I thought I would share some of the many pieces of art that I have created recently.
Tag: practice
Automatic art
I tried to do some art without thinking too much. My husband likes that these are less representational than usual and more abstract. http://renminds.org/2020/03/25/neo-apocalyptic-dust-mites/ liked the idea as he had done something similar so here is a link to his work. 
Netflix
This is a brilliant platform to watch foreign language films on subjects that you are interested in. I have already posted about watching The First Line which is English but with plenty of Greek to keep me happy. I have also been watching Cathedral of the Sea which is Spanish (English subtitled) history, The Medici which is Italian history, Bolivar which is Spanish (English subtitled) Latin American history and the Last Csars which is Russian history. That last one is part dramatisation, part historical program. For pure drama in Russian with English subtitles watch Trotsky. This is not for the faint hearted as it’s quite raunchy from the start.
If you need to practice your English I recommend watching Peaky Blinders. This is on BBC IPlayer as well as on Netflix. You have 4 seasons so far to sink your teeth into. This is set in Birmingham just after World War One and the language is quite raw but it’s highly enjoyable. Not one for children but then neither are any of the above programmes either.
Do you have programs to recommend that I should watch as you don’t tend to hear about any of the ones above when asking people for viewing suggestions?
Best wishes
Angela
50 verbs in Greek
I like the fact that Lina explains in great detail the fact that lots of words in Greek have several meanings. I’m not a great talker so she does the job amply for me.
Part of my conversation series
100 common phrases in Athenian Greek
How to have a basic conversation in Greek with common phrases
For my other work see here
Best wishes
Angela
Krashen’s Hypothesis (on language acquisition) and what I think is it’s relationship to the difficulties present in Autism
This is in fact a group of 5 hypothesis (sorry about that), that were formulated by Stephen Krashen in the 1970’s and 80’s. These are to do with Second Language Acquisition and Educational Psychology. This is rather in depth and technical at times so your going to have to bear with me on this one. It’s an important theory that I have just come across due to it being promoted by Luca Lampariello. He is a Italian polyglot and teaches languages for a living.
The 5 hypothesis are as follows,
- The Input hypothesis
- The Acquisition Learning hypothesis
- The Monitor hypothesis
- The Natural Order hypothesis
- The Affective Filter hypothesis
Input hypothesis
- Only practising talking, means that while you will be able to communicate, you will not necessarily be able to write as it is writing that encodes language into our brains far stronger than any other message. Hence when we need to remember something we write it down.
- When you have enough reading material of an appropriate level or Comprehensible Input you will learn grammar far better than through direct grammar teaching. This has been proven by the famous Hungarian polyglot Kato Lund but also by the Canadian Ling Q founder (language app) and noted polyglot Steve Kaufman.
- The way you are taught in a classroom is quite often different to how you learn naturally so a gap becomes apparent which results in lopsided learning that isn’t particularly useful. Any one who remembers there high school french classes can probably attest to learning innumerable things to pass tests but nothing useful that you could actually use in a real life situation.
Acquisition Learning hypothesis
Monitor hypothesis
- As the Monitor (think of a computer scanning your speech before you say it), requires you to analyse form (grammar and syntax) and meaning (semantics) at the same time; this can result in conversation slowing to a crawl or even completely stopping while the conversation is digested. I’m certainly one of these people. I think a lot of autistics are also prone to it. This is perhaps why autistics talk in such a strange way. We understand the grammatical rules but not the meaning because that often morphs to fit the situation. This affects not only our first language but any others we may learn. This is how you can come across people who while having been born and bred in the UK; prefer and sometimes even move to where they can speak French (Daniel Tamnet autistic polyglot with Savant syndrome), Greek (occasionally myself), or any other language including made up ones like Klingon or Elvish (many introverted geeky people).
- When Writing you often have all of the time in the world, so you can utilise your vocabulary to its full extent. This ability is enabled as you have no outside influences competing for your attention. This shows itself frequently in that autistics often prefer to communicate in written form as opposed to verbally like the rest of the world. This can be electronically in the form of instant messaging, email, blogging see an example here – How to have a basic conversation in Greek with common phrases or in older times writing letters, poetry, or even a book! See examples here My author page.
- As a result of this, while we (Autistics) may Know the Rules; we don’t don’t have sufficient processing time in conversations. We will therefore resort to talking about topics we know about without us requiring to consciously think about them. We don’t want to slow you down but we simply cannot listen and reply at the rate you do.Language variation.
From what I’ve seen of Neurotypical (anyone who doesn’t have Autism) conversations; it involves lots of talking, not a lot of listening and a lot of forgetting so you can say the same things repeatedly and nobody minds as they were never paying attention on any of the previous occasions anyway. So inefficient and illogical as it wastes so much time and effort.
- We are more than linguistically capable of holding a conversation. Maybe even more so than yourselves, as you’ve never needed to prove yourself. As we struggle for the correct words to respond appropriately, we appear immature and tend to get treated as children with patronising and condescending comments. We (I) have very good hearing as these are usually whispered or muttered under the breath in an attempt to discreetly “badmouth” us. These are also delivered in tones that while are acceptable when you are still a chronological child, become infuriating when you get older both chronologically and mentally. The problem is the more you stay with people your comfortable with (because they induce less panic and anxiety), the more they want you to stay the same so you don’t grow. This is why we leave our parents. Otherwise we probably never would.
- Since so much of communication can’t be learned from a book, Autistics struggle greatly with this. Which is why you will frequently see us talking with our hands when we can’t get the words out quick enough. If Italians, Greeks etc can get away with it, why not other cultures like English too?
Natural Order hypothesis
Affective Filter hypothesis
- If your expected to speak too soon therefore not allowing enough silence for information gathering and processing (all the time in pretty much every conversation ever) and
- Your corrected too soon (yes this is me totally with so much baggage from my childhood it’s unreal).
Reading about all of these hypothesis makes total sense to me as I have been struggling a lot with my language skills recently. I have also been wondering why I cannot perform when I have the necessary prerequisites to do so. Hopefully the blocks have now been removed since they have been discovered.
Additions and Critique
Additions
According to Wolfgang Butzkamm (linguistics professor) and John A Caldwell (2009), while you need comprehensible input to understand the language around you, you also require dual comprehension. This means that you need to understand what something literally translates to as well as what they are actually asking you. This happens so often to me in English, Greek etc and I’m pretty sure this is another facet of Autism. We get the words but not the meaning hence our literal sense of humour. It’s witty and intelligent as it involves wordplay but deviate from the established standards and were lost.
Critique
The above hypothesis are critiqued by some (but Wikipedia is unable to say who Grrr) for saying that there is a gap between acquisition and learning – the acquisition learning hypothesis but as this not an area that can be proven it is left in the air so to speak. I know there is this gap because I can acquire language but it does not necessarily mean I have learnt it. It’s like saying memorisation and learning are the same thing. Just because you can repeat something does not mean you can use or make use of it.
Conclusion
I like the idea that language learning is heavily dependent on the mood of the learner and other factors like intelligence, memory etc are nowhere near as important. If a learner is under some kind of stress than the learning will be impaired just like if they are unwilling to learn in the first place. This shows that the environment that a learner is placed in, subject to and how it affects them is more important than any other factor when it comes to language learning.
Best wishes
Angela
The Stoic way to deal with the problem of Indifference in Relationships
The Problem of Indifference in Relationships
The Problem of Indifference in Relationships
— Read on beyondboundslb.co/2019/05/26/the-problem-of-indifference-in-relationships/
Stoicism is an Ancient Greek ideal that is gaining popularity at the moment. Here is a good explanation of how it relates to modern life.
Best wishes
Angela
The problem of knowing a language at an intermediate level
Here in Lefkás I can read Greek at a suitable level to get by and this includes some social media posts too. This is a great achievement for me.
However, this does not extend to a cashier wildly gesticulating her arms about in the guise of some kind of transfer. She was pointing in the direction of the cabbages that I had bought but since I’d already paid and they were already in bags I had no clue what she wanted. I said to her that I didn’t understand but my fatal error was that I said this in English. This causes them to lose all interest in you and then the transaction is done after a cursory goodbye.
It’s so sad that this happens after I had been polite by greeting her and even giving her money after she told me the total in Greek. I didn’t know the word for cabbage since you so rarely get them here but those that are interested google says it’s λάχανο.
It’s disappointing that the only time that the young populace lose the power of speech, is when they are confronted by an English person. They (the English) have tried to learn your language (Greek) but you have used something unknown to them. Suddenly being more interested in your colleague doesn’t help the situation as you clearly wanted to communicate something but were too bloody stubborn to explain! It’s called customer service. Just because I’m English does not entitle you to pretend that you don’t understand me. I know you do so please help me out next time. I don’t need to learn your language but I have because I wanted to. Don’t make me regret my decision.
Best wishes
Angela
How to increase your attention reblog
https://mathias-sager.com/2019/04/08/increasing-the-attention-span/
This is yet another series of blogs that I have been digesting recently. This is also quite the mammoth undertaking so be prepared for the time investment required to properly appreciate what is written here.
If you were to write at length, what would be your topic of choice?
Angela
Greece my love (translation) γιατί μου λείπει Λευκάδα
Today I decided to write a post to Thankyou all for visiting my blog and for the fact that I have received 1000 likes! I am also happy that I have been nominated for a mystery blogger award and for the fact that I have been asked for a written interview in a fb group I am part of.
As it’s April fools day as a joke I wrote this entirely on google translate to show that you shouldn’t do this and also why I don’t write in Greek. For those of you that can understand this, how is google doing?
Thankyou for the replies on this. I know it’s not an exact transcript above but it’s almost perfect. Here is the link to the original article:- April fools!
Now for some editorial comments.
It would seem that I was incorrect in my assumption that posting every day for 8 days was what was causing my ratings to rise. It would seem that in fact I need to write in Greek to engage your curiosity. Comments will come from a couple of people who are really interested in my blog but mostly it’s just likes which I’m quite happy to receive.
So here goes Μου λείπεις η λεφκαδα. Λοιπόν θα επισκεφθω πολύ σύντομα.
Or Lefkada is missing from me ( I miss Lefkás) so I will visit very soon.
I wish you all the help you need in your language journeys.
Angela
The English Introvert 