say that i wasn’t allowed to try to play certain songs on my saxophone until i could accurately sing them to him. He did this to make sure that the song was stuck in my head before i was going to try to make it come out on the saxophone. The same is true with languages, you need to find some things that you can get stuck in there to use as reference. When i first started learning chinese, i had no trouble remembering the tones of certain words because i’d heard them a million times in one of my Pimsleur lessons. If i needed to remember it, i could just mentally replay the sentence from Pimsleur that had that word in it, and then i’d be able to say it properly.
Using this combination of learning about the sounds, and then actually hearing the sounds over and over again, you should be able to start deciphering things. It will also be helpful if you can find the same things said by different speakers. It’s much easier to figure out what makes a certain sound unique when you’ve heard two or more different people saying the same sequence of sounds.
If you know some native speakers of the target language, try to playing this game with them: pair up so that one native speaker is with you, and another native speaker is with another student. Then have the native speakers have a once-removed conversation with each other where they tell you what to say, and you have to say it; the two students will be having a conversation with each other, but they’ll be told exactly what to say by the native speakers. You don’t have to understand what you’re saying, you just have to try to mimic it exactly. Hilarity will ensue. You’ll hear the mistakes that your fellow student makes when she tries to repeat her half of the conversation, and she’ll hear yours. The native speakers will find the results hilarious and will probably love helping you get closer to the real thing. For extra fun, trying combining it with drinking shots of 白酒
Next you’ll want to focus on hearing where the word boundaries lie. This usually requires some basic vocab so that you can recognize a couple of the words that you hear, but a lot of it is still just awareness of sounds and general familiarity with the language. Something that helps a lot is finding hours and hours of your target language, and then keeping it on as background noise while you do other things. Find some online radio shows or podcasts or something, making sure that they’re purely in the target language with no english, and then put them on your mp3 player. Have it on whenever you walk to the store, do the dishes, tend the garden, go to work, whatever. You want to totally saturate your brain with it.
I did this with fantastic results in the summer. When i got back from china at the beginning of the year, i wasn’t so keen on studying chinese for a while, so i took a break. When i wanted to get back into it i had some catching up to do, so i found some radio shows from Radio Canada International’s chinese program and put them on my ipod. I listened to them for about 8 hours per day for two weeks. At the beginning, i didn’t understand a thing. This annoyed me because i’d already spent a good year studying chinese pretty hard, but the radio host spoke soooo fast and used lots of advanced vocab that tripped me up. But after two weeks, i found that i could actually understand quite a lot of it. I had become used to the sound of the language again, and became used to the speed at which these radio hosts spoke.
After you’ve got some beginner’s knowledge of the language, what you really want is some audio that you have transcripts for. Then you can listen to it while reading it, and you’ll get a better sense for the words that you’re reading. You don’t want to spend a long time reading a language that you don’t know how to pronounce, because you’ll probably be practicing these bad pronunciations in your head as you read. It’s better to have a firm grasp of pronunciation right away before you do a lot of reading. If you have a recording device, try recording some of your native speaker friends reading the sentences from your books, and then listen to these recordings while you study.
Of course, all of this should be adjusted for your personal interests. Keep things fun. Try finding a dubbing of some fun cartoons…i’m currently looking for a copy of the Batman animated series in chinese, which i’ve heard exists. That’s certainly something i could sit down and watch over and over. What i’m really wishing for is mandarin-dubbed Star Trek: The Next Generation, but i don’t think it exists. If anyone finds mandarin sci-fi, let me know!
Ride hard, ride free