Re: Learning languages

In a message dated 2004:03:11 11:12:36 PM, dawiertx@SBCGLOBAL.NET writes in
direct response to my email regarding Barry Farber, founder of the Language
Club, syndicated radio talk show host, author of _How to Learn Any Language:
Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and On Your Own_:

>I know who you're talking about. His radio show was on a local station
>in Lufkin, TX when I lived there. Though I don't agree with a lot of his
>right-wing politics (at least he's not abrasive like Limbaugh or O'Reilly),
>he's definitely SMRT and fun to listen to.
    SMRT 0_o?

>>     Farber, who claimed some level of fluency in 25 languages circa 1991,
>> advocates using all at once cassette tapes, flash cards, dictionaries,
>>grammar books, etc.; turning idle time - i.e. waiting at doctors' offices,
>>standing in bureacratic lines, riding elevators even - into
>> 'mini-lessons"; plunging in at a young child's level and working one's
>>way towards conversation, reading publications, and watching movies in
>>one's target language, etc. And one track Farber constantly returns to is
>>chattin' up native speakers, be-friending 'em... friendships can be a >>"major
human asset" in a linguavore's toolbox... a conlanger's bag of >>tricks (...a
linguamangalanger's sleeveful of whack-happiness).
>
>So he came up with the whole "multi-track/learn-as-a-child" idea before
>I did...
    LMAO
    Now seriously, I theorize that the Italian educationist Maria Montessori
(1870-1952) redefined, and perhaps even refined, the anarchist 'free school"
ideas of Spanish educationist/organizer Francisco Ferrer y Guardia (1859-1909).
    A creative sort that has been described as "child-like" and
"Trickster-like" was Joseph Beuys, one of my numerous "heroes."
    German artist/educator/activist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986 <A
HREF="http://www.walkerart.org/beuys/gg3.html">WAC | Joseph Beuys | A Brief Biography</A>)
seems to have read Ferrer and perhaps Montesorri as well: "We have to
revolutionize human thought. First of all revolution takes place within man. When man
is really a free, creative being who can produce something new and original, he
can revolutionize time." Beuys founded the Free International University,
_Frei Universität_ - an international, multi-disciplinary network - with artists,
architects, designers, music composers/musicians, translators/linguists,
anthropologists, philosphers, scientists, technologists, psychologists,
economists, ecologists, etc..
    One German email-pal of mine rightfully insists the German Green Party
would not be as strong and striking as it is today without Beuys' art or _Frei
Universität_ making "...the First Cultural-Ripples that Now become viable
Progressive-Path with shock-waves...."
    Beuys' hectic pace towards the end of his life had a fatal toll on his
health - his guilt-driven self-sacrifice _made_ the German Green Party (he was
one of its crucial founding fathers). This thus IMHO more than makes up for his
mysterious and mythic Nazi military past.
(for more on Beuys: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/beuys.html AND
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/beuys_joseph.html)

>oh well, he [Farber] does speak a lot more languages than I did (is he still
>alive?).
    I have no idea if he's still kickin'... or if so, still kikkin' ass or
shit-kikkin' on radio...

>And the saying "you have to think in X to speak X" does hold true.
    That is  what most modern schools teach. And, evidently, that's what the
teachers in most modern schools of diplomacy _and_ cloak-&-dagger also preach.
It could literally mean life or death for certain field officers.
    The heroic soldier-scholar Sir Richard Burton is a good classic example
of "goin' native" and passin' for native under severe risk conditions. My
friend (and one of our list-lurkers) Yuri Mayakovskii informs me that students at
the Soviet-era KGB language studies group were directed by "the more
idealistic, 'liberal' instructors" to study Burton's life and example (in English if at
all possible): "For all intents and purposes, Burton was our patron saint of
covert arts."

>[...] I also listen to as much "world music" as I can, especially
>Spanish/Latin, which of course is very common here in the Lone Star >State.
    Ever since being in the States - I, too, growin' up Texan - and livin' in
less-than-middle-class environments (translit.: slums, ghettos, barrios,
etc.) - and now livin' in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have literally grown up
with and been surrounded by "Spanish/Latin" music. BTW the San Francisco Bay
Area has very strong Brazilian and Irish music "scenes" (and within the Irish
community here, there are many IRA veterans, supporters and sympathizers).
::preparing to duck:: IMHO San Francisco Bay Area is sorta like New York City, but
it's more Postmodern pastiché Melting Pot than ethno-balkanized,
neighborhood-centric Tossed Salad.

>The "chattin' up" thing... thing is, I have this "language anxiety" when
>trying to speak in another language, because I never feel sure I know >what
I'm doing.

    Which Farber says is exactly _why_ ya need to chat up your new native
speaker friends... even - something I like to do* - bug 'em to death with 3rd
degree style questions and arguements.

    * tho' I met my more-than-equals in linguistic curiosity and perversity
when I met Yuri Mayakovskii a decade ago in Houston TX and Christophe Grandsire
here... about 4 years ago I think o_0? ... anyways, both linguavores par
excellence... both rather "twisted" in their own ways...

> So I end up speaking English hoping the other person can
>understand (like a typical American), or make a fool of myself in whatever
>language (like a typical American).
    Well at least ya're more diplomatic than the Pug-Ugly Thug American Type
who believes if he is not understood quickly enough that a nice Big Stick or
set of brass knuckles or blackjack will work just bloody fine ;)

>And when it comes to conlangs, I tend to keep things secret unless I'm
>sure how things will be (even on this list or with close friends/family);
took
>me a while just to spit out phonology, and I'm not even NEAR vocabulary >or
grammar yet! It's like peeing in public.

    Good thing I am a uninhibited Trickster Archetypal. I not only piss in
public - expose myself in public, I take delight in pissin' & shittin' on many
of the public icons of conventionality and ol' hoaried ideas of "Conventional
Wisdom and Decorum." Waddaya expect frum a WOG like me, eh 0_o?
    I should be showering the list with _goomeelego_ stuff sometime soon...
so heads up ;)

>>     Intriguin'ly Farber says: "... let me ... point out that Indonesian
>> [Bahasa Indonesia] is the easiest language in the world - no hedging,
>>no 'almost,' no 'among the easiest.' In my experience, Indonesian is the
>>easiest. The grammar is minimal, regular, and simple. Once I began to >>learn
it, Indonesian didn't seem 'jungle' anymore...."
>
>I feel that way about Turkish, but I haven't done much study of >Indonesian.
I honestly think Mandarin would be one of the easiest were it >not for the
thousands of characters required to write it (in other words, if >I could
read/write it all just in Pinyin or Bopomofo -- but that would really >wreck the
aesthetic nature of it all).

    When it comes to the highly amusing attempts at Romanizing Mandarin, my
Mum (a Yale alumnus) and my younger sister are rather partial to the Yale
Romanization and _Gwoyeu Romatzyh_.
    Yale looks good and works well for an American trying to speak Mandarin.
_Gwoyeu Romatzyh_ sounds pretty good but looks ugly to
Mandarin-speaking/English reading peeps like my Mum and my American-born sister who is slowly
learning Mandarin.

>>     ROTFLMAO. Farber has not tried reading or hearing classic/academic
>> Indonesian fiction and poetry evidently... (To the list newbies: I am
>>ethnic'ly Chinese-Indonesian - with an exotic dash of Russian Jewish -
>>tho' I self-identify as a BBC [BritishBorn Chinaman] and WOG [Wiley >>Oriental
Gentlerogue])
>
>If my wife and I ever have kids, they'll be Anglo-Irish, French, German,
>Arab, Turkish, Iranian and who knows what else. They'll think of >themselves
as just "American mutts" like their parents most likely.

    Yes that would make things rather easier ;)
    America needs the "multi-racial/multi-ethnic" option. It is the future
American way - a true Melting Pot nation of Race-Traders ;)

>>     Ok, again back to the subject... ol' papa Ezra Pound suggested a
>> _reading_ ability of at least two (2) other languages - besides one's
>>mother tongue or variations & mutations thereof - and he regarded
>>translation as a very useful adjunct activity for any writer. Of course, >>Pound was
partial to translating poetry (or attempting to do so).
>
>I know first hand that studying other languages -- even just learning >ABOUT
other languages -- not only helped me speak English better, but >made me
smarter overall.

    Yepyep, makes one a better, more widely-read, more worldly person even.
And, in times of crisis and conflict, a person not at all wise to
underestimate...

>Good advice.
    Quite possibly Ol' Papa Pound's only good advice besides "Make it new."

---
Hanuman Zhang, _Gomi no sensei_ [Master of junk] <A
HREF="http://www.boheme-magazine.net">=> boheme-magazine.net</A>

    "To live is to scrounge, taking what you can in order to survive. So,
since living is scrounging, the result of our efforts is to amass a pile of
rubbish."  - ChuangTzu/Zhuangzi, China, 4th Century BCE

    "...So what is life for? Life is for beauty and substance and sound and
colour; and even those are often forbidden by law [socio-cultural conventions].
. .Why not be free and live your own life? Why follow other people's rules
and live to please others?..." ~Lieh-Tzu/Liezi, Taoist Sage (c. 450- 375 BCE)

    "Taoism in a nutshell: Shit Happens. Roll with the Punches. Hang 10 - Go
with the Flow!" - anon. California surferBeatnik, c.1950's/1960's

    "[The modern economist] is used to measuring the 'standard
of living' by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the
time that a man who consumes more is 'better off' than a man
who consumes less.
    "A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively
irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-
being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being
with the minimum of consumption." - E.F. Schumacher, _Small is Beautiful_

    "Western man not merely blighted in some degree every
culture that he touched, whether 'primitive' or advanced, but he also
robbed his own descendants of countless gifts of art and craftsmanship,
as well as precious knowledge passed on only by word of mouth
that disappeared with the dying languages of dying peoples...." - Lewis
Mumford, _The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine_

>Anarchism's great project is to dissolve the asymmetry of power. How? >There
are thousands of alternatives and there is not only one solution. To >advance
'one' solution would be a doctrine of power, a manifestation of >power.
>- Venezuelan University Academic Alfredo Vallota quoted in _El Libertario_