Learn a language

Learning a new language needn’t be hard work. We explore the power of computer-assisted language tuition

It is said that learning a foreign language can give you a better command of your native tongue.

But many people need more of an incentive before they’ll devote the considerable time and effort necessary to absorb a foreign grammar and lexicon.

Cunning use of technology can make the job a whole lot easier than it used to be.

Whether you need a few handy phrases for an overseas vacation or you’re planning to spruce up your CV with a more advanced command of a language, a computer and an internet connection will get you up to speed.

They won’t replace the skills of a teacher, but they’re great for supplementing study and improving your comprehension of a different language. So whether you want to improve your school-learnt French or aim to captivate Chinese clients, prepare to get ahead by employing a few technology smarts.

There are four fairly obvious key skills to develop if you want to learn a language successfully: reading, writing, listening and speaking. The most obvious strategy for tackling all at once with your PC is to install a software study suite.

These packages divide into offline and online types, a good-value example of the former being Transparent Language’s Learn Language Now! series (www.transparent.com). There are 16 titles available, covering Dutch, Arabic and Swedish, as well as more common choices, each of which introduces more than 15,000 words and hundreds of handy phrases.

It’s not merely a case of reading from lists. Transparent uses the multimedia strengths of the Mac and PC to present interactive lessons featuring video clips narrated by native speakers, along with the means to analyse your own pronunciation. Games and reference resources also feature, as do mp3 files that can be loaded onto a personal media player for revision while you’re out and about.

Rosetta Stone publishes both offline and online interactive study courses in 30 languages. The company uses what it calls Dynamic Immersion, by which you link words with on-screen pictures and hear native speakers pronounce the words.

The online service enables you to continue study when travelling. Rosetta tracks your progress, so you get an idea of which areas need additional focus.

Immersion in a foreign culture can bring language acquisition along a treat. And while multimedia study courses go some way to creating an immersive experience, there’s still more that can be done to create a virtual environment in which to better absorb new vocabulary.

Strange transmissions
Try dialling up an internet radio station from the country of your target language. Point your web browser at www.radio-locator.com for a huge list of overseas stations that broadcast online.

There are downsides to this approach, however. If you’re at work, the systems manager will probably take a dim view of your bandwidth-hogging activity. And native speakers often talk too quickly to be understood.

Also, you can’t revise and analyse streamed audio unless you record it. For that, you’ll need a capture program, such as Applian’s AV Streaming Capture Suite for PC or Wiretap Pro for OS X. Both products can convert streamed audio into files that can be saved for later study, and even slowed down in an audio editor, such as the open source program Audacity.

With diligence, you can create your own audio-based study modules, while learning something of current affairs in the country you’re interested in.

Read and learn
Alternatively, there are numerous language courses available with accompanying audio on CD.

It’s the work of moments to rip the audio and transfer it to an iPod, or whatever flavour of personal media player you prefer, so you can revise while out walking or commuting.

Just be prepared for strange looks from passers-by as you listen, repeat and understand.

You’ll probably be familiar with Linguaphone but, although the company’s study materials are very good, learning a language is not quite as simple as the ‘Languages made easy’ slogan suggests. Remembering what you’ve learned and actively using it is the trick, but constant exposure to the written and spoken form helps the material to sink in.

So a good way to woo native speakers further with your skills is to absorb some of the culture’s literature. Every nation has its great novelists and poets and you’ll find their works on sale in the UK, but in translated form.

If your book budget doesn’t stretch to much, take a look at Project Gutenberg. While its English collection of free books is immense, there are also extensive lists of downloadable books in everything from Afrikaans to Yiddish. If you are interested in Bulgarian, there are titles by Khristo Boteb, while those who are potty about Polish can amuse roughly one per cent of the UK population with the fact that they’ve been reading Wachtel, Oziminski and Lubienski in the original.

Foreign newspapers can be useful, too – especially since you’ll already have a good idea what the main international stories are about from our own press. Cartoons are also a great way of getting to grips with the culture.

As your confidence grows, it will probably be knocked by encounters with native speakers who either speak too quickly or use words you’ve not yet encountered. Having mastered the phrase “could you speak more slowly, please?” in the target language, there’s another high-tech trick to employ to keep the conversation flowing.

PDAs are great study aids. Not only can they display Pdfs of text-based revision material, but many can also play sound files, so you can dispense with the iPod if pocket space is a concern and rely on your PDA’s audio playback.

Even better, there are plenty of foreign language dictionaries available for Pocket PC, Palm and the like, and they’re much more effective than their printed counterparts when used to steer a conversation. Just tap in the word you’re struggling for to bring up its translation – much easier than flipping through a printed dictionary, especially if you’ve not yet mastered the order of the foreign alphabet.

Software dictionaries such as those published by Lingvosoft can help further by pronouncing the word you’ve looked up. This is very useful with a language such as Russian, in which the stress placed on vowel sounds is crucial to meaning. Get it wrong and you may end up walking into a shop wanting to buy flour (muká), but asking for torment (múka) instead.

If the pronunciation is beyond you, just show the PDA to the person with whom you’re intent on communicating and watch them beam as they read the translation and appreciate the effort you’re making. That’s what’s called a ‘positive reinforcing encounter’ and it’s a real boost to confidence.

If, however, you’ve left the PDA at home, fret not. Software from Lingvosoft, Paragon and Ectaco is also available for Smartphone and Symbian, so you could use a supported mobile handset as a translator. And if it’s capable of audio playback, that’ll also be handy for revision with your mp3s.

You could also use it to learn with the aid of the Pimsle ur system from Simon and Schuster. It’s an audio-based teaching method that repeats new words and phrases at precise intervals, not so frequently that they become overly repetitious and not so infrequently that you forget them – scientific stuff, but highly effective.

Grammar
Acquiring vocabulary is one of the big challenges of learning any language, but you won’t get far without a good understanding of grammar.

It’s essential in helping you decipher what the other person is saying as well as expressing yourself without sounding like an idiot.

English speakers are fortunate in that English grammar is relatively straightforward (although unlucky in that English spelling is anything but).

Word order in sentences is crucial, but inflection in English is much simpler than in Greek, Latvian, Latin and other languages.

Some people will recall the drudgery of Latin classes, in which they were asked to learn verbs by rote (amo, amas, amat and so on). The system of gender and cases is common to many languages, and there are those languages, such as Chinese, in which the pitch of the voice is fundamental to the meaning of speech.

Your language-learning software can take you a fair way towards mastering grammar, but there’s also plenty of help online. A quick way to find it is to use Google, or whichever search engine you favour. Type in the language, then ‘grammar’ and focus on the hits with top-level domains of .edu or .ac.uk. Academic institutions are generous in putting study materials online and, with luck, you’ll find authoritative resources available for your chosen language. Also check out Unilang.org, which has a wealth of links to grammar aids.

Font issues
There are few problems with font display these days – Windows XP, Vista and OS X are able to display a wide variety of character sets, so you can view foreign language websites and type away without having to worry about installing specific fonts.

However, when it comes to writing in the target language, you may yearn for something more attractive than the fonts already on the system. You’ll probably find something useful listed on Omniglot, a website dedicated to the writing systems of world languages. It hosts links to free downloads of numerous fonts – even those supporting dead and made-up languages (Klingon, anyone?) – including True Type and bitmap. There should be something there that’ll add pizzazz to your correspondence.

Of course, when writing, you’ll probably need frequent access to a dictionary to check the spelling and definitions of unfamiliar words. So, rather than flipping through the pages of a dictionary or relying on a PDA-based electronic version, try some of the hundreds of web-based dictionaries.

Again, Omniglot has a huge listing of websites into which you can enter English words to find their foreign equivalents. Some even allow you to enter short phrases, but care should be taken.

If you type the previous sentence into, say, Babelfish, translate it into Dutch and then translate the translation back into English, you’ll get: “What permits you even short expressions enter, but the care would have be taken.” See the ‘Machine translation’ box for more on the pitfalls of relying on computers this way.

Put it into practice
No matter how much software and hardware you use in your quest to learn a foreign language, there’s one thing that you really can’t substitute with technology.

It’s vitally important to find a native speaker, or a well-versed, non-native-speaking teacher of the language you’re learning, to help you master the finer points of the spoken language.

If you get into bad habits at the outset, such as mispronouncing certain words or making a mess of the grammar, they’ll be hard to break later on.

The UK is a pretty cosmopolitan place and it’s not hard to find expatriates from a good many countries if you keep your eyes and ears open.

Many people will be eager to improve their English language skills, so they may see advantages in helping you with your studies. You could attempt to find a penpal online, but you never really know the true identity of the person with whom you’re corresponding and email correspondence can’t beat face-to-face interaction.

Should you happen upon a friendly native speaker in the UK, bear in mind that they’ll want to practise English on you, too, just as the French like to do on Brits abroad. You may have to encourage them to speak their own language more than they’d like. However, if you get on so well that you’re invited to travel and meet the family, grab the opportunity.

Many a language student has spent time with a family overseas, where they’re forced to speak another language to socialise adequately. Make sure to pack that PDA, or even a laptop loaded with tuition software and built-in dictionary. You’ll find that within a few days, the combination of contact with the culture, plus a helpful dash of technology, will have a profound effect on your ability and confidence in the target language.

You might also notice that when in the UK, you’ll suddenly make the acquaintance of a large number of expatriate native speakers, who have a tend ency to come forward when they realise there’s a friendly, comprehending British face in their midst. And they’ll also stop gossiping about you within earshot!

As technology-led studies empower you further, new career opportunities could arise. Business is becoming increasingly globalised, so foreign language skills will make you more attractive to certain types of employer.

This may, of course, dictate the language you choose to learn – there’s a great deal of interest in Chinese these days, driven by China’s strengthening economy. Spanish is also a popular choice, with its use expanding in North America. And there’s a host of eastern European languages that are gaining popularity in the UK since the accession of so many member states from the region since 2004.

In fact, earlier this year, PC Gary Pentengell of Norfolk Constabulary became the first non-native to win a Pride of Lithuania Award for teaching himself Lithuanian after noticing how many people from that country had moved into his patch. If a full-time copper can find the time to learn one of the most difficult languages in the world, what’s stopping you?

Typing in tongues
As we’ve mentioned, a key skill to develop when learning a foreign language is writing.

Naturally, handwriting is where people begin, but it’s also possible to type away at the computer in foreign characters. Windows and Mac OS X have numerous languages built in, so it’s a case of finding your target language and activating it.

In Windows, go to Regional and Language Options in the Control Panel. In OS X, you’ll find languages under the International icon in System Preferences.

Of course, foreign characters will be mapped to different keys, which makes for a lot of blind hunt-and-peck on a Qwerty keyboard.

One workaround is to have Windows’ On-Screen Keyboard or OS X’s Keyboard Viewer open at the base of the screen to use as a guide. Alternatively, acquire overlay stickers or a foreign-character keyboard.

UK retailer The Keyboard Company and Languageresource.com have wide ranges catering for many popular languages and for both Mac (USB) and PC (PS2). Pick one with both English and foreign characters so you don’t have to keep swapping the keyboard when hopping between languages.

And in case you’re wondering, it is possible to convert a Western keyboard to the complex input systems used by the Chinese.

Dedicated dictionaries
If you have money to invest in language-learning technology, there are plenty of dedicated, portable electronic dictionaries from which to choose.

One of the biggest names in hardware-based translation tools is Ectaco. Its £324 EW800 (pictured) is a hugely capable gadget that can translate between English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

It will speak the words to you, while language students can test their pronunciation via the built-in microphone.

The device is also capable of interpreting a phrase spoken into it and reading it aloud in translation – very handy for tourists struggling to make themselves understood.

Ectaco also manufactures the rather less expensive Language Teacher range for language learners. These are non-talking dictionaries with an emphasis on language acquisition. The Italian version, for example, includes more than 450,000 words, plus an organiser function to help students schedule their studies. The price of a Language Teacher varies depending on which language pair is installed, but for an idea, the Italian-English option costs £89.95. Ectaco 020 7669 4111.

Machine translation
There’s a temptation, when new to a language, to use translation software if you’re in a hurry to write something. After all, language is based on rules, so computers should be able to map one lot of rules on to another with ease.

There’s plenty of choice, including the Systran range, products from Promt, Babylon, LEC and more.

Although such software can be handy for getting the gist of a document translated from a foreign language, these products are tools for professional translators already fluent in the target language. We’ve already seen what Systran’s system, as used by Babelfish, makes of porting English into Dutch and back.

Google’s Translate service, meanwhile, makes this of a sentence on the Russian Know-House.ru website: “To date, 74 per cent of families have no heater and difficulties in the off hot water.” Not bad, but you’d need human intervention to make the sentence work properly.

If attempting to translate from English into another language with the assistance of software, it’s best to wait until you have a good command of that language so you can tweak the result. But if all you need is to translate from the target language to your own, such programs are well worth checking out. The closer the relationship between the languages, such as those from the same families, the better the results.