Are smart drugs the answer to language learning process?

Hello everyone! Did you like our page on Facebook? Here we are! 

Ok, before we start, I do recomend you watch this debate.

Or, if you want, watch the highlights of it, clicking here. 

First: When we use the word Drugs, people tend to block it, because it is the common sense. It is not “correct” to support it. If you support any kind of thing related with the word drugs, you are politically incorrect. Here I invite you to leave all this stuff out.

Let’s start with one consideration, if I say to you, most part of the planet use drugs to enhance the brain function. Would you be shocked? Maybe you did it today.

Do you like Coffee? Yes? Me too. Let me explain how it works on your brain. Caffeine molecule looks like this (C8H10N4O2)

In other hand, we have a chemical   called Adenosine. This chemical is responsible to attack a nerve cell and slow it down. Yep, it is the chemical that makes you feel sleepy. To our brain, Caffeine looks like Adenosine, So your brain takes one instead of another. It is how this drug works.

We could do it to another substances, like Nicotine, alcohol or other substances accepted by society.

The smart drugs.

Ok, now, let’s go to that substances called Smart drugs. There is a group of medications, made for people with some deseeses, like Alzheimer, Narcolepsy and others.

The point is, people are using this ones to increase brain functions. Most famous is Modafinil. Here you can see how it works.

So, My point of view? I see a great value in this kind of drugs. Ok, calm down. I agree with the professor Barbara Sahakian, of Cambridge. I admire her and her work since long time ago.

If you think about people using this drugs to increase brain functions to get better in school exams, so, it sounds fool. Ok, let me put a different situation for you. If you are a doctor and need to go for a surgery and work on that for 6 – 8 hours… If you feel sleepy, the patient could die. Worth the risk of side effects of these drugs now? To save people’s life?

If you are a pilot, going to war. Your life depends of your state of alert. Now, worth the risk to take one of these pills? Everything is relative.

Smart drugs for language learning? 

I don’t think so. It is not a rule, if you like it, ok, but for me, the language learning process is a matter of love, you do fall in love with the language. It is a funny thing, you don’t need to stress your brain until you need drugs to keep you alert.

Use drugs to increase brain function and then learn a language, for me it is the same to say we need drugs to date, to watch movies, to read book, to live. Language is a living thing, you need to interact with, you don’t need a mechanic way to learn it. Just enjoy it.

Wonderful world of Ancient languages according to Ioannis Ikonomou

Hello everyone! This time I am here to share the thoughts of a very special Hyper-polyglot about a very nice topic.

Between Polyglots you usually hear things like… I speak German, I study Chinese. I love Japanese, I would love to learn Arabic. My favorite language is Polish, Finnish, an the list goes on…

How many times did you hear… I have studied Greek ( Sometimes, right?) And Ancient Greek? And Old English? And Latin, And Gothic? And all of them together? Awesome? Yes.

Let me introduce my guest.

Brussels, Belgium, 21 August 2014Translator Ioannis Ikonomou. Photo: Ezequiel Scagnetti / Babylonia – Creative Affairs Bureau

This man is ιωάννης οικονομου (Ioannis Ikonomou). He is from Greece (Obviously noticed by his name.) There are a lot of interesting facts about him… I could say, he is a man fluent in 32 languages, he is the best translator of EU, he learned English when he was 5 years old, German (7 years old), Italian (10 Years old), Russian (13 years old), he speaks 21 of 24 official EU languages and a whole list of unbelievable things.

When I talked to him, he asked me: Where are you from, and I said, I am Brazilian, so, instantaneously, we started to talk in Portuguese, I felt like I was talking with a Portuguese native speaker.  So I learn a lot from him.

Don’t you know him? Join his group on Facebook!

The cultural background:

He has a different thing from a lot of Polyglots we see nowadays. If he speaks a language, he is not only fluent, but he know a lot about the culture of that country, that society. He is like an anthropologist, the feeling you get, talking with Yannis is that he knows all the answers. If I see a hard question I say: Yannis: why is that? Recently I was asking why there is a big difference between Ancient and Modern Greek but not between Hebrew (Ancient and modern). Who could explain.. I thought. Yannis, of course.

The world of Ancient languages

So, I began to form an idea… I was thinking about the process of learning languages and I decided to try an old and dead language, to understand the process, and I foud someone with large experience on this topic.

Yannis have studied most ancient Indo-European languages, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Avestan (He wrote his Harvard dissertation on a text by the prophet Zarathustra written in that one), Khotanese, Sogdian, Hittite and the other Anatolian Languages, Gothic, Old Icelandic, Old English and other Germanic languages, Classical Armenian, Old Irish, OCS (Old Church Slavic), also studied ancient Maya, ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Old Persian.

What a great list! Would you like to download his brain? Me too. So I asked, Do you think this languages helped you to learn other ones? Secondarily so. In fact every language you learn helps you learn more languages, he says.

My doubt was… if there are no one to talk with, how do you learn it?

According to him: “We learn such languages based only on the written monuments we have in it. It is a different learning process than with living languages.”

Are you thinking about to try it? 

When I asked him the hardest part, he told me, it is the language itself. and I reply, how to deal with the process? Do you recommend it for everyone or just for people with experience in language learning?

Yannis’ words:

No, only people who really want to learn, say, Latin or Sanskrit, ancient Egyptian or Greek, should embark on that. And then there is only one way: study, study, study. Systematically and passionately. Just playing with Latin won’t do.

So guys, it is a wonderful world, but there is no place for playing, you need to go deep inside!

Did you like this guy? Don’t forget to join the group!

I will give my shot, once I study Hebrew, makes sense to me if I study Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic.

If you enjoyed this one, I also recommend this article. 

Sounds of life by Haikaa Yamamoto

Hello everyone! In this special post, I invited my favorite singer and song writer Haikaa Yamamoto!

I love this topic, but she is an awesome specialist!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Music and language learning, by Haikaa!

My love for languages and music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was raised in Brazil by a music loving Japanese mother. From a very early age, she taught me countless Japanese songs that I couldn’t always understand. Since I was used to singing songs without knowing what the lyrics were about, I guess I was never intimidated by foreign music or foreign sounds. And that turned out to be a great asset for me in language learning. On this post, I’d like to share a few tips that you may be able to incorporate into your own polyglot adventure.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION AND PRONUNCIATION

First of all, I believe that by listening to music in a new language, we are exposed to the phonetics of that language in a more direct manner. Because we rely on our hearing sense, our vocal apparatus – our tongue, lips, larynx, pharynx, soft and hard palate – is able to move according to what our ears capture and not according to what our eyes are conditioned to see. What I mean is that when we look at written words, we are likely to read them according to the phonetics of a language that we already know. On the other hand, when we just hear it or sing it, we are exposed to the sound itself. This could help with our listening skills and especially pronunciation.

Tip #1:

Search for some songs you REALLY like. Then, write the lyrics down exactly the way you hear them, memorize it and sing away.

VOCABULARY

Another obvious way in which music helps in learning a new language is with vocabulary. We’re probably not likely to learn specific words about something more technical like banking as there aren’t that many songs about financial markets. However, it is possible to learn words related to love, relationships and life. We can also learn pronouns, idioms and a bit about verb conjugation too. The great thing about learning new words with music is because songs give us a natural context. And as most people who study languages know, words don’t exist in a vacuum and we are much more likely to remember them when they have a context.

Tip #2:

Use songs to give you context and help you memorize a few basic nouns, idioms, pronouns and verbs.

CULTURE

Much the same way a word doesn’t exist in a vacuum, a language doesn’t either. A language exists within a culture and music is a wonderful introduction to the cultural setting to which a certain language belongs. By listening to the songs, the instrumentation and the melody of a song, we might be getting in touch with the entire history of that culture. When a sensitive artist writes or sings a song, that song is the result of everything that that person has experienced and learned from the collective intelligence around.

I experienced this a few years ago when I decided to sing versions of my song “Work of Art” in as many languages as possible. Among the twenty languages I recorded the song in was Lushootseed, a Native Indian idiom spoken by the Suquamish tribe. The pronunciation required me to produce very challenging sounds for which I had to put my tongue against my hard palate, let saliva accumulate on my tongue then blow air threw it. As I was struggling to make these sounds, the lyricist Zalmai Zahir explained to me that the sounds of Lushootseed mimicked the sounds of the forests where the Suquamish lived. That did not make me sound like a native Lushootseed speaker but I felt a connection with the language that wasn’t there before when I was just trying to mechanically make the sounds. All of a sudden, I was seeing rivers and wood crackling and the wind.

Tip #3:

Allow songs to be the doorway into a new culture.

PLEASURE

On the first tip I gave, I stressed that it’s important to choose songs we REALLY like in order to use them successfully as a learning tool. In psychology, there’s a term called “Flow” which is used to describe a mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. I believe every language learner understands the importance of focus, involvement and enjoyment. When those elements are missing, our language learning process is very likely to fail. A song we REALLY like or LOVE may allow us to easily experience flow in language studies. As we connect with that language emotionally and positively, I think our ability to learn increases too.

Tip #4:

Let your love for music be a part of your language learning process.

When I was three, my mother taught me a Japanese children’s song called Satchan. At a certain point the lyrics went “Satchan te yo-bunda-yo.” Because my native tongue was Portuguese and the word “bunda” meant butt, I used to think it was a song about butts. I choreographed my own peculiar dance for it and performed it everywhere we went. As an adult, it is obviously essential to get the meaning of words right but maintaining that openness to a new language through music can still be incredibly fun.

(Patrick again): Enjoy the perfect work of Haikaa

I am really a fan. Not kidding. Below: My favorite song from her:

About the author: #HonorYourself, #HonorOthers, #HonorThePlanet, these principles permeate the works of singer-songwriter and author Haikaa. From Brazil, Japan and the US, Haikaa promotes the celebration of diversity as a catalyst for change through music and writing. In 2010, she released her “Work of Art Global Song” video where she sings in 19 languages. She also published a book titled “What is Diversity?” in 2012.

She published a book! Find it here! 

I did an interview with her on My polyglot TV.

You can check it here. 

And We have a deal… in almost one month I will interview her again, in Japanese. (I decided to learn only for this interview and I am loving)

10 Impressive Polyglots from Comic books

First, this time, leave the adults out. Bring your internal child and let me show the list of 10 impressive Polyglots from comic books!

• 10 – Wolverine:

– A lot of people know this one because movies, cartoons and the great role played by Hugh Jackman, but, did you know that he is fluent in Japanese and Spanish (plus English)

• 9 – Super boy:

– Not so famous, but this character appears in a lot of versions, but in the most recent, in the cartoon, Young Justice, in the first episode, they show use that he is a clone of Superman, but a Polyglot one!

• 8 – Green Arrow:

– This character spent a long time without a good history. In Comic books he was like a bad version of Batman, but, in his new TV Series: Oliver Queen, played by Stephen Amell, spent some time in China, Some time in Russia and some time training with Ra’s al ghul. During this show, Oliver speaks English, Mandarin, Russian and Arabic, until now. Good reborn for the character.

• 7 – The Punisher:

– Frank Castle, Ex-Seal, the popular Bad*ss hero from Marvel, he is cruel, he kills the bad guys, but what not everybody knows is that Castle is a Polyglot! In the movie from 2004 with Thomas Jane, during a scene when they are reading the file about Frank, it is reviled that he speaks 5 languages.

• 6 –  Ravena (Teens titans):

– One girl! Yep, Ravena is the creepy character from DC comics, showed in a light version in the cartoon Teen Titans. She is daughter of the Demon Triggon and use dark powers saying mysterious words… But, interesting detail, Ravena speaks ga lot of languages. During one animated movie it is reviled. She speaks English, German, Romanian, Sanskrit, Latin and more languages!

• 5 – Kingpin:

– The bad guy from Marvel has a lot of versions, but recently, he appears on the Netflix’s shows Daredevil. This evil businessman is a master of strategy, and very smart, aaand.. he speaks a lot of languages…. including Mandarin and Japanese. (The actor seems to suffer to speak Mandarin hahaha, but it is a nice job!)

• 4 – Madam Gao:

– Character from Marvel too, she appears on the same show as Kingpin, but, this mysterious evil old lady is interesting. She speaks during the show that she can speak all the languages of the world.

• 3 – Black Widow:

– Famous character played by Scarlett Johansson, the Russian spy, Natasha Romanoff, is a kind of genius, master of a lot of martial arts and… in Comic books AND in the movie Iron man 2, she appears like an impressive Polyglot who speaks fluently a lot of languages, including Latin.

• 2 – The beast (X-men)

– The awesome mutant Hank McCoy is a genius, he is an intellectual, fights for Mutant rights, but, the most impressive thing from this guy is, he speaks English, German, French, Latin, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Russian and the language from Dr. Doom’s country. Ah, and he studies dead languages too.

• Cypher (Marvel Comics)

Ok, he is not a famous character but deserves the first place for me. Why? Who is he?

Doug Ramsey is a mutant from X-men universe, and his power is: to understand ALL THE LANGUAGES of the world. Not just spoken languages, he can understand computer languages, corporal languages and every type of act that produce information. Awesome.

• The Bonus Character:

He is not from Comic books. Ok, but… did you see the movie Limitless? With Bradley Cooper?

In this history, a man name Eddie Morra took a pill and poof, access all the power of his brain… During the movie, he describes what he could do with this pill. Including become fluent in a language just listening it.