Dear gods of the cyberverse, please direct this blog-entry through the right routers,feed aggregators, RSS readers … anything it takes so that those great apple developers in the sky can start to get a taste of the multilingual HUMAN world outside of that apparently monoglot paradise of Cupertino.

I've had my iPhone for almost a year now. Someone actually gave me a 3G version, but I was so attached to my original phone that I sold the 3G version and kept the old one. You see apart from liking the metallic feel of it – something that you just can't find with handheld appliances these days, mine has a huge crack across the screen that I've grown rather fond of. (The crack happened when running to escape the Bangkok rain in mid 2008 – when the device slipped out of the slip-proof iPhone belt-holster that I'd purchased a few days earlier).

Why a Polyglot / linguaphile SHOULD own an iPhone

As we learned in Dale Carnegie Instructor training, when delivering bad news, START WITH THE POSITIVE AS A BUFFER! So here goes.

The first week I had my iPhone I wanted to throw the thing out the window. I'm a tinkerer – and not being an Apple person, I found the iPhone not really tinkerer friendly. Luckily within a few days I was lucky to find a team of enthusiastic iPhone hackers that whetted my palate with the possibilities that the iPhone holds for tinkerers. From that moment on, I started to take to the thing.

Podcasts, Language MP3's, Youtube and more

I quickly found many uses for it – it's actually changed my life. From ChinesePod.com to Japanesepod101.com to news podcasts in different languages to morse simulators to Youtube clips, the iPhone is a language learners dream! If you want to know someone, take a look at their iTunes library. I have MP3's and streams in over 40 languages in my iTunes that I sync with my phone which facilitates my learning every waking moment (that I'm not with clients of course … well, even then some)

Now with AV cables, I don't even have to take my computer to many events that I have to speak at / teach at. I can play the Audio / Video files straight out of my iPhone through the sound system / LCD of the seminar venue – and even record Presentations as video files and then use my iPhone as the presentation device rather than PowerPoint.

There are also some great apps out there that developers are creating for learning languages - one that I particularly like is JapaneseFlip (日本語フリップ) by Andre Khromov. Very simple but good looking App that helps you get through your JLPT levels.

3 Steps to Drive a Polyglot to go Insane and Throw their Freaking iPhone off a Cliff!

I can imagine what the project management meetings in the development process were like:

Project Manager: "Now guys, there are gonna be some folks out there that don't speak 'Merican, so we might have to have some way they can talk to each other in their own gobbledygook"

Development Team Underling: "Ahh… yes boss, I'll get on it. Those Chinese folks down on the corner at the restaurant seem nice, maybe they'll be able to help me get some of their lingo into this thing."

Project Manager: "Great idea! Just make sure you don't make it too easy for 'em. We don't wanna encourage too much of 'their language'… in the long run, better to have 'em speaking 'Merican like the rest of the world! We have those great 'Merican language modules that we use in our Mac OS's … just throw one of those under the hood and it should do the trick"

Development Team Underling: "Umm .. boss… what about people who want to communicate in more than one language at once?"

Project Manager: "Yeah right!" (sarcastically)

Development Team Underling: "Okie Dokie boss – consider it done!"

And so the iPhone language development team was born.

3 Areas of iPhone Linguistic Insanity

1. Language Input
2. Predictive Text
3. Fonts

Language Input

The way you switch languages is really cumbersome too! In a typical message sent out of my phone, I could have any combination of Thai, Chinese, Japanese, English, Indonesian, Spanish and Nordic languages being used. I just had a look through some of my SMS's and some of them use up to 4 languages in a given message.

Could I suggest a language selection button that will iterate if tapped normally through the input language list similar to the buttons that already open up to display additional characters when held. Rather than a straight tab of letters though, if held it would open up something like a daisy-wheel so you can slide your finger directly to the target language selection – when you release your finger, it's in that language input mode.

That way, if there are only 2 input keyboards running, you can do 1-tap iteration, otherwise people with more than 2 keyboards can also quickly switch between them without iterating through ALL OF THEM … often resulting in the thing hanging and then crashing. At the moment I have 8 keyboards active. So if I change to a language and back to English, a minimum of 9 clicks is needed. Not only that, because you're typing as fast as you can, you often get 'click happy' and iterate past the English keyboard and have to go through them all again. It's a bit 'Ground hog day'ish' guys!

Input Keyboard Layout

I understand that screen real-estate is scarce, but some of the excuses I've seen for Thai keyboards are appalling. Given, I don't think that most of the ones that I've been using have been developed by Apple themselves – most of them 3^rd party apps from Eastern Europe, the developers were probably just concerned about getting so many letters into such a small space and knew nothing about typing habits of native speakers of those languages, common letters vs. uncommon letters etc.

Predictive Text

With the original firmware, there was a function in there that allowed you to turn the predictive text off. Since version 2.0, I'll be darned if I can find it anymore!??

Even for monoglots of English, people don't communicate in standard English. There have been papers after papers on the language of messaging, sms language, email English etc.

Here's an example in English:

Desired text:

Ud bttr c if ur gf's up to it, coz ur gona get it otherwise.

If I type that into my iPhone without going back each time and correcting it here's the result:

I'd byte CID ye FFA up to it, cox HR Bina get it otherwise

The funny thing… each time I tried to backspace and fix things up, things progressively changed and got worse (even more changes to what you see above!)

I don't know what these guys could have been thinking. We don't send text messages to be grammatically correct! We send them for efficiency. Not only that, the shorthand used communicates a multitude of emotions, relationships and other 'meta meanings'.

Indonesian Texting

I think Indonesians would have to be right up there with the Filipinos as the number one texters on the planet! Someone could be driving down the freeway at 130kmh, swerving between the cars and still get out an epic text message in a few seconds flat.

As with many other languages, SMS language in Indonesia is a language of its own.

As a linguist, it's fascinating to analyse what's going on. Normal language takes on almost semitic language principles – where words retract into fundamental vowel deprived roots, then inflated with different amended affixes as needed.

Here's another call out to the developers…

INDONESIANS USE THE ROMAN ALPHABET TO TYPE BAHASA INDONESIA…. So there's no need to change a keyboard. The English keyboard would do just fine if there wasn't any freakin' predictive text there to botch it all up!

Not only do Indonesian's use the Roman alphabet, many of them can speak languages other than Indonesian!... so in a given message, you might have Bahasa Indonesia, Sundanese, Javanese, Mandarin, Hakka and English!

But let's get back to Indonesian SMS'ing. Here's a sample sentence:

Thai and other languages

This applies to ALL languages. Sometimes depending on someone's phone and language upbringing, Thais might send a message in Thai – or write their version of Thai using the Roman alphabet. There is no standard to the spelling used, so developing a dictionary would be useless. Each person has their own 'flavour'.

It gets worse, the predictive text started to think it would be smart by 'learning' Thai letter order patterns. Well it thought it did… it applied 'English' logic to Thai and the results were terrible. Vowels and consonants were all swapped around to make the language look totally alien.

Other notes on Input Languages

The technology is out there guys… so how bout it…add a few languages into the iPhone official 'flock' – Arabic, Thai, Hindi / Devanagari, Tamil and other scripts that although they might be a little foreign to Cupertino, there are still billions of people outside of that 'hood' that use the languages.

Fonts

My last note is on Fonts.

On my Window's system, I love the MS Arial Unicode font – although it lacks some scripts like Burmese, Khmer, Tibeten and several others, it is fantastic in that the point size for Thai, Chinese, Arabic and Latin are all the same. I can even call a whole range of IPA characters up and they'll display on any page.

The iPhone's font mapping is bizarre with languages like Arabic. Arabic is a complex class script where the letters' forms will change depending on where they are in the word, with diacritics above and below the letters. For some reason, when reading pages on the web in Arabic / Urdu / Farsi etc, only the initial position letter forms are used. This again, makes the language look extremely bizarre. While it's possible to make out what the words are (kinda) it's very cumbersome and not in line with that slick 'Apple' image that I could imagine that you guys would be trying to shoot for.

APPLE EXECUTIVES TAKE NOTE

You are about to launch the iPhone here in Thailand legally. I'm not sure what you're doing in the way of your 'official' Thai input option, but if I were you, I'd seriously consider giving the Thai language issues an overhaul.

I'm happy to hire my consulting services out to you to make sure you don't piss the SE Asian texting community off any more than they already are.

Actually – I've changed my mind … hire me and we can sit down over a coffee in Cupertino and give the WHOLE FREAKIN' LANGUAGE thing an overhaul.

I've walked into Apple stores all over the world over the past couple of years and challenged the salespeople to convert me to a Mac user. I need a system that will allow me to use all the languages I use with ease – Microsoft actually got the whole predictive text thing right with Mandarin and Windows leaves Mac's OS in the dust when it comes to speed of typing up a Chinese document.

Both Apple and Windows do a dismal job in allowing us to type in Cantonese and other Chinese languages / dialects. I'm honestly surprised that one of the over a BILLION speakers of non-Mandarin Chinese languages hasn't mentioned it to you before.

CONVERT ME! MAKE ME A DISCIPLE! No one has been able to do it yet - and I still sit here with my PC - Linux and Windows.

Find Your Way Around Indic Based Writing Systems (Devanagari, Tamil, Panjabi (Gurmukhi), Burmese, Bahasa Bali (Balinese), Bahasa Jawa (Javanese), Thai and Khmer (Cambodian) Without a GPS

Download Full A3 Size Chart Here

Theme and Variation

The reason I love playing and listening to jazz so much is because you're able to get into the soul of the players by hearing how they improvise on a theme. Language is not that much different.

I've noticed what could be described as almost an unquestioning deific reverence and fear paid to the writing systems of Indic language systems by their users (and learners of them). Whether it's the Devanagari script used to write amongst other languages, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and Nepali, or the scripts of other languages in India and surrounding countries like Panjabi, Tamil, Telugu or as far down as Southeast Asia including Thai, Lao, Burmese, Khmer (Cambodian), Balinese orJavanese, when you start to scratch the surface of the origins, grammar or even just the reasoning of certain things that would seem strange to outsiders, the eyes of your average Joe who's spoken one of those languages since birth will tend to glaze over. (Now THAT was a long sentence!)

That's the Problem with Turtles… It really shouldn't be that way!

Those Indians were pretty cluey back in the day. They developed an alphabet thousands of years ago that was a virtual GPS for the human mouth!

Just like the theme and variation in Jazz, all the languages that I've mentioned above (and many more) have used this basic map as their base - a reference guide and then coloured it with the sound filters of their own respective languages.

To draw an analogy from English, take a common sentence that we use every day like:

'That's the problem with turtles'

This is the 'base' or 'theme'. A variation might have those same letters read as:

'Dat's da pwoblem wif toitles' …

For many, the whole concept that 'Dat's' had come from 'That's' was never explained, leaving not only learners, but also native speakers of the language in a haze as to 'why' certain things are about the language and just accepting that it's something beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.

Part of my Mnidcraft course is to get a good grounding in the principles of Indic based scripts and develop some level of proficiency in identifying several the scripts including Devanagari, Thai, Khmer and Burmese.

I developed my 'Indic Consonant Glyphs' and the 'Stuart Jay Raj's Indic Script Consonant Compass' as a tool to accelerate the acquisition / learning of scripts based on the Indic sound system themes and variations.

Don't Count The Letters!

I'll often hear people measuring the complexity of a language by the number of letters in its alphabet. This to me is absurd as the practice of judging a presentation's quality by its PowerPoint slide count! (Another pet hate of mine… which led me to designing my 'Present!' presentations workshop who's subtitle is 'Bringing Presentations Back to The Presenter').

It's this body count (or in this case consonants + vowel count) that has turned many a learner off from learning languages like Thai, Sanskrit, Khmer and Burmese.

What Language Would You Prefer to Learn?

Here's the blurb….

I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd be lining up to learn Wadafrackizet! (Ok, I admit it – I probably would)… but honestly, Soowizy sounds just so … EASY!

The Cardinal Points of the Mouth

As you read through the brief explanation to each of the following glyphs, place your tongue / mouth in the position and hold it there. Once you can do it for each glyph, move your gaze from one glyph to another at random and practice locking your mouth into the correct position according to the glyph that you're looking at.

Drilling yourself for about 2 minutes like this should be enough to start to develop some long lasting muscle memory.

대한민국! (Dae Han Min Kuk!)

Now, I know the Korean speakers out there must be thinking "Hmmm… some these symbols seem eerily familiar!".

Koreans are very proud of their writing system 'Han Geul' – 한 글 .. . and so they should be. Developed by King Sejong the Great (1418-1450) in 1444, it is one of the easiest scripts to learn on the planet! (I learned it on a bus ride across Seoul one sunny afternoon in 1996J ).

To add value to learning the Korean alphabet, I suggest spending an extra 10 minutes to learn how to touch type in Korean also. The keys are very logically set out between:

• Left hand: Consonants
• Right hand: Vowels

Each syllable in Han Geul is broken into a beginning (initial) sound, vowel and final sound component (if necessary). The symbols used to represent each of the sounds were based on the various parts of the mouth from which they were produced.

Korea Meets India

I have combined this principle with the basic principle of the Indic Scripts 'Map of the Mouth' logic to develop my own symbols.

It's interesting to note that the sound for 'r' / 'l' in Korean is uncannily similar to many of the symbols used to represent these same sounds in Indic (Brahmi) based scripts that display a 'rolling tongue' in one rendering or another. When I'm learning a new Indic script, this is actually one of the first memory points I will look for – I will peg the similarity or difference of its 'r' sound to the ones that I already know. I can't include all the samples in this text based medium as the fonts probably won't render properly on your computer. You can see them on the main 'Indic Consonant Compass' chart though.

Another shape that is very similar include the 'base voice' symbol which in many scripts is a circular shape of some sort.

The 'y' symbol which in Korean is normally 'two prongs' heading in the vowel direction. In the Indic scripts, the 'y' sound is usual a 2 or 3 pronged shape which I imagine is a representation of the way the tongue interacts with the palate.

Here is a sample:

Comparison of Similar Sound Shapes in Korean, Devanagari, Thai, Tamil and Gurmukhi (Panjabi)

The Key Actions of the Mouth

Colour Coding

I have also colour coded each category within the sound system to give a colourful representation of the textual glyph. There are 5 base colours that correspond to each of the 5 cardinal points of the mouth (see above).

When comparing the sound shifts from the original base letter to the target language letter, you can either follow the 'glyph' transliterations in the octagon adjacent the target letter, or just look at the colour changes. Getting a visual and emotional representation of these sound shifts through colour is another device that I find really useful in 'embedding' the language within me.

Ready to Go!

"Stuart Jay Raj's Indic Script Consonant Compass v1.0 – Southeast Asian Version"

There were so many languages to choose from. I broke this chart down to 8 scripts that I think would cover a good portion of the globe. The languages / scripts with my reasoning for choosing them are:

Download "Stuart Jay Raj's Indic Script Consonant Compass v1.0 – Southeast Asian Version"

As my New Years gift to you for 2009, rather than giving you a cruddy jpg or bmp version (like you see above) and waiting for you to come to my Mnidcraft workshop to receive a full high resolution version, I have included a PDF version of my "Indic Script Consonant Compass – v1.0 – Southeast Asian Version". I have created it using vector graphics, embedding the fonts where possible and expanding any other fonts that could not be embedded. What this means is that you are free to print out the chart to enormous sizes and stick it all over your home, office, toilet and any other place you see fit. Getting one or more of these scripts under your belt is an investment that you won't regret.

Just the Consonants Ma'am

Remember, these are only the consonsants... and admittedly, there are a couple of rare consonants in each script that I haven't included on the chart as it would in my opinion add unnecessary complexity to learning the scripts. There is also some funky stuff happening with the Tamil that I'm working at ironing out in future versions. If there are any Tamil experts out there, drop me a line!

You will also notice that I haven't touched on vowels. … stay tuned… that will come in a later installment.

I also have some surprises planned for this whole 'Indic' kick that I'm on. If time permits, I'm sure that you will see the bizarre fruits that my brain has borne in the near future.

Good Luck!

Who Should Read This

• Anyone interested in languages J
• Chinese speakers of one Chinese Language (方言) that would like to learn another
  • (E.g. Cantonese speaker wants to learn Mandarin, Mandarin Speaker wants to learn Cantonese, Hokkien Speaker wants to learn Mandarin etc.)
• Learners of Chinese that want a better understanding of what's under the hood of the language that they're learning
• Learners / Speakers of Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Burmese etc that would like to understand why things the way they are – e.g. tones, consonant classes, vowel changes etc. Cambodian isn't a tonal language, but some of the principles do still apply.

Why Cantonese?

I wrote a blog entry about a year ago now about how I approached learning Vietnamese. There have been many comments and emails that have come in since that posting asking for me to go into further detail (as promised in the article) about how I went about memorizing the vocab and getting on top of the grammar and tones. I thought about how I would approach that 'follow up' article, and realized how much my ability to grow and affinity with Vietnamese depend on my understanding of the link between Middle Chinese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Thai and other regional languages from China. I love Cantonese for a lot of reasons. It's a very funky and modern language when it has to be, but at the same time, it preserves many ancient traits from the Tang Dynasty – consonants, vowels, lexicon, tone rules, idioms from the past that are a little more difficult to grasp when using Mandarin as a base. I personally like to think of Cantonese as a dinosaur wearing an Armani suit, shades and a lot'a 'bling'.

So before I go into how I went about getting on top of Vietnamese vocab, grammar, tones etc, I thought I'd share some of my learnings over the years about the engine that is running beneath the hood in Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai and other 方言 /fang1 yan2/ - regional languages.

Understanding the Tones

Very often when I hear people comparing 'difficulty levels' of learning tonal languages like Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese etc, I hear lines like:

"Cantonese has nine tones where Mandarin only has five – that means Cantonese is more difficult". …. In my humble opinion… that's just RUBBISH.

The number of tones in a language doesn't make it any more difficult than another if you learn it in a natural way where you can experience the rhythms and pitches of the language. Tones just become a natural part of using the language.

Moreover, whether it's Mandarin, Vietnamese or Thai, I will always try and map the tones where possible in reference to the base tone system of the 9 tones in Cantonese.

Writing the Tones in Text

From now on when I refer to tones and pitch changes, I'll use the standard of 1 to 5.

• 1 is the lowest note you can possibly make in your vocal range
• 5 is the highest note you can make in your vocal range

So if I was to write a pitch change that went from very high to very low, I would write 51.

If I was to write a pitch change that started very high, went very low, then came back up to around the mid range of my voice, I would write 513.

Yin and Yang 陰陽

When people first start learning Mandarin, along with spending the first few weeks or so getting their Pin Yin consonant and vowel sounds right, a lot of time is usually spent on getting the 5 tones down (4 tones + neutral tone).

You'll probably learn the names of the tones around that time too.

People might be curious as to where the Yin and the Yang come from? This curiosity is quickly surpassed by the student's need to master what they sound like rather than pontificate on where the origin of the tone's name came from.

I find the whole Yin and Yang element of it fascinating though, and it is very useful in understanding the tonal and sound structures in other related languages.

To start with, stare at the following picture for a few minutes and turn it into a Mind Map in your own mind.

Glossary

Explanation

I'll explain this in relation to Cantonese.

• The tones are separated into Yin tones and Yang tones.
• The Yin tones (female) are higher in pitch – memory point – 'Woman is on top – voice is higher pitched than the guy's'.
• The Yang tones (male) are in the lower register of the voice. Memory point – guy has the deeper voice.
• The Entering tone is sometimes called 'clipped' – it's the tone for syllables that end in p' t' or k', where the vowel is killed by the final consonant. In Thai we call these คำตาย 'kham tai' – dead words. There are no 'clipped' syllables in Mandarin.

You're going to see in a minute that the 'Level' and 'Departing' tones in Cantonese sometimes don't actually just stay level or fall as the departing tone does in Mandarin. Don't let this confuse you. If you trace these back over the centuries, they morph all over the place from time to time and region to region. The system remains the same though. The main point I would like to get across here is the SYSTEM rather than its rendering in just one language. The reason I'm using Cantonese as a base is because it still preserves all the tones. I'm sure that there are going to be many Cantonese speakers reading this too, so this will help understand how to map Cantonese tones across to Mandarin too.

When I learn words in Chinese, I try to subconsciously (initially consciously) file it away based on the picture above. I'll tag in my mind whether it's a 上 平 去 or 入 type tone, and I'll also shade it in my mind with the Yin or the Yang sign. This is unbelievably helpful later on if you're looking at learning more Chinese languages .... and consequently Vietnamese too. Even if the new languages have words that have changed their tone categories, I find making a point that certain words have changed tone categories serves as an extra memory enforcer.

Cantonese Rendering of the Yin Yang Tone System

Note that the 陰平 (Yin Ping) tone in Cantonese can be a level high tone, or could be a high falling tone. In Cantonese, these two in most cases are interchangeable - some words would be more commonly heard with one rather than the other. This is one thing that can sometimes help tell whether a Cantonese speaker is from the Mainland or from Hong Kong.

What about the Entering Tones? (入聲)

In Cantonese you can see that they fit nicely into the existing tone pitch contours. Note that in Cantonese, all the entering tones 入聲 are constant pitch tones - High, Middle and Low. In other words, whenever there is a word that ends in a clipped p, t or k in Cantonese, the tone will only ever be a steady High, Middle or Low tone.

Mapping the tones to Mandarin

So you're probably wondering now whether there is a correlation with the tones of words in Cantonese and Mandarin. The answer is YES. There's a bit of fuzzy logic sometimes. Over time and geography, the tone category has shifted for many words and many words fall into 2 and sometimes more categories. What this does mean however is that for Mandarin speaking learners of Cantonese, or Cantonese speaking learners of Mandarin, the following relationships will help you turn your Canto-Mandarin into more standard Mandarin, or your flat Cantonese turn into more natural sounding Cantonese.

From Cantonese to Mandarin

Please note that this table isn't 100% accurate, but it's a great framework to start with.

How can this table be used?

Admittedly, this table is probably a lot more useful to Cantonese speakers that are learning Mandarin than Mandarin speakers that are learning Cantonese. The reason being is that you are going from a manyà one relationship from Cantonese to Mandarin, where as Mandarin à Cantonese is a One à Many, compounded by the fact that there are also entering tones. As you start going through the dictionary though, you start seeing patterns emerge.

• 花 – flower

• In Cantonese, this is a 陰平 tone pronounced 'fa'. This converts to a 1^st tone in Mandarin 'hua'. (Note f -> hu. The changes from 'f' between Cantonese and Mandarin are normally – f -> f (e.g. 飯), f -> hu (e.g. 花) or f ->'ku' (e.g. 快) )

• 人 – person.
  • In Cantonese, it's 'yan' – yang ping 陽平 tone. You could make a pretty confident bet that it would be a 2^nd tone in Mandarin. Note the y -> r change. There are many
• 好 – good.
  • I know that it's a 上 (ascending) category tone, so it is probably going to be the same in Mandarin – i.e. 3^rd tone in Mandarin.
• 是 - is
  • In Cantonese, this isn't the common word for is – but a Cantonese speaker would still know the word. In Cantonese, it is a 去 tone, so that means that it would be a 4^th tone in Mandarin.

I am the first to admit that there are many many many more variables than what's shown in the above tables that we need to take into consideration before we can start to feel confident with applying rules to morph Cantonese into Mandarin or Vice Versa. What I've provided here is a fundamental first building block.

Other variables include:

Consonant Changes

Some of these have been mentioned above. Some of the common ones are:

Vowel Changes

Some common vowel changes are:

Bysyllabic versus Monosyllabic

In Mandarin, a word feels kind of 'naked' if it's said with just one syllable. In Classical Chinese and Cantonese, it's very common just to use one syllable words.

Examples would be (Taken From Zeng ZiFan's book)

Different Characters for Same Common Meanings in Standard Spoken Language

Reversed Word Order

In Mandarin, you would say

我给你钱

Wo3 gei3(2) ni3 qian2

or more commonly

我把钱给你.

I - (particle denoting object) - give - you

In Cantonese, you would say

(updated 5 Oct 2008 - Thanks to Cantonese Guru Cecilie Gamst Berg!)

我俾錢你

(ng)oh bei chin (n)lei

I – give - money - you

Actually, in Mandarin, you could make a structure similar to the Cantonese structure, but you'd need to through a 把 in before the 錢 'money' - 我把钱给你.

Loan Words / Transliterations

Cantonese has many more transliterations that we find in Mandarin from the mainland. In Mandarin, it's usually standard practice to invent a brand new word rather than use a transliteration based on the pronunciation of the original word in English or other source language. The following examples are a mixture of both types. There's also a difference between many terms used in Taiwan and the mainland.

Even more variables include idioms, standard grammatical structures – e.g. the use of the verbs 'to be' , 'to have', 'to be able to' etc, words that exist in Cantonese but not at all in Mandarin, use of measure words, repetition of words, adverbs, suffixes and more. For a great rundown on all of these, I can't recommend enough the book by Zeng Zifan "Colloquial Cantonese and Putonghua Equivalents". I've had my copy for around 13 years now – the pages are torn, yellowing and crumbling, but it still serves as a great reference between the languages. The examples used from both Cantonese and Mandarin are second to none also, as it's focusing on colloquial language – not book language.

In future posts, I'll show how this foundation serves me well in my endeavor to learn Vietnamese and understand other regional languages / dialects.

Cantonese Lessons on Youtube by Cecilie Gamst Berg

I thought that I would include a link here to Cecile's latest production efforts. For those of you who haven't heard her Naked Cantonese podcasts - downloadable free from iTunes, Cecilie is now producing learn cantonese video clips currently available on Youtube. You can link to them here.

Cecilie is a Norwegian lady who has lived in Hong Kong for many many moons and speaks (and teaches) fantastic Cantonese. Her sense of humour is amazing and after meeting her in person on a few occasions, I can confirm that she is the real deal!

I received an email in my Youtube box this morning that touched on a topic that I had always meant to post about. I figured this is a better time than ever to write about it. Here's the letter:

Perfect Pitch

I touched lightly in one of the interviews that I posted on the Thai TV Show 'Joh Jai' on the idea of perfect pitch. For me, every sound – whether it's a musical note, a sound in speech or just a 'bang' of a gun, has not only a colour, but also texture, shape and emotion. I don't know where these things came from. I just remember them always being there. Perhaps it's thanks to my grandfather's advice that I've mentioned in other posts of never allowing "words to limit my thoughts – always think LOUD". That 'LOUD' for me wasn't just loud colours, but it was anything that would stand out in my mind and have an emotional effect on me.

A Musical Family

I come from a very musical family. My mother sings and plays the guitar, my brother the same, my sister sings and plays the piano a bit, I play piano. I have musician cousins, aunts, uncles and extended family too. When I was very young, we would be driving and my mum would make each of us in the car take different parts singing acapella.

Feeling harmony – intervals such as major and minor 3rds, 5ths, 4ths, flat 5ths, flat 7ths was something that when I was younger, I assumed everyone could do it naturally. Hearing 'notes' in my mind was another thing that I thought everyone 'just did'. It was only when I was a bit older that I realized that most people had had this ability 'muffled'.

'But I'm Tone Deaf!'

When talking about 'perfect pitch' or even teaching people to learn tonal languages, I am frequently confronted with the excuse 'I'm tone deaf'. Although I read in the Wikipedia page on tone deafness that some believe that it could be genetically influenced, I find it very hard to swallow that argument.

Tonal Languages and Tone Deafness

On the language front, of the billions of people who speak tonal languages such as Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese etc., I am yet to come across a native speaker that doesn't speak with the correct tones (according to standards of whatever dialect that they speak / grew up with). Could it be that only non-tonal language speakers could be genetically tone deaf? I don't think so. I think it comes down more to exposure and active use rather than a genetic displacement.

Exposure to Pitch, Tones and a Buffet of 'Sound Stuff'

I mentioned earlier that when I was young, because of the musical 'tone' of my family (no pun intended... well maybe a little one), I was fortunate to be exposed to many different concepts in sound. One of the earliest 'songs' that I can remember is the tuning of a guitar:

It was the first 'song' that was played before any other song – e e e e BBBBbbbbbBBBBB e e e e BBBBBB… my mum would be tuning the guitar working from the top down. The 4^th interval of the top string 'E' and the next string 'B' would go from good to a dissonance that was like an earthquake in my eardrum, then back to a nice 'buzz'. When the notes 'buzzed' together nicely, I knew that they were in tune. She would then work back down the strings in the same fashion. If there was any suspicion that the notes weren't in tune, she would 'ping' the harmonics to make sure that they were indeed in 'sync'. When there's dissonance between harmonics on a guitar, I think even the least trained ear could notice that something is askew as you can physically feel the air 'wobbling' out of sync ... you can feel the air going 'woob woob woob wooooooobbbbb' in your ear.

Songs are 'Pegs' to Represent 'Notes' or Frequencies

Here's an exercise if you're interested in developing perfect pitch.

• Go to your CD collection or grab your iPod and go to a song that you like and have listened to many times. Don't play the song yet.
• Make sure that your surroundings are quiet – sit in silence for a minute or so.
• Think of the song that you chose. Important – DON'T HUM OR SING IT YET. Just think of it. In your mind and in your mind only, think of the introduction to the song, think of any 'key moments' in the song. Think of the chorus, think of any lead breaks. Think of how the song ends. Think of the emotions that the song makes you feel.
• Do you feel that the song is any specific 'colour'? If so, paint that song in the colour and emotion that you're thinking of. Splash the paint all over it, fly around inside the song if you like and smatter the paint throughout it.
• Now pretend that your mind has a 'volume control'. With your eyes closed, turn the volume right up so that the song is blasting in your mind's ears. Even if someone came into the room now, you couldn't hear them because the song in your mind is playing so loudly now.
• Ok – wake up!
• Now play the song on your iPod or CD player.
• Does the song sound the same as what you imagined it to sound like? I find in most cases, even people who are tone deaf – when they start humming a 'golden oldie' like 'Dock of the Bay' or the intro to Michael Jackson's 'Beat It', or even the 'dah dah dah dahhhhhh' of Beethoven's 5^th, they are more than often spot on when it comes to starting on the right note.

Over the years, I've built up a menu of songs that to me are the epitome of 'keys' or 'notes'. Some of them include (I've also included the colours that these notes make me feel):

• 'Groovy Kind of Love' = A (Yellow)
• 'All the Things you Are' – Ab (and Fm) (Greyish yellow)
• 'Rhythmning' – Bb (Dark Greyish Blue)
• 'A-Train' = C (Green)
• 'Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong' = D (Woody Brown)
• 'Guitar Tune' = E (Darkish Red)
• 'Round Midnight' = Eb (Even darker red with black splotches)
• 'Bye Bye Blackbird' = F (Orange flame)
• 'All Blues' = G (Brown – lighter than D)

If you are a musician and you know how to play the songs, think of the intervals that make up the song. For example in the song "Bye Bye Blackbird", for me that's a very distinct Yellow down to Orange Major Third start of the melody (A -> F). I actually see in my mind a swirling sandwich of yellow and orange as those first two notes play.

In this sense, you get both perfect pitch and relative pitch through the same exercise.

It gets to the point that you don't know what came first – the chicken or the egg… or in this case, the song or the key. If I hear a note, I will normally see a colour with it, my hands will know where on the keyboard it would be and other songs that are in the same key start to congregate in my mind around that song like ants to a pile of sugar.

You may be wondering why during the above exercise I mentioned not to 'sing the song out loud' yet. That's because I've found that sometimes people hear the song in the right pitch in their imagination, but the ability of actually producing that sound with their vocal chords 1^st time needs a bit of work. That's why it's good to just compare your mind's song with the actual song first – check if you are indeed close to the real pitch.

When you think of it, it's a miracle that we can actually normally without thinking produce out of thin air a predetermined frequency with our voice. How do we 'know' that a particular tension on our vocal chords will produce a particular frequency. Just thinking about it blows me away. I just accept that there are some things that I can't explain and that we can do it.

As you get better, you'll be able sing 'notes to order'. And even microtones – notes between notes. I have a cousin – Kerri Ayling (speaking of musical / business genius, take a look at their site and history at The WAM Communications Group ) that is notorious for her uncanny ability to pick out notes / frequencies with her perfect pitch and tell how many 'cents' they are out from the standard frequencies. Kerry was a great device to have lying around the studio when the recording engineer was trying to fix up pitchy vocals on tracks that had been recorded.

The Disadvantage of Perfect Pitch

This sometimes causes a little havoc. I was playing in a jam session a few months back where we had to play a standard in some obscure key because of the singer's vocal range. This was one of those songs that I had played a million times before, and although I could have transposed it in my head straight down from Eb to Bb, I was lazy. I used the 'transpose' button and knocked the calibration of the electric piano down a 4^th. Something very strange happened. It was like 'Culture Shock' of a musical kind! My mind was telling me of the colours that had to come next because that song was a part of me now (the song was Stellar by Starlight by the way). All of a sudden, I was hearing deep blue where I was supposed to be hearing RED. I was hearing yellow and green flat 5ths where I was supposed to be hearing browny orange ones! My fingers on about 4 occasions during the song tried to recalibrate themselves to play the colours that they were expecting to hear.

Can Anyone Develop Perfect Pitch?

I believe YES, they can. Just like I've never heard a native speaker of Chinese or Thai speak with incorrect tones, I believe that everyone has an inherent ability to define pitches. For some however, they have had it hidden away from them since childhood. It's something that needs to be fostered back into action. Try the above exercise a few times a day until your strike rate starts to get better. Slowly build up a vocabulary of 'songs' that you can use as reference points for notes, chords and intervals.

How Does This Relate to Learning Tonal Languages?

I think some of the same principles can be applied. As with being able to pin point specific musical notes, I think that the amount of 'noise' that is crowding out the important variables of sound when we're learning language needs to be filtered out. In language, that 'noise' could be actual ambient 'noise' that distracts us from really listening to what the native speakers of the language are saying. It could be the 'noise' created by the filters of our mother tongues' sound system, subconscious sound and rhythm rules etc. It could also be the 'noise' of our own psyche telling ourselves that 'I'm tone deaf - I can't hear this - I can't do this'. Those sort of negative affirmation can be very destructive to our language learning aspirations. The first thing is to realise what forms of 'NOISE' we have influencing / impeding and interpreting what we here and find a way to at least for the moment, put those noises aside.

Work in Progress

I've never sat down like this and tried to work a method out for developing perfect pitch.

If this does work for you, please do let me know!

Somebody's Gotta Do It …

The Miss Universe 2009 pageant has just wrapped up (not without controversy) at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Another amazing year where I was fortunate to spend a lot of time meeting some wonderful people and rub shoulders with the gorgeous, the glamorous, the influential … and the not so influential (though many in this final category would probably have liked to have thought otherwise), surrounded by egos, hairspray, horrible overpriced American greasy food and two giant manta-rays, not to mention more languages than you could poke a stick at… all the ingredients for the perfect 'gig'!

My life started to be fatefully influenced by the Miss Universe pageant back in 2005 as a result of a series of seemingly random events stringing from the Tsunami in Thailand leading up to a chance encounter interviewing Miss Indonesia 2005 (Artika Sari Dewi) in Bangkok for an Indonesian television network. Since then, I've had the honour of working with one of the most amazing bunch of linguistically endowed people on the planet who wait all year for dinner conversations where sex, politics, syntax and the subjunctive can (and more often than not DO) all get rolled up into one sentence!

Putting the Odds in Your Favour at Miss Universe

Having been a qualified Dale Carnegie facilitator in a former life, I realized that the first 9 Dale Carnegie Human Relations principles could well be the key to success at Miss Universe. I see mistakes being made time and time again by contestants and their managers. If you're going to be competing in Miss Universe in the future, it mightn't hurt trying to implement some of the following suggestions.

Principle #1 – Don't criticize, condemn or complain.

IT'S ALL ABOUT BRANDING!

In my eyes, the Miss Universe Competition is not a beauty contest. It's a branding exercise where the right character / image for the Miss Universe brand is selected to represent the organisation for the next year.

Think of some of the top brands out there –

Whether you love them or hate them, the statistics (and bottom lines) show that strong brand names help generate higher returns, stability and growth for the organisations that they represent. In May of 2008, Coca-Cola's brand was valued at US$58.2 billion. This four-syllable piece of intellectual property is THE MOST VALUABLE asset that the company owns.

Miss Universe is a powerful brand that is associated with another powerful brand-name – Donald Trump. The person who is crowned 'Miss Universe' for the next year takes that mast-head position for the organization and will be just as important to the success of the Miss Universe Organization as the name, font, design and colours of the Coca Cola logo are for the Coca Cola organization.

In saying that, the process of coming down to that one person who is going to represent the brand and ensure that the organization has a future is more than just skin-deep.

Girls … You're on Stage 24/7! The Miss Universe Competition is a Psychological Game of Stamina

There are many physically beautiful women on this planet. I am blessed by living in Bangkok, Thailand where in my humble opinion I think that there is an inordinate ratio of stunningly gorgeous women mixed into the general population. The Miss Universe organisation needs something more than just a pretty face. If I were running the organisation and were to write a list of 6 of the most desirable traits that I would be looking for in Miss Universe, it might look something like this:

1. Physically Attractive - May not be so politically correct in this day and age – but hey, it's a beauty pageant… right?
2. Interesting – There is some degree of depth to their character that makes other people want to be around them. Some of the more interesting people there this year included:
   1. Miss Honduras (Bélgica Suárez) – a real life 'CSI' forensic scientist who was passionate about her work and had some amazing stories to tell about cadavers and other related things.
   2. Miss China (Wang Jingyao) was always in a good mood, and always appeared to be really interested in everyone she spoke to – and could tie something of herself into each person she met. Enthusiasm won out over any language barrier.
   3. Miss Egypt (Elham Wagdi) is a psychologist / marriage counsellor – extremely fascinating person.
   4. Miss Indonesia 'Zizi' (Zivana Letisha Siregar) was an amazing ambassador for Indonesia this year and captured the hearts of many.
   5. Miss Israel (Yulia Liubianitzki) is a soldier, and had some fascinating perspectives on world politics.
3. Awareness and Empathy – have a keen understanding of the current social talking points and can take a stand on one side or the other, though understanding all sides of an issue – e.g. War, politics, economy, health issues, minority issues, environment etc. Even if they don't agree with something, they should be able to as we say in Dale Carnegie "Disagree in an Agreeable Manner"… and not just make groundless claims or use cliché garble statements (most infamous point in case – Miss South Carolina)
4. Understands the Business – she should realise that Miss Universe is a business and understand her own role and her impact on both the longevity of the organisation and the bottom line.
5. Has Style – needs to be a good cutting-edge image for the organisation whether attending a cocktail-party, or just woken up and called out for an urgent shoot. The right person needs to be able to compose themselves and broadcast a consistent image with consistent sound-bites. Luckily, she will have people like Lou during the pageant and Roston to help take care of this.
6. Presentation Skills - Whether speaking one on one, doing a photo-shoot, attending an orphanage, Guantanamo Bay or addressing a crowd of thousands at a sports meet, Miss Universe's entire life for the next year will involve presenting themselves and the organisation. More importantly, they need to be able to successfully and positively present their values and the values of the organisation based on solid arguments – not just claims. The non-physical side of presenting (owning your message, enthusiasm, knowing your audience, structuring your message) are just as important as the physical aspects (posture, voice, body language, grooming etc).

During the 3-4 weeks that the girls are living together running up to the final pageant, they are being assessed on how they measure up to the criteria for a successful 'Miss Universe'. The above criteria are my own assumptions – I'm sure Mr. Trump, Paula, Roston and the gang have their own personal wish-lists.

Back to The 3 C's …

Getting back to the 3 C's, 'Don't Criticize, Condemn or Complain' - Understand that if you do Criticize, Condemn or Complain, it will eventually more likely than not come back to bite you. It's not just a matter of trying to put on your happy face when you're on stage or out in public being watched. The fact is that eyes are on you the whole time. Who's eyes? Your minders, any of the hundreds of MU employees roaming the corridors of the event facility / hotel, hotel staff (house-keeping, restaurant staff, security etc), managers of other contestants that are chomping at the bit to find some mud to sling on the competition (NOTE: some of these people can be very influential in the blogosphere, social networks, print / broadcast media and beyond!), people viewing the video feeds from the TV cameras constantly rolling in the venue. There are literally thousands of eyes on you ALL THE TIME. All it takes is one nose to be put out of joint, one smart remark that was taken the wrong way to blow it for you. Speaking on your mobile phone or checking your Facebook page or email when you're supposed to be paying attention to someone 'important' and you could well have just cost you your position in the top 15 and subsequently any chance of winning the crown.

Blogs and Forums could Make You or Break You

Blogs, mobile phones and the organic communication channels that develop as a result of having so many people living in close quarters during the lead-up to the pageant can either work for you or against you. Communication is swift and rumors traverse at lightning speed.

What does this mean for you as a contestant?

Always be painfully aware of what effect you are having on your environment. It's always better to have a mentor that can be your eyes on yourself rather than assuming (filtering) through your own eyes that everything is rosy.

I have seen on many occasions where contestants have finished the pageant and gone back home in a delusional state that they were the bees knees, that they had done everything right and that there was some how some kind of conspiracy against them in the end to keep the crown away from them. Many of these people have been the ones that I've noticed during rehearsals to have been constantly not paying attention, talking on their mobile phones past the breaks and showing other anti-social behavior.

Principle #2 – Give honest, sincere appreciation.

Spend every day there with a confident attitude, but never let this turn to arrogance. Understand that when it all comes down to it, it's a privilege that you're even there – not your God given right.

Look Out for Other People's Strengths

As a contestant, look for the strengths in all of your peers and other people you come across in the organisation and try and be something that edifies them, builds them up and brings value to who they are. Each time you do this, by default you're bringing value to who you are.

Principle #3 – Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Everyone has their own agenda. Whether you're a salesperson, CEO, or a housewife, one important key to being successful on this planet is to be able to build a passion in other people about things that you're passionate about. To do this, you need to understand what's important to THEM first! …that means going back to Principle #1 and Principle#2.

One example where this can really come in handy is during the interview session. You might have a burning passion to let the world know your views on a certain topic. Before you go doing this though, make sure that you put things into perspective first. Ask yourself:

• Is there a chance in hell that the judges will be interested in this?
• Why do I want them to hear about this?
• Is telling them about this going to help the Miss Universe Organisation achieve its goals over the next year?
• Is this topic going to demonstrate a personal value / virtue that the judges would be looking at in a successful candidate?
• Is this something that is going to be important / interesting to the world at large, or might it only be interesting to my own countrymen?
• Can I deliver this message concisely and effectively in the restricted time that I have? (If they tell you you have 3 minutes – then you have 3 minutes!)

If you hesitate in answering 'yes' to any of these, I strongly suggest that you suspend your need to share and find something more middle of the road to talk about.

Principle #4 – Become genuinely interested in other people.

The time you spend there is going to be one of the most amazing networking experiences in your life with people for every inch of the globe and every walk of life imaginable. I highly recommend going in there with the attitude that you are a sponge that's going to absorb as much of every person you meet and every moment that you experience that you can. These people and experiences can't help but have an influence on your life and make you a richer person.

While you're there, spend more time learning about other people than you do telling them about yourself!

The questions that you pose and interest that you take in other people will already be telling the world a lot about who you are.

Principle #5 – SMILE

This is my favourite Dale Carnegie principle.

In Bangkok, there is an elevated walkway that spans between Siam BTS Skytrain station and Chidlom Station (with Central World linking in the middle). One of my favourite stress relieving exercises is to walk from one station to the other with my iPhone headphones in my ears – (people think you're listening to music or a funny podcast, but really, you don't need to have anything playing) and smile all the way along your journey. You will be amazed at how many people smile back at you and even go out of their way to say 'hi'. I have met many seemingly 'random' people via this exercise alone.

Thailand is often referred to as the 'Land of Smiles' … but I'll let you in on a secret. Out of 12 of the main 'smile' categories in Thai, only a handful of them are positive!

People can feel a genuine smile from the heart when they feel it. As a contestant, find something inside of you that will generate a genuine smile and keep that burning all the while you are there. You'll be amazed at what it might reap for you.

I understand that as the times and fashions go, it might not be 'hip' to smile when you're walking down the catwalk. I'll leave that to the experts – but as much as my two cents are worth, people with a sour look on their face (off the catwalk) day in day out don't tend to get too far.

Principle #6 – Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Learn people's names and USE THEM.

There are normally over 80 contestants in each pageant. It's tough for most people to remember everyone's names, and so you just end up calling each of the girls by her 'country' rather than her name(e.g. "Hey Thailand!", "Can you pass the ketchup please Czech Republic?", "You're standing on my train Venezuela!") . While this is understandable, may I suggest that best practice would probably be to learn people's names and try and avoid calling them by their country. It will help build warmer relationships between all of you and once again, could reap benefits that you never imagined.

Knowing Who's WHO

On the topic of knowing names and who people are, I can't stress how important it is to know who exactly the key people are in the organisation. I was once speaking to a contestant one year that didn't know who Donald Trump was! Fatal.

Learn about all the key people in the organisation, influential people in the movement, the history of other pageants, relationships between people … basically any intel that you can get. All of this can help you achieve your goal … and avoid sticking your foot in your mouth (or being caught with your pants down!)

There are some very key (and cool) people that have made it a fine art of being inconspicuous during everything.

Principle #7 – Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

This goes back to Principle# 1, Principle #2 and Principle#3.

Let me emphasize once more how important listening is during events and ESPECIALLY DURING THE REHEARSALS. This is the time where people's tempers reach boiling point, voices are raised, egos are shattered and relationships break down.

Michael, Lou, Ken and all the gang choreographing and coaching you are some of THE BEST money can buy. Pay attention to every word that comes out of their mouths and more importantly, observe everything that they do. Sometimes, some cultural / language issues might get in the way of everyone comprehending what's being communicated. Nevertheless, resist the urge to get distracted or even worse, start complaining. Getting negative during these times has no upside. Stay attentive, stay positive!

Principle #8 – Talk in terms of the other person's interests.

I've touched on this throughout this article, but touching on it once more won't hurt!

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Whether it's a one on one conversation, a press conference, an interview with a panel of judges, or the final 'big' top-5 question, your goal is to understand what drives them and let them be certain that who you are will fit into their agenda. If what comes out of your mouth brings no value to the people you're speaking to, you'd probably be better off putting your soap-box into storage for a while and wait for a more suitable opportunity to come along once the pageant is over.

Principle #9 – Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Don't be fake.

When I was training to be a Dale Carnegie instructor, we would have to coach people and make comments about people's performance with the goal of telling them something constructive about themselves that they didn't already know – every time. That means you really have to look into each individual person, observe them, notice their strengths and bring value to them according to what you observe. Just saying "That was good" or "Great!" would result in us being asked to start again and find something meaningful to say. Just making a comment like "Great" without feeling or thought could backfire and leave the person thinking that you're fake and insincere.

I've been able to take this skill that was developed in Dale Carnegie and use it in every facet of my life. It's good, it works and you continuously grow as a result of doing it as you're always looking to learn from other people.

Building a Sustainable Brand for Yourself

Whether you win the crown or not, the experience of going through something like this shouldn't go to waste. In fact, I can think of many instances where people who didn't get the crown ended up better off in the long run than those that did. Just because you were Miss Universe for a year doesn't mean that you're going to be rich and famous for the rest of your life. People get older and good looks fade. You've had the opportunity to be coached by some of the most successful and amazing people in the business. Work out a strategy that will hone yourself into a successful, sustainable 'brand'. When you get back home, continue to build your brand and bring value to other people. For me personally, this mindset has been what has allowed me to live out my dreams every single day – and not have to wait until I'm retired at 60 years old to start 'enjoying' life.

As my grandfather used to tell me – "Do what you love doing, and people will pay you to do it". Ain't that the truth!

It's a fantastic day in Siam today … why? I'm not quite sure yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far for some reason!!

Before you read any further, check out my latest clip that I've just thrown together. It will form the base of this blog entry.

Where Jazz, Language and Ciphers Meet

Playing for years in my Jazz Trio – "The ROL Trio" with Dale Lee and Kenro Oshidari, we would often experiment with new ideas for soloing and communication when we played together. Kenro is a master of telling a story on his double bass, and Dale likewise. I used to try and take that 'communication' concept to a new level. I would often incorporate into my piano solos, messages in Morse code.

This must have been rumbling in my subconscious a few weeks ago when I dreamed of teaching perfect pitch, relative pitch, how to swing, Morse Code and Sign Language in one big strategic globule!

Words were running through my head. I wrote down several versions and after a little thought decided on what you see in the clips for various reasons.

Lyrics

Here are some of the concepts that went into the mix when putting this together:

• Language / Learning / Mind / NLP
  • Simultaneous Language Acquisition
  • Using Humour and Emotion in Learning
  • Guiding the Eyes / Utilising Peripheral Vision
  • Subconscious / Unconscious Programming
  • Hearing a new language or 'Morse' as 'Sound Blocks' – not text strings
  • Use of Colour in Learning and Memory
  • Learning Things Without Even Knowing We've Learned Them
• Music
  • Perfect Pitch
  • Relative Pitch
  • Rhythm – the power of 120 beats per minute
  • Pedal Notes – makes the note easier to recall through repetition
  • Pedal Notes – Help change the brainwave state

Language / Learning / Mind / NLP

Simultaneous Language Acquisition

I'm a strong advocate of Simultaneous Language Acquisition. I've found that any time I learn more than one language at the same time, there are synergies that happen that wouldn't have otherwise occurred.

In this clip, I chose two 'candidates' for our lab rats – Morse Code and the American Sign Language (ASL) Finger Spelling Alphabet. They are easy because they have a common link – the Alphabet. I admit that in other languages there are other letters and some of the images that I have used (e.g. Oreos) may not be relevant in some countries / cultures. I always have a problem when trying to make something 'universally applicable', as when you start to get broader with mnemonics, links etc, the 'emotional' potency is sometimes lost that would normally be there from things that have strong emotional value in one's own culture. I would recommend to people who find that some of the words might not sit well with them, to change them.

Some examples of this might be the word 'Laboratory' for 'L'. Some people say 'LABratry', some say 'LaBOratory' and then some say (as I've used in the clip) LaBOratry.

Some people might have an aversion to embedding 'Yankee Doodle' into your psyche too. That's just personal choice I guess J … I fully understand if you'd like to change it to something else.

Humour, Emotion and Learning

I've tried to tap into the 'emotional' realm of things on a number of levels here.

120 bpm

The first thing that I did intentionally was to choose 120 beats per minute. This rhythm sets our brainwaves into a state ideal for 'learning'.

Imagery

I've chosen to use a sparse plain white background. This enhances the images and colours used. I put several filters on myself to try and make the picture look a little more surreal. I didn't want to appear as a 'human teacher' in the video. Just a memory aid that dueled with the pictures opposite.

You can see a similar intentional use of 'space' in training programmes like the Landmark Forum. Many people either love or hate the forum. I will reserve the right to not express my opinions on their philosophies, but they definitely understand how to use space, colour and repetition to have a subconscious impact.

I have tried to choose images that evoke emotions. In some cases I have also tried to choose words that look like the hand-signs. Often these emotions are reinforced by my facial expressions. Some examples are:

A Apple Looks like an Apple

D Dog's Behind – humourous picture / concept. My facial expression reinforces it and the index finger in the sign is reinforced by the dog's tail caught by peripheral vision in the image of the 'dog's behind'

E EGG! – The beat that the word 'egg' comes in on is an off-beat – chosen to represent a 'splatting egg'. The image chosen reinforces it.

K Kangaroo – the Sign already looks like a 'K' and I bounce my fingers slightly to trigger the thought of a Kangaroo

V Victory 'V' – This is a very powerful image the world over. I've abused THREE meanings of this sign. First – the letter 'V' which is the learning target. I've chosen the words 'Victory V' as the Morse peg, and to reinforce the meaning of 'Peace' to keep re-occurring each time the 'Peace' riff comes up.

Y Yankee Doodle – This image is filled with different meanings for different people – depending on what part of the world you're from and what era you're from. I've tried to have a similar expression on my face as Uncle Sam.

Z Zebra Crossing. Rather than using a shot of an actually Zebra Crossing, I finally decided on stark graphic black and white stripes as a cue in peripheral vision.

Subconscious / Unconscious Programming

My kids were singing the song this morning in the car on the way to school. They were sitting in there when I was knocking the tune out on the piano from the beginning, and so now know all the rhythms and melodies.

This morning, I was listening to my daily morse code bulletin and my 4 year old daughter could pick out many of the letters that she heard and referenced the melody and letter that the different letters appeared in my clip. I was very happy – as this was one of my intentions! – To help people to learn without realizing that they're learning.

There are many other devices that I use to do this too. From the Spinning Peace Sign with a riff that is actually 'Peace' in Morse code, to flashing text 'Groove' and strong command words with black text on a white screen –

"Sing the Words to the Tune" (note use of capitals to stress key words)

"Copy my Hand" (not hands plural – subconsciously want to look again to make sure it's right)

"And GROOVE" – (Groove in capitals and flashing)

These all help access the subconscious and the unconscious.

Flicker Rates

There has been extensive research into flicker rates – and how TV actually flashes at a rate that can put us into an altered state. This can be (and no doubt has been)abused by people who manage the medium. It is a fascinating subject though. If you are interested, you might want to start your research here.

Not a Word is Heard

You will notice that you don't HEAR me say a word. I mouth the words, but my voice is essentially the music. I want listeners to be able to hear their own voice in their heads… or even better, to be able to link the concepts together with the rhythm etc without hearing ANY voice. This is a great skill to prepare people for simultaneous interpreting.

Hearing Sound Blocks rather than Text Strings

I've done this in many places. Actually – the whole song! One thing that I hear from experienced teachers of Morse Code is that they struggle to get students to not think of the textual dots and dashes and rather have them starting to hear 'sound blocks'. I would say the same for learning a new language – rather than learning just grammatical structures and spelling, we need to learn to hear the way the meanings are locked into different sound blocks – not just individual words.

Some examples of this in the clip are:

"Prepare for Transmission" – The international Morse is QRV : --.- .-. ...-

"PEACE" :.--. . .- -.-. . (I've intentionally rotated the Peace sign – with the intention that the eyes will follow the bottom 'stokes' in the circle as it spins and take the viewers attention of the text that comes up on the left. It still enters the subconscious, but the main focus is to think of 'Peace' via the symbol accompanied by the organ riff – which is spelling 'Peace'.

"LOVE": .-.. --- ...- .

"End of Message" -The international Morse is AR: .- .-.

Music

To briefly touch on the music specific aspects of the clip.

120 bpm

I already mentioned the use of 120bpm. It's a great thing for a musician to know how to play at a certain bpm on call. 120 is a good standard.

Pedal Note (Holding / repetition of one note)

Even from the 'Mnidcraft' intro before the main clip, you can hear that I have a 'C' pedal note in the background going. 'C' is a good central note to peg oneself when learning to develop perfect pitch. The whole song is in the Key of C, and I utilize certain intervals at different points within the Ionian and blues scales based on C.

The pedal note also helps change brainwave patterns

I've also used this concept on certain key letters like 'Queue in a Line' and 'Zebra Crossing'. These work as anchors. The 'Q' also words as a great point for people looking to develop perfect pitch – you know that that is a 'G' – and it's also a 5^th interval from the root note C – which to resolve would be a perfect cadence.

Beethoven's 5^th

Two great techniques for learning to recognize a minor 3^rd interval is to hum the first 4 notes of Beethoven's 5^th Symphony "DAH DAH DAH DAH!!!!!"…. Beethoven's 5^th is actually in Cmin. It just so happens that 'V' – is the same rhythm… which is very dramatic and so can easily link in with the concept of "Victory V".

It just so happens of course that 'V' is '5' in Roman Numerals... so linking it into Beethoven's Vth is also another reinforcement.

Another tune to get this interval is to hum the first 3 notes of the Lullaby song 'LullaBY' – that is also a minor 3^rd.

What's Next?

This clip is actually part of my Mnidcraft programme. In just a couple of minutes, the clip is able to touch on many of the topics that are close to my heart – and really want to be able to share with other people. These are the things that I believe have led me to have such a good relationship with languages.

If you'd like to run a programme in your neck of the woods, drop me a line / email. I'd love to see how I can adapt it all to work across different languages and cultures.

If you haven't done so already, I've created a Mnidcraft group in Facebook. Go on in and join the group. I will keep you up to date with latest news, materials and events. It also serves as a great meeting point for people who love languages, communication and using their minds!