We've been really busy since we returned to Kuching. All necessary stuff, but it's put a bit of a squeeze on language-learning again.

There are one or two things to report, however, so this will be a bit of a portmanteau post, to offload all the updates before another month ends.

1.

At the end of February, I wrote a "catching up" post (the first since November). Matters arising:

i. Memrise, one of the apps I use, is updating its interface, and now differentiates between "official" courses (still in "early access" mode) and "community" courses. I like the new look, and don't at all regret the demise of "memes", which I never found particularly helpful. The Chinese course in particular looks as though it's a great improvement. The old Korean course was good, but this version is better organized. Ditto for Russian.



ii. Back in February I was still conducting an internal debate as to whether a language schedule was a good idea or not. Well, I opted for yes. I decided that my language-life was just too chaotic without any guidelines at all (although I'm very happy to throw them out of the window when circumstances demand). The new iteration is a lot less demanding than the old one (and therefore more likely to be adhered to); it adds to, rather than includes, anything I do on the three apps I still use; and it's supposed to reflect...

iii. ...my new priorities. These have evolved quite a bit since I first wrote about them here. Not, I might add, in response to any long-term travel plans, as it's still pretty much impossible to make them, but purely in response to my own developing interests and abilities. I now have one Grade 1 priority language: Russian. Why? Because I’m within striking distance of being able to read an easy book, so it makes sense to keep working to acquire vocabulary. Five sessions a week, therefore (sessions, depending on circumstances, are anywhere between 10 and 45 minutes). Then there are two Grade 2 priority languages: Spanish (because I’m still aiming to bring it up to "maintenance" level, ie, where it's good enough to just keep ticking over with minimal effort) and Indonesian (because I want to reclaim the ground I lost after retirement, when I was no longer using it regularly for research). So, three sessions a week, plus I read in both those languages, so that's extra. After that come two languages that I'm aiming to just keep on the boil: Turkish (because I don’t want to lose the little I gained this year) and Chinese (because I just can’t let go…). Three times a week. Down one in the pecking order are two "dabbling" languages: Italian (I’m reasonable at reading already, and also have plans to read more, as there are a number of interesting books that I can find only in Italian), and Portuguese (I still need to get that second book under my belt, but otherwise there's no specific goal). So twice a week should suffice for them. Next come three low-priority languages: Manx, Korean, and Thai. Just once a week; I'm really only playing. And, finally, two "maintenance" languages: French and German. Once a week for them too (since they are also regularly pressed into service for reading/watching/researching).



iv. Since I first wrote about comprehensible input (with examples here and here, I've added the following to my language diet:

** Natalia Practical Russian -- a good mixture of material
** SyS Mandarin -- a little hard for me, but interesting
** Learn Chinese Essentials -- includes some lovely conversations with her little girl (who speaks Chinese, Korean, and English -- wow...)
** Dunia Pagi Ini from BBC Indonesia -- I like the format
** Learn Turkish with Ali Yilmaz -- a bit hard for me, but I'm working on it...
** Comprehensible Turkish -- in its infancy, but going in the right direction
** Vaporetto Italiano -- again, a good mixture of things
** Practice Portuguese and Portuguese With Leo -- both of them eclectic, and nice to dabble in (and they're European Portuguese, now my preferred variant)
** Learn Thai in Thai -- an object lesson in how comprehensible input can be produced even for the absolute beginner





v. Wouldn't I make more progress if I had fewer languages in my life, you might ask. Yes, almost certainly. But languages is a hobby, remember. Progress doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is interest and enjoyment. When I NEED to make progress (because I KNOW for SURE that I'm really, truly, actually going to use a particular language for something specific like a journey, then I'll rejig the schedule).

vi. I also wondered, in that February post, whether to experiment with a physical (as opposed to virtual) notebook. Well, once back in Kuching, I bought an old-fashioned paper notebook, and an old-fashioned pen with which to write things in it. Teething troubles: You can't see paper in the dark of the early-morning balcony, so you have to wait a while before you can write in your notebook (derr...); no matter whether it's Cyrillic, Thai, or Latin script, my handwriting is TERRIBLE; and my new pen had something furry on the tip that I had to cut off before it would write properly... So the first result was the thing of beauty you see below:



But a month on, I can say that my writing is improving (a bit), and I think the notebook is useful. We need some more time to figure out whether it actually helps me to review...


Maori is still "parked" for the moment...

2.

In early April I wrote a post about Ukraine, which included the reactions of some of my online Russian teachers. These have continued.

Max and Yulia, when not visiting Serbian cities, and doing visa runs to Montenegro, have produced some thoughtful videos on whether Russians can support Russia without supporting Putin (TL;DR: yes...), and why there's no better time to start or continue learning Russian than now: "Language is a way to see the world differently... A language doesn't belong to any one country, group, or nation. A language belongs to anyone who uses it in any way... Language opens up access to the heritage produced by cultural and artistic figures... It's impossible to understand Russia without knowing the Russian language."



Back in April, Natalia did a little video about life in Russian under sanctions. I found it very interesting, but some of the comments were pretty hateful. Here, she talks about the new platforms she has been forced to turn to, in order to continue her work. And recently there have been a couple of posts entitled Why I don't want to comment and Why I stopped following the news. Sad, but totally understandable.

The other week, Easy Russian did a very poignant set of interviews in St Petersburg, seeking answers to the question: How do Russians see the future? Everyone is fairly guarded, but it's rather moving to see what people emphasize:

"Peace"
"Peace"
"That politicians will stop doing what they're doing"
"World peace"
"What a start to the year..."
"[Hopes for] no geopolitical surprises... [such as] a war that will greatly change our borders"
"Peace, at the very least"

At the top of the comments section, the Easy Russian team has pinned the following: "The events of the past days have deeply shocked and saddened us. It's important for us to say that the Easy Languages and Easy Russian team strongly supports peace. We understand our project as a way to not just promote language learning but also intercultural understanding and friendship. With this goal in mind, we want to continue our work, because we hope that in these days language learning can help to build bridges between people rather than destroying them. Please do not stop learning Russian and do not stop believing in kindness and love." Amen.



3.

And finally...

At the end of April I wrote a post about the art of translation. Since then, I've come across a few more articles about this fascinating process.

The first is this fascinating reflection on the meaning of translation by author Jhumpa Lahiri. I'm in awe of people who can write novels in a second language -- and then translate them into their first.. . She writes: "All translation must be regarded first and foremost as a metamorphosis: a radical, painful, and miraculous transformation in which specific traits and elements are shed and others are newly obtained... Far from a restrictive act of copying, a translator restores the meaning of a text by means of an elaborate, alchemical process that requires imagination, ingenuity, and freedom. And so, while the act of repeating, or echoing, is certainly pertinent to the subject of translation, it is only the starting point of the translator's art..."

A similar point is made by Frank Wynne, chair of the 2022 International Booker Prize judging panel, and himself a professional translator. Talking about Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, which had been considered too hard to translate until Daisy Rockwell succeeded in doing just that, he says: "I think that any translator worth his or her salt will reject the idea that anything is impossible to translate. Or rather: at a theoretical level, EVERYTHING is impossible to translate, so it’s just a question of HOW to render the impossible... If there is a hilariously funny passage in the original, it’s your job as a translator to make sure it’s hilariously funny in translation, and that will frequently mean changing every single word, because the chance that the same words will have the same effect in a different language is almost nil -- even when they are related languages... Translation, of fiction particularly but of any form of literature, is the recreation of the whole, and within that the translator may use different techniques to recreate the voice they hear on the page. If they do so successfully, then it has been translated."

More prosaically, I don't think I've ever mentioned Reverso. It works with 17 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, and Chinese. And it operates like a sort of language-aggregator, drawing on millions of bilingual texts. So you enter a word or phrase, and it offers you a range of translations, complete with copious examples for each usage. It's not perfect, and I wouldn't feel confident using it in a language I knew nothing of. But it's very useful and informative.



Phew, this post is not so much a portmanteau as a pantechnicon... But hey, we are almost half-way through the year...