A Long Weekend in Bristol

...so it's Tuesday now and I've just about recovered from a cold, wet, tiring but marvellous long weekend in Bristol with friends.

This city really is becoming my home-away-from-home!  If I were to ever move away from Birmingham it would be sure to be top of my list.  I wasn't surprised at all to learn this weekend that it's been voted the Best Place to live in the UK for 2017!

On this trip we visited some old favourites as well as some amazing new places, which I'm going to try to get around to blogging about eventually.

Until then, here's a few photos that capture some of my favourite moments, just as a taste of what Bristol has to offer!  Click on any of the thumb nails to view the set at full-size images:

Language Learning Journal - Somali #3 - BBC Somali

BBC Somali is a resource that I'm already leaning heavily on.

One of the reasons for this is that, as a reputable organisation, I know that I can trust the quality of language being used...certainly more so than most sources for Somali on the internet (which are few and far between already in comparison to most foreign languages that I've worked with).

I also know that by dipping into this source I'll be learning from a variety of lexical fields, and be picking up vocabulary and phrasing that is current and relevant.

Even at this early stage in my learning I'm using the BBC Somali website to push myself to read Somali.  At this stage I'm just looking at headlines - short, succinct text conveying the essence of an entire article - to see what I can already understand, and what I can learn.

Learning a little about current affairs in the process certainly doesn't hurt.

Yesterday I was confronted with the following headline:

In ka badan 30 ku dhimatay weerar lagu qaaday cisbitaal

...and I must admit that I was darned proud (if a little bummed) to link one word - dhimatay - to death.

Following some of my usual vocabulary-learning techniques, I used Google Translate to get the full sense:

More than 30 killed in attached on hospital

...and to pick up some useful new vocabulary - just the basics for now (nouns):

cisbitaal - hospital (phonetic)

weerar - attack

...now I'm just hoping for some happier News to learn from!

Language Learning Journal - Somali #2 - Noun Plurals

Further to my previous entry on learning vocabulary, this one relates to a note that I'd made to learn more about Somali plurals.

I'd noticed that a couple of plural nouns in my memrise vocabulary list seemed to follow the same pattern of an "-o" ending, so looked into this over the last couple of days.  One example:

albaab - door

albaabbo - doors

I often view learning a new language like tackling a puzzle!  Indeed, perversely, it's this aspect of language learning that attracts me the most, far more than the social aspect.

In this way, my own curiosity is a great guide to follow.  I'll spot patterns and strive to understand them so that I can apply them freely in new situations.

Curiosity did also kill the cat, though, and boy-oh-boy do I wish a little bit that I hadn't bothered unraveling this particular ball of string so soon!

I read through a couple of neat websites, some of the top hits in Google that, rather than being simple grammar guides, turned out to be LINGUISTIC ESSAYS

Source 1: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_1998/ling202/nouns.htm

Source 2: http://www.linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~nlampitelli/lampitelli_14IMA.pdf

It seems that the "basic rule" is indeed...

"add o"

but there are also a shocking number of exceptions including...

"double the last consonant and add o" (after certain consonants)

"add yo" (after certain consonants)

"change the final consonant altogether and add o"

"lose a vowel and add o"

"repeat the last syllable"

"change nothing"

"add ooyin" (if the singular already ends in "o")

my notes on Somali plurals.  Shortly after this my will to live diminished and anarchy overran the page.

As a beginner, this can be pretty daunting to tackle.  I've coming across a lesser extreme with German previously and will be tacking Somali in much the same way.  And that is to learn the plural form of the word along with each singular noun that I add to my repertoire and test both at the same time.

As someone who likes to analyse and understand, I do not agree with the school of thought that grammar is something that should be avoided when learning a new language.  In this instance, though, I will aim to build up a sense of Somali's pattern and become comfortable with it through repetition.

That said, I could not have come to this decision and formed my "plan of attack" for Somali nouns without first researching this grammar rule.  I'm hoping that over time I'll be able to revisit the linguistic essays above and better understand the grammar behind the rules....or better still, develop an instinct for the exceptions.

Language Learning Journal - Somali #1 - Vocabulary

A very good Sunday to you all!

I'm aware that I'm not posting too often at the moment, so I'm trying my hand at incorporating my blog into my language learning a little more ...to document my techniques and give you all a little insight into what works for me (and perhaps also what doesn't).

I'm going to try not to reflect so much on my posts being so polished and allowing them to be more ephemeral; to show a journey.  After all, making mistakes is key to learning a language, so I'd be a hypocrite to preach about language learning without showing my own!

I'm also hoping hereby to shame myself a little into progressing a little faster than I have been.

This evening's learning is Somali - a language that I started looking at around 18 months ago when I found myself suddenly unemployed and reflecting on the lack of applicable language skills that I possess - believe me, French and German do not get you very far in the jobs market!

I've not got very far - due to my being very much settled in a new job and also as Somali's a very tough nut to crack - but my desire to learn new languages never completely fails so I'm prepared to attack it with fresh vigour!

I'm finding that one of the complexities with Somali is the lack of available materials - be it text books or online resources - so here's how I've been going about learning new Somali vocabulary thus far: 

1 - Memrise

There are some decent user-created lists already to hand on Memrise (example: https://www.memrise.com/course/52251/somali-for-beginners/).  Unfortunately there aren't any sound files attached to aid with your pronunciation, so that will require a different approach.

2 - Google Search

In order to try and keep my vocabulary contextual I've been using Google to help me to further my learning on Memrise

This means simply typing my memrise vocabulary - one word at a time - into Google along with "Somali" to see what word combinations come back.  The top searches are likely to be the most frequently used combinations in the Somali language, so I record any complete ones.

3 - Google Translate

Whilst not an ideal tool for all types of translation, this is still a valid tool for garnering a basic understanding.  If I type my newly discovered phrase into Google Translate and it doesn't make sense then I can try breaking it down until it does.  This way I can learn new words and - more importantly - new constructs that will help me to build up my comprehension of the language.  If I understand the phrase but something still doesn't quite make sense I note it down for later - there's most likely a grammatical rule that I don't yet understand that's causing this!  Reversing the source and target languages often helps reveal things too!

4 - Back to memrise

Finally, I load my new vocabulary into my own vocabulary list on Memrise

5 - Repeat

To illustrate how this works...

I learnt from memrise that dayuurad means plane (1).  My first hit on Google gave me dayuurad ku burburtay Soomaaliya (2).

 which translated to "plane crashes in Somalia" in Google Translate (3).

This sentence makes perfect sense, but I still haven't learnt any new words.  I already know ku to mean "to", roughly, Soomaaliya is Somalia, so the only unknown is burburtay, which is a verb, and I don't yet understand enough about verb constructs to understand how this has been conjugated, or surmise an infinitive form.

...so I make a note to look into the basics of verbs in my next grammar session, and I will learn this phrase as a whole until I am able to understand its components (4).

If anyone reading this is also learning Somali I'd be very interested to hear how my own methods compare with your own!  I do also use mine for other languages, especially in the early days where my level is not sufficient for me to read longer texts.