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.
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