Hello! nǐ hǎo! toki! Saluton!
Did you know? In Cuba, after the 1959 revolution language education became a priority as part of a broader effort to promote literacy and social equality. The government launched the “Cuban Literacy Campaign,” which not only focused on teaching Spanish but also on other languages like Russian or French. Learning these languages was viewed as essential for fostering international solidarity with other countries and enhancing Cuba’s engagement in global affairs.
Here’s some questions for you beloved language learners! Feel free to answer as few or as many as you want in your native tongue or your target language!
- What are some challenges you face while learning your target language? How do you overcome them?
- How important is it for you to learn about the culture surrounding your target language?
- What movies, songs, or books in your target language have you enjoyed?
And here are the same links as last thread!
I am currently studying Vietnamese, which has a lot of benefits and drawbacks.
Some of the benefits are that modern Vietnamese has a crazy high number of Mandarin loan words, and as I studied that language previously, it is easy to remember a lot of that vocabulary. Being a Latin based script, it is quite easy to learn how to read and write.
There are some difficulties though. As my native language is English and my second language is Mandarin, both of these languages focus heavily on consonant sounds, and if you can get all of the consonants pronounced correctly and in the correct order, everyone will understand what you intend to say, even of your pronunciation is terrible. Vietnamese is exactly the opposite, the focus is very much on vowel pronunciation (and they have a lot of vowels), along with 5 (technically 6 if including ‘no tone’) tones, which are much more important than tones in Mandarin for understandability. Also, being a visibly obvious foreigner comes with some complications for practicing speaking. Living in a major city, English language education is quite good among the younger generations, so any time speaking with them, the vast majority are eager to practice their spoken English, even when conversation is initiated in Vietnamese. Among older generations, they know that their language is an incredibly difficult one and they do not expect foreigners to learn it, so much so that many older people will simply refuse to engage with a foreigner who tries to speak it, and just call over their child to translate for them.