One thing that I have been very keen on lately is language learning through the use of social media outlets. My vehicle of choice has been Facebook, but others would probably work just as well. With all of the people who have signed up for an account to date, there is almost certainly someone on there who can speak the language you have an interest in learning.
Case in point: I am currently set on improving my Mandarin and French. One day, I went on Facebook to search for terms like “Chinese”, “Mandarin”, “French”, and “Languages”, and was returned pages upon pages of results. I found a group called OneFrenchWish, created by a man named Robin in Ghana, Africa. Although his mother tongue is English, his French has become quite good and he is now helping others learn. Anyone in the group (which has over 800 members now) can post questions or comments, but Robin moderates a lot and drives discussions, as well as suggests new topics for discussion.
Not only am I learning French when I go through this group, but I am also interacting with people from around the world. It just so happens that many (if not most) of the group members are from Africa, exposing me to a whole other world than I usually see here in Vancouver, Canada. I get insights not only into various cultures and how French is spoken in different African countries, but also how English is spoken in different African countries. However, this doesn’t only apply here; it could apply to any similar group.
After seeing the positive exposure to French that I was getting from OneFrenchWish, I decided to create two additional groups of my own: Learn Chinese Group and Learn Russian Group. Perhaps the names aren’t the most creative, but hey, they get the point across.
In the Chinese/Mandarin group, members have been discussing everything from Chinese poetry, to classic fiction, to slang, to movies, to Classical Chinese, to the pros and cons of Traditional vs. Simplified characters (a never-ending debate that you will soon become very, very familiar with if you ever start to study Mandarin).
Although I have a lot of years of Mandarin study under my belt already, it is of course an evolving language, and the members in this group are constantly explaining new things to me (including those that I have forgotten or am rusty on), and also introducing parts of the language that I have yet to study in much depth, such as Classical Chinese.
My second group, Learn Russian Group, was initially created because I have a deep interest in Central Asia (and especially its ties with ancient China). I want to travel someday to countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, not to mention take the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing through Central Asia to Moscow, and Russian is a good lingua franca in this area. It has also become a second language in places like Mongolia and Israel as well, so from what I can see, it has the potential to open an individual up to many new opportunities, especially since Russia itself is one of the “BRICS” nations.
A side note: I know in my About page that I said I need to be more focused on the languages I choose to study and not take on too many at one time. However, even though I’m concentrating primarily on Mandarin and French at the moment, I don’t see any reason why I can’t glance at other languages too (as long as I keep my main focus on the first two). Russian might become my new language of study in 2012. If not, then at least I’ll have learned a bit more about another part of the world.
Back to the Facebook groups though. I am a complete beginner in Russian. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent my time just learning the alphabet, but learning a few simple sentences as well has been inevitable. I recently posted what I have learned on the group’s wall:
Всем привет – Hello everyone
Я канадец – I’m Canadian
Я люблю языки – I love languages
Ирина ветеринар, и Иван техник, а они техники – Irina is a veterinarian, and Ivan is a technician, but they are technicians
Sort of random, but that’s how learning a new language can be — especially at the beginning.
Now, take a look at the third sentence, Я люблю языки – I love languages. After posting this, someone in the group told me that I had actually written I love tongues! Apparently they were just joking with me, as the last word, языки, means both languages and tongues (we have this similarity in English too of course). I learned from this process that it would be better to say Я люблю иностранные языки, or I like foreign languages, in order to avoid confusion with native speakers.
Furthermore, I also learned another sentence from this exchange: Я хочу говяжий язык в соусе. It means I want beef tongue in sauce. Notice the same word again in this sentence: язык — and I learned all this before even having a good grasp of the alphabet itself!
So that’s my push for groups like these. They’re really just people getting together over the internet to talk with each other about a subject they love. But it could be anything, and I’m sure there are other groups on Facebook devoted to any number of topics.
I’ll leave you with a cute little Russian children’s character that I have come to learn about from my Russian group. He’s a crocodile that plays an accordion! (I’m pretty sure you don’t learn about this in Russian textbooks!) It’s called Blue Wagon, or Голубой Вагон.
