Urdu

[jeshyr]

I have been learning Urdu since about the middle of November.

I have more-or-less learned the 40-ish letters of the alphabet and the letter name, written shape, and sound of each letter (so each of those cards has 3 "sides"). According to my flashcard-ish thing (Anki) I also have about 150 other "things" which are mostly words but some are sentence structure flashcards too, and each of those cards has a back and a front. So say 100-150 words. You can say a surprising amount with 150 words!

Interesting framing-related thing I noticed this week:

When I think about Urdu learning in terms of "I must memorise these words/grammar structures/spellings" and focus on the outcomes, it's quite stressful. On days when my brain is uncooperative and I have forgotten everything it's even more stressful.

When I think about it as "I must expose my brain to these words/grammar structures/spellings so I can learn" and focus only on the effort, it's not at all stressful and becomes highly enjoyable. Even on days when I have forgotten everything it's not too bad, the thing that's "my job" is only the effort (and I can control that) - trusting that the outcome will follow if I put the effort in consistently[*].

It makes me wonder how much the inevitable outcome focus in schools screws up learners in those environments, especially when their outcomes are not what they wanted. I was lucky when I was in academic settings that my brain worked so well I almost never felt that sort of stress.

Also, of course, I have the HUGE advantage of living with a fluent speaker and having a second fluent speaker with my every day, so I can ask them things as they pop up. Given the number of things I've asked, I'm wondering how anybody manages without!


[*] I am separately learning about adult language learning, to make sure I am doing the most efficient exposing-type-thingies that we know of at the moment, but that doesn't even count as "effort" for my brain because I adore popular science and there are a ton of good evidence-based books about adult language learning.

Comments

[acelightning]

i occasionally worked with Urdu-speaking "presenters" when i worked at UN Radio (45 years ago!). they were from Pakistan (which still included Bangladesh at the time) and northern India, and they were very proud of their ethnic differences from Hindi-speaking people from south India. they often mentioned how beautiful Urdu poetry was, although of course i couldn't judge it. and one day i happened to be wearing a sort of tweedy light-purple wool miniskirt with brilliant hot-pink tights and a silk shirt that exactly matched the tights, with a scarf at the neck that matched the skirt (this was while i was in the middle of the long process of becoming entirely purple-clad and never wearing skirts), and one of the Urdu-speaking men praised my colorful outfit at great length, including an explanation of how his people were known for their love of bright colors.

i find it extremely difficult to try to learn a language that's written with an unfamiliar character-set; i can speak a few words of Russian, but i never did manage to grok Cyrillic. my brain keeps trying to keep track of "upside-down L" and "R plus its mirror image" and "C - oh, that's really S" - i don't know if i'll ever be able to read (never mind write) Chinese! but i'm pretty good at picking up spoken language.

[jeshyr]

Learning another alphabet is definitely a challenge but with enough flashcard repetitions (I used both physical flashcards and Anki flashcards) it's mostly sticking to my brain now!

I still can't spell worth a damm, and the fact that Urdu doesn't write down most of the vowels at all definitely doesn't help, but it's a start.

[acelightning]

fascinating! i don't know whether you've ever seen Heinlein's advice for how to learn a foreign language: get some recorded "language lab" lessons in the language you want to learn, and play them in the background as you're going about your daily activities. for him, at least, this worked better than actually doing the lessons, although i would think it took longer. i do know that i learned a smattering of French when i worked at the UN, because most of the time i was working with French-speaking announcers, and i had a typed script (in French) in front of me so i'd know when to insert the sound bites. i didn't realize i'd learned anything until i went on holiday in Francophone Canada, and found myself understanding quite a bit of what i heard, and even being able to ask simple questions (e.g., "where are the toilets?"). until that time, the only languages i spoke were English and Spanish; i'd studied Spanish in school, from Year 7 until halfway through college, and of course most major metropolitan areas in the US are bilingual, English/Spanish.

and it only took me about a week to pick up Strine :-D

can you recommend/do you have any links for information about adult language-learning?

[jeshyr]

I am dubious about the merits of passive listening. I haven't found any actual research about it though ...

These are the four I like best for reading:
http://fluent-forever.com/language-blog/
http://www.fluentin3months.com/blog-home/
http://www.languagehero.co/blog
http://www.latg.org

What I am actually doing is a combination of what the Fluent Forever book/blog (first link) suggests and a Pimsleur course and what Fluent in 3 Months (second link) suggests.

[acelightning]

thanks!

passive listening did work for me, although i didn't realize it until i needed the language. also, i think it helps a lot with getting the pronunciation right (although i know i'll always have an "American" accent in whatever language i try to speak). now... well, say i wanted to go to China. i'd probably get some sort of very basic lessons in spoken Chinese somewhere online, because i don't have a clue about pronunciation. then i'd get a phrasebook or two, and memorize the most critically useful ones ("where are the toilets? how much does that cost? thank you! what is in this food? i am from America. please excuse me for not speaking better Chinese.") then i'd just land in Beijing and do my best to get by.

i know that a lot of people are very self-conscious when they try to learn a language. i have a friend on LJ who lives in England, and is trying to learn Spanish so she can go on holiday in Spain. but she's horribly afraid that Spanish people will laugh at the mistakes she makes. i tell her, "suppose a foreign person came up to you in public and said, with a heavy accent, 'station of train, where be her?' you wouldn't make fun of them - you'd probably just say 'the train station is at the end of that street,' and point, or something equivalent. well, the same goes for how people will treat you if you're the foreign person in their country."