Tools For Spanish Language Learning - Tease Out The Underlying Structure of The Target Language
Process Option 01 - "Check Out The Book The Loom Of Language " By Frederick Bodmer
The Loom of language (New York:W.W,Norton & Company Inc. 1944. Hard Cover. 692 pages.) has been reprinted and is available from Amazon. I just got a copy from a book sale, and it is awesome! They have taken some of the most helpful insights into the underlying structure of European Languages and harnessed these insights to turbo boost language acquisiton for the home learner. It was written in the last days of World War II, when folks were thinking that maybe better communication across cultures and language groups would help prevent a repetition of the carnage.
The author and his side-kick editor collaborated, one as infstructor and the other as an informed but definately non-language-learner "test subject". They intentionally designed everything they shared to help the ordinary person. Somehow this book and its message is amazingly current, as new ideas as to how best to tackle language learning seem to take a while to trickle into the educational system. An easy read (compared to other structure books) both as a reference and as a straight narrative. Tubs of great strategies.
For example, he says that the two feeder streams into English (Germanic and Romance) give native English speakers the key into ten European languages, and learning the underlying structure of each of these two streams is two tasks not ten tasks. That is, it is the same structure for each package of five languages, and much easier to learn either one as a single unit or package of languages. I like the way they think...effecient and high reward.
Specific references to relevant material will be put on each of the learning options link pages.
Process Option 02 - Build a spreadsheet in Excel to Access structure-based tools and resources from the Net
One of the problems with addressing the structural issues in language learning is that there is far too much information on the internet
and it is impossible to know its real value personally until later on. A spreadsheet does a marvelous job of retaining what is acquired and keeping it relational
until it can be fully inter-related with itself. By using multiple pages in a workbook. it is possible to make a series of trial runs at parts of a larger project,
capture promising links to website material, and gradually build structures which reflect your personal understanding of the language's structure...a top-down
structure so to speak, without having to have a big-picture view of the language at the outset.I have used this approach with The European language reality of two language families (as outlined by Bodmer in his book The Loom Of Language, using his material
as an initial starting place. As the work built on Ogden's basic English concept (now in archives) I integrated core concepts in the spreadsheet to see if that approach was helpful.
The project turned out to be a series of progressive approximations, each one being for me "at least this good".Rather than having to throw away my work as I outgrew each level of understanding, I was able to start a new page in the workbook and import the consistent framework laid out by Bodmer
back at the first, and used in his book. This way I was able to integrate several new or rather later developments in language learning theory and add to Bodmer's work. I liked his concept,
as well as his motivation for doing all that work (world peace at least in Europe...by helping people talk to each other directly, and understand their varying positions as neighbors...
community development on a massive, continent wide scale).Although Bodmer did not push into the area raised in the story of Babel, when earlier workers addressed the same issue, I was able to work with that in mind, knowing that the insight of that story,
coupled with Jesus' initiative years later to train "cultural boundary jumpers" he nick-named "Apostles" to act as go-betweens between cultural groupings, rather than remove those cultural boundaries -
bringing riches from one culture into the next personally, I realized the massive utility of a language project such as mine... as a tool for people involved in such an endeavor.Ultimately, the construction of such a tool is far beyond the capacity of one worker, but by focusing on making the structure, and leaving to other workers the task of doing the sub-tasks,
I was able to harness such work as done to date and currently located on he Internet, put it into Bodmer's structure, in hyperlink form mostly, and extract the parts I needed in order to learn Spanish quickly,
and then shift back to my original project of learning French in order to play my guitar better.Personally, I learn best by making tools for self and others, and I know it is not for everyone, nor is the end product for everyone, but that is exactly the point...today there can be a variety of ways to learn a language
regardless of our purposes for doing so.As I look back on this now-almost-finished structural task, I think one of the things building it did for me was to force me to think big-picture/top down about language as it is understood today, and to express my insights
in a very easy to use piece of software which is widely available to ordinary people around the globe. This bodes well for both wider utilization of the concept and other people taking up he structure building task
where I leave off. So I feel good about being involved in a project which is far bigger than my life, both in terms of standing on the massive work of others before my time (like Bodmer and Ogden), during my lifetime (like language learning sie builders today), and far into the future. It is
also satisfying to be doing it in light of the theological insights I have gained over my lifetime about the larger issues of war and peace, destruction/stewardship of the planet, and the nature of good and evil on a day to day
street-level basis.One of he limitations of the current practice of "community development" and "community economic/business development", relates to the exclusion of the humanities from the discourse. Language, religion, philosophy, history...
on and on it goes. This project, even at this point in its development, has so enriched me on all those fronts, as I have encountered the echoes of a number of "unseen hands". Humanity has gone about its business of
"smartening up", finding "better ways to live", "maturing individually and collectively", and "facing together both ourselves and each other", in our joint-future together on "planet earth" as a "global village", and its various
languages have left a paper trail, like Hansel and Grettle's bread-crumb trail behind it for us to follow. That trail is left as the "linguistic artifacts" embedded in our various intermingled dialects. To me it is like following the DNA
of society, and our world community. Only now, using computers and internet type tools, are we able to extract much of that paper-trail, and understand a bit more fully how we got to this point in our life together.Like a massive "wiki-project" humanity has constructed its global language-scene, and now, perhaps we can use a community tool such as the internet and its "wiki-capacity" to grow in our mutual understanding.
Thanks,Lord for being able to take part in even this tiny part, of this massive communication-undertaking we know as "language", within our human community, and its "Eden-Babal-Apostolic" reality. Thank-You, indeed.
In terms of future work on this part of the project, I see the need for the same sort of spreadsheet-thing being done from the point of view of every language on earth. I have worked from the base of 'English", and I have used English as my working language, but it is of limited use as a tool
for those even in the other ten or so languages represented in it. What is needed is for someone to take the spreadsheet-concept and make a parallel tool in Spanish or French, and plug in the resources and explanations and insights from
each of those languages, and do it in their home language (L1, so to speak). Personally, I like Bodmer's insight that English, being a mix of two language families located in Europe, does open up ten separate, but related doors into those feeder-languages.
But what about those people coming the other way, from those separate languages, if only to then use that "English" language-amalgam of the two families as a stepping-stone back into the other European feeder-languages? Would a spreadsheet in their own home language not speed
up such a language acquisition/learning project for them? Anyway, that is my personal view of tool-making as a language-learning aid. Not for everybody, nor is any possible result, but for me, it has proven to be a great way to become aware of a world bigger than mine, but to which I am inextricably linked.
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