Resources and Methods

Ok, so I really started learning quite a while ago but haven't put much time in until recently (probably the last month or so, and even then it's only been two decent two-hour sessions a week or some audio tape repetition). I'll call this a proper start. Resources and methods to go, then I’ll make my NEXT post be the start of the ‘blog’.

Resources

A couple of days ago the book "Beginners' Icelandic" from the Hippocrene series arrived, being the only Amazon favourite yet to be given any negative review comments (read: mentioned) by PhD. Alexander Argüelles on his website (I’ll elaborate later). It’s good. I don’t know what exactly polyglots look out for in resource books but it launched straight into some basic grammar and believable dialogue (“Are you also a student?” “No, I teach history” “So you’re a teacher?” “Yes”) and immediately expanding upon some elements of greeting multiple people that I’d been confused about after the first sixty pages of “Colloquial Icelandic” by lecturer Daisy Neijmann. I’ve had the second book for ages and it’s taught me some solid basics, so I’m happy.

As far as audio goes, I’ve got the CDs that came with both books (the Colloquial CDs have too much English and too many pauses and I’m yet to listen to the Hippocrene ones, but it’s helpful to hear some slower Icelandic) and radio stations ... when they decide to play. Blah. http://dagskra.ruv.is/ras1 and http://dagskra.ruv.is/ras2 are the two I’ve been trying to listen to recently – both excellent, but the second’s more conversation-centric I think. Classical jazz mixed with friendly Icelandic voices doesn’t go amiss from RÁS1 though. Of course I can’t currently understand much of it but I’m just trying to picture the sentences in my head, which I hope is improving my understanding of sentence fluidity. There’s a website I’ve not saved (but is easy to find on Google) with plenty of links to other radio stations in Icelandic.

The DVDs “Nói Albinói“ and “101 Reykjavík” count as my audio training. Fully accurate subtitles for 90 minutes each and interesting stories to follow; yay. I’ll look out for more DVDs as they come up on Amazon. I wish Sigur Rós’ “Heima” had more Icelandic ... I suppose it was marketed to an audience of more than 320,000 and they can’t be blamed for doing that.

Inspiration, motivation and tips count as resources to me. The great and aforementioned Alexander Argüelles runs the website http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/. A serial polyglot for years – he doesn’t seem to ever list how many languages he knows to a good standard but jeez does he have a lot of books – he’s trying to set up a language learning institute in America with the aim of teaching people how to learn languages efficiently. It’s been his life’s work so I think he’s well and truly trained for it; good luck to him. I stumbled across his website after he’d posted a video on Youtube giving an introduction to the Icelandic language (http://youtube.com/watch?v=m_b9V_gbUNw), a language he’s been learning as a base for Germanic languages for 20 years. Although a lot of what he writes I won’t need to take into consideration, I hope to use ‘shadowing’ (speaking over audio files without delay to force your accent into shape) someday soon, once I get decent recordings. I went through all his textbook series reviews but, much to my disappointment, most of the ones mentioned don’t have Icelandic publications (only Colloquial, which he quite likes, and Teach Yourself, which I’ve decided against getting after reading some Amazon reviews alongside). The forum “How To Learn Any Language” (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/), as cheesy as the name is, has some extremely knowledgeable people on it and great ideas to help people of all types go about learning languages. I hope to draw some influence from there.

I’ve of course got my own resources I’ve created, but they’re rather limited right now. Noun lists for common fruits, vegetables and articles household equipment are all it’s really amounted to. The website http://www.vokabel.com/creteste.html seems like it may become an excellent resource. You get to create tests that can be as simple as something like: “Question: Cranberry” “Answer: mýraberjalyng” with up to 100 questions. That’s sufficient for most vocabulary lists with variations and could be used for entire sentences, grammar forms etc. Aye, I’m in love. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to make a program in VB for that but that’d force me to remind myself of computing last year...

Oh yeah, and the University of Glasgow (open 19 hours a day) has a full two-way dictionary. Unfortunately it’s not a very modern dictionary and I can’t take it back to London with me for the three months I’ll be away this summer, but it’s excellent to use when I’m here.

Methods ...

... or a summary.

At the time of posting I’ve got two books designed for a first year university course level, an abundance of post-it notes, some advisory websites, a public dictionary that nobody ever uses and some audio from radio, CD and DVD. There’s also an Icelandic IRC chatroom but because it’s revolved around a multiplayer game there’s a lot of Englandic thrown around – not particularly helpful sometimes, although undoubtedly amusing.

Every day (hopefully) I plan to go through a few book exercises, switching between the textbooks. I’ll repeat lessons regularly, so it’ll take me a good while to go through both - by which time I should be able to confidently stride through them without getting confused or needing a dictionary. Whenever I’m alone and I don’t feel like listening to music I’ll listen to Icelandic radio. DVDs whenever I please too. I’ll try and create a lot of tests on that Vokabel website, incorporating nouns, adjectives, inflections etc (Icelandic has a lot of inflections ... English has almost none most of the time). I’ll discover and experiment with new methods as I find them on the forums etc. I’ll get my iPod back into shape once I’ve got some selected audio so I’ve got something to listen to on journeys.

1000 words. Jájá!

Bless. Paul x