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Consider this an admission of guilt. I am learning Esperanto. Esperanto has both its critics and proponents in the language learning community, which initially bothered me. Nobody has criticized me for wanting to learn Spanish, nor has anyone (including myself) felt the need to defend that desire. I expect that the same would be true if I suddenly decided to learn German, Hindi, Arabic, or Navajo. Yet, for some reason, Esperanto draws in critics and defenders. This has kept me from posting about it here, but now I’ve decided that my decisions don’t need to be defended, and criticisms are easily ignored.

I first heard about Esperanto from a friend in my high school German class. He didn’t know the language but he knew of it, and while the idea was fascinating, I wasn’t interested enough in languages at the time. In the past year or so I’ve become more and more curious about Esperanto but I didn’t want to sidetrack any progress I was making in Spanish. Just over four months ago, I decided that while I am not yet fluent in Spanish, I am comfortable enough with it to attempt to learn Esperanto using Spanish. So far, I don’t regret this decision at all. Spanish is established in my head well enough that I don’t confuse any of my new Esperanto vocabulary with it or vice-versa.

Learning Spanish is still my primary focus, but sometimes when I feel like I’m starting to burn out in Spanish, I switch to studying Esperanto. Esperanto is an exciting language for me, and studying it seems to help me regain my enthusiasm for Spanish as well. I feel that my Spanish has improved at a faster rate since I started studying Esperanto.

Resources

So far I’ve only been using online resources to learn Esperanto, but I have just recently purchased a couple of books as well. This is what I’ve been using so far:

• lernu.net – I’ve primarily been using lernu.net in Spanish, so that my Spanish will improve as I study Esperanto. I spent a lot of time with this Esperanto puzzle tutorial, which appealed to my style of learning a lot. Lernu.net also has forums, reading material, a dictionary, and other useful materials to help you learn.
• Tatoeba.org – This site is great to find sentences using a new word in many languages, including Esperanto. It currently has over 10,000 sentences in Esperanto. I take the sentences I find here and put them in my SRS. Many of these sentences are also translated to Spanish, and so if I find the Spanish sentence useful, I will copy it into my Spanish SRS deck as well.
• A Complete Grammar of Esperanto – This is one of the two books I just purchased. I bought this to help expand my vocabulary, explain a few of the concepts I don’t quite understand just yet, and also because this book contains graded reading material. I wanted reading material in Esperanto, in printed form, but I also wanted something that would start at a simple level and build up from there. Since receiving this book, I’ve discovered that the text of it is in the public domain, and can be found for free from Project Gutenberg. I’ve downloaded the text version to make copying sentences into my SRS a simple matter of copy and paste.
• Esperanto Learning and Using the International Language – This is the other book I purchased, and I bought it for mostly the same reasons I bought the previous book. This book is more modern, and also contains a section giving the history of the Esperanto language and community. I purchased two books because I wanted to see if there was one book I preferred over the other, and also to push my Amazon order over $25 so I could get free shipping. =)
• Ek - If you are using Windows, this tool is handy for helping to type the Esperanto special characters: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ. The only problem I’ve had with Ek is that it doesn’t work correctly with Anki, which is why I built:
• An Esperanto Support plugin for Anki – Simply install this plugin in Anki, configure your deck to use the Esperanto card model, and after that you can type in cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, and ux in your cards, which the plugin will automatically convert to ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ.
• If you are a Linux user, you can use an Esperanto keyboard layout that is usually already built-in with their distribution of choice. Unfortunately, I don’t own a Mac so I have no idea what tools exist for the Mac. If you know of one, please comment about it.

I’m curious to hear about other resources that people are using to learn Esperanto. If you have any, please leave a comment and tell me about it!

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Usually when I am reading in Spanish, and I find a word I don’t know and can’t figure out from context, I look it up in a dictionary. Often the sentence I originally found that word in is long and/or complex, which doesn’t make it a good candidate for entry in my SRS, so I will usually enter the example sentence in the dictionary into my SRS instead. But what if there is no example sentence for that word? This dilemma happens with at least half of the words I look up. Until recently, I didn’t have a good solution. Most of the time I would just let it go and later forget the word, causing myself to look it up again.

Now I take that word and search tatoeba.org for sentences containing that word. And most of the time (at least with Spanish), I can find a sentence with that word and copy it to a new card in my SRS. Tatoeba.org supports a lot of languages, with 1,000 or more sentences in at least 22 of those languages. As of this writing there are 10,140 sentences in Spanish, 41,850 in French, and 152,705 in Japanese!

I have noticed that there are audio icons next to the sentences on tatoeba.org, but very few actually have audio available. While you are mining sentences from there, take them over to RhinoSpike.com and find a native speaker to read them to you!

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Today we’re going to look at French pronouns. Specifically, the subjective case, the French equivalent of saying the following words:

• I
• You
• He
• She
• It
• We
• They

In English, these are all the pronouns with which you start a simple sentence. Sentences like “You are speaking” and “He is listening.” We’ll look at all the basic pronouns that start a sentence, and even pick up a little extra vocabulary along the way!

For all of these examples, the text in French is in italics.

• In English
• en français

I am the number one pronoun

If you’re like me, you like to talk about yourself. After all, I’m probably the subject about which I’m most knowledgeable. So what should I say about myself?

• I have a computer.
• J’ai un ordinateur.
  
• I am talking about her.
• Je parle d’elle.
• I am thinking about vacation.
• Je pense aux vacances.
  
• I have to go to work.
• Je dois aller au travail.
  
• I am eating this cake.
• Je mange ce gâteau.

Basically, the way to say “I” in French is “je.” Note how the “e” is dropped when the next word starts with a vowel. Another important thing to note is that “je” isn’t capitalized in the middle of a sentence. For example:

• They are people that I don’t like.
• Ils sont des gens que je n’aime pas.
  
• The children I take care of are cute.
• Les enfants dont je m’occupe sont mignons.
  
• Amber is a girl I have feelings for.
• Amber est une fille pour qui j’ai de l’affection.

You are the second person on my mind

Much like Spanish, French has two forms of “you.” There is a singular and a plural. However, the plural is also used to address a single person formally. First, let’s use some examples with the singular form:

• You are speaking.
• Tu parles.
  
• You prepare it for us.
• Tu nous la prépare.
  
• You saw the children.
• Tu as vu les enfants.
  
• You are in your bed.
• Tu es dans ton lit.
• You are there.
• Tu y es.

Let’s look at the plural form of “you:”

• You don’t sleep enough.
• Vous ne dormez pas assez.
  
• You woke up.
• Vous vous êtes réveillés.
  
• You go to the movies.
• Vous allez au cinéma.
  
• You were studying.
• Vous étudiiez.
  
• You did not write to us!
• Vous ne nous avez pas écrit!

“Vous” is not only a different word from “tu,” but it also has a completely different way of conjugating verbs. We’ll get to that in a later post. I just want to point out that there is a difference, and thus you can’t just replace “tu” with “vous.”

It doesn’t exist!

Every noun in French is masculine or feminine. There is no French equivalent for “it.” They simply refer to everyday items as “he” or “she” depending on whether the item is masculine for feminine. What determines an object’s gender? It’s kind of arbitrary. You just have to make sure that you learn the gender as part of the vocabulary.

That said, “he” and “she” have the same verb conjugations, but the adjective forms change depending on the gender. Here are some examples with a masculine third-person subject:

• He is the most serious student in the class.
• Il est l’étudiant le plus sérieux de la classe.
  
• He loves the Mediterranean Sea.
• Il adore la Méditerranée.
  
• He broke his leg.
• Il s’est cassé la jambe.
  
• He gave me flowers.
• Il m’a offert des fleurs.
  
• He always eats a banana in the morning.
• Il mange toujours une banane le matin.

And some examples with a feminine subject:

• She is brushing her hair.
• Elle se brosse les cheveux.
• She doesn’t have money.
• Elle n’a pas d’argent.
• She is an actress.
• Elle est actrice.
• She speaks to him/her.
• Elle lui parle.
• She is not interested in politics.
• Elle ne s’intéresse pas à la politique.

Why not just call it the “first people” pronoun?

Ah, the first person plural: “we.” Or, en français, “nous.” Hopefully, when you go to the French-speaking locale of your choice, you’ll have a lovely lass (or perhaps a lad) of whom you can refer with yourself as “we.” Here are some things you might then say:

• We admire you.
• Nous t’admirons.
  
• We are learning French.
• Nous apprenons le français.
  
• We are happy.
• Nous sommes heureux.
  
• We are afraid of him.
• Nous avons peur de lui.
  
• We have been married for four years.
• Nous sommes mariés depius quatre ans.

Since this article is just about the subjective case, I’ll cover “us” at a later date. And since we’ve already covered the plural form of “you,” that leaves just one more pronoun:

They’re the last pronouns

That’s right! They are the French equivalents of “they:” “ils,” and “elles.” It should be noted that these are pronounced the exact same way as the singular version most of the time. Refer to the RhinoSpike recordings for the cases shown here.

Also note that “elles” is only used to refer a group that consists entirely of females or feminine objects. For example, if you were to refer the group of your door, your table, and your lamp (all feminine nouns in French,) you would say “elles.” However, if you were to include your bed (a masculine noun,) you would refer to the group as “ils.” Similarly, if you were to speaking about a gaggle of girls, you would say “elles,” but once that group has even one guy in it, it becomes “ils.” Let’s look at some sentences using “ils:”

• They are intelligent.
• Ils sont intelligents.
  
• They love one another.
• Ils s’aiment.
  
• They listen to their parents.
• Ils écoutent leurs parents.
  
• They talk to each other.
• Ils se parlent.
  
• They have a dog that I can’t stand.
• Ils ont un chien que je déteste.

And here are some sentences using “elles:”

• They are tall.
• Elles sont grandes.
  
• They were sleeping.
• Elles dormaient.
  
• They wrote to each other.
• Elles se sont écrit.
  
• They’ve known each other since they took the same class.
• Elles se connaissent depuis qu’elles ont suivi le même cours.

A personal subject

That wraps up the subjective pronouns. You can download an Anki deck with these sentences here. Additionally, I’ve posted an audio request of these sentences on RhinoSpike.

Note: The sentences in this article have been pulled from the book “Correct Your French Blunders” by Véronique Mazet, Ph.D. I’m not affiliated with the book or the author in any way, and I don’t receive anything for mentioning it here. However, it is a good reference for French because it provides a great deal of full French sentences and clear explaination of French grammar. Most importantly, it highlights an incredible amount of errors a novice French speaker may make.

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My name is David and I’m a new contributing author here at babelhut.com. Like Peter and Thomas both, I’ve realized my desire to learn another language later in life, though looking back at my life, it’s been a rather obvious result.

The first thing in my life I can remember involving a second language was when I was about 7 or so, in the faraway, but beautiful land of San Diego. My brother and I were trying to conceive a language of our own, not having any real knowledge of languages other than English. It was a short lived attempt, but some of the conventions of the language we came up with opened my eyes as to how different languages could also “taste” different.

Going to middle school, before I took any foreign language classes, I found myself interested in the language of Klingon. I learned what I could through the Klingon Language Institute’s website, but I simply didn’t know anything about learning languages at the time, so I didn’t really get far. Later, I eventually realized that the design of the language and the impracticality of it (there are very few actual speakers in the world) would have killed my motivation to learn it anyway.

Between the choice of Spanish and French, I chose to learn French in high school for two reasons. First, I thought of French as the more romantic language (not that I was really the romantic type,) and second, the large majority of students took Spanish. The French teacher I had for my first year was terrible, but when I had Mrs. Smith as a teacher, I suddenly found myself speaking French with the best in my class. Of course I was terrible at getting my projects done, so I only made Bs in that class.

After high school, my retention for French faded away, as did any desire to continue learning it. I was too busy focusing on other areas of study. It wasn’t until my brother got on this language kick a few years ago that I really started looking at learning another language again. Since I was into anime at the time, Japanese seemed like a logical choice, but as my interest for anime faded, so did my interest for Japanese. I’ve also looked into Lojban, which was probably the  easiest language to get into thus far, but my motivation was not strong enough. As it turns out, the mere appreciation of a language’s features is not enough to get me to learn the language. Instead I discovered that I really need a reason to learn the language, that the language is merely a means to an end.

I’ve begun learning French again with the primary intent of being able to travel to and, perhaps someday, live in a foreign country, perhaps one as strange as Canada. While I do enjoy the country I live in and the freedoms it provides, I feel I may be better suited elsewhere.

Motivation plays a large part in how well you do anything in life. What is your motivation for learning your new language? What are you trying to achieve with it? Let me know in the comments.

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Within the last few months, I decided that I am finally going to get some international travel under my belt. I’m going to save my money, and I’m going to Japan. The actual trip probably won’t happen until next year, but it’s going to happen, and I’ve already made good progress in saving up for the trip. Why Japan? Mostly because Thomas, my friend and fellow Babelhut.com writer, lives there with his wife and child. What better way to travel internationally than to get someone you know to show you around?

Because of this decision, my girlfriend and I have decided to start learning Japanese. Spanish is still my primary language of study, and that won’t change, so we plan to only study Japanese for one hour a week. We don’t intend to become fluent speakers, we just want to be able to get around. We just started this and have only studied twice now, but so far we have been having fun.

We are focusing mostly on learning to communicate verbally, and in our first sesssion we sampled both Carl Kenner’s free Japanese audio course, and the Michel Thomas Method Japanese for Beginners. Carl Kenner’s course teaches writing along with speaking, while the Michel Thomas course is focused entirely on speaking. We found that Carl Kenner moved a little to quickly for us to keep up, and decided to stick with the Michel Thomas course for now.

I was surprised at just how much fun learning a brand new language together with my girlfriend is. We both laugh at our silly mistakes, while simultaneously being very encouraging to each other. During our second session, we needed to say “kore o kudasai, ” which means something like “please may I have this?” My girlfriend couldn’t remember how to say it, so I held up a piece of mail and said “correo” which in Spanish means “mail”, but sounds very similar to the Japanese “kore o.” This got a laugh out of her and now she remembers that “kore” means “this” in Japanese.

I hope we continue to have this much fun with Japanese, because we are both looking forward to our next Japanese session!

One last thing. I know it’s been very quiet around here. Thomas and I have been working on something big, and soon we’ll be able to tell you all about it! I’m actually very excited about this, but I can’t say more yet! Stay tuned…

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Welcome to the first post of a new series at Babelhut.com, Spanish Verb Highlight. This series will highlight a different Spanish verb in every post, and provide several example sentences showing how the verb is used in different tenses.

The first verb highlighted is oír, which means to hear, or to listen to. Oír is an irregular verb, and one that I personally have trouble remembering how to conjugate. You have probably seen or heard oír in the form of ¡oye!, which is used to get someone’s attention in the same way that we would say “hey!” in English.

Let’s look at some example sentences, some of which I have pulled from the Spanish-English Sentence Database:

He tenido que dormir con tapones para no oír tus ronquidos.
I’ve had to sleep with earplugs so I wouldn’t hear your snores.

Oigo las sirenas muy cerca.
I hear sirens very close by.

Se oyeron unos gritos de dolor.
They heard some painful screams.

¿Has oído lo que han dicho las noticias?
Have you heard what they’re saying on the news?

Creo que oiga algo.
I think I hear something.

¿Qué estás oyendo?
What are you listening to?

Te oyó la primera vez.
He heard you the first time.

Add these sentences to the SRS of your choice so that you don’t forget how to use this verb!

Photo credit: CarbonNYC

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Here’s a language learning tip that has worked really well for me: learn to cook.  And when you do, use recipes in your target language.  Great way to learn language.  Here’s why:

1. Recipes are short – most recipes fit on one piece of paper, and that’s including a big picture of the end result.
2. Recipes are easy – recipes all follow pretty much the same format: picture, ingredient list, instructions.

   The ingredient list itself will provide you with half of the information you need to read the instructions.

   And the instructions are short, logical and sequential:  Cut this into this size pieces.  Cut that into that size pieces.  Put them in a pot.  Add this ingredient.  Cook it over a flame of this strength for this many minutes.  Add this seasoning.  Garnish with this.  Voila!

3. Cooking is hands-on – when you cook you will be using all five senses: touch, sight, taste, smell, sound.   This enhances the experience and you will remember it better.

   The more senses you use the better it is for recall.  Imagine sitting at a desk and looking over a vocabulary list of fruits in Swahili for 5 minutes.  Then imagine someone throwing fruits at you for 5 minutes, calling out their names in Turkish while you try to dodge.  Which set do you think you’ll remember better at the end of the day?   Assuming you don’t get hit in the head with a canteloupe.

   Senses matter.   Instead of studying words in a language you are creating an experience in the language.  That experience will imprint itself in your mind in ways that a chair and a sore back can’t.

4. Double reward – when you cook you get to eat the food at the end.  When you cook in a foreign language you get to eat the food and feel good about yourself for doing something in your target language. 

   That’s double the return.

   And if you mess up and the food tastes horrible at least you have a funny story to tell.  “Check this out.  I was trying to make some cake but the recipe was in Arabic…”

5. Foreign food – part of learning a language is experiencing another culture.  You can’t separate the two.  And food is a big part of any culture.  You need to learn the tastes, smells and names of native foods.

   How many Spanish people in Spain can talk about Spanish food in Spanish?  All of them.  (Replace the underlined words to match your language situation).

   Learning food will make your language experience more complete.  And it will help you read menus when you visit the country.

Execution

Ok, I hope I convinced you that it’s worth a try.  It’s very easy to get started.  Here’s how you do it:

Paper Method

1. Figure out the word for “recipe” in your target language.
2. Put that word into Google.  That should bring up a ton of recipe websites.
3. Find a recipe that looks good.
4. Print the recipe out.
5. Cook it.
6. Eat.

YouTube Method

Same as the paper method, but replace Google with Youtube, and of course you watch the video instead of printing out the recipe.

Using YouTube to find recipes is great because you get some listening practice in too.  Plus you get to watch somebody else cook the recipe before you do.  It has repetition built into it too because you’ll find yourself running back and forth between the kitchen and your computer to watch the video again.

I’ve been learning a little Spanish and I cooked dinner one night (actually two nights now) using this:

I’m a complete newbie at Spanish but I was able to follow this more or less after watching it a few times.  The end result didn’t quite look the same, but it tasted great.  And when I was finished I was better at Spanish than I was when I started.

Bonus Tip

If you already live in the country where your target language is spoken, here’s a bonus tip for you:

You’ve probably walked into a grocery store before and seen food that you had no idea what it was, how to eat it or what to do with it.  Instead of passing it up, buy it.  Take it home.  Here’s why:

Most recipe sites have a search box.  Enter the name of your mystery food into the search box.  Bam!  Now you have a bunch of recipes that tell you how to use it.

You may have to take another trip to the store to get more ingredients, but its worth it because you will get to try something you’ve never tasted before.

Here in Japan I often come across food I’ve never eaten before, like the day I saw a shelf full of tougan (冬瓜 – とうがん). I searched for とうがん on cookpad and found a recipe for some delicious Chicken and Tougan soup.

Try it!

Do you have any language learning tips? If so, please share them!

Other language learning tips:

• Start A Translation Project
• Read Children’s Books

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Today I received yet another envelope from Time Warner Cable addressed to “Peter Carroll or Current Resident,” which was seconds from being thrown in the trash can when I decided to open it. This is what was inside:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

I was surprised to receive the advertisement in Spanish. I don’t think the neighborhood I live in has a high concentration of Hispanic people, though I could be wrong about that. All my previous dealing with TWC has been in English. Still, it was nice to read it before I threw it away, and realize I understood most of it without any trouble. I did have to look up sorteo though, which looks odd to me the way it was conjugated, but I’m no expert.

Has anyone else ever received mail in an unexpected language? Talk about it in the comments!

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The latest version of Barra de Español is now available from addons.mozilla.org! Those of you who already have an older version installed should see an update notification in Firefox soon, if you haven’t already.

What’s new in 1.2? The biggest new feature is the ability to find pronunciations of Spanish words. You can select a word on any web page, right-click on it, and choose “Pronunciar,” or you may type in the word into the toolbar’s search box and select “Pronunciar” from the dropdown to the right. The pronunciations are found on forvo.com.

Version 1.2 also adds support for Firefox 3.6, and drops support for Firefox versions below 2.0. Inserting the accented characters now works in rich text email editors such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. I’ve also added a new video link to fomny.com.

Check it out and feel free to leave feedback in the comments!

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I received an email today from the Mozilla Add-ons group that Barra de Español has been approved to be in the public listing on addons.mozilla.org! This means that it no longer has the “experimental” label and can be installed without the user needing to check a box. For those of you who forgot what Barra de Español is, check out the original announcement. If you haven’t installed it yet, do so today!

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