Like a lot of native English speakers, I’m pretty lazy when it comes to learning foreign languages.  The temptation to get by using English is always there.

I studied French and German at high school for a couple of years, but I can’t speak them now.  When I was studying at school, I wasn’t convinced about the usefulness of studying another language.  Everyone speaks English these days, right?

Once I started travelling, I realised how much more you can enjoy your travels if you speak a little bit of the language.

I did a homestay in Guatemala to learn Spanish.  For English speakers, Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn quickly.  It’s easy to get to a stage where you can make yourself understood, even if you are making lots of grammatical errors.

Before I moved to Japan, I assumed that if you lived for a year in another country that you’d be able to speak the language pretty well.  That’s not necessarily the case if you have to speak English all the time at your workplace (as many English teachers do).   I lived in Japan for 4 years and I slowly studied the language.  I can speak okay conversational Japanese, but I can’t understand Japanese movies without subtitles.

Japanese uses a number of writing systems, including kanji, based on Chinese characters.  It’s not exactly the most practical writing system, but it does have a certain beauty and elegance.  The history of how the characters developed  is also interesting. For example in ancient China, farmers wanted their sheep to be big.  This is reflected in the origins of the character for beautiful:

Sheep (羊) + Big (大) = Beautiful (美)

(You need Asian character support to be setup on your PC to see the characters above).

Blue Cherry Sky, one of my short stories, is set in Japan where people use kanji as a system of magic.

I’m visiting Russia soon so I started learning the Cyrillic alphabet.  It’s a lot easier than trying to learn kanji.  I just wanted to learn enough so that if I’m in Moscow and I get on a train that says it’s going to Владивосток, I know I’ll be in for a very long train ride.

Language Software

One of the most useful tools for learning languages are flashcard programs that use spaced repetition.

They’re much more efficient than paper flashcards.   You grade yourself on how well you can recall the answer and the more trouble you’re having remembering vocabularly, the more often the program asks you that question.  It really speeds the process of learning and remembering vocabulary.

I use a Palm Pilot (a PDA) with flashcard programs.  It’s extremely useful if you want to do a few minutes study while you’re waiting somewhere or on the train.

Twinkle is a free program for the Palm Pilot that supports Japanese fonts.

Supermemo also runs on the Palm Pilot, as well as a number of other platforms.

Mnemosyne and Anki are both free flashcard programs that run on Windows and Macs.

PAdict is another really useful program for the Palm Pilot.  It’s a free Japanese dictionary that includes animated kanji stroke order and kanji handwriting recognition.

Practice

If you don’t practice languages, then it’s easy to forget them.  When you’re leanring a language, doing a little bit of practice every day is usually the best way to work.

To keep practicing my Japanese, I write blog entries using Mixi, the Japanese equivalent of Facebook.

I also maintain a blog, Oz Eigo for Japanese people learning English.

Practicing reading and writing is all well and good, but listening and speaking are usually harder.   Depending on the language it might be possible to watch TV shows or movies as listening practice.  There are also Internet radio stations.  For speaking practice there are plenty of web sites where you can find people to do a language exchange with, and practice talking using Skype.

MyLanguageExchange

SharedTalk

LingoFriends