I look at how Chinese is different from the other languages I speak, and how I was dealing with this difficulty. Also, after the first few weeks of learning Chinese, I noticed that I was missing something and that I was getting quite confused at times. Would I be able to keep up my motivation […]
Children learn their first language without looking up any grammar rules, so why can’t adults do the same? In this episode look at how the grammars of the world’s languages differ. Having previously worked on “grammar” and even written a grammatical description of an Amazonian language, Mosetén, I decided to study Chinese without learning any […]
Once I had decided to learn Chinese, I needed to find the right method to do so. In this episode I describe my thought-process and why started with an app that was entirely in Chinese, without any translation.
In this episode I look at what the term ‘Chinese’ refers to. Mandarin? Cantonese? Why are there so many different terms for Chinese in Chinese itself? I try to investigate whether Chinese is difficult to learn. Well, apparently it is, because everyone keeps telling me so! But is it really? Is my learning doomed right […]
Would a 49-year-old even be able to learn a new language? Spoiler alter: yes! But why are people different in their language-learning success? What affects language learning? In this episode I compare how children learn their first language and second language acquisition and I look at the different factors behind language-learning success.
Hi, I’m Jeanette Sakel and I’m a professor of Language and Linguistics. I’m an avid language learner… or at least used to be, until I settled into a permanent teaching post, had a kid and somehow did not have the time or inclination to learn languages for a number of years. But this changed about […]
