One of my main resources in learning a language (or, as I'd like to say "becoming familiar with a new Latin dialect", but let's stick to standard terminology) is surrounding myself with that language as much as possible. Not just read the language, not just hear it or speak it, but actually live it. This experience mimics being in the country where the language is spoken. For learners of English, for instance, this is very easy to accomplish because English, being just about the world's lingua franca at present time, is everywhere, even if the country is not an English-speaking one. The rest of us can achieve that as well; it simply requires creativity, and a little bit of hard work.
Certainly, you won't show up to class or work, and start talking to your teacher or boss in Catalan out of nowhere. Instead, you substitute your native language wherever you have the freedom to replace it with the language you're focusing on: the magazines and books you read, the news you watch, the people you surround yourself with, and, even the dreams you have (this will actually happen naturally when you do everything else just mentioned).
Then, there are the social networking sites — Facebook, Twitter, all of Google services, email, Youtube, and so forth.
For the past year, I've had my email, Facebook, and Google account set to Romanian. Youtube, unfortunately, did not have a Romanian option for the interface, so I settled for Italian, the closest available. Today, I checked the language list again after some time, and, I was happily surprised to see Romanian there.
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| "Choose your language" Section |
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| Youtube in Romanian |
The same goes for Facebook...
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And email.
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| Gmail |
4 comments:
Molt bé. D'aquesta manera, a més, dones un feedback positiu als llocs web que es decideixen a crear versions lingüístiques diferents. També pots configurar el navegador perquè en el cas de pàgines amb versions en diferents llengües triï automàticament la que desitges.
Off topic: do you know about a _reliable_ source on the relative presence of languages in the www? Spanish reports about the subject are always biased to increase/diminish the "success" of the minority languages.
Respect, Filius!
Impresionantă pasiune pentru română. bravo.
cred că putem intra realmente în concurență în ceea ce privește utilizarea corectă a limbii.
felicitările mele sincere
mm
You write that English is "just about the world's lingua franca at present time". Mmm. English is fairly widespread, but far from universal.
Learn Mandarin, and you’re tongue–tied in Japan. Learn Portuguese and you can’t even ask for a loaf of bread in Germany. Learn Arabic and you are reduced to miming in Russia. The obvious solution would be to make wider use of Esperanto. Are you in favour of more widespread use of Esperanto? Ĉu vi parolas tiun lingvon?
@Joaquim: I haven't researched that, so I couldn't give you the answer you seek. If I come across something of that nature, I'll make a post about it.
@Maria: Mulţumesc frumos. :))
@Bill: The "just about" part implies that it doesn't apply in every case. So, I don't disagree with you.
As for Esperanto, I've never been a fan of conlangs. If worse came to worst, I wouldn't going mind back to the age when Latin was the lingua franca in the literary world.
But, you ask specifically about Esperanto, so if it came down to Esperanto or English, I would side with English. :)
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