zompist bboard

Yo.

Recently I came upon , which professes to be a "language fluency" game meant to facilitate the recovery of endangered languages. I think it looks pretty interesting.

Let me just say that I'm all for ANY group that is trying to save endangered languages, so I think this is EFFIN FANTASTIC. I haven't yet tried playing WAYK, but I intend on doing so soon. Since I don't speak a dying language, however, I'll probably have to get some nerd friends together and try to use the system to teach them Klingon or something!

I've got two gripes with the system/"game" at the moment: First, I'm not sure that I'm keen on seeing what the creators admit is a cobbled together short-hand constantly being referred to as "Sign Language".

Second, I don't think that the material on the site is presented in the most useful way possible. For example, there is no single video on the site that shows a whole first session in which the facilitators walk participants through the basic rules--the first video is a "recap". I also think that talking in terms of "technique: 'Set-Up'" and other "techniques" might be less useful than a simple, page-long description of how one goes about starting.

I'm curious what y'all think. Do you think the system is at all useful, or could be potentially? Would you consider teaching others a language with the system, or a conlang? Do you think the system could really help to alleviate the language crisis?

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"I bet your Sun-Prince can't bend like that!" said the Joppan to the Northlander. And he was right.

I've been following WAYK for a bit--the podcasts are quite interesting, and it's cool to see language revitalization in action.

I've tried running a few basic games with friends of mine, so far only using the sign pigeon (how cobbled together is it, though? from my admittedly meager understanding of ASL, it seems fairly close to truth), though we're hoping to break in some Chinese here shortly. I also hope to play a few rounds in Feayran at a writers' conference this summer, which a lot of the folks in my learners community will be at.

I agree that the official website isn't organized very effectively. A more convenient compilation of material can be found .

As for how effective the game truly is--I'm not qualified to say, but it certainly looks promising, and the application of TPR techniques is cool. I think the coolest part of the whole system, though, is the notion of "language hunting." Once I started listening to them describe what that process looks like, it occurred to me that it's what I've been trying to do with my language instructors for months. How cool would it be to have a teacher who would worry less about book-learning me, and just talk with me, letting me riddle my way through conversations!

But we'll see. I have a few plans this summer (in addition to the aforementioned writer's conference) to stress-test the WAYK game. I'll get back to you.

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Kyn nag ov den skentel pur ...

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Kyn nag ov den skentel pur ...

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"I bet your Sun-Prince can't bend like that!" said the Joppan to the Northlander. And he was right.

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"I bet your Sun-Prince can't bend like that!" said the Joppan to the Northlander. And he was right.

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It's (broadly) [faɪ.ˈjuw.lɛ]
#define FEMALE

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Quis vult in terra stare,
Cum possit volitare?

Cartweel-

I am most definitely not telling Dustin that. He will get an even bigger ego than he has already. Haha.

The present configuration of the material is, in a word, terrible. And I am the webmaster responsible. I'm a blogger who said "I'll do the website until we get a professional involved".

We are woefully underfunded. Last Fall we tried some fundraising to pay for a "videohost"-style library web app, and pay for some actual competent videographers, editors, etc. We fell far short of the mark (though we used that money to fund our rambling podcasts).

So I guess this is me agreeing with you. Honestly, I think it's pretty darn cool (I might even go far as to say "frickin' amazing") that one can even virally learn the system in person. For helping the communities we want to help, that's critical, for it to pass from tribal member to tribal member.

But that's not to say it doesn't kill me that I don't have a decent way to get it to go viral on-line too. We write grants, we scare up sponsors, but we haven't hit that big source of funding yet that we need.

If you check out the google group, there's a couple hardy souls who managed to wrench the ability to play the game from the videos somehow; I don't know how they did it.

Yeah, so, this is me sighing and agreeing. But thank you for supporting us!

Welcome Willem. No offense intended on my part. I was going to post some comments on your site when I'd had time to suss the whole thing out a bit more. There are a lot of issues, and right now its way too late at night this side of the pond

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Kyn nag ov den skentel pur ...

Perhaps a bit late now to wake up this thread, but I am really interested in the various methods being put forward to get people fluent in an L2, whether as beginners or as people who already have a theoretical knowledge of the written language. One factor that is new in a way, is the possibility now of making and accessing videos and recordings of 'rare' languages. How can this power be most effectively utilised?

When, quite a while ago now, I studied psychology, I remember that the conventional idea that learning was a gradual building up of something or other had been challenged. It was suggested that connections were in fact made more or less instantly by individuals, and that the steadly climbing learning curves of the researchers were simply the statistical sum of many small binary steps.

This came to mind when someone worked out the rate at which a child needs to build the vocabulary of its native language. So many words to be learned within so few years. And I think one writer concluded that oftentimes the child must latch on to an item after hearing it a very few times, probably only once. That is, an item may not be grasped first time, it would depend on the relevance of the context I would guess, but when it is grasped, it's locked in once and for all. Has anyone looked into this?

If something like this is possible for a child, it might be possible to set up situations where it has a good chance of happening in L2 learning situations. That would be better than sitting up late bashing away at disembodied vocab lists. I can think of cases where this kind of one-shot learning seems to have happened to me. When I come across a particular word, I sometimes recall exactly the situation where I first heard or used it, who was there, what was going on, the atmosphere, the whole thing.

For instance I recall when I was beginning to learn Cornish, I was with a group of Cornish speakers in a relaxed social setting, and someone said something like "pass the matches", and someone else passed a matchbox over. I remember that. I remember the room, the lighting, the sound of the matches rattling in their box, and I remember the Cornish word tanbrennyer 'matches' which afaik I'd never heard before, and which I've never forgotten since.

There were some bonuses here two. It's a compound of tan 'fire', prenn 'stick, piece of wood' etc. and a most unusual plural, -yer. So this one interaction fixed in my mind tan, prenn, prennyer 'sticks', tanbrenn 'matchstick' and it's plural tanbrennyer, the word I actually heard used in context. Not a bad trawl. Does a child perhpas rely on this kind of compound learning to master the native language so completely in the time available?

In this and a few other cases I personally recall, the situation/event was accidental. But if we could somehow plan for such vivid permanent connections to be made, then we'd put all the snake-oil 'system' people out of business very quickly. And like the WAYK people, and the TIP people etc. it ought to be a lot more fun than most classes now are.

Your thoughts and experiences please?

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Kyn nag ov den skentel pur ...