Language

I love language, not just my native English language but languages in general.  I would love nothing more than to be a polyglot who could speak dozens of languages at a fluent level with ease.  I've studied many languages over the years not just in an academic setting as was the case with Irish, but in a personal setting too as was the case with Spanish, French, German, Greek, Italian, and many others that I have taken an interest in.  The only languages that I would say I had any real success in learning however were Irish and Spanish.  The former was something I learned in school in structured education but having not used it since leaving fifteen years ago my knowledge of it has faded quite significantly.  As for Spanish, I can read and write and to an extent I can have conversations in it with relative ease.  As for my continued development, I think I have reached a plateau where I can't improve my understanding and my proficiency without exposure to native speakers which I don't have.

I mentioned in my previous post that I have a condition called Nystagmus, and that this caused me to be short-sighted.  Learning a language is one of the areas of my life where my eyesight unexpectedly proves to be a barrier for me.  This shouldn't really be a surprise to me given that my time in Primary school wasn't exactly an enjoyable experience when it came to reading and writing due to my visual impairment.  Simple things stand out in my mind like one instance of a teacher refusing to spell the word "Leaf" because there was a large diagram of a tree on a wall with each part labelled, no understanding at all given to the fact I couldn't read what was written there because I couldn't see it.

When it comes to learning, not just languages but anything in general, you need to have resources that are accessible.  When it comes to languages themselves, there is no greater resource than examples of the language, and that is where you first run into problems when you have a visual impairment.  Certain languages are more accessible than others.  I happen to think those that use Latin based alphabets are the most accessible, and those that do not are the least accessible.  For example when I first took an interest in learning Hebrew, I didn't make it past learning the alphabet for the simple reason that I realised I would have difficulty seeing it before you even got to what it meant.  This difficulty was repeated when I looked at Arabic, a language with beautiful calligraphy but one that relies on observation of intricate detail.  I had similar experiences with Mandarin Chinese and a number of other languages that used logographic writing systems.

I rely quite heavily on computers and the accessibility functions they provide, being able to change the size of fonts, and zoom in and out is essential for me to be able to read with ease.  You would think this would mean I hate physical books but that's not the case.  I like having a book that I can see and touch and smell, there's something incredibly satisfying about having that tactile connection.  I just need it to be big enough for me to be able to read.  When it comes to other languages, most references come in standard sizes, and if you can't read them comfortably then you don't often get an alternative.  Your only hope of having that option is if you stick to text books that are intended for academic use as most of those at least do come with large print varieties or they use font sizes that are big enough to be read easily, especially if they are intended for children.

Over the years I have used many resources, from games for my Nintendo DS like My Spanish Coach which teaches vocabulary and some basic grammar, to websites like Duolingo which uses crowd-sourced translations to give more accurate translations and will accept anything that conveys the same meaning even if it's not a literal translation rather than relying on literal translations or machine translation.  Duolingo also helps translate the web by feeding users content from the web that needs translated into their own language and using crowd based validation to confirm whether that translation is accurate.  I've also used News websites written in other languages as a means to practice reading, this can help as the stories covered are often stories similar to those I have read that day in English so I at least have an idea of what the article is meant to be about before I start reading this makes it easier to know if I am reading it correctly or not.

One of the most useful resources I have found online however is the use of podcasts which provide natural conversations in other languages which gives you exposure to the language in a way you would actually expect to hear it, rather than an academic variant.  If you only ever studied English in an academic setting for example you would probably get lost quite quickly having a normal conversation with people in the UK, that is if you can get around the accents which vary quite significantly from those you would hear through academic reference media.

The hardest thing to learn when learning another language however is the informal language, the slang, and colloquialisms, idioms, and the influence the culture of other countries have in shaping the language.  Understanding a language at a native level involves living it, which if you can't completely immerse yourself in that environment is very hard to achieve.