Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Step 2: Reading.

Why learn to read if you mostly want to speak?

It is much more important to me to be able to speak and understand spoken Malayalam than it is to be able to read and write. Because of this, I agonized a bit about whether to spend time learning to read and write Malayalam at all. There are two major reasons I ended up deciding I did need to learn the written language:
  1. There are more ways to learn. If I were trying to learn Malayalam while living in Kerala, where I were surrounded by the spoken language, things might be different. But as things are, even living with a Malayalam-speaking spouse, I really need to be able to learn and practice words and phrases without him there, sometimes. Looking up words in a dictionary, making lists of words that I've learned and reviewing them, practicing reading simple stories - all depend on learning to read.
  2. It helps you get the pronunciation right. I didn't actually expect this one, but it's turned out to be a big deal for me. A lot of the sounds I can only sort of hear - but I can mimic them if I know which one I'm supposed to be saying, and I can learn that best when I learn how the word is written along with how to say it. For example, there are two basic "N" sounds in Malayalam, one that's like an English N, and one where you curl your tongue back in your mouth to start. I can (more or less) say them, but I can't hear which is which very well. So the best way for me to learn which word has which kind of "N" turns out to be for me to see the word written out.

How do you learn to read?


Learning to read only works as a way to help you learn to hear and speak if you make sure that as you learn to read, you from the very start integrate in learning the proper pronunciation.

In the next series of lessons, I'll lay out one path to doing that. It's not necessarily the best one, but it's a mixture of what worked for me with what I now wish I'd done, looking back. Here's the plan:
  • Introduce the alphabet. Malayalam has a lot of letters, but they're not just a big long list; there's structure to them. I'll go over the basic patterns for you, so as you learn individual letters you can fit them into the big picture.
  • Learn individual letters, a few at a time. When I started learning the alphabet, I tried to learn all 50-some-odd (depending on how you count them) letters straight off, plus the even larger number of extra symbols that you use when you write them next to each other in different combinations. I then moved on to learning words - and was rather discouraged to discover that half of these letters were rarely used, and most of the other half I'd been mispronouncing in my head as I learned them. I then went back and used the strategy I'm giving here: learn a handful of letters, learn them well, learn words that use them, and then move on to some more.
  • Learn words that use each new letter. I guess I gave this one away just above, but, it really does help - until you hear it in a couple words, it's hard to really get ahold of what the letter sounds like. Plus, it's more fun this way. And by the time you're done with the alphabet, you've got quite a bit of vocabulary under your belt, too!
  • Gradually introduce complex notational issues. Malayalam has a number of ways in which its writing system is different from English. For example, vowel signs can either be written independently or can be used to modify a consonant; consonants can be combined together in ways that use different symbols and have different meanings than if they are just written next to each other. All of these wrinkles we'll introduce gradually.
  • Gradually introduce simple phrases and grammatical patterns. The grammar in Malayalam is in many ways quite different from English (or so I gather so far... and I have a feeling it's only going to get worse as I go further!). For me, the most productive way to transition from learning vocabulary to learning to actually understand and say things with my vocabulary has been to mix in learning at first simple and gradually more complex phrases and sentences. So, really, by the time you get through with the learning-to-read primer, you'll be well on your way to being able to speak and understand simple words and sentences, as well!  EDIT:  On my first go at this, I found this last step to be where I fell down. I don't live in Kerala, and it was very hard to get enough ongoing exposure to the spoken language to begin to actually pick up grammar - and the few simple primers I had were from the 50s, such that when native speakers saw them, they laughed and laughed and then told me noone actually speaks like that anymore.  So, the new strategy is going to be to aim all of the above learning directly at being able to start reading simple - and then gradually more complex - kids' books.  The biggest wrinkle here is that these are of course copywrited.  I will probably recommend that if you're following along you just order the ones I'm using, but I will also try to excerpt as much as is legal to get you started, too.  
Ok, enough planning - on to the first real lesson!

Monday, November 19, 2007

Where to start: listening

The best way to learn a language, of course, is to live somewhere where it is spoken as the primary language. But what if you're trying to learn something like Malayalam from afar?

Why start with listening?

The biggest issue with trying to learn a language in this kind of a situation is that the most convenient medium for teaching yourself a language is written - but if you want the language to be a tool for in-person communication, this just isn't going to be enough. Somehow, you have to train yourself to make a real connection between the written letters and the sounds.

I found this to be true from the very start. Although it seemed like a good idea to just jump straight in with the alphabet, I found that that I at least couldn't even hear many of the differences in the sounds right away - and trying to memorize all 51 letters when their pronunciation wasn't particularly clear in my head was a pretty painful beginning. Even when I managed to hold them all in my head for a day or so, I would very quickly forget and have to start over.

A better way do things, then, at least for me, was to get used to hearing and processing Malayalam words as my very first task, without worrying about how those words were written.

How do you actually go about starting with listening?

There are, I'm sure, lots of ways that would work to do this - the key is just to make sure you're actually processing the sound, not just passively listening. This means having the Malayalam internet radio station running in the background is nice and all, and might do some good (I do it while I work, often), but it's nowhere near as good as having a task where you actually have to remember and distinguish the sounds.

The way I did this was to use a cheap commercial product: Talk Now! Learn Malayalam - Beginning Level. It doesn't seem to be for sale at Amazon any more, but I do see it floating around still - I'm sure you can find it somewhere or another. It's simple, and it won't give you a huge vocabulary, but its interface is easy and its games are stupid but kind of fun, and after playing around with it for a while you'll be a whole lot better prepared to launch into actually taking a stab at reading and writing the language.

A bit more rambling on why it makes sense to start with listening

Although I didn't think of it this way at the time, this may actually make some sense in terms of science. In my real life, I happen to do Neuroscience research, studying the neural mechanisms of sensory processing. There is strong evidence that for a number of different sensory systems, such as vision or your sense of smell, your brain cells actually rewire themselves over time in response to the stimuli they hear - making the sense that "wow, last month that phrase sounded like an indistinct blur, but now it actually sounds like words!" one that may well be due to an actual physical change in your brain that takes place below the level of your conscious awareness. So, you might as well sit back, play the silly little games, and rest easy knowing that your brain's doing most of the hard work without any attention on your part, at least for now!

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Why learn Malayalam? Why blog about it if you do?

What is Malayalam?

Malayalam is the language of Kerala, the southwest-most state in India. It is spoken by almost 40 million people, which is approximately the population of Spain, and is larger than the population of Canada.

Malayalam has both Dravidian and Sanskrit roots - it closest living-language relative is Tamil (a Dravidian language), but many words have both Dravidian-derived and Sanskrit-derived versions. The repertoire of sounds includes those from both language groups.

Why learn Malayalam?

There are a lot of different reasons someone might want to learn Malayalam. Perhaps your parents or grandparents are from Kerala, and didn't grow up speaking the language but would like to. Perhaps you are a student of South Indian history. Perhaps you are are thinking of living there for a time. Perhaps you really like Malayalam movies!

In my case, I have just married a Malayali man, and I want to be able to communicate with his family. I also want to be able to understand the language well enough that when we have children, he will be able to speak to them in Malayalam without my being excluded - so that they can grow up knowing both Malayalam and English.

Why blog about learning Malayalam?

While this seemed like a noble sentiment, it has proven harder than I had expected - not the least because of the incredible dearth of materials available for English speakers who want to learn Malayalam (without learning Hindi first...!). There are some... but they can be hard to find, and hard to cobble together into a coherent strategy.

Thus, the purpose of this blog:

  1. Collect the resources I have found useful for learning Malayalam, in the order in which I found them the most useful.

  2. Add some additional materials for learning Malayalam to the public domain. In particular, I am finding computer-based flashcards which contain an audio file (kindly recorded by my husband) to be an invaluable tool; I would like to make these available for others to use.

  3. Keep myself motivated!



Leave a comment! Send me a message!

If you happen to stumble across this blog and learning Malayalam is something you are interested (or working on) trying, please feel free to contact me! If nothing else, I'd love some company on this journey. I'm also happy to provide any materials and advice I have that might be useful. Also, any and all suggestions for new materials or learning strategies are of course welcome, as well!