Simply think of them as passion flowers yet to blossom! Of course, shopaholic bibliophiles (of which there are many of us) may also have a ready-made dabbling shelf thanks to past purchases, as yet not fully explored. Your never know – those first steps just might turn into a lifelong passion. Learn a couple of basic words and phrases, and listen out for whether those sounds speak to your heart. Remind yourself that there is no harm in doing a few tentative lessons in a new language to see if you like it. And dabbling is a great way to test the water for new projects on the polyglot trail. Polyglots are always on the lookout for their next big language love. As personal proof, I recently spent a couple of weeks marvelling over the differences between Norwegian and Swedish (Coffee and wine are neuter?! Wolf is varg and not ulv?!) and I feel more informed, not more confused. In fact, our brains are much more resilient to this than we think, and research into bilinguals provides some evidence for this. Personally, I put off exploring Swedish for years for fear of ‘contaminating’ my Norwegian. Naturally, you might worry about getting things mixed up. And that can only cement your proficiency in the key language. Seeing how two related languages treat the same root teaches a lot about the development of vocabulary and sound systems, for instance. Getting to know your core language’s closest cousins ultimately means you understand it more intimately, too. Through dabbling with closely related languages, you can add extra strings to your polyglot bow very quickly and easily.īut there is an additional upside to this. That said, we can also turn this argument on its head. Straying from the same path opens up the box. Sticking to the same language family presents just one picture of how language can be, how human beings perform things with languages. And just a brief dip in the water reveals that there is much more to language life than S-V-O! It is a big, wide and varied world of words out there. Its definite accusative and vowel harmony system require IE-soaked newbies to think on their feet. To those focused tightly on Indo-European languages, it is a revelation. Just take a bite of Turkish, for example.
Instead of falling back on your automatic, ingrained thinking, you must conceive brand new categories. When dabbling, you suddenly challenge yourself to make sense of new, unfamiliar patterns. And that defeats one huge benefit of language learning in terms of head health: the mental gym, working out the plasticity of our brains with new puzzles. We no longer have to think, or try, with the same tenacity. For a start, picking new ones up is so much easier if the rules and structures are already familiar to you.īut sometimes, material can be so familiar that the element of challenge evaporates. It can be very handy to study languages from closely related families, for example. Now, there are benefits to sticking with familiar pastures. Polyglots, like so many other animals, are creatures of habit. So what can dabbling do for us? And why should we purposefully make time for it between all our ‘serious’ learning projects? Dabbling out the box The extra leaderboard points were very helpful, of course! But the utility of dabbling goes far beyond that. I used the time to play with everything from Italian to Turkish to Swahili, chiefly thanks to Duolingo. Seizing upon that spirit, I decided to make August my Dabble Month. The joy – and utility – of dabbling is just too good to deny it to yourself. Learning to embrace a linguistically curious nature is a healthy step towards becoming a well-rounded polyglot.
#Dabble in spanish free
After all, when we look elsewhere, doesn’t it almost feel like we are cheating on those languages closest to our hearts and minds? That our attention should be completely and unwaveringly directed towards our greatest goals? However, giving yourself free rein to explore can be a liberating experience. Two-timing – or a hall pass?įor many of us, it can be a real source of guilt to stray from our core language projects. And there are so many opportunities for it these days, with multiple online platforms offering quick, easy – and free – taster courses. Dabbling – or the casual exploration of new languages – is when passionate polyglots really let their hair down. But there should always be time for a bit of ranging and roving. Planning, routine and system are crucial in language learning. This year, I made it my month of dabbling! For many, August is the month of holidays.
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