#language education

👨🏽‍🏫Instructor: Cuitlahuac Arreola Martinez

💻Where: Virtually via Zoom, In person or Hybrid 

🗓️When: Year-round (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall)

✅Who: Open to all but BBIPOC-Centered 

Subject: Language Learning, Language Teaching, Language Revitalization

Credit: Personal Growth and Personal Devolopment

Cuitlahuac offers beginners and intermediate synchronous/asynchronous, online courses in Jalisco Nahuał (Mexicano) through the Speaknahuatl collective. The one-semester, dynamic courses begin in the Winter (January—February), Spring (April—June), Summer (June—August) and Fall (September—December). Each course meets for 9 weeks for one-hour sessions. Students will register and donate $250. Those interested should message Cui at (213) 340-4784 or visit https://speaknahuatl.com/registernow. Visit the following link for a demo class using the Where Are Your Keys? LR method: https://youtu.be/dUJl_XYWTzU. Click here to learn more about our LR work.

Do you live in the Eugene-Sprinfield, OR area? We are offering FREE in person classes perhaps in the Fall. Please click here.

✍🏼Info & Registration at: https://speaknahuatl.com/registernow.

If you'd like a workshop at your organization, campus, museum or cultural center, click here. You must be logged in with your Gmail address. This will help with scheduling a 💻virtual meeting to discuss further details. In-person, virtual or hybrid options available. 

🗣️Se habla español mexicano.

Sponsorship/Scholarship Program click here.

📩Contact Email: [email protected]

📞 213-340-4784

Use small phrases when talking to pets/inanimate objects/ yourself etc

Kid books!!! Especially ones you know like cat in the hat or something similar. These are amazing especially if you are a beginner. It helps build fluency, literacy, pattern (different languages have different speaking patterns and flow), etc. There's a reason they push the books on kids.

Do translations! Take those books and mark them up. Find news articles, research papers, etc and translate them.

Keep a diary in your target language

Find people who are native speakers and tell them to talk to you in that language more than your native language

WRITE. When I formally studied Spanish, one of my teachers made us write EVERY WORD 10 times with their meanings. If it was a phrase, we would still do it word by word. I HATED this so much but after 4 years of not speaking or hearing the language, those were the words I still knew.

Change your phone language or an app language to your target language

Watch shows in your language. Use subtitles. If you're trying to learn to read better, put subtitles in your target language. Trying to pick up words? Use your native language for subtitles and listen to the show in your target language.

Describe your actions, feelings, etc to yourself in your target language

Find signs in public that are multilingual and read them

Play your favorite songs in your target language and sing along

Play your favorite songs in your native language but sing along to them in your target language

Follow comic artists (or other people) on social media. Comic artists are great because they tend to use slang, colloquial language, jokes, etc that build a more fluent speech. Makeup artists and influencers are good for this too

Go to shops. Where I'm from we have mercados and taquieras everywhere so going to places like that can help a lot

Reach out to people and learn with them! Find someone that studies the same language or someone who's trying to learn your language but speaks your target language. Talking with non native speakers can help you learn study and language tricks that helped them

Flash cards!

Apps that help you learn a new language are great! But only if you practice outside the app

Find recipes written in your target language

Rewrite class notes in the language!

In respect to countries with both an indigenous population and a settler population, what is the wish of language planners and revitalisers? Is the goal to maintain the language only within the native community or for the majority of non-indigenous people to be fluent in it as well?

This is relevant to places like Australia, Canada and the United States. For instance, in education, should all children be taught the language or should teaching of the language be targeted toward indigenous-majority schools?

Regardless of the answer, I think that indigenous languages should be legally protected and that indigenous people should have the right to not only receive education in their language but also to receive public services in their language and for it to be accommodated in the legal system. I also think that bilingual signage should be standard and that there should be more dual-language schools, even for non-indigenous minority languages.

In an ideal situation in these countries, supposing that it is agreed that non-indigenous people should learn indigenous languages, the school language curriculum should be like this (excepting non-English medium schools and dual-language schools): each child must learn at least two foreign languages— a modern “foreign” language (e.g. French, Japanese) / a sign language / an ancient language (e.g. Latin, Ancient Greek) and the indigenous language of the region. I think this is only fair.

i’ve been working to learn Diné bizaad for quite a while now and though i’m proud of my progress and though i’ve got my dictionaries and language books that were printed in like the 30’s and 50’s and though i’ve been using duolingo (but full disclosure here that app is not ideal for this language) i really desire more options to expand. navajo word of the day is a relatively good source for cultural context behind words and phrases and i’d love to get access to a tutor but at the moment i’m semi strapped for cash and can’t get afford a one (nor can i afford a paid subscription to an education site/app).

as a native english speaker, the amount of times i've been "corrected" on my grammar by some is awkwardly… a few times too many. i refuse to believe it's because my english is "wrong." rather, it's the fact that i have been surrounded by a creole my whole life that's wrong to them.