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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
Listening
Expanding your target language vocabulary by listening is something I’m a huge fan of and, I believe, is something you can do even before you’ve learnt all the grammar and vocabulary. Or, indeed, anything.
You might think that doesn’t make sense, at all. You might think I’m contradicting myself according to what I’ve said in previous podcasts. I’m not. Hear me out. (Yes, that was supposed to be a pun.)
When I started to learn Italian, almost three and a half years ago now, I was listening to Italian radio within a month. Back then, I didn’t really know what I was doing in the modern language-learning world. Things had changed a lot since I was a language student, but everyone was talking about input and acquisition and I thought, listening to the radio counts for that, right?
Of course, I could barely understand a word of what I was listening to, but I persevered. Every night when I went to bed I would put RAI Radio Uno on and let it wash over me. Because, honestly, that’s all it was doing at that stage.
What was the benefit of this? I was hearing the sound of the language, the music if you will, or prosody, as we learnt a few weeks ago, spoken by natives who weren’t in the least bit interested about a foreigner understanding them. It was natural. It was fast. It was a blur. Can something be a blur when it’s listening?
After a month, or two, I started to be able to recognise some words and phrases. It seemed unbelievably fast, as all foreign languages do when you first start, but it no longer seemed completely impossible. Just almost impossible.
Each month, I found I could understand more, because my vocabulary was increasing. I could understand phrases from the news that I’d heard first in my language, in Italian. I could understand repeated vocabulary that you might only hear on the radio, or in the news, and, eventually, well, let’s talk about now, three and a bit years later, and something that feels a little bit weird.
The thing is, for a significant portion of the year, the principal thing on the radio when I’m listening to it is football (I mean soccer, if you’re American, but I refuse to call it that). I have never been a football fan, but I live in the UK, so cannot help but be familiar with the basic rules and the terminology, especially as, when I was a kid, sometimes football was all that was on the TV and being of the generation when colour TV was still shiny and new, it had to be on!
Okay, back to the radio. I’m at the stage now where I know, or rather, recognise, because I might not be able to produce it, much of the football terminology that’s used and can actually understand, to a certain extent, what’s happening in the match. Because, of course, football commentary often goes at lightning speed and I can easily get lost. But, I know some things that, despite myself, I find interesting. Like they don’t say gol, when there’s a goal, they usually say rete, which is the net. So, in the net. Plus, they call the goal, as in the physical object, la porta, short for porta di calcio. The football door. I think this is used more as the goal mouth really, during commentary. And when I was checking that I had understood that correctly, I discovered that the goalkeeper is the doorman - door person? - or the portiere. Isn’t it funny the different meanings the same word can have?
Anyway, I don’t know when I’m ever going to use this vocab, apart from now, but that’s beside the point. It proves one thing. I’ve acquired this language without really trying, just by listening.
Try listening without any expectations. It’s well worth the time. And you might even find out some weird and interesting facts for yourself.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.