About 2,500 years ago, on the Greek island of Samos lived the elusive Aesop. Rising from slavery, his master, a man named Xanthus freed him due to his eloquence and mastery of the spoken tongue. Eventually, Aesop would go on diplomatic missions around the fertile crescent, until meeting his maker in Delphi, a city considered to be the center of the world by the ancient Greeks. Before that, however, there was life. In fact, to this day, Aesop has been credited with writing hundreds of fables…
Did you know Naples, or Neápolis, as Aesop may have called it, was a major city in the greater Greek mediterranean area of Magna Gracia?
One of the fables is that of the la Tramontana e il Sole or, the North wind and the Sun. Here it in English.
,,The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.
Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him;
and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.
And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.’’
It just reeks of old folk-ness doesn’t it? All fables have a moral, what do you think the moral is here? If you want to know RIGHT now, check out the last paragraph, otherwise, keep reading…
Now how about hearing this tale in English. Not only that, in an Australian accent, or in a Michigan Grand Rapids accent. How about a Huston, Texas accent? How about hearing it in a Niger-Congolese Kirundi Burundi accent? Check this link out, it might just blow your mind.
Click on the speaker icons on the map and hear the same story, the north wind and the sun, told by hundreds of different voices in hundreds of languages. This is the fruit of decades of work done at the Arturo Genre Experimental Phonetics Laboratory or LFSAG (Laboratorio Fonetica Sperimentale Arturo Genre) in Turin, Italy.
Now this, in combination with Radio Garden (I use this to listen to radio stations all over the world. Check out that blogpost here) can help you tap into the language learning immersion you want! Say you wanted to learn Brazilian-Portuguese instead of Portuguese-Portuguese.
For LFSAG, why don’t you try:
Learning the words
Shadowing (imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation and rhythm of the speaker)
Learning the shadowing by heart
Not only will you learn some new words, but it can start or fine tune your ear and mouth to the accent you want.
Each fable had a moral, as they usually do. This one teaches us the power of persuasion. The wind, however strong, is unable to blow the cloak off the traveler. The sun, however, trumps the wind by persuading the weary traveler. The traveler decides to take the cloak off after the sun warms the earth. Now how can we make this about language learning? Well, I see it like this. You’re the traveler, the sun, and the wind. You need to persuade yourself to learn a language. Find your motivation (blog post here), but that, must come from within. Your role as the sun, is to make it hot. And I don’t mean turnin’ up the Marvin Gaye (albeit I never think that’s a bad idea…) I mean, change your environment so you can persuade yourself to learn. Immerse yourself, go to a language café (blog post), write letters, watch TV, listen to music (blog, blog, BLAWG!). Your role as the wind, finally, and this is something that the fable doesn’t touch upon, is discipline. You can use structure and discipline as tailwind. It will push you for when you are not always able to persuade yourself. Sometimes we need a little push. Again, creating the mental space to do so by working on your discipline is so powerful. And I mean it, it got me through college. The hardest thing is often just to get started. Remember 15 minutes a day?
I hope you’re all well, and I hope you’re finding time for yourselves in this quarantine.
Keep getting in on,
calypso
Love this! 😊